She sat there, next to one of the princes of PR and the fat French clown — she straight-haired, no make-up, in her loose brown dress that reached below her knees, like a monk’s habit without a hood, and well-worn block-heeled sandals. Hawn could not tell whether she was enjoying herself or not.
Logan turned to Hawn: ‘’Course it’s the most frightful bore. Twelve dead, as far as we know, and the whole coast awash with valuable oil. And I’m afraid a lot of people seem to be rather cross about it. Including your dear Anna here.’
‘You obviously think it’s rather a joke,’ she said. ‘A nice excuse for a few days in Venice, living it up at ABCO’s expense.’
‘Not a joke, my dear. Work.’
‘What work? Wining and dining a few corrupt Italian bigwigs — greasing the odd palm, and selling them all the soft-soap about ABCO’s great world role in keeping the wheels of industry moving, and how Italy can’t do without her, and how a few spoilt beaches really mustn’t be allowed to foul up the works.’ Her face, in profile to Hawn, had taken on a deeper flush.
Ham Logan chortled into his Negroni. It was clear that the others too were faintly entertained by Anna’s outburst. But she only increased Hawn’s discomfort by turning on him: ‘Well, haven’t you got anything to say?’
‘Oh, don’t be childish,’ he said, in a half-whisper. ‘You’re not going to change their morality overnight — let alone over a few drinks. You know what sort of people they are. And you accepted their hospitality, not me.’
As though sensing that the conversation had gone far enough in this line, they now turned to broader subjects. More drinks arrived, and the awful bogus bonhomie was spread more thick, with the exception of the American, Robak, who sat quietly aloof with his orange juice.
‘The Saudis are windy. Don’t blame them. After Iran, they’re bound to bump up the price this time.’
‘The Shah was a darned fool. He paid too much, to too many people, then was dumb enough to listen to them.’
‘The Americans behaved disgracefully.’
‘Carter, he is a catastrophe.’
‘The British are all washed up.’
‘Like the Italians.’
‘I’d like to see Tricky-Dicky back.’
‘Who’s going to guard the Gulf now? It’s up for grabs, and we don’t have to look far to see who’s going to grab it.’
‘The New Islam is pretty anti-foreign — which includes being anti-Russian.’
‘You think that worries the Russians?’
‘The Russians need oil. Always have. They’ve got plenty of it, but they can’t exploit it. They need the technology. They need us. I tell you, gentlemen, if anyone is going to act as the new policeman in the Gulf, it’s ABCO. The Soviets aren’t going to rock the boat.’
This last opinion came from Robak. Hawn, who had been only half listening, and was waiting for a convenient moment in which to extract Anna, now broke in, recklessly, as much to keep his end up with her as to make a serious contribution.
‘What about the Germans in the last war?’
‘So? What about ’em?’
‘They didn’t have oil — or nothing to speak of.’
‘They had technology — the best in the world. Anyway, they lost, didn’t they?’
‘It took them a damned long time to lose.’
‘They had Rumania, the Russian fields, and the rest they manufactured themselves — from shale and coal.’
‘Can you run a tank or heavy armoured vehicle on synthetic fuel? And the Russian fields were lost by 1943, and after that the Rumanian ones were being bombed flat, until they were taken in 1944. But the Germans kept going.’ Robak said calmly, with a thin layer of contempt: ‘As I said, the Germans were very advanced in their techniques. I mean scientific techniques. With respect, Mr Hawn, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.’
Logan broke in: ‘The whole of Nazi Germany was bristling with synthetic fuel plants. They were up to every trick. We don’t begin to equal them for ingenuity. They even built a car that ran on wood!’
