The Keys Of Hell

ROME AND MATANO, 1965
TWO

WHEN CHAVASSE ENTERED THE GRAND Ballroom of the British Embassy, he was surprised to find the Chinese delegation clustered around the fireplace, looking completely out of place in their blue uniforms, and surrounded by the cream of Roman society.

Chou En-lai surveyed the scene from a large gilt chair, the ambassador and his wife beside him, and his smooth impassive face gave nothing away. Occasionally, guests of sufficient eminence were brought forward by the First Secretary to be introduced.

The orchestra was playing a waltz. Chavasse lit a cigarette and leaned against a pillar. It was a splendid scene, the crystal chandeliers taking light to every corner of the cream-and-gold ballroom, reflected again and again in the mirrored walls.

Beautiful women, handsome men, dress uniforms, the scarlet and purple of church dignitaries – it was all strangely archaic, as if somehow the mirrors were reflecting a dim memory of long ago, dancers turning endlessly to faint music.

He looked across to the Chinese and, for a brief instant, the white face of Chou En-lai seemed to jump out of the crowd, the eyes fastening on his. He nodded slightly as if they knew each other and the eyes seemed to say: All these are doomed – this is my hour and you and I know it.

Chavasse shivered and, for no accountable reason, a wave of grayness ran through him. It was as if some sixth sense, that mystical element common to all ancient races, inherited from his Breton father, were trying to warn him of danger.

The moment passed, the dancers swirled on. He was tired, that was the trouble. Four days on the run with no more than a couple of hours of uneasy sleep snatched when it was safe. He lit another cigarette and examined himself in the mirror on the wall.

The dark evening clothes were tailored to perfection, outlining good shoulders and a muscular frame, but the skin was drawn too tightly over the high cheekbones that were a heritage from his French father, and there were dark circles under the eyes.

What you need is a drink, he told himself, and, behind him in the mirror, a young girl came in from the terrace through the French windows.

Chavasse turned slowly. Her eyes were set too far apart, the mouth too generous. Her dark hair hung loosely to her shoulders and the white silk dress was simplicity itself. She wore no accessories. None were needed. Like all great beauties, she wasn’t beautiful, but it didn’t matter a damn. She made every other woman in the room seem insignificant.

She moved toward the bar, heads turning as she passed, and was immediately accosted by an Italian air force colonel who was obviously slightly the worse for drink. Chavasse gave the man enough time to make a thorough nuisance of himself, then moved through the crowd to her side.

“Ah, there you are, darling,” he said in Italian. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Her reflexes were excellent. She turned smoothly, assessing him against the general situation in a split second and making her decision.

She reached up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “You said you’d only be ten minutes. It’s really too bad of you.”

The air force colonel had already faded discreetly into the crowd and Chavasse grinned. “How about a glass of Bollinger? I really think we should celebrate.”

“I think that would be rather nice, Mr. Chavasse,” she said in excellent English. “On the terrace, perhaps. It’s cooler there.”

Chavasse helped himself to two glasses of champagne from the table and followed her through the crowd, a slight frown on his face. It was cool on the terrace, the traffic sounds muted and far away and the scent of jasmine heavy on the night air.

She sat on the balustrade and took a deep breath. “Isn’t it a wonderful night?” She turned and looked at him and laughter bubbled out of her. “Francesca – Francesca Minetti.”

She held out her hand and Chavasse gave her one of the glasses of champagne and grinned. “You seem to know who I am already.”

She leaned back and looked up at the stars. When she spoke it was as if she were reciting a lesson hard-learned.

“Paul Chavasse, born Paris, 1928, father French, mother English. Educated at Sorbonne, Cambridge and Harvard Universities. Ph.D. Modern Languages, multilingual. University lecturer until 1954. Since then…”

Her voice trailed away and she looked at him thoughtfully. Chavasse lit a cigarette, no longer tired. “Since then…?”

“Well, you’re on the books as a Third Secretary, but you certainly don’t look like one.”

“What would you say I did look like?” he said calmly.

“Oh, I don’t know. Someone who got about a lot.” She swallowed some more champagne and said casually, “How was Albania? I was surprised you made it out in one piece. When the Tirana connection went dead we wrote you off.”

She started to laugh again, her head back, and behind Chavasse a voice said, “Is she giving you a hard time, Paul?”

