North From Rome

by Helen Macinnes

  “He’ll give up his title willingly, in exchange for being a leader. What’s in a title? Power is the thing. And then there is another practical consideration. When the machine guns are turned against the innocents, he and his friends have determined which end of the machine guns they’ll be facing. Astute characters.”

  “Yes,” Lammiter said with marked distaste. He looked at Rosana again.

  She returned his look frankly. “You are wondering why I am friendly with such people?”

  “Was it your idea, or did your clever policeman suggest it, when you and he were discussing your brother’s death?”

  “Bevilacqua?” She laughed with relief. “See, Tony, Mr. Lammiter trusts me. He doesn’t think I really belong with them.”

  “I see,” said Brewster. “But I also think that Pirotta, too, is beginning to see. Look at last night—”

  “Did you believe him? Last night, what was the number on the car’s licence plate?”

  Rosana looked suddenly anxious, as if she instinctively knew some bad news was about to be given her. “I told you the number, Tony,” she said.

  “And now I shall tell you that the car that tried to run me down was a fourteen Fiat, grey, with the same number-plate you noted.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Lammiter took a sharp breath. I wish, he thought unhappily, I wish to God I had seen the whole licence plate last night. Then I’d have known whether the fourteen Fiat, grey which brought me to the Piazza Navona tonight was the car they are talking about.

  “Yes?” Brewster asked him.

  Lammiter shook his head. He had nothing to add: the three last numbers on a licence plate were not enough.

  Brewster turned to Rosana again. “You will have to be extremely careful for the next week. I’m taking no risks with you, Rosana. Lammiter looks like a well-built young man to me. He has strength enough for the journey to Perugia by himself.”

  “But I could help him—there’s so much I know and he doesn’t—”

  “I shan’t ask too much of him. All I need is a pair of good eyes in Perugia, who will report back to me what I myself would like to have seen. And that—” he turned now to Lammiter, “you will do at once. At once, so that the necessary steps can be taken—”

  “Look here,” Lammiter said, genuinely puzzled, “if you and Bevilacqua and the two men from the Narcotics Bureau in Washington have this Pirotta organisation all ready to blow apart, what need is there for anyone in Perugia? The case is practically closed, isn’t it?”

  “Nothing is ever closed. One thing leads to another. But I told you that before, didn’t I?”

  “All you have to do now is to start blocking out your special story for the London Echo.”

  “There is another story, too. And every bit as important. It could be even more so.”

  Lammiter said, with a sudden anger that surprised himself, “I don’t think there’s any business more contemptible than drug-smuggling, unless it’s pimping or slave-trafficking. What’s more important than catching people like that?”

  “Rosana—would you hand me my file?” As she reached for the pile of books, carelessly jumbled together, and selected one ordinary-looking volume of medium size, Brewster looked at Lammiter. He had become bitterly serious. “What’s more important? Not much. Unless it is catching the men who support a system of forced labour, of torture and secret police— the men whose chief business is to bring that kind of existence to your country and mine and Rosana’s. I am talking about the professional Communist, Mr. Lammiter. Not the workman who votes Communist because he wants a better deal, a bigger share; not the woman who thinks that if the system were changed, men would be changed, too. I’m talking of the professional Communist. He’s just another kind of narcotics smuggler, perverting minds instead of bodies. He’s a liar and a cheat and a betrayer. He’s the man who makes slave-labour camps possible. What’s more important than catching that kind of man?” He took the book from Rosana. “To spread his empire around this world, he will plot dissension, destruction, and hate. He won’t do the fighting or risk the dying. Oh no! He must stay alive, in order to control the peace that follows. To the professional Communist, people are always expendable.” Brewster took a deep breath. “Now I step down from my soapbox.”

  He opened the book. It was hollowed out in its centre, a bogus book, as in one of those antique leather objects that coyly display cigarettes. In the space where cigarettes usually lie, there was a small Manila envelope. Brewster opened it, searched inside, and drew out a snapshot. He studied it. He gave a strange smile, acid, contemptuous. Then he looked up, speaking casually, seemingly at random. “Pirotta was a friend of MacLean’s.”

