October Men

'Eh?'

'If he is already—close to Porta San Paolo—he has—a long start on us—the man Audley. That is—if we are— going to follow him— wherever he is—going.'

'Follow him?' Villari replied casually over his shoulder. 'We shall let the police follow him. That's what they're paid to do.'

'Then what—shall we do?'

Villari stopped suddenly beside a monstrous sports car parked in defiance of the sign above it. Boselli's spirits sank at the sight of it. It was so exactly the sort of car he would dummy2

have imagined for this sort of man that it did not surprise him, yet its shocking disregard of common prudence was dismaying nevertheless—a tank or an armoured carrier would have been hardly less ostentatious.

His reaction must have been evidently headlined across his face, for Villari grinned at him mischievously across the blinding roof— at least the prospect of physical (as opposed to mental) activity appeared to purge his bullying streak and dissolve his petulance, anyway. When he spoke there was almost no cutting edge in his voice.

'Don't panic, little Boselli—this is the easy part. The Englishman drives like an old woman on the way to Sunday Mass—I could catch him if he was already halfway to the coast. But it isn't necessary. The police will follow him in their car, and we will follow them in ours, if I can make myself drive slowly enough. So stop worrying and get in.'

Boselli clambered awkwardly into the low-slung black leather bucket seat, first overawed and then abruptly slammed back into the padding by the Ferrari's explosive acceleration.

Then, as he gathered his wits, all thought of the problems and difficulties ahead was submerged in the heady pleasures of speed and power and opulence: this—the snarl of horsepower and the wide bonnet stretching ahead of him away into the distance—was the very stuff of his own private dreams. If success and promotion ever came, if patience and application were ever rewarded, if merit and intelligence were recognised, it would be thus and with this that it would dummy2

be celebrated, not with the petty family aspirations of his wife and her crow of a mother and that rapacious crew of nonentities from Viterbo who had pinned their hopes of comfortable old age on the clever civil servant their only sister had married. . . .

'Chase has joined the Via del Mare—Chase has joined the Via del Mare—Over.'

The crackling voice jerked him back to reality, and a reality in which there could be no more day-dreaming if he was to pass the tests ahead.

Villari threw a small switch. 'Acknowledge—over and out.'

He threw the switch again and smiled almost conspiratorially at Boselli. 'You see? Nothing at all to worry about. Nothing to do but talk.'

The Tiber sparkled momentarily in a gap on his left and then was gone as the accompanying traffic fell away from them, unwilling to match their insolent speed. That boast at least had substance—and substance which aroused Boselli's reluctant admiration: whatever the Clotheshorse's defects, he used the road like a prince in his own territory, disdainful of laws made for lesser men.

But a prince who was going out of his way to be affable to one lesser man now: patently Villari had at last recognised the need to work with him—or at least to tap that 'special knowledge' he had hinted at. Only the working would be on Villari's terms, with Villari leading and getting the credit. The dummy2

nuance of command had been clear in those last words

—'nothing to do but talk' meant that he must now spill all his hard-won information on pain of displeasure. 'It rather looks like the Lido, then,' he began cautiously. 'There is nowhere else to go from the autostrada unless they are heading for the airport. And as they have left the baby and the au pair, I would think—'

But Villari was not prepared to accept this conversational gambit.

'And I would think,' he interrupted, 'that you have not quite finished telling me why the General wants this man Ruelle dead.'

Boselli gestured vaguely. 'They are old enemies, signore.

From the war. ...'

Villari looked at him quickly, unsmiling now. 'Don't start playing your little games with me again—I know they were in the war together, and I know the General doesn't love Reds.

Answer the question.'

Boselli pretended to give in obsequiously. 'No, of course—I beg your pardon, signore! It was in 1943, just at the beginning of the— period of co-belligerency, at the time the Anglo-Americans landed at Salerno, that this thing happened. There was a German column crossing the Appennines from Foggia, and the General and Ruelle joined their forces to block the road ... or they were supposed to join, that is.'

dummy2

'Go on!'

'Well, I do not know the full details of it, but Ruelle double-crossed him, that is what it amounts to ... and he did it cleverly, so that it looked like a misunderstanding. Half the General's men were cut off without a chance—and the Germans did not take any prisoners, either.'

Villari grunted. 'Typical Red trick—the scum!' The Clotheshorse was probably summing it up more accurately than he knew, Boselli reflected. Ruelle had undoubtedly fought the Germans in his own savage way; but at that stage in the war he was already looking ahead to the struggle for power in postwar Italy, and he had merely used the Germans to weaken his future political opponents, who would be needing men like the fire-eating Bersaglieri major he had betrayed.

'Yes,' he nodded, 'and the General guessed as much, but there wasn't anything he could do at the time.'

'And afterwards? He let the scum get away with it? That doesn't sound like our Raffaele!'