‘Don’t overdo it, sir,’ Trubman told him. ‘Just tell us what happened here.’
‘Jerry . . . Jerry came.’
‘Where’s Savarin and the partisans?’
‘Struck camp . . . pulled out.’
Wallace and Trubman exchanged a glance. ‘You mean they left you for the Hun?’ Wallace demanded. ‘After snatching you from that convoy yesterday? It don’t make sense.’
‘Traitors,’ Butterfield mouthed: his lips curled up suddenly with anger. ‘Like Caine. Traitors everywhere.’
Wallace blinked, wondered if he’d heard right: Trubman was staring at him, eyes wide under his thick lenses. ‘Did he say Caine?’
Wallace lowered his simian head, spoke in Butterfield’s ear. ‘What’s this, sir? Who’s Caine?’
Butterfield coughed again, struggled for an instant before he said, ‘Caine . . . escaped from the convoy . . . in Nazi uniform. One of . . . Amray’s . . . traitors.’
‘Caines are common as dishwater,’ Trubman said.
‘Was this Caine a POW in Jesi?’ Wallace asked. ‘I was in the camp six months: never come across anyone with that name.’
Butterfield whispered something unintelligible. Wallace leaned closer.
‘Caine’s SAS. Decorated officer. Captain Tom Caine . . . DSO.’
For a second Wallace and Trubman were thunderstruck.
‘Tom Caine?’ Wallace gasped. ‘A traitor? It can’t be our Tom Caine. That just ain’t –’
‘Guten Morgen,’ a cold voice said.
A German soldier was standing upright among the trees: he was clad in a field-grey tunic with high boots and draped on his shoulder was a cylindrical ammunition-box. He was pointing a service rifle at them.
Wallace’s Würstel-sized fingers twitched for the pistol stuffed into his belt.
‘Don’t!’ another voice cracked out.
This time the Jerry was behind them. Wallace shifted his head slightly, clocked a German with a Schmeisser leering at them from behind a bush – a fresh-faced farmboy with an aggressive grin and startling blue eyes. There was a flurry of movement in the trees around them: a bunch of Krauts were getting up, moving in.
Wallace caught Trubman’s gaze, saw he’d turned pasty. ‘’Ow daft can you get,’ he sniffed. ‘’Ook, line and bleedin’ sinker.’
He raised his hands slowly: Trubman did the same.
The fresh-faced Jerry moved out of cover, pushed his coalscuttle helmet back on his head, stood in front of them beaming.
‘So, it is Fishface and the Giant,’ he chuckled. ‘You did not get far, my friends. Now you are once again prisoners of the Reich.’
Wallace glared at Trubman. ‘Oh, bloody ’ell,’ he said.
Chapter Thirty
Near Montefalcone, Le Marche, Italy
10 October 1943
The woods were a tangle of trees with twisted limbs and torsos: leaves like burnished copper fractured the light into hazy colours, blazed a trail among gold shafts, through deeper seams of bronze and raw siena. At mid-morning, Caine and Emilia slithered down a carpet of leaves to the edge of a brook that gurgled shallow and clear over buffed stones. There were rocks padded with moss here, and green-velvet deadfall branches in knots like entwined pythons. They crouched in the black mud, ladled up water in their hands, lapped it thirstily: Emilia washed her face, smoothed back her hair. They sat in the grass: Caine watched red and blue dragonflies dive, hover, skim the surface of the water. Then he watched the countess as she stretched out on the ground, propped herself on her elbows: there was a feline fluidity to her body, he thought – she looked bendable, like a gymnast. She obviously found nothing awkward in lying on the earth, among the trees and grasses: it was almost as if she belonged here rather than in the castle. Her face had lost the severity he’d noticed earlier: now it was graced with a wry expression which, enhanced by the sleepy, half-narrowed eyelids, was almost sensuous.
‘You seem to be at home here,’ Caine said.
She picked a grass-blade, stuck it in her mouth, gave Caine a glimpse of pointed teeth. ‘I spent a lot of my childhood riding and hiking in these forests. I also spent time in New York, though: I didn’t really want to come back – it was only because I’d promised my father that I’d look after the villa. Now I am back, I know it’s where I should be – in the midst of nature.’
‘And yet you’re leaving again.’
She shrugged. ‘C’est la guerre.’
