Partisans

Two

The Wehrmacht did not believe in limousines or luxury coaches for the transportation of its allies: Petersen and his companions crossed Italy that following day in the back of a vintage truck that gave the impression of being well enough equipped with tyres of solid rubber but sadly deficient in any form of springing. The vibration was of the teeth-jarring order and the rattling so loud and continuous as to make conversation virtually impossible. The hooped canvas covering was open at the back, and at the highest point in the Apennines the temperature dropped below freezing point. It was, in some ways, a memorable journey but not for its creature comforts.

The stench of the diesel fumes would normally have been overpowering enough but on that particular day faded into relative insignificance compared to the aroma, if that was the word, given off by George’s black cigars. Out of deference to his fellow-travellers’ sensibilities he had seated himself at the very rear of the truck and on the rare occasion when he wasn’t smoking, kept himself busy and contented enough with the contents of a crate of beer that lay at his feet. He seemed immune to the cold and probably was: nature had provided him with an awesome insulation.

The von Karajans, clad in their newly acquired winter clothing, sat at the front of the left-hand unpadded wooden bench. Withdrawn and silent they appeared no happier than when Petersen had left them the previous night: this could have been an understandable reaction to their current sufferings but more probably, Petersen thought, their injured feelings had not yet had time to mend. Matters were not helped by the presence of Alex, whose totally withdrawn silence and dark, bitter and brooding countenance could be all too easily misinterpreted as balefulness: the von Karajans were not to know that Alex regarded his parents, whom he held in vast respect and affection, with exactly the same expression.

They stopped for a midday meal in a tiny village in the neighbourhood of Corfinio after having safely, if at times more or less miraculously, negotiated the hazardous hair-pin switch-backs of the Apennine spine. They had left Rome at seven o’clock that morning and it had taken over five hours to cover a hundred miles. Considering the incredibly dilapidated state of both the highway and the ancient Wehrmacht truck – unmarked as such and of Italian make – an average of almost twenty miles an hour was positively creditable. Not without difficulty for, with the exception of George, the passengers’ limbs were stiff and almost frozen, they climbed down over the tail-board and looked around them through the thinly falling snow.

There was miserably little to see. The hamlet – if it could even be called that, it didn’t as much as have a name – consisted of a handful of stone cottages, a post office store and a very small inn. Nearby Corfinio, if hardly ranking as a metropolis, could have afforded considerably more in the way of comfort and amenities: but Colonel Lunz, apart from a professional near-mania for secrecy, shared with his senior Wehrmacht fellow-officers the common if unfair belief that all his Italian allies were renegades, traitors and spies until proved otherwise.

In the inn itself, the genial host was far from being that. He seemed diffident, almost nervous, a markedly unusual trait in mountain innkeepers. A noticeably clumsy waiter, civil and helpful in his own way, volunteered only the fact that he was called Luigi but thereafter was totally uncommunicative. The inn itself was well enough, both warmed and illuminated by a pine log fire in an open hearth that gave off almost as much in the way of sparks as it did heat. The food was simple but plentiful, and wine and beer, into which George made his customary inroads, appeared regularly on the table without having to be asked for. Socially, however, the meal was a disaster.

Silence makes an uncomfortable table companion. At a distant and small corner table, the truck-driver and his companion – really an armed guard who travelled with a Schmeisser under his seat and a Luger concealed about his person – talked almost continuously in low voices; but of the five at Petersen’s table, three seemed afflicted with an almost permanent palsy of the tongue. Alex, remote and withdrawn, seemed, as was his wont, to be contemplating a bleak and hopeless future: the von Karajans who, by their own admission, had had no breakfast, barely picked at their food, had time and opportunity to talk, but rarely ventured a word except when directly addressed: Petersen, relaxed as ever, restricted himself to pleasantries and civilities but otherwise showed no signs of wishing to alleviate the conversational awkwardness or, indeed, to be aware of it: George, on the other hand, seemed to be acutely aware of it and did his talkative best to dispel it, even to the point of garrulity.

His conversational gambit took the form of questions directed exclusively at the von Karajans. It did not take him long to elicit the fact that they were, as Petersen had guessed, Slovenians of Austrian ancestry. They had been to primary school in Ljubljana, secondary school in Zagreb and thence to Cairo University.

‘Cairo!’ George tried to make his eyebrows disappear into his hairline. ‘Cairo! What on earth induced you to go to that cultural backwater?’

‘It was our parents’ wish,’ Michael said. He tried to be cold and distant but he only succeeded in sounding defensive.

‘Cairo!’ George repeated. He shook his head in slow disbelief. ‘And what, may one ask, did you study there?’

‘You ask a lot of questions,’ Michael said.

‘Interest,’ George explained. ‘A paternal interest. And, of course, a concern for the hapless youth of our unfortunate and disunited country.’

For the first time Sarina smiled, a very faint smile, it was true, but enough to give some indication of what she could do if she tried. ‘I don’t think such things would really interest you, Mr – ah–’

‘Just call me George. How do you know what would interest me? All things interest me.’

‘Economics and politics.’

‘Good God!’ George clapped a hand to his forehead. As a classical actor he would have starved: as a ham actor he was a nonpareil. ‘Good heavens, girl, you go to Egypt to learn matters of such importance? Didn’t they even teach you enough to make you realize that theirs is the poorest country in the Middle East, that their economy is not only a shambles but is in a state of total collapse and that they owe countless millions, sterling, dollars, any currency you care to name, to practically any country you care to name. So much for their economy. As for politics, they’re no more than a political football for any country that wants to play soccer on their arid and useless desert sands.’

