North From Rome

by Helen Macinnes

  “Salvatore Sabatini,” Joe said slowly. “And what makes you think of him?”

  “He’s been at the back of my mind most of the night.”

  “Now I start asking the questions. Why?”

  “Oh—just a lot of little things,” Lammiter said vaguely. But he was remembering more than was comfortable.

  “Such as—?”

  “He tried to get me to leave with him, as if he didn’t want Brewster to start talking to me. In fact, he only left me behind when Brewster seemed to be falling asleep. He checked the locked door to the cat staircase, and he did that carefully. Then he looked at me as if he were afraid I had been watching him. Now I think he may have been unlocking the door.”

  “Sometimes a man remembers things to suit his thinking,” Joe reminded him quietly.

  “I’m not suiting my memory to anything. I felt uneasy at the time. But Rosana and Brewster trusted Sabatini. So I trusted him.” Never play down your instincts, he told himself: listen to them, Lammiter, listen.

  “And when did you start distrusting Sabatini?”

  “Since I started adding up all the little things. He spoke to you in the Piazza tonight. When you told me that, I didn’t think much about it. But Sabatini isn’t an amateur like me. He knows the rules. When he spoke to you, he broke them. Didn’t he?”

  Joe made no comment.

  “It was almost as if he were identifying you to the two strangers who started hunting you. How else did they know you?” He watched Joe’s face.

  Joe gave him a sudden smile. But his face was serious, almost grim. “Yes, I thought of that. I thought of that when I thought of a man who could have used my car.”

  “Sabatini?”

  Joe nodded.

  Lammiter tried to straighten his stiff legs. “I might have guessed you—” he began. He could laugh now at his worries about Sabatini. The man was the reason Joe had been sent north. Sabatini was Joe’s own particular division of labour. “You were ahead of me, Joe.”

  “Not me. Bevilacqua.”

  “No one has seen Sabatini since he spoke to you in the Piazza Navona—is that it?”

  “That’s just about it.”

  “Well,” Lammiter said with relief, “my guesses weren’t so damned stupid after all, not if Bevilacqua is—”

  “Bevilacqua has no guesses. But he is taking no chances.”

  “Then he must know something. Why else would he send you chasing north?”

  “In this business,” Joe said, “you do not always know. If you wait until you know, it can be too late. So you act on the greatest probability. If Sabatini is the man we want, I shall find him near Perugia. That’s all in the pattern. If he is the man we want...”

  “You make him sound more important than I thought he was.” But Joe added nothing to that. “He isn’t an Italian, is he?”

  “So now you are telling me something? I, an Italian, don’t know he isn’t an Italian!” Joe was annoyed. He tried to be amused.

  “Look, Joe—I make my living listening to people speak. I listen to actors up on the stage, I—”

  “In America, yes. What’s that to do with Italia?”

  “Look, Joe—” he tried again, “I thought I could speak Italian when I came to Italy. Once—before a war in Korea —I took a degree in Romance languages—Italian and French. So when I arrived here, I thought this is a breeze, Lammiter, my boy; what’s a rusty subjunctive or a forgotten pluperfect conditional between friends? But every Italian I’ve met—you included, so why the hell do I have to tell you all this?—has been politely amused by the way I speak his language. I’m a walking grammar book.”

  Joe looked somewhat mystified, but unperturbed.

  “Every city, every town in Italy, every village perhaps, has its own little tricks of language. Not only with the words and phrases, but even with the way they are spoken. Right?”

  “But you hear all kinds of accents in Rome,” Joe argued. He was still on the defensive.

  “Sure. It’s like New York. It’s the meeting place for the rest of the country. But what regional accent does Sabatini have?”

  “He comes from the north.”

  “Are you sure? Or is that what he tells you because you come from the south? Don’t you see, he’d have to meet someone from his supposed home town before he could be pinned down as a liar.” But no doubt Sabatini, if he ever had met such a man, would then come from a little town a hundred miles east, or west, whichever seemed safer. Then Lammiter was suddenly shocked by his own eloquence: it had led him farther than he had meant to go. “I can be wrong,” he said. “I guess I was carried away. Forget it, Joe. Let’s stick to what we do know.”

