Partisans

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘You need to point that thing at my head? With three of your fellow-thugs armed to the teeth?’

  There were indeed three other men in the bedroom. Unlike their leader they were a scruffy and villainous looking lot, dressed in vaguely paramilitary uniforms but their appearance counted little against the fact that each carried a machine-pistol.

  ‘Fellow thugs?’ The man on the chair looked pained. ‘That makes me a thug too?’

  ‘Only thugs hold pistols against the heads of sleeping men.’

  ‘Oh, come now, Major Petersen. You have the reputation of being a highly dangerous and very violent man. How are we to know that you are not holding a loaded pistol in your hand under that blanket?’ Petersen slowly withdrew his right hand from under the blanket and turned up his empty palm. ‘It’s under my pillow.’

  ‘Ah, so.’ The man withdrew the gun. ‘One respects a professional.’

  ‘How did you get in? My door was locked.’

  ‘Signor Pijade was most cooperative.’ “Pijade” was Josip’s surname.

  ‘Was he now?’

  ‘You can’t trust anyone these days.’

  ‘I’ve found that out, too.’

  ‘I begin to believe what people say of you. You’re not worried, are you? You’re not even concerned about who I might be.’

  ‘Why should I be. You’re no friend. That’s all that matters to me.’

  ‘I may be no friend. Or I may. I don’t honestly know yet. I’m Major Cipriano. You may have heard of me.’

  ‘I have. Yesterday, for the first time. I feel sorry for you, Major, I really do, but I wish I were elsewhere. I’m one of those sensitive souls who feel uncomfortable in hospital wards. In the presence of the sick, I mean.’

  ‘Sick?’ Cipriano looked mildly astonished but the smile remained. ‘Me? I’m as fit as a fiddle.’

  ‘Physically, no doubt. Otherwise a cracked fiddle and one sadly out of tune. Anyone who works as a hatchet-man for that evil and sadistic bastard, General Granelli, has to be sick in the mind: and anyone who employs as his hatchet-man the psychopathic poisoner, Alessandro, has to be himself a sadist, a candidate for a maximum security lunatic asylum.’

  ‘Ah, so! Alessandro.’ Cipriano was either not a man easily to take offence or, if he did, too clever to show it. ‘He gave a message for you.’

  ‘You surprise me. I thought your poisoner – and poisonous – friend was in no position to give messages. You have seen him, then?’

  ‘Unfortunately, no. He’s still welded up in the fore cabin of the Colombo. One has to admit, Major Petersen, that you are not a man to do things by half-measures. But I spoke to him. He says that when he meets you again you’ll take a long time to die.’

  ‘He won’t. I’ll gun him down as I would a mad dog with rabies. I don’t want to talk any more about your psycho friend. What do you want of me?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure yet. Tell me, why do you keep referring to Alessandro as a poisoner?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I might. If I knew what you were talking about.’

  ‘You know that he carried knockout gas-grenades with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You knew that he carried a nice little surgical kit with him along with hypodermics and liquids in capsules that caused unconsciousness – some form of scopolamine, I believe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know that he also carried capsules which, when injected, led to the victims dying in screaming agony?’

  Cipriano had stopped smiling. ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘May I get out of bed?’ Cipriano nodded. Petersen crossed to his rucksack, extracted the metal box he had taken from Alessandro, handed it to Cipriano and said: ‘Take that back to Rome or wherever and have the contents of those capsules analyzed. I would not drink or self-inject any of them if I were you. I threatened to inject your friend with the contents of the missing capsule and he fainted in terror.’

  ‘I know nothing about this.’

  ‘That I believe. Where would Alessandro get hold of such lethal poison?’

  ‘I don’t know that either.’

  ‘That I don’t believe. Well, what do you want of me?’

  ‘Just come along with us.’ Cipriano led the way to the diningroom where Petersen’s six companions were already assembled under the watchful eye of a young Italian officer and four armed soldiers. Cipriano said: ‘Remain here. I know you’re too professional to try anything foolish. We won’t be long.’

