North from Rome (38 page)

“Yes,” Joe said. “Ten years as a kid; two years later on, as a college student in New York. I was brought up in Cleveland—I was only two when my father settled there. When he died, my mother brought the family back to Sicily. She had always kept talking about Sicily—the best place in the world, she said, the only place.” Joe’s smile broadened. “Funny thing, when she got to Sicily, she kept talking about America.” He swerved round a pair of white oxen.

“Oh!” Eleanor sat up and looked at them.

“Want to take a photograph?” Joe asked, but he didn’t slacken speed. “Or is the light not good enough? What colour would their hair turn?”

She half-smiled. She gave Bill’s hand a little squeeze. See, she was telling him, I’m all right: I feel better every minute. And perhaps, she was thinking, I need this: I need to look out at the world, this heavenly scene of farmers and white oxen and rich fields and little hills and trees, all silhouetted so clearly against the western sky. I need this sense of reality, as much as I need food or sleep. When Luigi and his two men brought me here, it was a nightmare journey through menacing shadows and grim black shapes. Now. She took a deep breath of the gentle air, with its first hint of coolness. Now, too, I begin to see the real reason behind everything Luigi did today. If this man Evans is
so important, then now I see Luigi as clearly in perspective as these clear-cut hills. He lied, to the very end he lied to me. He wasn’t taking me away to save me from danger. He was taking me away to make sure of saving Evans. And when he tried to kill me, it wasn’t because he loved me so much, it wasn’t any sweet romantic nonsense like that. He was simply protecting Evans. Luigi was the realist. It was not I who betrayed him. It was he who betrayed everyone who trusted him as a human being.

Bill was looking at her, worried again. She smiled for him. Some day, she thought, I’ll talk to him about this. Not now. Some day... What makes a man into a machine? What kills conscience? Or did that die when self-criticism died? And did you stop criticising yourself when you believed that anything you did was right? And if anyone else questioned you, there was always the cause for an excuse? But how could you judge that a cause was good or bad unless you had enough feeling left in your veins for human beings? Not just “the people”, a vague abstract mass, with as little real meaning as a linoleum pattern. But people like Rosana and Jacopone and Joe and old Alberto and Anna-Maria. People were not pawns, to be moved around and sacrificed, to be swept away if they did not fit into the grand design. People were this farmer here, riding slowly home with his daughter and son beside him; these two women walking with bundles of twigs on their backs; that boy on the bicycle; that man in the high-powered car; this bus load, Joe, Bill, me.

“Here we are,” said Joe, swinging the car to his right.

They began to twist up the long arm of a hill between an avenue of trees. The town sprawled over the peak like a cap of snow on a Japanese mountain. Down here, the houses were
new, neat modern shapes of plaster painted green or cream or pink, but above them the old buildings clustered together— perched, it seemed, on a precipice, an island of bleached stone and jutting shapes.

They had reached the end of the climb. They came into an open square with public buildings and a small park that overlooked the precipice. There, the main street began, the Corso Vanucci, running like a spine along the crest of the hill on which lay Perugia. There, too, the cars were parked, for the Corso itself was closed off to traffic. “It’s usual,” Joe told them as they got out. “At this hour, everyone strolls out to see the sunset.”

“And one another,” Lammiter added, looking at the groups of young girls walking arm in arm in their pretty dresses; of young men, tall and handsome keeping together; of proud couples, with red-cheeked babies, all preened in starched frills. There was a strange hush over the street, broken only by the sound of light-soled shoes and the murmur of peaceful voices. The street was straight, wide, handsomely paved, and not very long. He could see the other end marked by a fountain, in front of a huge cathedral. Between, the piazza, which they were leaving, and this stone giant, there was only a constant stream of gay clothes and well-brushed heads. Nothing could be more unlike Montesecco, he thought thankfully. He began to relax. And then, as they passed the last parked car and entered the wide stretch of street, he looked back swiftly.

“Yes?” asked Joe.

“That’s Whitelaw’s car. Bertrand Whitelaw. You know him?”

“I know about him.”

“Where does he stand?”

“Does that matter?”

“He brought the princess from Rome. He knows Pirotta is dead.”

Joe frowned. “Give me time. I’m slow. I have to think this out.”

Lammiter looked at Eleanor.
Pirotta is dead,
he had said, as cold-bloodedly as though he had been talking about Mussolini or Stalin. But all she noticed now was his concern over her. “How far do we walk?” she asked, keeping her voice light.