  Joe was silent for a full minute. “Now all that could be very interesting,” he said at last, half-lost in his own thoughts. “If it is true,” he added, still a little on the defensive.

  “I told you to forget it.”

  But something had made contact in Joe’s mind. Lammiter could almost feel him thinking. “Very, very interesting,” he said at last, furrowing his brows at the dark stretch of road in front of them. “If your guess is right, then Sabatini could be more important than any of us thought.”

  “But he’s only a guide—” Lammiter began. He stopped short, remembering Brewster’s warning: never look for an important agent in an important position; never look at the ambassador, look at his chauffeur.

  “It would be a perfect cover,” Joe conceded with grudging admiration.

  Lammiter said slowly, “I don’t like this, Joe. I don’t like it.”

  “You began it.”

  Lammiter said nothing. For the second time that night, he forced himself to play down what women call instinct and men, more modestly if less elegantly, a hunch. Stick to the facts, Lammiter, he thought grimly.

  But Joe was not going to let any deductions wither in the bud. “You still think Sabatini isn’t a real Italian?”

  “Yes. But what does that matter?”

  “Then he’s not only told one lie, he’s living a hundred lies. That matters.” He waited, but Lammiter was keeping quiet. “So I’d like to learn why you say he isn’t an Italian. Sure, sure, I know we’ve all got our different ways of speaking. In Venice, Giorgio is always Zorzio.” His voice sharpened. “But in Italy, there are people who speak as well as you do.”

  “Hey there!” Lammiter said quickly. “I speak bad Italian, Joe. That’s my point. I speak like a God-damned book. I’ve no background to my voice. That’s what I mean—no background. Why, even the principessa has that. She’s a Roman, isn’t she? She’s educated and travelled, but you wouldn’t say she came from Milan or Naples or Florence.”

  “Background...” Joe said thoughtfully. His feelings were less ruffled now. “You’ve got a quick ear, eh?”

  “If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t try writing plays.”

  “Sabatini comes from around Milan. You say that’s impossible?”

  “I’d say you should get a Milanese to check on his voice.”

  “Simple, isn’t it?” Joe said sarcastically now. “But I never met any Milanese who talked with him.”

  “How long has he lived in Rome?”

  “Eleven years. Since the war.”

  “He and Brewster were in the underground together. Right?”

  Joe nodded. “We checked back to the day he was born. Near Milan.”

  “That’s definite?”

  “We didn’t take Brewster’s word for him alone. What do you think we are?” Joe still had some hackles rising. Then he calmed down. He even gave a brief laugh. “Want me to recite for you?” he asked suddenly.

  Lammiter glanced at him quickly.

  “Salvatore Sabatini, born 1917, Milan, father a lawyer, only child, bright boy. Won prizes at school. Did his military service in the carabinieri, student at Milan University. The Germans came, father was killed, mother died. He left Milan, joined some underground fighters around Como. Met Brewster. Later joined a British battalion, as interpreter. After the war,
he came to Rome, worked for a travel bureau, became a guide. He did some black marketing for a while—small-scale stuff. And a little smuggling—nothing big. Just a small operator. But he got to know a lot of small operators. People on the fringe. Brewster found that useful: your best information can come from people on the fringe.” Then he looked at Lammiter. “Well?”

  “I think his father would have been kind of disappointed.”

  “Oh—some people drift.”

  “Some do.”

  “You are not buying?”

  “Are you?”

  “You heard what I told you. It all runs straight, as straight as this road.”

  “But it’s a poor showing for such a good start.” And Lammiter thought, Sabatini hadn’t given him the impression that he was content to be a man without a future.

  “The war changed people. Made them—” Joe paused. He frowned again at the road ahead of them. Then he said, and his voice had faltered, “The war killed some people, too. Killed them and left no trace.”