George stopped briefly, perhaps to admire the eloquence of his own oratory, perhaps to await a response. None was forthcoming so he got back to his head-shaking.

‘And what, one wonders, did your parents have against our premier institute of learning. I refer, of course, to the University of Belgrade.’ He paused, as if in reflection. ‘One admits that Oxford and Cambridge have their points. So, for that matter, does Heidelberg, the Sorbonne, Padua and one or two lesser educational centres. But, no, Belgrade is best.’

Again the faint smile from Sarina. ‘You seem to know a great deal about universities, Mr – ah – George.’

George didn’t smirk. Instead, he achieved the near impossible – he spoke with a lofty diffidence. ‘I have been fortunate enough, for most of my adult life, to be associated with academics, among them some of the most eminent.’ The von Karajans looked at each other for a long moment but said nothing: it was unnecessary for them to say that, in their opinion, any such association must have been on a strictly janitorial level. They probably assumed that he had learned his mode of speech when cleaning out common rooms or, it may have been, while waiting on high table. George gave no indication that he had noticed anything untoward, but, then, he never did.

‘Well,’ George said in his best judicial tones, ‘far be it from me to visit the sins of the fathers upon their sons or, come to that, those of mothers upon their daughters.’ Abruptly, he switched the subject. ‘You are Royalists, of course.’

‘Why “of course”?’ Michael’s voice was sharp.

George sighed. ‘I would have hoped that that institute of lower learning on the Nile hadn’t driven all the native sense out of your head. If you weren’t a Royalist you wouldn’t be coming with us. Besides, Major Petersen told me.’

Sarina looked briefly at Petersen. ‘This is the way you treat confidences?’

‘I wasn’t aware it was a confidence.’ Petersen gestured with an indifferent hand. ‘It was too unimportant to rate as a confidence. In any event, George is my confidant.’

Sarina looked at him uncertainly, then lowered her eyes: the rebuke could have been real, implied or just imagined. George said: ‘I’m just puzzled, you see. You’re Royalists. Your parents, one must assume, are the same. It’s not unusual for the royal family and those close to them to send their children abroad to be educated. But not to Cairo. To Northern Europe. Specifically, to England. The ties between the Yugoslav and British royal families are very close – especially the blood ties. What place did King Peter choose for his enforced exile? London, where he is now. The Prince Regent, Prince Paul, is in the care of the British.’

‘They say in Cairo that he’s a prisoner of the British.’ Michael didn’t seem particularly concerned about what they said in Cairo.

‘Rubbish. He’s in protective custody in Kenya. He’s free to come and go. He makes regular withdrawals from a bank in London. Coutts, it’s called – it also happens to be the bank of the British royal family. Prince Paul’s closest friend in Europe – and his brother-in-law – is the Duke of Kent: well, he was until the Duke was killed in a flying-boat accident last year. And it’s common knowledge that very soon he’s going to South Africa, whose General Smuts is a particularly close friend of the British.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Michael said. ‘You said you’re puzzled. I’m puzzled too. This General Smuts has two South African divisions in North Africa fighting alongside the Eighth Army, no?’

‘Yes.’

‘Against the Germans?’

George showed an unusual trace of irritation. ‘Who else would they be fighting?’

‘So our royal family’s friends in North Africa are fighting the Germans. We’re Royalists, and we’re fighting with the Germans, not against them. I mean it’s all rather confusing.’

‘I’m sure you’re not confused.’ Again Sarina’s little smile. Petersen was beginning to wonder whether he would have to revise his first impression of her. ‘Are you, George?’

‘No confusion.’ George waved a dismissive hand. ‘Simply a temporary measure of convenience and expediency. We are fighting with the Germans, true, but we are not fighting for them. We are fighting for ourselves. When the Germans have served their purpose it will be time for them to be gone.’ George refilled his beer mug, drained half the contents and sighed either in satisfaction or sorrow. ‘We are consistently underestimated, a major part, as the rest of Europe sees it, of the insoluble Balkan problem. To me, there is no problem just a goal.’ He raised his glass again. ‘Yugoslavia.’

‘Nobody’s going to argue with that,’ Petersen said. He looked at the girl. ‘Speaking – as George has been doing at some length – of royalty, you mentioned last night you knew King Peter. How well?’

‘He was Prince Peter then. Not well at all. Once or twice on formal occasions.’

‘That’s about how it was for me. I don’t suppose we’ve exchanged more than a couple of dozen words. Bright lad, pleasant, should make a good king. Pity about his limp.’

‘His what?’

‘You know, his left foot.’

‘Oh, that. Yes. I’ve wondered–’

‘He doesn’t talk about it. All sorts of sinister stories about how he was injured. All ridiculous. A simple hunting accident.’ Petersen smiled. ‘I shouldn’t imagine there’s much of a diplomatic future for a courtier who mistakes his future sovereign for a wild boar.’ He lifted his eyes and right arm at the same time: the innkeeper came hurrying towards him. ‘The bill, if you please.’

‘The bill?’ Momentarily the innkeeper gave the impression of being surprised, even taken aback. ‘Ah, the bill. Of course. The bill. At once.’ He hurried off.

Petersen looked at the von Karajans. ‘Sorry you didn’t have a better appetite – you know, stoked the furnaces for the last part of the trip. Still, it’s downhill now all the way and we’re heading for the Adriatic and a maritime climate. Should be getting steadily warmer.’