She sat up abruptly, removed the grass, brushed hair out of her eyes, clasped her knees, stared at Caine with that frankly challenging, slightly mocking expression he’d noticed back in the villa: her face was so close he could feel her breath on his cheek.
‘I’m sorry if I snapped at you about being late,’ she said. ‘I know it wasn’t your fault.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Caine felt mesmerized by the movement of her lips over her sharp white teeth, by the drowsy look in her eyes that seemed almost an invitation. Their eyes met: Caine felt the same magnetic power-surge he’d experienced when he’d first seen her – the feeling that he knew her, deep in his soul. She opened her mouth slightly: Caine was unable to draw his eyes away: he parted his lips, narrowed his eyes, moved his face towards hers.
‘What’s that?’
Caine opened his eyes fully, followed her gaze, clocked a set of scuff-marks in the mud by the stream-bank a few paces distant: they were human footprints, and they looked fresh. He got up, went to examine them. The marks had been made by civilian shoes, that was obvious, but there were also oblong impressions in the mud, of hard objects that had been set down: three of them. ‘Jerry cans,’ he concluded. ‘Someone was here filling jerry cans. Not long back, either: in the past few hours.’
He returned to Emilia, hunched down by her: her look was distant now.
‘Is it the partisans?’
‘Two men, a big chap and a small chap, in civvie shoes. Big chap’s a clodhopper – shoe size thirteen, at least. Unless locals use jerry cans, it’s got to be partisans. Shouldn’t be too difficult to follow their trail to the camp.’
He didn’t add that he had no idea what he would do when they got there. What if they recognize me as the Nazi stool pigeon who ran from the convoy? Will Butterfield be there? Will he back me up or condemn me as a traitor? It was ironic, he thought, that he was risking his life to carry out a promise made to a man he couldn’t trust to support him.
Caine tried to consider alternatives, but there was no plan B. They’d have to head for the partisans. He’d just have to use all his powers of persuasion when he met them. Either that or run like hell.
He sat down close to Emilia again, gave her a cigarette, lit it for her, then lit his own. He took a long drag, held smoke in his lungs, let it out.
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘Before we find the partisans, I want to sort out something. You say you don’t know where the Codex is and, frankly, that’s hard to believe. I can’t blame you for not trusting me: I appear with no warning, no uniform, dressed in women’s clothes. I must look like a rank amateur.’
Emilia sniggered. ‘Boy, you’re no amateur. The way you demolished my centuries-old hall with those grenades was the work of a master. Don’t worry, I’ve no doubt whose side you’re on. I still don’t know where the Codex is, though.’
Caine bristled. She’s not telling me the whole story. She arranged to have Butterfield snatch her and her brother, and the Codex. That must mean she knows where it is.
Maybe it had all been a bluff, he thought, to get herself and her brother evacuated in style. Maybe there was no Codex. But then what had Stengel been after? That didn’t add up either. And the countess had guts: she’d been abused by Stengel but she’d come up fighting: she was a girl, but she didn’t seem the kind who’d give up easily.
He felt frustrated: he would have pulled Emilia out of the villa for her own sake, even without the Codex – he’d have been glad to get her out of danger, her brother, too. He paused, knew he’d missed something. The
brother. Where is he? He wasn’t at the villa, but she hasn’t mentioned him. Is that what this is about? The Codex for her brother?
He took a deep breath: Emilia was lying back with her head against a moss-braided stone, her eyes narrowed, almost closed: she blew smoke coolly through pursed lips. Caine touched her ankle.
‘Let’s stop playing games,’ he said. ‘Is this some kind of tit-for-tat set-up? You won’t tell me where the Codex is unless I get your brother out. Is that it?’
Emilia sat up, blew smoke, glared at him. ‘Yes, we have to find my brother. But no, that’s not it. Not really.’
‘Not really.’ Caine was so incensed he rose to his knees. ‘Look here, a lot of people have risked their lives for this bloody manuscript: five SAS-men have been murdered for it. What about that? What about five dandelion seeds buried in the forest? What about the man in the mirror who’s not himself? What about the thing that lies in a room with no doors or windows? What’s all that about, eh?’
It came out in a rush: Caine was hardly aware of what he was saying. The effect was dramatic, though: Emilia went rigid, gazed at him with eyes like hub-caps. ‘How did you know about that? Nobody knows but me and Ettore.’
