The Sword of Fate

by Dennis Wheatley

  Gonzaga had seemed quite confident that they would be able to hold our thrust on the frontier, but these stories of our successes filled all of us with feverish excitement, and every one of my brother officers had the same idea as I had had that morning. If our comrades were pushing on at such a rate they might take Fort Capuzzo and rescue us before the Italians had a chance to pack us off into the interior.

  Personally I was not at all sanguine about our chances, as a mighty fortress like Capuzzo would take a deal of subduing, but when Teddy Bannister and I got back to our cell that evening we discussed at great length the problem of if there was any way in which we could manage to prevent ourselves from being shifted, and we both decided to feign illness.

  That was unfortunate, as when orders came through for our removal half an hour later, and we were told to get our few belongings together, it transpired that every single officer, N.C.O. and man among the British prisoners of war in Fort Capuzzo had had the same not very brilliant idea.

  In vain we pleaded that the bean soup, which we had had for our evening meal, had poisoned us, held our tummies, made faces and pretended to twist about in agony. The genial Gonzaga appeared and just laughed at us, ordering his men to pull us out of our cells by the scruff of the neck when the time came if we would not march out of our own accord on receiving the order.

  We had been given a quarter of an hour to prepare for our departure, and ten minutes of it had already gone when one of the head warders arrived in front of my cell and behind him I saw Paolo Tortino. The gate was unlocked and Tortino swaggered in, closing it with a clang behind him.

  As he was a professional diplomat it had been rather a surprise to see him in an officer’s uniform, but I soon guessed the reason. After Italy entered the war, the number of embassies and legations which Mussolini could continue to maintain abroad was considerably lessened, and it was one of the sounder tenets of his creed that a good patriot should be willing to serve his country in any capacity, so there could be no argument if he ordered a number of his surplus diplomats to become army officers, and Paolo was evidently one of the surplus diplomats who had been detailed for service with a Blackshirt formation.

  For a moment he gloated in silence, then he said:

  “You have heard, I suppose, that you are shortly leaving for Tobruk on your way to Italy?”

  I nodded and he went on, “I was too busy to come to see you before, but when I heard that you were leaving I felt that I must spare a moment to come over and give you some idea as to your future.”

  I shrugged, “The future of all prisoners of war is pretty much the same, so I don’t think you need bother.”

  “But yours will be different,” he said, with a malicious grin. “You see, you were at one time in the Diplomatic Service.”

  “What’s that to do with it, since I’ve been out of the Service for years?” I enquired. “I certainly can’t claim Diplomatic immunity.”

  “Oh no. You can’t do that; but it makes you an especially interesting prisoner, particularly as while you were in the Diplomatic Corps you indulged in espionage. Once a spy, always a spy, you know. I wanted the satisfaction of telling you myself that I’m sending a special chit to the authorities about you to ensure that you receive individual attention.”

  His voice had sunk to a lower note, and it was positively dripping with honeyed malice as he finished, “I have taken steps to make certain that you will be treated as a political prisoner and handed over to the Ovra.”

  My mouth went dry, and I swallowed hard. The Fascists may not be quite as ruthless as the Nazis, but there is little to choose between either in the treatment of their political prisoners by their secret police, and the Ovra is the Italian equivalent of the Gestapo.

  Chapter XII

  A Desperate Gamble

  One does not hear so much about the Ovra as about the Gestapo, and we are too apt to form a picture of the Italian as a lazy, pleasure-loving fellow who is content to loll about in his sunny vineyards, roll his eyes at every young woman he sees and warble ‘O Sole Mio’ in the moonlight.

  We forget that some of the most hard-headed, dynamic and unscrupulous men in the world are also Italians—Al Capone and his gangsters, for example. The Italian secret police are staffed by just such men who prefer to wield power as servants of the Fascist State to becoming criminals. Many of them are the assassins of the old Black-Hand and Camorra which Mussolini broke up, afterwards taking over its professional knifemen for his own purposes.

