North from Rome (3 page)

The lobby, large, dark, and cool, shaded rigorously from the glare of the brilliant Italian sun, was filled with young people returning from their morning pilgrimages. Students clustered in groups: girls in cotton dresses with wide skirts and neatly bloused tops, flat heels, large handbags, and short white gloves; young men in seersucker jackets and crew cuts. It seemed as if half the college population of the United States was visiting Rome this summer of 1956.

He handed over his room key at the porter’s desk. “Any word of a reservation?”

The senior porter shook his head. “Not yet, Signore Lammiter. We do not expect to hear anything definite until four o’clock.”

Ah yes, Lammiter thought: now is the time for everyone to shut up shop for lunch. And after lunch, the siesta. Half-past four might be a more accurate prediction before any business would be done on that hot July afternoon. He turned towards the door, leaving an anxious group of schoolteachers from Ohio inquiring about seats for
Traviata
at the Baths of Caracalla. He halted at the entrance, hesitating behind the heavy curtain of white sailcloth which cut off the sunlight at the threshold. For a moment he watched the crowded hotel lobby; for a moment he listened to the babel of tongues. He
could recognise at least six foreign languages being spoken in addition to occasional Italian—Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese, French, English, Swedish, or Danish (he wasn’t quite sure, and Austrian German. Labels on neat piles of luggage near the doorway came from practically every country in Western Europe; from Egypt and Israel and Syria; from Ceylon, Hong Kong, Australia. For a moment, the noise and movement added to his indecision as if they hypnotised him. Then he noticed the large clock over the porter’s desk. Five minutes to twelve.

He pushed aside the gently blowing screen and stepped through the open doorway into the brilliant blinding light. The light breeze puffed its hot breath into his face. He turned sharply left and entered the broad sweep of the Via Vittorio Veneto. He walked at an even pace on the wide sidewalk, as the other foreigners were doing. He was a man on his way to Doney’s for a drink and a pleasant view of the world strolling by.

The Via Vittorio Veneto is the main promenade in Rome, a wide curve of a slowly descending hill, edged with trees, sweeping down from the old Roman wall to the more commercial streets of the modern city, covering no greater distance than half of a brief mile. But it contains much. It is the street of big hotels and sidewalk cafés, of small expensive shops for perfume and pretty shoes; of banks and imposing buildings; of lovely bareheaded girls strolling, breasts out, waistlines in, between the rows of café tables; of the Capuchin church with its coarse-gowned tonsured friars welcoming visitors to view its crypts filled with dead brothers’ bones—skull and ribs and pelvis laid out in patterns like a carefully arranged flower bed or a burst of fireworks. It is the street of thick trees giving dappled shade to broad sidewalks; of crowding taxis, smart cars, white-uniformed traffic policemen; of young men swerving on flatulent Vespas, foreigners on foot, young Italian soldiers on wide-eyed leave
in ill-fitting uniforms; of crisp, khaki-suited tourist police with a protective air; of the United States Embassy sitting placidly among walled gardens and ornamental balustrades; of grave-faced, tall, handsome
carabinieri
with gold braid, black cavalry boots, and carefully held swords, pacing majestically in matched pairs; of the Excelsior, where Texas oil men and Hollywood stars scatter largesse and perpetuate the myth that every American is a millionaire; of neighbouring Doney’s, where the chic and the odd, the dramatic and the beautiful, the bad and the vicious, the known and the strange, the quiet and flamboyant, the tragic and the farcical, the enchanted and the charming, all gather before the midday and evening meals to eye and be eyed.

The girl couldn’t have chosen a meeting place more favoured by foreigners, Lammiter thought as he reached Doney’s. The pre-luncheon crowd had started to gather. The little round tables, which edged the sidewalk like a guard of honour, leaving a centre path for the pedestrians (and it was surprising how many people would saunter past, not only once or twice but three times and more), were already half-filled. In another fifteen minutes they would all be occupied.

He kept his pace slow, untroubled, his eyes seemingly looking for a table where a gay umbrella would provide sufficient shade. He had the sudden fear that she wouldn’t arrive, that this little incident would end as a dreary, hour of waiting, of false alarms, of fading hopes, and a sudden angry retreat to a lonely meal. Everything had gone so badly for him in the last four weeks that he had begun to expect nothing but disappointment. And then he saw her. He didn’t have to try very hard to look surprised.