‘Oh, no, it won’t.’ It was the first time Alex had spoken since they had entered the inn and, predictably, it was in tones of dark certainty. ‘It’s almost an hour since we came in here and the wind has got stronger. Much stronger. Listen and you can hear it.’ They listened. They heard it, a deep, low-pitched, ululating moaning that boded no good at all. Alex shook his head gravely. ‘An east-northeaster. All the way from Siberia. It’s going to be very cold.’ His voice sounded full of gloomy satisfaction but it meant nothing, it was the only way he knew how to talk. ‘And when the sun goes down, it’s going to be very very cold.’

‘Job’s comforter,’ Petersen said. He looked at the bill the innkeeper had brought, handed over some notes, waved away the proffered change and said: ‘Do you think we could buy some blankets from you?’

‘Blankets?’ The innkeeper frowned in some puzzlement: it was, after all, an unusual request.

‘Blankets. We’ve a long way to go, there’s no heating in our transport and the afternoon and evening are going to be very cold.’

‘There will be no problem.’ The innkeeper disappeared and was back literally within a minute with an armful of heavy coloured woollen blankets which he deposited on a nearby empty table. ‘Those will be sufficient?’

‘More than sufficient. Most kind of you.’ Petersen produced money. ‘How much, please?’

‘Blankets?’ The innkeeper lifted his hands in protest. ‘I am not a shopkeeper. I do not charge for blankets.’

‘But you must. I insist. Blankets cost money.’

‘Please.’ The truck driver had left his table and approached them. ‘I shall be passing back this way tomorrow. I shall bring them with me.’

Petersen thanked them and so it was arranged. Alex, followed by the von Karajans, helped the innkeeper carry the blankets out to the truck. Petersen and George lingered briefly in the porch, closing both the inner and outer doors.

‘You really are the most fearful liar, George,’ Petersen said admiringly. ‘Cunning. Devious. I’ve said it before, I don’t think I’d care to be interrogated by you. You ask a question and whether people say yes, no or nothing at all you still get your answer.’

‘When you’ve spent twenty-five of the best years of your life dealing with dim-witted students–’ George shrugged as if there were no more to say.

‘I’m not a dim-witted student but I still wouldn’t care for it. You have formed an opinion about our young friends?’

‘I have.’

‘So have I. I’ve also formed another opinion about them and that is that while Michael is no intellectual giant, the girl could bear watching. I think she could be clever.’

‘I’ve often observed this with brother and sister, especially when they’re twins. I share your opinion. Lovely and clever.’

Petersen smiled. ‘A dangerous combination?’

‘Not if she’s nice. I’ve no reason to think she’s not nice.’

‘You’re just middle-aged and susceptible. The innkeeper?’

‘Apprehensive and unhappy. He doesn’t look like a man who should be apprehensive and unhappy, he looks a big tough character who would be perfectly at home throwing big tough drunks out of his inn. Also, he seemed caught off-balance when you offered to pay for the meal. One got the unmistakable impression that there are some travellers who do not pay for their meals. Also his refusal to accept money for the blankets was out of character. Out of character for an Italian, I mean, for I’ve never known of an Italian who wasn’t ready, eager rather, to make a deal on some basis or other. Peter, my friend, wouldn’t even you be slightly nervous if you worked for, or were forced to work for the German SS?’

‘Colonel Lunz casts a long shadow. The waiter?’

‘The Gestapo have fallen in my estimation. When they send in an espionage agent in the guise of a waiter they should at least give him some training in the rudiments of table-waiting. I felt positively embarrassed for him.’ George paused, then went on: ‘You were talking about King Peter a few minutes ago.’

‘You introduced that subject.’

‘That’s irrelevant and don’t hedge. As a departmental head in the university I was regarded – and rightly – as being a man of culture. Prince Paul was nothing if not a man of culture although his interests lay more in the world of art than in philology. Never mind. We met quite a few times, either in the university or at royal functions in the city. More to the point, I saw Prince Peter – as he was then – two or three times. He didn’t have a limp in those days.’

‘He still doesn’t.’

George looked at him then nodded slowly. ‘And you called me devious.’

Petersen opened the outer door and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We live in devious times, George.’

The second half of the trip was an improvement on the first but just marginally. Cocooned, as they were, to the ears in heavy blankets, the von Karajans were no longer subject to involuntary bouts of shivering and teeth-chattering but otherwise looked no happier and were no more communicative than they had been in the morning, which meant that they were both totally miserable and silent. They didn’t even speak when George, shouting to make himself heard above the fearful mechanical din, offered them brandy to relieve their sufferings. Sarina shuddered and Michael shook his head. They may have been wise for what George was offering them was no French cognac but his own near-lethal form of slivovitz, his native plum brandy.

Some twelve kilometres from Pescara they bore right off the Route 5 near Chieti, reaching the Adriatic coast road at Francavilla as a premature dusk was falling – premature, because of gathering banks of dark grey cloud which Alex, inevitably, said could only presage heavy snow. The coastal road, Route 16 was an improvement over the Apennines road – it could hardly have failed to be otherwise – and the relatively comfortable though still cacophonous ride to Termoli took no more than two hours. Wartime Termoli, on a winter’s night, was no place to inspire a rhapsody in the heart of the poet or composer: the only feelings it could reasonably expect to give rise to were gloom and depression. It was grey, bleak, bare, grimy and seemingly uninhabited except for a very few half-heartedly blacked-out premises which were presumably cafés or taverns. The port area itself, however, was an improvement on Rome: here was no blackout, just a dimout which probably didn’t vary appreciably from the normal. As the truck stopped along a wharf-side there was more than enough light from the shaded yellow overhead lamps to distinguish the lines of the craft alongside the wharf, their transport to Yugoslavia.

