Telesio drove us to the airport in the Flat, which still didn't have a dent, though he hadn't changed his attitude on obstructions. There were more people and activity at the airport than there had been on Palm Sunday, but apparently word had been passed along by the signer who had legalized us, for Telesio merely popped into a room with our passports and popped right out again, and took us out to a plane that was waiting on the apron. With tears in his eyes -- which didn't mean he was suffering, because I had noticed that they came when he laughed -- he kissed Wolfe on both cheeks and me on one, and stood and watched us take off. Since on our way in we hadn't left the airport, I couldn't say I had been in Rome, but now I can. A taxi took us through the city to the American embassy, and later another one took us back to the airport, so I know Rome like a book. It has a population 279 of 1,695,4773 and has many fine old buildings.
When we entered one of the buildings, the embassy, we were ten minutes early for our appointment, but we didn't have to wait. A young woman^who was fair enough at the moment but would have two chins in a few years if she didn't take steps was obviously interested in us, which was natural, since Wolfe declined to give our names, saying only that we were expected by Mr. Courtney, and she had been briefed, for after a quick survey trying to guess whether we were CIA or just a couple of congressmen trying to be cagey, she used a phone, and before long Richard Courtney appeared, greeted us diplomatically without pronouncing names, and escorted us within, to a little room halfway down a long, wide corridor. Three chairs were about all it had room for without crowding. He invited us to take two of them and went to the third, which was behind a desk stacked with papers. He eyed us. Superficially he was still a distinguished-looking college boy, but a lot more reserved than four days earlier. From the way he looked at us, he wasn't exactly suspicious, but he intended to find out whether he ought to be. 280 'You said on the phone,' he told Wolfe, 'that you wanted to ask a favor.' 'Two favors,' Wolfe corrected him. 'One was to let us get to you without mention of names.' 'That has been done. I've mentioned your name, since you phoned, only to Mr. Teague, the Secretary. What's the other one?' 'I'll make it as brief as possible. Mr. Goodwin and I came to Italy on an important and confidential matter, a private matter. During our stay on Italian soil we have violated no law and committed no offense, except the minor one of being abroad without our papers. Our errand is satisfactorily completed and we're ready to go home, but there is a small difficulty. We wish to sail tomorrow from Genoa on the Basilia, but incognito. The success of our errand will be compromised if it is known that we are sailing on the ship. From Bari I telephoned the Rome office of the steamship company and was able to reserve a double cabin in the names of Carl Gunther and Alex Gunther. I want to go there now and get the tickets. I ask you to telephone them and tell them it's all right to let me have them.' 'You mean to guarantee that you'll pay for them when you get to New York?' 281 'No, I'll pay for them in cash.' 'Then what's the favor?' 'To establish our bona fides. To approve our being listed under different names than those on our passports.' 'Just that?' 'Yes.' 'But my dear sir,' Courtney was relieved and amused -- 'that's nothing. Thousands of people travel incognito. You don't need the sanction of the embassy for that!' 'That may be. But,' Wolfe persisted, 'I thought it desirable to take this precaution. With all the restrictions imposed nowadays on people who wish to move around, or need to, I wanted to preclude any possibility of a snag. Also I prefer not to undertake lengthy explanations to a clerk in a steamship office. Will you phone them?' Courtney smiled. 'This is a pleasant surprise, Mr. Wolfe. Certainly I'll phone them. I wish all the favors our fellow citizens ask for were as simple. And now I hope you won't mind if I ask for a favor from you. After I told Mr. Teague, the Secretary, that you were coming here this afternoon, he must have spoken of it to the Ambassador, because he told me later that the Ambassador would like to meet you. So if you can spare a few minutes, after I phone?' 282 Wolfe was frowning. 'She's a woman.' 'Yes, indeed.' 'I must ask your forbearance. I'm tired clear to my bones, and I must catch a seveno'clock plane to Genoa. Unless -- will you take it ill and change your mind about phoning?'
