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SEVEN

T
HE LANDING STAGE WAS DESERTED
when Chavasse, Orsini and Carlo drove up in the old Ford pickup. The big Italian cut the engine, jumped to the ground and went to the head of the steps.

He turned, shaking his head. “We’re wasting our time, Paul, but we’ll check the house just in case.”

They went down the steps quickly and crossed the landing stage to the door. It opened without difficulty and Chavasse went up first, an old Colt automatic Orsini had given him held against his right knee.

The door to the room in which Kapo had interviewed him stood ajar, light streaming out across the dark landing. Chavasse kicked it open and waited, but there was no reply. He went in quickly at ground level, the automatic ready.

Vodka from the smashed bottle had soaked into the floor mixed with blood and the table still lay on its side. Fog billowed in through the broken window and Orsini walked across, feet crunching on glass, and peered outside.

He turned, respect on his face. “A long way down.”

“I didn’t have a great deal of choice. What do we do now?”

The Italian shrugged. “Go back to the Tabu. Maybe old Gilberto’s remembered something by now.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Chavasse said. “That was a hard knock he took.”

“Then we’ll have to think of something else.”

They returned to the pickup and Carlo drove back to the Tabu through the deserted streets. As the truck braked to a halt, Chavasse checked his watch and saw that it was almost half past two. He jumped to the ground and followed the two Italians along the alley to the side door.

There were still a few customers in the bar at the front and, as they walked along the passage, the barman looked round the corner.

“Rome on the phone. They’re hanging on.”

“That’ll be my call to the Bureau,” Chavasse said to Orsini. “I’ll see what they’ve got to tell me about Kapo.”

“I’ll have another word with old Gilberto,” Orsini said. “He may be thinking a little straighter by now.”

Chavasse took his call in the small office at the back of the bar. The man he spoke to was the night duty officer based at the Embassy. No one of any particular importance. Just a good reliable civil servant who knew what files were for and how to use them efficiently.

He had nothing on Kapo that Chavasse didn’t already know. Incredibly, everything the man had said about himself was true. At one time a high official in the Albanian Ministry of the Interior, he had been marked down for elimination in 1958 during one of Hoxha’s earlier purges. He had been allowed to enter Italy as a political refugee and had since lived in Taranto earning a living as an import-export agent. Presumably on the basis that an Albanian of any description was preferable to a foreigner, Alb-Tourist had appointed him their Taranto agent in 1963. An official investigation by Italian Military Intelligence in that year had indicated nothing sinister in the appointment.

Chavasse thanked the duty officer. No, it was nothing of any importance. He’d simply run across Kapo in Matano and had thought him worth checking on.

 

A
T THE OTHER END OF THE WIRE IN HIS
small office in Rome, the duty officer replaced the receiver with a thoughtful frown. Almost immediately, he picked it up again and put a call through to Bureau headquarters in London on the special line.

It could be nothing, but Chavasse was a topliner—everyone in the organization knew that. If by any remote chance he was up to anything and the Chief didn’t know about it, heads might start to roll and the duty officer hadn’t the slightest intention of allowing his own to be numbered among them.

The telephone on his desk buzzed sharply five minutes later and he lifted it at once. “Hello, sir…yes, that’s right…well, there may be nothing in it, but I thought you’d like to know that I’ve just had a rather interesting call from Paul Chavasse in Matano….”

 

O
LD
G
ILBERTO COUGHED AS THE BRANDY
caught at the back of his throat and grinned wryly at Orsini. “I must be getting old, Guilio. Never heard a dammed thing. It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes after Carlo had delivered the young woman. One moment I was reading a magazine, the next, the lights were going out.” He raised a gnarled and scarred fist. “Old I may be, but I’d still like five minutes on my own with that fancy bastard, whoever he is.”

Orsini grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “You’d murder him, Gilberto. Nothing like a bit of science to have these young toughies running around in circles.”

