Partisans

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Ah, indeed.’ Giacomo looked at Sarina. ‘You didn’t smell any smoke during the night, did you?’

  ‘Smoke? Yes, we did.’ She shuddered, remembering. ‘We were sick enough already when we smelled it. That was really the end. Why?’

  ‘That was your friend Peter and his friends at work. They were welding up the door of Alessandro’s cabin.’

  ‘Welding up the door?’ A faint note of hysteria had crept into her voice. ‘With Alessandro and his men inside! Why on earth – ’ She was suddenly at a loss for words.

  ‘I guess he didn’t want them to get out.’

  The two girls looked at each other in silence. There was nothing more to say. Petersen cleared his throat in a brisk fashion.

  ‘Well, now that’s everything satisfactorily explained.’ The two girls turned their heads in slow unison and looked at him in total incredulity. ‘The past, as they say, is prologue. We’ll be leaving in about half an hour or whatever time it takes to obtain some transport. Time to brush your teeth and pack your gear.’ He looked at Giacomo. ‘You and your friend coming with us?’

  ‘Lorraine, you mean?’

  ‘Got any other friends aboard? Don’t stall.’

  ‘All depends where you’re going.’

  ‘Same place as you. Don’t be cagey.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Up the Neretva.’

  ‘We’ll come.’

  Petersen made to rise when Carlos entered, a piece of paper in his hand. Like Giacomo, he was shaven, brisk and apparently cheerful. He didn’t look like a man who hadn’t slept all night but then, in his business, he probably slept enough during the day.

  ‘Good morning. You’ve had breakfast?’

  ‘Our compliments to the chef. That paper for me?’

  ‘It is. Radio signal just come in. Code, so it doesn’t make any sense to me.’

  Petersen glanced at it. ‘Doesn’t make any sense to me either. Not until I get the code book.’ He folded the paper and put it in an inside pocket.

  ‘Might it not be urgent?’ Carlos said.

  ‘It’s from Rome. I’ve invariably found that whenever Rome thinks something is urgent it’s never urgent to me.’

  Lorraine said: ‘We’ve just heard that a man has been shot. Is he badly hurt?’

  ‘Cola?’ Carlos didn’t sound very concerned about Cola’s health. ‘He thinks he is. I don’t. Anyway, I’ve sent for an ambulance. Should have been here by now.’ He looked out of the small window. ‘No ambulance. But a couple of soldiers approaching the gangway. If, that is, you could call them soldiers. One’s about ninety, the other ten. Probably for you.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Carlos had exaggerated the age disparity between the two soldiers but not by much: the younger was indeed a beardless youth, the older well stricken in years. The latter saluted as smartly as his arthritic bones would permit.

  ‘Captain Tremino. You have a Yugoslav army officer among your passengers?’

  Carlos waved a hand. ‘Major Petersen.’

  ‘That’s the name.’ The ancient saluted again. ‘Commandant’s compliments, sir, and would you be so kind as to see him in his office. You and your two men.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘The Commandant does not confide in me, sir.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘A few hundred metres. Five minutes.’

  ‘Right away.’ Petersen stood and picked up his machine-pistol. George and Alex did the same. The older soldier coughed politely.

  ‘The commandant doesn’t like guns in his office.’

  ‘No guns? There is a war in progress, this is a military post, and the commandant doesn’t like guns.’ He looked at George and Alex, then slipped off his machine-pistol. ‘He’s probably in his dotage. Let’s humour him.’

  They left. Carlos watched through the window as they descended the gangway to the quayside. He sighed.

  ‘I can’t bear it. I can’t. As an Italian, I can’t bear it. It’s like sending a toothless old hound and a frisky puppy to round up three timber wolves. Sabre-toothed tigers, more like.’ He raised his voice. ‘Giovanni!’

  Sarina said hesitatingly: ‘Are they really like that? I mean, I heard a man in Rome yesterday call them that.’

  ‘Ah! My old friend Colonel Lunz, no doubt.’

  ‘You know the Colonel?’ There was surprise in her voice. ‘I thought – well, everybody seems to know everything around here. Except me.’

