“You were going to say—?”
“Nothing,” I answered quickly.
“You were going to tell me something. What was it?” And then, as I remained silent, he said, “For God’s sake, Dick, tell me where you come into it. You come into it somewhere. That I’m certain.”
“I can’t help you,” I said.
He looked at me for a moment as though testing my mood. “All right,” he said at length. “If you won’t talk, I can’t make you—not yet. But watch your step. I think you’re out of your depth. Perhaps you don’t know it. I hope for your sake—” He ground his cigarette out on the carpet. “If you change your mind I’m staying at the Garibaldi.” He turned quickly and went down the corridor. I went slowly back into the box and sat down again in the seat beside Zina. She didn’t move, but I knew she had seen me. “What did he want?” she whispered.
“Nothing,” I said.
Her lips were compressed into a thin line and for a moment she looked almost haggard.
When the curtain came down on the first act and the lights went up I saw there were two empty seats in the centre of the stalls. “Your friends have left?” Zina’s eyes were narrowed and watchful. I didn’t reply and she said, “Let us go and get a drink.” When we were seated in the bar she said, “Are you shocked to learn that I work for the Germans?”
“No,” I said.
She looked down at her drink. “I was in cabaret then. My father had been injured in the bombing of Napoli. My mother was dying of tuberculosis. I had a brother prisoner of war in Kenya and two sisters, one ten, the other twelve. They gave me the choice of working for them or going to the campo di concentramento. If I had refused then my sisters would have become prostitutes in the bordellos off the Via Roma. I do not think I have much choice, Dick.” She looked up at me and smiled. “But now everything is all right. The war is over and I am married to a conte. Only, you see, I do not like to be reminded of the past, by people who do not understand. This Maxwell, he was a British police officer?”
“No. R.A.F. Intelligence.”
“And what does he do now?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
She shrugged her shoulders. “What does it matter anyway. Who cares what he does? He has ruined the evening, that is all I know.” She finished her drink and got to her feet. “I wish to go home now, Dick. You are not good company any more and I am upset.”
I followed her out of the bar and down the wide staircase to the crowded foyer. The car was parked in the Piazza Trieste, but there was no sign of Roberto. I found him in a café in the Galleria Umberto. As we drove down to the waterfront Zina slipped her hand over mine. “Dick. I do not think this Maxwell is very good for you. Why not come away with me for a little? I have a friend who has a villa on the other side of Vesuvio. It is very quiet there among the vineyards. You can rest and relax, and nobody will know you are there. That is what you want, isn’t it?” I could feel the warmth of her body very close to mine. I felt my nerves begin to relax as though they were being gently, subtly caressed. It was exactly what I wanted. If I could get right away, so that Maxwell, nobody knew where I was. “Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I want. But there is your husband.”
“It does not matter about my husband,” she murmured. “He is in Roma. He will be there for several weeks yet. I often go out to this villa. He can ring me there as easily as at Posillipo. What do you think?”
“Can I ring you in the morning?”
“No. Come and see me between eleven and twelve. I will be ready to leave if you want to go. Roberto can drive us.”
The car had stopped at my hotel. “Good night,” I said. “And thank you. I’ll see you to-morrow.”
“Buona notte.”
I watched the red tail-light of the Fiat disappear round the bend by the entrance to the Castello dell’Ovo and then I went into the hotel and straight up to my room. But when I’d gone to bed I couldn’t sleep. Something Maxwell had said kept running through my mind—Somehow you’re a part of it whether you like it or not. At length I got up, put my dressing-gown on and went out on to the balcony. The night air was cool after the warmth of the room. A rippled path of silver ran to meet the moon and I could hear the water lapping at the stone breakwater of Santa Lucia. Away to the left a red glow showed for an instant in the night sky and was gone. I watched and it came again, high up, a reflected glow against the under-belly of a cloud. But the stars shone brightly and there wasn’t a sign of any cloud.
