Authors: Eric Ambler
He stared for a moment or two, then reached for the intercom on his desk, flipped a switch and spoke. The only word of what he said that I understood was ‘sandwiches’. Having switched off, he considered my half-empty glass and pushed aside his own. Several more seconds elapsed though before he finally decided how best to reply.
He spoke as if for the record. ‘Mr Halliday, it is precisely because I
am
prepared to tell all and name names’ – he raised his hands into the scrubbed-up position – ‘
and because this has become known
, that my enemies want to kill me.’
‘In other words, Doctor, you’re prepared to name
their
names but not your own. Would I be right in thinking that your problem is also one of self-incrimination?’
There was another pause as he prepared himself for more
egg-shell walking. The hint of melancholy that he succeeded in putting into his simper was impressive. ‘Mr Halliday, even the little, the marginal facts, that you were able to find out about me in America must have told you that I have to be prudent.’ The raised hands slowly fell. ‘My place,’ he said, ‘is in the shadows.’
‘Let’s put it on a severely commercial basis then. Whose picture do we see on the book’s jacket? To whom does our publisher turn for support and comfort when his libel lawyers advise him that a whole lot of the telling all and the naming of names is actionable? Who comes forward to support his pleas of justification with sworn testimony?’
He brightened up at once. ‘Now you are talking, Mr Halliday. Brass tacks, eh? Well, let me tell you. First, none of those named will dare to show his nose. Second, if our publisher is of the type to be frightened by what his own lawyers tell him, then we should get another. Are there not other publishers with stronger nerves?’
‘Mr Zander, there are always other publishers, but …’
‘Good. Now, here is something to eat.’
Chihani had returned with a plate of bread-roll sandwiches that looked as if they were stuffed with salami. I passed on them but raised no objection when Zander directed her to refill my glass. There were several bad tastes in my mouth for which another strong drink could probably have done something. I thought, too, that the business of mixing and serving the drink might divert their attention from me while I made a decision. Should I say something that would blow the whole deal there and then, or should I wait and tell Pacioli so that he could handle my defection in his own way?
However, Zander was giving me no chance of deciding anything. As he began to munch a sandwich he made his surprise announcement. ‘Mr Halliday,’ he said, ‘has come up with a clever suggestion.’
‘He is a clever person.’ She almost made it sound as if she meant it.
‘Yes, he is indeed. He has suggested that we postpone all
decisions about the book’s publication until we have done our work and have the manuscript complete. That is a very professional approach I think.’
‘Excellent.’ She put his freshened drink down in front of him and turned back to prepare mine. I wondered why she was suddenly looking so relaxed.
Zander bit into his sandwich again. ‘What sort of work plan do you have in mind, Mr Halliday?’
‘Obviously, the first thing to be done is for me to read the Nechayev memoirs. If they are to be our basic text, the sooner I get to know them the better. How about your own preliminary work, Doctor? I should be studying that too.’
He pretended to consider the proposal before shaking his head. ‘Mr Halliday, I think it will be better if we come to my work later. It is mainly in the form of notes and not well organized. Better that we begin at the beginning.’
I have heard a great many variations on that airy theme from indolent or phony clients and a reference to non-existent notes is nearly always in there somewhere. The client has often written nothing at all, of course, just day-dreamed a little. The genuinely shy or over-modest ones are rare. Still, Zander was able to make the lie sound remarkably convincing. Work on a book with him would have had its entertaining moments.
‘I quite understand, Doctor. Now, you say you have an English translation of the memoirs.’ I noticed that my freshened-up drink was mostly water.
‘Pacioli had one made. It was not very good, but I have worked to improve it myself. You should know that it was the habit of the old anarchist groups in Geneva, even when they were writing mainly in Russian, to use French also. It was a lingua franca with them. Some also used shorthand for writing, perhaps for secrecy. The Nechayev memoirs have passages in Fayet shorthand. This was a system invented in France.’
‘I see.’
‘And the French passages have been left in French.’
‘That’s all right. I can read French.’
