Partisans

Six

It was snowing heavily and the temperature was below freezing when Petersen drove the stolen Italian truck out of Mostar shortly after two o’clock that afternoon. The two girls beside him were silent and withdrawn, a circumstance that affected Petersen not at all. Relaxed and untroubled, he drove as unhurriedly as a man with all the time in the world and, after passing unhindered through a check-point at Potoci, slowed down even more, an action dictated not by any change of mood but by the nature of the road. It was narrow, twisting and broken-surfaced and urgently in need of the attentions of road repair gangs who had not passed that way for a long time: more importantly, they had begun to climb, and climb quite steeply, as the Neretva valley narrowed precipitously on either side of the river which sank further and further below the tortuous road until there was an almost sheer drop of several hundred feet to the foaming river that lay beneath them. Given the unstable nature of the road, the fact that there were no crash-barriers or restraining walls to prevent their sliding off the slippery road and the fact that the river itself increasingly disappeared in the thickening snowsqualls, it was not a route to lighten the hearts of those of an imaginative or nervous disposition. Judging by the handclenching and highly apprehensive expression of Petersen’s two front-seat companions, they clearly came well within that category. Petersen had neither comfort nor cheer to offer them, not through any callous indifference but because on the evidence of their own eyes they wouldn’t have believed a word he said anyway.

Their relief was almost palpable when Petersen abruptly turned off the road into a narrow gully which suddenly – and to the two girls, miraculously – appeared in the vertical cliff-side to their right. The road was no road at all, just a convoluted, rutted track that offered only minimal traction for the almost constantly spinning rear wheels, but at least there was no way they could fall off it: high walls of rock pressed in closely on both sides. Perhaps five minutes after leaving the main road, Petersen stopped, cut the engine and dropped down.

‘This is as far as we go,’ he said. ‘As far as we can go in this truck, anyway. Stay here.’ He walked round to the back of the truck, parted the curtains, repeated his words and disappeared into the swirling snow.

He was back within a few minutes, sitting beside the driver of a peculiar open vehicle which looked as if it might once have been a small truck that had had both its top and rear sliced off. The driver, clad in British warm – a thick, khaki, woollen overcoat – could have been of any nationality: with a fur cap pulled down to eyebrow level, a luxuriant black beard and moustache and a pair of hornrimmed sunglasses, there wasn’t a single distinguishable feature of his face to be seen except for a nose that could have belonged to anyone. Petersen stepped down as the vehicle came to a halt.

‘This is Dominic,’ he said. ‘He’s come to help us along a bit. That’s a four-wheel-drive vehicle he’s got there. It can go places where this truck can’t, but even then it can’t go very far, perhaps a couple of kilometres. Dominic will take the two young ladies, all our gear and all our blankets – I can assure you we’re going to need those tonight – as far as he can, then come back for the rest of us. We’ll start walking.’

Sarina said: ‘You mean to tell us you expected this friend of yours to meet us here? And at just this time?’

‘Give or take a few minutes. I wouldn’t be much of a tour guide, would I, if I got all my connections wrong?’

‘This truck,’ Giacomo said. ‘You’re surely not going to leave it here?’

‘Why ever not?’

‘I thought it was your custom to park unwanted Italian trucks in the Neretva. I saw some lovely parking spots in the god-awful ravine we just came through.’

‘A sinful waste. Besides, we might even want it again. What matters, of course, is that our friend Major Cipriano already knows we have it.’

‘How would he know that?’

‘How would he not know it, you mean. Has it not occurred to you that the informer who tipped him off to our presence in the Hotel Eden would also have given him all the details of our trip from the torpedo boat, including those of this vehicle? Either by radio or before being apparently dragged from an hotel bedroom, it doesn’t matter. We passed through a check-point at Potoci about an hour ago and the guard didn’t even bother to slow us down. Odd, one might think, except that he had already been given details of our vehicle, recognized it at once and obeyed orders to let us through. Let’s get that stuff out quickly. It’s turned even colder than I thought it would be.’

It had indeed. A south-east wind had sprung up, a wind from which they would have been sheltered in the Neretva valley, and was steadily strengthening. This would not normally have been a cold wind but this was a wind that paid no attention to meteorological norms: it could have been blowing straight from Siberia. The four-wheel-drive vehicle was loaded with passengers and gear and drove off in a remarkably short time: there could be no doubt that Dominic’s sunglasses were, in effect, snow-glasses.