  ‘Of course I know him.’ He turned as the lean, dyspeptic looking engineer-chef appeared in the doorway. ‘Breakfast, Giovanni, if you would.’

  Giacomo said wonderingly: ‘You can really eat that stuff?’

  ‘Atrophied taste-buds, a zinc-lined stomach, a little imagination and you could be in Maxim’s. Sarina, one does not approach me at the quayside at Termoli, jerk a thumb towards the east and ask for a lift to Yugoslavia. Do you think you’d be aboard the Colombo if I didn’t know the Colonel? Do you have to be suspicious about everyone?’

  ‘I’m suspicious about our Major Petersen. I don’t trust him an inch.’

  ‘That’s a fine thing to say about a fellow-countryman.’ Carlos sat and buttered bread. ‘Honest and straightforward sort of fellow, one would have thought.’

  ‘One would have – look, we’ve got to go up into the mountains with that man!’

  ‘He seems to know his way around. In fact, I know he does. You should reach your destination all right.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure. Whose destination – his or ours?’

  Carlos looked at her in mild exasperation. ‘Do you have any option?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why don’t you stop wasting your breath?’

  ‘Carlos! How can you talk to her like that?’ Lorraine’s voice was sharp enough to bring a slightly thoughtful look to Giacomo’s face. ‘She’s worried. Of course she’s worried. I’m worried, too. We’re both going up into the mountains with that man. You’re not.’ She was either nervous or had a low temper flash-point. ‘It’s all very well for you sitting safe and sound here aboard the Colombo.’

  ‘Oh, come now,’ Giacomo said easily. ‘I don’t think that’s being too fair. I’m quite sure, Carlos, that she didn’t mean what she implied.’ He looked at Lorraine in mock-reproval. ‘I’m sure Carlos would willingly leave his safe and sound ship and accompany you into the mountains. But there are two inhibiting factors. Duty and a tin leg.’

  ‘I am sorry.’ She was genuinely contrite and put her hand on Carlos’ shoulder to show it: Carlos, who was addressing himself to the confection that Giovanni had just brought, looked up at her and smiled amiably. ‘Giacomo’s right’ she said. ‘Of course I didn’t mean it. It’s just that – well, Sarina and I feel so helpless.’

  ‘Giacomo is in the same position. He doesn’t look in the slightest bit helpless to me.’

  She shook his shoulder in exasperation. ‘Please. You don’t understand. We don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know anything. He seems to know everything.’

  ‘He? Peter?’

  ‘Who else would I be talking about?’ For so patrician-looking a lady she could be very snappish. ‘Perhaps I can shake you out of your complacency. Do you know that he knows where Giacomo and I are going? Do you know that he seems to know about my background? Do you know that he knows I’m not Italian? That he knows that you and I knew each other in the past, but not in Pescara?’

  If Carlos was shaken he concealed it masterfully. ‘Peter knows a great number of things that you wouldn’t expect him to. Or so Colonel Lunz tells me. For all I know Colonel Lunz told him about you and Giacomo, although that wouldn’t be like the Colonel. He may have expected you aboard. He didn’t seem annoyed by your presence.’

  ‘He was annoyed enough by Alessandro’s presence.’

  ‘He wouldn’t know about Alessandro. Alessandro is controlled by another agency.’

  She said quickly: ‘How do you know
that?’

  ‘He – Peter – told me.’

  She removed her hand and straightened. ‘So. You and Peter have your little secrets too.’ She turned to Sarina. ‘We can trust everybody, can’t we?’

  Giacomo said: ‘Carlos, you’re beginning to look like a hen-pecked husband.’

  ‘I’m beginning to feel like one, too. My dear girl, I only learnt this during the night. What did you expect me to do? Come hammering on your cabin door at four in the morning to announce this earthshaking news to you and Sarina?’ He looked up as the dyspeptic engineer-chef appeared again in the doorway.

  ‘Breakfast has been served, Carlos.’

  ‘Thank you, Giovanni.’ He looked at Lorraine. ‘And before you start getting suspicious of Giovanni he only means that he’s given food to our friends in the fore cabin.’

