I shuffled over and picked it up, read it, and then went out into the vaulted corridor and looked out of the tall window. Katerina, in her yellow bikini, was poised on the edge of the quay. She dived, neat and clean, came up and started away in a strong crawl. She could have given me fifty yards’ start in a hundred and beaten me easily.
I went back to bed and lit a cigarette.
Her note read:
Walking Pomina late afternoon. Taking toothbrush, nightdress. Love.
I shaved and dressed and went next door to Vérité’s room. She was sitting up in bed having breakfast.
I said, “I think Mrs V. and Katerina are leaving today. My guess is that some boat is picking them up here.” I squatted on the end of the bed and showed her Pomina on the map.
“What are you going to do?”
I took a sugar lump from her bowl and sucked it, thoughtfully. She looked nice sitting up in bed, her dark hair tied back at the nape of her neck with a ribbon, a little bed jacket demurely buttoned close up to her neck.
“Well, I’m not swimming after them. The only thing I can do is to be out there, catch the name of the yacht – if it is a yacht – and then it can be traced. But we’ll have to get back to Dubrovnik to set that going. That means a time gap. One that Katerina might not be able to bridge for me. Anyway, I think you’d better make arrangements for us to leave for Dubrovnik tonight.”
“Do you want me to come with you to Pomina?”
“No. I’ll take off after lunch on my own. We don’t want anything conspicuous about this.”
“Because of Herr Walter Spiegel?” She gave me a shrewd look and a half smile.
I nodded. She was no fool. How could she be, being Malacod’s secretary? I said, “He’s got an interest. He tried to sell me part of it. Not that he threw any light on the overall project. But I’ve managed to sell him the idea that Mrs V. will be leaving from Babino Polje, which is some way down the coast in the wrong direction. He’s sending the good Frau down there. Probably on the back of a mule – there don’t seem to be any roads, but she’ll have her transistor to keep her company. I’d just like to know that he was taking a siesta this afternoon. Okay?”
She nodded and pushed my hand away from the sugar bowl. “That stuff is bad for the teeth.”
I bared mine briefly. “They’re big and strong. I’ve got an urge to bite something with them.”
She giggled and it was like a string of soap bubbles going up into the sunlight, bursting with little iridescent pops.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I want to bite in anger. I’m fed up with being a follower. I’m fed up with being out in the dark. My curiosity is killing me.”
She laughed and said, “I had a brother who was something like you....”
I stood up and backed gently for the door. “That’s a damning thing to say to a man. Puts him on the wrong side of the romantic tracks. I don’t want to be a brother to anyone but my sister.”
She said, “Oughtn’t you – under the terms of your employment – to give me something specific to report about Herr Spiegel?”
“Why not? He’s working for the Russians. Is one. An old and very tried agent. And he’s paying me five hundred dollars a month for double-crossing Herr Malacod. The money’s useful. And he’s getting nothing from me. Not even a receipt. Okay?”
It was a pleasant walk, though maybe a bit soon after lunch. I went across the short strip of water to the near lakeside in the hotel rowing boat with a party of English schoolmistresses, who were going for a long hike collecting flower specimens. They were a jolly lot, most of them pushing forty-five, and with that hearty, semi-flirtatious manner which gets over schoolmistresses once the Channel steamer hits the Calais quay. I told them I was going wild-mongoose-watching and needed to be on my own. They padded away in their tennis shoes up the lake road, leaving a wake of sharp, bright echoes of chatter in the steel-blue, bright afternoon air. As I took a track straight up the hillside away from the road I had a moment’s nostalgia for Wilkins and underground station signs, and Brighton pier seemed a long way away. Which it was, of course, but then obvious thoughts are always comforting, and I had a queer feeling in my stomach that cried out for comfort, the butterfly tickle which had nothing to do with the dalmatinski prsut which I had gone for in a big way at lunch. (Smoked ham: Fodor.)
I went up over the shoulder of the hill, along a very rough track and dropped down to the lake road on the far side, out of sight of the hotel. I went westwards towards the far end of the lake, and after about half an hour was on a small bridge that crossed the little water channel that connected the big Veliko Jezero with the smaller Malo Jezero. Here, I left the road and went along the north shore of the small lake for a while, and then up the hillside, through small oak and large pine, to cross the hump of land that would bring me down to Pomina.
Pomina was nothing. Just a rough road that died out among boulders and a stony beach. There were a few bamboo-thatched sheds full of lobster-pots and fishing gear, and about four fishermen’s houses, stone built, and with that incomplete look of broken walls, unglazed windows, and raw wood that made you wonder whether they were just being built or slowly falling down. There was a small motor-boat moored off a wooden jetty that was only a foot above water, a
