The Angry Mountain

CHAPTER TWO

It was obvious that Maxwell wanted to speak to me. In the mirror backing of the shelves behind the bar I could see him seated at one of the little tables well away from the light of the windows. He was reading a newspaper and didn’t once glance in my direction. I waited until the bar had filled up. Then I got myself another drink and went over to his table. ‘Permit me, pane,’ I said in Czech, and took the chair opposite him.

‘I was beginning to get worried about you, Dick,’ he said without glancing up from his newspaper. ‘Are you being watched?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I answered.

‘GOOD. Will they let you take the plane tomorrow?’

‘I think so. They don’t seem to have anything against me except the fact that I saw Jan Tucek on Wednesday. How did you know I’d been arrested?’

‘I was at the airport.’

‘Were you catching that plane?’

‘No. I was waiting to see you.’ I saw the whites of his eyes in the shadow of his face as he glanced quickly round the room. Then he smoothed his paper out flat on the table and leaned slightly forward. ‘You probably know by now why the S.N.B. police picked you up for questioning.’ I shook my head and he said, ‘We got Tucek out of the country last night. That’s why I couldn’t meet you as arranged. There was a lot to do.’

‘You got him out of the country!’ I stared at him. ‘But — he was in protective custody. How—’

‘A little diversion. The house next door caught fire. But don’t worry about the details. We had an old Anson waiting at Bory airfield. There were two of them — Tucek and a senior Czech air force officer, general letectva Lemlin.

They should have been in Milan early this morning.’ He was talking very fast, his lips hardly moving. ‘Reece wouldn’t be expecting them till Sunday morning, but they knew where to contact him, and I should have had confirmation of their arrival by wire this morning.’ He paused and then said, ‘I’m very worried, Dick. I’ve heard nothing. When you get to Milan tomorrow, I want you to go straight to the Albergo Excelsior, opposite the Stazione Centrale. Tell Reece to wire me immediately. Will you do that?’

‘The Excelsior! Is Reece staying there?’ I asked him.

He nodded and I cursed the luck that had booked me at the same hotel. I didn’t want to see Reece. I think Maxwell knew that, for he added, ‘It’s very urgent, Dick. They may have crashed.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll see Reece.’

‘Good man. Just one other thing. A message from Tucek. He told me to tell you that he wished to see you as soon as you arrived in Milan. He was very insistent.’

‘All right,‘I said.

A waiter appeared and collected our glasses. Maxwell folded his newspaper. ‘Would pane care to have a look at the paper?’ he said in Czech. I thanked him and took the paper. He collected his brief case and got to his feet. ‘Goodbye, Dick,’ he whispered. ‘See you again sometime.’ And he strolled down the length of the bar and out by the street door.

I had another drink and then went in to lunch. Time passed very slowly during the rest of that day. I drank it away watching the hands of the clock over the bar move steadily through afternoon into evening. The airport had made no difficulty about transferring my booking to the following day. The only question was, would the police let me go? Everything seemed to hinge on whether the night porter kept his mouth shut about Tucek’s extraordinary visit to my room. The more I thought about that, the more odd it seemed. If he had come to see me, then why hadn’t he wakened me? Perhaps I’d been so drunk he couldn’t wake me? But then why did he want to see me as soon as I reached Milan?

These speculations became more and more confused in my mind as I drank the evening out. And they became confused with my promise to see Reece. I didn’t want to see Reece. Alive or dead, I didn’t want to see him. He’d been so bitter. He’d turned his sister against me, smashed my life. Shirer I didn’t mind so much. Shirer had been older. He knew what I’d been through. But Reece was young. He didn’t understand. He’d never faced real pain in his life. Those letters he’d written her from the hospital — he’d told me what he was writing to her. He’d taken it out of me that way. Suddenly I didn’t care about the Czech security police. I didn’t want to leave Czechoslovakia any more. Let them arrest me. I didn’t care. All I knew was that I didn’t want to go to Milan and see Reece. God! For all I knew Alice might be there. I began to sing Alice Blue Gown. That was when they got me out of the bar and I found the night porter helping me up to my room.

As we reached the landing he said, ‘I hear,pane, that you have trouble with the S.N.B. to-day?’ His greedy little eyes peered up at me. I wanted to punch his face. I knew what he wanted. He wanted money. ‘You go to hell!’ I said.

I couldn’t get his face in focus, but I knew he was leering up at me. ‘Perhaps I go to the police.’

‘You can go to the devil for all I care,’ I mumbled.

He opened the door of my room and helped me inside. I tried to shake him off and fell on to the bed. He shut the door and came over to me. ‘Also I hear pan Tucek is escaped. Perhaps his visit to you is more important than the fifty kronen you give me, eh?’ He was standing beside the bed, looking down at me.

‘Get the hell out of here, you little crook,’ I shouted at him.

‘But, pane, consider for a moment, please. If I tell the police what I know it will be a very bad for pane.’

I didn’t care any more. As long as I didn’t have to see Reece I didn’t mind. ‘Go to the police,’ I said wearily. ‘It doesn’t matter. Go and tell them what you know.’ I saw the baffled, frustrated look on his face and that was the last thing I remember. Whether I passed out or just fell asleep I don’t know. All I know is that I woke fully clothed and very cold to find myself sprawled on my bed in the dark. It was then just after one-thirty. I undressed and got into bed..

In the morning I felt frightful. Also I was scared. Everything is much simpler when you’re drunk. Perhaps it is because the urge to live is less. At any rate, in the sober grey light of day I knew that I’d rather face Reece in Milan than be held here in Pilsen by the Czech police. I’d been a fool to refuse the porter money. I dressed quickly and went down to find him. But he’d already gone. I was in a panic then lest he’d gone to the police. I tried to steady myself with cups of black coffee and cigarettes. But my hands were trembling and clammy and I knew that I was waiting all the time for my name to be called, waiting to go out and find the man with the sandy eyelashes standing by the reception desk. But my name wasn’t called and in the end I got up and went out to pay my bill. As soon as I looked in my wallet I knew why the police hadn’t come for me. Most of my money was gone — all the pound notes and lire. The little swine had left me just enough kronen to pay my bill.