‘Simone, it is in the centre drawer of the desk. The envelope marked with the number three.’
She took a fat, page-size envelope from the drawer and handed it to him.
He weighed it in his hands thoughtfully. ‘Mr Halliday, we come back again to the problem of security.’
‘All right.’
‘The enemy forces who think that they have you under surveillance at your hotel do not yet know that you evaded them this evening.’
‘I guess they don’t. You want me to go back up by the service elevator, the way I came down?’
‘There would be no point. They will have all access to the building covered by now. The point is that when you return, however you return, they will realize their mistake.’
‘So?’ For one nasty moment I was wondering what I could do or say if they had decided to maintain security by keeping me in their safe house on ice.
‘So, from the moment of your return you will be considered hostile. They will step up their counter measures. The risk for us here will greatly increase. I must accordingly ask you if you are now willing to obey security orders for your journey back to Milan tonight and for your return here tomorrow. Are you willing?’
‘Of course, now that I have been given reasons.’
‘Then let us say that we will meet again tomorrow, at a time to be arranged by telephone but following a procedure to be determined in advance.’
He nodded to Chihani who reached forward and took the glass out of my hand. ‘No more whisky tonight,’ she said, ‘and we will go as we came.’
‘In the minibus?’
‘Yes, but not all the way. There is a service station area on the autostrada near Milan. From there we can get a taxi to take you to your hotel. You have enough Italian money I think.’
‘Yes.’
‘Arrangements for your return will be as follows. At twelve tomorrow morning you will be telephoned at your hotel and questioned about your reading of the Nechayev memoirs. Then, depending on your replies to my questions you will be told whether or not it is safe to leave the hotel. If it is not yet safe you will be telephoned again at a stated time. You understand?’
‘Yes.’
Zander snickered. ‘Very ingenious, Simone.’
‘Upon being told that it
is
safe for you to leave, you will immediately go down from your room and take a car or taxi to Malpensa airport. Not Linate, where you arrived, but Malpensa. Understood?’
‘Yes.’
‘On arrival at Malpensa you will go to the Milan bus-ticket counter in the main hall. There can be no mistake. The sign above is in Italian and English. You will then wait until the girl who was with us tonight walks by. Go with her and obey all her instructions. She will lead you to transportation. Understood?’
‘It all seems fairly clear.’ But they were both looking so pleased with themselves and with my humble obedience that I changed my mind about leaving it at that. ‘Clear, that is,’ I added, ‘except for one thing.’
‘What?’ demanded Chihani.
I looked at Luccio. ‘Doctor, you must know that most major American publishers are owned by other, bigger, diversified corporations. Syncom, for instance. Now you must know that people like Syncom aren’t easily pushed around. Do you really believe that you can persuade them to publish something that their lawyers tell them is plainly and criminally libellous?’
‘For me, they will do anything,’ he said airily.
‘Doctor, who is this patron of yours?’
‘Patron?’ The eyes had become stony and the tone colour of his voice had changed in an odd way. I knew that I had gone too far but also guessed that it could be more
dangerous to back down than to persist.
‘That’s what I said, Doctor. I’m talking about that high personage in the Gulf who gives orders to Syncom on your behalf.’
‘Who has been putting such absurd thoughts in your head? Pacioli?’
‘The statement that you enjoyed the protection of a high personage in the Gulf was made during the briefing I was given in New York.’ It was unlikely, I thought, that McGuire employed a driver who could be beaten up, but I took out a little insurance for McGuire himself against package bombs designed to work. ‘In fact,’ I added, ‘that was one of the aspects of the whole proposal that I found most intriguing. Naturally I was curious about his identity. Is it supposed to be kept secret?’
He sat back, looked down at his whisky and then drank some. Several seconds went by before he looked at me again. Then he said slowly: ‘You may now be in a small way committed to me, but you are not yet
trusted
, Mr Halliday. Don’t forget that, please.’ He seemed to remember the envelope with the memoir in it that he was still holding and handed it to me. ‘You had better get started back. Have you sleeping pills?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Take several tonight. You must be well rested tomorrow.’