  George, inevitably, was relaxed in a carver chair, a tankard of beer in his hand. Alex was looking quietly murderous. Giacomo just looked thoughtful. Sarina was tight-lipped and pale while the mercurial Lorraine, oddly enough, was expressionless.

  Petersen shook his head. ‘Well, well, we’re a fine lot. Major Cipriano has just said I was a professional. If –’

  ‘That was Major Cipriano?’ George said.

  ‘That’s what he says.’

  ‘A fast mover. He doesn’t look like a Major Cipriano.’

  ‘He doesn’t talk like one either. As I was about to say, George, if I were a professional, I’d have posted a guard, a patrolling sentry. Mea culpa. I thought we were safe here.’

  ‘Safe!’ Sarina spoke with a wealth of contempt.

  ‘Well, no harm done, let’s hope.’

  ‘No harm done!’

  Petersen spread his hands. ‘There are always compensations. You – and Lorraine – wanted to see me in, what shall we say, a disadvantaged position. Well, you see it now. How do you like it?’ There was no reply. ‘Two things. I’m surprised they got you, Alex. You can hear a leaf fall.’

  ‘They had a gun at Sarina’s head.’

  ‘Ah! And where is our good friend Josip?’

  ‘Your good friend,’ Sarina said acidly, ‘will be helping Cipriano and his men to find whatever they’re looking for.’

  ‘My goodness! What a low opinion – what an immediate low opinion – of my friend.’

  ‘Who tipped them off that we were here? Who let them in? Who gave them the keys – or the master key – to the bedrooms?’

  ‘One of these days,’ Petersen said mildly, ‘someone’s going to clobber you, young lady. You’ve a waspish tongue and you’re far too ready to judge and condemn. If that soldier with the gun at your head had taken the second necessary to pull the trigger he’d be dead now. So, of course, would you. But Alex didn’t want you to die. Nobody let them in – Josip never locks his front door. Once in, getting the keys would be no trouble. I don’t know who tipped them off. I’ll find out. It could even have been you.’

  ‘Me!’ She stared at him, at first stunned and then furious.

  ‘No-one’s above suspicion. You’ve said more than once that I don’t trust you. If you said that, you must have had reasons to think that I have reservations about you. What reasons?’

  ‘You must be out of your mind.’ She wasn’t mad any more, just bewildered.

  ‘You’ve turned pale very suddenly. Why have you turned pale?’

  ‘Leave my sister alone!’ Michael’s voice was an angry shout. ‘She’s done nothing! Leave her alone. Sarina? A criminal? A traitor? She’s right, you must be out of your mind. Stop tormenting her. Who the hell do you think you are?’

  ‘An army officer who wouldn’t hesitate to instruct a very raw enlisted man – boy, I should say – in the elements of discipline. Mind you, a show of spirit at last, but I’m afraid it’s mistimed and misplaced. Meantime, you should rest content with the knowledge that you are not under suspicion.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be pleased with that while Sarina is under suspicion?’

  ‘I don’t care whether you’re pleased or not.’

  ‘Look here, Petersen –’

  ‘Petersen? Who’s Petersen? “Major Petersen” to a ranker. Or “Sir”.’ Michael made no reply. ‘You’re not under suspicion because after you’d transmitted this message to Rome yesterday morning I rendered your radio inoperable. You could ha
ve used your sister’s tonight, but you wouldn’t have had the guts, not after being caught out the previous night. I know you’re not very bright but the inference is obvious. Alex, a word with you.’

  As brother and sister looked at each other in mingled apprehension, incomprehension and dismay, Alex crossed the room and listened as Petersen began talking to him.

  ‘Stop!’ The young Italian officer’s voice was sharp.

  Petersen looked at him patiently. ‘Stop what?’

  ‘Stop talking.’

  ‘Why ever should I? You just let me talk to that young man and girl.’

  ‘I understood that. I don’t understand Serbo-Croat.’

  ‘Your lack of education doesn’t concern me. To compound your ignorance, we’re not talking Serbo-Croat but a Slavonic dialect understood only by this soldier here, the fat gentleman with the beer glass and myself. You think, perhaps, that we are planning a suicidal attack on you, three unarmed men against four machineguns and a pistol? You can’t possibly be so crazy as to think we’re so crazy. What rank are you?’

