“Von Riehl,” said Andrews. “He’s been in Italy a fortnight already. Have you heard of him, Mencken?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “But I question where the ‘von’ has come from. He was Professor of Chemistry at Bonn five or six years ago. Since——”
“Did you ever meet him?” Dwight asked sharply.
“No, no. But I know he was promoted by the Nazi Government to be one of their top scientific advisers. I did hear that he was among the chief advocates of biological and chemical warfare.”
Dwight smiled, if you can call it a smile when only skin and not flesh is involved. “A worthy representative of the Reich. He’ll get the Iron Cross, no doubt.”
For some minutes they discussed the ways of Germans with bitterness and acidity. I wondered if they had ever heard of Goethe or Beethoven, Freud or Schweitzer or Einstein. I had a curious presentiment that Andrews would never like me, because of my Austrian blood. I am not a man given over quick antipathies, and this feeling surprised me.
“What’s the man been doing in Italy for over two weeks?” Andrews said. “He brings a Fräulein to Garda, apparently for what people do go away with Fräuleins for, and then almost every day drives off with his secretaries: to Milan, to Turin, to Genoa, leaving the girl behind.”
Dwight said: “ Von Riehl is conferring with the various industrial and economic boys; he’s been sent to get what information he can and report to his government on the exact condition of Italian war production, especially its most urgent needs in raw materials and ersatz products.”
“Ah … that makes sense.”
Dwight made a wet noise with his pipe and looked at me over the top of it. “ Things are shortly going to move in Africa, Dr Mencken. Italy has to act more vigorously than she has done so far, to justify her rating as a major partner. All Germany expects it. But war wastage will be high and Italy is cut off from her normal markets. Also things are not well with either her war machine or her supply system. Von Riehl has been sent to find out what’s wrong. Next Tuesday, near the end of his stay, he’s attending this conference of scientists under Professor Brayda. From what you say, it sounds as if that’s really more his like of country than reporting on inefficiency and bottle-necks, but maybe he’s a man of all-round ability.”
“He’s that,” I said. “He is the breed of scientist who is much better at organising a department than doing original research. Where is the conference to be held?”
“At the big experimental laboratories attached to the Faroni works.”
“Oh, I know where that is.”
“What sort of a memory have you?” Andrews asked.
“Poor for most things. But good on my own subjects, I suppose.”
“You see, you’ll have to play this as it comes. You may be allowed to take a few notes—I don’t see why not—but it’ll depend a lot on how well Bonini supports you. You’ll be there after all as his secretary. Have you ever done any photography?”
“Afraid not.”
“Pity. We’ve a nice little job that looks just like a gold wrist watch. You pull your cuff back to see the time and click.…”
“No,” said Dwight. “That would be a non-starter in inexpert hands—and dam’ dangerous. Let’s be content with Dr Mencken’s report. We don’t want him to fall at the first jump.”
He began to cough again, and got up to change his position. He coughed till the veins stood cut on his narrow shiny forehead. Pulmonary oedema, most probably.
“Blast,” he said. “ Where was I? Oh, the camera——”
“Chlorine or phosgene?” I asked.
He stared at me. “Phosgene,” he said after a moment. “Thiépval, 1916. I’d forgotten you were a doctor chappie.”
“Not really. But I had a cousin in Vienna. He had got it fighting on the other side.…”
Andrews waved this irritably aside. “ Do you know where the Fondamenta Vittoria is, Mencken?”
“Not for certain. In this area?”
“Near the Arsenal. You’ll find Captain Bonini at number five. Be there at eleven to-morrow. He’ll be expecting you. Give in your name but don’t state your business until he comes. Report back here about six to-morrow. In the meantime I’ll have your passport. I’ll get it visaed for entry into Switzerland.”
I put out the end of my cheroot. “ You expect me to return that way?”
Andrews took my passport and stared at it. “ Not expect. We’d like you to return the way you came. But Switzerland is the nearest neutral if anything goes wrong.”
