October Men

by Anthony Price

  “You know him?”

  “Know him? I thought he was dead! I thought he’d been dead for years.”

  “But you know him.”

  “No, but I’ve heard of him. My first cousin—my second cousin’s father—knew him before he moved north. He said that was the best thing that happened to Campania since the Krauts retreated—the Bastard heading for Rome where the action was. He really was a bastard in the fullest sense of the word. The Italian Stalin, that was his ambition, Enrico said. But you mean to say he’s alive—and—?”

  Boselli nodded sagely. “Alive, Signor Richardson, and positively connected with this.”

  “But I thought the Bastard was drummed out of the Party back in the fifties?”

  “So he was. And Segato with him. That is what worries us now—he does not fit the pattern.”

  “You mean your Communists have gone respectable?”

  Boselli snorted. “They will never be that! But they pretend to respectability, and Ruelle—he is a creature from the Dark Ages, a man of violence. A Neanderthal.”

  “Phew!” Richardson scratched his head. “And old David’s in the middle. I’m damn glad you’ve got him safe and sound.” He stared at Boselli suddenly. “He ducked you both at Ostia, then—just like that?”

  “So it would seem, signore. There was some—some confusion, you understand—“

  He stopped, at a loss for a moment as he realised how grossly he was understating the nightmare situation which had developed in the aftermath of the shooting.

  In spite of Porro’s best efforts they had been quite unable to contain events. First the local police had arrived, their zeal apparently strengthened by a determination not to let the Pubblica Sicurezza hog any of the limelight. Rumours of a clash between Fascist and Maoist student factions had quickly blossomed into a Roman gangland battle, and then into a terrorist-anarchist bloodbath, which in turn had drawn crowds of sightseers, squads of journalists and a convoy of screeching ambulances. Two busloads of German tourists who had just entered the excavations added a dimension of babel to the confusion.

  Confusion was a totally inadequate word for it, and it had taken no special talent for either the assassins or the Englishman and his wife to make their getaway in the last precious moments before it had descended; ironically it had been Boselli and Porro who had been first trapped and then humiliated…

  Boselli just managed to control an involuntary shudder at the memory of it as he became aware that Richardson was still staring at him, curiosity and puzzlement mixed on his face.

  “There was—some confusion,” he repeated mechanically.

  Richardson smiled, but wryly this time. “I can imagine it.” He paused. “I wonder what the devil he was up to?”

  “Ruelle?”

  “Him too.” The half-Englishman nodded. “Perhaps him most of all. But I was actually wondering what Dr. Audley was doing in Ostia Antica in the first place.”

  Boselli watched him sidelong. In repose, now unsmiling again, the brown face was too long, the jaw too angular, for good looks. But more than that there was an underlying worry in the expression which had escaped him until now. So the English too did not know everything, or did not know quite how to control what they had set loose in Italy.

  It was a timely reminder that they were not to be trusted. Even in the days of their power and glory that had been true; now, in their age of decline, they would be as dangerously unpredictable as an old bull. In that respect at least George Ruelle and his fatherland were now disturbingly alike.

  XII

  LITTLE RAT-FACE BOSELLI had spoken the truth about Audley’s detention, anyway. The villa was new and surpassingly ugly, its salmon-pink tiles and bright red ironwork at odds with the colours of nature all around it. But if it lacked elegance as a home it was a decidedly superior temporary jail, the more so when its prisoner was established comfortably under a gay awning at the far end of the terrace with bottles on the table beside him.

  Audley did not get up as they approached him.

  “Well—hullo, Peter.”

  It was a low-key welcome, at least when coming from a man who had been plucked off the autostrada by the cops, no matter how well they had behaved or how comfortably they had bestowed him; there was more resignation in it than pleasure, and no surprise at all. But that was pretty much to be expected: Audley had had time since his arrest to compute most of the angles, with the arrival of someone from the department figuring in at least one of them. And being Audley he could be relied on at least not to play the guiltless innocent.

  “Hullo, David.”