The five men set out on foot and were picked up some fifteen minutes later by the returning Dominic. The ride along an even more bumpy and deteriorating track was, because of the increase in snowdepth and incline, uncomfortable and haphazard to a degree, and only marginally better and faster than walking. None of the passengers was sorry when the truck pulled up at the track’s end outside a ramshackle wooden hut which proved to be its garage. Inside, the two girls were sheltering from the snow. They were not alone. There were three men – boys, rather – in vaguely paramilitary uniforms and five ponies.

Sarina said: ‘Where on earth are we?’

‘Home, sweet home,’ Petersen said. ‘Well, an hour and a half’s gentle ride and we’ll be there. This is the mountain of Prenj, more of a massif, really. The Neretva river makes a big U-turn here and runs around three sides of it, which makes Prenj, in defensive terms, an ideal place to be. Only two bridges cross the river, one to the northwest at Jablanica, the other to the north-east at Konjik, and both of those are easily guarded and defended. It’s open to the south-east but no danger threatens from that direction.’

‘Gentle ride, you said. Do those horses canter or gallop? I don’t like horses.’

‘They’re ponies, not horses, and, no, they don’t canter or gallop. Not on this occasion anyway. They wouldn’t be stupid enough to try. It’s all uphill and pretty steeply uphill.’

‘I don’t think I’m going to enjoy this climb.’

‘You’ll enjoy the view.’

It was half an hour later and she was enjoying neither the climb nor the view. The climb, though not impossibly steep, was a difficult enough one and the view, remarkable though it was, engendered in her only a feeling that lay halfway between fascinated horror and paralysed terror. The path, barely two metres in width and sometimes noticeably less, had been gouged out of the side of a slope so steep as to be virtually a cliff-side, and ascended it by a series, a seemingly endless series, of hairpin twists and turns. With every step the pony took, the floor of the narrow valley, when it could be seen at all through the driving snow, seemed more remotely and vertically distant. Only she and Lorraine had been mounted: the other three ponies carried all their securely strapped gear and blankets. Lorraine was on foot now, clutching Giacomo’s arm as if he was her last faint hope on earth.

Petersen, walking beside Sarina’s pony, said: ‘I’m afraid you’re not enjoying this as much as I would like you to.’

‘Enjoying it!’ She shuddered uncontrollably, not with cold. ‘Back in the hotel I told you I wasn’t a great big coward. Well, I am, I am! I’m terrified. I keep on telling myself it’s silly, it’s stupid, but I can’t help it.’

Petersen said matter-of-factly: ‘You’re not a coward. It’s been like this since you were a child.’

‘Like what? What do you mean?’

‘Vertigo is what I mean. Anyone can suffer from it. Some of the bravest men I know, some of the most fearsome fighters I’ve ever met, won’t climb a step-ladder or set foot in a plane.’

‘Yes, yes. Always. Do you know about it?’

‘I don’t get it, but I’ve seen it too often not to know about it. Dizziness, loss of equilibrium, an almost uncontrollable desire to throw yourself over the edge and, in the present case, a conviction on your part that your pony is about to jump out into space at any moment. That’s about it, isn’t it?’

She nodded, dumbly. Petersen refrained from saying that if she’d known about her condition and the Yugoslav mountains, she should have stayed in Cairo. Instead he moved round the head of the horse and took her stirrup-leather in his hand.

‘These ponies are more sure-footed than we are and by a long way. Even if it should suffer from a bout of vertigo now, and ponies never do, I would be the first over the edge. And even if you felt like throwing yourself over, you can’t because I’m between you and the cliff edge and I’d stop you and catch you. And I’ll change sides at every corner. That way we’ll be sure to make it to the top. I won’t be so silly as to tell you to sit back and relax: all I can say is that you’ll be feeling a lot better in fifteen minutes or so.’

‘We’ll be away from this cliff by that time?’ The tremor was still in her voice.

‘We will, we will.’ They wouldn’t be, but by that time it would be so dark that she would be unable to see the valley below.