  The instant Paolo Tortino had told me of the revenge which he had planned to take on me for breaking up his engagement with Daphnis I saw myself no longer an ordinary prisoner of war but a poor wretch in perpetual solitary confinement in some damp, dark cell on one of Mussolini’s prison islands; subject without hope or reprieve to any beastliness which the agents of the Ovra cared to inflict upon me.

  Almost at the same second a way in which I might possibly avert that fate and even turn the tables on Tortino flashed into my mind. With a last malicious smirk he had contemptuously turned his back and strode to the barred gate of the cell, where he was calling to the guard to let him out.

  In two strides I was after him. He was a good two inches shorter than myself. It was easy for me to fling my left arm round his neck so that his chin came in the crook of my elbow. Jerking back his head so that he fell against me, with my right hand I wrenched open his pistol holster and pulled the pistol from it. Next moment I had dragged him away from the gate and had the muzzle of the pistol firmly pressed against his spine.

  “You rat!” I snarled. “Stop struggling. Not another movement or I’ll empty the whole contents of your gun into your body!”

  He went dead still at once—which told me the thing that I was desperately anxious to know. From its weight I had thought that the gun was loaded, but now the fact that he made no attempt to get at the dagger in the back of his belt assured me that I had only to press the trigger and Paolo would get a bullet in his liver.

  One of the guards had heard the brief struggle and came running up to find out what was going on. Immediately he saw the lieutenant pinioned against my chest he shouted: “Hi! Stop that! Let the tenente go this instant or it will be the worse for you!” He drew his pistol.

  I swung Tortino round a little so that his body almost covered mine as I called back: “Don’t shoot or you’ll hit the tenente, and don’t attempt to enter this cell. If you do I shall shoot the tenente myself. I’ve got his gun here and it’s loaded.”

  The guard stared at me undecided for a moment, then he lowered his weapon and yelled for his superior.

  Bannister had been at the inner end of the cell when, only a moment before, I had leapt upon Tortino. I caught a glimpse of his face, comically round-eyed with surprise, but now he stepped swiftly forward.

  “Good God, Day! What the devil are you up to? You’ll get hell for attacking one of their officers.”

  “Leave this to me,” I said abruptly.

  By this time the head warder and half a dozen other guards had all come hurrying up and were eying us angrily through the bars, while they jabbered excitedly in Italian.

  “Shoot him in the legs!” “No, no, be careful! You may hit the tenente” “Let me go in!” “Stop, I say! He has threatened to kill the officer.” “He has a gun!” “The Englishman is mad!” “Open the gate and let us rush him together!”

  Eventually the head warder shouted the others into silence and stormed at me, demanding that I release my prisoner, and threatening me, if I refused, with all sorts of dire punishment.

  I waited until he had finished, then replied firmly: “If anyone attempts to come in I shall shoot the tenente. Go and fetch Il Comandante Gonzaga.”

  There was some further argument, but failing to find any way out of the impasse in which I had placed them, their chief sent one of them running to fetch the Governor. Five minutes later the ex-head waiter, now hatless, very pink in the face and far from friendly looking, came briskly along t
he gallery.

  “So! Et ees Meester Day!” he exclaimed, and I thought his eye softened a little as he realised that I was the delinquent who had caused him to be fetched from his quarters. “What for you maka da troubles in my prison, eh? Let go ze tenente at once now—quick! I commands it.”

  “Would you please send your men away?” I said. “I want to talk to you alone.”

  With a swift order he despatched the guards about their routine business, then he said, in a slightly more conciliatory voice: “Come now, no more of zese nonsenses. For attacking ze officer you will getta da punishment, but eff you ’angs on to ’im you maka da business worse.”

  “Listen,” I said. “I don’t like this fellow. I don’t like his face; I don’t like his smell; I don’t like anything about him. I only tell you that because I want you to have no doubts at all that when I say that I’ll shoot him if any of your men try to come into this cell I really mean it.”