Footsteps sounded on the pavement below and I heard an American voice say, “It’s just the same as it was in 1944.” Just the same as in 1944! I knew then what that glow was. It was Vesuvius. The molten lava tumbling about inside the crater was being reflected on the cloud of gases each time she blew off. I lit a cigarette and stood watching it, wondering how it would look from a villa on the slopes of the mountain itself. At the moment it was only a faint flash of red in the sky, no brighter than the glowing tip of my cigarette, far less bright than the moon’s path.
I shivered and went back into my room. To-morrow I would leave Naples. To-morrow I would go with Zina to this villa. Maxwell wouldn’t find me there. And in a week’s time I’d go back to Milan and start work again.
Chapter V
In the morning I told myself I was a tool to be driven out of Naples by Maxwell. Why should I go up to a hot, dusty villa on the slopes of Vesuvius when I could stay down in Naples and lounge by the sea? Better to go over to Capri or Ischia or down the coast to Amalfi and Positano. The fact that Maxwell seemed to think I was in some way connected with Tuček’s disappearance didn’t seem so important as I sat on the balcony having breakfast in the sunshine.
It was a very close day. The sky overhead was blue, but cotton-wool banks of cumulus were piled up over Sorrento. Vesuvius looked remote and misty as though the air round it were curtained with dust. The red flashes of fire I’d seen the night before were no longer visible. The mountain looked serene and entirely dormant.
A thing that puzzled me was why Zina should want to go up to a villa on the slopes of Vesuvius. She seemed so much a creature of the popular bathing beaches. Not that it mattered. She would be exciting wherever we went. Lying back in my chair with a cigarette between my lips and the warmth of the sun seeping through the silk of my dressing-gown my mind conjured a picture of her body that was so clear I felt I could stretch out my hand and caress it.
The sound of a taxi stopping in the street below broke the spell and I leaned curiously over the balcony. It had stopped at the entrance to the hotel and a girl got out. Her titian hair glinted in the sunlight as she paid off the driver. It was Hilda Tuček. I turned quickly back into my room and grabbed the telephone. But by the time I got through to the hall porter it was too late—she was on her way up to my room.
As I put down the receiver there was a knock at the door. “Signor Farrell.”
“Yes?”
“C’è una signorina che la cerca, signore”.
I tightened the belt of my dressing-gown and went to the door. When I opened it I was shocked to find how tired she looked. She seemed to have got no benefit from the sunshine of the past few days. Her skin was pale, almost transparent, and the freckles were more noticeable. “May I come in, please?” Her voice was low and hesitant.
“Of course.” I held the door open. “Come through on to the balcony. Would you like something to drink?”
“Please. A lemonade. It’s so hot.”
I sent the boy for it and took her through to the balcony. She stood quite still with her hands on the railing looking out across the bay.
“Won’t you sit down?” I suggested.
She nodded and sank into my chair. I brought out another. An awkward silence developed. I was waiting for her to tell me why she had come and she seemed to find it difficult. At length she said, “It is so beautiful.” Her voice sounded wistful.
The boy brought her the drink and she sipped at it. I offered her a cigarette. When I had lit
it for her, she said, “I am afraid I was rather rude to you that morning at the Excelsior.”
I waited for her to go on, but she was gazing out towards Capri again. “Did Maxwell tell you to come and see me?” I asked.
She glanced at me quickly and then dropped her eyes to the handkerchief she was slowly twisting round her fingers. “Yes.” She looked up suddenly and I realised how tensed-up she was inside. “He thinks you know something. He thinks you’re connected with it in some way. Please, Mr. Farrell, you must help me.” There was desperation in her voice and somehow it hurt me.
“I wish to God I could help you,” I said. “But I can’t. Maxwell’s wrong. I know nothing about your father’s disappearance. If I did I’d tell you.”
“Then why did you leave Milan so hurriedly?”
“I told Maxwell last night—because I needed a holiday.”