It was quite some time after dark when they passed through the perimeter of what seemed to be a permanent camp of sorts. There were a large number of huts and tents, all close together and nearly all illuminated: not brightly illuminated, for at that remote altitude there was no central power grid and the only small generator available was reserved for the headquarters area: for the rest, the great majority of the guerrilla soldiers and the inevitable camp-followers, there was only the light to be had from oil, tallow or coke braziers. Then there came a quite uninhabited and gently rising slope of perhaps three hundred metres before their small cavalcade fetched up at a large hut with a metal roof and two windows which gave out a surprising amount of light.

‘Well, here we are,’ Petersen said. ‘Home or what you’d better call home until you find a better word for it.’ He reached up his hands and swung the shivering girl to the ground. She clung to him as if she were trying to prevent herself from falling to the ground which was what she was indeed trying to do.

‘My legs feel all funny.’ Her voice was low and husky but at least the tremor had gone.

‘Sure they do. I’ll bet you’ve never been on a horse before.’

‘You’d win your bet but it’s not that. The way I hung on to that horse, clung to it–’ She tried to laugh but it was a poor enough attempt. ‘I’ll be surprised if that poor pony doesn’t have bruised ribs for days to come.’

‘You did very well.’

‘Very well! I’m ashamed of myself. I hope you won’t go around telling everyone that you’ve met up with the most cowardly radio operator in the Balkans.’

‘I won’t. I won’t because I don’t go around telling lies. I think you may be the bravest girl I ever met.’

‘After that performance!’

‘Especially after that performance.’

She was still clinging to him, clearly still not trusting her balance, was silent for a few moments, then said: ‘I think you may be the kindest man I’ve ever met.’

‘Good God!’ He was genuinely astonished. ‘The strain has been too much. After all you’ve said about me!’

‘Especially after everything I said about you.’

She was still holding him, although now only tentatively, when they heard the sound of a heavy fist banging on a wooden door and George’s booming voice saying: ‘Open up, in the name of the law or common humanity or whatever. We have crossed the burning sands and are dying of thirst.’

The door opened almost immediately and a tall, thin figure appeared, framed in the rectangle of light. He came down the two steps and thrust out a hand.

‘It cannot be . . .’ He had an excruciatingly languid Oxbridge accent.

‘It is.’ George took his hand. ‘Enough of the formalities. At stake there is nothing less than the sacred name of British hospitality.’

‘Goodness gracious!’ The man screwed a monocle, an oddly-shaped oval one, into his right eye, advanced towards Lorraine, took her hand, swept it up in a gesture of exquisite gallantry and kissed it. ‘Goodness gracious me. Lorraine Chamberlain!’ He seemed about to embark upon a speech of some length, caught sight of Petersen and went to meet him. ‘Peter, my boy. Once again all those dreadful trials and tribulations lie behind you. My word, I can’t tell you how dull and depressing it’s been here during the two weeks you’ve been gone. Dreadful, I tell you. Utterly dreadful.’

Petersen smiled. ‘Hello, Jamie. Good to see you again. Things should improve now. George, quite illicitly, of course, has brought you some presents – quite a lot of presents, they almost broke the back of one of the ponies coming up here. Presents that go clink.’ He turned to Sarina. ‘May I introduce Captain Harrison. Captain Harrison,’ he added with a straight face, ‘is English. Jamie, this is Sarina von Karajan.’

Harrison shook her hand enthusiastically. ‘Delighted, delighted. If only you knew how we miss even the commonest amenities of civilization in these benighted parts. Not, of course,’ he added hastily, ‘that there’s anything common about you. My goodness, I should say not.’ He looked at Petersen. ‘The Harrisons’ ill luck runs true to form again. We were born under an evil and accursed star. Do you mean to tell me that you have had the great fortune, the honour, the pleasure of escorting those two lovely ladies all the way from Italy?’

‘Neither of them think there was any fortune, honour or pleasure about it. I didn’t know you had the pleasure of knowing Lorraine before.’ Giacomo had a sudden but very brief paroxysm of coughing which Petersen ignored.

‘Oh, my goodness, yes, indeed. Old friends, very old. Worked together once, don’t you know? Tell you some time. Your other new friends?’ Petersen introduced Giacomo and Michael whom Harrison welcomed in what was his clearly customary effusive fashion, then said: ‘Well, inside, inside. Can’t have you all freezing to death in this abominable weather. I’ll have your goods and chattels taken in. Inside, inside.’