Caine was confused. ‘Know about what?’
‘What is sought lies in a room with no doors or windows. How could you possibly know?’
Caine shifted, stuck for words. He was reluctant to admit that he’d dreamed it: on reflection, though, there didn’t seem to be any other way he could explain it. Another leap of faith, he thought. He took a breath. ‘I know this sounds crazy, but I heard it in a dream. In fact, I saw you in a dream. I didn’t imagine it: I recognized you as soon as I saw you at the villa. There was a lot of other stuff, too, about dandelion seeds and a man in a mirror, but it was the room without doors and windows that stuck in my head.’
He sat down, embarrassed, searched her face again: her eyes were still riveted on him. ‘In a dream?’ she repeated.
‘I know, it sounds nuts. But I saw you. You were wearing a white dress –’
‘I never wear a white dress –’
‘That’s not important. But what does it mean? How could anything lie in a place with no doors or windows?’
Emilia watched him pensively, tugged at wayward strands of hair. She swallowed, stubbed out her cigarette, licked her lips.
‘OK,’ she said quickly. ‘That verse is a mnemonic. It was something my father made up before he died, to remind me how to find the Codex.’
Caine’s jaw dropped. ‘But you say you don’t know where it is.’
‘Hold your horses, I’m coming to it. My father loved the Codex: he considered it a direct link to the Romans, a priceless national treasure. He knew the Nazis wanted it, and would kill to get it. He was the only one who knew where it was, but in case anything happened to him, he passed the secret on to me –’
‘So you do know –’
‘My father was a scientist – a physicist, actually. He had a friend in the scientific community called George Estabrooks – a professor of psychology at Columbia University who was an expert on hypnotism. Have you ever seen anyone in a hypnotic trance?’
Caine nodded. He recalled a hypnotism show they’d once put on at the barracks: a heavy-set man in a suit with glasses and a goatee: a lot of his Sapper mates joining hands over their heads and not being able to part them: soldiers on stage grunting like pigs, running around quacking like ducks: one of them made so rigid he could lie like a plank between two chairs while a staff-sergeant stood on his chest. Caine remembered being amused but not convinced. ‘All that’s fake, isn’t it?’ he said.
Emilia’s eyes were grave. ‘No, it’s not. Estabrooks worked with military intelligence, on a technique called the hypnotic messenger, or locking. In one experiment, he hypnotized an officer codenamed Smith, in Washington DC, and gave him a message to take to another officer – Brown – in Tokyo. He conditioned Smith to forget the message: it could only be retrieved by Brown, using a signal-phrase that would put Smith into a trance and unlock the secret. Smith had no conscious memory of the message, so he couldn’t give it away. And even if someone other than Brown gave him the signal-phrase, it wouldn’t work: no-one else could hypnotize him.’
Caine felt completely at sea. ‘I don’t understand. What has this got to do with your father?’
‘Papa used Estabrooks’ method on me. He put me in a trance, told me the location of the Codex, locked it in my head. When I came out, I didn’t even know I’d been hypnotized: Papa gave me the no doors or windows phrase so I’d remember that the secret was in my memory, even though I couldn’t recall it.’
Caine was still confused. ‘What use is it if you can’t recall it?’
‘I didn’t say it can’t be recalled. It can, but it requires a signal-phrase like the one Estabrooks gave Brown. That code is the key to the room with no doors and windows. I am the door, you see, and . . .’
‘Another holds the key?’
‘Exactly. Papa gave my brother, Ettore, the signal-phrase. He’s the only one alive who can put me in a trance and unlock the secret. He holds the key. Even if I’d told Stengel I’d been hypnotized, even if he’d somehow known the signal-phrase, it wouldn’t have helped him at all.’
‘You expect me to believe this? It’s too fantastic.’
Emilia let out a sardonic titter. ‘And here’s the man who claims he saw me in a dream, who knows a phrase he couldn’t possibly have known. There’s much more in this world than is dreamed of in our philosophy, Captain . . . whatever your name is.’
‘Caine,’ Caine said sourly. ‘Tom Caine.’
‘Yes. Caine –’
‘All right.’ He cut her off. ‘For whatever reason, we have to get your brother. I’ll accept that.’
‘For whatever reason? You don’t believe me?’