I got my bags down and took a drozka out to the airport. I was sweating and my head was swimming as I went towards the passenger clearing office. I searched the faces of the men standing around the room. Several of them seemed to be watching me. I reached the desk and presented my passport. The same clerk was on duty there. He waved the passport aside with a little smile and made some crack about there being no reception committee for me this morning. I got a paper and sat waiting for my flight to be called. I tried to read, but the print hurt my eyes and I couldn’t concentrate. I watched the main entrance, suspicious of every man who came in without any baggage.

The flight was called at eleven-fifteen. I walked out to the plane with four other passengers. As we queued up to enter the aircraft my heart was in my mouth. An attendant was checking the names of the passengers. Beside him stood a man in a grey trilby. I was certain he was from the S.N.B. At last my turn came. ‘Name, please?’

‘Farrell.’ My mouth felt dry. The man in the grey trilby looked at me with cold, hostile eyes. The attendant made a tick against my name. I hesitated. The man in the trilby made no move. My leg seemed more awkward than usual as I negotiated the three steps of the ladder. I found a seat well up towards the front of the fuselage and slumped into it. I was sweating and I wiped my face and my hands with my handkerchief.

I got my paper out then and pretended to read. The crew came in and went through to the cockpit. The connecting door slid to. I sat there waiting. I could feel the draught from the open door of the fuselage blowing on my back. Would they never close it? The suspense was frightful. To get so far…. The devil of it was that I knew this was just the sort of cat-and-mouse game they loved. It was all part of the softening-up process.

The port engine turned over and started into life. Then the starboard engine. The door to the cockpit slid back and one of the crew looked in and ordered us to fix our safety belts. Now was the moment they’d come for me. I heard a sudden movement by the entrance door. I couldn’t control myself any longer. I swung round in my seat. To my amazement the steps had been taken away. The door shut with a clang and was closed on the inside. The engines roared and we began to taxi out to the runway.

The feeling of relief that flooded through me was like the sudden plunge into unconsciousness. There was a pleasurable chill feeling along my spine and the back of my eyes were moist. I don’t remember taking off. I felt too dazed. I only know that the roar of the engines changed suddenly to a steady purr and the seat was pressed hard against the base of my spine. Automatically I fumbled at the locking device of my safety belt, only to find that I’d never fastened it. Through the window at my side all Pilsen was spread out below me, tilted at an angle as we banked. I could see the onion-shaped dome of the water tower of Pilsen Brewery and the miles of sidings alongside the big factories. Through belching smoke I caught a glimpse of the Tucek Steel works. Then Pilsen vanished beneath the plane as we straightened on to our course.

My sense of relief was short-lived. There was still Prague and Vienna. At each of these stops they could arrest me. But nobody disturbed me or even asked for my papers, and 25 we rose into the clear sunlight over Vienna with the snowcapped gleam of the Alps ahead I lay back in my seat, relaxed for the first time in two days. I was the right side of the Iron Curtain. They couldn’t touch me now. I slept then and didn’t wake until we were in Italy.

The plane skirted the foothills of the Dolomites and then we were on the edge of the Po Valley headed west towards Milan. I began to think of what lay ahead, of my meeting with Reece. It was odd that it should be at Milan, so close to Lake Como. It was there, at the Villa d’Este, that I had last seen him.

It had been in April, 1945, that he and Shirer had escaped. And it was that little swine of a doctor who was so like Shirer who’d fixed it for them. He’d helped them to escape and then he’d blown his brains out.

The mere thought of him brought the sweat prickling out on my forehead. Giovanni Sansevino — il dottore, they’d called him. I could hear the orderly’s voice saying, ‘Il dottore is coming to see you this morning, Signer Capitano.’ How often had I heard that, and always with a sly relish? The orderly — the one with the wart on his nose who was called Luigi — he’d liked pain. ‘Il dottore is coming to see you.’ He’d stay in the ward after that, watching me out of his unnaturally pale eyes, watching me as I lay sweating, wondering whether it was to be one of the doctor’s little social visits as he called them or another operation.

Starting out through the window of the plane to the serrated edge of the Alps, it wasn’t my reflected face that I saw in the perspex, but the doctor’s face. I could remember it so clearly. It didn’t seem possible that he’d been dead over five years. It wasn’t an unpleasant face at all. Except for the moustache, it might have been Shirer’s face, and I’d liked Shirer. It was a round, rather chubby face, very blue about the jowls with a broad forehead and an olive complexion below the black sheen of his hair. Only the eyes weren’t right somehow. They were too close together, too small. He hid them behind dark glasses. But when he was operating he abandoned the glasses and I could remember staring up into those small, dark pupils and seeing the strange, sadistic excitement that stirred in them as his hands touched my skin, caressing with beastly enjoyment the flesh he was going to cut away. His breath would come then in quick, sharp pants as though he were caressing a woman and his tongue would flick over his lips.

Sitting there in the plane I felt my muscles contracting as I relived the touch of those hands. It wasn’t difficult for me to recall the feel of them. My trouble had been to forget. Too often I’d wakened in the night screaming, with all my body tense, forcing myself to realise that my left leg was no longer there, that it had gone in shreds down the drains of the Villa d’Este, and that the touch of those hands, which I could still feel even on waking, was just a trick of nerve threads that had been severed long ago.

It is extraordinary how nerves can recall touch in such detail. The slow, stroking movement of the tips of his long, sensitive fingers was indelibly fixed on the nerve record of my brain. The man had been a fine surgeon and his fingers had been clever and strong. Yet somehow in their touch they had managed to convey a subtle enjoyment of pain. He must have done hundreds of operations, and all the time I felt he had been patiently waiting for the moment when I should be delivered to him and he could demonstrate his skill to the patient by operating without an anaesthetic.

