October Men

by Anthony Price

  “I’m too goddamed busy for girls, General,” said Villari easily. “You should know that—it’s your fault.”

  The General chuckled. “You don’t fool me one bit, boy. You’ll stop chasing when you stop breathing, not one moment before. I’m much more worried that you aren’t keeping up your skiing. You’ll never make the national team now, you know—not a chance of it. And don’t say you haven’t had the leave for it, either.”

  Boselli, greatly daring, cleared his throat.

  “I have the Audley files here, sir.”

  The General still didn’t look at him. Indeed, neither of them gave the least sign that they had even heard him speak. It was just as though he didn’t exist, or that he existed in some other space and time, a shadow man with his armful of shadow documents desperately waiting for someone in a warmer, more real world to notice him. He had a sudden pathetic desire to scream and stamp and throw all his paperwork into the air, and shout rude gutter words.

  Instead, he felt himself shrinking, the sweat on his forehead cold in the General’s air conditioning, and he knew he would stand there, meek and eager, until his turn at the end of the queue came. There was nothing new in this, it was the very pattern of his existence. Rather must he watch patiently for the arrival of his moment, when the General and Villari came down to earth. They would need him then—they always did in the end.

  “Not a chance is dead right,” Villari gave a snort. “Nobody who works for you has time for fun—or games. It’s getting so a chap can’t even slip through Rome for a day without you catching him. And it’s the wrong season for trouble—this Audley of yours has no breeding.”

  “Audley? So you know about him?” The General’s arm delivered a final man-to-man slap and then fell away from the shoulders. He turned abruptly and bent a fierce eye on Boselli at last.

  Boselli tried for one second to match the eye and the hard set of the mouth, but his face instantly turned traitor on him with an expression of total obsequiousness.

  “I—“ Boselli ran out of words after the first squeak, looking helplessly from one man to the other. From Villari he expected—and received—nothing, neither explanation nor even recognition. And from the General—with the General it was always the same: there seemed to lie between them (at least in Boselli’s mind) unasked for the knowledge that when he had been a pimply youth toying with the idea of the seminary the General had been a daring Bersaglieri captain, raider of British airfields, and then the leader of the Partisan group which had ambushed Panzergeneral Hofacker in the mountains.

  And hot on that memory came the comparison of his wife’s sagging body with those of the gorgeous creatures the General always had at heel, despite his age and disabilities.

  The General couldn’t help it—he rarely even barked at Boselli. The trouble was, he didn’t have to.

  “I don’t know about him,” said Villari offhandedly. “I know of him, of course.”

  “What do you know of him, boy?” the General snapped.

  “Not much, to be honest,” Villari gave the General a sidelong glance. “The British don’t concern me directly—or do they?”

  “Just answer the question,” repeated the General with a small cutting edge in his voice now which warmed Boselli. This was more like the real man he knew.

  Villari sketched a shrug, unsnubbed, as though the matter was of little importance to him, ignoring or pretending to ignore the danger sign. “He’s a university professor, or that’s his cover anyway.”

  “He has been attached to a university, that’s true. Go on.”

  But only partly true, Boselli thought gleefully. The Clotheshorse was already giving himself away.

  “Go on,” repeated the General.

  “Well, he writes history books of some sort—about the Arabs, I seem to remember. Or something like that. And he’s one of Sir Frederick—ah—Clinton’s group—“

  “And what do you know about that,” the General pounced hard.

  Villari grinned at him boyishly. “Frankly, damn all, General. Am I supposed to? I didn’t think the British were in my sphere of operations.”

  “Where did you hear about Audley?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Villari was something less sure of himself now, and something less than convincing. “I keep my ear to the ground—I hear all sorts of things.”

  Mostly bottles opening and bedroom doors closing, thought Boselli. That was the strength of it.

  “You’ve never met Audley, then?”

  “No, never.” Villari used the certainty of his reply to cover the relief in his voice, without realising that he was thereby admitting that he knew what Audley looked like, Boselli thought with instant contempt. If this were the pride of the German section, then God help them: no wonder they gave him so much time off to ski. He gave himself away every time he opened his handsome mouth.

  But the General was obviously not interested in pursuing Villari’s incompetence any farther. He retired to the farther side of his desk and sat down heavily.

  “Tell him, Boselli,” he ordered dispassionately.

  Boselli gave a guilty start. “Tell him what, sir? About Dr. Audley?”

  “The Clinton group first. And don’t stand there sweating—sit down.” The General waved a hand. “Sit down both of you. And make it brief, Boselli. I haven’t all the afternoon.”

  “Sir—“ Boselli faced the General, then Villari. The punitive gleam in Villari’s eye drove him back at once to the General. “The origins of the group go back to the aftermath of the Suez failure—“

  “Not its history, man. Tell him what it does!”

  “Yes, sir. Well—“ Boselli began again nervously “—it doesn’t exactly do anything. I mean—“ Christ! He was getting himself as tangled as Villari had been, and with far less reason. He couldn’t ski one metre, or hang expensive suits on himself, or fornicate with foreign women. But this one gift he had.