With that he stood up and walked through into his gym.
‘We have our orders,’ Chihani said. ‘Time to go.’
As she led the way out I glanced into the gym. The master was naked and preparing to sunbathe. The long jagged scar on his thigh looked like the result of a shell-splinter wound.
The return journey was made in silence. To pass the time in the darkness I tried going through my Pacioli contract from memory, clause by clause, to see if I could spot the one that Barbara would use to get me into the clear and on to a plane for New York. Oddly, the exercise had the effect that counting sheep is supposed to have on the sleepless. I dozed and, when we eventually stopped, Chihani had to wake me.
‘Jet lag and whisky together,’ she commented.
She ordered the minibus lights switched off and then went with me to the gas station to call a cab. When I went to the men’s room she waited outside. She also waited until the cab came. As she was careful to point out, this was no mere courtesy on her part. Security procedures must never neglect matters of detail or make easy assumptions. At that stage, perhaps, it probably did not much matter if I saw and memorized the number plates on the minibus, but, on the other hand, it might matter a great deal.
‘Go to your hotel and stay there until I order you to leave,’ were her parting words as she slammed the door of the cab on me. Even if I had felt like saving her the trouble of issuing orders that I had no intention of obeying, she gave me little chance of doing so.
It was nearly eleven when I arrived back at the hotel. At the desk I asked for an Alitalia timetable and was told that I would find one in my sitting room.
What I found in my sitting room instead was a fog of panatella smoke and a delegation of three.
The smoker was a fellow countryman whom I had not seen for several years. As the surprise of seeing him there faded and memories of our last meeting began to flood back, I realized that, as far as I was concerned, time had not been a healer and that, judging from the look on his face, our mutual dislike was as lively as ever.
Also present were Renaldo Pacioli and a man wearing half-glasses and a tweed suit who looked all set to play the family doctor in an aspirin commercial. Of the three, only Pacioli was looking troubled by the possibility that I might not be pleased by their dropping in unannounced. While they were still getting up out of the armchairs and clearing their throats, I walked over to the windows and opened them both as wide as I could.
The smoker said, ‘Hi, Bob,’ and stubbed out his cigar in an ashtray already overflowing with butts. As I tossed my raincoat and Luccio’s envelope on to the desk, Pacioli came towards me with his hands spread out in a curious gesture of surrender combined with apology.
‘I beg you to forgive this intrusion,’ he said, ‘and I hope that you will find the reasons for it understandable. You have evidently recognized in your compatriot here a familiar face. He is at present, he tells me, a political attaché at your country’s embassy in Rome. I found him with this other gentleman, Herr Schelm, in my office when I returned from meeting you. They both flew up from Rome this afternoon expressly to see you. When we could not reach you by telephone to explain the urgency, we came here at once. Herr Schelm was already concerned on your account. When we found that, although a bed appeared to have been slept in, you were not still here, we were even more concerned. On the
advice of Herr Schelm, however, it was decided not to call the police but to wait.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I can tell you
what
I’ve been doing. I’ve been having a meeting with Dr Luccio. The meeting wasn’t my idea and I wasn’t consulted about it in any way. I was just taken to it.
Where
I was taken I can’t tell you because I don’t know. As I was hired to meet with and listen to Dr Luccio, I guess I can’t complain and risk being told that I’m a sorehead.’ I stared at the familiar face. ‘Was that what you wanted to see me about? The work I’m supposed to be doing here?’
He pretended, as he always had, to be indifferent to my hostility. ‘Bob,’ he said, ‘there are two reasons for my being here. The first is to tell you that back home a couple of weeks ago your personal file was pulled.’
That stung me, as he had known it would, and I snapped at him: ‘What the hell for? I have nothing to do with you people and I mean to keep it that way. If they’re pulling names on the sucker list, they can forget mine. I’m not available.’
‘Easy, Bob. That mail-bomb caper created quite a lot of interest. You couldn’t expect that some word of it wouldn’t get to us. And when we hear that you’ve been asking round about Zander, well naturally we have to start asking questions too.’