Алистер Маклин - Partisans

‘No!’ Alessandro’s voice was a scream of pure terror. ‘No! No! No!’

Cipriano leaned forward and struggled against his bonds, his face suffused dark red as he tried to force words through his still constricted throat. Giacomo tapped him again to ensure his continued silence.

‘I’m afraid I cut him a little,’ Alex said apologetically. He was hardly exaggerating: Alessendro’s arm was, indeed, quite badly gashed.

‘No matter.’ Petersen picked up the syringe and selected a phial at apparent random. ‘Save the trouble of searching for a vein.’

‘Ploče!’ Alessandro’s whispered. His voice was strangled with fear. His breath coming and going faster than once every second. ‘Ploče. I can take you there! 18 Fra Spalato! I swear it! I can take you there!’

Petersen replaced the syringe and phials and closed the lid. He said to the girls: ‘Alessandro, I’m afraid, was psychologically disadvantaged. But I never laid a finger on him, did I?’

Both girls stared at him, then looked at each other. As if by some telepathic signal, they shuddered in unison.

When Alessandro’s arm had been bandaged and Cipriano recovered, they made ready to leave. As Alex approached him with a gag, Cipriano looked at Petersen with empty eyes and said: ‘Why don’t you kill me here? Difficult to dispose of the body? But no trouble in the Adriatic, is it? A few lengths of chain.’

‘Nobody’s going to dispose of you, Cipriano. Not permanently. We never had any intention of killing you. I knew Alessandro would crack but I didn’t want to waste time over it. A bit of a pragmatist, is our Alessandro, and he had no intention of sacrificing his life for a man he believed to be already as good as dead. We have every moral justification for killing you but no legal justification. Spies are shot all the time: spy-masters never. Geneva Conventions say so. It does seem unfair. No, Cipriano, you are going into durance vile. A prisoner of war, for however long the war lasts. British Intelligence are just going to love to have a chat with you.’

Cipriano had nothing to say, which was perhaps understandable. When the reprieve comes along just as the guillotine is about to be tripped, suitable comment is hard to come by.

Petersen turned to his cousin as Cipriano’s gag was being fastened. ‘Marija, I would like you to do me a favour. Would you look after a little boy for a day or two?’

‘Mario!’ Lorraine said. ‘You mean Mario?’

‘What other little boy would I be talking about. Well, Marija?’

‘Peter!’ Her voice was full of reproach.

‘Well, I had to ask.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘The bane of my life, but I love you.’

‘So we part once more,’ Josip said sadly. ‘When do we meet again?’

‘Dinner-time. George is coming back for the rest of that venison he couldn’t finish last night. So am I.’

Edvard stopped the truck several hundred yards short of the entrance to the docks. Alex and Sava dropped down from the back of the truck followed by a now unbound and ungagged Alessandro – they were in the main street and there were a number of people around. The three men turned, without any undue haste, down an unlit side-street.

Crni, seated up front with Petersen, said: ‘Do you anticipate any trouble at the control gate?’

‘No more than usual. The guards are old, inefficient, not really interested and very susceptible to arrogant and ill-tempered authority. That’s us.’

‘Cipriano’s wrecked command car is bound to have been found some time ago. And the people in charge at the airport must be wondering where he’s got to.’

‘If a Yugoslav found it, it will have made his day and he would have driven by without stopping. Whether the airport was expecting him I don’t know – Cipriano seems an unpredictable fellow who does very much what he wants. Even if it’s accepted by now that he’s genuinely missing, where are they going to start looking? Ploče’s about as unlikely a place as any.’

And so it proved. The sentry didn’t even bother to leave his box. Beyond the gate, the docks were deserted – the day’s work was over and the freezing temperatures were hardly calculated to encourage night-time strollers. Even so, Petersen told Edvard to stop two hundred metres short of where the Colombo was berthed, left the cab, went round to the back, called Lorraine’s name and helped her down.

‘See that light there? That’s the Colombo . Go and tell Carlos to switch off his two gangway lights.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, yes.’ She ran a few steps then halted abruptly as Petersen called her.

‘Walk you clown. No one in Ploče ever runs.’

Three minutes later the gangway lights went out. Two minutes after that the prisoners had made their unobserved way up the unlighted gangway and the truck had disappeared. The gangway lights came on again.

Carlos sat in his usual chair in his cabin, his good left hand tightly held in both of Lorraine’s, the expression on his face not so much uncomprehending and stunned but comprehending and still stunned.

‘Let me see whether I’ve got this right or whether I’m just imagining it,’ Carlos said. ‘You’re going to lock up my crew and myself, abscond with Lorraine and Mario, imprison Cipriano and his men aboard and steal my ship?’

‘I couldn’t have put it more succinctly myself. Except, of course, that I wouldn’t have used the word “abscond”. Only, of course, if you consent. The decision is entirely up to you. And Lorraine, too. But I think Lorraine has already made up her mind.’

‘Yes, I have.’ There was no hesitation in her voice.

‘I’ll be dismissed from the Navy,’ Carlos said gloomily. ‘No, I won’t, I’ll be court-martialled and shot.’

‘Nothing will happen to you. There is not a chance in the world. George and I have gone over it time and again.’

‘My crew will talk and–’

‘Talk? Talk what about? They’re sitting in the mess-room with machine-pistols at their heads. If you had a machine-pistol at your head would you have any doubt whatsoever that your ship had been taken over by force?’

‘Cipriano–’

‘What of Cipriano? Even if he survives his captivity, which he unfortunately probably will as the British don’t shoot prisoners, there’s nothing he can do. There is no way your version and that of the crew – and this will become the official version – can be disproved. And he would never dare lay a personal charge against you – by the time peace comes you can call for the testimony of several solid and respected citizens of Yugoslavia who will testify to the fact that Cipriano kidnapped your son. The penalty in Italy for kidnapping is life imprisonment.’

‘Oh, do come on, Carlos,’ Lorraine said impatiently. ‘It’s not like you to dilly-dally. There is no other way.’ She gently touched his chin so that his eyes came round to hers. ‘We’ve got Mario back.’

‘True, true.’ He smiled at her. ‘That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it?’

‘Not all.’ She smiled in return. ‘You’re back too. That matters a little. What’s the alternative, Carlos? Peter doesn’t want to kill Cipriano, and if Cipriano is free our life is finished. He has to be imprisoned in a safe place and that means in British hands, and the only way to get him there is in this boat. Peter doesn’t make mistakes.’

‘Correction,’ Sarina said sweetly. ‘Peter never makes mistakes.’

‘“ Souvent femme varie ”’ Petersen said.

‘Oh, do be quiet.’

‘If I’m locked up,’ Carlos said, ‘When will I – and my crew – be released?’

‘Tomorrow. An anonymous phone message.’

‘And Lorraine and Mario will stay with your friends?’