'And you are here too,' replied Boselli acidly. He mopped his brow with the big silk handkerchief his eldest daughter had given him on his last birthday, fancying as he did so that Villari had chosen even those words 'steamed up' with deliberate scorn also. For all his North Italian, almost Scandinavian blondness, the younger man showed not a sign of discomfort in the swelter—it was Boselli himself, the Roman, who was already wilting.
But that bitter little thought raised another much more interesting one which momentarily chased away Boselli's private discomforts. There had to be a reason for the General to recall this gilded Clotheshorse from his leave beyond the fact that he happened to be here in Rome. If the General had dummy2
wanted someone from Venice or Messina —or Benghazi—he wouldn't have thought twice about summoning him. So it was Villari and none other that he wanted now. And since Villari combined fluency in the North European languages with the right colouring and an ability to withstand extremes of temperature, cold as well as hot, it must be that Villari was needed to check up on Audley in England.
Which meant that the General was committed to a line of action, or was at least on the very brink of commitment.
And that was a useful thing to know, even though he had not as yet the faintest idea what Audley—
Villari suddenly loomed up directly in front of the desk, cutting off this intriguing line of reflection. He placed his hands precisely on the two corners—the desk creaked alarmingly as it took his weight—and leaned forward until his face was less than fifty centimetres from Boselli's.
'Little man, little man—' Villari's smile was as devoid of good humour as it was of friendship '—I can hear the cogs and wheels whirring in your little brain but you haven't answered my question. And when I ask a question I expect you to provide an answer.'
Boselli sat up stiffly and drew back in the same instant, the faint smell of expensive cologne in his nostrils.
'I haven't been told to answer any questions,' he snapped. 'I have no authorisation to answer questions.'
'Authorisation?' The grin became frozen, but there was a dummy2
glint of anger in Villari's eyes now. 'You have the soul of a clerk, little Boselli. A clerk you were born and a clerk you will die.'
He straightened up slowly. 'But I don't need to lose my temper, because I have my own way with clerks. It's a very simple way—let me show you how I treat clerks who bandy words with me. You could call it my authorisation—'
He put his hand in the middle of Boselli's desk and with an unhurried movement, before Boselli could even think of stopping him, swept half the surface clear.
A second too late, unavailingly, Boselli jerked forward in an attempt to stop the cascade of paper, grabbing desperately and clumsily, catching nothing. Villari watched him scrabbling on his knees for a moment and then, as though bored with the whole affair, turned away towards the window again.
'You're—mad,' Boselli heard himself muttering in anguish as he sorted the jumbled documents. 'It'll take me hours—hours
—' He cut off the complaint as he realised that it would only give Villari more satisfaction. He had no dignity left to salvage and no hope of lodging any sort of complaint without further humiliating himself (the crafty swine had calculated that exactly). Silence was all that remained to him.
But silence did not seem to worry Villari. He merely waited until the papers had been shovelled more or less into their correct files, and the files had been piled more or less in their original places, in a mockery of their original neatness. Then dummy2
he advanced again.
Instinctively Boselli set his hands over the files in a pathetic attempt to protect them.
Villari laughed.
'If you could see yourself!' He shook his head. 'Better death than disorder! So we start again, then: who is the man Audley? Speak up, clerk.'
Boselli sighed. 'What makes you think it is Audley who concerns you?'
Villari looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, as though undecided as to whether or not to assault the files again.
Then, to Boselli's unbounded relief, he relaxed; the game of bullying had palled, or more likely the need for information from a beaten opponent commended itself more urgently.
'Well, he seems to concern you, little Boselli. His name is written all over your files—three folders all to himself, and one from the Foreign Ministry. What a busy fellow he must be!' The manicured hand pointed carelessly. 'And isn't that a photograph too?'
He tweaked open one of the covers and twisted round the contents.
'Hmm. . . . Not a particularly prepossessing type. In fact he reminds me of a bouncer I met in a club in Hamburg—he thought he was a hard man.' Villari sniffed at the memory, then held the photograph up at arm's length for a more critical look. 'The suit's okay— you can't beat the English for dummy2
tailoring—but he's filling it too much ... a big tough guy running to seed.' He nodded to himself. 'A bit like that actor of theirs who's always getting into scrapes with the cops.
Another tough one.'
Boselli smiled inwardly then, permitting himself to be drawn into the game at last by Villari's crass error of judgement.
'You're looking at the wrong half of the face. Look at the eyes and the forehead.'
Villari blanked off the squashed nose and square jaw with his other hand and stared at the photograph again. He shrugged.
'So—a hard man with a brain. But don't let him fool you, clerk: if you let him talk you into a dark alley he'll still