Walking back to the hotel, I thought that I did not find either of my helpers congenial men. If only one of them had been like Colonel Brown. But charm is not essential for a secret agent; ruthlessness may be. In neither of these men, I thought, would scruples be a serious handicap.
All the same I wished they had been more secretive, more serious about it all. They might have been talking a trade; they seemed casual, careless. I hoped this was a misconception, that they would be careful with their own lives and specially careful with mine.
Chapter Five
The Fondamenta Vittoria is, as its name suggests, a row of houses overlooking a canal. Its view must have been very pleasant on a sunny morning, but to-day there was heavy rain. I had come by gondola to save getting wet and the gondolier, having demanded four times the proper fare and received only double, made a play of complaint and annoyance. The servant who came to the door let me in and closed it again to shut out his guttural tenor.
Yes, Captain Bonini was in. What name? Would I be pleased to wait? She showed me into a handsome hall with a baroque marble staircase worthy of Longhens. I stood admiring this, and then turned nervously at the sound of slippered foorsteps, to see approaching a man almost as handsome in his own way as the staircase. The noble beauty of the young Italian is sometimes enough to take the breath away. This man was ten years beyond his best and was now putting on weight; in another five the flowering would be over; but he still impressed, with his glossy hair, pale olive skin, magnificent eyes. Of course none of this way any guide to his character: the Borgias probably looked the same.
“Captain Bonini?”
“You asked for me.”
“I was admiring the carving of the balustrade, sir. It is distinguished.”
“Early eighteenth century. After the style of the Trinita dei Monti. What do you want?”
So it seemed that he wished to hear my prepared story. “I approached you with diffidence, sir. We are related through my cousin Edda, who married your brother-in-law. I have lately come from Portugal where I was in the silk trade. I was to have joined the forces but yesterday I was rejected on medical grounds. It occurred to me that in your capacity on the naval staff you might—might hear of some clerical work that I could do.”
He felt in the pocket of his brightly stripped silk dressing-gown and fitted a cigarette into a long white holder. He did not offer me one. I wondered why the interview was in this public place and it occurred to me that he wanted to try to over himself in case of trouble. If he could bring witnesses to his first meeting …
“What relation are you to Edda? She has never mentioned you.”
“Her mother and mine are sisters. Her mother married a Rosselino and mine a Catania. My family still lives in the Via Montevecchio, Turin, where I was born.”
He lit the cigarette. “We have no room for the unfit in Italy. You had better have stayed in Portugal.”
So he was to have his little unpleasantness.
“I wanted to help,” I said humbly.
“No doubt, no doubt.… What can you do?”
“I can type and write shorthand. I can speak German. Also a little French. I have had some training in office methods.”
“So have many others. I’ll keep your case in mind, Catania, but I can promise very little. Where are you staying?”
“At the Hotel San Moisé.”
“Very well. You will excuse me. I am busy now; I have important matters to attend to
.” He walked to the bell and pushed it. Throughout the interview he had hardly looked at me; his manner was detached, cold; if It had been snore personally involved it would have been hostile.
The maid appeared. “ Show this gentleman out.”
“Thank you,” I said, “I shall hope to hear from you.”
“Don’t rely on it. Take something else if you can get It.”
The interview was at an end. It did not seem quite to have turned out as arranged, but I was in his hands.
As I got to the door he said: “Stay,” and came padding across with his vigorous, sightly flat-footed walk. “Did you say you could speak German?”
“Yes, sir, I know it well.”
“To be able to interpret for me if necessary?”
“Oh, yes, certainly.”
“Oh, then I might be able to offer you a temporary post. I wonder. My own secretary has been taken ill and may be off two or three weeks. I haw important business to attend to in Milan and need someone I can trust. I will put the matter before the Admiralty and see if I am permitted to use you temporarily.”