  “What ’ave you against ’im?” Gonzaga inquired.

  “The little rat told me just before I collared him that he’s sending a special chit to Italy which will ensure that directly I get there I’ll be handed over to the Ovra.”

  Gonzaga gave a long sigh and shook his large head. “Zat ees bad. But why does ’e do zis bad zing to you?”

  “Because I pinched his girl.”

  “Ah!” Gonzaga sighed again and rolled his eyes to heaven. “Ze women, zey maka da trouble everywheres—even in my nice prison! But finish! Zis cannot go on. I giva you da order—let ze tenente go!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m not hanging on to him just because I happen not to like him. It’s because I’ve made up my mind that I’d rather not go to Tobruk.”

  “What you say? Not go to Tobruk! But zis is mutiny!”

  I nodded. “I know that but I can’t help it. I mean to stay here, anyhow for the next twenty-four hours, and the tenente is staying with me. Any attempt to get me or him out of this cell and I’ll make him dead as macaroni!”

  “Oh, come,” the Governor’s voice took on a wheedling note and even in that tense moment I felt an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh because it was so reminiscent of the tone that he used to use in the old days when trying to persuade me to have another helping of some special dish, or to gloss over some small defect in the generally perfect service of his restaurant.

  “Oh, come, Meester Day. What for you maka da troubles in my nice prison? We treata you well ’ere. You ’ave no complaint. Sooner or later you ’ave to let ze tenente go. You cannot ’old ’im like zat for ever. What ees the difference eff you let ’im go now or zis time tomorrow?”

  “A lot,” I answered promptly. “By this time tomorrow the British Army may be here.”

  His fat face broke into a smile and he began to chuckle: “No, no; we ’ave plenty big guns in Capuzzo, plenty tank, plenty every-thin’. Even if we were besiege we ’old out for one month, three month, six month—so you see you are be’aving like ze bloody fool!”

  “I don’t care,” I said stubbornly. “I’m not going to Tobruk and the tenente is remaining here with me.”

  Gonzaga began to mop his bald brow with a large bandanna handkerchief. He was evidently at his wit’s end as the chief warder came up to whisper something to him. With a muttered “Si, si” he stepped back from the cell gates.

  A moment later the bell rang, the main switch was operated and all the gates swung open. For a second I thought that they meant to rush me; then I heard the other prisoners being ordered out of their cells and realised that, it now being past the time at which all of us had been scheduled to leave for Tobruk, it had been decided to get the rest of them down to the yard before entering into any further arguments with me.

  My neighbours had been agog with excitement ever since they had heard the guards bellowing at me, and as they ran from their cells it looked as if a general mutiny might follow. But some of the guards had fixed bayonets and others covered the prisoners with tommy-guns, so it would have been madness for our people to have raised a finger. I was relieved of a frightful responsibility when they confined their sympathy to shouts of encouragement and allowed themselves to be hustled away.

  All this time Tortino had remained motionless, leaning back against me and partially supported by the crook of my left arm being round his neck and under his chin, but the sight of the open gate proved too great a temptation to him; suddenly he began to struggle wildly.

  I had no scruples about dealing with the little brute, and I played the sort of trick on him to which his friends of the Ovra would probably have treated me every morning before breakfast. With a violent jerk of my left arm I wrenched his head almost off his neck. At the same time, twisting slightly sideways, I swung the heavy gun butt round which my fingers were clasped and brought it crashing down on top of his right kidney. He gave one strangled yelp, and after jerking about a little spasmodically, went limp as a dead fish.

  “Next time it will be a bullet,” I remarked conversationally, both for his benefit, if he was still in a condition to hear me, and for Gonzaga’s.

  Gonzaga groaned: “Zis maka et worse for you. For ’itting ’im ze court martial mus’ now taka place an’ zey giva you da solitary cell.”