They went out into the passage, leaving the old man sitting at the fire, a blanket around his shoulders. “A good heavyweight in his day,” Orsini said. “One with the sense to get out before they scrambled his brains. Anything from Rome?”

Chavasse shook his head. “Everything Kapo said about himself was true. He
is
the Alb-Tourist agent in Taranto, an old Party man from Tirana who said the wrong thing once too often and only got out by the skin of his teeth. According to Italian Intelligence he’s harmless, and they usually know what they’re talking about.”

“That’s what MI5 said about Fuchs and look where it got them,” Orsini pointed out. “Nobody’s perfect and the good agent is the man who manages to pull the wool over the eyes of the opposition most effectively.”

“Which doesn’t get us anywhere,” Chavasse said. “They’ve gone, which is all that counts, taking Francesca Minetti with them.”

They went into the office at the rear of the bar and Orsini produced a bottle of whisky and three glasses. He filled them, a slight thoughtful frown on his face.

“Whoever took the girl, it couldn’t have been Kapo and his men—the time factor wouldn’t have allowed it. The men who attacked her on the jetty earlier—what can you tell me about them?”

“Judging by the language the second one used when he tried to stick his knife into me, I’d say he was Italian,” Chavasse said. “Straight out of the Taranto gutter.”

“Anything else interesting about him?”

“He had a dark beard, anything but the trimmed variety, and his face was badly scarred. A sort of hook shape curving into his right eye.”

Orsini let out a great bellow of laughter and clapped him on the shoulder. “But my dear Paul, this is wonderful.”

“You mean you know him?”

“Do I know him?” Orsini turned to Carlo. “Tell him about our good friend Toto.”

“He works for a man called Vacelli,” Carlo said. “A real bad one. Runs a couple of fishing boats out of here, engaged in the Albanian trade, the town brothel and a café in the old quarter.” He spat vigorously. “A pig.”

“It looks as if Kapo must have employed Vacelli to get hold of the girl for him,” Orsini said. “The sort of task for which Nature has fitted him admirably. Unfortunately, you arrived on the scene and messed things up.”

“Which doesn’t explain why Kapo went to the trouble of having me pulled in for a personal interview.”

“He probably thought he could do some kind of a deal, you made a break for it and he had to leave in a hurry in case you decided to whistle down the law on him. No other choice.”

“And in the meantime, Vacelli and his boys picked up the girl?”

Orsini nodded. “And Kapo had to leave before they could get in touch with him.”

“So you think Vacelli may still have the girl?”

Orsini opened the drawer of his desk, took out a Luger and slipped it into his hip pocket. He smiled and the great, ugly face was quite transformed.

“Let’s go and find out.”

 

V
ACELLI

S PLACE FRONTED THE HARBOR ON
the corner of an alley that led into the heart of the old town. The sign simply read
Café
. Inside, someone was playing a guitar. They parked the pickup at the entrance, and when they went in, Orsini led the way downstairs.

There was a bead curtain and the murmur of voices from the bar beyond. The guitar player sat just inside the entrance, chair balanced against the wall. He was young with dark curling hair, the sleeves of his check shirt rolled back to expose muscular arms.

Orsini pulled back the curtain and looked down at the legs sprawled across the entrance. The guitar player made no effort to move and Orsini hooked the chair from under him, the sudden clatter stunning the room to silence.

There was a narrow, marble-topped bar, the wall behind it lined with bottles, and a few small tables, chairs ranged about them. The floor was of stone, the walls whitewashed, and there were no more than a dozen customers, most of them men.

The guitar player came up fast, a spring knife in one hand, but Carlo was faster. His hand tightened over the wrist, twisting cruelly, and the youth screamed, dropping the knife. He staggered back against the wall, tears of pain in his eyes, and Orsini shook his head.

“God knows what’s happened to the youth of this country. No manners at all.” He turned, looking the other patrons over casually. The bearded man with the scarred face, the one they called Toto, sat at the table by the wall, one arm in a sling.

