The Dark Chronicles

by Jeremy Duns

  I looked over at Severn, who was standing by the door watching Zimotti at work. ‘Let’s get him,’ was all he had said in the bar. Now he looked equally calm, but his jaw was clenched tight and he was drumming his fingers against his thighs. He sensed my gaze and looked across at me, then smiled unconvincingly. It sent a shiver through me. Woe betide anyone who got on the wrong side of Severn. For a moment, I almost felt sorry for Pyotr.

  Almost.

  Sarah Severn was standing next to her husband, smoking her third cigarette since we’d arrived. I wished to God Severn hadn’t brought her along. She was a radio officer; there was no need for her to see any of this. She also seemed to be under the illusion that I’d been some sort of a hero in London, and I didn’t like having to go through this grotesque charade in front of her. But go through it I would, of course.

  We’d only been here a few minutes, but the flat was already halfway to a shambles. Zimotti’s men had removed the drawers of the desk and shaken the contents onto the carpet, and they were now attacking the chairs, removing the cushions and tearing off the covers. Pyotr began objecting again and Zimotti pulled him up short, leaning over him and yelling at him to sit down. Pyotr glanced at the heavies and decided to do so.

  ‘Will someone please tell me what is happening here?’ he said, pouting like a child.

  Zimotti smiled. ‘Va bene. We are representatives of the Servizio Informazioni Difesa, and we are here because we suspect that you are engaged in activities that may be harmful to the interests of Italy, Great Britain and its allies.’

  ‘Only them?’ said Pyotr with a sneer.

  Zimotti ignored it. ‘Specifically, we suspect that you are involved in terrorist activity, or are in contact with people who are. I am now going to hand you over to this man,’ – he nodded at me – ‘who is a very senior member of British intelligence. He has some questions to put to you.’

  I stepped forward.

  ‘Hello. My name is Paul Dark. Could you tell me yours, please?’

  He didn’t answer, just glared dully at me.

  ‘The quicker you cooperate,’ I said, ‘the quicker we are going to get through this. If you are not involved in the way we think you are, we will soon clear this up and leave you in peace. You can have that coffee you were looking forward to.’

  I tried to keep the tone relatively light, and glanced at Zimotti several times while I was talking. I wanted to hook Pyotr into believing that the Italians had somehow caught onto him but that I had engineered my way into handling the situation and was going to extricate him from it. That I was his friend, essentially.

  There were a few seconds of silence, and then:

  ‘Pierre Valougny.’

  Hooked.

  ‘Nationality?’

  ‘Swiss.’

  ‘Occupation?’

  ‘I run a small printing company between here and Geneva.’

  Someone had opened a window to let the air in and I walked over to it. The noise of the traffic drifted up. I strained to make out other sounds: birdsong, a dog barking, a fountain trickling in the piazza. I turned back to Pyotr.

  ‘Edoardo Barchetti,’ I said. ‘Recognize the name?’

  ‘No. I have absolutely no idea what any of this is—’

  ‘He contacted us recently, concerning a small group he was a member of here: Arte come Terrore.’

  No reaction, but there was no reason for there to be, yet.

  ‘I say “was”. A couple of days ago we learned that members of this group were planning a series of attacks in Europe. I went to meet him a few hours ago at the modern art museum to find out more, but I didn’t get very far. Care to guess why?’

  His nose twitched, but his eyes were glued to me. He didn’t know where I was heading, but his instincts were telling him it wasn’t the right way.

  ‘Because by the time I reached him, Edoardo Barchetti was dead. However, I saw you leaving the museum in a hurry, so I followed you here. I’d like to know why you killed him.’

  I didn’t like myself for saying the last part, but in a way it was true. He had forced me into it, and now I was going to make him pay the price.

  ‘I am a printer,’ he said. ‘My company prints art magazines. I was interested in the exhibition—’

  ‘Is that an attic you have?’ I said, glancing upwards. He made to stand up and I stepped forward and pushed him back down into the chair. I walked over to the bookcase and pulled out the ladder. Zimotti nodded at one of his men and he began climbing up.

