by John Harris
He looked at the expression on Henry’s face and sneered, his eyes bleak and cold with the dregs of a ravaged idealism, like the blue china eyes of a doll. ‘You should live here, Englishman,’ he said. ‘Then you might know something of the faith we have and the frustration that we’ve suffered. We shan’t soil the joy of victory with half-hearted Socialism and collusion with the East.’
He turned to Dittli, who was examining the contents of the brief-case, and they began to speak in German.
‘Who are they, Signore?’ Giovanni whispered. ‘Why is the Signor Stettner here?’
Henry drew a deep breath. ‘They are Montanari, Giovanni,’ he said quietly ‘They are the people who have been blowing up the railway bridges and the trains.’
Giovanni’s eyes narrowed and Henry heard him draw in his breath sharply. ‘Are they the people who killed Sister Ursula, Signore?’
Henry nodded. ‘Yes, Giovanni. They are the people who killed Sister Ursula.’
The boy made a move forward and Henry grabbed his arm and held him tightly. Caporelli’s eyes were agonized.
‘Be still, Giovanni,’ Henry whispered. ‘For the love of God, be still.’
Stettner and Dittli had finished talking now and Stettner swung the pistol round to Caporelli. ‘Where’s the rest of the plastic, brother-in-law? he demanded. ‘You’ve used some of it.’
Caporelli glared back, his mouth tight, but Wasescha gestured towards the sluice gate and Dittli swung the torch round so that the spray from the jets playing on the wall became golden in its beam. Stettner nodded and Wasescha climbed across the rubble and stood knee-deep in the water as he began to climb to detach the charges.
Caporelli swung round after him, but Stettner slammed him back against the wall with a blow across the face with the pistol. Caporelli shook his head like a wounded animal and Henry saw there was a deep gash across his cheek. Even as he watched, the blood welled up in little beads and began to trickle down his face and off the end of his chin on to his shirt. Giovanni’s eyes narrowed and glittered blackly, and Henry gripped his arm more tightly.
‘Look, Stettner,’ he said savagely, as he saw Wasescha reaching up to the holes they’d dug, to remove the detonators. ‘That dam’s dangerous. It’s likely to go. That’s why we’re blowing off the gate.’
Stettner gestured angrily. ‘I don’t care if the dam goes,’ he snapped. ‘We’ve got better uses for plastic explosive than draining an old dam.’
‘What about the town?’ Caporelli yelled, his fury exploding out of him at last.
Stettner shrugged. ‘It’s filled with Italian police at the moment.’
Henry fought down his disgust and forced himself to speak calmly, knowing he’d get nothing out of Stettner in the black rage that was tearing at him.
‘There are a lot of your friends down there, too,’ he pointed out.
‘None that we shall miss. Our friends are in the mountains where they’ve been for months, some of them for years.’
‘Not Elena Oswino,’ Caporelli jeered. ‘She was down there looking for you.’
The laughter died out of Stettner’s face. ‘Are you sure, brother-in-law?’
‘She was looking for you in the Stettnerhof. That’s why we came.’
Stettner’s eyes flickered and for a second, as he looked uncertain, Henry thought they might dissuade him. Then he shrugged and grinned. ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘Elena knows where to go.’
Wasescha was removing the plastic now, reaching into the holes they’d hacked out of the rotten cement.
‘What else have you got, brother-in-law?’ Stettner jeered.
Dittli was examining the canvas bag now and he held it open for Stettner to glance inside. He straightened up and grinned at them. ‘We’ll leave you your battery,’ he said. ‘We can soon get one of those.’
Wasescha had removed all the charges now and was placing them carefully back in the brief-case.
‘Frau Oswino,’ Stettner said. He grinned at Caporelli. ‘She’ll be back. She’ll know what to do with them. She’s always known what to do. Right under your nose, brother-in-law. All the time the police were looking. Even her husband did as she said. She wasn’t born in Innsbruck for nothing.’
Wasescha had strapped up the brief-case now. He straightened up and looked at Stettner, still without having said a word, as though he had lived so long in the wordless silences of the Catena di Saga he’d forgotten how to speak.
‘Schnell!’ Stettner jerked his head, and Wasescha turned immediately and scrambled through the rubble and out of the tunnel.