  “It was formed as a passive intelligence group, not an active one,” he said firmly, his voice gaining authority with each word. “The various labels it has used have been more for accounting convenience than a guide to its function—it goes under Research and Development at the moment, but its true relation with the conventional intelligence arms is broadly analogous with pure research departments in a university and the applied research departments in major commercial companies.”

  “What the Americans call a ‘Think Tank’,” observed the General helpfully, watching Villari.

  “Broadly speaking, yes,” Boselli nodded. “But there was a considerable spin-off in foreward intelligence.”

  “They forecasted international trends.”

  “And trouble spots, sir. And likely reactions. They appear to have done this rather well. The only drawback was that they couldn’t do it to order. Clinton just let them follow their inclination, and then passed on what he thought might prove of value to the active departments and the appropriate ministries.”

  He risked a surreptitious glance at Villari and was gratified to observe that the mask of aristocratic boredom had descended again. If the fool was stupid enough to show his disdain before the General— disdain of a briefing ordered by the General—then so much the better: the General always noticed things like that.

  “Yes … that about sums it up. Sir Frederick Clinton is an uncommonly astute and persuasive man,” the General murmured, the last words half to himself as though he fancied the idea of a private Think Tank at his own fingertips.

  “Quite so, sir,” said Boselli quickly, hastily evaluating the note of envy in his master’s voice and thoroughly disapproving it. Such a group of intellectual outsiders would tend to devalue his own importance more likely than not. “But there is a disadvantage in his system—a disadvantage and a temptation. And this man Audley exemplifies each of them.”

  “Indeed?”

  “These men—“ Boselli martialled his thoughts very carefully, “—they are difficult to control. There is a—a rogue factor in them. Th
ey pursue truth rather than policy.”

  “I see …” The General nodded thoughtfully. “And if the truth gets out, you mean—?”

  “Exactly, sir!” It was an addictive pleasure to talk to a man who always grasped the exact meaning of one’s words. “This man Audley specialised in the Middle East. And he was good—he was very good. He was too good.”

  “He was unpopular in some quarters, that’s true.”

  Boselli nodded back. “He became committed to what he saw as the right course. Clinton had to get him out before there was a big scandal.” He paused, seeing the pitfall ahead just in time: the General evidently knew all about the Arab-Israeli report, and he disliked being told what he already knew—and what the Clotheshorse did not need to know even if he could grasp its significance.

  “And that exposed Clinton to the temptation to use him in a different way—to deal with specific assignments, the sort of awkward thing that would interest him.”

  The General started to speak and then cocked an eye at Villari, who seemed half-asleep now.

  “Would you say that was a temptation, Armando?”

  Villari stretched. “Hardly. I rather think—Signor Boselli is making something out of nothing. Clinton uses the fellow as a trouble-shooter, that’s all. Nothing strange about that, nothing at all.”

  Boselli watched the General’s almost imperceptible bob of agreement with dismay. He had failed to make his point, even though he felt in his bones he was right; it could only be that he had been a shade too quick to attack the Think Tank idea and the General had seen through him. He retired bitterly into his shell.

  Villari seemed to sense that the initiative was going begging again. He stirred languidly.

  “And just what has this so very terrifying Englishman to do with me, General?”

  The hatred inside Boselli was so absolute now that he could feel it as a lump in his chest, choking hum. That adjective had been as much an insult directed at him as would have been an actual blow on the face.

  “He is here in Rome at this moment,” said the General.

  “Doing what?”

  “Doing nothing—so far.” The General paused. “He arrived on the night flight from London early this morning.” He paused again. “With his wife, his child and his German au pair girl.”

  “His—?” Villari gave a short, incredulous laugh.

  Boselli lifted his eyes to the General’s face, the leaden lump of hatred instantly dispersed by his renewed interest.

  “His wife, his child and his au pair?” Villari repeated the words as though he doubted his ears.

  Fool, thought Boselli briefly. Fool not to wait for the additional facts which must lie beneath this one like vipers in a bed of flowers.

  “We weren’t watching the flight, and he was on the passenger list anyway. It was an ordinary scheduled flight and a routine entry. Purpose of visit—holiday.”

  Boselli waited patiently for the viper.

  “But as luck would have it we did have a man there.”

  “He was met?” Villari was trying to sound interested.

  “Audley? No, he was not met,” the General shook his head, “not in the sense you mean, anyway. But there was someone there waiting for him all the same. Someone who didn’t want to be seen by him. Someone who followed him when he drove off in his Hertz car.”

  Someone we know, thought Boselli.

  The General looked at him. “George Ruelle—does that name ring any bells with you, Boselli? It’s possible the bastard was before your time.”

  George Ruelle. The curious thing was that the General had used the English form of the given name, George.

  George Ruelle.

  Before his time. But his time here had been almost exactly continuous with the General’s—they had both been new boys at the same time, albeit one at the bottom and the other at the top.

  And that left one strong possibility at least.

  “A partisan, General?”

