Partisans. Alistair MacLean
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what?’
‘You know, his left foot.’
‘Oh, that. Yes. I’ve wondered—’
‘He doesn’t talk about it. All sorts of sinister stories about how he was injured. All ridiculous. A simple hunting accident.’ Petersen smiled. ‘I shouldn’t imagine there’s much of a diplomatic future for a courtier who mistakes his future sovereign for a wild boar.’ He lifted his eyes and right arm at the same time: the innkeeper came hurrying towards him. ‘The bill, if you please.’
‘The bill?’ Momentarily the innkeeper gave the impression of being surprised, even taken aback. ‘Ah, the bill. Of course. The bill. At once.’ He hurried off.
Petersen looked at the von Karajans. ‘Sorry you didn’t have a better appetite—you know, stoked the furnaces for the last part of the trip. Still, it’s downhill now all the way and we’re heading for the Adriatic and a maritime climate. Should be getting steadily warmer.’
‘Oh, no, it won’t.’ It was the first time Alex had spoken since they had entered the inn and, predictably, it was in tones of dark certainty. ‘It’s almost an hour since we came in here and the wind has got stronger. Much stronger. Listen and you can hear it.’ They listened. They heard it, a deep, low-pitched, ululating moaning that boded no good at all. Alex shook his head gravely. ‘An east-north-easter. All the way from Siberia. It’s going to be very cold.’ His voice sounded full of gloomy satisfaction but it meant nothing, it was the only way he knew how to talk. ‘And when the sun goes down, it’s going to be very very cold.’
‘Job’s comforter,’ Petersen said. He looked at the bill the innkeeper had brought, handed over some notes, waved away the proffered change and said: ‘Do you think we could buy some blankets from you?’
‘Blankets?’ The innkeeper frowned in some puzzlement: it was, after all, an unusual request.
‘Blankets. We’ve a long way to go, there’s no heating in our transport and the afternoon and evening are going to be very cold.’
‘There will be no problem.’ The innkeeper disappeared and was back literally within a minute with an armful of heavy coloured woollen blankets which he deposited on a nearby empty table. ‘Those will be sufficient?’
‘More than sufficient. Most kind of you.’ Petersen produced money. ‘How much, please?’
‘Blankets?’ The innkeeper lifted his hands in protest. ‘I am not a shopkeeper. I do not charge for blankets.’
‘But you must. I insist. Blankets cost money.’
‘Please.’ The truckdriver had left his table and approached them. ‘I shall be passing back this way tomorrow. I shall bring them with me.’
Petersen thanked them and so it was arranged. Alex, followed by the von Karajans, helped the innkeeper carry the blankets out to the truck. Petersen and George lingered briefly in the porch, closing both the inner and outer doors.
‘You really are the most fearful liar, George,’ Petersen said admiringly. ‘Cunning. Devious. I’ve said it before, I don’t think I’d care to be interrogated by you. You ask a question and whether people say yes, no or nothing at all you still get your answer.’
‘When you’ve spent twenty-five of the best years of your life dealing with dim-witted students—’ George shrugged as if there were no more to say.
‘I’m not a dim-witted student but I still wouldn’t care for it. You have formed an opinion about our young friends?’
‘I have.’
‘So have I. I’ve also formed another opinion about them and that is that while Michael is no intellectual giant, the girl could bear watching. I think she could be clever.’
‘I’ve often observed this with brother and sister, especially when they’re twins. I share your opinion. Lovely and clever.’
Petersen smiled. ‘A dangerous combination?’
‘Not if she’s nice. I’ve no reason to think she’s not nice.’
‘You’re just middle-aged and susceptible. The innkeeper?’
‘Apprehensive and unhappy. He doesn’t look like a man who should be apprehensive and unhappy, he looks a big tough character who would be perfectly at home throwing big tough drunks out of his inn. Also, he seemed caught off-balance when you offered to pay for the meal. One got the unmistakable impression that there are some travellers who do not pay for their meals. Also his refusal to accept money for the blankets was out of character. Out of character for an Italian, I mean, for I’ve never known of an Italian who wasn’t ready, eager rather, to make a deal on some basis or other. Peter, my friend, wouldn’t even you be slightly nervous if you worked for, or were forced to work for the German SS?’
‘Colonel Lunz casts a long shadow. The waiter?’
‘The Gestapo have fallen in my estimation. When they send in an espionage agent in the guise of a waiter they should at least give him some training in the rudiments of table-waiting. I felt positively embarrassed for him.’ George paused, then went on: ‘You were talking about King Peter a few minutes ago.’
‘You introduced that subject.’
‘That’s irrelevant and don’t hedge. As a departmental head in the university I was regarded—and rightly—as being a man of culture. Prince Paul was nothing if not a man of culture although his interests lay more in the world of art than in philology. Never mind. We met quite a few times, either in the university or at royal functions in the city. More to the point, I saw Prince Peter—as he was then—two or three times. He didn’t have a limp in those days.’
‘He still doesn’t.’
George looked at him then nodded slowly. ‘And you called me devious.’
Petersen opened the outer door and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We live in devious times, George.’
The second half of the trip was an improvement on the first but just marginally. Cocooned, as they were, to the ears in heavy blankets, the von Karajans were no longer subject to involuntary bouts of shivering and teeth-chattering but otherwise looked no happier and were no more communicative than they had been in the morning, which meant that they were both totally miserable and silent. They didn’t even speak when George, shouting to make himself heard above the fearful mechanical din, offered them brandy to relieve their sufferings. Sarina shuddered and Michael shook his head. They may have been wise for what George was offering them was no French cognac but his own near-lethal form of slivovitz, his native plum brandy.
Some twelve kilometres from Pescara they bore right off the Route 5 near Chieti, reaching the Adriatic coast road at Francavilla as a premature dusk was falling—premature, because of gathering banks of dark grey cloud which Alex, inevitably, said could only presage heavy snow. The coastal road, Route 16 was an improvement over the Apennines road—it could hardly have failed to be otherwise—and the relatively comfortable though still cacophonous ride to Termoli took no more than two hours. Wartime Termoli, on a winter’s night, was no place to inspire a rhapsody in the heart of the poet or composer: the only feelings it could reasonably expect to give rise to were gloom and depression. It was grey, bleak, bare, grimy and seemingly uninhabitated except for a very few half-heartedly blacked-out premises which were presumably cafés or taverns. The port area itself, however, was an improvement on Rome: here was no blackout, just a dimout which probably didn’t vary appreciably from the normal. As the truck stopped along a wharf-side there was more than enough light from the shaded yellow overhead lamps to distinguish the lines of the craft alongside the wharf, their transport to Yugoslavia.
That it was a motor torpedo boat was beyond question. Its vintage was uncertain. What was certain was that it had been in the wars. It had sustained considerable, though not incapacitating, damage to both hull and superstructure. No attempt had been made at repair: no-one had even thought it worthwhile