The fat Frenchman, Pol, now spoke in a high cooing voice: ‘They did better than that, messieurs. They constructed a train that ran on the gases from old corpses. And corpses were about the only thing they weren’t short of!’ He took a deep drink, then shook his head: ‘But I regret, my dear Monsieur Logan, when you talk of synthetic fuel, you mean the hydrogenation process. It is one I am familiar with. It yields a very low-grade petrol, and the Germans were only able to use it in aircraft or light vehicles. They fitted their Messerschmitts with a specially adapted engine that used water-injection — the first of its kind. Very ingenious, but with a synthetic fuel it only lasted twenty minutes before it burnt out. However, that was just enough, since their production lines could produce a new engine every fifteen minutes.’
There was a pause. Logan looked momentarily confused. But Hawn’s blood was up, and when he spoke again, he had Anna’s full attention: ‘Speer was building a thousand of those Tiger Tanks a month — in a factory under a mountain, to protect them from Allied attacks. He kept them rolling against us and the Russians right up to zero hour — when the Fuhrer blew his head off, and the whole pack of cards came tumbling down. Hitler maintained a mobilized army that could match both us and the Russians, and could fight us all right up to the touchline. How did he do it? Where did he get his fuel from?’
Hamish Logan sat forward and snapped his fingers; his face was very red. ‘I know, you’ve been talking to that ridiculous little Prince Grotti Savoia! He’s been making a perishing nuisance of himself here in Venice in these last few days. Things haven’t been easy for any of us, without having that wretch poking up at odd times and spouting all his nonsense about the oil companies — by which he means ABCO, of course. And he doesn’t do you journalists any more good than he does us. Stories like that simply lower the tone. Somebody should shut him up.’
‘Perhaps somebody will. He’s jittery enough. He even got all upset when somebody took an American’s photograph in the bar. He sees spies everywhere.’
‘Simple case of paranoia. Probably got the DTs too. He’s beyond the slippery slope, is Grotti Savoia.’ Logan lit a cigar and looked at Hawn, casually, conversationally. ‘I suppose he just gave you his old spiel? The Nazis didn’t have any obvious sources of oil, except Rumania, so where did they get it from?’
‘You tell me, Hamish. Forget about the Principe. Where did they get it from?’
Logan sighed. ‘Reserves. Everyone has reserves. At the time of the 1973 oil crisis, it was given out that the Pentagon had reserves for five years — hidden in underground lakes.’ He handed his empty glass to the waiter. ‘Don’t tell me that old Adolf wasn’t prepared. He’d had six bloody years to prepare.’
Pol popped an olive into his mouth and said nothing.
Ham Logan seemed to have recovered his professional calm. ‘I don’t want to sound patronizing, my dear Tom. But I do think you’ve been out in the wilds too long. Too much time to think. A bit of sanction-busting in Southern Africa is one thing — but insinuating that our major Western oil company may have connived at helping the Nazis is really carrying things too far.’
‘Too far for you, maybe, Ham,’ Anna said, ‘particularly if it’s true.’
‘Now, don’t you start being silly too, Anna. You must excuse our two young friends,’ he said, turning to Robak and Pol, ‘but journalists — particularly those who have been out of action for some time — tend to get a little excited. They fantasize.’
‘Au contraire,’ said Pol: ‘I find your friend’s theories most stimulating. The war still holds many secrets. We must not simply close our ears to the possibility of them, just because the idea is inconvenient, even repugnant to our interests.’
‘I’d like to make one thing quite clear,’ Hawn said. ‘I never once insinuated that ABCO, or any other Western oil company, traded with the Nazis. Those were your words, Ham, not mine.’
‘And Anna’s.’
> ‘Leave Anna out of this.’
Robak spoke, bland, his dry grey eyes fixed unblinking on Hawn. ‘It’s certainly a dramatic theory, I’ll grant you that, Mr Hawn. And an original one. But I don’t recall — did you say you got it off that Prince fellow, Grotti-something?’
Hawn did not believe that the Prince really needed his protection: yet there was something that worried him about Robak — apart from his being sure that he had seen the man before. He and Logan and the grotesque Frenchman made an incongruous, even sinister trio. He said: ‘I got it off the top of my head — stuck in a traffic jam this afternoon.’