And always as his fingers stroked my flesh he had said, ‘You think I enjoy operating on you without an anaesthetic, don’t you, Signor Farrell? But I am a surgeon. I like to do a good job. This is not necessary, you know. Why not be sensible? Why not tell the Gestapo what they wish to know, eh?’ It had been a formula run off like a magician’s stage patter. He hadn’t wanted me to talk. He’d wanted me to remain silent, so that he could operate. I could tell that by die way his breath came in his gathering excitement and by the narrowing of the black pupils of his eyes. Soon it had been only the remains of a leg that he had stroked so gently, so caressingly. Then there had come a day when he had said, ‘There is not much left of this leg. Soon we must begin an the other one, eh?’ His gentle, sibilant voice was there in the drone of the engines and I could feel the whole of my lost leg as though it was still flesh and blood and not a tin dummy.

I put a stop to my imagination, wiping the sweat from my forehead and dragging myself back to the present by leaning forward and gazing out of the window. Padua was below and beyond the starboard wing the white teeth of the Dolomites fanged a dark cloudscape. But staring at the.Alps didn’t blot the thought of Reece from my mind. He was there in the past, as he’d always been. And now he was ahead of me, too. When I reached Milan I’d got to face him, give him Maxwell’s message — and somehow I didn’t feel I had the courage to face him. They’d brought him to the Villa d’Este with a bullet in the lung only a few hours after that last operation. They’d put him in the next bed to mine and let him find out gradually how he’d come to be picked up.

Shirer they had picked up about the same time. But he went to a P.O.W. camp. He was brought to the Villa d’Este early in 1945 after a course of poison gas treatment. It was a burning gas and they’d used him as a guinea pig, partly to make him talk, partly as an experiment. They put him in the bed on the other side of me and il dottore was put to work on him. There in the plane I could still hear his screams. I think they were worse than my own remembered screams. And all the time, through the barred window, we looked out on to the blue of Lago di Como, with the white villas opposite and the Swiss frontier only a few kilometres away.

Sansevino did a good job on Shirer. Within two months he was almost well again. Once the little doctor said to him, ‘I take trouble with you, signore, because you are so like me. I do not like to see a man who is so like myself disfigured.’ The likeness was certainly extraordinary.

In April the three of us were moved to a separate ward. It was then that Sansevino first intimated that he would help them to escape. His condition was that we all three signed a statement that he had been kind and considerate to all Allied patients and that he had taken no part in German guinea-pig experiments. ‘The Allies will win the war now,’ he had said. ‘And I do not wish to die because of what they force me to do here.’ We had refused at first. I remembered that I had enjoyed the momentary flicker of fear I had seen in his eyes as we refused. But we’d signed the document in the end, and after that we had got better food. It was almost as though he were fattening us up. He was particularly interested in Shirer’s condition, having him weighed repeatedly, examining him again and again as though he were a prize exhibit in some forthcoming show. This special treatment worried Shirer. He was worried, too, about his resemblance to the Italian doctor. He became obsessed with the idea that it was because of this he had been brought to the Villa d’Este and he was filled with a premonition that he would never see America again.

For my part I thought it was all a part of the twisted mentality of the little doctor that he should bring these two, Reece and Shirer, to the hospital and then move us to a separate ward. It was hell for me being cooped up in that tiny room, forced into the company of the two men I had destroyed. They should have been out in the hills above Bologna organising the partigiani. Only the fact that my plane had been hit by ack-ack and crashed after dropping them had led to their being captured. It was hell having them for company — a worse hell than the frightful pain of those operations. Shirer had understood, I think. He wasn’t a young man and he had seen a good deal of suffering in the coal mines of Pittsburgh, which was his home. The fact that he was an American Italian also probably had something to do with it — it made him more sensitive and perhaps his code wasn’t so rigid.

Reece, on the other hand, was solid and unimaginative. He came from Norfolk of a long line of Puritan ancestors and for him right and wrong were as clear as white and black. Two years in Milan as an engineering student had hardened, rather than softened his outlook on life. From the day he arrived at the Villa d’Este and Sansevino explained to him how it was that he had been captured, he never spoke to me. The fact that I had been engaged to his sister made his reaction all the more violent. He didn’t take Sansevino’s word for it. He cross-examined me. And when lie realised that it was the truth, that the third operation had finished me, then he withdrew into himself, hating me for being the cause of his not finishing the job he’d been sent out to do.

It wasn’t so bad in the big ward. But when we were moved into the little room overlooking the lake, it had been torture to me. I could feel the silence still. It would grow and grow until suddenly Shirer would break it, going out of his way to talk to me. He had made a little chess set and we played by the hour. But all this time I was conscious of Alec Recce’s presence, knowing that sooner or later he would inform his sister of what had happened.

The memory of those days was so vivid that even the sounds of the plane and the sight of the Alps standing white along the horizon couldn’t blot out their memory. Then, thank God, the two of them had gone. Sansevino had arranged it. I was up and about then, getting my stump accustomed to the pain of bearing my weight on the cup of the wooden leg they’d given me. But I couldn’t go. And I was glad I couldn’t go.

They left on the 21st April. Sansevino had given them civilian clothes and all the necessary documents. They left just after midnight — first Shirer, then Reece. They were to rendezvous at the vehicle park, take an ambulance and drive to Milan where they would be looked after by Sansevino’s friends.

I thought at the time that Sansevino had been relying on the document we had all signed to save him from being arrested for war crimes when the war was over. It never occurred to me that in arranging their escape he was trying to come to terms with his conscience. Yet that must have been the reason for his sudden act of generosity, for next morning he was dead at his desk. His orderly had been instructed to bring me to him first thing in the morning, at 7 o’clock. It was we who found him. He was in full uniform with all his Fascist decorations, slumped in his chair, his head lolling back and a black bloodstain on his shoulder. The little Beretta with which he’d shot himself was still clenched in his hand. Oddly enough his dark glasses still covered his eyes, though the force of the explosion had driven them almost to the end of his nose. Some queer sense of justice must have induced him to arrange it so that I should actually be one of those to see him after he’d taken his life.

