He paid the bill and we set out.
For a quarter of a mile or so we retraced our steps; then we struck out in a north-easterly direction.
It was a cold night and cloudy. I was wearing a thin overcoat and I had no scarf; but the pace that Zaleshoff set soon made up for those deficiencies.
To begin with we exchanged a few desultory remarks. Soon we fell silent. Our footsteps grated in unison on the flinty road. My mind seemed with my fingers to have gone numb. I felt emotionally exhausted. All that I was conscious of for a time was a dim, unreasoning resentment of Zaleshoff. He was responsible. But for him, I should be sleeping comfortably in my room at the Parigi. I thought, absurdly, of a favourite shirt I had left among my things there. I should never see that again. I tried to remember where in London I had bought it. Perhaps they wouldn’t have any more shirts like that. Zaleshoff’s fault. Useless to tell myself that Zaleshoff had done no more than make suggestions, that what I was paying for now was the fit of bravado, of temper which had led me that night in Zaleshoff’s office to telephone Vagas. Zaleshoff was the villain of the piece.
Out of the corners of my eyes I glanced at him. I could see him in dim outline, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, plodding along beside me. I wondered if he was conscious of my dislike, of my mistrust of him. He probably was. He did not miss very much.
And then I had a sudden revulsion of feeling. It was not true to say that I disliked him; you could not dislike him. I felt suddenly that I wanted to put out my hand and touch his arm and shake it to show that I bore him no ill-will. I wondered idly, unemotionally, if, had Vagas already received my second report, or had Zaleshoff been able to transmit it to him in any other way but through me, I should have been helped in this way. Probably not. I should have been left negligently to my fate. Zaleshoff was a Soviet agent-I had come without effort to take that fact for granted-and he had his work to do, he had the business of his extraordinary government to attend to. I supposed that, strictly speaking, I, too, was a servant of that government. Oddly enough, I found that idea no worse than curious. Vagas’ suggestion that I was a servant of his government I had found highly-distasteful. Perhaps that was because I liked Zaleshoff and disliked Vagas, or because one had paid me and the other had merely offered to do so. Still, it was odd. After all, I had no particular feelings about either of their countries. I knew neither of them. When I thought of Germany I thought of parades, of swastika banners flapping from tall poles, of loudspeakers, of stout field marshals and goose-stepping men with steel helmets, of concentration camps. When I thought of Russia I thought of dark, stupid Romanoffs, of the Winter Palace, of Cossacks, of crowds streaming in terror, of canopied priests swinging censers, of Lenin and Stalin, of grain rippling in the breeze, of the Lubianka prison. Yes, it was odd. I found suddenly that we were slowing down. Then Zaleshoff cleared his throat and muttered that we turned right. We passed the fork in the road and increased our speed again. The moon shone for a moment through a thin patch in the drifting clouds, then disappeared again. In the darkness the silence walked with us like a ghost.
In the east the sky became pale and smoky. The trees and a line of pylons sprang out in silhouette against it like scenery against a dimly lighted cyclorama. The sky yellowed. The silhouettes changed slowly into three dimensional figures. A slight breeze sprang up.
I peered at my watch. It was half-past five. We had been walking without a break for over six hours. I had on only thin “pavement” shoes, and the roads had been rough. My feet were sore and swollen. My eyes were smarting and I felt weak at the knees. Zaleshoff saw me glance at my watch.
“What time is it?”
I told him. It was the first thing either of us had said for several hours.
“What about a shot of cognac and a cigarette apiece?”
“I could do with both.”
In the half light I could see that we were walking along a narrow road between fields lying fallow. It looked very much the same sort of country as that we had landed in from the train. We sat on a pile of flints by the side of the road. Zaleshoff produced the brandy and we drank some of it out of the bottle. We lit cigarettes.
“Where are we?” I said.
“I don’t know. There was a signpost a kilometre or so back, but it was too dark to read it. How are you feeling?”
“Not too bad. And you?”
“Tired. We must have done about thirty-five kilometres or so. It’s not bad for a start. There should be a village or something a little way ahead. We’ll push on for a bit. Then you can hide up somewhere while I go and forage for something to eat. We’ve got to eat.”
“Yes and we’ve got to sleep.”
“We’ll think about that too.”
We finished our cigarettes and set off again. The cognac had done me good, but my feet were worse for the rest and I felt myself developing a limp. Somewhere, not very far away, a cock was beginning to crow.
We walked on for another hour and a half. Then we came to a stretch of road bounded by a wood of young birch trees. Zaleshoff slowed down.
“I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you stopped here. I think we must be pretty close to a village now and there may not be such good cover as this farther on. You’d better take the brandy. You may get cold and, anyway, I don’t want to take it with me. I may be gone some time. But don’t move away and don’t show yourself near the road. There’ll be farm labourers about soon now. Have you got plenty of cigarettes?”
“Yes.”
“All right then. I’ll see you later.”
He tramped off down the road. I watched him out of sight round the bend, then threaded my way through the trees to a spot sheltered by some bushes about twenty-five yards from the road. I sat down thankfully on the ground and prepared to wait.
Zaleshoff was gone nearly two hours. The sun had risen and was glancing through the trees, but it was still cold. Soon I gave up sitting on the ground in favour of a sort of sentry-go pacing between two trees. Fifty times I looked at my watch and fifty times I found that the hands seemed not to have moved. Once, a man passed along the road whistling. My heart was in my mouth until he had passed. I resumed my pacing. After a bit I drank some more of the cognac. My stomach was empty and the spirit made me feel sick. I began to wonder if Zaleshoff had perhaps been arrested until I remembered that there was no reason why he should be. Then I made up my mind that he had regretted his offer to get me out of the country and made for the nearest railway station and a train back to Milan. That, too, was absurd. He was probably, I decided, having a good breakfast of hot, crisp rolls with a great deal of ice-cold butter and scalding coffee. I suddenly became ravenously hungry. I could almost smell the hot yeastiness of those rolls. The swine! The least he could have done would have been to get me a bite to eat. Then I began to think of Claire. I ought somehow to let her know what was happening. Pelcher, too. Perhaps I could send them telegrams. No, that would be awkward. The Italian authorities might trace the telegrams back to the sending office and thus find out where we were. I must be careful, discreet. I could send them a letter each. That would be all right. Zaleshoff could not object to that. Better perhaps, though, not to tell him. But I had not got any note-paper or envelopes. I should have to tell him. As I paced up and down my mind wandered on. But of all the many reasons I had to feel sorry for myself, the one that made the others seem trifling was the lack of those hot rolls. It was, no doubt, just as well that it was so.
I was disturbed in these reflections by the snapping of a twig. I started violently. Then Zaleshoff hailed me softly. I pushed my way through the screen of bushes that hid me and found him struggling with a number of paper parcels.
“Oh there you are!” he said.