“Another fifty yards,” Joe said. “That’s all. We start slanting over to our left.” He steered them expertly across the street, between the strolling groups, towards the broad sidewalk which was filled with café tables.

“The foreigners,” said Eleanor, looking at the tables, “are here in force.”

“Keep watching,” Joe told her quietly. They walked slowly along the edge of the sidewalk. Joe had taken her other arm. He pressed it suddenly. “Don’t stare, just look,” he told her. “Anyone you know?”

“No one,” she said, when she thought it was safe to speak. “No one at all.”

“Did you see that fair-haired man in the grey flannel suit?”

“Yes?”

“You’ve never seen him before?”

“No.”

“Into this restaurant,” Joe directed them suddenly. He led the way across the sidewalk. He seemed neither disappointed nor hurried.

The restaurant was empty, of course, and unlighted. No one ate until the promenade outside, the
passeggiata,
was, over. Now Joe let his pace increase. He led them through the cool
dark room into a tiled kitchen where a solitary cook under a spreading tree of pots and pans suspended from an overhead beam was busy with a bubbling pot. The cook, a bulky man who looked as though he enjoyed his own cooking, scarcely glanced around. “You’re late. I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.” He pointed with a ladle to a closed door.

Joe nodded. As he opened the door leading them into a back room, he called to the cook, “Serve it up!”

“Subito, subito!”
The ladle went back to stirring.

Through the doorway was a tiled room, ill lit from the single window near its ceiling, but cool. Its wooden table was ready for supper. There was a scraping of chairs on its stone floor as four men rose to their feet.

“Hallo, there!” said Bunny Camden, coming forward to welcome them. He looked at Eleanor, then at Lammiter. “Good,” he said. “It’s good to see you.” Then he turned to introduce two of the men. “A couple of friends,” he said, “MacLaren from Canada. Oglethorpe from England.”

The Englishman’s eyes had a suspicion of a smile for the name Bunny had invented for him. A Canadian and an Englishman, Lammiter remembered suddenly: last night, in that open-air movie house behind the Esedra, they had been mentioned. They must indeed have been as interested in Evans as Bunny had guessed. But the fourth, an Italian, middle-aged, dark-haired, with a thin intelligent face and mournful eyes, did not come forward. He nodded pleasantly, but he seemed to prefer the most shadowed wall of the room. Or, Lammiter thought, watching the clever worried face, he is only an observer from some branch of Italian intelligence, and is tactfully being subsidiary, leaving the main problems to the others. Joe, too,
had retreated into the background: in fact, at this moment, he was leaving, quietly, unobtrusively.

Eleanor sat down. So did Lammiter. The others stood.

“Did you see Evans sitting outside?” the Englishman asked.

Eleanor shook her head.

“He was wearing a grey flannel suit,” Oglethorpe told her as he watched her face.

“That was not the man I met at Tivoli.”

“You’re quite sure, Miss Halley?”

“Yes. Quite sure.”

The men exchanged glances. “That’s just what I thought,” MacLaren said in disgust. In this moment of sharp disappointment; his voice held a pugnacious note surprisingly in contrast with his expressionless face. Like Oglethorpe, he could easily be misplaced in a crowd, an unremarkable man, with nondescript features, unobtrusive clothes, nothing dramatic or eccentric in his gesture or manner. The eyes were alert, though. These men were nobody’s fools, Lammiter decided. How, then, had they been deceived? Or perhaps it was not their fault. He glanced at the silent Italian. Another sharp character. Then how had the failure developed? A split in authority, divided responsibility, conflicting methods, all the headaches of international co-operation? Lammiter passed the basket of half-sliced bread to Eleanor. “Eat slowly,” he told her.

“I’ve eaten bread all day,” she said dejectedly. “Bread and water. Everything else was drugged.” And all this trouble for nothing, she thought: Evans is free. He has been the cause of everything that has happened to Bill and me. We could have been killed, both of us, and he would have brushed us off his memory like a couple of dead flies from a window sill.

The Italian spoke suddenly. “You are thinking we have been stupid?” He shook his head. “Even in the best plans, there is the moment of luck, of accident.”

Lammiter said, “I could wish the moment of bad luck would strike Mr. Evans, too.”

“It may. There are few roads out of a hill town such as this. We have them watched. Every car is being stopped, every foreign passport is being examined.”

