by John Harris
‘The water’s coming over the top of the dam. They told us we had to let them know if it did.’
Henry turned abruptly towards Caporelli’s office, his brows down, his eyes angry, suddenly sick of the whole complicated set-up, sick of the obstructions that had been put in their path, sick of Mornaghini’s hesitation, sick of the threat of Stettner’s Montanari. He had fought against involvement ever since he had arrived. He had told himself again and again that it wasn’t his affair, that his concern finished with the opinion he had expressed. But somehow he was bound closer to Cadivescovo than he had realized. It was beyond his power merely to put the affair behind him and feel that he was finished with it apart from the report he would have to write. Caporelli had involved him, and so had Stettner and Maggie and Sister Ursula. A swelling sense of disgust and anger flooded over him, indignation mingled with contempt and a sudden new fear.
Caporelli stared after him for a second, then he followed him.
‘Open your safe,’ Henry said brusquely.
Caporelli’s eyes gleamed. ‘You will do it?’ he asked.
Henry nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Now. Let’s go.’
Fifteen
The rain was lashing down now and they could hear it roaring on the glass roof of the veranda, and trickling heavily into the puddles that had formed on the gravel where the guttering had overflowed.
Caporelli was taking Maggie’s canvas bag from his safe and stuffing everything from it into a large leather briefcase. ‘Here,’ he said, handing it to Henry. ‘Take care of that. And handle it carefully. I’ll find some decent boots.’
Henry was waiting in the hall with Maggie when he reappeared, dressed in a long rubber hooded cape, his legs heavily stockinged, thick kletteschühe on his feet. His eyes were bright and there was a new look in them. The stockings and boots and the cape had transformed him from a suave hotel proprietor to a mountain man, and he looked tough and capable and resilient, and he was enjoying every minute of it, even the urgency.
He glanced at Henry’s light mackintosh and shoes.
‘Is that all you’ve got?’ he asked.
Henry’s face was pale and tense, and the anger inside him, as unexpected and searing as the fury that had driven him once before in Egypt to defy authority and risk imprisonment for his beliefs, boiled up again. ‘There’s no time for anything else now,’ he said brusquely. ‘We’ve got a job to do.’
‘Strong boots would help us do it better,’ Caporelli retorted.
Henry shrugged and looked at Maggie. ‘Stay here,’ he said.
‘What’ll happen?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’ Henry shook his head. ‘Nothing will happen. We’ll stop it. We’ll stop it somehow. We must.’
Caporelli picked up the canvas bag and took a big hand lamp and a long torch from a cupboard. The Alfa Romeo was in the courtyard, black and shining in the lights of the hotel as the rainwater streamed off it. Caporelli placed the bag and the torches on the back seat, then dropped into his place behind the wheel. The interior smelled of damp and through his anger Henry became aware of the wetness of Caporelli’s cape brushing against his trouser leg.
Caporelli started the engine and let in the clutch quickly, so that the wheels spun before gripping, then the car shot off with a jerk. Unexpectedly, he didn’t drive on to the road but headed towards the garages behind the hotel, where the Super-cortemaggiore sign was rattling and banging in the wind. There he began to disconnect the battery of the Fiat van.
‘We have everything we need,’ he said. ‘Explosives. Detonators. Wire. All we need is the electricity to fire it. That’s all. We’ll use this battery. It should be more than enough. If it fails, we’ve got the torch and the hand lamp. Both six volts. That’s enough to crack any nut, so long as we keep them dry.’
He lifted the battery off its platform and placed it in the back of the car with sacks and a pile of tools which he snatched off the wall above the workbench, then he found string and rope and a crow bar and adhesive tape, and for safety took down an ice-axe that was hanging over the door. ‘We might as well be prepared,’ he said.
He nodded towards the car and they climbed in and he drove slowly out of the hotel grounds.
‘We’ll avoid the town,’ he said. ‘Because of the soldiers. They might try to stop us.’