  He looked tired, though, thought Richardson. And also there was something else he had never before seen in the big man’s face, an obstinate blankness like a safety door closed against him.

  “This is Signor Boselli, of General Montuori’s staff in Rome, David,” he began cautiously.

  “Signor Boselli,” Audley nodded. He gestured towards the table. “You’ll join me? The drinks here are on the house, it seems.”

  He turned up two fresh glasses and splashed wine into them, topping his own up afterwards. But the wine bottle had been hardly touched before, Richardson noted, while the aqua minerale was almost empty.

  David lounged back in his chair. “So you’ve come to bail me out, young Peter. I’m very grateful.”

  “We have to work our passage first, David.”

  “Indeed?” Audley murmured blandly. “Go on, Peter.”

  “After what happened at Ostia you’re not the most popular Englishman in Italy, you know.”

  “At Ostia?” Audley glanced briefly at Boselli. “I’ll tell you something for free, Peter: whatever may have happened at Ostia was none of my doing. I’m not responsible for homegrown Italian talent.”

  There was an element of truth in that, thought Richardson irritably, but it hardly accounted for Audley’s lack of co-operation when it must be obvious enough to him that the Italians had the whip hand.

  Boselli drained his wine and stood up self-consciously.

  “Excuse me, signori,” he mumbled. “There are things I must do—excuse me. I will return shortly.”

  Audley watched him off the terrace, then turned towards Richardson, one eyebrow raised ironically.

  “Now you’re not going to tell me he’s gone for a quick pee, are you, Peter?”

  “Not unless you twist my arm.”

  “Good. So you both agreed on how to handle me.” He nodded to himself. “But just because he’s got you frightened that doesn’t mean I have to get talkative.”

  “Him—? Got me frightened? Him?”

  “You aren’t? Well, don’t be deceived by appearances, boy—although I admit they certainly are deceptive.” Audley stared reflectively in the direction Boselli had gone. “Unless I’m very much mistaken that little fellow is one of Montuori’s top guns, specially imported for the occasion.”

  Richardson goggled at him, and then down the empty terrace wordlessly.

  “I could be wrong, of course.” Audley stood up. “He’s a new one on me I admit… But let’s take a turn among those olive trees down there by the cliff. They didn’t mind me walking there—there isn’t anywhere you can get out, but it’s a little more private.”

  Richardson followed him obediently down the white steps into the sparse little grove of olives until they came to a low stone wall. The roar of the traffic on the coast road far below rose to meet them. Away to the left Salerno spread out invitingly, and he remembered the last time he had been there, with a delectable Swedish girl he’d picked up at Amalfi—

  “I want you to get me out of here, Peter,” said Audley in his ear urgently. “I don’t care how you do it, but just get me out of here quickly.”

  Richardson faced him. “It can’t be done, David. They’ve had a man killed, maybe two. Montuori phoned Sir Frederick, person to person. He’s out for blood. In fact they’re both ruddy well out for blood—only it’s yours Sir Frederick would like and Montuori isn’t so cho
osy. I rather think it’s someone else’s he wants more than yours, anyway.”

  Audley studied his face for a moment, then shook his head. “Nobody’ll get anything unless you get me out of here. Without me you haven’t got a prayer of a chance. You just don’t understand what’s going on—neither does Fred.”

  Richardson looked at him in momentary surprise: this was the old Machiavellian Audley right enough—on the scaffold, but ready to bargain that what he had in his head was too valuable for anyone to dare cutting it off. It had worked well in the past, and it had been allowed to work, because in his own way Audley had always delivered the goods. But from the moment old Charlie Clark had pulled the trigger too much had happened, and too much was known, for it to work this time.

  “You’re dead wrong there, David.” It was brutal, but it would be quicker this way. And anyway, he owed Audley something like honesty for old time’s sake. “We know ruddy near the lot.”

  In spite of the noise from below there was a silence between them for a moment.

  “The lot?” Audley measured the word.

  “ ‘Near,’ I said.”

  “How near?”