That it was a motor torpedo boat was beyond question. Its vintage was uncertain. What was certain was that it had been in the wars. It had sustained considerable, though not incapacitating, damage to both hull and superstructure. No attempt had been made at repair: no-one had even thought it worthwhile to repaint the numerous dents and scars that pockmarked its side. It carried no torpedoes, for the sufficient reason that the torpedo tubes had been removed; nor had it depth-charges, for even the depth-charge racks had been removed. The only armament, if such it could be called, that it carried was a pair of insignificant little guns, single-barrelled, one mounted for’ard of the bridge, the other on the poop. They looked suspiciously like Hotchkiss repeaters, one of the most notoriously inaccurate weapons ever to find its mistaken way into naval service.

A tall man in a vaguely naval uniform was standing on the wharf-side at the head of the MTB’s gangway. He wore a peaked badgeless naval cap which shaded his face but could not conceal his marked stoop and splendid snow-white Buffalo Bill beard. He raised his hand in half-greeting, half-salute as Petersen, the others following close behind, approached him.

‘Good evening. My name is Pietro. You must be the Major we are expecting.’

‘Good evening and yes.’

‘And four companions, one a lady. Good. You are welcome aboard. I will send someone for your luggage. In the meantime, it is the commanding officer’s wish that you see him as soon as you arrive.’

They followed him below and into a compartment that could have been the captain’s cabin, a chart-room, an officers’ mess-room and was probably all three: space is at a premium on MTBs. The captain was seated at his desk, writing, as Pietro entered without benefit of knocking. He swung round in his swivel-chair which was firmly bolted to the deck as Pietro stood to one side and said: ‘Your latest guests, Carlos. The Major and the four friends we were promised.’

‘Come in, come in, come in. Thank you, Pietro. Send that young ruffian along, will you?’

‘When he’s finished loading the luggage?’

‘That’ll do.’ Pietro left. The captain was a broad-shouldered young man with thick curling black hair, a deep tan, very white teeth, a warm smile and warm brown eyes. He said: ‘I’m Lieutenant Giancarlo Tremino. Call me Carlos. Nearly everyone else does. No discipline left in the Navy.’ He shook his head and indicated his white polo neck jersey and grey flannel trousers. ‘Why wear uniform? No-one pays any attention to it anyway.’ He extended his hand – his left hand – to Petersen. ‘Major, you are very welcome. I cannot offer you Queen Mary type accommodation – peacetime accommodation, that is – but we have a very few small cabins, washing and toilet facilities, lots of wine and can guarantee safe transit to Ploče. The guarantee is based on the fact that we have been to the Dalmatian coast many times and haven’t been sunk yet. Always a first time, of course, but I prefer to dwell on happier things.’

‘You are very kind,’ Petersen said. ‘If it’s to be first name terms, then mine is Peter.’ He introduced the other four, each by their first name. Carlos acknowledged each introduction with a handshake and smile but made no attempt to rise. He was quick to explain this seeming discourtesy and quite unembarrassed about doing so.

‘I apologize for remaining seated. I’m not really ill-mannered or lazy or averse to physical exertion.’ He moved his right arm and, for the first time, brought his glove-sheathed right hand into view. He bent and tapped his right hand against his right leg, about halfway between knee and ankle. The unmistakable sound of hollow metal meeting hollow metal made the onlookers wince. He straightened and tapped the tips of his left fingers against the back of his right glove. The sound was against unmistakable although different – flesh meeting metal. ‘Those metal appliances take some getting used to.’ Carlos was almost apologetic. ‘Unnecessary movement – well, any movement – causes discomfort and who likes discomfort? I am not the noblest Roman of them all.’

Sarina gnawed her lower lip. Michael tried to look as if he weren’t shocked but was. The other three, with eighteen months of vicious and bitter warfare in the Yugoslav mountains behind them, predictably showed no reaction. Petersen said: ‘Right hand, right leg. That’s quite a handicap.’

‘Just the right foot really – blown off at the ankle. Handicap? Have you heard of the English fighter pilot who got both legs destroyed? Did he shout for a bath-chair? He shouted to get back into the cockpit of his Spitfire or whatever. He did, too. Handicap!’

‘I know of him. Most people do. How did you come by those two – um – trifling scratches?’

‘Perfidious Albion,’ Carlos said cheerfully. ‘Nasty, horrible British. Never trust them. To think they used to be my best friends before the war – sailed with them in the Adriatic and the Channel, raced against them at Cowes – well, never mind. We were in the Aegean going, as the lawyers say, about our lawful occasions and bothering no-one. Dawn, lots of heavy mist about when suddenly, less than two kilometres away, this great big British warship appeared through a gap in the mist.’

Carlos paused, perhaps for effect, and Petersen said mildly: ‘It was my understanding that the British never risked their capital ships north of Crete.’

