Алистер Маклин - Partisans

Harrison spilled the contents of his glass on the table. He looked dazed. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Nobody does. I’m his right arm, only, in charge of field operations. As you know, he seldom accompanies me. This mission was different but, then, this was an unusually important mission. Couldn’t be trusted to bunglers like me.’

Michael approached George, a certain awed incredulity in his face. ‘But in Mostar you told me you were a Sergeant Major.’

‘A tiny prevarication.’ George waved his hand in airy dismissal. ‘Inevitable in this line of business. Tiny prevarications, I mean. But I did say it was a temporary not substantive rank. General-Major.’

‘Good God!’ Michael was overcome. ‘I mean “Sir”.’

‘It’s too much.’ Harrison didn’t even notice when George courteously refilled his glass. ‘It’s really too much. Too much for the reeling mind to encompass. Maybe I haven’t such a mind after all. Tell me next that I’m Adolph Hitler and I’d seriously consider the possibility.’ He looked at George, shook his head and drained half his glass. ‘You see before you a man trying to find his way back to reality. Now, where was I? Ah, yes. I was asking you when you came to the decision you were free to talk.’

‘When you told me – or Lorraine did – about your Jenny.’

‘Ah, yes, of course. Jenny. I see.’ It was plain that Harrison was quite baffled. He suddenly, physically, shook himself. ‘What the hell has Jenny got to do with this?’

‘Nothing, directly.’

‘Ah Jenny. Lorraine. The question that Captain Crni asked me through there.’

Lorraine said in a quiet voice: ‘What question, James?’

‘He asked me if I knew Giancarlo Tremino – you know, Carlos. Of course I said yes, I knew him very well.’ He looked down at his glass. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have answered. I mean, they weren’t torturing me or anything. Maybe I don’t have such a mind after all.’

‘It wasn’t your fault, James,’ Lorraine said. ‘You weren’t to know. Besides, there’s been no harm done.’

‘How do you know there’s been no harm done, Lorraine?’ Sarina sounded bitter. ‘I know it wasn’t Captain Harrison’s fault. And I know it wasn’t really Captain Crni who asked the question. Don’t you know that Major Petersen always finds out what he wants? Are we still to regard ourselves as prisoners in this room, Captain Crni?’

‘Good God, no! As far as I’m concerned the house is yours. Anyway, you don’t ask me. Major Petersen is in charge.’

‘Or you, George?’ She smiled faintly. ‘Sorry. I’m not used to the General-Major yet.’

‘Quite frankly, neither am I. George is fine.’ He smiled and wagged a finger at her. ‘Don’t try to spread dissension in the ranks. Outside my head office, which at the moment is a disused shepherd’s hut up near Bihać, Peter is in sole charge. I just point in the general direction and then get out of the way. If you know you’re not in his class, as I’m wise enough to know, you don’t interfere with the best field operative there is.’

‘Could I speak to you, Major? In the hall?’

‘Ominous,’ he said and picked up his glass. ‘Very ominous.’ He followed her out and closed the door behind them. ‘Well?’

She hesitated. ‘I don’t know quite how to say this. I think–’

‘If you don’t know what to say and you’re still at the thinking stage, why waste my time in this really melodramatic fashion?’

‘It’s not silly. It’s not dramatic! And you’re not going to make me mad. What you’ve just said sums you up. Superior, cutting, contemptuous, never making allowances for people’s faults and weaknesses: and at the same time you can be the most thoughtful and kind person I know. It’s not just that you’re unbearable. You’re unknowable. Jekyll and Hyde. The Dr Jekyll bit I like and admire. You’re brave, George thinks you’re brilliant, you take incredible risks that would destroy a person like me and, best of all, you’re very good at looking after people. Anyway, I knew last night that you couldn’t belong to those people.’

Petersen smiled. ‘I won’t give you the chance of telling me again how nasty I am, so I won’t say you’re being wise after the event.’

‘You’re wrong,’ she said quietly. ‘It was something that Major Metrović said last night about Tito’s Achilles’ heel, his lack of mobility, his three thousand wounded men. In any civilized war – if there is such a thing – those men would be left to the enemy who would treat them in hospital. This is no civilized war. They would be massacred. You could never be a party to that.’

‘I have my points. But you did not bring me out here to point those out.’

‘I did not. It’s the Mr Hyde side – oh, I don’t want to lecture but I dislike that side, it hurts me and it baffles me. That a man so physically kind can in other ways be so cold, detached, uncaring to the point of not being quite human.’

‘Oh, dear. Or, as Jamie would put it, I say, I say.’

‘It’s true. In order to gain your own ends, you can be – you are – indifferent to people’s feelings to the point of cruelty.’

‘Lorraine?’

‘Yes. Lorraine.’

‘Well, well. I thought it was axiomatic that two lovely ladies automatically disliked each other.’

She seized his upper arms. ‘ Don’t change the subject.’

‘I must tell Alex about this.’

‘Tell him what?’ she said warily.

‘He thinks you detest one another.’

‘Tell Alex he’s a fool. She’s a lovely person. And you are tearing her to pieces.’

Petersen nodded. ‘She’s being torn to pieces all right. But I’m not the person who’s doing the tearing.’

She looked closely at him, her eyes moving from one of his to the other, as if hoping that would help her find the truth. ‘Then who is?’

‘If I told you, you’d just go and tell her.’ She said nothing, just kept up her intense scrutiny of his face. ‘She knows who is. But I don’t want her to think that it’s public knowledge.

She looked away. ‘Two things. Maybe, deep down, you do have some finer feelings after all.’ She looked at his eyes again and halfsmiled. ‘And you don’t trust me.’

‘I’d like to.’

‘Try.’

‘She’s a good, honest, patriotic British citizen and she’s working for the Italian secret service, specifically for Major Cipriano and she may well be responsible, however indirectly, for the deaths of an untold number of my fellow countrymen.’

‘I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!’ Her eyes were wide and full of horror and her voice shook. ‘I don’t! I don’t! I don’t!’

‘I know you don’t,’ he said gently. ‘That’s because you don’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe it myself. I do now. I can prove it. Do you think I’m so stupid as to say I can prove a thing when I can’t. Or don’t you believe me either?’

‘I don’t know what to believe,’ she said wildly. ‘Yes, I do. I do. I do know what to believe. I don’t believe Lorraine could be like that.’

‘Too lovely a person, too honest, too good, too true?’

‘Yes! Yes! That’s what I believe.’

‘That’s what I believed, too. That’s what I still believe.’

Her grip on his arms tightened and she looked at him almost beseechingly. ‘Please. Please don’t make fun of me.’

‘She’s being blackmailed.’

‘Blackmailed! Blackmailed! How could anyone blackmail Lorraine?’ She looked away, was silent for some seconds, then looked back again. ‘It’s something to do with Carlos, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Indirectly.’ He looked at her curiously. ‘How did you know that?’