‘Inside’ was surprisingly roomy, warm, well-lit and, by guerrilla standards, almost comfortable. There were three bunks running the length of each side of the room, some tall articles of furniture that could have been either cupboards or wardrobes, a deal table, half a dozen pine chairs, the unheard luxury of a couple of rather scruffy arm-chairs and even two strips of worn and faded carpet. At either end of the room were two doors that led, presumably, to further accommodation. Harrison closed the outside door behind him.

‘Have a seat, have a seat.’ The Captain was much given to repeating himself. ‘George, if I may suggest – ah, foolish of me, I might have known that any such suggestion was superfluous.’ George had, indeed, lost no time in doubling in his spare-time role of barman. Harrison looked around him with an air of proprietorial pride. ‘Not bad, although I say it myself, not bad at all. You won’t find many such havens in this strife-torn land. I regret to say that we live in accommodation such as this all too infrequently, but when we do we make the best of it. Electric light, if you please – you can’t hear it but we have the only generator in the base apart from the commander. Need it for our big radios.’ He pointed to two six-inch diameter pipes angling diagonally upwards along either wall to disappear through the roof. ‘Central heating, of course. Actually, they’re only the stovepipes from our coke and wood stove outside. Would have it inside but we’d all be asphyxiated in minutes. And what do we have here, George?’ He inspected the contents of a glass George had just handed him.

George shrugged and said diffidently: ‘Nothing really. Highland malt whisky.’

‘Highland malt whisky.’ Harrison reverently surveyed the amber liquid, sipped it delicately and smiled in rapture. ‘Where on earth did you get this, George?’

‘Friend of mine in Rome.’

‘God bless your Roman friends.’ This time assuming his beatific expression in advance, Harrison sipped again. ‘Well, that’s about all the mod cons. That door to the left leads to my radio room. Some nice stuff in there but unfortunately we can’t take most of it with us when we travel which, again unfortunately, is most of the time. The other door leads to what I rather splendidly call my sleeping quarters. It’s about the size of a couple of telephone boxes but it does have two cots.’ Harrison took another sip from his glass and went on gallantly: ‘Those quarters, naturally, I will gladly vacate for the night for the two young ladies.’

‘You are very kind,’ Sarina said doubtfully. ‘But I – we – were supposed to report to the Colonel.’

‘Nonsense. Not to be thought of. You are exhausted by your travels, your sufferings, your privations. One has only to look at you. I am sure the Colonel will gladly wait until the morning. Is that not so, Peter?’

‘Tomorrow will be time enough.’

‘Of course. Well, we castaways marooned on a mountain top are always eager for news of the outside world. What of the past fortnight, my friend?’

Petersen put down his untouched glass and rose. ‘George will tell you. He’s a much better raconteur than I am.’

‘Well, yes, you do rather lack his gift for dramatic embellishment. Duty calls?’ Petersen nodded.

‘Ah! The Colonel?’

‘Who else. I won’t be long.’

When Petersen returned, he was not alone. The two men accompanying him were, like himself, covered in a heavy coating of snow. While they were brushing this off, Harrison rose courteously and introduced them.

‘Good evening, gentlemen. We are honoured.’ He turned to the newcomers. ‘Let me introduce Major Ranković and Major Metrović, two of the Colonel’s senior commanders. You venture forth on a wild night, gentlemen.’

‘You mean, of course, why have we come?’ The speaker, Major Metrović, was a man of medium height, dark, thickset and cheerful. ‘Curiosity, of course. Peter’s movements are always shrouded in mystery and heaven knows we see little enough of new faces from the outer world.’

‘Peter didn’t also mention that two of those new faces were young, female and – I speak as a detached observer, of course – rather extraordinarily good-looking?’

‘He may have done, he may have done.’ Metrović smiled again. ‘You know how it is with my colleague and myself. Our minds are invariably preoccupied with military matters. Isn’t that so, Marino?’

Marino – Major Ranković – a tall, thin, dark-bearded and rather gloomy character, who looked as if he let Metrović do all the smiling for both of them, didn’t say whether it was so or not. He seemed preoccupied and the source of his preoccupation was unquestionably Giacomo.

‘I asked them along,’ Petersen said. ‘I felt it was the least I could do to bring some relief into their cheerless lives.’

