October Men

though less by the example of his career than by the manner of his death. For it had been on the day that the Duce had murdered the Marshal in the air above Tobruk because he knew the truth about the armed forces and wasn't afraid to speak it that the young Captain Montuori had ceased to be a Fascist. . . .

He nodded to himself philosophically, watching the travellers congregate outside the terminus, idly sorting them into their proper categories with half his mind, natives and foreigners, holidaying couples and rucksacked students —only the unlucky, the ignorant and the young braved midsummer Rome!

Except his mother, naturally, who behaved in her own way, regardless of everything and everyone.

The General watched a pale-coloured car farther up the parked line to his left slide forward smoothly, curving in front of him in the wake of a big grey Fiat into which the dummy2

blonde woman with the baby—

His thought was extinguished by the fierce headlights of another car on his right which for one blinding instant illuminated the driver of the pale car moving across his front.

It was like a photographic flash, so brief was it, but still long enough to transmit an image through the General's eye and etch it on his brain, to be instantly registered, identified and remembered.

Remembered!

He sat rigid with excitement: there was no possibility of mistake, not one ten-thousandth particle of a possibility, no question of failing night sight playing him false with the vision of that profile, unremarkable but unforgotten.

Or unremarkable on this side, anyway. And since the years had changed its hungry outline so little they would have done nothing to erase the scar on the other side which ran from cheekbone to jawline —the General's own parting gift, delivered with the raking stock of his sub-machine gun. And he would not have misused a good weapon so if there hadn't been a company of German Alpine troops on the hillside less than three hundred metres below them: he would have used it as the Beretta company had intended, and good riddance!

But maybe he should have taken the risk at that—he thrust the hot memory down as the car passed out of his range of sight. The Bastard had been out of his territory then, just as he was out of his territory now. Only now he was out of his time too—sitting there alone in his car, sitting alone like the dummy2

General, waiting for someone, also like the General. Except that he had driven off smartly having met nobody— the flashing headlights had shown that too. So someone hadn't come?

The General swore and reached for the ignition. Someone had been here right enough—but the Bastard had not been here waiting to say 'Hullo' to him!

He slammed the gear selector over, flicked the light switch and jammed his foot on the accelerator. There was still just about time enough to catch up with him—

Except that his mother was standing directly in his way.

He jammed down his foot on the brake pedal even more fiercely than he had done on the accelerator. The car tyres squealed and slithered.

'Mother, for the love of God—' the General began despairingly 'Mother—'

'Raffaele!' The General's mother had a remarkably deep voice for so very feminine a woman, and although her admonitory tone towards him had changed over the course of fifty-eight years, it was fundamentally still that of a long-suffering mother to her slow-witted son. 'Don't sit there with your mouth open, Raffaele!'

'Mother—'

The General's mother turned her back on him. It was a well-dressed back too, he noticed bitterly; after four years of widowhood black still dominated her wardrobe dummy2

conventionally—but it was always the black of Antonelli and Mila Schoen and Valentino (and God in His heaven only knew what English house she had probably found by now to spend his money on).

'Angela!' The General's mother did not shout, she simply projected her voice. 'Tell that fellow to bring the cases here.'

He reached out and switched off the engine: when the odds were hopeless even the bravest man could surrender without discredit, and these odds, as he had good reason to know, were infinitely too much for him.

'Raffaele! Are you going to sit there all night?'

The General groped for the door handle. Already it had a quality of unreality, that sudden vision of the past. And he was really too old for these night games, anyway: there was something more than a little ridiculous about the idea of tearing through the night after his old enemy. And finally, it was too late now—his mother had seen to that. It had been too late ever since he had used the butt instead of the bullet twenty-eight years ago.

And then, as his fingers touched the handle, the General was pricked by that ancient instinct, that atavistic feeling of unease which had once been like an extra sense to him, as to be relied on as sight and hearing and smell.

He had thought that it had atrophied during his long spell behind desks of increasing size. But here it was stirring his innermost soul again: too old, it was saying, if you are too dummy2

old, then so is your enemy. Too old to be waiting in the darkness unless there is really something worth waiting for.

'Raffaele!'

So the grey Fiat was worth waiting for—or rather the grey Fiat's occupants, who would be on the passenger list for all to see.

It was as simple as that.

'Coming, Mother!' said the General happily.

At the precise moment that General Raffaele Montuori put his foot on the tarmac at Leonardo da Vinci Airport, Mrs.