He turned right, away from the town, and began to climb the hill, the rain lashing against the windscreen and dropping in sheets across their view. From time to time, the greyness of the mountain was lit up by lightning as it flared in great purple glows that were followed by the crashing of the thunder. Henry could see rain-whipped trees and a roadway that was littered with leaves and twigs and even small branches that the storm had brought down; and the water running off the walls, bringing down silt and pebbles, and wet rocks glowing in the stormy light.
They followed the road until it narrowed, Caporelli flinging the car round the corners in a way that would normally have terrified Henry. Eventually the asphalt stopped, and they bumped savagely over a stony road, then that stopped too and became merely a track, then as the track steepened and the engine began to whine in difficulty as the wheels refused to grip any more, Caporelli fought the car into the entrance to a field by a group of houses and a small church.
‘We’ll not get it any further,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to walk now. It’ll be a hard climb.’
‘We can do it,’ Henry said shortly. ‘We can do it all right.’
Caporelli opened the canvas bag in which Maggie had brought the pentolite and, wrapping the heavy battery round with sacking, he placed it inside the bag with the torches.
‘That’ll have to do,’ he said. ‘We still have the torches as an emergency.’
He stuffed the tools and string and adhesive tape after the torches, then zipped up the bag and slung the rope round his shoulders.
‘Here.’ He passed the ice-axe to Henry. ‘You never know. We might have to dig.’
He managed a quick smile, but it was thin and cold and mirthless and even through his anger Henry was startled by the change that action had worked on Caporelli.
Henry was soaked within a couple of minutes of climbing out of the car. Caporelli handed him the brief-case with another warning to handle it carefully, and took the crowbar, and they set off up the mountain with the battery between them, bowed against the weather and the lashing rain.
Even with the driving rage inside him, Henry found it hard to keep up with Caporelli, who was sturdier, fit as a fiddle and used to the mountains. In addition, he had on heavy climbing boots and the cape, while Henry’s lightweight mackintosh and shoes were worse than useless.
The path wound upwards between isolated farmyards and the inevitable carved crucifixes and stacks of sawed winter wood. After a while the clumps of trees gave way to stunted shrubs and more sparse vegetation, and the wind up there, carrying the lashing sheets of rain, blew cold against them. Now that they were away from the shelter of the clumps of trees, it was harder going, with the bag containing the battery between them, and the path was like a small river, the earth beneath it beaten by the rain into slippery mud.
They stopped once to get their breath and they could already only just see the roofs of Cadivescovo below them, shining in the rain. The lake was almost invisible in the mist and there was no view of the mountains on the other side. Henry was already cold and wet, but indifferent to his discomfort in his smouldering rage.
Caporelli adjusted his cape and pointed to his right. ‘This way,’ he said, giving Henry a little confident smile.
‘How much further?’ Henry said.
‘Two miles, I guess.’
‘Come on.’
Caporelli gave him a curious, admiring look, and set off after him, his hair in his eyes, the water running across his cheeks and into his mouth, having to hurry to keep up with Henry’s thin frame, bowed under its load and completely indifferent to the weather.
Eventually they saw the lights of Oswino’s farm and they
pushed towards it through the rain, splashing through the torrents of water that were pouring off the mountain.
‘Oswino’ll help,’ Caporelli said. ‘I’ll make him.’
The door was swinging open and they pushed through it into the house. The huge fire had burnt into a heap of cold ashes and the telephone receiver was hanging on its wire below the instrument. There was no sign of Oswino.
Caporelli’s face was puzzled and angry as he splashed through the downstairs rooms. The water was coming in through the back door and was moving in a rapidly spreading pool across the flagstones.
The place seemed to be empty and they were just on the point of leaving when they heard sounds from the back of the house. They scrambled through the back door, which slammed open for them before the gusts of wind as they released the catch, and through a river of muddy water that was roaring through the yard.
They found Oswino struggling in the mud at the back of the barn. The pond just above the house had overflowed as the streams rushing from the mountain poured into it, and the water had washed away the foundations of the barn. Part of it had collapsed across his legs in a tangle of heavy timbers and he was lying face down, trying to free himself, his clothes saturated, his face streaked with mud, half submerged in the rushing brown stream that flowed over and round him and down to the lake.