‘Well, welcome, welcome.’ Harrison looked at his watch. ‘Won’t be long, you said. What do you call short?’

‘I wanted to give George a chance to finish his story. Besides, I was detained. Much questioning. And I stopped by at my radio hut to see if you’d made off with anything during my absence. It seems not. Perhaps you mislaid the key.’

‘The radio hut?’ Sarina glanced at the door at the end of the room. ‘But we heard nothing. I mean–’

‘My radio hut is fifty metres away. No mystery. There are three radios in the camp. One for the Colonel. One for Captain Harrison. One for me. You will be assigned to the Colonel. Lorraine comes here.’

‘You arranged that?’

‘I arranged nothing. I take orders, just like anyone else. The Colonel arranged it, Lorraine’s assignation here was arranged weeks ago. There’s no secret about it. The Colonel, for reasons that may seem obscure to you but which I understand very well, prefers that Captain Harrison’s radio operator, like Captain Harrison himself, should not speak or understand Serbo-Croat. The basis of the Colonel’s security beliefs is that one should trust nobody.’

‘You must have a lot in common with the Colonel.’

‘I think that’s rather unfair, young lady.’ It was Metrović again and he was still smiling. ‘I can confirm what the Major has said. I’m the go-between, the translator, if you like, for the Colonel and Captain Harrison. Like the major, I was partly educated in England.’

‘Enough,’ Harrison said. ‘Let us put unworthy thoughts to one side and concentrate on more important things.’

‘Such as hospitality?’ George said.

‘Such as hospitality, as you say. Be seated, please. What is your choice, gentlemen – and ladies, of course?’

They all told him what they wanted, all, that is, except Major Ranković. He crossed to where Giacomo was seated and said: ‘May I ask what your name is?’

Giacomo lifted his eyebrows in slight puzzlement, smiled and said: ‘Giacomo.’

‘That’s an Italian name, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Giacomo what?’

‘Just Giacomo.’

‘Just Giacomo.’ Ranković’s voice was deep and gravelly. ‘It suits you to be mysterious?’

‘It suits me to mind my own business.’

‘What’s your rank?’

‘That’s my business, too.’

‘I’ve seen you before. Not in the army, though. Rijeka, Split, Kotor, some place like that.’

‘It’s possible.’ Giacomo was still smiling but the smile no longer extended to his eyes. ‘It’s a small enough world. I used to be a sailor.’

‘You’re a Yugoslav.’

Giacomo, Petersen was aware, could easily have conceded the fact but he knew he wouldn’t. Ranković was an able soldier but no psychologist.

‘I’m English.’

‘You’re a liar.’

Petersen stepped forward and tapped Ranković on the shoulder. ‘If I were you, Marino, I’d quit while I was ahead. Not, mind you, that I think you are ahead.’

Ranković turned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that you’re still intact and in one piece. Keep on like this and you’ll wake up in hospital wondering if you fell under a train. I can vouch for Giacomo. He is English. He’s got so long and so distinguished a war record that he puts any man in this room to shame. While you’ve been pottering around the mountains he’s been fighting in France and Belgium and North Africa and the Aegean and usually on assignments so dangerous that you couldn’t even begin to wonder what they were like. Look at his face, Marino. Look at it and you’ll look into the face of war.’

Ranković studied Giacomo closely. ‘I’m not a fool. I never questioned his qualities as a soldier. I was curious, that is all, and maybe, like the Colonel and yourself, I am not much given to trusting anyone. I did not intend to give offence.’

‘And I didn’t intend to take any,’ Giacomo said. His good humour had returned. ‘You’re suspicious, I’m touchy. A bad mix. Let me suggest a good mix or rather no mix at all. You never mix malt whisky with anything, do you, George? Not even water?’

‘Sacrilege.’

‘You were right on one count, Major. I am English but I was born in Yugoslavia. Let us drink to Yugoslavia.’

‘A toast no man could quarrel with,’ Ranković said. There were no handshakes, no protestations of eternal friendship. It was, at best, a truce. Ranković, no actor, still had his reservations about Giacomo.

Petersen, for his part, had none.