As for Reece and Shirer, something had gone wrong. I heard afterwards that they’d been stopped at an unexpected road block and had been killed whilst attempting to climb to the Swiss frontier. That’s what I had been told and I had never doubted the truth of it. Certainly I had made no attempt to check up on it. Why should I? The very last thing Reece had said to me was, ‘I have written to Alice telling her everything. That letter may not reach her and I may not come through. But God’s curse rest on you, Farrell, if you ever try to see her again. You understand?’ And I had nodded, too emotionally destroyed to say anything. His letter, however, had got through. Her reply was waiting for me when I rejoined my unit at Foggia. Maxwell himself had handed it to me.

God! I could remember it all so clearly. And here I was, flying through the Po valley to see Reece again. Ahead of us I could see Lake Maggiore, like a piece of lead laid flat in the brown fold of the hills. And beyond, in a golden shimmer of sunshine, the Plain of Lombardy was rolled out like a map. I wiped the sweat off my brow and picked up the paper. My eyes drifted aimlessly over the headlines until they were caught and held by a story headed: ISAAC RINKSTEIN CONFESSES. One paragraph stood out from the rest: Rinkstein has admitted to making heavy sales of diamonds and other precious stones to certain industrialists, the chief among them being Jan Tucek, chairman and managing director of the Tuckovy ocelarny. This is regarded as indicating that he has been active against the State. Men who convert their fortunes into such easily portable goods as precious stones usually have a guilty conscience. Tucek is believed to have been selling vital industrial and military information to the Western Powers.

I put the paper down and stared out of the window. We were over Verona now and the road from Venice to Milan cut like a grey ribbon through the green sheet of Lombardy. I was hoping that if Tucek had crashed, as Max feared, he had crashed beyond the Czech frontier. At least he’d have a chance then. But through the farther window I could see the jagged molars of the Alps grinding against the black vault of a storm. I knew what it was like to crash — the rearing, shattering impact and then the sudden stillness of intense pain and the smell of petrol and the fear of fire. That’s how it had been when I’d crashed in the Futa Pass. But there I’d managed to find an open stretch of moorland. Up here in the Alps it would be into a snow-covered peak or against some pine-clad slope they’d crash. There was all the difference in the world.

Thinking about Tucek, I forgot myself, and it was not until the sound of the engines slackened and the port wing dipped that I looked out of my window again. Milan lay along the horizon, sunlight glittering on long streamers of smoke blown by the wind from the tall factory chimneys on the outskirts. The solid bulk of a gasometer came up to meet us. Then we were skimming the spire of a church and running in towards a line of pylons. The lights came on in the indicator ordering safety belts to be fixed. The door to the cockpit slid back and one of the crew repeated the order. The sun-baked flat of the airfield came up to meet us and in a moment the concrete of the runways was streaming by and we had landed in Milan.

The main hall of Milan Airport looked very much as it had done when I passed through it on my way down to Foggia in May, 1945, after the German capitulation. The same air maps sprawled across the walls publicising Mussolini’s empire. But now the sun shone through the tall frosted windows on to the motley of civilian dress and the public address system announced the flights in Italian and French as well as English.

I checked baggage and passports and was just going out towards the waiting bus when I saw Reece. He was over near the airfield entrance talking to a small, bearded Italian. Our eyes met across the heads of the crowd. I saw sudden recognition and the shock of surprise in his eyes. Then he deliberately turned away and continued his conversation with the Italian.

I hesitated. I had a message to give him and the sooner he got it the better. But somehow I couldn’t face it. The blankness that followed that sudden glance of recognition seemed to block me out. I found I was trembling and I knew then I must have a drink before I faced him. I went quickly out to the bus and climbed in. ‘Dove, signore?’ The attendant stared at me suspiciously.

‘Excelsior,’ I answered.

‘Excelsior? Bene.’

A few minutes later the bus moved off. I knew then that I ought to have gone over to Reece and given him Maxwell’s message. I cursed myself for letting my nerves get the better of me. After all it “was a long time ago and … But all I remembered was the blank look that had followed recognition. It had taken me straight back to that little room in the Villa d’Este. He didn’t seem to have changed at all. A bit fuller in the face perhaps, but the same broad, stocky figure and determined set of mouth and chin. Well, I’d got to face it sooner or later. I’d have a drink or two and wait for him at the hotel.

The Excelsior is in the Piazzale Duca d’Aosta, facing the Stazione Centrale, that exuberant monument to Fascist ideals that looks more like a colossal war memorial than a railway station. A porter took my two suitcases and I climbed the steps and entered the marble-pillared entrance hall of the hotel. At the reception desk the clerk said, ‘Your home, please, signore?’

‘Farrell,’ I answered. ‘I have accommodation booked.’

‘Si si, signore. Will you sign please. Numero cento venti.’ He called a page. ‘Accompagnate il signore alcento venti.’ The room was small, but comfortable. It looked out across the Piazzale to the railway station. I had a bath and I changed and then went down to the lounge to wait for Recce. I ordered tea and sent a page for my mail. There wasn’t much; a letter from my mother, a bill for a suit I’d bought before leaving England and the usual packet from my firm. The last included a letter from the managing director. We expect big things of you in Italy…. When you have been in Milan a week send me a report on the advisability of establishing a permanent agency…. You have my permission to take a holiday there as and when you please and trust you will be able to combine business with pleasure by making social contact with potential customers for our machine tools. It was signed Harry Evans. I folded the letter and put it away in my briefcase. Then I sat back,’ thinking of the possibilities of a holiday in Italy, and as I did so my eyes strayed over the room and riveted themselves on the far corner.

Seated alone at a small table by the window was Alice Reece. The sight of her hit me like a blow below the belt. As though drawn by my gaze, she turned her head and saw me. Her eyes brightened momentarily as they met mine across that dimly-lit lounge. Then they seemed to go cold and dead, the way her brother’s had done, and she turned away her head.

I think if I’d hesitated I’d have fled to my room. But I was gripped by some strange urge to justify myself. I got to my feet and walked across the room towards her table. She saw me coming. The green of her eyes was caught in the sunlight from the window. She looked into my face and then her gaze fell to my leg. I saw her frown and she turned away towards the window again. I was at her table now, standing over her, seeing the sunlight colouring the soft gold of her hair and the way her hands were clenched on her bag.

