Burmeister thought about that for a second. “Could he have got it together?”
“What are you asking? Could time have healed?”
“Yes.”
“No,” said Phelps, with conviction. “Not time. Not in two years, anyway. It would take something else. A belief. A new cause – something essentially decent, something pure in spirit perhaps. One of the chaps who dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki spent years working in an orphanage. He finally came to grips with it.”
“What else?” Burmeister asked.
“It’s a matter of will. It’s a matter of wanting to. The human mind is a complex thing. I know as much about it as any man alive. Humans can stave off death by sheer willpower, or they can lie down and die. It all depends on what he has to live for or fight for. If, perhaps, he has loved ones...”
Burmeister thought suddenly about Morton’s daughter. In the file photo she was attractive. He remembered tousled hair and a freckled smile.
“What about a woman?” he asked. “Could a woman drive him back?”
Phelps pursed his lips and thought for a second, inspecting his fingers before answering. “No-one can drive him back, but love is a powerful force. If he found something inherently decent, something he loved, something that needed him, or that he himself needed. It might draw him out. It just might.”
“And what might happen if someone tried to take that... thing?” Burmeister struggled with the last word.
“If it was a woman who helped him, and you tried to harm her or take her, you would find him back alright. He would have rediscovered decency and loyalty and you would be attacking it. For how long one couldn’t say, but he would be back – and back with a vengeance.”
“Capable of what?”
“Almost anything. Even as a patient he struck me as enormously capable and well trained.” Phelps stood. “Now it’s my turn, Mr Burmeister. Hear me now! Leave him alone. He did his bit and, if he’s making some recovery, then we should all be thankful – because the way he was treated was an absolute disgrace. You are concerned about the fate of your men. That I can understand. If Titus Quayle has met a woman, and she has drawn him back, and if your men threatened her, then you have every reason to be concerned for their safety. They may have gotten precisely what they asked for.”
“What are you saying?”
“That he should be left alone.”
“You sound like you’re on his side!” Burmeister snapped.
“I am on his side, you idiot,” Phelps retorted. “He is my patient!”
With little ceremony, Burmeister showed him the door and walked back to his desk. He had never liked Titus Quayle, even from the beginning – and since the Berlin incident it had been worse. He hated being shown up by anyone and Berlin was still on his file. He remembered the frightened Romanian girl from their mission and her babbled story and emotional request to see Quayle. He was in Prague at the time, so he told her to go. She had begged for a safe place to hide and he had her slung onto the street by security, irritated by her ridiculous sobbing. She had been snatched from the Embassy doors by her countrymen and Quayle had lost a friend. When he returned, he confronted Burmeister over the issue and Burmeister made a flippant remark. Quayle’s punch snapped off Burmeister’s front teeth and knocked him clear across his secretary’s desk. Now, years later, the wound remained as strong as it had been that day.
Quayle produced a French driving licence and walked up to the Hertz desk at Milan Airport, smiling widely at the pretty girl behind the counter. Away to his left he could see Holly, an overnight bag over her shoulder, Ouzo bottle in hand. Some way behind her, Pope meandered, seemingly aimlessly, looking every inch the retired civil service type of tourist.
Quayle used French for the car arrangements. The Panama hat and silk shirt gave him a dashing flamboyant look that the Hertz girl obviously liked, because she pushed her address and phone number across at him with the forms that needed signatures.
“I will be home this evening,” she said in faultless French.
“What a shame Cheri, I will be in Verona. A business matter. But another time maybe?”
“Tres bien,” she smiled. “Call before you come. I will be... available. It’s a silver BMW, three rows back in the rental park.”
He smiled, tipped his hat and walked away with the keys. Ten minutes later, he collected Holly and Pope in the large car park. In the meantime, he had crumpled the hat and thrown it into a rubbish skip and had slipped on a pair of conservative Germanic spectacles and a lightweight pullover. Holly almost didn’t recognise him.
The drive to Venice was made in near silence as Holly slept in the back seat and Pope dozed next to Quayle. His gun was in a brown paper bag on his lap and, as they had left the airport, he had reloaded the Teflon rounds into the magazine, then fussed over the new packet of bullets they had collected in Athens, shaking individual rounds and checking the seals on the casings He had had no trouble walking it through security at Athens airport – and Quayle, following him through, cynically thought it was no wonder they had hijackings there.
Soon he stopped the car at a motor way service area and bought sandwiches from a machine, coffee and a packet of sweets. Back on the road, the tyres humming on the wet surface, Holly sat up in the back, sleepily pushed the hair from her eyes and sipped at the