Murchison, the First Secretary, limped across the terrace. He was a handsome, urbane man, face bronzed and healthy, the bar of medals a splash of bright color on the left breast of his jacket.

“Let’s say she knows rather too much about me for my personal peace of mind.”

“Should do,” Murchison said. “Francesca works for the Bureau. She was your radio contact last week. One of our best operatives.”

Chavasse turned. “You were the one who relayed the message from Scutari warning me to get out fast?”

She bowed. “Happy to be of service.”

Before Chavasse could continue, Murchison took him firmly by the arm. “Now don’t start getting emotional, Paul. Your boss has just got in and he wants to see you. You and Francesca can talk over old times later.”

Chavasse squeezed her hand. “That’s a promise. Don’t go away.”

“I’ll wait right here,” she assured him, and he turned and followed Murchison inside.

They moved through the crowded ballroom into the entrance hall, passed the two uniformed footmen at the bottom of the grand staircase and mounted to the first floor.

The long, thickly carpeted corridor was quiet and the music, echoing from the ballroom, might have been from another world. They went up half a dozen steps, turned into a shorter side passage and paused outside a white-painted door.

“In here, old man,” Murchison said. “Try not to be too long. We’ve a cabaret starting in half an hour. Really quite something, I promise you.”

He moved back along the passage, his footsteps silent on the thick carpet, and Chavasse knocked on the door, opened it and went in.

The room was a small, plainly furnished office, its walls painted a neutral shade of green. The young woman who sat at the desk writing busily was attractive in spite of her dark, heavy-rimmed library spectacles.

She glanced up sharply and Chavasse smiled. “Surprise, surprise.”

Jean Frazer removed her spectacles. “You look like hell. How was Albania?”

“Tiresome,” Chavasse said. “Cold, wet, and with the benefits of universal brotherhood rather thinly spread on the ground.” He sat on the edge of the desk and helped himself to a cigarette from a teak box. “What brings you and the old man out here? The Albanian affair wasn’t all that important.”

“We had a NATO intelligence meeting in Bonn. When we got word that you were safely out, the Chief decided to come to Rome to take your report on the spot.”

“Not good enough,” Chavasse said. “The old bastard wouldn’t have another job lined up for me, would he? Because if he has, he can damn well think again.”

“Why not ask him?” she said. “He’s waiting for you now.”

She nodded toward a green baize door. Chavasse looked at it for a moment, sighed heavily and crushed his cigarette into the ashtray.

THE INNER ROOM WAS HALF IN SHADOW the only light a shaded lamp on the desk. The man who stood at the window gazing out at the lights of Rome was of medium height, the face somehow ageless, a strange, brooding expression in the dark eyes.

“Here we are again,” Chavasse said softly.

The Chief turned, taking in everything about Chavasse in a single moment. He nodded. “Glad to see you back in one piece, Paul. I hear things were pretty rough over there.”

“You could say that.”

The older man moved to his chair and sat down. “Tell me about it.”

“ Albania?” Chavasse shrugged. “We’re not going to do much there. No one can pretend the people have gained anything since the Communists took over at the end of the war, but there’s no question of a counterrevolution even getting started. The sigurmi, the secret police, are everywhere. I’d say they must be the most extensive in Europe.”

“You went in using that Italian Communist Party Friendship cover, didn’t you?”

“It didn’t do me much good. The Italians in the party accepted me all right, but the trouble started when we reached Tirana. The sigurmi assigned an agent to each one of us and they were real pros. Shaking them was difficult enough and the moment I did, they smelt a rat and put out a general call for me.”

“What about the Freedom Party? How extensive are they?”

“You can start using the past tense as of last week. When I arrived, they were down to two cells. One in Tirana, the capital, the other in Scutari. Both were still in contact with our Bureau operation here in Rome.”

“Did you manage to contact the leader, this man Luci?”

“Only just. The night we were to meet to really discuss things, he was mopped up by the sigurmi. Apparently, they were all over his place, waiting for me to show my hand.”

“And how did you manage to scrape out of that one?”

“The Scutari cell got a radio signal from Luci as the police were breaking in. They relayed it to Bureau headquarters here in Rome. Luckily for me they had a quick thinker on duty – a girl called Francesca Minetti.”

“One of our best people at this end,” the Chief said. “I’ll tell you about her one of these days.”