Orsini grinned. “Eh, Toto, you don’t look too good. Where’s Vacelli?”

There was a scrape of a boot on stone and a surly voice growled, “What the hell do you want?”

Vacelli stood at the top of the flight of stone steps in the corner leading up to the first floor. He was built like Primo Carnera, a great ox of a man with a bullet-shaped head that was too small for the rest of his body.

“Hello there, you animal,” Orsini cried gaily. “We’ve come for the Minetti girl.”

Vacelli’s brutal face reddened in anger and he obviously restrained his temper with difficulty. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What a pity.” Orsini picked up the nearest chair and threw it at the shelves behind the bar, smashing the mirror and bringing down a dozen bottles. “Does that help?”

Vacelli gave a roar of rage and came down the steps on the run. Orsini picked up a full bottle of Chianti from a nearby table, jumped to one side and smashed it across Vacelli’s skull as he staggered past.

Vacelli fell to one knee. Orsini picked up a chair and brought it down across the great shoulders. Vacelli grunted, started to keel over. Orsini brought the chair down again and again until it splintered into matchwood. He tossed it to one side and waited.

Slowly, painfully, Vacelli reached for the edge of the bar and hauled himself up. He swayed there for a moment, then charged head-down, blood washing across his face in a red curtain. Orsini swerved and slashed him across the kidneys with the edge of his hand as Vacelli plunged past him.

Vacelli screamed and fell on his face. He tried to push himself up, but it was no good. He collapsed with a great sigh and lay still.

“Anyone else?” Orsini demanded.

No one moved and he turned to Carlo. “Watch things down here. We won’t be long.”

Chavasse followed him up the stairs and the big Italian pulled back a curtain and led the way along a narrow passage. A young woman in a cheap nylon housecoat leaned in a doorway smoking a cigarette.

“Eh, Guilio, have you killed the bastard?”

“Just about.” He grinned. “He’ll be inactive for quite a while. Time enough for you to pack your bags and move on. There was a girl brought here tonight. Any idea where she is?”

“The end room. He was just going in when you arrived. I don’t think he meant her any good.”

“My thanks,
carissima
.” Orsini kissed her lightly on one cheek. “Go home to your mother.”

Chavasse was already ahead of him, but the door was locked. “Francesca, it’s Paul,” he called.

There was a quick movement inside and she called back, “The door’s locked on the outside.”

Orsini stood back, raised one booted foot and stamped twice against the lock. There was a sudden splintering sound, the door sagged on its hinges, rotten wood crumbling. He stamped again and it fell back against the wall.

Francesca Minetti stood waiting, her face very white. She was still wearing Chavasse’s old sweater and looked about fifteen years old. Chavasse was aware of the breath hissing sharply between Orsini’s teeth and then the Italian was moving forward quickly.

His voice was strangely gentle and comforting, like a father reassuring a frightened child. “It’s all right now, cara. There is nothing to worry about anymore.”

She held his hand, gazing up into the ugly, battered face and tried to smile, and then she started to tremble. She turned, stumbled across the wreckage of the door and ran into Chavasse’s arms.

EIGHT

I
T WAS JUST AFTER EIGHT O

CLOCK ON
the following evening when the
Buona Esperanza
moved away from the jetty and turned out to sea. It was a warm, soft night with a luminosity shining from the water. There was no moon, for heavy cloud banked over the horizon as though a storm might be in the offing.

Orsini was at the wheel and Chavasse stood beside him, leaning forward to peer through the curved deckhouse window into the darkness ahead.

“What about the weather?” he said.

“Force four wind with rain imminent. Nothing to worry about.”

“Is it the same for the Drin Gulf?”

“A few fog patches, but they’ll be more of a help than anything else.”

Chavasse lit two cigarettes and handed one to the Italian. “Funny what a day-to-day business life is. I never expected to set foot on Albanian soil again.”