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” I answered with somewhat forced cheerfulness. “Every time the little swine struggles he’s got it coming to him.”

  “Alla right,” he looked past me and addressed Bannister. “In zis foolishness you ’ave no part. Steppa out, please, to joina ze prisoner zat go to Tobruk.”

  Teddy shook his head. “No, thanks, I think I’d rather take a chance with Day in the hope that if we stay here we’ll be rescued by our friends.”

  Still keeping a tight grip on Tortino, I looked quickly over my shoulder: “Don’t be a fool, Teddy. Nobody’s threatened to hand you over to the Ovra. The British advance may not get as far as this. Even if it does, it may be weeks before the fortress surrenders. I’ve taken on such long odds only because it means the next worse thing to a German concentration camp for me if they ever get me to Italy.”

  “All the more reason I should stay with you,” he said firmly. “Alone you couldn’t hang out for much more than twenty-four hours before you fell asleep; then they’d rush you. But with two of us we can take turns to guard our hostage.”

  “I starva you out!” interjected Gonzaga angrily. “No food, no drink—nozzings!”

  “All right, do your damnedest,” Teddy snapped with equal heat. “I’m staying.”

  “No, Teddy, it’s grand of you to offer,” I said gratefully, “but you mustn’t all the same.”

  “I’m staying, I tell you. After all, if the Governor starves us he’ll have to starve our prisoner as well, and somehow I don’t think he’ll let the lieutenant die of hunger or thirst.”

  As he spoke Teddy leaned past me and drew the little six-inch dagger that went with Paolo’s Blackshirt uniform, and added: “I think I’d better take charge of this in case it proves too great a temptation to him. It will come in useful if anyone starts an invasion of our Sovereign State, hereby declared to consist of Cell 311.”

  “Well, since you’re set on it, bless you,” I exclaimed at the same moment as Gonzaga, realising that it was useless to argue further, turned away swearing in Italian and gave a signal upon which the cell gates crashed to.

  Now that we were locked in again we were able to put this prison within a prison, or the Sovereign State of Cell 311, as Teddy called it, on a slightly less emergency footing. Obviously I could not continue to hold the pistol to Paolo’s spine for hours on end, and we set about deciding measures which would allow us to enjoy reasonable comfort while ensuring that there was no chance for the guards to catch us napping or Paolo to make a quick getaway.

  We first made him take off his trousers, shoes and socks. Italian soldiers have an ungentlemanly habit of kicking people they dislike in a particularly tender region of the body; so in case Paolo decided to have a crack at us some time I
thought it a wise precaution to ensure his being bare-footed.

  The trousers we cut up with his knife into thin strips which we plaited into ropes. With some of these we tied Paolo’s wrists behind his back and secured his ankles; with others we arranged a contraption which would give us warning if the gate of the cell were stealthily opened in the night. The cell had two bunks, one above the other, and as the gate swung inwards a rope tied to it, which ran over the top bunk, would slacken so that Paolo’s shoes, which were attached to the other end of the rope, would fall upon the head of anyone sleeping in the lower bunk. With two more of the ropes we attached Paolo to ourselves so that, if he got within two feet of the gate during the night, we should feel the tug and be able to pull him back.

  During most of our preparations several warders remained outside the cell eying us curiously, but when we had finished they went away and the whole of our tier in the Big House having been occupied by British prisoners of war was now quite silent.

  Nobody brought us an evening meal, but fortunately our carafe was over half full already, and by keeping it out of Paolo’s reach we hoped that he would have to plead for water long before we were reduced to giving in. We did not mean to start any altruistic nonsense about sharing with our unwilling guest. If Paolo wanted water he would have to persuade his compatriots to give it to him.

  Lights were put out at the usual time, which was nine o’clock, so Bannister and I settled down in our bunks, having warned Paolo that he really would be taking his life in his hands if he tried any funny business.