‘Huh-huh. Don’t laugh, Ham — some of the best ideas come off the tops of our heads. Are you going to be around in Venice for a few days, Mr Hawn?’
‘It depends on the situation.’
‘I don’t expect that should put you off, if you’re a real journalist. Come up and see me tomorrow morning — but not too early — suite 104, the Gritti.’
Hawn glanced at Logan. ‘He’s not thinking of having me bumped off, is he?’
‘Well, not right away,’ Robak said. ‘Bad for public relations.’
Logan stood grinning between them, as Hawn and Anna shook hands; and again Hawn wondered where he had seen Robak before. The memory irked him like a piece of grit in his shoe.
He was still puzzling over it, as he followed Anna through the revolving doors, when he heard the pad of feet behind him, turned and saw Pol waddling towards him, his huge body balanced on tiny black-slippered feet.
‘Monsieur Hawn! I regret that I have not more time to talk with you. Because, you see, I, too, am interested in your theory — from a more impartial point of view, shall we say? I have a rather personal interest in the crimes of the Nazis. I will not detain you now, except to say that I also have my theories. May I suggest that you both join me for dinner tomorrow night — the Antico Martini, at 8.30?’
Hawn lay beside Anna under the single sheet, and in the cool darkness he could just distinguish her fine-boned profile against the spear of lantern-light through the curtains. Even after eighteen months it still puzzled him how a girl of such character, intelligence and obvious good looks could have progressed no further than the dingy catacombs of the London School of Economics, where she worked as a senior researcher.
They had met not there, but in the Public Record Office in Kew, where Hawn had been hacking assiduously at the deafening wall of silence surrounding the Rhodesian oil sanctions: while Anna had been delving into the industrial history of the Suffragette Movement. Hawn had followed his well-proven experience that libraries — along with art galleries — are the most propitious places for ensnaring the opposite sex. Soon he was meeting her for a regular drink in the local pub.
She was an earnest girl, quiet, undemanding; and while she was rarely high-spirited, he never found her dull. At first this had worried him: he suspected that it might be simply because he knew so little about her — that this air of secrecy might be lethally compounded by her subtle but firm refusal in those first weeks to go to bed with him. When she finally did, her attitude was equally puzzling: a mixture of gaucheness and carnal passion that both disturbed and stimulated him.
To his dismay, he became fascinated by her. For if he could find any real fault in her — and he had a cruel and practised eye where women were concerned — it was her complete self-possession, her lack of any need of protection.
She had moved into the roomy chaos of his flat off Notting Hill; and soon, without aggression or any trace of ulterior motive, had restored it to a place of order. She offered him stability and calm; she cooked superbly, and without complaint; entertained even his most abominable friends; and afterwards she was a luxurious, uncomplicated lover. Only two conditions did she extract from him: that he cut down his habitual drinking, and that he was faithful to her. To his surprise, Hawn found himself complying.
He could not remember exactly how or when the break, or suspension, of their relationship had come. He had been growing increasingly restless on his newspaper, where he had now risen to fill a senior desk job: he was no longer the brave trooper in the field, but the commanding officer at basecamp. He had asked for six months’ paid leave, and had been granted it, together with the option of a further six months, unpaid.
A respectable publisher had advanced him enough to carry him comfortably over this period; but a worm of puritanism had persuaded him to seek out the barren solitude of the Italian hills — to escape from his work, the clatter of typewriters, spiked stories, coming back in mid-afternoon over-fed, burping with too much Hock-and-Seltzer from the cavern of El Vino. And escape from Anna — from coming back too late from the office, to have his apologies shrugged off while she warmed up the evening’s dinner which they often ate in bed.
He looked at her now, at the innocent curve of her neck in the half-darkness. ‘Are you asleep, angel?’
‘No.’
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘You.’
‘Anything I should know?’
‘Nothing that’ll hurt you. You’ve lost weight. You look younger. How are the Medicis?’
‘Coming along, slowly. I’m going to have to get back to London soon — spend some time in the British Museum. I haven’t got enough reading material out in Tuscany, and my Italian’s not up to the local archives.’