He looked up as they approached and the furious frustrated expression on his face changed to one of fright as he saw them. The crowbar he had in his hands splashed into the mud and he strained upwards towards a small handcart that stood hub-deep in the water alongside him, almost out of reach, trying to drag a tarpaulin across it.
They dropped their loads and ran across to him and, with the crowbar, managed to raise the timbers sufficiently for him to scramble free. He didn’t even bother to thank them, however, and even through the misery of the lashing rain in their faces they were aware of the oddness in his manner. Caporelli stared at him for a second, frowning, then he jumped forward and slammed him aside with a sweep of his arm. Oswino flopped down into a sitting position in the mud but, as Caporelli reached for the tarpaulin over the handcart, he scrambled to his feet again and leapt forward to stop him. To Henry’s surprise, Caporelli swung round and in the same movement slammed his fist into the farmer’s face and Oswino went down again, and Henry saw then that Caporelli had a pistol in his hand.
Oswino was on his feet again at once and Caporelli hit him back-handed across the mouth with the pistol. Oswino staggered back, blood starting from his split lips, slipped and flopped down again. Caporelli dropped the pistol, and reaching down for him, dragged him to his feet, half supported in his grip and trying to spit out a tooth.
Caporelli’s face was contorted with rage and he slapped the farmer twice across the face with the flat of his hand, first one way, then the other.
‘Look,’ he said to Henry, jerking his head at the handcart. ‘In there!’
Blinking the rain out of his eyes, Henry saw rifles and a sub-machine gun under the tarpaulin and he realized at once that the accident he’d had outside Oswino’s gate had been no accident at all. Caporelli had been dead right when he’d said that Henry might get hurt. Even Oswino had been in the plot. A lot of things were suddenly explained – even the calendar of St Stephen’s, Vienna, in the Oswinos’ kitchen.
Caporelli was still hitting Oswino, viciously, transformed suddenly in a way that Henry couldn’t have imagined possible.
‘You!’ he was saying. ‘You and that bitch of a wife! This is where you kept your guns. Under the barn floor!’
Oswino tried to struggle free, but Caporelli knocked him down again. At last he stopped and dragged the farmer to his feet, limp and bleeding from the mouth.
‘Get going,’ he said savagely. ‘Now, you son of a whore!’
Oswino gave him a frightened look and started to run, his feet slipping in the mud as he scrambled away from them up the slope.
Caporelli started after him for a second, his eyes blazing.
‘No wonder Alois was always up here,’ he said furiously. ‘No wonder that worm never objected! They were all in it together. This is what she wanted him to collect – before the water washed away the hiding-place.’
He gestured at Henry and began to load rifles into his arms.
‘Into the pond,’ he snapped, indicating the little artificial dam Oswino had built, where a few ducks were swimming happily, indifferent to the weather, watched by a rooster and a few wretched chickens crouching under the dripping eaves of a broken-down shed.
The ducks squawked and skittered across the water with flapping wings and paddling feet as Henry threw the rifles in, then Caporelli joined him and flung in the machine gun and pistol with a savage gesture.
Returning to the barn, he peered among the splintered timbers, and kicked angrily at the mud.
‘There’ll be more in there,’ he said wearily. ‘There’ll be a whole store of them. That’s what he was doing when it collapsed. This is where they’ve been keeping them all this time.’
He glanced around him through the curtains of rain, uncertain for a second, then he gestured angrily upwards at the torrents of water that were rushing down on them and through the farm.
‘It’s all from the dam,’ he said. ‘And it’s not coming through the sluice gates, either. Come on. We can’t stay here all day. There’ll be plenty of time to sort out the Oswinos later.’
He picked up the crowbar and they adjusted their loads, then they set off again, stumbling and falling in the rushing stream that the rain had made of the path to the dam.