  I looked back at Pyotr. He was starting to realize the situation. The Italians hadn’t caught onto him; I had framed him. His anger was rising and he was desperately trying to keep a lid on it. He was furious with himself for letting me get the upper hand on him. He’d wanted to play the big man with the compromised agent, and I’d responded by doing the unthinkable and he hadn’t seen it coming. He was holding up well, considering, but I knew that he would go to the ends of the earth to pay me back if I didn’t manage to pull this off. It was him or me now, and if he’d had no problem in blowing my cover earlier, he would now be itching to do it.

  There was a noise from upstairs, and I knew the Italian had found the transmitter. A couple of minutes later and it was sitting on the desk, along with the magazines and gallery invitations. Zimotti and Severn both walked over and peered at the untidy-looking heap. Severn started leafing through the notes, his face set.

  ‘How do you explain these items?’ I said to Pyotr.

  ‘The money is for emergencies – we Swiss are prudent people, and I always keep some at home, in all currencies.’ He smiled sweetly, almost in recognition of his cleverness.

  ‘And the transmitter?’

  ‘I have a passion for amateur radio.’

  ‘Why is it hidden in your attic?’

  ‘My landlady does not like the idea – and it gets much better reception up there. It is not, as far as I am aware, a crime.’

  ‘This is a spy transmitter, Signor Valougny, and you are using it to communicate with your colleagues in the Soviet embassy. And this,’ – I picked up the Praktina – ‘is a spy camera, used for copying documents.’

  ‘I don’t see why you use that term. I bought it in a shop in town, and I often use it to photograph pictures from my books here to take to the office with me. Books are unwieldy.’

  It was weak, but then he wasn’t playing to us. He was playing to a jury. We had to be a lot more solid than this to convict him; if we weren’t, he wouldn’t confess. He was skating on thin ice – I had to cut the ice away from his feet and make sure he fell in.

  ‘You say you print art magazines.’ I picked up the copy of La Classe and placed it on the table. ‘But this is a Communist magazine, calling for class struggle – for revolution, in fact.’

  ‘We print lots of different magazines. We are not responsible for the content. You must take that up with the editors and writers.’

  Printer as a cover was a new one to me, but I could see the benefits. He could hover around the edge of the underground movement, but if pressed by the authorities – as now – could plausibly distance himself.

  I pointed to a copy of Transizione.

  ‘Did you also print this?’

  He peered at it, then nodded.

  ‘This is the same magazine that published a series of articles last year putting forward the case for violent acts against the state.’

  ‘Yes, I read those articles. They were purely theoretical, of course. They weren’t intended—’

  ‘We don’t think so. We believe that they constituted a kind of manifesto, in fact, and that they led to the foundation of Arte come Terrore. What do you know about the assassination of the head of British intelligence in London yesterday?’

  ‘The assassination of who? I have no knowledge of this whatsoever. I demand that you leave my home at once. I am a respectable businessman, and I do not take kindly to this treatment.’

  Enough cat-and-mouse. It was time to close in for the kill.


  ‘All of this,’ I said, gesturing at the table, ‘is circumstantial. I found this piece of paper on Barchetti.’ I took it out of my pocket and read it to him. It was only a few lines in Italian, but I’d packed it with enough to damn him to hell and back:

  We feel that the committee is now ready to step up its actions, and recommend the targeting of senior members of Western intelligence agencies. Details will soon follow of a public event in Britain. Please choose an operative for this task from among your number. We will provide the necessary weaponry once they have entered the country. Further operations in Italy, France and elsewhere are in advanced stages of planning.

  I threw the letter onto the table and placed a hand on the Olivetti.

  ‘How much do you want to bet that the typeface matches the one produced by this machine?’

