men would be in them. Look here: we know that they’ve got on to that poste restante set-up of yours with Vagas. There’s very little doubt that Madame Vagas gave them the whole works. That means that they’ve got hold of the report I wrote. Do you remember that you didn’t think much of it? Well, I told you it was dynamite and dynamite it is. You saw how Vagas reacted to it. Well, believe me, that would be nothing to the way the contra-espionage department of the Organizzazione Vigilanza Repressione Anti-fascismo would react when they saw it. I’m not a good gambler, but I would not mind betting heavy money that at this very moment there’s enough sweating going on among the big boys in Milan and Rome to float that new battle-cruiser of theirs. And they let Vagas slip through their fingers. They must be kicking themselves good and plenty. But they’re not going to make the same mistake twice. They’re going to get you or bust themselves trying.”
“I don’t see why I should be so important.”
“No? The first thing they’d do, they’ve certainly done it by now, is to descend in a cloud on the Turin factory where those aircraft lifts are being made, to discover just how the leakage of information took place and how much you found out.”
“But I haven’t even been there.”
“Just so. You haven’t been there. You must have got the information from somewhere else. And the rest of the information in that report was stale before you arrived in the country, so you couldn’t have got that by yourself either. In other words, they’re going to tumble like a sack of potatoes to what’s being put across them. That’s why you’ve got to get out of the country, and pretty damn quick.”
For a bit I said nothing. I was impressed; very much so. I could feel something cold gripping at my insides. “Pretty damn quick.” There was a horrible urgency about those three ugly little words. I saw, suddenly, the naked realities of the mess I was in. My mind involuntarily turned away from them. Heavens, what a mess! If only…
I began to regret, to try and rearrange things in a more pleasing pattern. Finally I began to argue with Zaleshoff in an effort to get him somehow to modify his conclusions. I wanted him to minimise the danger. It was a plain case of funk, and it deceived him not at all.
“It’s no use,” he said at last. “I’m not going to call black pale-grey just because you’d like it better that way. You’re in a spot. I think I can get you out of it. I’ll do all I can to do so because I reckon I did a good deal to get you into it. But you’ll have to do as I say. It isn’t going to be easy. If we have to lose a night or two’s sleep it’ll be just too bad, but you’ll have to put up with it. If that’s all we lose before we’re through, I reckon we shall have done swell.”
I did not like the sound of that at all.
“Well, anyway,” I said with feeble heartiness, “the worst that can come of it is a nice stay in prison.”
It was as much a question as a statement. I was afraid, as soon as I had said it, that he would answer the question, and he did.
“Prison? Yes-maybe.”
“What do you mean by ‘maybe’?”
“They have a formula for these things hereabouts. It’s called ‘shot while attempting to evade arrest.’ ”
“And if you don’t attempt to evade arrest?”
“Then,” he said calmly, “they make you kneel down. Then they put a bullet through the back of your neck and call it ‘shot while escaping.’ ”
I laughed, not very convincingly, but I laughed. I decided that he was trying to frighten me.
“Newspaper talk!” I said.
He shrugged. “My friend, when you’re above the law, when you are the law, the phrase about ends justifying means has a real meaning. Put yourself in their place. If you felt that the state which you worshipped above your God was endangered by the life of one insignificant man, would you hesitate to have him shot? I can tell you that you wouldn’t. That’s the danger of Fascism, of state-worship. It supposes an absolute, an egocentric unit. The idea of the state is not rooted in the masses, it is not of the people. It is an abstract, a God-idea, a psychic dung-hill raised to shore up an economic system that is no longer safe. When you’re on the top of that sort of dung-hill, it doesn’t matter whether the ends are in reality good or bad. The fact that they are your ends makes them good-for you.”
But I was scarcely listening to him. I was trying to sort out the confusion of my thoughts. Claire! what would she have done? But Claire was not there. In any case, she would have been too wise to have involved herself in such an affair. I tried to strike out along a new line, but eventually I found that it turned back on itself. I was thinking in circles. In desperation I turned again to Zaleshoff.
He was busily crushing a lump of sugar in the bottom of his coffee cup.
“Tell me what you propose.”
He looked at me quickly. Then he put the spoon down, put his hand in his pocket and drew out a small map of Northern Italy. He spread it on the table in front of me. With his pencil he indicated a point north-east of Treviglio.
“We’re just about here. Now we could make for Como and the Swiss frontier. But if we did that we’d be doing precisely what they’ll expect us to do. Even if we got as far as Como, the lake patrols would get us. I propose that we make for the Yugo-Slav frontier between Fusine and Kranjska. We can go most of the way by night trains, so that we can sleep. In the daytime we can double on our tracks across country and pick up the railway at another point. Now, that’s going to cost money. Trains here are expensive unless you have the tourist discount, and we can’t very well claim that. I’ve got a bit more than you, but it only makes about fifteen hundred lire between us. That’s not enough. Before we leave here I shall telephone Tamara and tell her to get some money to Udine. Then we’ll make cross-country for the railway where it runs south of Lake Garda at Desenzano. What do you think about it?”
There was a pause.
“Well,” I said grimly, “if you really want to know, I think it’s one of the most remarkable pieces of understatement I’ve ever listened to. It sounds like a Sunday-school treat. Auntie Alice will distribute the buns at Udine.”
His brows knitted. He opened his mouth and drew breath to speak.
“But,” I went on firmly, “we’ll leave that side of it out for the moment. What I want to know is why on earth you should choose the Yugo-Slav frontier. What about the French? What about the German?”
He shrugged. “That’s precisely what they’ll say.”
“I see. The French, Swiss and German frontiers are going to be stiff with guards, but the Yugo-Slav frontier’s going to be like the Sahara Desert. Is that right?”
He frowned. “I didn’t say that.”
“No,” I retorted angrily, “but you wish you could. I suppose the fact that we’re going to make for the Yugo- Slav frontier wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Vagas is in Belgrade would it? or with the fact that, as I haven’t got a passport, I could not get into Yugo-Slavia from France or Switzerland or Germany without swearing affidavits and heaven knows what else in London first?”
He reddened. “There’s no need to get hot under the collar about it.”
I spluttered furiously. “Hot under the collar! Dammit, Zaleshoff, there are limits…”
He leaned forward eagerly.
“Wait a minute! Don’t forget that you’ve got close on two hundred and fifty dollars to collect from Vagas. It would look perfectly natural for you to make for Belgrade to collect them. For all he knows, you may be flat broke. You will be, anyway, by the time you get to Belgrade. Besides, what difference does it make? If they catch you, you won’t get much change out of them by explaining that you’d decided, after all, not to cause them any more trouble. You started a good job of work. Why not finish it?”
I regarded him sullenly. “I made a fool of myself once. I see no reason why I should do so again.”
He stared at the tablecloth. “You realise, don’t you,” he said slowly, “that without me to help you, you’ll be sunk? You haven’t got enough money. You’ll be caught inside forty-eight hours. You do realise that?”
“I’m not going to wait to be caught.”
He still stared at the tablecloth.
“Nothing will induce you to change your mind?”
“Nothing,” I said decidedly.
But I was wrong.
The proprietor was out of the room, but in the corner of the bar a radio had been quietly churning out an