I tried to change from hang-dog to eager dog. “That is most kind. Thank you. I shall look forward to working for you, sir.”
He stood with the holder firm between his strong white teeth. “We would have to get a security clearance. I don’t know if it would be possible in the time, but come and see me to-morrow morning at eleven. I shall know then. But don’t build on it. The decision will be out of my hands.”
The maid was holding the door open. “Thank you. I’m greatly indebted. Most obliged.”
He didn’t reply but turned away in a whisk of bright silk dressing-gown as I went out into the rain.
Venice is not an unfriendly city even in bad weather; and I bought an inexpensive umbrella and spent the rest of the morning in company with many other umbrellas shop-gaging in the Merceria. I had lunch at a trattoria and then spent a pleasant half hour in St. Mark’s Cathedral—though nothing inside it can compare with the old painted Byzaatine beanty of the exterior. I walked back to my hotel wondering what had happened to Bonini’s own secretary. How did one conveniently arrange for someone to be ill, if that someone were not in the secret?
In the afternoon the rain stopped and I went another walk, fed the pigeons and at five-fifteen found myself an the Campiello di Giovanni.
Andrews had said about six, but this seemed near enough for an inezact appointment, so I climbed the dingy stairs, threading between three children playing on a lower flight, tapped on Andrews’s door. There was no answer. He would be out.
I tapped a second time just to be sure, and instantly the door was open and Andrews stood there.
He bulked. He took most of the light somehow. There was not much room for anybody in the doorway but him. I resisted—and slightly resented—an inclination to step back.
“Well?”
“You told me to call round this afternoon.”
“Not at this time.”
“About six.”
“It’s not yet nearly six.”
“I’m sorry,” I said stiffly. “I will come back.”
“Hell, no. Come in. It won’t do to be up and down the stairs all day.”
He moved aside and I went in, swallowing offence. I was clearly in the wrong. “I’m sorry. Next time you want me at six don’t say ‘about’ six.”
He picked at his teeth. “ There’d better not be a next time. What have you to report?”
I told him.
“Good. What do you think of the animal?”
“Bonini? Handsome but dangerous. I don’t trust him. He might any time try to save himself by turning King’s Evidence.”
“Duce’s Evidence, you mean. He would if he could. But all espionage is based on probabilities; certainties don’t exist. How do I know that you are not a German Nazi at heart? How do you know that I am not paid by the Italians as well as by the British?”
I stared at him, half angry, half doubtful. He seemed to enjoy taunting me; yet logically my brain acknowledged that he was right.
“I think if you’ll give me my instructions——”
The door on the left of the room opened and a young woman in a dressing-gown came in.
“What I’m surprised about——” she began in English, and then saw me. She looked at Andrews. Clearly I was adding to her surprise.
Andrews picked something out of his discoloured bottom teeth with a finger nail. “Come in, my dear. This is Robert Mencken, recently from Portugal; you’ve heard me speak of him. This is Jane Howard, an Australian with American connections.”
She came in, buttoning a couple more buttons of this peach silk flowered house-coat Underneath I could see she wore only a black brassière and short black knickers.
She half smiled and murmured a greeting, and I made some stiff conventional reply, understanding very well now why my too early call had been so unwelcome.
She was a very attractive girl.
In my life I have had little time for courting women or making love to them; but I have always enjoyed women’s company and they seem to have enjoyed mine. Perhaps it has helped that there has been a lack of challenge in my attitude, but never a lack of interest. Just at the moment of course I was off balance, concerned only to make an excuse which would end this embarrassment and enable me to leave; but I still could not help but notice how very attractive she was, and wonder what she could possibly see in Andrews.
We made a few moments more of conversation, but I was guarded, aware that Andrews obviously confided too much in his mistress. What was the point of introducing me as Mencken when it should be Catania?
“My passport,” I said to him, refusing a cigarette, “I should be glad of it now.”
“Of course. I’ll get it.” He scratched his plump chin. “But there are one or two things I still have to explain to you.” He went off into the room from which she had emerged.