‘Do you mind if I sit down for a minute?’ I asked, and my voice was trembling.

She didn’t stop me, but as I pulled out the chair opposite her, she said, ‘It’s no good, Dick. ‘She had spoken in a tone of pity.

I sat down. Her face was in profile now and I saw she was older, more mature. There were lines in her forehead and at the corners of her mouth that hadn’t been there before. ‘Eight years is a long time,’ I said.

She nodded, but said nothing.

Now that I was here, sitting opposite her, I didn’t know what to say. No words could bridge the gulf between us. I knew that. And yet there were things I wanted to say, things that couldn’t have been written. ‘I hope you’re well,’ I said inanely.

‘ Yes,’ she answered quietly.

‘And happy?’

She didn’t answer and I thought she hadn’t heard. But then she said, ‘You had all there was of happiness in me, Dick.’ She turned and looked at me suddenly. ‘I didn’t know about the leg. When did that happen?’

I told her.

She looked away again, out of the window. ‘Alec never told me about that. It would have made it easier — to understand.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t want to make it easier for you to understand.’

‘Perhaps.’

An awkward silence fell between us. It grew so that I felt at any moment our nerves would snap and we’d cry or laugh out loud or something equally stupid.

‘What are you doing in Milan?’ I asked.

‘A holiday,’ she replied. ‘And you?’

‘Business,’ I answered.

Silence again. I think both of us knew that small talk was no good between us. ‘Will you be here long?’ I asked. ‘I mean — couldn’t we meet some—’

She stopped me with an angry movement of her hand. “Don’t make it more difficult, Dick,’ she said and I noticed a trembling in her voice.

Her words took us over the edge of small talk, back into tine past that we’d shared; a holiday in Wales, the Braemar Games where we’d first met, her fair hair blown by the wind on a yacht on the Broads. I could see her slim body cutting the water as she dived, see her face laughing up at me as we ay under the shade of an old oak in the woods above Solva. Memories flooded through me bringing with them the bitter thought of what might have been between us — a home, children, life. Then her hands were on the table, moving blindly among the tea things, and I knew she had not married.

‘Can’t we go back—’ I began. But the look in her eyes flopped me. She hadn’t married, but there was no going back. The eyes that met mine were full of sadness. ‘Please go now, Dick,’ she said. ‘Alec will be back soon and—’

But suddenly I didn’t care about Alec. ‘I’ll wait,’ I said. ‘I’ve a message for him — from Maxwell in Czechoslovakia.’

Her eyes tensed and I knew then that she had some idea what her brother was doing. ‘Are you in this, too?’ she asked. ‘I thought—’ Her voice stopped there.

‘I got drawn into this by chance,’ I said quickly.

Her eyes were searching my face now as though she expected to see some change there. Suddenly she said, ‘Tell me about your leg. Was it very bad? Did you have a good surgeon?’

I laughed. Then I told her what had happened. I kept nothing back. I wallowed in self-destruction, explaining how it felt to have the bone sawn through without any anaesthetic, knowing that it would happen again and again. I saw that I was hurting her. But she didn’t stop me and I went on. ‘You see, I don’t remember anything. All I knew is I went under again, screaming and half delirious and when I came round I was told there would be no more operations, that they had got all—’

I stopped suddenly for I was conscious of a figure standing over us. I looked up. It was Alec Reece. I saw the muscles in his throat tighten and the blood come up into his face as anger gripped him. ‘I told you once, Farrell, that I’d break your neck if you ever tried to speak to my sister again.’ I had risen to my feet. ‘I suppose you thought I was safely out at the airfield.’ His influence was obvious and I felt my anger rising to match his.

‘Sit down, both of you.’ Alice’s voice was calm. I saw her hand catch her brother by the arm. ‘Dick has a message for you from Max.’

There was a baffled look in his eyes as he said, ‘Where did you see Maxwell?’

‘In Pilsen yesterday,’ I said. I turned to Alice. ‘Excuse us a minute.’ He followed me over to the window. ‘Has Tucek arrived?’ I asked.

He stared at me. ‘What about Tucek?’ he asked. He didn’t trust me. I could see that.

‘Jan Tucek was arrested on Thursday,’ I told him. ‘Maxwell got him away to Bory airfield that night. Tucek and a senior Czech air force officer flew out in an Anson trainer. They should have arrived at Milan early yesterday morning.’

‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ he said.

‘I’m not interested whether you believe me or not,’ I exclaimed angrily. ‘Maxwell asked me to see you when I got to Milan and tell you to notify him whether or not they’d arrived. He’s afraid they may have crashed since they were told to contact you immediately on arrival and he’s not heard from you.’

He fired a lot of questions at me then. At length he said, ‘Why the devil didn’t you give me that message at the airfield?’

‘Your own attitude made it impossible,’ I answered.

‘What were you doing in Pilsen?’

I told him.

‘Have you any proof that you represent this machine tool company?’

He was still suspicious.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But you’ll bloody well have to take my word for it.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll start checking up. But I warn you, if I find you’re playing some game of your own—’ He turned on his heel, and then stopped. ‘And keep clear of Alice whilst you’re here.’ He went back to his sister then. He bent over her for a moment, talking to her, then with a quick glance at me, he hurried out of the lounge.

I went over to the table. Again I was conscious of her gaze on my leg. She began to put the tea things together as though she were going to carry them out herself. As she didn’t speak I said, ‘How long will you be in Milan?’

‘Not long,’ she said. ‘I am going to Rapallo and then to stay with some friends of Alec’s at Cannes.’

‘I hope you have a nice time,’ I murmured.

‘The sun will be nice, and I think we shall enjoy oursleves.’ Her voice was barely audible. Then she suddenly said: ‘Please go now, Dick.’

I nodded. ‘Yes. I’ll go now. Goodbye then.’

‘Goodbye.’

She didn’t look up. I went back to my table and collected my things. As I passed her on the way out she didn’t look at me. She was staring out of the window. I hesitated in the doorway. But she made no sign and I went up to my room.