  ‘Lieutenant.’ He was a very stiff, very correct and very young, lieutenant.

  ‘Lieutenants don’t give orders to majors.’

  ‘You’re my prisoner.’

  ‘I have yet to be informed of that. Even if I were, which legally I’m not, I’d be Major Cipriano’s prisoner and he would regard me as a very important one and one not to be molested or harmed in any way, so don’t bother looking at your men. If any of them comes over to try to stop or separate us I’ll take his gun from him and break it over his head and then you might shoot me. You’d be courtmartialled, cashiered and then, by the stipulations of the Geneva Conventions, face a firing squad. But you know that, of course.’ Petersen hoped the lieutenant didn’t, for he himself had no idea, but apparently the young man didn’t either for he made no further attempt to pursue the matter.

  Petersen talked to Alex for no more than a minute, went behind the bar, picked up a wine bottle and glass – this without even a raised eyebrow from the young lieutenant who might have been wondering how many men it took to constitute a firing squad and sat down at the table with George. They talked in low and seemingly earnest tones and were still talking when Cipriano returned with his three soldiers, Josip and his wife, Marija. Cipriano not only looked less buoyant and confident than he had done when he had left the dining-room: he was still smiling, because he was an habitual smiler, but the smile was of such a diminished quality that he looked positively morose.

  ‘I am glad to see that you are enjoying yourselves.’

  ‘We might be just a little justifiably annoyed at having our sleep disturbed.’ Petersen replenished his glass. ‘But we are of a forgiving nature, happy and relaxed in our carefree conscience. You will join us in a nightcap? I’m sure it would help you to frame a more graceful apology.’

  ‘No nightcap, thank you, but you are correct in saying that an apology is in order. I have just made a telephone call.’

  ‘To the wise men of your intelligence HQ, of course.’

  ‘Yes. How did you know?’

  ‘Where else does all the misinformation come from? We, as you know, are in the same line of business and it happens to us all the time.’

  ‘I am genuinely sorry to have inconvenienced you all over a stupid false alarm.’

  ‘What false alarm?’

  ‘Papers missing from our Rome HQ. Some misguided genius on General Granelli’s staff – I don’t know, yet, who it was but I’ll find out before the day is over – decided that they had fallen, if that’s the word, into the hands of either yourself or one of your group. Very important papers, very top-secret.’

  ‘All missing papers are top-secret. I have some papers with me myself, but I assure you they’re not stolen and how top-secret or important they may be I don’t know.’

  ‘I know about those papers.’ Cipriano waved a dismissive hand and smiled. ‘As you’re probably well aware. Those other, and much more important papers have never left their safe in Rome. A topsecret filing clerk careless about filing top-secret documents.’

  ‘May one ask what they are about?’

  ‘You may and that’s all the answer you’d get. I don’t know and even if I did I couldn’t tell you. I wish you an undisturbed night – or what’s left of it. Again, my apologies. Goodbye, Major Petersen.’

  ‘Goodbye.’ Petersen took the extended hand. ‘My regards to Colonel Lunz.’

  ‘I will.’ Cipriano frowned. ‘I hardly know the man.’

  ‘In that case, my regards to Alessandro.’

  ‘I’ll give him more than that.’ He turned to Josip and took his hand. ‘Many thanks, Signor Pijade. You have been most helpful. We will not forget.’

  It was Sarina, nothing if not resilient, who broke the conversational hiatus that followed the departure of Cipriano and his men. ‘“Thank you, Signor Pijade. Most helpful, Signor Pijade. We won’t forget, Signor Pijade.”’

  Josip looked at her in puzzlement then turned to Petersen. ‘Is the young lady talking to me?’

  ‘I think she’s addressing the company.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t think she does either. The young lady, as you call her, is under the ridiculous impression that you notified Major Cipriano – one assumes she thinks it was by telephone – of our presence and then took him and his men on a guided tour of the premises, distributing keys where necessary. She may, of course, be trying to divert from herself the suspicion that she is the guilty party.’