  Pyotr licked his lips anxiously. Perhaps he was missing his chocolates. He was sweating now, and his face seemed to be turning an ash-grey. It was doubly insulting to him, because only the sloppiest of agents would have handed a contact such a note, in the clear and typed up on their own machine. But he could hardly point that out.

  ‘I did not write this,’ he said coldly. ‘I have never seen it before.’

  I pressed it with my finger. ‘Is this why you killed Barchetti? Did you realize he was an infiltrator? Or was he perhaps blackmailing you, threatening to tell someone about your plans?’ I leaned on the word ‘blackmailing’ and was pleased to see him flinch at it. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘This is an amusing game, Mister…’

  ‘Dark.’

  ‘An amusing game, Mister Dark. But how far are you prepared to take it?’

  ‘All the way,’ I said. ‘I have no choice.’

  He looked up at me sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  I smiled – he thought I’d slipped up. ‘A sniper killed the head of our agency in front of my eyes in London yesterday,’ I said. ‘It appears they have not finished their work. I can’t let it go. I can’t let you go until you tell us what you know.’

  ‘So you’re a patriot, is that it? You don’t strike me as the type.’ He glanced down at the letter disdainfully. ‘I have never seen this letter before in my life.’

  ‘Then why was it in Barchetti’s—’

  ‘Because you planted it there, Mister Dark!’ His cheeks were burning now. ‘You planted it there because you want to prove to your colleagues that I had something to do with the death of Mister Farraday in London.’

  Trapped! Severn sprung forward. ‘So you do know about—’

  ‘I know because Mister Dark here told me,’ said Pyotr, and I shook for a moment, realizing that he had decided to go all the way, dragging us through the whole charade. Well, so be it. I had a whole heap of evidence against him, and all he had against me was his say-so. ‘Mister Dark told me when I met him outside the British embassy yesterday evening,’ he said, his voice rising in pitch, ‘because Mister Dark is a Soviet agent, and I am his contact here.’

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘Are you confessing to being a Soviet spy, Mister Valougny?’ I said.

  He laughed derisively. ‘No. I am confessing that you and I both are.’

  Severn took a few steps closer. ‘Do you have any evidence of that?’ he asked, but I cut him off before he could go any further.

  ‘Please, Charles,’ I said. ‘Let me handle this. It’s a desperate gambit, Mister Valougny, but I’m afraid it won’t work. All you have to do is tell us what it is that Arte come Terrore is planning next, and we can take it from there. Perhaps we can make some sort of a deal if you were to work for us from now on. But please show my colleagues and me a little more respect. Throwing around melodramatic accusations is an easy game to play, but you’re not convincing anyone and you’re not going to disrupt this investigation.’

  Pyotr smiled, but it was the grim smile of a man who knew he was defeated. Oh, he would be cursing the day he met me for a long time. It served him right. Don’t blackmail someone unless you are very certain of your ground – and can lose a tail.

  ‘Let’s take him out of here,’ said Zimotti, who was pacing around by the door. ‘We need some time to crack this nut and this isn’t the place for it.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’ I said.

  ‘We have better facilities in town,’ said Zimotti. ‘Let’s get this bastard into an interviewing room.’

  *

  We went outside and bundled into the cars. The Severns took the Alfa Romeo, Zimotti’s men took Pyotr in one of the Lancias and I went with Zimotti in his own car. He didn’t say anything as he drove through the early afternoon traffic, his face staring ahead grimly. I reviewed the situation. It had gone well, all things considered. Pyotr had thrown out the counter accusation, as I had expected he might when cornered, but the timing was a little awkward: I hadn’t bargained on our being split up like this. No doubt he was now telling the others in the car behind that I had been recruited in Germany or some such thing. No matter – I’d disposed of all the evidence, and I doubted they would let him say very much: Zimotti’s men looked like pretty tough customers. I would have to tread very carefully now to make sure none of the mud he flung stuck to me, but if I applied more pressure on him, and quickly, I reckoned I would be in a strong position…

  We took a sudden lurch to the left, and I caught a glimpse out of the window. Zimotti had taken a minor road, and it seemed we were heading away from the city centre.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I said, but as I turned I felt a sting in my upper thigh and saw him removing the needle. I started calling out, but it was no use, because my world was fading to black and all I could think was: I’m finished.