They were gone next morning. I don’t know what hotel they went to. All I know is that I didn’t see them at breakfast and when I inquired at the reception desk I was told they had left.

It was useless trying to do any business that day. It was Sunday. So I went for a walk. Spring had come to Milan. The sun shone out of a cloudless sky and the wide tram-lined streets blazed with warmth. There were tables out on the pavements and some cafes even had their awnings down. I walked up the Via Vittor Pisani and into the Giardini Pubblici. I was thinking of nothing but the fact that the girls were in summer frocks and that the olive-skinned, laughing crowds looked gay and happy. The mystery of Tucek’s disappearance and my encounter with the Czech security police seemed very far away, part of another world. In the gardens the trees were showing young green. Everything was bursting with life. I sat down on one of the seats and let the warmth of the sun seap through me. It was wonderful just to sit there and relax. Tomorrow there would be work to do. But to-day, all I had to do was sit in the sunshine.

I always remember that hour I spent sitting in the Giardini Pubblici. It stands out in my mind like an oasis in a desert. It was my one breathing space — a moment that seems almost beautiful because it had no part in what had gone before or what came after. I remember there was a little girl and a big yellow rubber ball. She followed it relentlessly, teeth flashing, black hair gleaming and her dark eyes bubbling with laughter. And her mother sat suckling a baby discreetly under a shawl and telling me how she hoped to go to Genoa for a holiday this year. And all the time Milan streamed by, their gay clothes and constant, liquid chatter seeming so lighthearted after the sombre atmosphere of Czechoslovakia. It was like listening to Rossini after a course of Wagner.

Feeling warm and happy I went out into the Viale Vittorio Veneto and sat for a while at one of the cafe” tables drinking cognac. I sat there till twelve-thirty, reviving my Italian by listening to scraps of the conversation that flowed around me. Then I went back to the hotel. As I crossed the entrance hall towards the lift the clerk at the reception desk called me over, ‘Signer Farrell.’

‘Yes?’ I said.

‘I have a message for you.’ He pulled a slip of paper out of the pigeonhole marked F. ‘Signor Sismondi telephone half an hour ago to say will you ring him please.’ He handed me the slip of paper on which was scribbled a telephone number and the name Sismondi.

‘Who is he — do you know?’ I asked.

‘Signor Sismondi? I think perhaps it is Signor Riccardo Sismondi. He have a big fabbrica out on the Via Padova, signore.’

‘What’s the name of his company?’ I asked.

‘I do not know if it is the same man, signore. But the one I speak of is direttore of the Ferrometali di Milano.’

I went up to my room and got my notebook with the list of Italian firms with which B. & H. Evans had done business before the war. Among them I found the Ferrometalli di Milano. I picked up the telephone and asked for Sismondi’s number. A woman’s voice answered. ‘Casa Sismondi. Chi Parla?’

‘This is Mr. Farrell,’ I answered. ‘Can I speak to Signer Sismondi?’

‘ Un momenta.’ Very faintly I heard the woman’s voice call ‘Riccardo.’ Then a man’s voice came on the wire, rather harsh and grating. ‘Signer Farrell? Bene. You know who I am per’aps?’

‘Ferrometalli di Milano?’ I asked.

‘Si si signore, I do business with your company before the war. I hear you arrive in Milano yesterday — from Pilsen?’

‘That’s correct,’ I murmured.

‘Do you see Signer Tucek of the Tuckovy ocelarny while you are in Pilsen?’

It was the suddenness of the question that rattled me. I hadn’t expected it. I naturally thought he’d rung me on business. Instead he was asking me about Tucek. The happy, laughing Milan I’d walked through that morning faded in my mind. I felt as though a long arm had been stretched out across the borders of Czechoslovakia, to fetch me back into the clutches of the Czech security police.

‘Ullo, ‘ullo, signore. Are you there plees?’ The voice sounded impatient — harsher and more grating.

‘Yes?‘I said.

‘I ask you do you see Signor Tucek when you are in Pilsen?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are a friend of his per’aps — from the war?’

‘Yes,‘I said.‘Why?’

‘And he know you are coming to Milano?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Then per’aps all is not lost.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Do you mind telling me what this is all about?’

‘Very well. I tell you. I am a business friend of Signer Tucek. Things are very bad for him in Czechoslovakia. He intend to leave the country and we are going into business together with a new factory’ ere in Milano. I am expecting him ‘ere for three days now. But he do not arrive. I am very worried, Signer Farrell.’

‘What’s this got to do with me?’ I asked him.

‘I tell you. We are to start a new business together. He is bringing with him specifications of some new types of machines we are to produce. On Friday I receive a letter from him to say that he will not bring them himself. It is too dangerous. He give them to an Englishman who fly to Milano the next day. I have checked with the airport, Signer Farrell. You are the only Englishman who arrives from Czechoslovakia since I receive his letter.’

‘And you think I’ve a package for you from Tucek?’ I asked.

‘No, no. I think per’aps you have a package as you say to deliver to Tucek here. But Tucek is not ‘ere. He do not arrive. It is terrible. I do not know what is happened. But business is business, Signor Farrell, and I have special workers ready waiting to begin the building of the tools to make these new machines. If I could plees have the specifications—’

‘But I haven’t got any package for you,’ I told him.

‘No?’ The voice had risen a shade. It was hard and metallic. ‘But Signor Farrell, in his letter he say—’

‘ I don’t care what he said to you in his letter,’ I interrupted him.’ I can only repeat, I have not got a package for you. I saw him once in Pilsen that’s all. It was in his office and an official interpreter was with us all the time.’

He started to say something and then his voice vanished suddenly as though he had cupped his hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. There was a pause and then he said, ‘Are you sure you only see him once, signore?’

‘Quite certain,’ I answered.

‘He does not come to see you at your hotel?’

Was it my imagination or was there a sudden emphasis on his words? ‘No,’ I answered.

‘But he tell me—’

‘Once and for all,’ I said angrily, ‘will you please understand that I have no package either for you or Tucek.’

