October Men

The very thought of Villari clouded his mind with confusion and guilt. The man had saved his life and taken his bullet, and the uncontrollable inner wish that the wound might prove mortal was therefore ungrateful and dishonourable as well as an act of treason and a mortal sin.

But Villari's survival would bring humiliation, because everyone from the General downwards now believed that he, Boselli, had gunned down the assassin.

'One shot—straight through the heart, too! I didn't know you could even use a gun, Pietro.'

'Sir—I—I—'

'It's all right, Pietro, you don't have to tell me about it, not yet— Porro's already told me how it was. And I know it was bad, don't think I don't know. The first time is always bad.

It was bad for me just the same—it was a Tommy in 1940, just outside Tobruk, and I was sick as a dog afterwards. But until then I didn't know whether I'd measure up. You can't tell until it happens—remember that, Pietro.'

Oh, God! It had been ordinary temptation first—the admiration in Porro's eyes and the General's voice. And he had suddenly become Pietro to the General after all those years of being Boselli— that was temptation doubled and trebled.

But after the General's homily on the moment of measuring up the true explanation had stopped dead in his throat and dummy2

then it was suddenly a thousand years too late for any sort of truth at all, and he was stuck with the lie like a hit-and-run driver who had run too far to turn back.

If only Villari had not been hit! Or, more impossibly, if only what everyone thought was the reality, and he had measured up!

But he had not measured up, and now God was punishing him in the most subtle way imaginable: in his daydreams he had always yearned for the chance of proving himself in the field, in charge of some important operation where no one else could steal the credit, but directly under the General's eye; and now he had his wish and with it his only chance of redeeming himself.

It was exactly as Father Patrick had always maintained—

when God punished He always built a second chance into the punishment, that was the nature of His Grace.

So now he must carry out the General's instructions to the very last letter or be doubly damned as a liar and an incompetent. There would be no third chance.

But then, when he had once more come round to that inescapable conclusion, the self-doubts began again—the doubt that he could deliver even half that the General wanted.

'You heard the tape of what Clinton said—it was very convincing —that note of surprise was a small touch of genius. I think there is no liar in the world like an English dummy2

gentleman, Pietro, no liar in the whole world. They are absolute masters of the half-truth. But I must know the whole truth. . . .'

No liars in the whole world—Boselli could believe that because he had been convinced that the news of the Ostian blood bath had genuinely surprised Clinton.

But the General was right, of course: to send such a man as Audley to interview Eugenio Narva about his investment in the oil discoveries in the North Sea made no sense at all. It was a technologist's assignment, and a routine one at that.

Nor was it likely to be of great interest to the Russians, the more so because it related to the past.

And above all it ought not to be a killing matter.

But at that point the second and more terrifying requirement obtruded.

'And I want Ruelle, Pietro. One way or another, alive or dead—I want him.'

A small sound registered in the world outside Boselli's private turmoil, the distant sound of aircraft engines. He raised his hand to lift the dark glasses which had slipped down his nose, remembering guiltily as he did so to whom they belonged. They were beautiful, expensive glasses, self-adjusting to the degree of sunlight: he had always wanted dummy2

such glasses, and it had seemed a crime to leave them lying where they had fallen.

He sighed. If Villari lived he would have to give them back too.

There was nothing as yet to see, only the increasing sound in the northwest to be heard. But it would not be long now before the Englishman arrived.

Captain Peter John Richardson.

Nothing could be more English than that, except that Captain Peter John Richardson was no more and no less English than George Ruelle—Captain Peter John Richardson was another bastard half Italian Englishman.

No, that was inaccurate: he was no bastard of a passing foreign soldier and an ignorant peasant girl, the dossier was clear on that point: the girl had been of good family and the wedding in Amalfi Cathedral was a matter of undoubted record.

Unfortunately those were almost the only undoubted things in the dossier. The man had trained as a soldier, had been seconded to army intelligence in Cyprus and had then been sent on a language course at a provincial English university.

Conjecturally, at some stage in that process he had been diverted into Sir Frederick Clinton's department—it