  “Good thinking.” The General’s smile was heartwarming. “Or should I say ‘good guessing’?”

  “It was a guess, sir,” Boselli admitted.

  “But a good one. Yes—Ruelle led a group in the next valley to mine. Group Stalingrad.”

  Group Stalingrad. Now, that rang a bell, or the faint echo of one— a memory of ancient and better-forgotten beastliness: of war to the knife with the Germans, when no prisoners were taken and no questions asked, and when reprisal brought bestial counterreprisal.

  It had passed the studious young Boselli by, but it had not left him unscarred.

  Group Stalingrad. That had been one of the merciless ones—and wasn’t there also a tale of British POWs (or were they American?) who had escaped in the confusion of 1943 only to be cold-heartedly sacrificed—by George Ruelle?

  If that was the man he must be quite old by now—and frighteningly young to have been the leader of a partisan group in those far-off, unhappy days…

  “This Ruelle followed Audley?” Villari’s voice cut through the memory.

  “We think so. He was there at the airport, waiting in his car. He didn’t collect anyone, he went off directly after Audley’s car. He doesn’t live in Rome and as far as we know he hasn’t any business here.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “That’s the problem. Our man wasn’t in a position to follow them himself. We know where Audley’s staying, of course. But for the rest—“ The General’s shoulders lifted eloquently.

  It was pretty slim. In fact it was really far too slim to act on if that was all there was to it, thought Boselli, still watching the General intently. A viper there certainly was; in fact it was patently because of that viper—Ruelle—that the General had become interested in Audley’s arrival in the first place, not because of Audley.

  He re-ran the General’s voice in his head: there had been a tightness about it when it supplied its minimal information about Ruelle, “a group in the valley next to mine. Group Stalingrad.” There could very well have been bad blood—if not actual blood—between the two partisan leaders, both young and ruthless, but one a Communist (only a Red would have named his group like that) and the other a blue-blooded army officer. Indeed, the more one thought about it, the more certain it seemed.

  But there was precious little in reality to connect Ruelle and Audley beyond the fact that they had left the airport one after another.

  “Is Ruelle active?” asked Villari.

  Boselli looked at him quickly, annoyed with himself for not asking the same question. The Clotheshorse’s mind must be labouring along roughly the same track as his own, but its very slowness had enabled it to see something he had overlooked: tailing people was a young man’s game, not an old man’s one.

  The General considered the question. “If he is, then this is the first we’ve heard about it,” he said slowly. “In fact, if he is then it will be— disturbing.”

  “Why so?”

  Once again there was an uncharacteristic delay before the General answered. “There was a time—it’s a long time ago now—but there was a time when George Ruelle was considered to be a coming man, and a very dangerous one, too.”

  He looked from one to another of them. “That was after the war, when things were … very different from now. Tito hadn’t shown his hand then, and Albania was Red, and it was touch and go in Greece. Those were the days when the bastard used to visit Moscow two or three times a year.” The General smiled suddenly and frostily. “I rather think that if things had gone his way, then he might have been sitting at this desk. And I would have been very dead, that’s certain.”

  The frosty smile faded. “But they didn’t go his way. And when Stalin died, that was the end of him. They didn’t want to know him any more.”

  Villari frowned. “But there’s still a Stalinist Wing here—I saw Brusati in the Senate as large as life when I went to see my uncle there in the spring—“

  “True, boy!” The General nodded. “But Stalinism is one thing and Stalin
’s crimes are another. There are some things even the hardliners don’t want to be reminded of, and that’s what George Ruelle does to them: he reminds them of the dirty things they’ve done. So they’ve disciplined him and pensioned him off—and told him to keep the hell out of their way and ours. And so he did, until we spotted him again at the airport.”

  So it was even slimmer still. If Ruelle was a has-been, his presence in the car park at the time of Audley’s arrival was probably no more than coincidence.

  And as for Audley—Purpose of visit—holiday might well be the fact of it. The whole business was simply not worth following up, and the sooner the General was advised to that effect, the better.

  “Well—“ he began neutrally (the General liked to be shown at least two sides of any problem, no matter how many or how few sides there were), “—in my view—“

  “Nothing to it,” Villari steamrollered over his words. “If we acted on every chance meeting like this we’d never have time for real work. Ruelle obviously doesn’t count any more—the Russians are working towards a detente at the moment, anyway, to take more of the stuffing out of NATO, so they wouldn’t use his sort anyway. And—Jesus Christ!—the Englishman’s got his family with him! It just adds up to a big zero.” He turned at last towards Boselli, but with offensive courtesy. “Of course, Signor Boselli may have other ideas, I’ve no doubt…”

  The lump of hatred came back so fiercely, so suddenly, that Boselli felt the sweat start on his forehead in spite of the air conditioning.

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” he heard himself say in the far-off distance.

  There was a ringing silence in the room, as though even the distant hum of the city had been stilled by his words.

  But what ideas? he thought wildly.

  Only that the bullying swine had pinched his words, just as he had stolen his information, and that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—agree with him under any circumstances!