  ‘I thought the door was locked.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ Carlos laid down knife and fork. ‘Suspicious again. The door is locked. Breakfast was lowered in a bucket to their cabin porthole.’

  ‘When are you going to see them?’

  ‘When I’m ready. When I’ve had breakfast.’ Carlos picked up his knife and fork again. ‘If I get peace to eat it, that is.’

  George said: ‘Took a bit of a risk back there, didn’t you? Chanced your arm, as they say, pretending you knew all about their plans and backgrounds when you knew nothing.’

  ‘Credit’s all yours, George. Just based on a couple of remarks of yours about ethnic background. Couldn’t very well tell them that, though. Besides, Lorraine gave away more than I extracted. I don’t think she’d make a very good espionage agent.’

  They were threading their way through cranes, trucks, both army and civilian, and scattered dock buildings, a few yards behind the two Italian soldiers. The snow had stopped now, the Rili hills were sheltering them from the north-east wind but the temperature was still below freezing point. There were few enough people around, the early hour and the cold were not such as to encourage outdoor activity. The soldiers, as Carlos had said, were either reservists or youths. The few civilians around were in the same age categories. There didn’t seem to be a young or middle-aged man in the port.

  ‘At least,’ George said, ‘you’ve established a kind of moral ascendancy over them. Well, over the young ladies, anyway. Giacomo doesn’t lend himself to that sort of thing. That paper Carlos gave you – a message from our Roman allies?’

  ‘Yes. We are requested to remain in Ploe and await further orders.’

  ‘Ridiculous.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘You think sending that cablegram was wise? We might have expected this.’

  ‘I did. I hoped to precipitate exactly this. We know what to expect and we’ve got the initiative. If we’d got clear of the port without trouble and then were stopped by a couple of tanks up the valley road we’d have lost the initiative. Our two guards in front there – they’re not very bright, are they?’

  ‘You mean they didn’t search us for handguns? One’s too old to care, the other’s too inexperienced to know. Besides, look at our honest faces.’

  The two guards led the way to a low wooden hut, obviously a temporary affair, up some steps and, after knocking, into a small room about as spartan and primitive as the exterior of the hut – cracked linoleum on the floor, two metal filing cabinets, a radio transceiver, a telephone, a table and some chairs. The officer behind the table rose at their entrance. He was a tall thin man, middleaged, with pebble glasses which explained clearly enough why he wasn’t at the front. He peered at them myopically over the tops of his glasses.

  ‘Major Petersen?’

  ‘Yes. Glad to meet you, Commandant.’

  ‘Oh. I see. I wonder.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I have just received a detention order –’

  ‘Ssh!’ Petersen had a finger to his lips. He lowered his voice. ‘Are we alone?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Quite sure?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘In that case put your hands up.’

  Carlos pushed his chair back and rose. ‘Excuse me. I must have a look at that cabin door.’

  Lorraine said: ‘You mean you haven’t seen it yet?’

  ‘No. If Peter says it’s welded, then it is. I should imagine one welded door looks very much like another. Curiosity, really.’

  He was back in just over a minute.

  ‘A welded door is a welded door and the only way to open it is with an oxyacetylene flame-cutter. I’ve sent Pietro ashore to try and find one. I don’t have much hope. We had one but Peter and his friends dropped it over the side.’

  Lorraine said: ‘You don’t seem worried about it.’

  ‘I don’t get worried about trifles.’

  ‘And if you can’t get them out?’

  ‘They’ll have to stay there till we get back to Termoli. Plenty of facilities there.’

  ‘You could be sunk before you get there. Have you thought of that?’

  ‘Yes. That would upset me.’

  ‘Well, that’s better. A little compassion, at least.’

  ‘It would upset me because I’ve really grown quite fond of this old boat. I would hate to think it would be Alessandro’s tomb.’ Carlos’ face and voice were cold. ‘Compassion? Compassion for that monster? Compassion for a murderer, a hired assassin, a poisoner who travels with hypodermics and ampoules of lethal liquids? Compassion for a psychopath who would just love to inject you or Sarina there and giggle his evil head off as you screamed your way to death? Peter spared him: I wish he’d killed him. Compassion!’ He turned and walked out.

