The Keys Of Hell

THREE

ENRICO NOCI LAY STARING THROUGH the darkness at the ceiling, smoking a cigarette. Beside him the woman slept, her thigh warm against his. Once, she stirred, turning into him in her sleep, but didn’t awaken.

He reached for another cigarette and there was a slight distinctive rattle as something was pushed through the letter box in the outer hall. He slid from beneath the blankets, careful not to waken the woman, and padded across the tiled floor in his bare feet.

A large buff envelope lay on the mat at the front door. He took it into the kitchen, lit the gas under the coffeepot and opened the envelope quickly. Inside there was a smaller sealed envelope, the one he was to take with him, and a single typed sheet containing his movement orders. He memorized them, then burned it quickly at the stove.

He glanced at his watch. Just before midnight. Time for a hot bath and something to eat. He stretched lazily, a conscious pleasure seeping through him. The woman had really been quite something. Certainly a diverting way of spending his last evening.

HE WAS WALLOWING UP TO HIS CHIN IN HOT water, the small bathroom half full of steam when the door opened and she came in, yawning as she tied the belt of his silk dressing gown.

“Come back to bed, caro,” she said plaintively.

For the life of him he couldn’t remember her name and he grinned. “Another time, angel. I must get moving. Scrambled eggs and coffee like a good girl. I’ve got to be out of here in twenty minutes.”

When he left the bathroom ten minutes later, he was freshly shaved, his dark hair slicked back, and he wore an expensive hand-knitted sweater and slacks. She had laid a small table in the window and placed a plate of scrambled eggs in front of him as he sat down.

As he ate, he pulled back the curtain with one hand and looked down across the lights of Bari to the waterfront. The town was quiet and a slight rain drifted through the yellow street lamps in a silver spray.

“Will you be coming back?” she said.

“Who knows, angel?” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

He finished his coffee, went into the bedroom, picked up a dark blue nylon raincoat and a small canvas grip and returned to the living room. She sat with her elbows on the table, a cup of coffee in her hands. He took out his wallet, extracted a couple of banknotes and dropped them on the table.

“It’s been fun, angel,” he said and moved to the door.

“You know the address.”

When he closed the outside door and turned along the street it was half past twelve exactly. The rain was falling quite heavily now and fog crouched at the ends of the streets, reducing visibility to thirty or forty yards.

He walked briskly along the wet pavement, turning confidently out of one street into another and, ten minutes later, halted beside a small black Fiat sedan. He opened the door, lifted the corner of the carpet and found the ignition key at once. A few moments later he was driving away.

On the outskirts of Bari, he stopped and consulted the map that he found in the glove compartment. Matano was about twelve miles away on the coast road running south to Brindisi. An easy enough run, although the fog was bound to hold him up a little.

He lit a cigarette and started off again, concentrating on his driving as the fog grew thicker. He was finally reduced to a cautious crawl, his head out of the side window. It was almost an hour later when he halted at a signpost that indicated Matano to the left.

As he drove along the narrow road he could smell the sea through the fog, and gradually it seemed to clear a little. He reached Matano fifteen minutes later and drove through silent streets toward the waterfront.

He parked the car in an alley near the Club Tabu as instructed and went the rest of the way on foot.

It was dark and lonely on the waterfront, and the only sound was the lapping of water against the pilings as he went down a flight of stone steps to the jetty.

It was quiet and deserted in the yellow light of a solitary lamp and he paused halfway along to examine the motor cruiser moored at the end. She was a thirty-footer with a steel hull, probably built by Akerboon, he decided. She was in excellent trim, her sea-green paintwork gleaming. Not at all what he had expected. He examined the name Buona Esperanza on her counter with a slight frown.

When he stepped over the rail, the stern quarter was festooned with nets, still damp from the day’s labor and stinking of fish, the deck slippery with their scales.

Somewhere in the distance the door of an all-night café opened and music drifted out, faint and far away, and for no accountable reason Noci shivered. It was at that moment that he realized he was being watched.

The man was young, slim and wiry with a sun-blackened face that badly needed a shave. He wore denims and an old oilskin coat, and a seaman’s cap shaded calm expressionless eyes. He stood at the corner of the deckhouse, a coiled rope in one hand, and said nothing. As Noci took a step toward him, the door of the wheelhouse opened and another man appeared.

He was at least six feet three, great shoulders straining the seams of his blue pilot coat, and wore an old Italian navy officer’s cap, the gold braid tarnished by exposure to salt air and water. He had perhaps the ugliest face Noci had ever looked upon, the nose smashed and flattened, the white line of an old scar running from the right eye to the point of the chin. A thin cigar of the type favored by Dutch seamen was firmly clenched between his teeth and he spoke without removing it.