Considerably later in the evening an understandably much more relaxed and mellowed atmosphere had descended upon the company. Some of them had paid a brief visit to a mess four hundred metres distant for an evening meal. Sarina and Lorraine had point-blank – and as it turned out, wisely – refused to brave the near blizzard that was now sweeping by outside. Michael, inevitably, had elected to remain with them and Giacomo, after a quick exchange of glances with Petersen, had announced that he was not hungry. Giacomo did not have to have it spelt out to him that, even among his own people, Petersen was suspicious of practically everybody in sight.

Compared to Josip Pijade’s midday offerings, the meal was a gastronomic disaster. It was no fault of the Četnik cooks – as elsewhere through that ravaged country, food was at a premium and fine food almost wholly unobtainable. Still, it was a sad come-down from the flesh-pots of Italy and Mostar and even George could manage no more than two platefuls of the fatty mutton and beans which constituted the main and only course of the evening. They had left as soon as decency permitted.

Back in Harrison’s radio hut their relative sufferings were soon forgotten.

‘There’s no place like home,’ Harrison announced to nobody in particular. Although it would have been unfair to call him inebriated, it would have been fair to pass the opinion that he wasn’t stone cold sober either.

He bent an appreciative gaze on the glass in his hand. ‘Nectar emboldens me. George has given me a very comprehensive account of your activities over the past two weeks. He has not, however, told me why you went to Rome in the first place. Nor did you seek to enlighten me on your return.’

‘That’s because I didn’t know myself.’

Harrison nodded sagely. ‘That makes sense. You go all the way to Rome and back and you don’t know why.’

‘I was just carrying a message. I didn’t know the contents.’

‘Is one permitted to ask if you know the contents now?’

‘One is permitted. I do.’

‘Ah! Is one further permitted to know the contents?’

‘In your own language, Jamie, I don’t know whether I’m permitted or not. All I can say is that this is purely a military matter. Strictly, I am not a military man, a commander of troops. I’m an espionage agent. Espionage agents don’t wage battles. We’re far too clever for that. Or cowardly.’

Harrison looked at Metrović and Ranković in turn. ‘You’re military men. If I’m to believe half you tell me, you wage battles.’

Metrović smiled. ‘We’re not as clever as Peter.’

‘You know the contents of the message?’

‘Of course. Peter’s discretion does him credit but it’s not really necessary. Within a couple of days the news will be common knowledge throughout the camp. We – the Germans, Italians, ourselves and the Ustaša – are to launch an all-out offensive against the Partisans. We shall annihilate Titoland. The Germans have given the name of the attack “Operation Weiss”: the Partisans will doubtless call it the Fourth Offensive.’

Harrison seemed unimpressed. He said, doubtfully: ‘That means, of course, that you’ve made three other offensives already. Those didn’t get you very far, did they?’

Metrović was unruffled. ‘I know it’s easy to say, but this time really will be different. They’re cornered. They’re trapped. They’ve no way out, no place left to go. They haven’t a single plane, fighter or bomber. We have squadrons upon squadrons. They haven’t a tank, not even a single effective anti-aircraft gun. At the most, they have fifteen thousand men, most of them starving, weak, sick and untrained. We have almost a hundred thousand men, well-trained and fit. And Tito’s final weakness, his Achilles’ heel, you might say, is his lack of mobility: he is known to have at least three thousand wounded men on his hands. It will be no contest. I don’t say I look forward to it, but it will be a massacre. Are you a betting man, James?’

‘Not against odds like that, I’m not. Like Peter here, I lay no claim to being a military man – I never even saw a uniform until three years ago – but if the action is so imminent why are you drinking wine at your leisured ease instead of being hunched over your war maps, sticking flags in here, flags in there, drawing up your battle plans or whatever you’re supposed to be doing in cases like this?’

Metrović laughed. ‘Three excellent reasons. First, the offensive is not imminent – it’s two weeks away yet. Second, all the plans have already been drawn up and all the troops are already in position or will be in a few days. Third, the main assault takes place at Bihać, where the Partisan forces are at present centred, and that’s over two hundred kilometres north-west of here. We’re not taking part in that: we’re staying just where we are in case the Partisans are so foolish, or optimistic or suicidal to try to break out to the south-east: stopping them from crossing the Neretva, in the remote possibility of a few stragglers getting as far as here, would be only a formality.’ He paused and gazed at a darkened window. ‘There may well be a fourth possibility. If the weather worsens, or even continues like this, the best laid plans of the High Command could well go wrong. A postponement would be inevitable. Nobody’s going to be moving around the mountains in those impossible weather conditions for days to come, that’s for sure. Days might well become weeks.’

