Those aren’t military uniforms, are they?
Bloody hell! They’re coming to get me!
Pierre is enjoying the spring sunshine lying on the sand, bare to the waist and trousers rolled up to the knees. He is thinking about Angela, what she’s likely to be doing at that moment, the things he will tell her when he gets back to Italy. Her perfume, her hair and endless details of her body suddenly come flooding into his mind. A kind of shudder runs through him, all the way from his feet to his shoulders. He thinks of the things he would like to tell his father, the knot he would like to loosen once and for all.
He decides to get up before he fries. Legs left liquid by the heat, steam in his brain.
He shakes off the sand and stumbles unsteadily towards the shoreline.
He rests his bottom in the clear water and is sorry he never learned to swim. Aunt Iolanda had tried to persuade him loads of times, but he was having none of it. He couldn’t understand all that effort, just for the pleasure of crossing the river Santerno, from the little pond where he used to bathe in the summer. The water was cool even by the shore, and you had to sit down to get in up to your neck.
But the sea is something else. This one makes you want to swim, look at the beach from various different viewpoints, swim way out, towards the waves, towards the gulls.
When he hears the sound of the engine he gives a start. He creeps over to the rocks that separate him from the other beach, and peers over the edge. Three men are dragging a large boat ashore. The fourth is a loose-limbed man who looks around as though admiring the landscape, then sits down on the sand and opens a book.
A tourist would be fascinated by the rocky backdrop, covered with anemones and Neptune grass.
With a kick of his flippers he would follow a shoal of little scad on their sudden unanimous twists and turns.
Or he might plunge into the depths in search of a starfish, or to see the eye of a cuttlefish peeping out from the sand.
He would slip loose the knife tied to his thigh to pry limpets from the rocks.
A tourist would delight in the sight of the loggerhead turtles, rare in these waters.
But Ivo Radelek is not a tourist.
The only thing he’s interested in looking at is right in front of him: the white hull of President Tito’s private yacht. As it approaches he tries not to think of the months he spent in Goli Otok, the Cominform hell, where Tito locked him up so that he could forget all about him. Now he’s going to make him pay for it, and he is going to have to be clear-headed and efficient.
Gripping the raised gangway, he hoists himself gently up on to the stern. He calmly takes aim, and only when he is certain of hitting his target does he blow into the blowpipe.
The third guard brings his hand to the back of his neck and barely has time to gurgle before the drug reaches his brain, leaving him lying sprawled on the deck.
The scuba-diver takes off his wetsuit, undresses the guard and puts on his uniform. Finally he takes a walkie-talkie out of the waterproof bag.
‘The net has been cast. Repeat: the net has been cast. Proceed.’
‘Let’s go,’ Zhulianov whispers to the other two.
The journey has been carefully planned. They can swoop on the beach unseen.
The two bodyguards are keeping their distance from Grant. In the shade of the sun, in their uniforms, just below the escarpment.
Three lizard men creep silently along, under the cover of the bushes. They freeze.
Twenty metres from their goal.
He walked along the waterline on the hard golden sand until he was out of sight of the inn. Then he threw off his pyjama-coat and took a short run and a quick flat dive into the small waves. The beach shelved quickly and he kept underwater as long as he could.
Cary hears a thump to his right and lowers the book. One of the guards is lying on the ground, and he doesn’t appear to be sunbathing. The reflex action conditioned by thousands of clapperboards: an expression that filmgoers around the world have admired on countless occasions.
Fractions of a second. The other man throws himself down, shielding him with his body, but there is a dart for him, too. Cary finds himself crushed by the dead weight of the brute, and lets out a curse.
He manages to disentangle himself, and with a somersault worthy of Archie Leach he pulls himself up and begins to run towards the rocks.
He just has time to glance behind him: three men in black are coming after him.
There are four of them.
One at the front, one in the middle, the rest behind.
No uniforms now, but they sure as hell aren’t tourists. They are running. Towards the barrier of rocks that separates the two inlets. The inlet they are anchored in from the one where Robespierre is standing.
Vittorio tenses his jaw. Drenched in sweat, apart from the hand clutching the Mauser and the finger pressed to the trigger.
He lowers his head, eye aligned with the barrel, and takes aim.
The loose-limbed man is first to spring from the rocks. He runs with great strides, like a sprinter. The other three struggle to keep up with him.
As they gradually approach, Pierre can see the man’s expression. Tense, frightened. He doesn’t look like an athlete in training. More like someone escaping. And his face is extremely familiar.
The shot has the effect of the starter pistol for the hundred-metre sprint.
He heads for the slope, leaving a cloud of sand behind him.
The second bullet takes the Slav just above the ankle. He goes down, like a slaughtered deer. The third shot whistles a few centimetres past the right ear of Zhulianov, who curses. He hadn’t predicted this. He creeps over to the injured man and helps him to his feet, dragging him to shelter from the gunfire. He switches on his walkie-talkie and speaks quickly: ‘Drop the lobster pot! I repeat: drop the lobster pot! Force 10 gale, come back immediately.’
He clambers over the still sleeping bodies of Grant’s bodyguards, helping the Slav to his feet. They set off up the path among the rocks.
The opium of failure and the adrenalin of flight do battle within his nervous system.
Never underestimate the enemy.
There is a kind of cave at the edge of the beach, quite shallow, just a dent among the rocks. Pierre noticed it on the way down, and now he slips inside, head first.
The loose-limbed gentleman is right behind him. He slips in beside him and sits with his back to the wall, to regain his breath.
Pierre turns round, still electrified by his running.
They look at one another.
It doesn’t occur to Pierre for so much as a moment that he might be seeing things. Too many times he has studied those features in photographs and on the big screen, centimetre by centimetre, trying to work out the secret of perfect style.
‘Fuck me, it’s Cary Grant!’
The emotion dulls his brain, he appeals to his English to help. His jaw refuses to close.
What should he say? What should he say!
‘This is a film. isn’t it?’ he says in English. A Hollywood star on a forgotten beach in Dalmatia, being pursued by three sinister figures. What else could it be?
Grant peers over the rocks. ‘I’m afraid not.’
It isn’t! What the hell is it, then?
Another effort, not taking his eyes off him.
‘What’s. happening, Mr Grant?’
An expression halfway between worry and self-irony. ‘Believe me, I haven’t a clue!’
Glue! What on earth did glue have to do with it? Try again.
‘You don’t know. who are. these men?’
If only Fanti could see him, talking in English to Cary Grant!
‘Absolutely not. And you? Where have you sprung from? Who are you?’
Understanding only half of the last question, Pierre rummages for something from Fanti’s first lesson, and says, ‘Nice to meet you. My name is Robespierre Capponi. I’m twenty-two and I’m from Bologna, Italy.’