North from Rome (12 page)

Lammiter looked both uncomfortable and angry, as men do when they don’t quite want to believe something that they instinctively feel may be too true for comfort. “You make it seem as if Western Europe were all under a constant barrage of narcotics. My God, Brewster—”

“I’m not exaggerating. I’ve only time to give you the barest details now. Later, if you’re interested, you can trace down many more. They’re all in print.”

“In print?”

“Ever heard of Interpol?”

“The International Police Force? But I thought the war had killed it.”

“It’s been resurrected. Headquarters are now in Belgium. You must read Interpol’s recent report on the narcotics business. You’ll find all the facts and figures about each
country’s contribution to this ugly mess—who grows the stuff, who processes it, who sends it travelling, what ships have carried it, what seamen have smuggled it. They’re all named. My dear Lammiter, the whole thing is a campaign against the West, planned and carefully subsidised by its enemies, aided and abetted by men whose lack of morality is amply compensated by their cupidity. Those who grow opium or process it, or ship it, ask no questions about why it is being bought or where it is being sent. They just keep their eyes fixed on their bank accounts.”

“They are monsters!” Rosana burst out.

“Yes, yes,” Brewster said calmly, pulling the conversation back to cold reason. “The United Nations Narcotics Commission has also issued its reports. The facts have all been gathered and noted down. Believe me”—he was becoming a little impatient—“I am neither exaggerating nor lying. America
is
the chief target.”

Rosana said, “And what is more, it is your young people who are the centre of the target.”

“At this point,” Brewster said, “Rosana always bursts into tears with indignation and helplessness. But cheer up, my soft-hearted Rosana: at least one drug-exporting firm is going to be out of business within a week. Thanks to you, Rosana. And to me. I may as well admit I’ve had one success in my life: Luigi, Count Pirotta.” He said the name with relish. He smiled benignly.

“There are a lot of people to be thanked,” Rosana reminded him. “There was Bevilacqua over at the Questura.” She turned to Lammiter. “Bevilacqua is the detective who has been working on the Pirotta organisation ever since my brother’s death. He’s
very
good. He’s clever, truly. He did more than anyone—” She bit her lip and smiled. “And then the two nice Americans— narcotics agents from Washington—they are now in Bari and Trieste waiting for two ships to arrive.”

“They’re always so interested in catching the
supplies,”
Brewster said irritably. “Opium, heroin, cocaine, marijuana. You puts in your penny and you takes your choice. But I’m interested in
people.
Such as our handsome count, who is making hay, with a nonny nonny yea.” He cocked his head and looked at Lammiter. “Does my levity shock you? Good. I need something to shock you into taking me seriously.”

“It’s all very well for you to see Pirotta as a comic character, but it isn’t your country that’s getting the treatment,” Lammiter reminded him grimly.

“Oh, some of the treatment blew off on us. The American bases in Britain are naturally of interest to Pirotta’s friends. His salesmen found them difficult, so they couldn’t resist trying to make some customers among the young and foolish in the local population. I think we caught them in time.”

“It is strange,” Rosana said, “how all people who take drugs try to convert others to be like them. They pretend it’s nothing at all, something normal and natural. They need company, I think.”

“That’s how it spreads. Worse than smallpox,” Brewster agreed. “Anyway, the British are definitely interested in this. Or else I shouldn’t be here.” He looked suddenly at Lammiter. “I’m a journalist, by the way.”

“You are?” Lammiter smiled.

“Yes, indeed. The London
Echo
is hoping to get an exclusive story when it can all be told.”

“When is that?”

“Next week—as soon as the two new shipments arrive and are consigned to Pirotta’s warehouses.”

Something in Brewster’s voice caught Lammiter’s attention. He said slowly, “I think it isn’t the sale of narcotics that really interests you. I think it is Pirotta himself.”

“You may be right.”

“Why?”

“Because Pirotta is not in the narcotics business for money. He’s in search of power, political power. He’s a Communist.”

“What?” Lammiter looked at Rosana. She was quite calm, as if she had long accepted the idea and could no longer be surprised by it.

Brewster went on quickly, “He has set up, during the last eight years, a remarkably efficient organisation, international in scope, with its key men all Communists. It can be turned to political uses when necessary. Meanwhile, it adds to the Communists’ secret funds, helps to corrupt their enemies, and gathers a list of future traitors—drug addicts can always be bribed by heroin, or blackmailed with threats of exposure. They’ll be quislings, every one of them.”

Lammiter was still thinking about Pirotta. “But he’s the fellow who has everything,” he said, almost to himself.

“Pirotta? Not in modern terms. What power lies in an inherited title today? What money?—Possessions now mean taxes. So what does an ambitious man do? He knows Europe is changing. He chooses the most ruthless force in the struggle for power. He sees the Communists as the wave of the future. And he is determined to stay on its crest. His family has managed to swim there for years.”

“For three centuries, to be accurate,” Rosana said. “They’ve
switched sides for three centuries, always choosing the winners. Until Mussolini.” She laughed softly. “His father chose wrong, there.”

“So he thinks he’ll regain the family’s power by supporting the Communists?” Lammiter asked.

“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 who 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.