“Guilio Orsini, master of the Buona Esperanza.”

Noci felt a sudden surge of relief flow through him as tension ebbed away. “Enrico Noci.”

He held out his hand. Orsini took it briefly and nodded to the young deckhand. “Let’s go, Carlo.” He jerked his thumb toward the companionway. “You’ll find a drink in the bar. Don’t come up until I tell you.”

As Noci moved toward the companionway, Carlo cast off and moved quickly to the stern. The engine burst into life, shattering the quiet, and the Buona Esperanza turned from the jetty and moved into the fog.

The salon was warm and pleasantly furnished. Noci looked around approvingly, placed his canvas grip on the table and helped himself to a large whisky from a cabinet in one corner. He drank it quickly and lay on one of the bunks smoking a cigarette, a warm, pleasurable glow seeping through him.

This was certainly an improvement on the old tub in which he had done the run to Albania before. Orsini was a new face, but then there was nothing surprising in that. The faces changed constantly. In this business it didn’t pay to take chances.

The boat lifted forward with a great surge of power, and a slight smile of satisfaction touched Noci’s mouth. At this rate they would be landing him on the coast near Durres before dawn. By noon he would be in Tirana. More dollars to his account in the Bank of Geneva, and this was his sixth trip in as many months. Not bad going, but you could take the pitcher to the well too often. After this a rest was indicated – a long rest.

He decided he would go to the Bahamas. White beaches, blue skies and a lovely tanned girl wading thigh deep from the sea to meet him. American for preference. They were so ingenuous, had so much to learn.

The engines coughed once and died away and the Buona Esperanza slowed violently as her prow sank into the waves. Noci sat up, head to one side as he listened. The only sound was the lapping of the water against her hull.

It was some sixth sense, a product of his years of treachery and double dealing, of living on his wits, that warned him that something was wrong. He swung his legs to the floor, reached for the canvas grip, unzipped it and took out a pistol. He released the safety catch and padded across to the foot of the companionway. Above him, the door opened and shut, creaking slightly as the boat pitched in the swell.

He went up quickly, one hand against the wall, paused, and raised his head cautiously. The deck seemed deserted, the drizzle falling in silver cobwebs through the navigation lights.

He stepped out and, on his right, a match flared and a man moved out of the shadows, bending his head to light a cigarette. The flame revealed a handsome devil’s face, eyes like black holes above high cheekbones. He flicked the match away and stood there, hands in the pockets of his slacks. He wore a heavy fisherman’s sweater and his dark hair glistened with moisture.

“Signor Noci?” he said calmly in fluent Italian.

“Who the hell are you?” Noci demanded.

“My name is Chavasse – Paul Chavasse.”

It was a name Noci was completely familiar with. An involuntary gasp rose in his throat and he raised the pistol. A hand like iron clamped on his wrist, wrenching the weapon from his grasp, and Guilio Orsini said, “I think not.”

Carlo moved out of the shadows to the left and stood waiting. Noci looked about him helplessly and Chavasse held out his hand.

“I’ll have the envelope now.”

Noci produced it reluctantly and handed it across, trying to stay calm as Chavasse examined the contents. They could be no more than half a mile from the shore, no distance to a man who had been swimming since childhood, and Noci was under no illusions as to what would happen if he stayed.

Chavasse turned over the first sheet of paper and Noci ducked under Orsini’s arm and ran for the stern rail. He was aware of a sudden cry, an unfamiliar voice, obviously Carlo’s, and then he slipped on some fish scales and stumbled headlong into the draped nets.

He tried to scramble to his feet, a foot tripped him and then the soft, clinging, stinking meshes seemed to wrap themselves around him. He was pulled forward onto his hands and knees and looked up through the mesh to see Chavasse peering down at him, the devil’s face calm and cold.

Orsini and Carlo had a rope in their hands and, in that terrible moment, Noci realized what they intended to do and the scream rose in this throat.

Orsini pulled hard on the rope and Noci lurched across the deck and cannoned into the low rail. A foot caught him hard against the small of the back and he went over into the cold water.

As he surfaced, the net impeding every movement he tried to make, he was aware of Orsini running the end of the line around the rail, of Carlo leaning out of the wheelhouse window waiting. A hand went up, the Buona Esperanza surged forward.

Noci went under with a cry, surfaced on a wave, choking for breath. He was aware only of Chavasse at the rail watching, face calm in the fog-shrouded light and then, as the boat increased speed, he went under for the last time.

As he struggled violently, water forcing the air from his lungs, he was aware of no pain, no pain at all. He seemed to be floating on soft white sand beneath a blue sky and a beautiful suntanned girl waded from the sea to join him, and she was smiling.