There was another pause and I thought perhaps he’d rung off. I was sweating and I wiped my face with my handkerchief. ‘Per’aps, Signor Farrell, we do not understand each other, no?’ The voice was softer, almost silky. ‘You see, if I have the specifications and can proceed with the organisation of the new factory, then I need several of the sort of machine tools fabricated by your company. Per’aps I require them in a hurry and pay a bonus to you for arranging the quick delivery, eh? Now you have another look through your baggage, signore. It is possible you cannot remember what is in it until I remind you, eh?’

It was a straight bribe and I wanted to tell him what I thought of him. But after all he was a potential customer, so all I said was, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Sismondi. I just haven’t got what you want. I will call on you later at your office if I may and talk about equipment for the Ferrometalli di Milano.’

‘But, Signor Farrell—’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly. ‘I cannot help you. Goodbye.’ And I put the receiver back on its rest.

For a while I stood there, staring out of the window at the colossal bulk of the Stazione Centrale. The grey stone stood out almost white against the dark underbelly of the cumulus that was piling up across the sky. Sismondi knew that Tucek had visited me at the Hotel Continental. That was the thing that stood in the forefront of my mind. I told myself I was imagining it. Sismondi couldn’t possibly know. But the thought stayed there and I felt as though the fingers of that imaginary arm stretched out across the Czech frontier were closing round me. The sunshine streaming in through the open window faded. The Piazzale Duca d’Aosta looked suddenly grey and deserted. I shivered and closed the window.

I started towards the door and then stopped. Suppose Tucek had put a package amongst my things that night. I hadn’t searched through my suitcases. It could have lain there without my noticing it. My hands were trembling as I got out my keys and unlocked the two cases. But though I searched even the pockets of my suits and felt the linings there was nothing there. I searched the clothes I was wearing and my overcoat and went through the papers in my briefcase. I found nothing and with a feeling of relief went down to the bar.

It was lunch-time and the place was half empty. I sat down at the bar and got a drink. I felt less alone with a glass in my hand and the cognac was comforting. There was a paper on the bar counter and I concentrated on that, trying to forget Sismondi and that damned telephone conversation. But even the paper contained something to remind me of Tucek. On an inside page I found a paragraph headed: CZECH TABLE TENNIS STAR TO STAY IN ITALY. The story began — When the Czech table tennis team, which has been touring Italy, left Milano yesterday, Sgna Hilda Tucek was still in her hotel. She refused to return to Czechoslovakia. She intends to remain in Italy for the present. Hilda Tucek is the daughter of…

I stared at the paragraph, remembering how Jan Tucek had said — Fortunately my daughter play table tennis well. So that was what he had meant. Father and daughter had planned to be together and now. … I pushed the paper away. Poor kid! She must be wondering what had happened.

A hand touched my arm and I spun round with a start.

It was Alec Reece. ‘Can I have a word with you?’ he said.

‘What about?‘I asked.

I didn’t want to talk to him. I’d had enough for one day. I suddenly felt very tired.

‘Come over here.’ He took me to a secluded corner of the bar. We sat down. ‘What are you having?’

‘Cognac,’ I answered.

‘Due cognac,’ he told the waiter. Then he leaned forward. ‘I’ve been checking up on Tucek,’ he said.

His face looked pale and there were lines of strain round his mouth. ‘The Anson arrived at the airport here shortly after four on Friday morning.’

‘Then he’s in Milan?’ I felt relieved. It was nothing to do with me. But I was glad he was safe.

‘No,’ Reece said. ‘He’s not in Milan. And the devil of it is I don’t know where he is — or what’s happened to him. The plane was met by two Italians. I gather that neither Tucek nor Lemlin ever got out of it. The aircraft was refuelled and took off again immediately. I’ve checked up on every airport in Italy, also in Switzerland, France and Austria. I’ve tried Greece and Jugoslavia as well. The plane and its occupants have completely disappeared.’

He was looking at me hard as though I were responsible.

‘Why come to me?’ I asked.

‘I thought you might know something,’ he said.

‘Look,’ I answered wearily. ‘I know nothing about this business.’

‘You saw Maxwell in Pilsen.’

‘Yes. And he gave me a message to deliver to you.’

‘Was that before or after your interview with the police?’

‘After.’ Then I saw what he was driving at and I could have hit him. He thought I might have got out of the clutches of the Czech security police by giving information to them. I got to my feet. ‘I see no point in continuing this discussion,’ I said. ‘I’m glad to know Jan Tucek didn’t crash. As to where he is now, I can’t help you.’

‘For God’s sake sit down,’ he said. ‘I’m not suggesting you had anything to do with it. But I must find him. It’s vitally important. Sit down — please.’ I hesitated. He pushed his fingers through his fair hair. He looked damnably tired.

‘All right,’ I said, resuming my seat. ‘Now, what do you want to know?’

‘Just tell me everything that happened to you in Pilsen — everything, however unimportant. It may help.’

So I told him the whole story. When I had finished he said, ‘Why was Tucek so anxious for you to see him when you got to Milan?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

He frowned. ‘And he came to your hotel that night?’ He looked across at me. ‘Has anybody tried to contact you since you’ve been in Milan?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I told him then about the telephone conversation I’d just had. Somehow the sense of menace I’d attached to it seemed to recede as I told it to Reece.

When I’d finished he didn’t say anything for a moment, but sat lost in thought, toying with the drink the waiter had brought him. At length he murmured the name Sismondi, rolling it over his tongue as though by repeating it aloud he could make contact with something hidden away in his memory. But then he shook his head. ‘The name means nothing to me.’ He swilled the pale liquor of his cognac round and round in the glass as though he couldn’t make up his mind what line to take. ‘I wish to God Maxwell was here,’ he said. Then he suddenly knocked back the drink. ‘I want you to do something,’ he said quietly, leaning across the table towards me. ‘You probably won’t like it, but—’ He shrugged his shoulders.

‘What is it?‘I asked.

‘I want you to go and see Sismondi.’

‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I don’t want anything to do with it. It’s none of my business.and—’

‘I know it’s none of your business. But Tucek was a friend of yours, wasn’t he? You were in the Battle of Britain together.’

I thought again of that shattered windshield with the black oil smoke pouring through it, the flames fanning out from the engine cowling and a voice in the headphones saying: Okay, I get him for you, Dick. Jan had probably saved my life that day. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Very well then. You can’t just abandon the poor devil because you’re afraid of getting involved in something unpleasant. All I want you to do is go and see Sismondi.

‘Find out what he knows. Evidentally he thinks you’ve got something he wants. Play on that.’

I remembered the silky tone in which Sismondi had offered me that bribe. Hell! It wasn’t my pigeon. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to get mixed up—’

‘Damn it, Farrell, don’t you realise Tucek’s life may be in danger. Listen! This is the second time in two months that somebody important has come through from the other side and then disappeared here in Italy. There have been others, too. Our people have been offered information that could only have been brought through by people who have completely disappeared. They’ve had to pay through the nose for it. Now do you understand? The man’s life is at stake.’

‘That’s your affair,’ I answered. ‘You and Maxwell were organising the thing. It’s up to you to see that he’s safe.’

‘All right,’ he answered in a tone of sudden anger. ‘I’ve slipped up. I admit it. Now I’ve come to you. I’m asking you to help me.’ He was forcing his voice under control, suppressing his anger, trying desperately to assume humility.

‘I’ve given you all the help I can,’ I answered. ‘I’ve told you everything that’s happened. I’ve given you a complete account of my telephone conversation with Sismondi. It’s up to you now. Go and see him. Batter the truth out of him.’

But he shook his head. ‘I’ve thought of that. It wouldn’t work. Sismondi won’t be the man we’re looking for. He probably knows very little. But if you were to suggest that you had the papers they’re after—’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m through with that sort of game. You should know that better than any one,’ I added in a tone of sudden bitterness.

‘Then you won’t help?’

‘No.’ I felt obstinate. Maxwell could probably have persuaded me. But not Reece. There was a personal barrier. I finished my drink and got to my feet.

Reece got up also and came round the table. He didn’t make any further attempt to play on my friendship with Tucek. He didn’t even try to tell me it was my duty as an Englishman to help him. He just said, ‘All right. I was afraid you might feel like that so I brought someone with me. I think you’ll find it more difficult to say No to her.’

For an awful moment I thought he’d got Alice with him. But he must have realised what was in my mind, for he said quickly, ‘It’s someone you’ve never met before. Let’s go through into the lounge.’ He had hold of my arm then and I had no option but to go with him.

She was sitting in the far corner — a small, red-haired girl with her head bent over a newspaper. As we approached she looked up, and I knew her at once. She was Jan Tucek’s daughter. Reece introduced us. ‘I have heard of you from my father,’ she said. The grip of her hand was firm. The set of the chin was as determined as her father’s, and her eyes, set rather wide on either side of the small upturned nose, looked straight at me. ‘He often used to speak of his friends in the R.A.F.’ She glanced down at my leg and then pulled up a chair for me. ‘Mr. Reece said you might be able to help us.’ Her voice was rather husky and she spoke English with a queer mixture of accents.

I sat down, comparing the girl in front of me with the memory of the photograph in Tucek’s office. Some trick of the light caused her hair to gleam just the way it had gleamed in the photograph. It was beautiful hair — a reddish gold, the real Venetian Titian. And she had freckles just as Tucek had said. They mottled the pale golden skin of her face in a way that gave it a gamin quality. But the face wasn’t quite the same as the face in the photograph — it was older, more set, as though she had had to come to grips with life since the photograph had been taken. I remembered how I’d last seen that photograph, smiling up at me from the floor of Tucek’s ransacked office. She wasn’t smiling now and there was no laughter in her eyes. Her face looked small and pinched and there were dark rings under her eyes. And yet, as I met the level gaze of her eyes, I was conscious again of that sense of something personal in her face. It suddenly became important to me that she should smile again as she’d been smiling in the photograph. ‘I’ll do anything I can,’ I murmured.

‘Thank you.’ She turned to Reece. ‘Is there any news please?’

He shook his head. ‘Not much I’m afraid. Farrell saw your father only once.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Does the name Sismondi mean anything to you, Hilda?’

She shook her head.

‘Your father never hinted that he might be forming a business partnership with Sismondi?’

‘No.’

‘He wasn’t planning to form a company here in Milan?’

Again she shook her head. ‘No. We were to have a holiday here, and then we were going to England.’ Her voice sounded puzzled. ‘Why all these questions?’

Reece gave her the gist of what I’d told him. When he had finished she turned to me. ‘You will go and see this Sismondi?’ I think she knew at once that I didn’t want to. ‘Please,’ she added. ‘He may know where my father is.’ She reached out and caught hold of my hand. Her fingers were cold and their grip was hard and urgent. ‘This is our last hope, I think.’ Her eyes were fixed on my face. ‘Can you imagine what it has been like for him in Czechoslovakia all these months since they take over? It has been terrible — always living on the edge of catastrophe. And it had happened before, you see — with the Germans. My mother was murdered. And his father. To have to leave Czechoslovakia twice — that is very hard, I think. We plan to build a new life in England. And now—’ She shrugged her shoulders. I thought, if she breaks down now it will be horrible. But she didn’t. Somehow she kept control of herself and in a small, tight voice, she said, ‘So you must help me, please.’

‘I’ll do anything I can,’ I said. I was completely under the spell of her urgency.

‘And you will go to speak with this Sismondi?’

‘Yes.’

S7 ‘Thank you. As soon as I hear you are the Dick Farrell who is a friend of my father’s I know you will help.’ She leaned suddenly closer. ‘Where do you think he is? What do you think has happened?’

I didn’t say anything and when she saw I had nothing to tell her she bit her lip. Then she got quickly to her feet. ‘I would like a drink please, Alec.’

They went through into the bar. She didn’t say anything to me as she left. She kept her face turned away. I think she didn’t want me to see how near she was to breaking point.