“My back way out of Albania was a motor launch called Buona Esperanza run by a man called Guilio Orsini. He’s quite a boy. Was one of the original torpedo merchants with the Italian navy during the war. His best touch was when he sank a couple of our destroyers in Alexandria harbor back in ’41. Got out again in one piece, too. He’s a smuggler now. Runs across to Albania a lot. His grandmother came from there.”

“As I recall the original plan, he was to wait three nights running in a cove near Durres. That’s about thirty miles by road from Tirana, isn’t it?”

Chavasse nodded. “When Francesca Minetti got the message from Scutari, she took a chance and put it through to Orsini on his boat. The madman left his crewman in charge, landed, stole a car in Durres and drove straight to Tirana. He caught me at my hotel as I was leaving for the meeting with Luci.”

“Getting back to the coast must have been quite a trick.”

“We did run into a little trouble. Had to do the last ten miles on foot through coastal salt marshes. Not good with the hounds on your heels, but Orsini knew what he was doing. Once we were on board the Buona Esperanza it was easy. The Albanians don’t have much of a navy. Half a dozen minesweepers and a couple of sub-chasers. The Buona Esperanza has ten knots on any one of them.”

“It would seem that Orsini is due for a bonus on this one.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

The Chief nodded, opened the official file that contained Chavasse’s report and leafed through it. “So we’re wasting our time in Albania?”

Chavasse nodded. “I’m afraid so. You know the way things have been since the twentieth Party Congress in 1956, and now the Chinese are in there with both feet.”

“Anything to worry about?”

Chavasse shook his head. “The most backward European country I’ve visited and the Chinese are too far from home to be able to do much about it.”

“What about this naval base the Russians were using at Valona before they pulled out? The word was that they’d built it into a sort of Red Gibraltar on the Adriatic.”

“Alb-Tourist took us on an official trip on our second day. Port is hardly the word for the place. Good natural shelter, but only used by fishing boats. Certainly no sign of submarine pens.”

“And Enver Hoxha – you think he’s still firmly in control?”

“And then some. We saw him at a military parade on the third day. He cuts an impressive figure, especially in uniform. He’s certainly the people’s hero at the moment. Heaven knows how long for.”

The Chief closed the file with a quick gesture that somehow dismissed the whole affair, placing it firmly in the past.

“Good work, Paul. At least we know where we stand. Another piece in the jigsaw. You’re due for some leave now, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” Chavasse said and waited.

The Chief got to his feet, walked to the window and looked out over the glittering city, down toward the Tiber. “What would you like to do?”

“Spend a week or two at Matano,” Chavasse said without hesitation. “That’s a small fishing port near Bari. There’s a good beach and Guilio Orsini owns a place on the front called the Tabu. He’s promised me some diving. I’m looking forward to it.”

“I’m sure you are,” the Chief said. “Sounds marvelous.”

“Do I get it?”

The old man looked out over the city, an abstracted frown on his face. “Oh, yes, Paul, you can have your leave – after you’ve done a little chore for me.”

Chavasse groaned and the older man turned and came back to the desk. “Don’t worry, it won’t take long, but you’ll have to leave tonight.”

“Is that necessary?”

The old man nodded. “I’ve got transport laid on and you’ll need help. Preferably this chap Orsini from the sound of him. We’ll offer a good price.”

Chavasse sighed, thinking of Francesca Minetti waiting on the terrace, of the good food and wine in the buffet room below. He sighed again and stubbed out his cigarette carefully.

“What do I do?”

The Chief pushed a file across. “Enrico Noci, a double agent who’s been working for us and the Albanians. I didn’t mind at first, but now the Chinese have got to him.”

“Which isn’t healthy.”

“They never are. Too damned earnest for my liking. There’s a boat waiting at Bari to take Noci over to Albania tomorrow night. All the details are in there.”

Chavasse studied the picture, the heavy, fleshy face, the weak mouth. A man who was probably a failure at everything he had put his hand to, except perhaps women. He had the sort of tanned beach-boy good looks that some of them went for.

“Do I bring him in?”

“What on earth for?” The Chief shook his head. “Get rid of him; a swimming accident, anything you like. Nothing messy.”

“Of course,” Chavasse said calmly.

He glanced through the file again, memorizing the facts it contained, then pushed it across and stood up. “I’ll see you in London?”

The Chief nodded. “In three weeks, Paul. Enjoy your holiday.”

“Don’t I always?”

The Chief pulled a file across, opened it and started to study the contents, and Chavasse crossed to the door and left quietly.