The Dark Chronicles (41 page)

His car was parked precariously on a verge, although calling it a car seemed something of a disservice: I’d never seen anything like
it. It was an Alfa Romeo, almost absurdly low slung and streamlined to perfection. The front window merged seamlessly into the roof, giving it the appearance of a prototype spacecraft. Instead of the traditional
rosso corsa
, the bodywork was British racing green.

‘New toy?’ I asked.

‘Just delivered,’ he smiled, unlocking an extraordinary pair of doors that swept up vertically, meeting in the middle like the wings of an enormous metal butterfly. ‘Isn’t it a beauty? It’s a “33 Stradale” – only a dozen or so have been built. It’s nearly identical to the racing version: top speed 175 miles per hour.’ He climbed in and patted the white leather. ‘Custom-built coachwork.’ He opened a compartment and pulled on a pair of matching kidskin gloves.

I made some appreciative noises, and remarked that he seemed to be doing well for himself.

‘Look who’s talking,’ he laughed. ‘Deputy Chief at forty-five!’

I manoeuvred myself into the front passenger seat.

‘Forty-four,’ I said.

For a moment I wondered whether he was on the take in some way, but immediately dismissed it: he was from an old banking family, and he’d always been a flashy bugger, even at school. As he brought us out onto the street, he veered out behind a rusty-looking Fiat, then brought the wheel round and squeezed through the gap to overtake it moments before a lorry came hurtling the other way. It was a terrific piece of driving but he hardly seemed to notice, and even accelerated. I looked on in admiration. Although the coachwork and exterior of the car were beautiful, there were few creature comforts: no radio, no carpet on the floor, no luggage space. It was a pure, brutal speed machine, and it certainly replicated the feeling of being in a race car. It took me back to Father’s sorties round Brooklands. I’d done a bit of racing myself in my teens, but had never really developed the taste for it: there didn’t seem to be enough of a purpose.

As we approached the centre of the city, Severn finally switched down a gear and I asked him for a situation report, which he gave as fast and as fluently as he drove.

‘There have been no further attacks,’ he said, ‘but the police took a call on Monday from someone claiming there was a bomb in the Finance Ministry – nothing was found, though. In Milan, the
carabinieri
have questioned fifteen anarchists and trouble-makers about the bombings there, and they’ve charged eight of them, including di Angelo and Rivera.’

I looked at him. ‘I thought they were based in Rome.’

‘They were both in Milan a few weeks before the bombing. The Italians think they might have been scouting around.’

‘I see.’ Well, that put paid to Haggard’s little idea, at least – I could hardly storm Milan’s police station and bump off a couple of their prisoners.

‘But it’s hardly over,’ said Severn. ‘Tensions are rising all over the place, and strikes and protests have now become almost the norm. Teachers, civil servants and railway workers have been on strike for the last few days, and a few hours ago several thousand Maoists stormed a Soviet May Day celebration and all hell broke loose, apparently. There are also rumours flying around that there’s a coup in the works. It’s a fairly explosive situation.’

I looked out of the window. An Agip dog whipped past, and then I started noticing the trees: ilexes, pines, even the occasional palm. In the blocks of flats lining the street, bougainvillea caught the evening sun in the highest trellises, and as we approached the next set of traffic lights I spotted a market stall selling fruit and vegetables in one of the side streets. Not much seemed to have changed in Rome, and I wondered if there was anything particularly out of the ordinary in Severn’s summary. Analysis this close to events was often prone to exaggeration, and he was, of course, trying to show me he was on top of things. Coups were forever being rumoured in Italy – one had very nearly taken place when I’d been here last – and I’d just seen London’s May Day march at close quarters, and that hadn’t been pretty, either. Britain had more than its fair share of strikes at the moment, and army units had even been posted to Northern Ireland after a recent spate of
firebombs… One could probably give a similarly grim sit-rep for most Western European countries, if one chose.

‘And Barchetti?’ I asked. ‘When’s your next scheduled meet with him?’

‘Oh-ten-hundred tomorrow. The National Gallery of Modern Art.’

‘Good. You can brief me over breakfast.’

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I tensed.

‘There’s good news and bad news,’ he said. ‘Which would you like first?’

I didn’t reply.