“Hallo!” he said, stopping abruptly. She was alone at one of the tables that lined the grass edge of the sidewalk. Behind
her was a row of parked cars, and then a stream of steady traffic. One table, to her left, was still empty; the other, on her right, was occupied by a handsome red-haired Italian, who was too openly interested in the girl to be anything but what he seemed—someone who admired a pretty woman. Pretty? She was beautiful. Lammiter stared down at her in amazement. “Well,” he added, beginning to smile, “well—”

“It can’t be!” she said, startled, smiling, delighted. It all seemed a natural succession of emotions. “But in Rome, everyone meets,” she added. “Sooner or later, everyone meets.”

“Are you waiting for a friend? Or may I join you?”

“Please do.”

So he pulled round the other wicker chair to the side of the small round table, and sat down to face her. Behind him, he heard almost a sigh of disappointment from her Italian admirer.

“Have I changed so much?” she asked as he kept looking at her. She was wearing a sleeveless white linen blouse, low-necked. Her bare arms were tanned, rounded, firm.

“In a way, yes. Last time we met, you weren’t so cool-looking.”

“Cool? In this temperature?”

“It’s hot,” he agreed. “And I hear it’s going to get hotter.” Behind him, a chair scraped as it was pushed back. A waiter hurried forward to lift the money that had been left to pay for the Italian’s Cinzano and to take Lammiter’s order.

“Beer: Danish,” he told the waiter, watching the Italian walk away. “Too bad. I spoiled his plans for a pleasant luncheon.” And possibly a cosy siesta, he thought. He studied the girl’s face, and he was smiling again. He hadn’t felt as relaxed as this, or as little unhappy, for a whole month. Was he beginning at
last to get over Eleanor? If so, this girl might be the pleasantest cure he could find. Her dark eyes were wide-spaced, richly lashed under excellently marked eyebrows. The forehead was broad and intelligent. Her features were classical, as Roman as one of the pretty stone girls in the Campidoglio museum. And, most startling against the honey colour of her glowing skin, she wore no make-up on her lips. They were soft, natural. It was a current fashion among the Roman girls, he had noticed. With a white face, it would have had a drab effect. With their deeply tanned faces and skilfully mascaraed eyelashes, the natural lips were startling.

“At least we can talk now,” she said, “and quickly. Before someone else sits down. Or perhaps the sun will discourage them.”

He realised then that only their table was shaded at this time of day by the small tree behind them. Other tables had their sheltering umbrellas or awnings. But here, the three tables usually depended on the tree. He looked at the girl speculatively. It was always difficult to remember that anyone as decorative as this could also be clever. But it was necessary to remember that. More guardedly, he said, “Why did you want to see me?”

“To thank you.”

He shook his head, smiling. Try again.”

“To warn you.”

“Me?”

“We must keep smiling. We are talking about America— about Harvard in 1950—just before you went off to Korea.”

“Look—” he said.

“Please smile,” she urged, her voice low. The waiter brought a bottle of beer, opened it, poured it, and left. Lammiter said,
as if there had been no interruption, “How do you know about Harvard? Or Korea? And who is watching us now so that we’ve got to keep this bright and breezy merriment stuck all over our faces? And why should I be warned? I’m in no danger. I’m just a peaceful guy who has been minding his own miserable business for four weeks. I’m leaving Rome today, anyway.”

“Yes, we know that too. And that worries my friends.”

He looked at her, startled. “Friends” had been bitterly spoken.

“They don’t like your plan to visit Perugia, not after your interest in me last night.”

“Perugia? Your friends aren’t quite up to date on all my plans. I’m going back to America.”

“Oh no!”

“You are forgetting to smile,” he said. She stared at him. She looked, suddenly, so young and defenceless that he relented.

“What’s this all about, anyway?”

She shook her head.

“Come on, tell me,” he urged gently. “You didn’t come here just to advise me to avoid Perugia.”

“It was my friends who didn’t want you to go there.”