  “Ian Howard. Eugenio Narva. Neville Macready.” Richardson paused. “And the Little Bird from East Berlin, of course—the Little Bird who sang in the wrong ear.”

  Not Joseph Hemingway or Peter Korbel or Bastard Ruelle—not yet. They were the second wave of attackers, ready if the shock troops failed to break through. Old times’ sake didn’t go all the way.

  “I see.”

  Audley turned away, staring out over the bay.

  “So … Neville Macready,” he murmured to himself as though that one name accounted for the rest. Disquietingly he seemed almost relieved by it but still unbowed: the shock troops were not through yet.

  “David, you’ve got to come clean with us now. There’s no other way.”

  “Come clean?” The sudden anger, cold and bitter, deepened Audley’s voice. “Come clean? Of all the goddam bloody stupid meddling fornicating idiots—blundering, fourth-rate, sanctimonious twats—“

  “David—“ Richardson was shaken by the sudden loss of control. On occasion he had heard Audley swear before, and more foully, but it had always been for effect, never from despair.

  “Not you, Peter—not you.” Audley shook his head quickly. “They couldn’t trust me—just this once—and they’ve blown it because of that, blown it sky high.”

  “It wasn’t like that at all—“ Richardson cut in desperately “—nobody blew it for you. There was a leak in the department, in the Reading Room where you had that talk with Macready.”

  “A leak?” Audley said incredulously.

  “The Librarian—Hemingway. We traced his contact just before I flew out—“

  “The same old story—you’ve heard it all before.” Cox had sounded bored. “He lived in Orpington—stock-broker belt—and he wanted to keep up with the Joneses. Only the Joneses in Orpington were too rich for his blood, with his army pension and what he was paid by your lot. You’re not exactly good payers, are you? But his neighbours thought he was a senior civil servant and he had to live up to what he’d let them think. He was easy meat, Captain Richardson. Easy for an old hand like Peter Korbel—“

  “Peter Korbel? Good God—I thought we’d expelled him with Protopopov and the Moscow Narodny Bank man. Months ago!” Audley’s surprise was unconcealed.

  Richardson grimaced. Their reactions had been identical.

  “Protopopov and Adashev went, but we let Korbel stay on for a bit.” Over the phone Cox hadn’t even the grace to sound apologetic. “He wasn’t considered dangerous enough—one of the hewers of wood and drawers of water, Captain. Besides, there’s going to be a big clear-out in a couple of months’ time if the Cabinet agrees. We’d got him on that list. We were rather hoping the Russians would save us the trouble, actually—he’s long overdue for retirement. Must be all of sixty…”

  “Retirement is right!” Audley snarled. “But you’ve picked him up now—and Hemingway, I take it?”

  “Hemingway’s dead.” Richardson decided that it was not the time to elaborate on the circumstances of the Librarian’s death. Audley had quite enough to worry about as it was.

  “And Korbel?”

  “Gone—vanished.”

  Richardson waited for Audley to swear again, but the big man only stared at him in silence for a few seconds and then turned away once more, his self-discipline clamped back tight again.

  “But listen, David—“ Richardson felt aggrieved that Audley had still managed to ask all the questions instead of answering them—and that he still seemed set on playing both ends against the middle “—there’s still a damn good chance the Russians haven’t been able to put two and two together. Maybe Hemingway didn’t hear everything. After Ostia…”

  The affray in Ostia was the awkward piece in the pattern, the very example of bloody public scandal which men on both sides risked their skins to avoid. It could only have happened because the Italian PS men and the Communist agents who were dogging Audley’s footsteps had collided head-on and had panicked—that was Boselli’s explanation, and if Korbel had been unable to warn his Italian opposite number about Hemingway’s death it was an explanation that made sense. But, even more significantly, the presence of those incompetent Reds surely meant that the opposition didn’t yet know what Audley was up to.

  That thought roused another one, much closer to home: the opposition weren’t the only ones in the dark about Audley’s actions there—

  “Just what the hell were you doing in Ostia this morning?”

  Audley didn’t reply. He didn’t even appear to hear the question, but seemed totally abstracted in the great sweep of land and sea.