“The things we do for the ladies.” Orsini grinned. “But this one is something special, Paul. This I assure you as an expert. She reminds me very much of my wife, God rest her.”

Chavasse looked at him curiously. “I never knew you’d been married.”

“A long time ago.” Orsini’s face was calm, untroubled, but the sadness was there in his voice. “She was only nineteen when we married. That was in 1941 during my naval service. We spent one leave together, that’s all. The following year she was killed in an air raid while staying with her mother in Milan.”

There was nothing to be said and Chavasse stood there in silence. After a while, Orsini increased speed. “Take over, Paul. I’ll plot our course.”

Chavasse slipped behind him and the Italian moved to the chart table. For some time he busied himself with the charts and finally nodded in satisfaction.

“We should move into the marshes just before dawn.” He placed a cheroot between his teeth and grinned. “What happens after that is in the lap of God.”

“Do you want me to spell you for a while?” Chavasse asked.

Orsini took over the wheel again and shook his head. “Later, Paul, after Carlo has done his trick. That way I’ll be fresh for the run-in at dawn.”

Chavasse left him there and went down to the galley, where he discovered Francesca making coffee. He leaned in the doorway and grinned. “That’s what I like about Italian girls. So good in the kitchen.”

She turned and smiled mischievously. “Is that all we’re good for—cooking?”

She wore a pair of old denim pants and a heavy sweater, and the long hair was plaited into a single pigtail that hung across one shoulder. She looked incredibly fresh and alive and Chavasse shook his head.

“I could think of one or two things, but the timing’s wrong.”

“What about the terrace of the British Embassy?”

“Too public.”

She poured coffee into a mug and handed it to him. “There’s a place I know in the hills outside Rome. Only a village inn, but the food is out of this world. You eat it by candlelight on a terrace overlooking a hillside covered with vines. The fireflies dance in the wind and you can smell the flowers for a week afterwards. It’s an experience one shouldn’t miss.”

“I’m all tied up for the next couple of days,” Chavasse said, “but after that, I’m free most evenings.”

“By a strange coincidence, so am I. I’m also in the telephone book and I’d like to point out that you still owe me a date.”

“Now how could I forget a thing like that?”

He ducked as she threw a crust of dry bread at his head, turned and went through the aft cabin into the salon. Carlo had two Aqua-lungs and their ancillary equipment laid out on the table.

“There’s fresh coffee in the galley,” Chavasse told him.

“I’ll get some later. I want to finish checking this lot.”

He never had much to say for himself, a strange, silent youth, but a good man to have at your back in trouble and devoted to Orsini. He sat on the edge of the table, a cigarette smouldering between his lips, and worked his way methodically through the various items of equipment. Chavasse watched him for a while, then went through into the other cabin.

He lay staring at the bulkhead, thinking about the task ahead. If Francesca’s memory hadn’t failed her and the cross-bearing she had given them was accurate, then the whole thing was simple. There couldn’t be more than five or six fathoms of water in those lagoons and the recovery of the statue shouldn’t take long. With any kind of luck, they could be back in Matano within twenty-four hours.

He could hear a rumble of voices from the galley, Francesca quite distinctly, and then Carlo laughed, which was something unusual. Chavasse was conscious of a slight, unreasoning pang of jealousy. He lay there thinking about her and the voices merged with the throbbing of the engine and the rattle of water against the hull.

He was not conscious of having slept, only of being awake and checking his watch and realizing with a shock that it was two
A
.
M
. Orsini was sleeping on the far bunk, his face calm, one arm behind his head, and Chavasse pulled on his reefer coat and went on deck.

Mist swirled from the water and the
Buona Esperanza
kicked along at a tremendous pace. There was no moon, but stars were scattered across the sky like diamonds in a black velvet cushion and there was still that strange luminosity in the water.