'My God, no!' Courtney laughed. He drew his head back and roared. It struck me as pretty boisterous for a diplomat. 283 Chapter 16 At noon the next day, Friday, we sat in our cabin on B deck on the Basilia. She was to sail at one. At the Forelli Hotel in Genoa we had eleven hours sleep on good mattresses, and a good breakfast. Wolfe could walk without shuffling or staggering, and my bruises weren't quite as raw. We were listed as Carl Gunther and Alex Gunther, had paid for the tickets, and had a little over six hundred bucks in our jeans. It was an outside cabin, twice as big as our cell in the Bari can, with two beds and two chairs, and one of the chairs was upholstered and Wolfe could squeeze into it. But what about Peter Zov? All Wolfe had been told was that he would enter Italy at Gorizia Wednesday night, cross to Genoa by way of Padua and Milan, and be on the Basilia as a cabin steward by Thursday night. Wolfe had wanted to know what his name would be, but Stritar had 284 said that would be decided after he got to Genoa. Of course we knew nothing about where Zov would get his name or his papers, or from whom, or how the fix was set up for him to replace a steward. We didn't know how good the fix was, or whether it always worked or only sometimes. As we sat there in the cabin, we didn't give a damn about any of that, all that was eating us was, was he on board or not? If he wasn't, did we want to sail anyhow and hope he would come later? Didn't we have to? If we abandoned ship just because Zov didn't show up, wouldn't that be a giveaway? 'There's an hour left,' I said. 'I'll go and look around some more. Stewards are popping in and out everywhere.' 'Confound it.' Wolfe hit the chair arm with his fist. 'We should have kept him with us.' 'Stritar would have smelled a rat if you had insisted on it, and anyway he wouldn't buy it.' 'Pfui. What is ingenuity for? I should have managed it. I'm a dunce. I should have foreseen this and prevented it. By heaven, I won't start back without him!' There was a knock at the door, I said, 'Come in,' it opened, and Peter Zov entered with our bags. 285 'Oh, it's you,' he said in SerboCroat. He put the bags down and turned to go. 'Wait a minute,' Wolfe said. 'There is something to say.' 'You can say it later. This is a busy time.' 'Just one word, then. Don't go to any pains to keep us from hearing you speak English. Of course you do -- some, at least -- or you couldn't be a cabin steward on this boat.' 'You're smart,' he said in SerboCroat. 'Okay,' he said in American, and went. Wolfe told me to shut the door, and I did. When I turned back he had his eyes closed and was sighing, deep, and then again, deeper. He opened his eyes, looked at the bags and then at me, and told me what had been said. 'We ought to know his name,' I suggested.
'We will. Go on deck and watch the gangway. He might take it into his head to skedaddle.' 'Why should he?' 'He shouldn't. But a man with his frontal lobes pushed back like that is unpredictable. Go.' So I was on deck, at the rail, when we shoved off, and had a good look at the city stretching along the strip at the edge of the 286 water and climbing the hills. The hills might have impressed me more if I hadn't just returned from a jaunt in Montenegro. By the time we had cleared the outer harbor and were in open water most of my fellow passengers had gone below for lunch, and I decided that now was as good a time as any for getting a certain point settled. I went back down to the cabin and told Wolfe, 'It's lunchtime. You've decided to stay put in this cabin all the way across, and you may be right. It's not likely that there's anyone on board who would recognize you, but it's possible, and if it happened and it got around, as it would, the best that could result would be that you'd have to write another script. But we're going to see a lot of each other in the next twelve days, not to mention the last six, and I think it would be bad policy for us to eat all our meals together in this nook.' 'So do I.' 'I'll eat in the dining room.' 'By all means. I've already given Peter Zov my order for lunch.' 'What?' I stared. 'Zov?' 'Certainly. He's our steward.' 'Good God. He'll bring all your meals and you'll eat them?' 'Yes. It will be trying, and it won't help 287 my digestion, but it will have its advantages. I'll have plenty of opportunities to discuss our plans.' 'And if he gets ideas and mixes in some arsenic?' 'Nonsense. Why should he?' 'He shouldn't. But a mart with his frontal lobes pushed back like that is unpredictable.'
'Go get your lunch.' I went, and found that though eating in the dining room would provide a change, it would offer nothing spectacular in companionship. Table Seventeen seated six. One chair was empty and would be all the way, and the other four were occupied by a German who thought he could speak English but was mistaken, a woman from Maryland who spoke it too much, and a mother and daughter, Italian or something, who didn't even know 'dollar' and 'okay' and 'cigarette.' The daughter was seventeen, attractive, and almost certainly a smoldering volcano of Latin passion, but even if I had been in the humor to try stirring up a young volcano, which I wasn't, mamma stayed glued to her all the way over. During the twelve days there was plenty of time, of course, to mo $ey around and make acquaintances and chin at random, 288 but by the third day I had learned that the only three likely prospects, not counting the volcano, were out. One, a black-eyed damsel with a lisp, was on her way to Pittsburgh to get married. Another, a tall slender Nor- die who needed no makeup and used none, loved to play chess, and that was all. The third, a neat little blonde, started drinking Gibsons an hour before lunch and didn't