‘Size, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. It was, in fact, a very small frigate, but to us, you understand, it looked like a battleship. We weren’t ready for them but they were ready for us – they had their guns already trained on us. No fault of ours – we had four men, not counting myself, on lookout: they must have had radar, we had none. Their first two shells struck the water only a few metres from our port side and exploded on contact: didn’t do our hull much good, I can tell you. Two other light shells, about a kilo each, I should think – pom-poms, the British call them – scored direct hits. One penetrated the engine-room and put an engine out of action – I regret to say it’s still out of action but we can get by without it – and the other came into the wheelhouse.’

‘A kilo of explosives going off in a confined space is not very nice,’ Petersen said. ‘You were not alone?’

‘Two others. They were not as lucky as I was. Then I had more luck – we ran into a fog bank.’ Carlos shrugged. ‘That’s all. The past is past.’

A knock came at the door. A very young sailor entered, stood at attention, saluted and said: ‘You sent for me, Captain.’

‘Indeed. We have guests, Pietro. Tired, thirsty guests.’

‘Right away, Captain.’ The boy saluted and left.

Petersen said: ‘What’s all this you were saying about no discipline?’

Carlos smiled: ‘Give him time. He’s been with us for only a month.’

George looked puzzled. ‘He is a truant from school, no?’

‘He’s older than he looks. Well, at least three months older.’

‘Quite an age span you have aboard,’ Petersen said. ‘The elder Pietro. He can’t be a day under seventy.’

‘He’s a great number of days over seventy.’ Carlos laughed. The world seemed to be a source of constant amusement to him. ‘A socalled captain with only two out of four functioning limbs. A beardless youth. An old age pensioner. What a crew. Just wait till you see the rest of them.’

Petersen said: ‘The past is past, you say. Accepted. One may ask a question about the present?’ Carlos nodded. ‘Why haven’t you been retired, invalided out of the Navy or at very least given some sort of shore job? Why are you still on active service?’

‘Active service?’ Carlos laughed again. ‘Highly inactive service. The moment we run into anything resembling action I hand in my commission. You saw the two light guns we have mounted fore and aft? It was just pride that made me keep them there. They’ll never be used for either attack or defence for the perfectly adequate reason that neither works. This is a very undemanding assignment and I do have one modest qualification for it. I was born and brought up in Pescara where my father had a yacht – more than one. I spent my boyhood and the ridiculously long university vacations sailing. Around the Mediterranean and Europe for part of the time but mainly off the Yugoslav coast. The Adriatic coast of Italy is dull and uninteresting, with not an island worth mentioning between Bari and Venice: the thousand and one Dalmatian islands are a paradise for the cruising yachtsman. I know them better than I know the streets of Pescara or Termoli. The Admiralty finds this useful.’

‘On a black night?’ Petersen said. ‘No lighthouses, no lit buoys, no land-based navigational aids?’

‘If I required those I wouldn’t be much use to the Admiralty, would I? Ah! Help is at hand.’

It took young Pietro an heroic effort not to stagger under the weight of his burden, a vertically-sided, flat-bottomed wicker basket holding the far from humble nucleus of a small but well-stocked bar. In addition to spirits, wines and liqueurs, Pietro had even gone to the length of providing a soda syphon and a small ice-bucket.

‘Pietro hasn’t yet graduated to bar-tender and I’ve no intention of leaving this chair,’ Carlos said. ‘Help yourselves, please. Thank you, Pietro. Ask our two passengers to join us at their convenience.’ The boy saluted and left. ‘Two other Yugoslav-bound passengers. I don’t know their business as I don’t know yours. You don’t know theirs and they don’t know yours. Ships that pass in the night. But such ships exchange recognition signals. Courtesy of the high seas.’

Petersen gestured at the basket from which George was already helping the von Karajans to orange juice. ‘Another courtesy of the high seas. Lessens the rigours of total war, I must say.’

‘My feeling exactly. No thanks, I may say, to our Admiralty who are as stingy as Admiralties the world over. Some of the supplies come from my father’s wine cellars – they would have your threestar sommeliers in raptures, I can tell you – some are gifts from foreign friends.’

‘Kruškovac.’ George touched a bottle. ‘Grappa. Pelinkovac. Stara Šljivovica. Two excellent vintages from the Neretva delta. Your foreign friends. All from Yugoslavia. Our hospitable and considerate young friend, Pietro. Clairvoyant? He thinks we go to Yugoslavia? Or has he been informed?’

‘Suspicion, one would suppose, is part of your stock-in-trade. I don’t know what Pietro thinks. I don’t even know if he can think. He hasn’t been informed. He knows.’ Carlos sighed. ‘The romance and glamour of the cloak-and-dagger, sealed-orders missions are not, I’m afraid, for us. Search Termoli and you might find a person who is deaf, dumb and blind, although I much doubt it. If you did, he or she would be the only person in Termoli who doesn’t know that the Colombo – that’s the name of this crippled greyhound – plies a regular and so far highly dependable ferry-service to the Yugoslav coast. If it’s any consolation, I’m the only person who knows where we’re going. Unless, of course, one of you has talked.’ He poured himself a small scotch. ‘Your health, gentlemen. And yours, young lady.’

‘We don’t talk much about such things, but about other things I’m afraid I talk too much.’ George sounded sad but at once refuted himself. ‘University, eh? Some kind of marine school?’

‘Some kind of medical school.’

‘Medical school.’ With the air of a man treating himself for shock George poured some more grappa. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a doctor.’

‘I’m not telling you anything. But I have a paper that says so.’

Petersen waved a hand. ‘Then why this?’