Carlo was standing at the wheel, his head disembodied in the light from the binnacle. Chavasse moved in and lit a cigarette. “How are we doing?”

“Fine,” Carlo said. “Keep her on one-four-oh till three
A
.
M
. then alter course to one-four-five. Guilio said he’d be up around four. We should be near the coast by then.”

The door banged behind him and a small trapped wind lifted the charts, raced round the deckhouse looking for a way out and died in a corner. Chavasse pulled a seat down from the wall and sat back, his hands steady on the wheel.

This was what he liked more than anything else. To be alone with the sea and the night and a boat. Something deep in his subconscious, some race image handed on from his Breton ancestors, responded to the challenge. Men who had loved the sea more than any woman, who sailed to the Grand Banks of the North American coast to fish for cod, long before Columbus or the Cabots had dreamed of crossing the Atlantic.

The door opened suddenly as rain dashed against the window and he was aware of the heavy aroma of coffee, together with another, more subtle fragrance.

“What’s wrong with bed at this time in the morning?” he demanded.

She chuckled softly. “Oh, this is much more fun. How are we doing?”

“Dead on course. Another hour and Orsini takes over for the final run-in.”

She pulled a seat down beside him, balanced her tray on the chart table and poured coffee into two mugs. “What about a sandwich?”

He was surprised at the keenness of his appetite and they ate in companionable and intimate silence, thighs touching. Afterwards, he gave her a cigarette and she poured more coffee.

“What do you think our chances are, Paul?” she said. “The truth now.”

“All depends on how accurately your brother plotted the final position of the launch when she sank. If we can find her without too much trouble, the rest should be plain sailing. Diving for the Madonna will be no great trick in water of that depth. Depending on weather conditions, we could be on our way back by this evening.”

“And you don’t anticipate any trouble in the Drin Gulf?”

“From the Albanian navy?” He shook his head. “From an efficiency point of view, it’s almost nonexistent. The Russians had a lot of stuff based here before the big bust-up, but they withdrew when Hoxha refused to toe the line. Something he hadn’t reckoned on and China’s too far away to give him that kind of assistance.”

“What a country.” She shook her head. “I can well believe the old story about God having nothing but trouble left to give when it came to Albania’s turn.”

Chavasse nodded. “Not exactly a happy history.”

“A succession of conquerors, more than any other country in Europe. Greeks, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Serbs, Bulgars, Sicilians, Venetians, Normans and Turks. They’ve all held the country for varying periods.”

“And always, the people have struggled to be free.” Chavasse shook his head. “How ironic life can be. After centuries of desperately fighting for independence, Albania receives it, only to find herself in the grip of a tyranny worse than any that has gone before.”

“Is it really as bad as they say?”

He nodded. “The sigurmi are everywhere. Even the Italian Workers’ Holiday Association complain that they get one sigurmi agent allocated to each member of their holiday parties. Even at a rough estimate, Hoxha and his boys have purged better than one hundred thousand people since he took over, and you know yourself how the various religious groups have been treated. Stalin would have been proud of him. An apt pupil.”

He took out his cigarettes and offered her one. She smoked silently for a while and then said slowly, “Last year, two of your people who were operating temporarily through the Bureau in Rome went missing. One in Albania, the other in Turkey.”

Chavasse nodded. “Matt Sorley and Jules Dumont. Good men both.”

“How can you go on living the life you do? That sort of thing must happen a lot. Look how close you came to not getting out of Tirana.”

“Maybe I just never grew up,” he said lightly.

“How did it all begin?”

“Quite by chance. I was lecturing in languages at a British university, a friend wanted to pull a relative out of Czechoslovakia and I gave him a hand. That’s when the Chief pulled me in. At that time he was interested in people who spoke Eastern European languages.”

“An unusual accomplishment.”

“Some people can work out cube roots in their heads in seconds, others can never forget anything they ever read. I have the same sort of kink for languages. I soak them up like a sponge—no effort.”

