October Men

It was typical of Villari that he understood nothing of the realities of the postwar period.

'He had even less chance then, actually. After the war, you remember, signore, the Government sent him with the negotiators to London—he had fought beside the Anglo-Americans and they had given him one of their medals. And then he went with the arms commission to Washington. By dummy2

the time he returned it was too late to settle such a score without causing great scandal.' He shrugged. 'The Bastard was too important in the Party hierarchy by then—that's what they call him, by the way: The Bastard.'

'That makes two of them—our Raffaele's something of a bastard too when the fit takes him.'

'Ah—but Ruelle really is one. I mean, he was born out of wedlock. The story is that his father was one of the English soldiers who fought alongside our army on the Piave in the Great War. Apparently he left Ruelle's mother in the lurch, or maybe he was killed in the Vittorio Veneto offensive—no one knows for sure. But Ruelle was born in Treviso in 1919, anyway, and his mother called him George, after the Englishman. And that's all his father left him, just the name.

Perhaps that's why he doesn't like the English.'

'He doesn't like 'em?'

'He hates them.'

'And yet he calls himself 'George'?'

'Yes, he does.' It was curious how Villari was echoing the same questions he had put to Frugoni; and in default of that missing section of the Ruelle dossier he could only advance Frugoni's replies. 'Maybe it helps him to keep on hating—a constant reminder. He was a good hater in the old days, so it seems, anyway. . . . Perhaps this other Englishman had better look to his back.' Boselli watched the handsome face carefully. 'Unless we are busy making something out of dummy2

nothing, of course. . . .'

But there was no hint of change in the aristocratic blankness of Villari's expression, nor any suggestion that he intended to give anything back in return for all the information he had received. He was not simply ignoring Boselli, but even more simply Boselli had ceased to exist for him while he digested what he had been told.

Boselli turned back towards the shimmering highway ahead.

They were out of the city now, almost magically—he had been too busy answering carefully, playing his answers one by one as frugally as he knew how, to notice how fast they had been travelling. Now they were eating up the kilometres to the sea even more rapidly, rushing to whatever rendezvous lay ahead. For this was not square one again, that at least he knew without Villari having to let slip one helpful word. It had been there from the start, even in the man's assumed nonchalance in the cafe: if there had really been nothing to report it would have been scorn, or sarcasm, or even anger waiting for him there, or certainly something very different from that first guarded hostility. Whereas when he had revealed that he had something to offer, Villari had been eager to take it—eager enough to affect that sickening contemptuous jocularity. . . .

So one thing was sure: they had staked out Audley's apartment on the Aventine and against all reasonable expectation it had quietly paid off. He had been right—it no longer mattered for what ridiculous reason; nobody knew dummy2

about that anyway and looking back on it he felt that in fairness to himself it had been logic and instinct as much as any other consideration which had prompted him to suspect that the English were up to something.

He had been right. He hugged the knowledge to himself triumphantly. And Villari had been wrong: that was almost as satisfying.

And he had been right against the odds and in the very presence of the General: that was the sort of thing he needed to establish himself, exactly the sort of thing! He had shown his quality in a way which would be noted: not a man of facts and figures, little more than a clerk, but a man of decision and discernment. . . .

' Chase is turning off main highway,' the crackling voice on the radio took him unawares again. ' Turning right—sign reads . . . Ostia Antica—do you read me?—Ostia Antica.'

'Check—Ostia Antica.' Villari flicked the switch and frowned at Boselli. 'What is there at Ostia Antica?'

'The excavations.'

'Excavations?'

'It was the port of ancient Rome, signore,' said Boselli patiently. The Clotheshorse was clearly pig-ignorant of everything that did not concern him, but that was only to be expected. 'It was the imperial port until the river course changed. I suppose it silted up first. And there would have dummy2

been the malaria from the marshes too—'

'I didn't ask for a history lesson. I know what the place was,'

Villari snapped. 'But what are the excavations like?'

Boselli scratched his head. The truth was he had never visited Ostia Antica, although he did not care to admit it just now.

'Just ruins.' He shrugged. That was safe enough: the past was always in ruins, and one ruin was much like another.

'Just ruins. You can see them alongside the road to the Lido—

I'm sure you must have seen them sometime.'

'I do not go to the Lido.' Villari contemptuously relegated the city's beaches to the city's rabble. 'Do the tourists go there?'

'To the Lido?' Boselli gazed at him stupidly.