Алистер Маклин - Partisans

‘Safe!’ Sarina spoke with a wealth of contempt.

‘Well, no harm done, let’s hope.’

‘No harm done!’

Petersen spread his hands. ‘There are always compensations. You – and Lorraine – wanted to see me in, what shall we say, a disadvantaged position. Well, you see it now. How do you like it?’ There was no reply. ‘Two things. I’m surprised they got you, Alex. You can hear a leaf fall.’

‘They had a gun at Sarina’s head.’

‘Ah! And where is our good friend Josip?’

‘ Your good friend,’ Sarina said acidly, ‘will be helping Cipriano and his men to find whatever they’re looking for.’

‘My goodness! What a low opinion – what an immediate low opinion – of my friend.’

‘Who tipped them off that we were here? Who let them in? Who gave them the keys – or the master key – to the bedrooms?’

‘One of these days,’ Petersen said mildly, ‘someone’s going to clobber you, young lady. You’ve a waspish tongue and you’re far too ready to judge and condemn. If that soldier with the gun at your head had taken the second necessary to pull the trigger he’d be dead now. So, of course, would you. But Alex didn’t want you to die. Nobody let them in – Josip never locks his front door. Once in, getting the keys would be no trouble. I don’t know who tipped them off. I’ll find out. It could even have been you.’

‘Me!’ She stared at him, at first stunned and then furious.

‘No-one’s above suspicion. You’ve said more than once that I don’t trust you. If you said that, you must have had reasons to think that I have reservations about you. What reasons?’

‘You must be out of your mind.’ She wasn’t mad any more, just bewildered.

‘You’ve turned pale very suddenly. Why have you turned pale?’

‘Leave my sister alone!’ Michael’s voice was an angry shout. ‘She’s done nothing! Leave her alone. Sarina? A criminal? A traitor? She’s right, you must be out of your mind. Stop tormenting her. Who the hell do you think you are?’

‘An army officer who wouldn’t hesitate to instruct a very raw enlisted man – boy, I should say – in the elements of discipline. Mind you, a show of spirit at last, but I’m afraid it’s mistimed and misplaced. Meantime, you should rest content with the knowledge that you are not under suspicion.’

‘I’m supposed to be pleased with that while Sarina is under suspicion?’

‘I don’t care whether you’re pleased or not.’

‘Look here, Petersen–’

‘Petersen? Who’s Petersen? “Major Petersen” to a ranker. Or “Sir”.’ Michael made no reply. ‘You’re not under suspicion because after you’d transmitted this message to Rome yesterday morning I rendered your radio inoperable. You could have used your sister’s tonight, but you wouldn’t have had the guts, not after being caught out the previous night. I know you’re not very bright but the inference is obvious. Alex, a word with you.’

As brother and sister looked at each other in mingled apprehension, incomprehension and dismay, Alex crossed the room and listened as Petersen began talking to him.

‘Stop!’ The young Italian officer’s voice was sharp.

Petersen looked at him patiently. ‘Stop what?’

‘Stop talking.’

‘Why ever should I? You just let me talk to that young man and girl.’

‘I understood that. I don’t understand Serbo-Croat.’

‘Your lack of education doesn’t concern me. To compound your ignorance, we’re not talking Serbo-Croat but a Slavonic dialect understood only by this soldier here, the fat gentleman with the beer glass and myself. You think, perhaps, that we are planning a suicidal attack on you, three unarmed men against four machine-guns and a pistol? You can’t possibly be so crazy as to think we’re so crazy. What rank are you?’

‘Lieutenant.’ He was a very stiff, very correct and very young, lieutenant.

‘Lieutenants don’t give orders to majors.’

‘You’re my prisoner.’

‘I have yet to be informed of that. Even if I were, which legally I’m not, I’d be Major Cipriano’s prisoner and he would regard me as a very important one and one not to be molested or harmed in any way, so don’t bother looking at your men. If any of them comes over to try to stop or separate us I’ll take his gun from him and break it over his head and then you might shoot me. You’d be court-martialled, cashiered and then, by the stipulations of the Geneva Conventions, face a firing squad. But you know that, of course.’ Petersen hoped the lieutenant didn’t, for he himself had no idea, but apparently the young man didn’t either for he made no further attempt to pursue the matter.

Petersen talked to Alex for no more than a minute, went behind the bar, picked up a wine bottle and glass – this without even a raised eyebrow from the young lieutenant who might have been wondering how many men it took to constitute a firing squad and sat down at the table with George. They talked in low and seemingly earnest tones and were still talking when Cipriano returned with his three soldiers, Josip and his wife, Marija. Cipriano not only looked less buoyant and confident than he had done when he had left the dining-room: he was still smiling, because he was an habitual smiler, but the smile was of such a diminished quality that he looked positively morose.

‘I am glad to see that you are enjoying yourselves.’

‘We might be just a little justifiably annoyed at having our sleep disturbed.’ Petersen replenished his glass. ‘But we are of a forgiving nature, happy and relaxed in our carefree conscience. You will join us in a nightcap? I’m sure it would help you to frame a more graceful apology.’

‘No nightcap, thank you, but you are correct in saying that an apology is in order. I have just made a telephone call.’

‘To the wise men of your intelligence HQ, of course.’

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘Where else does all the misinformation come from? We, as you know, are in the same line of business and it happens to us all the time.’

‘I am genuinely sorry to have inconvenienced you all over a stupid false alarm.’

‘What false alarm?’

‘Papers missing from our Rome HQ. Some misguided genius on General Granelli’s staff – I don’t know, yet, who it was but I’ll find out before the day is over – decided that they had fallen, if that’s the word, into the hands of either yourself or one of your group. Very important papers, very top-secret.’

‘All missing papers are top-secret. I have some papers with me myself, but I assure you they’re not stolen and how top-secret or important they may be I don’t know.’

‘I know about those papers.’ Cipriano waved a dismissive hand and smiled. ‘As you’re probably well aware. Those other, and much more important papers have never left their safe in Rome. A top-secret filing clerk careless about filing top-secret documents.’

‘May one ask what they are about?’

‘You may and that’s all the answer you’d get. I don’t know and even if I did I couldn’t tell you. I wish you an undisturbed night – or what’s left of it. Again, my apologies. Goodbye, Major Petersen.’

‘Goodbye.’ Petersen took the extended hand. ‘My regards to Colonel Lunz.’

‘I will.’ Cipriano frowned. ‘I hardly know the man.’

‘In that case, my regards to Alessandro.’

‘I’ll give him more than that.’ He turned to Josip and took his hand. ‘Many thanks, Signor Pijade. You have been most helpful. We will not forget.’

It was Sarina, nothing if not resilient, who broke the conversational hiatus that followed the departure of Cipriano and his men. ‘“Thank you, Signor Pijade. Most helpful, Signor Pijade. We won’t forget, Signor Pijade.”’