“He doesn’t believe you.” Her eyes were watching me closely and I realised that, however pathetic she might seem, she was a girl of iron determination. She was going to sit there and batter away at me until she got the truth out of me. I felt suddenly ill-at-ease, as though I was faced with something that I couldn’t beat down. “Why did you leave Milan?”
“Look,” I said. “The reason I left Milan has nothing whatever to do with your father’s disappearance. You’ve got to believe that.”
She looked at me hard, and then said, “Yes—I think I believe that. But Maxwell is convinced there’s some connection between—”
“Maxwell knows nothing about it,” I snapped.
She turned her head and looked out to sea. “Would you be willing to tell me about it?” she asked.
I hesitated. “No.” I said. “You’ve got enough troubles without listening to mine,”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I would have liked you to feel you could trust me.” She paused for a moment and then said, “When John Maxwell arrived in Milan he brought a message for me from my father. It was given to him at the airfield before they left—on that flight. My father said, if anything went wrong I was to contact you.”
“Contact me?” I stared at her in surprise. “Why contact me?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Farrell. I thought you might know. You were his friend years ago. I think he must have communicated something to you.”
I remembered then the extraordinary telephone conversation I had had with Sismondi.
“Won’t you tell me what it was, please?”
“I can’t,” I said. “There’s nothing to tell you.”
“But surely—”
“I tell you there’s nothing. I saw him once, that’s all. It was in his office and there was an interpreter with us the whole time. All he did was to give me a message for Maxwell which I delivered.”
“And you didn’t see him again?”
“No.” I hesitated and then added, “The night porter at the hotel where I was staying told me your father visited me late one night. If he did, he didn’t wake me. He left no message, nothing. I’ve searched my baggage, even my clothes. I can only imagine the porter made it up in order to blackmail me into giving him some kronen to keep his mouth shut.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, looking at me hard. “Maxwell is convinced you’re mixed up in this—”
“Damn Maxwell! “I said, rising suddenly to my feet. “He knows nothing about it. He wasn’t there.”
“But this business of Sismondi telephoning you about some blueprints you were to deliver to him?”
“I think it was a try-on.”
“You went to his house. What happened, please?”
“Nothing happened.” I was getting agitated. She was forcing my mind back to Milan, to things I wanted to forget.
“Alec told me you were very upset when you got back.”
“I was drunk,” I said. Damn it, why did she have to cross-examine me like a public prosecutor?
“Mr. Farrell, please. I have a great deal at stake in this. I love my father very much. I have run his home ever since we have been able to return to Czechoslovakia. He means a great deal to me.” There were tears in her eyes now. “What happened at the flat of this man Sismondi?”
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to help her. But it wouldn’t help if I started telling her again about Shirer and Sansevino. “Nothing happened,” I said. “I met someone I hadn’t seen for a long time, that’s all. It upset me.”
“Walter Shirer?”
I nodded.
“Captain Caselli is satisfied he has got nothing to do with it. Also Alec Reece swears that Shirer would never have become involved in a thing like this.”
“The man he knew wouldn’t,” I answered.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing.” I was thinking back now to the scene in Sismondi’s flat. I’d thrust it out of my mind. But now I remembered how Sismondi had been waiting …
“Walter Shirer is very like the man whose picture you had.”
“Yes. He was very like Sansevino. Have you—met Shirer?”
“Yes. John Maxwell took me to see him.”
“In Milan?”
“No. Here in Naples. We saw him last—” She caught hold of my arm. “What is the matter?”
“It’s all right,” I muttered. I felt for the back of my chair and sank into it.
“You went quite white.”
“I’m not at all well. That’s why I had to have a holiday.”
“It was when I said Walter Shirer was here in Naples.” She was leaning forward, staring at me. “Why did the name Shirer upset you?”