‘Well you might ask.’ Momentarily, Carlos sounded as sad as George had done. ‘The Italian Navy. Any navy. Take a highly skilled mechanic, obvious material for an equally highly skilled engineroom-artificer. What does he become? A cook. A cordon bleu chef? A gunner.’ He waved his hand much as Petersen had done. ‘So, in their all-knowing wisdom, they gave me this. Dr Tremino, ferryman, first class. Considering the state of the ferry, make that second class. Come in, come in.’ A knock had come on the door.

The young woman who stepped over the low coaming – she could have been anything between twenty and thirty-five – was of medium height, slender and dressed in a jersey, jacket and skirt, all in blue. Pale-complexioned, without a trace of make-up, she was grave and unsmiling. Her hair was black as night and swooped low, like a raven’s wing, over the left forehead, quite obscuring the left eyebrow. The pock-marking, for such it seemed to be, high up on the left cheekbone, served only to accentuate, not diminish, the classical, timeless beauty of the features: twenty years on, just as conceivably thirty, she would still be as beautiful as she was at that moment. Nor, it seemed certain, would time ever change the appearance of the man who followed her into the cabin, but the sculpted perfection of features had nothing to do with this. A tall, solidly built, fair-haired character, he was irredeemably ugly. Nature had had no hand in this. From the evidence offered by ears, cheeks, chin, nose and teeth he had been in frequent and violent contact with a variety of objects, both blunt and razor-edged, in the course of what must have been a remarkably chequered career, It was, withal, an attractive face, largely because of the genuine warmth of his smile: as with Carlos, an almost irrepressible cheerfulness was never far from the surface.

‘This,’ Carlos said, ‘is Lorraine and Giacomo.’ He introduced Petersen and the other four in turn. Lorraine’s voice was soft and low, in tone and timbre remarkably like that of Sarina: Giacomo’s, predictably, was neither soft nor low and his hand-clasp fearsome except when it came to Sarina: her fingers he took in his finger and thumb and gallantly kissed the back of her hand. Such a gesture from such a man should have appeared both affected and stagey: oddly enough, it did neither. Sarina didn’t seem to think so either. She said nothing, just smiled at him, the first genuine smile Petersen had seen from her: it came as no surprise that her teeth would have been a dentist’s delight or despair, depending upon whether aesthetic or financial considerations were uppermost in his mind.

‘Help yourselves,’ Carlos gestured to the wicker basket. Giacomo, leaving no doubt that he was decisive both as to cast of mind and action, needed no second urging. He poured a glass of Pellegrino for Lorraine, evidence enough that this was not the first time he had met her and that she shared the von Karajans’ aversion towards alcohol, and then half-filled a tumbler with scotch, topping it up with water. He took a seat and beamed around the company.

‘Health to all.’ He raised his brimming glass. ‘And confusion to our enemies.’

‘Any particular enemies?’ Carlos said.

‘It would take too long.’ Giacomo tried to look sad but failed. ‘I have too many.’ He drank deeply to his own toast. ‘You have called us to a conference, Captain Carlos?’

‘Conference, Giacomo? Goodness me, no.’ It didn’t require any great deductive powers, Petersen reflected, to realize that those two had met before and not just that day. ‘Why should I hold a conference? My job is to get you where you’re going and you can’t help me in that. After you land I can’t help you in whatever you’re going to do. Nothing to confer about. As a ferryman, I’m a great believer in introductions. People in your line of business are apt to react over-quickly if, rightly or wrongly, they sense danger in meeting an unknown on a dark deck at night. No such danger now. And there are three things I want to mention briefly.

‘First, accommodation. Lorraine and Giacomo have a cabin each, if you can call something the size of a telephone box a cabin. Only fair. First come, first served. I have two other cabins, one for three, one for two.’ He looked at Michael. ‘You and – yes, Sarina – are brother and sister?’

‘Who told you?’ Michael probably didn’t mean to sound truculent, but his nervous system had suffered from his encounter with Petersen and his friends, and that was the way it came out.

Carlos lowered his head briefly, looked up and said, not smiling, ‘The good Lord gave me eyes and they say “twins”.’

‘No problem.’ Giacomo bowed towards the embarrassed girl. ‘The young lady will do me the honour of switching cabins with me?’

She smiled and nodded. ‘You are very kind.’

‘Second. Food. You could eat aboard but I don’t recommend it. Giovanni cooks only under duress and protest. I don’t blame him. He’s our engineer. Everything that comes out of that galley, even the coffee, tastes and smells of oil. There’s a passable café close by – well, barely passable, but they do know me.’ He half-smiled at the two women in turn. ‘It will be a hardship and a sacrifice but I think I’ll join you.

‘Third. You’re free to go ashore whenever you wish, although I can’t imagine why anyone should want to go ashore on a night like this – except, of course, to escape Giovanni’s cooking. There are police patrols but their enthusiasm usually drops with the temperature. If you do run into any, just say you’re from the Colombo: the worst that can happen is that they’ll escort you back here to check.’

‘I think I’ll take my chance on both weather and the police,’ Petersen said. ‘Advancing years or too many hours in that damned truck or maybe both, but I’m as stiff as a board.’

‘Back inside an hour, please, then we’ll leave for the meal.’ He looked at the bulkhead clock. ‘We should be back at ten. We sail at one o’clock in the morning.’

‘Not till then?’ Michael looked his astonishment. ‘Why, that’s hours away. Why don’t we–’

‘We sail at 1.00 a.m.’ Carlos was patient.

‘But the wind’s getting stronger. It must be rough now. It’ll be getting rougher.’

