'—and your name will be enough, at the right time. I'd rather take Signor Boselli, if you can spare him —'
XVII
HE COULDN'T REMEMBER anything they had said, he could only see the dusty track stretching up the hillside towards the farm. 'Is there anything else you'd like to know before we start?'
Boselli felt the sweat beneath his palms on the steering wheel. He had the feeling that this was at least the second time of asking that question. But there was nothing else he needed to know, because he knew it all.
Maybe the big Englishman was doing what he thought was best and most reasonable in cold blood. And maybe he was right at that! But he, Boselli, the Boselli of flesh and blood, was here because the General liked to hedge his bets; because the General thought maybe the Englishman couldn't pull it off, and if he didn't then it would be better to lose the little clerk Boselli than the son of one of his old flames, the half-Englishman—
dummy2
'I beg your pardon, signore—professore?'
'Is there anything you're doubtful about?'
'Doubtful?'
Mother of God, but that was an understatement!
Audley regarded him keenly. 'You didn't seem very interested in what I was saying back there.'
Not very interested? Well, if that was how he had appeared Boselli supposed he ought to be grateful that he had concealed his absolute dismay so well. It had certainly not been lack of interest, but rather the resignation of the bullock in the slaughterhouse yard.
'I was listening.' That was true enough; he could even remember the Englishman's words exactly. The trouble was that they were now just a string of remembered sounds without the life breath of meaning. 'You are going to tell the truth.'
'Pretty much, yes. The only thing I'm not going to tell him is that it's the KGB itself we've consulted. He mustn't even suspect that, or we're done for.'
'I understand.'
That was not quite true, either, since Audley had omitted to say what this miraculous truth of his was, or how it was going to change George Ruelle's plans. But the General hadn't seemed unduly curious about it, and neither was Boselli now.
He was cast as an onlooker again, and the bullock's lethargy dummy2
was overpowering.
Anyway, the truth was there, up in the farmhouse, waiting for him. And so was Ruelle. And he could escape neither of them.
Except for the bumping of the car on the potholes and summer-hardened ruts, they didn't seem to be moving: it was the farm that was coming towards them, first on one side and then on the other, and finally on the last straight hundred metres dead ahead. He couldn't take his eyes off it.
'You're going too fast,' murmured Audley. 'Go slowly—we must do everything slowly now.'
The tyres slithered as Boselli braked too hard. He hadn't been aware of his speed, and the Englishman was absolutely right: whatever fear he felt at coming to this place would be matched by the alarm their arrival must cause here. Fear made men trigger happy, and these pigs had already shown themselves to be that.
The farm resolved itself into a tumbledown collection of buildings almost encircling them, with two other cars tucked in the shadow of a crumbling barn—a little Fiat 600, old and battered, and a larger pale green vehicle of a make Boselli didn't recognise.
'Stop here.'
Obediently Boselli halted in the middle of the yard.
'Get out slowly—and for God's sake keep your hands in view.
dummy2
They'll be expecting something from you, if anyone.'
Boselli couldn't understand what the Englishman was driving at, but there was no time to ask for an explanation.
He knew only that his hands seemed to have become large and clumsy, and he didn't know where to put them for safety.
In the end, as he came round the front of the car, he found that he was holding them loosely in front of his chest, as he did at home when he was looking for a towel to dry them.
The voice was as loud as a pistol shot behind him.
The second part of the command was superfluous: there was nothing in the world which would have moved Boselli one hair's-breadth from where he was standing, and for a moment he was afraid his heart was obeying also.
'Raise your arms—higher—now walk towards the wall ahead
— slowly—'
The wall? Up against the wall?