“Evans is probably leaving disguised as a white ox,” Lammiter said abruptly. Anticlimax was one frustration that he didn’t accept very gracefully. “Can’t we get some soup or something?” he asked sharply. Camden nodded and left. “How did this situation develop, anyway?” He looked at them, trying to keep his temper from breaking loose. We deserve some kind of explanation, he thought angrily. Damn it, are we among friends, or aren’t we?

Oglethorpe and MacLaren, moving to the door, halted. “Have you any special interest in Evans?” Oglethorpe asked, seemingly only politely curious.

“A personal matter.”

“But you didn’t know him.”

“I have a little bill I’d like him to settle for the trouble he has caused several of my friends. Brewster chiefly.”

“Haven’t we all?” said MacLaren. He was anxious to leave.

“But,” Lammiter kept on doggedly, “I do have a special interest in that meeting. Don’t tell me you slipped up on that, too!”

Oglethorpe’s mouth tightened. “We don’t always fail, Lammiter.”

“Look,” Lammiter said (and here, thank God, was Bunny himself, carrying in a tureen of soup), “this girl was nearly
murdered in front of my eyes. Don’t expect sweetness and light from me.” Quickly he served Eleanor a plate of
minestrone.
That would put some colour back in her cheeks. “Slowly, now,” he told her again.

“Would one success make you feel any better?” There was a smile now, in the Englishman’s eyes.

“Much better.” Even knowing that there had been success was as good as the smell of the soup from the plate before him.

“Seven men attended that meeting. All were secretly photographed as they left.” Oglethorpe paused, and then decided to add an extra bonus. “Three of them were government officials from NATO countries, two were from the Middle East: none under the least previous suspicion of being Communists. So that is one success we have had.”

Lammiter said, “And a big one.”

Oglethorpe nodded. “Have you seen the newspapers today?”

“Too busy.” He nodded his thanks to Camden, who now brought in a bottle of Orvieto.

“There’s trouble simmering in the Middle East,” Oglethorpe said. “The Communists will certainly try to make that pot boil over. So, you see, these five photographed men are the best news I can give you. Even better than Sabatini’s arrest.”

“And what about the two other men?—There were seven at the meeting, you said.” Lammiter’s voice had lost its edge: the soup was good. We’ll live, he thought, watching Eleanor carefully.

“Oh yes, these other two...” Oglethorpe seemed just to have remembered them. “One answered Evans’s description. The other was totally, unknown. No one could place him. At best, he seemed to be Evans’s bodyguard. He wore a loose American
jacket, a bright tie, a beret pulled down over his head, dark glasses. And there was a cigar clamped in his mouth. Distorts the jaw line, you know.”

“Very neat,” Lammiter agreed. “So all he had to do was to dodge into the nearest men’s room after he left the meeting, take off all his accessories—”

“He did better than that. After all, we are prepared for tricks in a men’s room. He went into the cathedral. You’ve noticed it?”

“It would be hard to miss.” It was an enormous place, that unfinished cathedral, six centuries old, so vast in conception that people had long ago given up any idea of completing it.

“Inside, it’s practically pitch black. Gigantic pillars all over the floor. Chapels. Alcoves. Confessionals. Railings. Groups of groping tourists. Everything made to order. Including,” Oglethorpe added gloomily, “two main doorways. So all he had to do was to, dodge from pillar to pillar, quickly peel off that jacket, stuff the beret and glasses and cigar into a pocket, bundle the whole thing up, drop it behind an empty confessional, choose a collection of tourists, and straggle out with them into the street.”

“Smart fellow.” There was a slight movement at the door. He glanced quickly. But it was only Joe returning to slip quietly into place.

“Too smart for a bodyguard,” MacLaren said.

And that, Lammiter thought, was where the first doubts started. “Talking of bodyguards,” he said, “do you know a man called Whitelaw?”

They obviously did. “Where does he come in?” MacLaren asked quietly.

“He’s on stage right now. I saw his car near the piazza. A cream-coloured Ferrari. Joe—you tell them about last night in
the garden and today at the Casa Grande.” He concentrated on his soup. It was better than good. A warm glow spread through his belly and up over his body. For the first time in thirty-six hours he began to relax properly, not altogether, but just enough to make him feel more normal, less strained. He gave Eleanor a broad smile, poured a second glass of wine for them both, and said, “We leave it all to the experts now.” He thought, Our job is really done. We can do no more. That was a good feeling, too.