  For a moment, Lammiter didn’t follow. “You mean, the man who took to the hills round Como could have died up there?” “Died? He could have been killed in cold blood.” Joe took a long deep breath. “Underground fighting was not always a brave story. Sometimes, for politics, a good man was murdered. Yes—that could have happened. You take a man’s life, and then his name.”

  “But what about his friends? A murderer couldn’t take them over, too.”

  “Often the groups of those partisans were small. Sometimes they were wiped out, killed or captured. Sometimes there was only one survivor. He would join up with another group. Who would question him if he was a fighter who hated Fascists and Nazis? These were the only necessary credentials, my friend.”

  Grimly, Lammiter said, “We’ve built up a pretty picture between us. I don’t like it, Joe. Less and less.”

  “It may be false. Perhaps Sabatini is the student who went into the hills. Perhaps he didn’t play with the key of Brewster’s door. Perhaps he was so frightened, down in the Piazza, that he spoke to me. Perhaps he wasn’t the one who borrowed my car on those two special nights. You see, my friend, there’s an explanation for everything. Sometimes false, sometimes true. The main thing is that we know what we are meeting if we find Sabatini walking down a street in Perugia. Because, if he’s innocent, he won’t be walking down a street anywhere: he was one of Brewster’s little group, and it is being—eliminated.”

  “If he’s innocent, he’s dead. Is that it?”

  “Or in hiding, so that he will not be dead. Certainly, he will not be walking around as if nothing had happened.”

  “What does he know about you?”

  “Just what Tony Brewster or Rosana knew.”

  “He could have checked on your story.”

  Joe laughed. “Sure, he could.”

  “You don’t sound worried.”

  “Giuseppe Rocco has lived a simple life. He’s just a dumb Sicilian who got into trouble in Syracuse over a girl. When he got out of the prison hospital, he followed the Americans. But now he lives in Rome, and all he wants out of life is a bigger and better automobile. He went to work for Brewster, because Rosana persuaded him, and he’d do anything for Miss Rosana. Also, he hopes there will be some cash as a reward. Also, he keeps buying lottery tickets. Dumb as they come, that’s our Joe.”

  A prison hospital, thought Lammiter, might be a good place to pick up a recently vacated identity. But it seemed indiscreet to speculate openly about that. So he gazed out at the dark fields. They had begun to slope, to rise and fall. Far-off shadows against the sky were hills. The road was beginning to meet twists and turns. They passed through a small town, with its new buildings looking square and bare among the older houses with their cracked and peeling plaster.

  “A dump,” said Joe, with all the scorn of an adopted Roman.

  They passed other small houses, almost in little groups, as if people preferred to live as close together as possible. As in the town, the new buildings replaced war damage. Brightly painted in green and pinks, they were startlingly picked out by the car’s headlights. So were the bullet holes on the other houses, pitted and pock-marked by bursts of machine guns between the cracks and stains of age. In the distance, a heavy truck changed gears. Here and there, headlights swept over the fields, and a few cars hissed past.

  “Any chance of overtaking Pirotta?” Lammiter asked suddenly. Joe could drive. They were making excellent time.

  Joe shook his head. “I worked too carefully over that old Lancia,” he said regretfully. “She could drive from here to Geneva without a complaint.”

  “I still think we ought to have stopped it back at the gates.”

  Joe shook his head again. “We couldn’t have stopped them, my friend. I had a knife, you had no weapon at all. The gates were open, the engine was running. And there were three men in the car.”

  “Three?” That startled him. Then amazement changed to irritation. Joe did not need to measure out his information like this.

  “Pirotta, and two men who work for him. He was taking no chances.”

  “But—” He stopped, annoyance, giving way to fear, Joe was preparing him. For what?

  “I did all we could do. I telephoned. The alarm is out. The Lancia will be noticed.” Then, as Lammiter said nothing, he added, “If we had tried to stop them, they’d have changed their direction. Then we wouldn’t know where to follow them.” Again he glanced quickly at the American. He said harshly, “Stop thinking they will kill her. That—not! I have already told you.”