  XI

  I came back to consciousness slowly and realized I was lying on the floor. After a few seconds, I remembered what had happened.

  I did a quick inventory of my status. I was still in my suit, but my belt, shoes and socks had been taken, and my pockets emptied. Physically I seemed to be fine, apart from a small mark on my thigh from the hypodermic and some pain at the base of my neck and along my spine, no doubt due to having slept on the floor. I was drowsy, but not overly so: probably just a simple sedative, then. Mentally, nothing was damaged – yet.

  The room was bare: nothing in it at all, not even a bed or a bucket. It was about fifteen feet across and ten wide. The floor and walls were white and appeared to be made from some sort of plastic material, smooth to the touch. A sliver of light crept in through a tiny window high in the ceiling. Was it dusk or dawn? My last meal had been the sandwich and juice in the bar in Trastevere, which suggested it was at least the next day, as my stomach was beginning to gnaw at me and my throat was very dry. What the hell was going on? And where the hell had they brought me?

  I didn’t have to wait long for answers. Within a few minutes, fluorescent panels in the ceiling flickered on and began to brighten, until it became almost painful to the eyes. A door opened in one of the walls and through it walked Zimotti… and Severn. Both of them were wearing dark glasses with mirrored lenses, and Zimotti was now in a tailored midnight-blue uniform and cap. He was head of military intelligence, I remembered. They must have brought me to a base or barracks.

  A deeply tanned man with a sharp nose followed – I recognized him as one of Zimotti’s men from the flat. He was also wearing dark glasses, and camouflage fatigues instead of the jacket and jeans he’d been in earlier. He carried a couple of rather tatty-looking wooden chairs into the centre of the room, planted them down, then swivelled and marched to one of the walls, where he took up station.

  Zimotti and Severn seated themselves and looked down at me. Their entrance so soon after I had woken seemed unlikely to be coincidence, but how were they watching me? The room was as smooth and featureless as it was possible to be – I couldn’t even make out the edges of the door they had come through – but presumably there were film cameras somewhere, monitoring every movement I made.

  I looked up, and was shocked to see
a frightened, cowering animal reflected in the lenses of their glasses. I struggled to my feet and started shouting at them, telling them they’d made a dreadful mistake, that I was going to have Severn dismissed, that if they wanted to believe a Soviet agent over the Deputy Chief of the Service they were out of their minds, and so on.

  ‘Save it for someone else,’ Severn said once I’d done. ‘We know you’re a double.’

  It wasn’t so much the words that scared me as the way in which they’d been said. The tone was of calm contempt, and there hadn’t been a fraction of hesitation: he was dead certain. Think. The glance between him and Zimotti when I’d shown them the typewritten note in the bar… It hadn’t been acknowledgement that Pyotr was guilty, but confirmation of my guilt. But how could they be so sure about it? It must have been something I’d done, because if the Service had known I was a double before now they wouldn’t have let me get on a plane – they would have interrogated me back in London. So somehow I had just told them I was a double – but how? Simply because I had tried to frame Pyotr for Farraday’s death? Yes, that must be it. They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he hadn’t been responsible for it because…

  Christ.

  Of course.

  ‘You killed Farraday,’ I said to Severn.

  His eyes didn’t flicker.

  ‘Not deliberately,’ he said. ‘You were our target.’

  I shivered. If they had suspected me of being a double, they hadn’t waited for confirmation of it – they had simply arranged my assassination anyway. But why would they… ?

  Leave it for the moment. Now you need to fight back, before it’s too late.

  ‘I planted the evidence on the Russian,’ I said. ‘I admit that much. But that doesn’t make me a double.’