“I told you, that day in Milan when I was leaving—only you wouldn’t believe me. His name’s not Shirer. It’s Sansevino. Tell Maxwell that. Tell him that the man Reece escaped with was Sansevino.”
I saw her eyes widen. “But this Dr. Sansevino is dead—he died in 1945. Besides, Alec has seen Shirer in Milan. He would have known if it wasn’t Shirer.” She was looking at me oddly. “I think that doctor was right. You are ill.”
I felt frustration and anger mounting inside me. “Do you think I don’t know who the man is? That last night in Milan—I lay in bed in the dark and felt his hands on my leg. I knew those hands. I’d know them if a thousand hands were touching my leg.”
Her eyes had dropped to my artificial limb. The metal of it was showing beneath my pyjama trousers. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Last night Maxwell told me what happened to you when you are a prisoner. I did not mean to—” She didn’t finish and got to her feet.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” I, too, had risen.
“I think perhaps you were right. You do need a holiday. I didn’t realise it would be such a shock—”
I caught hold of her then. “You little fool! “I snapped, almost shaking her. “You come here for the truth. I give it you and you don’t believe me.”
“Please, Mr. Farrell.” She took hold of my hands gently and pulled them away from her shoulders. “Why not lie down for a bit? I don’t think you should be out here on the balcony. The glare—”
I started to say something, but she stopped me. “You mustn’t excite yourself any more.” Her eyes looked at me sadly. “I’ll let myself out.” Then she turned and went through into the room. I heard the door close. I was alone then with the knowledge that Sansevino was here in Naples.
I dressed quickly, packed my things and checked out of the hotel. Thank God Zina had suggested visiting this villa. I could forget things so easily with Zina. And they’d never find me there. I got a taxi and drove straight out to the Villa Carlotta.
Zina’s big, cream-coloured Fiat was waiting at the door as I drove up. Roberto was in the driver’s seat, lounging over the steering wheel. He didn’t smile at me. His eyes looked black and sullen and I had a sudden feeling that he hated me. The good-looking youth in the bathing trunks seemed to have become coarsened into a surly peasant.
I was shown into the room where I’d met her before. The powder-blue walls and furnishings seemed colde
r, more artificial. The view from the balcony was bleak and grey and the air was heavy so that my shirt stuck to my body. On a table in a corner was a photograph in a heavy silver frame— Zina in a white wedding dress, her hand resting on the arm of a tall, uniformed man with a drawn, leathery face. The door opened as I was putting the photograph back on the table. “You like my husband?”
I swung round. Zina, in a pale green silk frock covered with scarlet tigers, was smiling at me from the doorway. I didn’t know what to say. The man looked more than twice her age.
She gave me a quick, angry shrug. “What does it matter? He is already a part of the past.” She smiled. “Shall we go?”
I realised then that it had never occurred to her that I should not come.
“You look tired,” she said as she took my hand. Her fingers were very cool,
“It’s nothing,” I answered. “Just the heat. What’s wrong with Roberto this morning?”
“Roberto?” An amused smile flickered across her lips. “I think perhaps he is a little jealous.”
“Jealous?” I stared at her.
For a moment she seemed about to burst out laughing. Then she said quickly, “Roberto is employed by my husband. He think he is my watch-dog and he does not approve of my taking handsome young Englishmen out to Santo Francisco.” She held the door open for me. “Come,” she said gaily. “I have arrange everything. We will have lunch at Portici and then we have an appointment to keep with your American friend at Pompeii. Remember?” She wrinkled her nose at me. “I think it will be very dull. I ask him only because you are so stupid with me yesterday. But it does not matter. We have all the night.”
Outside Roberto was just putting my suitcases in the boot. He went round to the door and held it open. Zina paused as she was getting in and said something to him in Italian. She spoke softly and very fast. His eyes flicked to my face and then he grinned at her rather sheepishly. He was like a small urchin that has been promised a sweet.
“What did you say to Roberto?” I asked as I subsided into the cream upholstery beside her.
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