  “For Christ’s sake, David!” Richardson’s sorely-tried cool finally slipped. Only a few hours ago he’d fixed a date with little Bernadette O’Connell of the Dublin Provisional to meet in Mooney’s bar next day and eat at Donovan’s place in Balbriggan and end the evening strictly non-politically in her flat off Clanbrassil Street. She’d be waiting for him now, her passionate Anglo-Italian boyfriend with his sales list of Belgian sniperscopes and American rocket launchers that would never see the soft light of Irish day.

  “David—there have been some of your bloody stupid fornicating meddling idiots who’ve stuck out their bloody stupid fornicating necks for you this last twelve hours, including me for one. If you clam up now the Italians’ll turn nasty, and then we’ve really had it.”

  Audley met the appeal stone-faced. “If I don’t get out of here smartly, Peter, I agree with you: we’ve all had it. So just get me out.”

  “Man—you’re crazy!” Richardson stared at Audley in bewilderment at his obtuseness. “I tell you for the last time, it’s impossible—not after Ostia. And I tell you this too, David: I damn well wouldn’t do it now if it was. Either you work with me and little Ratface or you rot here until Montuori decides what to do with you. It’s shit or bust this time.”

  Audley blinked. One corner of his mouth dropped and twitched, though whether in anger or despair Richardson could not tell. He had never before seen quite this look on this face.

  “I’m sorry, David. But that’s the way it is.”

  “Sorry?” Anger and despair, and bitterness too. “Yes, Peter, I think you very well may be.”

  Richardson accepted the bitterness with bitterness of his own at Audley’s lack of understanding that he was sorry already. Sorry for the end of old times’ sake, the end of advice and the exchange of ideas, and of evenings and weekends at the old house in Steeple Horley… Sorry for friendship’s end even where friendship was a luxury, and maybe a dangerous one at that.

  Not that there was any choice, because it would be fatal for Audley to have been set loose while the Bastard was at large.

  “You know who we’re up against?”

  “I’m permitted to know, then?”

  Richardson ignored the sarcasm. “You’ve ever heard of Georg
e Ruelle?”

  “I’ve heard of him, yes.”

  It was a flat statement: evidently the Bastard didn’t frighten Audley.

  “Those were his men at Ostia. David—you were damn lucky to get out of that.” He grasped childishly at the obvious justification of his refusal to connive at Audley’s escape. “You could have got Faith killed there, never mind yourself.”

  Audley showed no reaction at the mention of his wife.

  “Where is she now, incidentally?” asked Richardson.

  “Back in Rome, of course.”

  Another flat statement: it was none of anyone else’s business what Faith Audley was doing, least of all now ex-friend Peter Richardson’s —the message was plain enough.

  Richardson sighed. “What were you doing in Ostia?”

  Audley looked down his nose at him. “Unlikely as it may seem to you—“ the blandness was insulting, “—I was showing my wife the ruins.”

  The simple logic of the answer was embarrassing. He had fallen into the trap of assuming that everything Audley had done was significant, forgetting that the big man had also been unaware of what had been happening in England, and had no reason to suspect that anything could go wrong. If he had he would never have hazarded his wife by keeping her at his side, but as it was there had originally been no particular urgency about this journey southwards; indeed, the whole Italian trip had probably been planned as a holiday, with the descent on Narva as a surreptitious side expedition.

  Richardson swore inwardly, recalling his pleasure only a few hours earlier at the sight of the familiar signpost to Upper Horley. Even the wild unpredictability of the Dublin IRA was maybe preferable to this, which already had the smell of disaster about it.

  “And now you’re heading for Narva?”

  Audley nodded a little wearily. “I was. Until your new friends picked me up.”

  “No friends of mine.” He emphasised the words hopefully, offering them like an olive branch. “We’ve got to work with them—they’ve got us by the short hairs at the moment. But if we can get the name of Little Bird’s contact without their getting it, maybe it’ud put Fred in a better mood. They’re not on to the real thing yet, I don’t think, David.”