The girl lit the cigarette she had just been given. Her quiet, serious face bent over the lighter, dark curling fringe over pale brow, lashes hiding brown eyes. This done, she perched on the arm of the only easy chair in the room, one slim leg swinging free, the mule an inch or so fallen away from the heel above it. She had brought a scent of jasmine into a room not previously over-savoury.
“Had you any problem with Captain Bonini?” she asked.
So she knew the whole story. Where in God’s name did Andrews’ confidences begin and end? The man was imposesible. Colonel Brown had delivered me over to a lunatic who risked not only my freedom but his own.
“None so far. D’you know him, Miss Howard? … Or perhaps I shouldn’t call you Miss Howard?”
She smiled again. “Perhaps you shouldn’t. It’s Mrs Howard, to be correct.”
“Oh … I’m afraid I had not thought of that. My memory was being overtaxed with Bercziks and Brevios.”
“A lot of B’s, aren’t there,” she agreed. “ Berczik, Brevio, Bonini.… I’ve seen Captain Bonini more than once. The last time I saw him—at a social function— he tried to get me into a private room.”
“I don’t wonder,” I said.
Her eyes widened slightly, but before she could reply Andrews came back.
“Here it is. All set for the next stage.”
“Is this visa genuine?”
“No, Mencken, it isn’t. But no frontier official will be able to tell the difference.”
Mrs Howard slipped off her chair arm and tapped the cigarette in the ash-tray. “Excuse me.” She went back into the bedroom.
Andrews and I ran through our little lesson. “That seems to be all,” he said. “Now before you go, is there anything else yoo want? The less we meet henceforward the better.”
“I’d like to know how many other people have details of this scheme.”
His small black eyes went over me. In any account of me there wouldn’t be a detail missing.
“You don’t need to worry about Jane. She’s as tight as the Bank of England. Sh
e has to know because she’s helping in this.”
“D’you mean she’s part of the organisation? I thought——”
“Yes, indeed,” said Andrews, as the girl came back. “One thinks a lot of things. But anything you like to ask is all right with me.” He scratched the balding patch on the crown of his head and then carefully smoothed back the thin black hair with his fingers, patting it over and over again. “Going, Jane? Let’s see, had I a job for you?”
She had taken off her dressing-gown and replaced it with a frock, a neat black thing of wool or something, with padded shoulders which made her look younger and still more slim.
“About the radio?”
“That’s it. What I felt was——”
“It’s time I went,” I said harshly. “ There’s nothing more to arrange, is there?”
Andrews took his fingers from his head and looked at them. They were greasy. “Nothing, except to remind you to put the minimum on paper. Nothing if you can avoid it. Say things over in your head until you’re sure of them. So—good luck, Signor Catania.”
He had the politeness to wipe his fingers down the side of his jacket before he shook hands.
She must have followed me from the square quite soon and by chance have taken the same route; she overtook me in the Caile San Zaccaria as I stopped to look in a window.
I would have let her pass, but she stopped and spoke. There seemed no reticence in any of them.
“Yes,” I answered, “I’m staying at the San Moisé.”
“I know it,” she said. “It’s got that cute little landing stage where the gondolas can moor.”
We walked the length of the street together, through the Sottoportico and out on the Riva degli Schiavòni. This was its usual scene of bustling activity. Postcard stalls, scarf stalls, cameo stalls, strolling crowds, cameras clicking, gondolas bobbing and milling in the churned up waters of the lagoon, a naval pinnace leaving an anchored destroyer; three fishermen, unshaven for a week, mending their nets beside a gaunt and shabby fishing boat; a low-built cargo ship, flying the swastika, in tow of a tug; the smell and feel of the sea.
“I love it here,” she said, but in Italian now. “ Have you ever spent a whole winter here? They have a fair on this quay. Roundabouts and things and candy stalls.”
Night Journey Page 4