‘It will not be too comfortable. Are you a bad sailor, Michael?’ The words were sympathetic, the expression not.

‘No. Yes. I don’t know. I don’t see – I mean, I can’t understand–’

‘Michael.’ It was Petersen, his voice gentle. ‘It really doesn’t matter what you can’t see or can’t understand. Lieutenant Tremino is the captain. The captain makes the decisions. No-one ever questions the captain.’

‘It’s very simple, really.’ It was noticeable that Carlos spoke to Petersen not Michael. ‘The garrison that guard such port installations as they have at Ploče are not first-line troops. As soldiers go, they are either superannuated or very very young. In both cases they’re nervous and trigger-happy and the fact that they have radio notification of my arrival seems to have no effect on them. Experience and a few lucky escapes have taught me that the wisest thing is to arrive at sunrise so that even the most rheumy eyes can see that the gallant Captain Tremino is flying the biggest Italian flag in the Adriatic.’

The wind, as Michael had said, had indeed strengthened, and was bitingly cold but Petersen and his two companions were not exposed to it for long, for George’s homing instinct was unerring. The tavern in which they fetched up was no more or less dingy than any other dockside tavern and it was at least warm.

‘A very short stroll for such stiff legs,’ George observed.

‘Nothing wrong with my legs. I just wanted to talk.’

‘What was wrong with our cabin? Carlos has more wine and grappa and slivovitz than he can possibly use–’

‘Colonel Lunz, as we’ve said, has a long arm.’

‘Ah! So! A bug?’

‘Would you put anything past him? This could be awkward.’

‘Alas, I’m afraid I know what you mean.’

‘I don’t.’ Alex wore his suspicious expression.

‘Carlos,’ Petersen said. ‘I know him. Rather, I know who he is. I knew his father, a retired naval captain but on the reserve list: almost certainly on the active list now, a cruiser captain or such. He became a reserve Italian naval captain at the same time as my father became a reserve Yugoslav army colonel. Both men loved the sea and both men set up chandlers’ businesses: both were highly successful. Inevitably, almost, their paths crossed and they became very good friends. They met frequently, usually in Trieste and I was with them on several occasions. Photographs were taken. Carlos may well have seen them.’

‘If he has seen them,’ George said, ‘let it be our pious hope that the ravages of time and the dissipation of years make it difficult for Carlos to identify Major Petersen with the carefree youth of yesteryear.’

Alex said: ‘Why is it so important?’

‘I have known Colonel Petersen for many years,’ George said. ‘Unlike his son, he is, or was, a very outspoken man.’

‘Ah!’

‘A pity about Carlos, a great pity.’ George sounded, and may well have been, profoundly sad. ‘An eminently likeable young man. And you can say the same about Giacomo – except, of course, not so young. An excellent pair to have by one’s side, one would have thought, in moments of trouble and strife, which are the only ones we seem to have.’ He shook his head. ‘Where, oh where, are my ivory towers?’

‘You should be grateful for this touch of realism, George. Exactly the counter-balance you academics need. What do you make of Giacomo? An Italian counterpart of the British commando?’

‘Giacomo has been savagely beaten up or savagely tortured or perhaps both at the same time. Commando material unquestionably. But not Italian. Montenegrin.’

‘Montenegrin!’

‘You know. Montenegro.’ George, on occasion, was capable of elaborate sarcasm, an unfortunate gift honed and refined by a lifetime in the groves of academe. ‘A province in our native Yugoslavia.’

‘With that fair hair and impeccable Italian?’

‘Fair hair is not unknown in Montenegro and though his Italian is very good the accent overlay is unmistakable.’

Petersen didn’t doubt him for a moment. George’s ear for languages, dialects, accents and nuances of accent was, in philological circles, a byword far beyond the Balkans.

The evening meal was more than passable, the café more than presentable. Carlos was not only known there, as he had said, but treated with some deference. Lorraine spoke only occasionally and then to no-one except Carlos, who sat beside her. She, too, had, it seemed been born in Pescara. Predictably, neither Alex nor Michael nor Sarina contributed a word to the conversation but that didn’t matter. Both Carlos and Petersen were relaxed and easy talkers but even that didn’t matter very much: when Giacomo and George were in full cry, more often than not at the same time, even the possibility of a conversational hiatus seemed preposterous: both men talked a great deal without saying anything at all.

On the way back to the ship they had to face not only a perceptibly stronger wind but a thinly driving snow. Carlos, who had drunk little enough, was not so sure on his feet as he thought or, more likely, would have others think. After the second stumble he was seen to be walking arm in arm with Lorraine: who had taken whose arm could only be guessed at. When they arrived at the gangway, the Colombo was rocking perceptibly at its moorings: the harbour swell responsible bespoke much worse conditions outside.

To Petersen’s surprise and an ill-concealed irritation that amounted almost to anger, five more men were awaiting their arrival down below. Their leader, who was introduced as Alessandro, and for whom Carlos showed an unusual degree of respect, was a tall, thin, grey-haired man with a beaked nose, bloodless lips and only the rudimentary vestiges of eyebrows. Three of his four men, all about half his age, were introduced as Franco, Cola and Sepp, which names were presumably abbreviations for Francesco, Nicholas and Giuseppe: the fourth was called Guido. Like their leader, they wore nondescript civilian clothes. Like their leader they gave the distinct impression that they would have been much happier in uniform: like their leader they had cold, hard, expressionless faces.