He noticed again the bitterness with which she emphasised the word “friends.” “But you wanted me to go there?” She was silent, watching him. It seemed better to concentrate on her so-called friends. “Why did your—friends not want me in Perugia?”

“They think you could very well be an agent, an American agent.” He stared at her. But she was serious. “You
were
in Army Intelligence, weren’t you?”

He began to laugh. “Oh, I burned the bits of paper in the
trash basket for a month or two. Then the office caught fire one day, and I was demoted. I held the door open for the big brass when they visited my colonel.”

She wasn’t persuaded. And she wasn’t amused, either. She said slowly, “You’ve been in Rome for four weeks. Without any apparent purpose.”

“I am a writer. At least, that’s what my passport says ‘writer’.”

“That is always a very good cover.”

“Not since Somerset Maugham wrote
Ashenden.”

“You have friends in Washington. In Intelligence work.” She was trying to fight down some major disappointment.

“They stayed on in the service. Why shouldn’t they get promoted to Washington? You can’t expect them to live in foxholes or army tents forever.” He looked at her with curiosity. “Did
you
hope I was connected with Intelligence?” he asked quietly.

She nodded. “Or the F.B.I. Or the C.I.A. Something like that...” She looked at him quickly, as if to surprise the truth.

“No,” he could assure her frankly. “I’ve even lost touch with most of my friends. I never seem to meet them nowadays.” He frowned, as he suddenly realised that was not quite accurate. Three days ago, right here in Rome, Bunny Camden had thumped on his shoulder blade and practically given him curvature of the spine. But Bunny was probably in Naples right now, and you didn’t talk about Bunny without Bunny’s permission. Bunny was the type who knew what he was doing even if no one else ever did.

“Yes?” she asked quickly, noting the frown.

He said, “I’m puzzled. How did your ‘friends’ do all this research on me?—Just how did they learn—”

“They have a good source of information on you.”

“They have?” He was suddenly annoyed. “And who are ‘they’?”

“We must keep our voices low,” she said. Her eyes flickered briefly towards a table under the café awning, where two men were seated. It lay opposite theirs, divided from them by a stream of passers-by. He noticed, now, that she always seemed to speak when people passed in front of them, as if their movement would hide her expression from the opposite table.

“All right,” he said. “Who are ‘they’, anyway?” He studied her face. “You don’t really like them very much, do you? Then why call them friends?” She looked away, as if absorbed by the three American movie stars who were walking so slowly along the aisle between the tables, “Did they tell you to meet me here?”

She nodded.

“Then, if they expected us to meet, why were we to pretend it was all accidental? Who else is watching us?”

“I can’t be sure,” she said. “But it is likely I am being watched by other people, too.”

She shrugged her shoulders, but she was worried. She took the cigarette he offered her with a strained smile of thanks.

“Weren’t you afraid to come here?” he asked.

“I’m well guarded at this moment. And besides, the two men of last night are—” she hesitated “—they are dead.”

“What?” He was incredulous, and then frankly disbelieving.

“Please,” she said, “we must keep our voices low.”

“Who killed the men who attacked you?
Your
friends?” He began to smile a little. What a story, what undiluted hogwash! Either that, or she’d better change the company she keeps, he thought.

“So they told me. This morning. But perhaps it may have been a lie—to make me feel all is safe. But—” She took a deep breath. Her lips trembled for a moment. Suddenly, watching the fear she was trying to hide, he believed at least part of her story.

He said, “Do your friends know that you are working against them?”

Her face went rigid with surprise at his guess. Quickly, with a pathetic smile, she said, “Please—please pretend I’m finding out about you, instead of your finding out about me.”

“And what do your friends want to learn about me?”

“Why you are in Italy? Are you dangerous to them?”

“Dangerous?” He was now amused. Her sense of the dramatic was more Italian than American, although her accent was practically regulation Miss Hewitt’s Classes. She must have lived for a number of years in the United States, been to school there. Her manners were the recognisable pattern of the well-brought-up Eastern girl. “Wellesley or Smith?” he asked suddenly.

“Please
take me seriously,” she said sharply. “And my college was Radcliffe.”

“Then we’ve got Cambridge in common.” That was always a useful point of departure in any friendship. In a way, he thought, it was a pity that this one was going to be so short.