‘The Italians say they have more information about Arte come Terrore, and are happy to share it with us.’

‘And what’s the good news?’

He laughed. ‘That
was
the good news, Paul!’ I glanced at him. ‘Marco Zimotti wants to brief you at dinner this evening.’

‘Dinner? Not on – I need to get some kip. I’ve had rather a long day.’

He smiled at the understatement.
You don’t know the half of it
, I thought.

‘I’m afraid Lennox is insisting – visiting dignitary and all that.’

Christ, that was just what I needed. Lennox was the ambassador, a pompous fool I’d encountered several times before, and Zimotti was the new head of Italian military intelligence, Giacomo’s replacement. I had never met him, but knew him by reputation: a tough customer, by all accounts. It sounded like he’d strong-armed his way into a meeting once he’d heard I was on my way. Still, if he
did
have anything useful on Arte come Terrore’s plans, I might be able to tie up everything for Haggard and get back to London faster.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Dinner it is, but let’s try to make it fast, shall we? But tell me about yourself, Charles – are you enjoying Rome?’ I didn’t care, especially, but it might help to show I was friendly: I was invading his turf, and he’d naturally be a little nervous.

He beeped at a passing motorcyclist and made a face. ‘Can’t say
I do, much,’ he said. ‘The summers are too bloody hot and the winters aren’t much better than London. Nobody ever gets anything done and, frankly, once you’ve seen the monuments there’s not a lot to
do
, other than get hassled by beggars and cats in the street. One might as well be in Africa. Didn’t you find?’

I smiled. I suspected that in a few years’ time he would be attacked by a pang of longing for the place, and would have forgotten all about the beggars. I considered telling him about what was going on in at least one corner of Africa that I knew of, but decided it wasn’t worth it.

I looked out of the window again. We were approaching the centre of town now, turning into Via Cristoforo Colombo. Traffic was light on account of it being Primo Maggio, and I spotted a few students with banners wandering along the pavement. We passed a bar, and for a moment I caught the eye of a pretty young girl, who flashed a mouth full of gleaming teeth at me. It was an infuriating country, no doubt, and God knew I didn’t want to be here on Haggard’s wild-goose chase while Innes was asking awkward questions in London. But there was something about it I couldn’t help liking. It was carefree, even in the face of political strife and bloodshed. There was something
living
about the place, and you could feel it pulsing around you, in the tooting of the horns, the policemen strutting about in their spotless uniforms, the mothers slapping their children around the head. Cooped up in that office in London I’d forgotten what living was. I’d remembered it in Nigeria – there was nothing like nearly losing your life to make you appreciate it all the more – but this was more like it. This was a place where life was appreciated. Perhaps it was time to get out, retire, buy a little villa somewhere in the south…

I caught myself and laughed inwardly. It was a line of thought I might have pursued a few months earlier – not any more. I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see if the girl was still visible, and it was then that I spotted the tail. It was four cars behind us, a small white Fiat with Rome plates. The driver was wearing a pair of oversized
dark glasses, but it was definitely him: Toadski. I looked across at Severn, but he didn’t appear to have noticed, and I wasn’t about to set him right.

What the hell did the man want now? And how had he got here? I’d checked every seat on the plane. Presumably, he had watched Barnes and me walk off to our gate at Heathrow – careless of me not to notice – seen where we were headed and taken the next flight out. He’d had a stroke of luck that my flight had been delayed, but then again I had flown BEA so perhaps it wasn’t so much luck as fate. But what did he want? It was a long way to come to tell me to keep a low profile again. He hadn’t looked like an assassin, but perhaps I’d misjudged him and the message had been a diversion. I should have drowned him in a bucket of bleach when I’d had the chance.

As Severn drove through the embassy gates, I looked in the mirror and saw the Fiat pulling up to park about halfway down the street. Severn slipped into a space at the top of the driveway under a palm tree, and I opened my door and stepped out.

We walked up to the entrance and I looked out at the grounds.

‘Staff still in the sheds?’ I asked, as he rang the bell.