Petersen glanced briefly at George, turned and left the cabin, George following with Alex, inevitably, close behind. Petersen had barely begun to speak when Carlos appeared in the passage-way and walked quickly towards them.

‘You are upset, Major Petersen?’ No ‘Peter’. The trace of anxiety was faint but it was there.

‘I’m unhappy. It is true, as I told Michael, that one never questions the captain’s decisions but this is a different matter entirely. I take it those men are also passengers to Ploče?’ Carlos nodded. ‘Where are they sleeping?’

‘We have a dormitory for five in the bows. I did not think that worth mentioning, any more than I thought their arrival worth mentioning.’

‘I am also unhappy at the fact that Rome gave me the distinct impression that we would be travelling alone. I did not bargain for the fact that we would be travelling with five – seven now – people who are totally unknown to me.

‘I am unhappy about the fact that you know them or, at least, Alessandro.’ Carlos made to speak but Petersen waved him to silence. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t think me such a fool as to deny it. It’s just not in your nature to show a deference amounting almost to apprehension towards a total stranger.

‘Finally, I’m unhappy about the fact that they have the appearance of being a bunch of hired, professional assassins, tough ruthless killers. They are, of course, nothing of the kind, they only think they are, which is why I use the word “appearance”. Their only danger lies in their lack of predictability. For your true assassin, no such word as unpredictability exists in his vocabulary. He does precisely what he intends to do. And it is to be borne in mind, when it comes to the far from gentle art of premeditated and authorized murder, your true assassin never, never, never looks like one.’

‘You seem to know a lot about assassins.’ Carlos smiled faintly. ‘I could be speaking to three of them.’

‘Preposterous!’ George was incapable of snorting but he came close.

‘Giacomo, then?’

‘One is left with the impression that Giacomo is a one-man panzer division,’ Petersen said. ‘Coldblooded stealth is not his forte. He doesn’t even begin to qualify. You should know – you know him much better than we do.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because acting isn’t your forte.’

‘So our school drama teacher said. Lorraine?’

‘You’re mad.’ George spoke with conviction.

‘He doesn’t mean you are.’ Petersen smiled. ‘Just the suggestion. Classically beautiful women almost never have gentle eyes.’

Carlos confirmed what seemed to be the growing opinion that he was indeed no actor. He was pleased, and not obscurely. He said: ‘If you’re unhappy, then I apologize for that although I really don’t know why I’m apologizing. I have orders to carry out and it’s my duty to follow orders. Beyond that, I know nothing.’ He still wasn’t a very good actor, Petersen thought, but there was nothing to be gained in saying so. ‘Won’t you come back to my cabin? Three hours before we sail yet. Ample time for a nightcap. Or two. Alessandro and his men, as you say, aren’t so ferocious as they look.’

‘Thank you,’ Petersen said. ‘But no. I think we’ll just take a turn on the upper deck and then retire. So we’ll say goodnight now.’

‘The upper deck? This weather? You’ll freeze.’

‘Cold is an old friend of ours.’

‘I prefer other company. But as you wish, gentlemen.’ He reached out a steadying hand as the Colombo lurched sharply. ‘A rather rough passage tonight, I’m afraid. Torpedo boats may have their good points – I may find one some day – but they are rather less than seakindly. I hope you are also on friendly terms with Father Neptune.’

‘Our next of kin,’ George said.

‘That apart, I can promise you a quiet and uneventful trip. Never had a mutiny yet.’

In the lee of the superstructure Petersen said: ‘Well?’

‘Well?’ George said heavily. ‘All is not well. Seven total strangers aboard this boat and the worthy young Carlos seems to know all seven of them. Every man’s hand against us. Not, of course, that that’s anything new.’ The tip of his nauseous cigar glowed redly in the gloom. ‘Would it be naïve of me to wonder whether or not our good friend Colonel Lunz is acquainted with the passenger list of the Colombo?’

‘Yes.’

‘We are, of course, prepared for all eventualities?’

‘Certainly. Which ones did you have in mind?’

‘None. We take turns to keep watch in our cabin?’

‘Of course. If we stay in our cabin.’

‘Ah! We have a plan?’

‘We have no plan. What do you think about Lorraine?’

‘Charming. I speak unhesitatingly. A delightful young lady.’

‘I’ve told you before, George. About your advanced years and susceptibility. That wasn’t what I meant. Her presence aboard puzzles me. I can’t see that she belongs in any way to this motley bunch that Carlos is transporting to Ploče.’

‘Motley, eh? First time I’ve ever been called motley. How does she differ?’

‘Because every other passenger on this vessel is up to no good or I strongly suspect them of being up to no good. I suspect her of nothing.’

‘My word!’ George spoke in tones of what were meant to be genuine awe. ‘That makes her unique.’

‘Carlos let us know – he could have been at pains to let us know – that she, too, came from Pescara. Do you think she comes from Pescara, George?’

‘How the devil should I tell? She could come from Timbuktu for all I know.’

‘You disappoint me, George. Or wilfully misunderstand me. I shall be patient. Your unmatched command of the nuances of all those European languages. Was she born or brought up in Pescara?’

‘Neither.’

‘But she is Italian?’

‘No.’

‘So we’re back in Yugoslavia again?’

‘Maybe you are. I’m not. I’m in England.’

‘What! England?’

‘The overlay of what it pleases the British Broadcasting Corporation to call Southern Standard English is unmistakable.’ George coughed modestly, his smugness could occasionally verge on the infuriating. ‘To the trained ear, of course.’