Jeffrey Archer - Paths Of Glory

Young led them slowly back down the mountain, not wasting any words on small talk until they were on safer ground. When their hotel came into sight, he uttered his last words on the subject. “I would be obliged, gentlemen, if this matter was not referred to again, even between ourselves, until the Foreign Office has made an official announcement.”

Both men nodded. “However,” Young added, “I hope you don’t have anything else planned for 1915.”

Finch was on his way down to dinner, dressed in an open-necked shirt, flannel trousers, and a sports jacket, when he spotted Mallory at the reception desk writing out a check.

“Off on another little adventure, are we?” inquired Finch, looking down at the suitcase by Mallory’s feet.

Mallory smiled. “Yes. I have to admit that you’re not the only man I’m trying to stay a yard ahead of.”

Finch glanced at the label attached to the suitcase. “As there are no mountains that I’m aware of in Venice, I can only assume that another woman must be involved.”

George didn’t reply as he handed his check to the clerk standing behind the counter.

“Just as I thought,” said Finch. “And as you’ve already implied that I’m something of an expert when it comes to the fairer sex, allow me to warn you that trying to juggle two women at once, even if they do live on different continents, is never easy.”

George grinned as he folded his receipt and placed it in an inside pocket. “My dear Finch,” he said, “allow me to point out that there has to be a first woman before there can be a second.” Without another word he picked up his suitcase, gave Finch a thin smile, and headed toward the front door.

“I wouldn’t repeat that when you come face to face with Chomolungma for the first time,” said Finch quietly. “I have a feeling that particular lady might well turn out to be an unforgiving mistress.”

George didn’t look back.

E VER SINCE HEhad set eyes on her at Westbrook, George hadn’t been able to get Ruth out of his mind, even when he was climbing. Was that the reason Finch had reached the top of the Matterhorn before him, and Young had chosen Somervell and Herford to join him on the Everest Committee? Was Finch right when he had suggested that at some time George would have to decide between them? No choice was necessary at the moment, thought George, as both the ladies in question were studiously ignoring him.

George had slipped away from Zermatt on Tuesday night, leaving his colleagues to settle their differences with one or two of the lesser peaks. He boarded the train for Lausanne, changing at Visp, where he spent most of his time planning how they might casually bump into each other-that was, assuming he managed to find her.

As the train rattled along, George couldn’t help thinking that although mountains were not to be depended on, at least they remained in one place. Wouldn’t it be all too obvious that he’d traveled from Switzerland to Italy specially to see her? He knew one person who would work it out immediately.

When George disembarked at Lausanne, he purchased a third-class ticket on the Cisalpino to Verona, from where he would join the express for Venice. There was no need to waste money on a more expensive ticket when all he intended to do was sleep. And he would have slept if he hadn’t been seated next to a Frenchman who clearly felt that every dish he ate should be liberally laced with garlic, and whose snoring rivaled the engine for noise.

George was able to grab only a few moments’ sleep before the train reached its destination. He had never visited Venice before, but Baedeker’s guide had been his constant companion for the past month, so by the time he stepped out onto the platform at Santa Lucia, he knew the exact location of every five-star hotel in the city. He even knew that the Firenze was the first hotel in Europe to offer what they described as an en-suite bathroom.

Once the waterbus had dropped him off at the Piazza San Marco, George went in search of the one hotel he could afford that wasn’t miles from the city center. He checked into the smallest room on the top floor, a proper place for a mountaineer, and settled down, desperate for a good night’s sleep. He would, like all well-prepared climbers, have to rise before the sun if he hoped to carry out his little subterfuge. He was confident that the Turners wouldn’t be setting foot outside whichever hotel they were staying at much before ten o’clock.

George spent another sleepless night, and this time he couldn’t blame garlic or a rattling train, but rather a mattress with no springs and a pillow that had never been introduced to more than a handful of feathers; even his young charges at Charterhouse would have complained.

He rose before six, and was crossing the Rialto Bridge half an hour later, accompanied by late revelers and a few early morning workers. He took a list of hotels from the inside pocket of his jacket, and set about his quest methodically.

The first establishment he entered was the Hotel Bauer, where he asked at the reception desk if the Turner family-one elderly gentleman and his three daughters-were guests. The night porter ran a finger down a long list before shaking his head. At the nearby Hotel Europa e Regina, George received the same response. The Hotel Baglione had a Thompson and a Taylor, but no Turner, while the night manager of the Gritti Palace waited for a tip before he even considered answering George’s question, but then gave him the same response. The next hotel refused to divulge the names of its guests, even after George claimed to be a close friend of the family.

He was beginning to wonder if the Turners had changed their holiday plans until the head porter of the San Clemente, an Englishman, gave a smile of recognition when he heard the name, although he didn’t smile again until George had passed over a large-denomination note. The Turner party, he told him, were not staying at the San Clemente, but they occasionally dined there, and he had once been asked to book a vaporetto to take them back to…He didn’t finish the sentence until a second note of the same denomination had joined the first…back to their hotel. A third note secured the hotel’s name, the Cipriani, as well as the dock where its private water taxi always dropped off its guests.

George placed a thinner wallet back in his jacket pocket and made his way quickly to Piazza San Marco, from where he could see the island of Giudecca, on which the Cipriani hotel proudly stood. Every twenty minutes a water taxi docked with the name Cipriani on its bow. He stepped into the shadows of a large archway from where he could observe every boat as it disgorged its customers, confident that an elderly gentleman accompanied by three young ladies would be easy enough to identify, especially when the vision of one of those ladies had rarely left his mind for the past six weeks.

For the next two hours George checked every customer coming by water taxi from Giudecca. After another hour he began to wonder if the Turners had moved to a different hotel; perhaps the one that had refused to divulge its guest list. He watched as the cafés all around him began to fill up. The pervading aroma of freshly baked panini, crostini, and piping hot coffee reminded him he hadn’t had any breakfast. But he dared not desert his post, for fear that if he did so, that would be the moment the Turner family set foot on the shore. George decided that if they hadn’t appeared by midday, he might have to risk taking the taxi across to the island, and even entering their hotel. But if he were to bump into them, how would he explain what he was doing there? Mr. Turner would have known that a night at the Cipriani would barely have been covered by George’s monthly salary, however small the room was.