  ‘And now you’ve upset him,’ Giacomo said. ‘Nag, nag, nag. It’s bloody marvellous. People – well, Peter and Carlos – tried, judged and condemned when you don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I didn’t mean anything.’ She seemed bewildered.

  ‘It’s not what you mean. It’s what you say. You could always try watching your tongue.’ He rose and left.

  Lorraine stared at the empty doorway, her face woebegone. Two large tears trickled slowly down her cheeks. Sarina put her arm around her shoulders.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It really is. They don’t understand. I do.’

  Ten minutes later Petersen and his two companions arrived. Petersen was driving an elderly truck, civilian not army, with a hooped canvas roof and canvas flaps at the rear. Petersen jumped down from the driving seat and looked at the five on the deck of the Colombo – Carlos, Giacomo, Lorraine, Michael and Sarina, the last four with their rucksacks and radios beside them.

  ‘Well, we’re ready when you are,’ Petersen said. He seemed in excellent spirits. ‘We’ll just come aboard for our gear.’

  ‘No need,’ Carlos said. ‘The two Pietros are bringing that.’

  ‘And our guns?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to feel undressed.’ Carlos led the way down the gangway. ‘How did things go?’

  ‘Couldn’t have been better. Very friendly, cooperative and helpful.’ He produced two papers. ‘A military pass and a permit for me to drive this vehicle. Only as far as Metkovi but it will at least get us on the way. Both signed by Major Massamo. Would you two young ladies come up front with me? It’s much more comfortable and the cab is heated. The back is not.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Lorraine said. ‘I’d rather sit in the back.’

  ‘Oh, no, she wouldn’t,’ Sarina said. ‘I’m not putting up with this walking inquisition all by myself.’ She took Lorraine’s arm and whispered in her ear while Petersen lifted patient eyes to heaven. At first Lorraine shook her head vigorously, then reluctantly nodded.

  They shook hands with Carlos, thanked him and said goodbye. All except Lorraine – she just stood there, her eyes on the dockside. Carlos looked at her in exasperation then said: ‘All right. You upset me and I, forgetting that I’m supposed to be an officer and a gentleman, upset you.’ He put his arm round her shoulders, gave her a brief hug and kisse
d her none too lightly on the cheek. ‘That’s by way of apology and goodbye.’

  Petersen started up the rather asthmatic engine and drove off. The elderly guard at the gate ignored Petersen’s proffered papers and lackadaisically waved them on: he probably didn’t want to leave the brazier in his sentry-box. As he drove on, Petersen glanced to his right. Lorraine, at the far end of the seat was staring straight ahead: her face was masked in tears. Petersen, frowning, leaned forward and sideways but was brought up short by a far from gentle elbow in the ribs. Sarina, too, was frowning and giving an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Petersen looked at her questioningly, got a stony glance in return and sat back to concentrate on his driving.

  In the back of the truck, already heavily polluted by George’s cigars, Giacomo kept glancing towards the tarpaulin-covered heap in the front. Eventually, he tapped George on the arm.

  ‘George?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you ever seen a tarpaulin moving of its own accord?’

  ‘Can’t say that I have.’

  ‘Well, I can see one now.’

  George followed the direction of the pointing finger. ‘I see what you mean. My goodness, I hope they’re not suffocating under that lot.’ He pulled back the tarpaulin to reveal three figures lying on their sides, securely bound at wrists and ankles and very effectively gagged. ‘They’re not suffocating at all. Just getting restless.’

  The light inside the back of the truck was dim but sufficient to let Giacomo recognize the elderly soldier and his very junior partner who had come aboard earlier in the morning to collect Petersen and the other two. ‘And who’s the other person?’

  ‘Major Massamo. Commandant – Deputy Commandant, I believe – of the port.’

  Michael, seated with Alex on the opposite side of the truck, said: ‘Who are those people? What are they doing here? Why are they tied up?’ The questions didn’t betray any real interest: the voice was dull as befitted one still in a state of dazed incomprehension. They were the first words he had spoken that day: sea-sickness and the traumatic experience he had undergone during the night had wrought their toll to the extent that he had not even been able to face breakfast.