‘Listen, Stettner–’ Henry began, but Stettner waved the pistol and pushed him back.
‘Shut up, Englishman,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t listen to you any more. Up here I’m not Alois Stettner, the guide, the tourists’ courier, at the beck and call of every stupid English Auslander. Up here I’m “Andreas Hofer”. These are our mountains, my mountains, and this is my country. There are streams in the valleys, Englishman, that you’ll never see and those Italian policemen down there’ll never see, and earth-smells of warmth and good growth, and jays and woodpeckers in the trees and hawks over the meadows, and mill-races that throw up water like a bow-wave. These things are ours, not the property of some pious politician in Rome.’
The pistol was jerking now. ‘I shall enjoy disposing of you,’ he was saying. ‘I have never disposed of an Englishman before. Only of English girls. You could have saved us such a lot of trouble if you hadn’t been so infernally lucky. We had two tries but they were hurried, and you had the angels on your side, and unfortunately we couldn’t afford to be crude about them. They had to be accidents.’
Dittli was watching them nervously. ‘Hurry, Alois,’ he said in English. ‘We can’t stand here all day talking.’
‘No,’ Stettner agreed. ‘No, we can’t. We must get after Wasescha and help him hide the brief-case.’
The hole in the pistol seemed as big as a tunnel. In a little while, Henry thought, we shall all probably be dead – if not in a matter of minutes, then in a matter of hours – and he had a terrible wish to be spirited away. He could feel his heart pounding, but he was somehow less afraid than angry and he put as much of a sneer into his voice as he could manage.
‘You’d better hurry,’ he suggested. ‘Wasescha won’t find it so easy to hide anything this time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Because your hiding-place has collapsed, Alois,’ Caporelli shouted. ‘We found it. We found Oswino trapped under it and pulled him out.’
Stettner stepped forward and struck him across the face again with the pistol, once, twice, and he stumbled and fell against the wall of the tunnel.
‘You’re lying!’
Caporelli dragged himself up weakly and managed a jagged laugh. ‘Not this time, Alois,’ he said. ‘There were rifles and sub-machine guns and a pistol, apart from a few other things.’
Stettner’s eyes flickered towards Dittli’s, then he gestured at the wire and the scattered tools lying about the floor of the tunnel among the rubble. He spoke sharply and, as the waiter began to coil the wire, Stettner threw the cape off his arm with a gesture and glared at Caporelli.
He was obviously furiously angry now and began to kick the tools and wire towards Dittli for him to pick up, and as he did so, Henry saw Caporelli’s hand creeping out towards the crowbar. The knowledge that Caporelli’s mind was still set on action startled him because he looked grey-faced and sick and was leaning weakly against the wall. His nose was bruised where the gun had struck him and the blood was startlingly bright against his pale skin. But the eyes were alert in the drooping head, Henry saw, and the slow movement of the clawing fingers, stained with mud and green with slime from the sluice gate, fascinated him and he had to jerk his eyes away to Stettner’s face in case he should give him away.
Dittli was in the gully with the wire now, his back to the entrance to the tunnel, and Henry moved slightly to place himself between him and Caporelli.
>
‘Look, Stettner,’ he said, trying desperately to draw attention to himself. ‘Listen to me for a while. This is no quarrel of mine. I’ve got some money on me.’
‘Ha!’ Stettner’s head turned to Henry and the crawling fingers began to move again. ‘So the British Empire’s pulled down the flag, eh? So! It’s going to try to buy its way out as it has before.’ He kicked angrily at the wire. ‘Machen Sie schnell!” he snapped at Dittli. ‘Schnell! Schnell!’
‘You can have all I’ve got,’ Henry said. ‘It’ll help your party. I don’t care what you do with it.’
Caporelli’s face was ghastly with the blood on it and the slime from the sluice gate, but the moving fingers stopped as Stettner glanced at him and jerked his head at Henry.
‘Perfidious Albion, brother-in-law,’ he said. ‘They buy themselves out of everything.’
He gestured at Henry with the pistol. ‘Give me the money,’ he said. ‘It’ll not be wasted.’
Henry fished in his pocket for his wallet, taking as long as possible, while Stettner clicked his fingers impatiently. He knew there was very little money in it and he couldn’t imagine it delaying Stettner for long.