She lapsed into fluent Albanian. “Isn’t it a little unnerving? Don’t you ever get your wires crossed?”

“Not that I can recall,” he replied faultlessly in the same language. “I can’t afford that kind of mistake. If it’s any consolation, I still can’t read a Chinese newspaper. On the other hand, I’ve only ever met two Europeans who could.”

“With that kind of flair plus your academic training, you could pick up a chair in modern languages at almost any university in Britain or the States,” she said. “Doesn’t the thought appeal to you?”

“Not in the slightest. I got into this sort of work by chance, and by chance I possessed all the virtues needed to make me good at it.”

“You mean you actually enjoy it?”

“Something like that. If I’d been born in Germany twenty years earlier, I’d probably have ended up in the Gestapo. If I’d been born an Albanian, I might well have been a most efficient member of the sigurmi. Who knows?”

She seemed shocked. “I don’t believe you.”

“Why not? It takes a certain type of man or woman to do our kind of work—a professional. I can recognize the quality, and appreciate it, in my opposite numbers. I don’t see anything wrong in that.”

There was a strained silence as if in some way he had disappointed her. She reached for the tray. “I’d better take these below. We must be getting close.”

The door closed behind her and Chavasse opened the window and breathed in the sharp morning air feeling rather sad. So often people like her, the fringe crowd who did the paperwork, manned the radios, decoded the messages, could never really know what it was like in the field. What it took to survive. Well, he, Paul Chavasse, had survived, and not by waving any flags, either.

Then what in the hell are you doing here?
he asked himself, and a rueful smile crossed his face. What was it Orsini had said?
The things we do for the ladies
. And he was right, this one
was
something special—something very special.

The door swung open and Orsini entered, immense in his old reefer coat and peaked cap on the side of his head. “Everything all right, Paul?”

Chavasse nodded and handed over the wheel. “Couldn’t be better.”

Orsini lit another of his inevitable cheroots. “Good. Shouldn’t be long now.”

Dawn seeped into the sky, a gray half-light with a heavy mist rolling across the water. Orsini asked Chavasse to take over again and consulted the charts. He checked the cross-bearing Francesca had given him and traced a possible course in from the sea through the maze of channels marked on the chart.

“Everything okay?” Chavasse asked.

Orsini came back to the wheel and shrugged. “I know these charts. Four or five fathoms and a strong tidal current. That means that one day there’s a sandbank, the next, ten fathoms of clear water. Estuary marshes are always the same. We’ll go in through the main outlet of the Buene and turn into the marshes about half a mile inland. Not only safer, but a dammed sight quicker.”

 

T
HE MIST ENFOLDED THEM UNTIL THEY
were running through an enclosed world. Orsini reduced speed to ten knots and, a few moments later, Carlo and Francesca came up from below.

Chavasse went and stood in the prow, hands in pockets, and the marshes drifted out of the mist and their stench filled his nostrils. Wildfowl called overhead on their way in from the sea and Carlo moved beside him and crossed himself.

“A bad place, this. Always, I am glad to leave.”

It was a landscape from a nightmare. Long, narrow sandbanks lifted from the water, and inland mile upon mile of marsh grass and great reeds marched into the mist, interlaced by a thousand creeks and lagoons.

Orsini reduced speed to three knots and leaned from the side window, watching the reeds drift by on either side. Chavasse moved along the deck and looked up at him.

“How far are we from the position Francesca gave?”

“Perhaps three miles, but the going would be too difficult. In a little while we must carry on in the dinghy. Much safer.”

“And who minds the launch?”

“Carlo—it’s all arranged. He isn’t pleased, but then he seldom is about anything.”

He grinned down at Carlo, who glared up at him and went below. Chavasse moved back along the deck and joined Francesca in the prow. A few moments later the launch entered a small lagoon, perhaps a hundred feet in diameter, and Orsini cut the engines.

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