‘It’s fantastic!’ I said. I was just thinking aloud.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you live a little longer in Naples,’ he said, ‘you will get used to the fantastic.’
Tell me one thing,’ I said, ‘did they buy her for running arms?’
He did not answer my question, but shouted for Anna again. ‘Bring my Bible and another bottle,’ he told her. When they arrived he poured us out more drinks. Then he said, ‘I’m still Presbyterian enough to believe that a man who makes an oath with his hand laid upon the Book will not break faith. Put your hand on the Book, man, and repeat after me.’
I hesitated. But there was no point in refusing. He would die sooner or later, and it would not be a pleasant death. Who was I to judge whether his decision was right or wrong. It would serve no purpose for his mother to know the truth about his life. And whatever the man had done — and I had no doubt that he had told us but a tithe of the rottenness that had been in his life — at least he had this one spark of decency, that he wished his mother to die in the belief that her son was the son she had known eight years ago. It was difficult to refuse perhaps the one decent gesture he had made during the past few years of his life.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But please understand that, apart from the information you can apparently give me, I would have done this anyway if you had wished it this way.’
He clicked his tongue. ‘Never mind about your high and bloody mighty principles, Cunningham. Just place your hand on the Book and repeat after me: “I swear by Almighty God and all that I hold dear to me, to visit your mother and tell her of your death and carry to her whatever last messages you direct.”’
I repeated it after him. And when I had finished, he said, ‘And may the curse of my body rest upon you if you fail to fulfil this charge.’
He sat silent for a moment after that. Then at length he said, ‘And now you’ll be wanting to know where your ship is.’ He spun his chair round and propelled it over to a desk in the far corner of the room. He pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer and for a moment or two the silence of the room was broken only by the scratching of his pen across the surface of the paper.
Then he slid back silently across the room to me and handed me the sheet. ‘That is my mother’s address at Ballachulish and her name. Below it I have put the location of your ship, the name of the man who was behind the outfit that “acquired” her and also the name of a trattoria and a time. That time is for tomorrow. Go to the trattoria and I will have a man meet you there. He is known as Il Piccolo Polipo. That means the Little Octopus. He will help you. The people who have acquired the ship want her for running arms. They represent Big Business and neo-Fascism. I am surprised that you did not get on better with them. They would have paid you good money for the ship rather than take the risk of stealing it. The man you will meet at the trattoria calls himself a communist. But I think you would find difficulty in understanding his political ideology. He heads a band of men who were once of the partigiani. It would not be good for him if neo-Fascism became too powerful in Napoli. He will wish to know where the leader is. Tell him he will be for the next three days at the villa of the banker, Mordini, on Monte Argentario. In return for that information I will see that he helps you to get your ship back. It is in any case to his advantage. If they have that ship for running arms then they will be all-powerful in this area — that is underground. But then the underground is not so far off the surface in this city as it is in most others.’
But I was scarcely listening to what he said. I had opened the folded slip of notepaper. In spidery copperplate writing the name Del Ricci caught my eye.
And immediately everything fell into place.
I felt a great relief. It is not nice to be forced to consider a friend no better than a crook.
The location of the Trevedra was given as Porto Giglio. ‘Where is Porto Giglio?’ I asked him.
‘It is a port on the island of Giglio about twelve miles off the coast just south of Elba,’ he said. ‘Il Piccolo Polipo will arrange for a boat and also transport up to Santo Stefano, which will be your port of embarkation.’ He passed his hand wearily across his brow. ‘When you see my mother, tell her that it was today I died.’ He looked across at the girl. ‘Goodbye, Monique,’ he said. ‘Pray for me sometimes. And if it’s any satisfaction to you, your visits brought light into the darkness of this room. I am glad to have had some part in getting you back to your mother.’
She went across to him and took his hand. Then she bent quickly and kissed his forehead.
We left then. And in the moonlit street outside I saw that she was crying. ‘He was kind,’ she said, not troubling to hide her tears. ‘He was kind and he was lonely.’
CHAPTER TEN
The next morning at twelve-thirty I went alone to the trattoria in the Vicoletto Berio. I sat at an empty table and ordered a glass of vino. Shortly afterwards a swarthy man with aquiline features came over from the bar. ‘Permesso, Signore’, he said and sat down opposite me. He asked me my name. And when I told him and had shown him the piece of paper on which the location of the Trevedra had been written the night before, he told me what I had to do. He spoke softly and naturally. ‘I have been waiting to get this Del Ricci for a long time,’ he said. ‘At his villa at Posillipo he has too many of his friends around him. But now he has gone into the country and his friends are not with him. I was told that you would tell me where he was?’
‘He is at the villa of Mordini, the banker,’ I said. Then, remembering what I had been told the previous night, I added, ‘The villa is on Monte Argentario.’
‘Good!’ he said. ‘That is very good. I know where it is. It is near Santo Stefano and that is where we must embark for the Giglio. We shall leave tonight. How many of you are there?’
I told him three. ‘Myself, one of my crew and a girl.’
He nodded as though that was what he had expected.
‘Be outside the Castello Nuovo at midnight where the road conies up from the docks. You cannot mistake it. There is a bridge over the road. A truck will come up from the docks. It will be a five-ton Fiat. I shall be on it. Don’t worry if it is a little late. We shall have flour to load. You will know the truck because the driver will switch his headlights on and off three times as he comes up the hill. If all goes well the ship will be yours again the following night. You must be prepared to sail as soon as she has been liberated.’ His lips twisted on the word ‘liberated’ into a sardonic smile. ‘Is it agreed?’
When I nodded, he got to his feet. ‘Arrivedela, Signore.’ And that was how it was fixed. I didn’t know his name, what he was or who he was. Just a drink in a cafe and everything had been arranged without my lifting a finger. I was left with a feeling of astonishment. I was not accustomed to the underground organization of foreign ports.
When I told Boyd the plan, his reaction was the same, ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘This bloke Del Ricci pinches our ship. There’s another bloke around the joint who hates his guts. An’ just because we can tell ‘im where this Del Ricci is, he’s prepared to act as Santa Claus an’ get the bleedin’ ship back for us.’ His small leathery face was puckered with bewilderment as he shook his head and said, ‘Stands ter reason a bloke’d want payment for a thing like that, especially in this God-forsaken country. But there ain’t no point in our worrying about it like, is there? I mean, we ain’t got nothink to lose.’