  “MacLean’s?”

  “Don’t you remember two men called Burgess and MacLean?”

  “Oh—them!”

  “Yes, them. Now we’re getting to the real issue,” he said with sudden relish. “All that briefing on the narcotics ring was only the first slices off the roast. But now we are getting to the real meat and bone.”

  “You mean all that information about narcotics was only an introduction?” Lammiter’s voice was both surprised and a little dismayed.

  “It was both necessary and important. I hope you forget none of it. Because it all links up. If I hadn’t been interested so much in Pirotta as the head of a drug syndicate, I shouldn’t have tried to find out whom he was going to meet in a trattoria over on the unfashionable side of the Tiber. I went, expecting to find some new face to add to our rogues’ gallery. Instead, I saw him meeting a man called Evans.” The sharp blue eyes were watching. “You don’t recognise the name?”

  Lammiter searched his memory. He shook his head.

  Brewster looked delighted. “I suppose not. His case was kept pretty quiet. He happened about a month later than MacLean and Burgess.”

  “Most unfortunate. Don’t tell me he was a Foreign Office type who specialised in America, too.”

  Brewster glanced quickly at Lammiter. “His job didn’t seem of much importance. Not until one began to study the people he met. They were all influential.”

  “And,” Lammiter said bitingly, “they all trusted him.”

  “Indeed, yes. He was an expert confidence man.”

  “How did you get on to him?”

  “You flatter me. I wasn’t quite so suspicious then as I am now. Otherwise he wouldn’t have left the country.”

  “For Moscow?”

  “Of course.”

  “What is he doing now in Rome? Can you guess?”

  “Nothing to do with drugs,” Brewster said firmly. “Evans deals with power politics. He is a diplomat’s diplomat. And he was always an excellent persuader.” Brewster half-closed his eyes as if he were trying to see the occasion for Evans’s visit to Italy.

  “Do you think he has brought instructions from Moscow to Pirotta?”

  Brewster shook his head. “Pirotta is only the go-between.”

  “But he’s head of the narcotics ring, isn’t he?”

  “That’s how I know he is only the go-between. In Communist undercover work, the really important man is rarely the head of anything. Don’t worry about the ambassador—look at his chauffeur; or a cipher clerk; or an under-secretary. Pirotta takes orders from someone quite outside the narcotics ring. Evans wouldn’t meet the head man directly—”

  “You sound pretty definite on that.” Lammiter was not quite sure.

  “I ought to be. Once, I was something of an expert on people like Mr. Evans.”

  “That used to be your job? Before you branched into drug-smuggling?”

  “Before I branched—?” Brewster began to laugh. “My God—branched! I was kicked—and no pretence of upstairs, either—into a minor job, outside my own field. It was the biggest hint to resign a man ever got.”

  “But why?”

  Brewster said impatiently, “Does that matter? What matters is that I’ve spotted Evans in Rome. I was given the job of uncovering a little company of spoiled brats wh
o were playing around with heroin and opium. But—” he was laughing again, “—but I found more than anyone expected. By God, I’d like to see their faces next week when the news reaches them.”

  Lammiter wanted to ask, “Whose faces?” but he felt he had already asked more than his allowance of questions. Brewster talked cryptically, partly because he expected any intelligent person to grasp the full meaning of his quick allusions. He wasn’t the sort of man who paid any attention to those whose wits couldn’t follow his. Even drunk—for he was beginning to show the effects of this last bottle of wine—he was a formidable opponent. He must have once made a relentless enemy. Once. Lammiter watched Rosana take away the empty bottle with a shake of her head.

  But Brewster had noticed it, too. “Rosana—you’ll find another fiasco in the kitchen,” he said angrily, as if to prove that his voice was not thickening. “Wine makes me think. You know that. It’s food and drink.”

  Rosana went, even if slowly, towards the kitchen. Tony Brewster was a man who seemed to get his own way. It was then that Lammiter understood how fully the damaged leg must have hurt the Englishman. For once, he had become dependent.