He held it up at last and Stettner sneered. ‘It looks thin,’ he said. ‘As though the British Empire doesn’t set a very high price on itself. That doesn’t look enough to prevent your climb up to the top of the dam.’
He clicked his fingers again and Henry tossed his wallet down in front of him. Caporelli’s moving fingers stopped dead as Stettner’s eyes swung across them all.
‘That’s too old a trick to catch me, Englishman,’ he said. ‘Pick it up and bring it to me. No’ – he gestured as Henry moved forward – ‘not you!’ He indicated Giovanni. ‘You!’
The boy backed behind Henry and Stettner gestured angrily with the pistol. ‘Come on, you little Italian bastard,’ he snapped. ‘Come and do what your betters tell you! Pick it up and bring it here!’
Giovanni glanced at Henry, and then at Caporelli, his eyes questioning. Caporelli’s lips twisted. ‘Do as he says, Giovanni,’ he said quietly.
Giovanni stooped and picked up the wallet, then he straightened up as Stettner clicked his fingers again. Somehow, from his manner, Henry knew his mind was working and he could see his eyes were bright and quick, and even as he prayed that the boy would do nothing foolish, his mouth was hanging open at the tension that he might.
Stettner took the wallet from Giovanni, the gun in his right hand, then, as his eyes dropped to it, Giovanni dived unexpectedly for his wrist, forcing the pistol away towards the sluice, hanging on to it with both hands and arms and every vestige of strength in his slight body.
‘Quickly, Signore,’ he shrieked. ‘Quickly! Kill them!’
Stettner heaved, trying to bring the gun to bear, his mouth contorted and swearing, but Giovanni’s arms were tight round his wrist and his legs were kicking wildly as he was swung into the air.
‘Dittli!’ Caporelli roared a warning as he grabbed for the crowbar.
The roar of the gun filled the narrow tunnel, deafening them, as Henry flung himself across Dittli’s back, hammering at his head with his fists in a savage explosion of rage. Dittli went downwards into the muddy sluice among the rubbish and the sticks and the old tin cans, and Henry heard the high ‘whanng’ of the bullet as it hit the stonework at the entrance to the tunnel and spun away end-over-end into the mist, then, as Stettner threw the shrieking Giovanni aside, the crowbar came down across his forearm with all the strength of Caporelli’s shoulders behind it. Stettner screamed and the gun clattered to the stones at his feet, but with his mouth open, his eyes bulging with pain and fear and one arm limp and useless, he still stumbled one-handed towards Caporelli.
Henry saw the flash of a knife and shouted a warning, but the swing of the crowbar had almost carried the dazed Caporelli off his feet and he was at Stettner’s mercy. As Henry leapt from his knees in a flat dive, his shoulder crashed against Giovanni, who was just scrambling to his feet, and sent him flying into the sluice, then his reaching arms had smothered the groping hand with the knife.
Stettner screamed with pain again as his broken bones were slammed against his side, but even in his agony he was strong and clear-headed, and, as he ducked, Henry went somersaulting over his shoulders, cracking his chin against the wall of the tunnel. As he hit the ground, however, twisting round at once to regain his feet, he saw Caporelli recover and the crowbar came slicing round again in a great scything blow.
Stettner’s feet were swept from under him as the steel crunched against flesh and bone, and he gave another cry and collapsed, half in the sluice, clawing with his one good hand for a grip, his eyes wild, his mouth working like a wounded animal’s. Then Caporelli brought the crowbar down again in a gust of fury across his thigh and he screamed once on a high tormented note and rolled back, unconscious.
Dittli was on the bank now, blood coming from his nose, his eyes wide with fear, his clothes saturated where he had fallen into the sluice.
‘Aynree!’
As he dived for the entrance to the tunnel, Henry stuck out his foot and he went flat on his face into the mud again, winded. He stayed there, whimpering, and Henry scrambled to his feet and yanked him up, one-handed, and slammed him savagely against the stone wall.
Caporelli had dropped the crowbar now and he leaned against the wall, gasping, his face grey. The blood had started to flow faster from the gash on his cheek, startlingly red as it dropped on to his clothes.
‘Ettore–!’