  “Whom are you persuading? Me—or yourself?” Lammiter asked angrily. “If Sabatini is the man in control, he didn’t stop at killing Brewster, his old friend, his old comrade. Did he?”

  “But he has more of a problem with the American girl. She has a lot of important friends. The Embassy—what will they say? Her father and his newspaper friends—what will they keep printing? The principessa—she won’t be silenced.”

  “The princess!” Lammiter said in deep disgust.

  “She’s your ally by this time. She has heard how they took the American girl from her house.”

  “How they took—?”

  “Sure. Do you think your girl walked into the car? Take it easy, Bill, take it easy,” Joe said worriedly.

  “Go on,” said Lammiter. “You’d better tell me it all. All.”

  “She came out of the villa slowly. She stood at the top of the steps and looked down at the car. Maybe she didn’t like Pirotta’s two men on either side of her. Maybe she had expected to stay at the villa. Maybe the car frightened her. She turned, and tried to run back into the house. But the two men were ready for that. They caught her. One had a hand over her mouth. They carried her down the steps. She was struggling. And then she didn’t struggle.” He hesitated. He glanced at Lammiter. “They didn’t hurt her. They put her to sleep, maybe. With a needle— that’s the quickest way. It would make the journey easier.”

  Lammiter took a deep breath and steadied himself.

  “The princess saw nothing of that,” Joe reminded him.

  Lammiter nodded. The princess had stood in the courtyard. Maria had been walking to the gates. Neither of them had seen.

  “But the princess will hear. The servants in the house would be watching. I know them. By now, she has stopped being angry with you. Now she is your ally.”

  And what did that matter?

  “You don’t think that’s important?” Joe asked quickly. Then he smiled, shaking his head, and concentrated on the road. They were swinging around a large church and a group of small houses. “Past this village,” Joe said, “we’ll stop. Stretch our legs.”

  “I’m all right. Keep on going.”

  Joe was watching the road, now running straight again for half a mile or so. His eyes were on the far-off lights of an approaching car. The lights blinked. Joe answered with his, as he began to slow down. So did the other car. It stopped under some trees and its lights were switched
off. Joe stopped and switched off his lights. “Out,” he said. “Stretch your back. Get some air in your lungs.” He opened his door, and crossed the road to the other car.

  Bill Lammiter did as he was told. He stood looking across the fields to the east. There was a faint pencil stroke of lightened darkness along the horizon. In front of him was a little vineyard, over there a patch of corn thrusting its strong stalks towards the sky, and flowers planted wherever there was a spare corner of earth. The air was cool and sweet.

  Behind him, Joe called to him softly, and he climbed back into the car. The other was already leaving.

  Their car started forward. “The Lancia is keeping to the road,” Joe told him. “That is one fear you can drop out of the window, my friend.”

  Lammiter tried to smile. Joe was doing his best to give him some encouragement. And it was true: the car that had reported to Joe made Lammiter feel better. The numbness was leaving his mind. They were not alone, two men on an endless road stretching over limitless fields.

  “Next stop,” Joe said, “we’ll get some gas. And coffee. And more information, too. And then, the hills. And after that, Montesecco. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Now I tell you the story of my life,” Joe said.

  19

  The dawn arrived as they turned off the Via Flaminia and branched to, their left. For some time they had been travelling among spreading hills and deep woods. Now the road ran along the side of a valley so broad that it seemed more like an immense plain rimmed by steep small hills, each complete in itself, sharp-pointed, almost symmetrical, drawn by an artist with an exact eye and a sure hand. Behind the hills were more hills, their peaks peering over each other’s shoulder. And every hill had its neat terraces of carefully spaced olive trees; its crest was sometimes forested, sometimes crowned by a walled miniature of a town. Down in the valley, a vast patch-work quilt of cultivated fields and trees was flung over the land, the neat squares stitched together by a very small river curving its way slowly back to Rome.

  “The Tiber,” Joe said, and rubbed his right shoulder and neck. They were the first words he had spoken in the last hour. Since their last stop in fact.