  “Yes,” Brewster said, relaxing back into his chair, “I’d like to see their faces when they hear about Evans. Rosana!—”

  “Coming,” she called back.

  Lammiter was watching Brewster. Once he must have been good at his job as an Intelligence officer. Then he had gone stale, worried too much, and been transferred. And now he was drinking too much cheap Chianti, brooding about “them”, who had transferred him, sobering up to get the necessary information which would damn the “spoiled brats” like Pirotta, thinking mostly of the work he had once done (“the real meat and bone”), and remembering Evans.

  “So you saw Evans,” Lammiter said appeasingly. “You recognised him.”

  “And he recognised me. Which explains that!” Brewster pointed to his leg, but he was watching Lammiter carefully. Suddenly, he held out the photograph. Lammiter had the feeling that until this very moment, Brewster hadn’t quite made up his mind to show him the snapshot. “He still looks very much like this. Just in case you run across him in Perugia.”

  Lammiter started, looking at Brewster, and then at the snapshot. Evans was strolling along a London street with some park trees and a bus sharing the background. He was elegantly dressed, bowler hat in hand, light gloves folded, rolled umbrella, dark suit of conservative cut. He was the very perfect gentleman. He was tall, thin, with his head at a slight angle as if he were listening politely. (One could see how he had earned quiet popularity.) Fair hair; a prominent brow; a thin high-bridged nose; a tight-lipped mouth; not a particularly strong chin.

  “That was taken five years ago by a street photographer. Very lucky picture. Caught his general attitude. Of course he has changed a bit. His hair is now greyish, his skin has gone sallow. He is still wearing English-cut shirts and ties, though. Just won’t give them up.”

  “But what do I do if—” Lammiter bit off the rest of the sentence. (He had been about to say, “What do I do if I see Evans in Perugia?” But suddenly he was wary, embarrassed by the situation he had created for himself: he had started making promises that might be impossible to keep.) “I’m not the man for this job,” he said frankly, holding out the photograph to Brewster. “It’s an emergency, obviously. Don’t waste valuable time with me. Get someone like Bunny Camden. There must be people at your own Embassy who’d like to catch up with Mr. Evans.”

  “I tried that,” Brewster said, slowly, bitterly. “But I’m a drunk who’s got persecution mania and a complex about Communists, didn’t you hear? No one would see me at the Embassy—I’m an embarrassment. That’s the reason I sent Rosana to find Camden.” He took the photograph at last. “You’ll remember this face?”

  “Why don’t you get the Italian police—the man with the odd name... Bevilacqua? He’s at least friendly, isn’t he?”

  “I’m afraid the Italians have nothing against Evans. Except the fact that he’s using a false passport. But before we can find out enough about that, Evans will have attended a most secret meeting in Perugia and gone, as quietly as he came.” Brewster considered something, and then decided to add, “Besides, some of my informants are a little nervous if you mention a policeman. No, no Lammiter, I can’t risk frightening away future sources of information.”

  “You trust them?”

  “After I prove their stories,” Brewster said with a smile. “This week I heard three very interesting pieces of news, dribbled to me in a frightened whisper. First, Pirotta was to have a quiet talk, four nights ago, with a most important man. That, as I proved, was true. Secondly, a meeting was being most secretly arranged in Perugia for this important man. That may also be true. I think it is. My informant, a very careful customer, was found knifed to death two nights ago in a back street in Tivoli. A café brawl.”

  “But you doubt if your man was in it?”

  “It has always been a useful diversion.”

  “Yes,” Lammiter agreed. “As poor old Christopher Marlowe found out. Which proves that playwrights should stick to writing plays.”

  Brewster looked at him with some surprise, and then smiled. “He made a bloody good secret service man.”

  “Until he got knifed in a London tavern.”

  “You’re nervous?” The smile was mocking.

  Lammiter grinned back. “Perhaps. Or perhaps I know I’m not a bloody good agent. Frankly, I’d be of no use to you in Perugia.”

  “I don’t expect you to do any thinking.”

  “Thank you.”

  “All I want you to do is to find out if Evans has actually gone to Perugia. If he turns up there, telephone me here. That’s all.”