  Sarina made to speak but an outraged Marija gave her no chance. Three quick steps and she was before the suddenly apprehensive Sarina. The ivory-knuckled fists and arms held rigidly by her sides spoke eloquently of her outrage: her eyes were stormy and her clenched teeth remained that way even when she spoke.

  ‘Such a beautiful face, my dear.’ It is difficult not to hiss when one’s teeth are clenched. ‘Such a delicate complexion. And I have long nails. Should I tear your face because you insult the honour of my husband? Or would a few slaps – hard slaps – be enough for a creature like you?’ In the technique of expressing contempt, Marija Pijade had nothing to learn from anyone.

  Sarina said nothing. The apprehensive expression on her face had given way to one of near shock.

  ‘A soldier – not the Major, he’s a civilized man and was not there – pointed a gun at me. Like this.’ Dramatically, she swung up her right arm and pressed her forefinger against her neck. ‘Not pointed. Pushed. Pushed hard. Three seconds, he said, for my husband to hand over the master key. I am sure he would not have fired but Josip handed over the key at once. Do you blame him for that?’

  Slowly, dumbly, Sarina shook her head.

  ‘But do you still think Josip betrayed you?’

  ‘No. I don’t know what to think, but I don’t think that any more. I just don’t know what to think. I’m sorry, Marija, I’m truly sorry.’ She smiled wanly. ‘A soldier threatened me with a gun, too. He pressed it in my ear. Maybe that doesn’t make for very clear thinking.’

  The cold fury in Marija’s face gave way to speculation then softened into concern. She took an impulsive step forward, put her arms round the girl and began to stroke her hair.

  ‘I don’t think any of us is thinking very clearly. George!’ This over Sarina’s shoulder. ‘What are you thinking of?’

  ‘ljivovica,’ George said decisively. ‘The universal specific. If you read the label on a Pellegrino bottle –’

  ‘George!’

  ‘Right away.’

  Josip rubbed a blue and unshaven chin. ‘If Sarina and I are not the culprits, then we’re no nearer to an answer. Who did talk? Have you no suspicions, Peter?’

  ‘None. I don’t need any. I know who it is.’

  ‘You know – ’ Josip turned to the bar, picked up a bottle of ljivovica from a tray George was preparing, filled a small glass, drained it in two gulps and when he’d finished coughing and spluttering said: ‘Who?’
‘I’m not prepared to say at the moment. That’s not because I’m intending to prolong anxiety, increase tension, give the villain enough rope to hang him – or herself – or anything stupid like that. It’s because I can’t prove it – yet. I’m not even sure I want to prove it. Perhaps the person I have in mind was misguided, or the action may have been unintentional, accidental, inadvertent or even done from the best motives – from, of course, the viewpoint of the person concerned. Unlike Sarina here, I don’t go in much for premature judgments and condemnation.’

  ‘Peter!’ Marija’s voice held a warning, almost peremptory, note. She still had an arm around Sarina’s shoulders.

  ‘Sorry, Marija. Sorry, Sarina. Just my natural nastiness surfacing. By the way, if you people want to go to bed, well of course, go. But no hurry now. Change of plan. We won’t be leaving until the late forenoon tomorrow. Certainly not before. Giacomo, could I have a quiet word with you?’

  ‘Have I any option?’

  ‘Certainly. You can always say “no”.’

  Giacomo smiled his broad smile, stood up and put his hand in his pocket. ‘Josip, if I could buy a bottle of that excellent red wine –’

  Josip was mildly affronted. ‘Peter Petersen’s friends pay for nothing in my hotel.’

  ‘Maybe I’m not his friend. I mean, maybe he’s not my friend.’ Giacomo seemed to find the thought highly amusing. ‘Thanks all the same.’ He picked up a bottle and two glasses from the bar, led the way to a distant table, poured wine and said admiringly: ‘That Marija. Quite a girl. Not quite a tartar but no shrinking violet. Changes her mind a bit quick, doesn’t she?’