‘Well, yes,’ Harrison said. ‘One sees why you face the future with a certain resigned fortitude. On the basis of what you say the chances are good that you won’t even become involved at all. For myself, I hope your prognosis is correct – as I’ve said I’m no man of war and I’ve become quite attached to these rather comfortable quarters. And do you, Peter, expect to hibernate along with us?’

‘No. If the Colonel has nothing for me in the morning – and he gave no indication tonight that he would have – then I shall be on my way the following morning. Provided, of course, that we’re not up to our ears in snowdrifts.’

‘Whither away, if one is–’

‘Permitted to ask? Yes. A certain Italian intelligence officer is taking an undue amount of interest in me. He’s trying either to discredit me or hamper me in my operations. Has tried, I should say. I would like to find out why.’

Metrović said: ‘In what way has he tried, Peter?’

‘He and a gang of his thugs held us up in a Mostar hotel in the early hours of this morning. Looking for something, I suppose. Whether they found it or not I don’t know. Shortly before that, on the boat coming from Italy, some of his minions tried to carry out a night attack on us. They failed, but not for the want of trying, for they were carrying syringes and lethal drugs which they were more than prepared to use.’

‘Goodness me.’ Harrison looked suitably appalled. ‘What happened?’

‘It was all quite painless, really,’ George said with satisfaction. ‘We welded them up in a cabin on the boat. Last heard of they were still there.’

Harrison looked reproachfully at George. ‘Missed this out in your stirring account of your activities, didn’t you?’

‘Discretion, discretion.’

‘This Italian intelligence officer,’ Metrović said, ‘is, of course an ally. With some allies, as we know, you don’t need enemies. When you meet up with this ally what are you going to do? Question him or kill him?’ The Major seemed to regard that as a very natural query.

‘Kill him?’ Sarina looked and was shocked. ‘That nice man. Kill him! I thought you rather liked him.’

‘Liked him? He’s reasonable, personable, smiling, open-faced, has a firm handshake and looks you straight in the eye – anyone can tell at once that he’s a member of the criminal classes. He was prepared to kill me, by proxy, mind you, through his hatchet-man Alessandro – which, if anything, makes it an even more heinous intention on his part – so why shouldn’t I be prepared to pre-empt him? But I won’t, at least not right away. I just want to ask him a few questions.’

‘But – but you might not even be able to find him.’

‘I’ll find him.’

‘And if he refuses to answer?’

‘He’ll answer.’ There was the same chilling certainty in the voice. She touched her lips with the back of her hand and fell silent. Metrović, his face thoughtful, said: ‘You’re not the man to ask questions unless you’re pretty certain of the answers in advance. You’re after confirmation of something. Could you not have obtained this confirmation at the hotel you mentioned?’

‘Certainly. But I didn’t want the place littered with corpses, not all of which might have been theirs. I’d promised to deliver this lot intact first. Everything in its due turn. Confirmation? I want confirmation of why Italy is planning to pull out of this war. That they want out I don’t for a moment doubt. Their people never wanted this war. Their army, navy and air force never wanted it. Remember when Wavell’s army in North Africa overwhelmed the Italians? There was a picture taken just after the last battle, a picture that was to become world-famous. It showed about a thousand Italian prisoners being marched off to their barbed wire cages escorted by three British soldiers. The sun was so hot that the soldiers had given their rifles to three of the prisoners to carry. That about sums up the Italian attitude to the war.

‘Given a cause that is close to their hearts, the Italians can fight as gallantly as any people on earth. This cause is not close to their hearts – it couldn’t be further away from it. This is Germany’s war and they don’t like fighting Germany’s war because, basically, they don’t like the Germans. It has been repeatedly claimed, both by the Italians and the British that the Italians are, at bottom, pro-British. The truth is, of course, that they’re just pro-Italian.