He gave a curt nod. The original embassy in Via XX Settembre had been bombed by Zionists in ’46 as part of their terror campaign against the British. Twenty-three years later, work had finally begun on rebuilding it on the original site, but most of the staff were still based here at Villa Wolkonsky, the ‘temporary’ embassy that had been set up after the attack. Although the ambassador’s quarters were rather grand, when I’d been here most of the staff had worked out of prefabricated shacks and outhouses in the grounds of the building – and apparently still did.

‘Sarah’s found you a room,’ Severn said. ‘Not terribly opulent, but I hope it will do.’

‘Sarah?’

‘The Station’s radio officer. We married last year.’

I remembered. I’d even been asked to sign off on it by Personnel, which I had done, naturally. ‘Keeping things in the family’ was approved of: it tended to make life easier. From past knowledge of Severn’s girlfriends, I imagined she would be very pretty and very pliant.

A butler in tails came to the door and led us inside. There was no lighting: there had been a power cut. ‘You see?’ Severn muttered to me under his breath. ‘Africa.’ The butler gave us each a torch, and we walked past the copy of Annigoni’s portrait of the Queen
to the reception desk, where a young man asked for our passports. Severn handed over his, and I remembered that Barnes had mine. Severn vouched for me, and the guard produced a form for him to sign to that effect. As well as having worked out of temporary quarters for over two decades, the embassy had a giant chip on its shoulder about security that dated back to the Twenties, when one of the local employees had passed hundreds of documents to the Soviets because he’d been trusted with keys to all the safes. As a result, the security precautions were often insufferable. They had annoyed me intensely in ’64, but right now I was delighted they were still in place: I couldn’t have picked a safer place to stay.

We climbed the staircase to the top floor, where Severn led me to a room roughly the size of the broom cupboard I should have strangled Toadski in.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘here we are.’

An iron bedstead had been made up with linen, and someone had sprayed cologne about, presumably to banish whatever unpleasant smell had previously occupied it. A rust-stained mirror and a washstand faced the bed, beside which sat my hold-all.

‘Where will Barnes sleep?’ I asked.

‘His room’s further down this corridor. Shall we go down now, or would you like a shave and a shower first?’

I walked over to the window and peered out. The street was largely protected from view, but I could just make out one corner of it. A tiny bubble of whitish grey stood out against the darkness: the Fiat.

I turned back to Severn. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

*

Downstairs again, members of the household were scurrying around lighting candles. From what I could make out, the place hadn’t changed much: the same candelabra and carpeting, the same paintings of dead dignitaries and the same smell of varnish.

We walked through to the dining room, where twenty or so people were seated, their faces quivering in the candlelight and
their voices merging into a low babble. Lennox, the ambassador, was at the head of the table, talking to an elderly woman I vaguely recalled was married to the French cultural attaché. On seeing us, he touched her lightly on the arm and stood, placing his napkin on the table. The room hushed, and he slowly began clapping his hands. A few moments later, the others followed suit, scraping back their chairs and facing me.

‘Bravo!’ Lennox called out. ‘Bravo!’

It took me a moment, and then I realized that they were giving me a standing ovation for chasing down Farraday’s sniper. I wished I were the man they thought they were applauding – but I wasn’t. A wave of shame swept over me and I gestured for them to stop, but it only encouraged them to applaud with greater gusto. I quickly stepped over to Lennox and he shook me by the hand and, slowly, the circus died down.

‘Welcome, Paul,’ he said. ‘It’s a pleasure to see you again, although I wish it wasn’t under such tragic circumstances.’

The last time we’d met had been at a particularly unpleasant meeting in London three years earlier, at which he had complained that my Section was interfering in his affairs – but no mind. ‘We wanted to have something a little grander,’ he was saying, ‘but what with the dreadful news about John, not to mention all the demonstrations taking place in town today, it wouldn’t really have sent the right message.’

I told him I quite understood and thanked him profusely both for the honour and for putting me up, and then let Severn lead me around the table. I shook hands with Cornell-Smith and Miller, two of the old hands at the Station. Then we came to Barnes, who looked up at me with evident relief that I hadn’t been kidnapped on the way from the airport. It seemed that everyone was ahead of me: his taxi driver must have been luckier than us with the lights, or known a short cut. He was seated next to a good-looking man with brilliantined grey hair, to whom Severn now introduced me: Marco Zimotti. I shook his hand.