‘Tom, stop fooling yourself. You’re not an academic. If you were, you’d have stayed on at Cambridge. You’ve got a good enough degree. But you wanted excitement — the dirt and adventure of Fleet Street and Algiers and Saigon. You’re an adventurer. Or you were.’
‘You make me sound as though I’ve just castrated myself. You want me to go back to Fleet Street?’
‘Only if you want to. But you said yourself what happens to old journalists — they don’t even fade away, they just finish writing up Wills and Weather, or drift into public relations — like that fool Logan, only he’s a full-blooded professional who actually enjoys it. You’re not that sort, Tom. What was it you once said to me? That the most exciting moments of your life have been to watch the wing of your plane dipping over a city at war? That’s what you really enjoy, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve seen enough war. I’ve covered seven altogether, not counting two civil wars, and the only difference between them was that some were nastier than others. And the one thing they all had in common was that after the first couple of days they rarely made the front page, and sometimes didn’t make the paper at all.’
She turned and moved her hand gently across his chest. ‘You don’t know what you want, do you?’
‘Do you know what you want?’
‘I think so. I want you — not all of you, just to share things with you. I can’t share Fleet Street — even if I wanted to — and I can’t share the Medicis, except perhaps to do some typing for you. But I could…’ She rolled over, full face to him, and kissed him softly, dispassionately, on the mouth. ‘I could share this theory of yours — about Nazi oil supplies. I could do the research — and there’d be one hell of a lot to do — while you did the legwork, the interviews.’
‘You’re not serious?’
‘I’m absolutely serious. I’m not a brilliant investigative journalist, but I can tell a good idea when I hear it.’
‘If you think it’s such a dazzling idea, why has no one thought of it before?’
‘You tell me. Who would have thought of it? Journalists, academics? You’re always saying that most journalists are a bunch of lazy hacks who prefer to follow up each other’s stories rather than think up their own; and academics spend most of their time in beautiful stone quadrangles, or bitching over the port.’
They lay in silence. From outside came the short warning cry of a gondolier approaching a blind corner, like a wild bird in the night. No police sirens this time: perhaps the tension was dying down. He said, ‘Did you notice anything significant this evening after I mentioned my theory at the Danieli?’
‘What?’
‘He’d been drinking. Everybody had, except that American.’
‘Logan wasn’t drunk — nobody was. And the Frenchman was definitely interested — a complete stranger, with interests in the oil business, and he invites us both for dinner tomorrow night. And as for that American, Robak — another complete stranger — he invites me up to his hotel suite tomorrow morning.’
‘You’ll go, of course?’
‘Damn right I will. I touched a raw nerve there, Anna. I either got them interested, or worried, or both.’
She nestled up against him, pressing her shallow breast into his armpit. ‘You’ve got me interested, too, love. Four empty months, then suddenly four orgasms — it may have been five — and now the thought of all those files — the LSE, Petroleum Institute Library, Public Record Office. Am I a very boring girl, Tom? Am I very pedestrian?’
He kissed her casually. ‘That’s a pretty double-edged compliment to me, after eighteen months. But if we’re really on to something, it’ll be more than just files and classified documents released under the Thirty Year Rule. If there’s even a grain of truth in my theory, we may well run into trouble. Could be bad trouble. The oil business is a rough business, and they play rough. They’ll play even rougher if they feel they’re threatened.’
‘Supposing we did prove that ABCO actually helped the Nazis? Would it hurt them so much, after all this time?’
‘It would blow them sky-high. For God’s sake, even this oil spillage in the Adriatic has worried them enough to send Logan scuttling out here to give the local bosses the sweet talk and grease a few palms. Like every big company, they’re concerned about their image. And the bigger the company the bigger the image. Giving a helping hand to old Smithy in Rhodesia is one thing — giving it to Adolf Schickelgrüber is something else. I mean, think of all those Jewish shareholders in the States. It would be years before they picked up the pieces. Watergate pales.’
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