  “And you’ll get the Embassy to listen to you then?”

  “Or someone,” Brewster said grimly. “At least, we’ll know that second piece of information was accurate. It will no longer be in the category of rumour. It will be a fact, proven and true.”

  “But where will I look for Evans in Perugia? My God, Brewster, it’s a sizeable town.”

  “I’ll tell you where you can look for him.”

  “Was that the third piece of information you received?”

  “You can count, I see,” Brewster said. “I’ll have a map of Perugia ready for you tonight, all the details...” He was tiring now. “Once Joe and Salvatore leave here, you and I will talk a little more. The final advice... You’ll have to rent a car. No, better still, I’ll persuade Joe to lend you his. Three hours, four at the most, and you’ll be in Perugia.”

  And then, as Lammiter still looked worried, Brewster’s voice broke into anger. “You’re backing out! But you can’t. You’ll have to go! Just as you had to stay in Rome. When the trouble breaks, you want to try to keep as much of it away from Miss— Miss—” He looked at Rosana.

  “Eleanor Halley,” she said.

  “From Miss Halley as possible,” Brewster finished. Suddenly he was completely exhausted.

  Lammiter said nothing. He rose. Brewster slowly put the Evans photograph back into the envelope, and the envelope into the hollowed-out book. His fingers, like his voice, were now overcareful and slow. Lammiter turned away, so that Brewster could not see the pity in his eyes: it was pathetic to see anyone as good as Brewster becoming a man with a mania. Evans, Perugia.

  “What are you afraid of in Perugia?” he heard his own voice asking.

  “The three-sided chess game,” Brewster said abruptly. He reached slowly for the new bottle of wine. “Go and have some dinner,” he added testily. “Put some sense into your thick head. Come back and listen. I’ll—I’ll tell you—enough to make your ears pop. And you”—he wagged a thick forefinger at the American—“can tell it some day to old Bunny. I wouldn’t have to argue with him like this, damn you. He’s the only one who believes me the only one—” His voice had begun to drone into an undertone. “The only one,” he said, rousing himself for a brief moment. He actually put down his
half-finished glass on the table, and pushed it away. It upset.

  “I’ll help you to stretch out on the bed,” Lammiter said. He put an arm around the thick waist and started to heave.

  “I’m all right,” Brewster said, pushing all assistance aside. “Where’s my damned crutch? Lost again.” Rosana found it where it had slipped under the table. He took it, and began moving across the room, heavily, with difficulty and considerable pain. He dropped it at the bedside, flopped down with a sigh of impatience, and eased his bandaged leg on to the mattress.

  “Tomorrow,” Rosana said, “Giuseppe and I shall take you to the sisters.”

  Brewster looked at Lammiter, as if defying him to laugh. “Nuns! That’s where I have to go. Hear that, Lammiter?”

  “It’s safe. And quiet. And pleasant,” Rosana said. She had wiped up the spilled wine and taken away the bottle. Now she was setting a small alarm clock, and putting it within reach of the bed.

  “So is here,” Brewster said, his eyes closing. “I think I’ll sleep. At last.” Brewster began to laugh, gently. “Hie me to a nunnery... This old Protestant?” His eyes closed.

  “But Santayana went—” Rosana began. Lammiter motioned towards the door. The girl nodded. She looked round as if checking everything. She replaced the hollowed-out book in the pile of innocent volumes. She straightened a chair, lifted the empty glasses, and went towards the kitchen.

  Lammiter looked at the man stretched out on the bed. He was already slipping into sleep. The pool of deep golden sunlight near the window had shifted on the floor, moving slowly towards the bed. The chorus of children’s voices rose into a permanent happy chatter broken by loud ecstatic shrieks. On impulse, Lammiter closed the shutter, cutting out light, muffling the sounds. “No,” Rosana whispered. “He likes to breathe.” She opened the shutters again. The man on the bed grunted gently, and let sleep drift over him, a soft grey mist of forgetfulness.

  10

  Rosana waited for Lammiter to join her in the kitchen before she opened the back door that led on to another flight of stairs.