Caine bit his lip. Could this be an elaborate excuse to make certain her brother wasn’t left behind? It seemed too elaborate, though. Emilia could have just dug her heels in and said that she wouldn’t go without him. The hypnotic messenger? It sounded like claptrap. But there was his dream: was that claptrap, too?
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I’m ready to help get your brother. Where is he?’
Emilia paused: the amber eyes grew moist. ‘Ettore has been arrested by the Krauts for partisan activity. That was his ring I got back from Stengel. He’s in detention at Orsini, but they’re taking him to Jesi tomorrow. After that he’s going to be shot.’
Chapter Thirty-One
Near Jesi, Le Marche, Italy
10 October 1943
It was cramped under the bush: Copeland eased his aching leg-muscles, changed position for the dozenth time. He pulled back his face-veil, inserted the eyepieces of his binos beneath, focused the lenses again on the gates of the Jesi camp. He’d been in position since before first light, had watched the sun bulge out of its cocoon, seen lightbeams paint sinuous van Gogh brush-strokes across the landscape, seen them expand into whorls of crimson and flame-orange, seen the sunlight drive spikes of fire among the placid evergreen copses of pencil cedar and Aleppo pine. The camp wasn’t far, but it stood on a rocky promontory, divided from his observation point by a plunging valley, obscured in places by peninsulas of forest, walled in by undulating green hills.
The camp itself was a set of intersecting rectangles of barbed wire, with watch-towers on stilts, chimneys, wooden hut-blocks, a few permanent buildings. An ash-coloured road ran through an avenue of poplars and telephone poles towards Jesi town, a playset of creamcake oblongs and cubes with ochre roofs peeking up amid forged and rusted foliage on another panhandle a mile or so distant.
Cope scoped the telephone lines, followed them to their vanishing point across the saddle: he let the glasses down, reverted to the naked eye. He had to be wary now the sun was getting up: an alert Jerry in one of those towers might spot the flash, send a party to investigate. Copeland thought he’d seen enough to assess their chances of rushing the camp, tho
ugh. The distance between there and the town was its Achilles’ heel, he reckoned. The main Axis forces were billeted in Jesi: judging by the size of the prison, he doubted that more than a company was stationed there – third-rate, rear-echelon troops, probably. A jeep-borne SAS patrol might deal with a company, might just get away with a surprise assault as long as no back-up arrived from the town: the telephone wires would have to be cut as a matter of course.
It would still be hazardous, though. Only one way in, and those watch-towers with their spotlights and Spandaus. Then you’d have to find Caine among thousands of milling prisoners, all of them wanting to jump on the jeeps with you.
Cope let his forehead drop into his hands, cushioned it with his face-veil. In a frontal assault, the best they could get away with would be 50 per cent casualties. That was a lot for one man, even if the man was Tom Caine. He knew Caine had been taken to Jesi, but how could he be sure he was still there? Breaking Jesi open would be a propaganda victory for the Allies, but would it be worth the sacrifice? No, not even Caine would want that. Cope had come here to get Tom out: he wasn’t going back without him, but there had to be a better way.
He looked up, caught the sparkle of sunlight on vehicle windscreens at the gates. He lifted his glasses, observed a convoy of lorries emerging from the camp, outridden by Jerry troops in motorcycle combinations. Copeland focused on the convoy as it came out: six – no – seven lorries, with passengers packed in like herrings. Their faces were blurred, but they were mostly men in uniform, without headgear or weapons: some wore grey prison overalls: there was a handful of civilians in mufti, even some women. He noticed that the last lorry in the convoy was piled with wheelbarrows, sacks and digging tools.
Cope suddenly remembered that Cavanaugh had talked about working parties . . . doing maintenance on the roads. That might be a better bet than trying to bump the prison-camp . . . It seemed likely they were taken out every morning at this time. He had no idea where they worked, but Lombard could probably find out . . . Cope swallowed, remembered that Lombard wouldn’t be doing any intelligence-gathering – not any more. They’d had to leave his body in Santa Lucia – the village in Abruzzo where they’d shot up the Hun. He wasn’t the only casualty of the past few days, either. Cavanaugh’s patrol had been shot up near Fabriano, by Fascist militia, in a dispute over a checkpoint. They’d ploughed on through with their Vickers rattling, but Cavanaugh had taken a gunshot-wound in the chest: he’d lost a lot of blood, was out of combat. He’d handed operational command of the three-jeep patrol over to Copeland.
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