After a while they came across a crude wooden shed, obviously where Oswino kept his cattle, and stopped to catch their breath. Henry’s cigarettes were already only limp wet tubes, but Caporelli produced a packet from under his cape and they lit them and drew in the smoke gratefully, though it tasted sour in the damp atmosphere.
‘We start really climbing now,’ Caporelli said.
Henry nodded and lifted the brief-case, which was beginning to weigh like lead against his muscles now, impeding everything he did, and reached for the handle of the canvas bag. Caporelli hoisted the heavy crowbar to his shoulder and took the other handle.
‘We shall do it,’ he said, flashing a grateful look at Henry.
As they went higher, stumbling and slipping, they began to meet rocks, their wet faces shining dully in the ugly light of the sky, and had to scramble round them and over them, clawing with cold fingers at the rain-wet surfaces, their feet sliding from under them on the wet grass and mud as they pushed their loads ahead of them.
‘There it is!’ Caporelli stopped, breathing heavily, and pointed upwards, and through the mist Henry could see the grey stretch of the stopper wall, against the east shoulder of La Fortezza, and round the other side the grey curve of the main wall.
‘It’s up to you,’ Henry panted. ‘I don’t know much about this department. You’ll have to tell me what to do.’
‘The gates are in the tunnels,’ Caporelli said. ‘It should be dry in there, thank God. We can’t afford to get the batteries wet. We can lay a charge and run off a wire and stand well clear.’ He glanced at Henry, noticing the fury still on his face. ‘Aynree,’ he said quietly. ‘This is going to be difficult. You can’t afford to be angry – not even with anybody. You’ll need a clear head.’
Henry drew a deep breath and fought down the anger inside him. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’m all right. I shan’t drop anything or start it off before you’re ready.’
Caporelli smiled. ‘Thank God the dam’s still standing,’ he said.
Henry looked up. ‘It doesn’t look as though it will for long,’ he commented.
The grey main wall was spouting jets of water all along its surface. Henry could see them plainly, even through the rain, white against the grey-brown stone, and the centre of the wall seemed more saddle-shaped than ever. There was a steady flood of water pushing over it, driving through the dip. The eerie light glinted on it, showing it clearly i
n a fifty-yard stretch like a weir. Over the noise of the rain, they could hear another sound, low and moaning, like a huge animal whimpering in distress.
‘It’s the dam,’ Henry said. ‘It’s going to give. Hurry, for God’s sake.’
Caporelli glanced up, his face twisted. ‘We shall fix it,’ he said. ‘We’re not too late.’
They scrambled the last half-mile to the stopper wall, gasping and panting and streaming with perspiration in spite of the rain and cold wind, and slithered along its foot to the entrances to the tunnels. Water was already pouring out of the first one they came to, as though the gate was leaking badly, and the tunnel and gully were choked with rubbish. They lay gasping against the wall, their feet in the puddles, fighting to get their breath, their muscles trembling after the climb. Even Caporelli was beginning to look exhausted now, and Henry’s legs didn’t seem to belong to him.
‘Come on!’
As Henry struggled to his feet and pulled the brief-case towards him, Caporelli grabbed his arm so that he fell back against the wall, feeling its icy surface through the thin clothes at his back.
‘Wait!’
Caporelli’s eyes were alert and his whole body was tense, his head on one side, listening intently.
‘There’s somebody in there,’ he whispered.
Then, above the gurgle and hiss of the escaping water running down the sluice, Henry also heard movement inside the tunnel, the occasional click of the metal heel of a shoe against a stone and the clank of a metal pan, as though someone were moving around alongside the sluice.
‘Wasescha again?’
Caporelli met Henry’s eyes and shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’
Kneeling in the mud, he took the ice-axe, then slowly got to his feet, edging towards the entrance to the tunnel, one foot after the other, the rubber-soled boots making no sound on the rocks. Then, with the torch ahead of him, its powerful beam switched on and blinding, he jumped round the corner. There was a cry from inside, a thin, high cry that was quite unexpected, then silence.