‘No-one is more acutely aware of this than the Italian high command. But there’s more to it of course than just patriotism. There’s no lack of first-class minds in the Italian high command and it’s my belief that they are convinced, even at this early stage, that the Germans are going to lose the war.’ Petersen looked round the room. ‘It may not be your belief, it may not be my belief, but that’s irrelevant. What matters is that I’m convinced it is their belief and that they are even now figuring out a way to arrive at an accommodation – for want of a better word – with the British and Americans. This accommodation, of course, would take the form of a full-scale surrender but, of course, it would be nothing of the sort. It would involve full-scale cooperation upon the part of the Italians with every aspect of the British and American forces just short of the front-line engagement of their troops in the front line.’

‘You seem very sure about this, Peter,’ Metrović said. ‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because I have access to sources and information that none of you has. I am in constant touch with both Italian and German forces in this country and, as you know, I’m a frequent visitor to Italy and have talked to literally hundreds of Italians there, both military men and civilians. I am neither literally deaf nor figuratively dumb. I know, for instance, that Italian Intelligence and German Intelligence are barely on civil speaking terms with each other and most certainly do not trust each other round the nearest corner in the street.

‘General Granelli, Head of Italian Intelligence and Cipriano’s boss – Cipriano is this Intelligence Major I was talking about – is an evil and warped character but out-and-out brilliant. He knows the situation and the options as well as anyone and is in no doubt that the Germans are going to go down in dust and flames and has no intention of joining them there. He’s also pretty certain that I know quite well what the true situation is and that if I start voicing my doubts – my convictions, rather – out loud I could be a positive danger to him. I think he’s been twice on the point of having me eliminated and has twice changed his mind at the last minute. I know there’s going to be a third time which is one reason why I want to get out of here – before Cipriano or some other comes, in the guise of a loyal ally, naturally, and arranges for an accident to happen to me. But the main reason, of course, for my departure is to get to their link-man before he gets to me.’

‘Link-man? Link-man?’ Harrison shook his head in bafflement. ‘You speak in riddles, Peter.’

‘A riddle with a childishly easy answer. If the Germans go down who else is going to go down with them?’

‘Ah-ha!’

‘As you’ve just said, ah-ha. All those who have fought with them, that’s who. Including us. If you were General Granelli and with Granelli’s keen eye to the future, which of the opposing forces in Yugoslavia would you back?’

‘Good Lord!’ Harrison sounded slightly stunned. He looked around the room. The others, if not quite stunned, looked for the most part deeply pensive, not least Ranković and Metrović. ‘What you are saying is that Granelli and this Major Cipriano are working hand-in-hand with the Partisans and that Cipriano is the master double-agent?’

Petersen rubbed his chin with his hand, glanced briefly at Harrison, sighed, poured himself some more red wine and did not deign to answer.

Petersen’s radio shack did not begin to compare in magnificence with Harrison’s, which they had left only a few moments previously, a premature departure arising directly from the conversational hiatus that had ensued immediately after Harrison’s last words, a lacuna that went on and on and on. Harrison and the two Četnik officers were sunk in profound reverie, Sarina and Lorraine, by their expressions not by words, had made it clear that their aversion to Petersen had not only returned but was in fuller flood than ever and Alex and Michael, as ever, had nothing to say. Those two master conversationalists, George and Giacomo, had battled bravely but only briefly on. It was a lost cause.

The hut would have been big enough to serve as a one-car garage, if the car were small enough. Three beds, a table, three chairs, a cooking stove and that was all: the radio room was a tiny office next door.

‘I am sad and disturbed,’ George said. ‘Profoundly disturbed.’ He poured himself a large glass of wine and drank half of it in one apparently endless gulp just to show how profoundly disturbed he was. ‘Sad, perhaps, is a better word. The realization that one’s life and one’s lifework has been a failure is a bitter pill to swallow. The damage to one’s pride and self-esteem is irreparable. The effect, overall, is crushing.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Petersen said sympathetically. ‘I’ve felt that myself.’

George might not have heard him. ‘You will not have forgotten the days when you were my student in Belgrade?’

‘Who could, ever? As you said yourself, not more than a hundred times, a walk with you through the rose-arboured groves of academe was an experience to remain with one always.’

‘Remember the precepts I preached, the eternal verities I cherished? Honour, honesty, straightforwardness, the pure in mind, the open heart, the outright contempt for deceit, deception, dishonesty: we were, remember, to go through the darkness of this world guided solely by the light of the everlasting flame of truth?’

‘Yes, George.’

‘I am a broken man.’

‘I’m sorry, George.’