Caporelli waved Henry away and indicated Dittli. ‘Never mind me,’ he muttered. ‘Watch him.’
As Henry kept one eye on the sullen waiter, Caporelli stumbled across to Giovanni and pulled him out of the sluice, his face concerned, his eyes soft.
‘Are you all right, my son?’ he asked gently.
Giovanni nodded, but Henry could see he was shaking, as though shock had started to take effect on him.
Caporelli put his arms round him and held him close. ‘That was a very brave thing to do,’ he said.
Giovanni began to cry softly, his head down as though he were ashamed of his lack of strength. ‘It was because of Sister Ursula,’ he said. ‘Because they killed her. That’s why. I’m sorry I’m crying. I can’t help it.’
Caporelli’s mouth twisted. ‘That’s nothing, my son,’ he said. ‘All brave men find the need to cry occasionally. It is the food of the soul – like grief and love. There is nothing to be ashamed of in it.’
Seventeen
Caporelli pushed the boy aside gently after a while, and made him sit down. Henry took off his coat and put it round him over Caporelli’s.
‘Soon,’ Caporelli said, ‘we will find you hot food and warmth. Be brave until then. Cry if you wish. It does no harm.’
Giovanni nodded, his burning eyes on Caporelli’s face as though, in the brief moment of savagery in the tunnel, he had transferred all the love in him from the gentle Sister Ursula to the strong and practical man.
‘I’m all right, Signore,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m glad we beat them.’
‘So am I, Giovanni,’ Caporelli said. ‘And we did. Soundly.’
He crossed to Stettner, who was lying on his back in the sluice, with the water flowing round him, his mouth open, his eyes closed, the blood running across his hand from the crushed flesh under his sleeve.
Caporelli stared down at him for a second, his face expressionless, then he jerked his head towards Dittli.
‘Better make sure he’s not got a gun,’ he said.
Henry crossed to the waiter and began to search him. Dittli pushed sullenly at his hands and Caporelli stepped forward immediately and hit him across the face. Dittli staggered back, his mouth bleeding, and spat out a tooth.
‘Now search him,’ Caporelli said.
This time Dittli didn’t move and Henry found a small automatic in his pocket.
‘Keep it,’ Caporelli said. ‘He hadn’t the courage to use it. We’ll decide what to
do with him later.’
Dittli’s eyes flickered and he swung round in a sudden dart for the tunnel, his feet scraping on the stones. Caporelli gave him a violent push as he passed him – unemotionally, his face still devoid of expression – and he crashed into the stone wall with a cry, slid down and sat at its base, his mouth hanging open.
As he fell, Caporelli’s pent-up fury burst out of him at last and he stood over him and, dragging him to his feet, hit him again and again and again, cursing and panting and calling him every name he could lay his tongue to, punching and slapping and kicking until Dittli crouched against the wall, not attempting to stop him, his head covered with his arms, shrieking for mercy.
‘You filth,’ Caporelli said in a cold bitter voice. ‘You treacherous filth. You kill and murder and maim, and howl for mercy when it’s you who’s hurt.’
Henry saw the startled shock in Giovanni’s face and dragged Caporelli off at last and he leaned against the wall, panting, his eyes wild with fury.
‘Ettore!’
Caporelli spat at Dittli in a gesture of disgust that was as Neapolitan as Santa Lucia. Dittli looked up and began to shout back at him in German and Caporelli hit him again with the flat of his hand.
‘In Italian,’ he snapped. ‘In Italian, when you speak to me in my own country, you German murderer!’
He looked at Giovanni, whose face was pale and frightened but by no means accusing. ‘Forgive me, Giovanni,’ he said. ‘I am only a man, with human feelings, and these men are wicked and murderers. They have stopped us doing what we came here for.’
He took out his cigarettes and lit one with trembling hands, slowly drawing in the smoke as though he were desperate for it, then he went to the entrance to the tunnel and stared out in the direction of the main wall of the dam. Above the roar of the water in the sluice, Henry heard that ominous moaning sound again. Until that moment he had forgotten it and he realized it was louder than before.
‘We can do nothing,’ Caporelli said, swinging round, his eyes blazing. ‘These madmen with their stupid politics! God knows how many people might die now just because they want to blow up one policeman.’