He shivered at the magnitude of his error of judgement, which was all the more unpardonable when he set this new information in perspective: if Montuori wanted Ruelle so badly he would naturally put one of his best men on the job.
Also, Boselli was one good reason why Audley had been so intractably determined to get away again. So long as he was with them there'd be precious little chance of holding out on the Italians.
"Well, we'll have to make the best of him for the time being,"
said Richardson philosophically. "And at least he'll have an eye cocked for Ruelle."
"True." Audley still didn't sound unduly worried about the Bastard—a little surprisingly in view of his Ostian experience, Richardson thought.
"You know he operated in these parts in the old days?"
"Ruelle? I thought Latium was his province?"
A flicker of interest now.
"Not to start with. He led a partisan group up Avellino way in
'43."
"Indeed?" The flicker brightened, steadied. "Well, that might account for it—"
"For what?"
"Eh?" Audley looked at him. "Oh—I mean it might account dummy2
for the presence of old Peter Korbel."
"For Korbel?"
"The art of deserting and surviving—Korbel could write a book about that, and it would take the form of an autobiography." Audley grunted. "You know where he came from?"
"He was born in the Ukraine. The Germans captured him in
'41 —he came to England as a DP after the war, I thought?"
"Yes and no." Audley regarded him donnishly over his spectacles. "He started from the Ukraine right enough, but he came to us the long way round—via Italy."
He paused smugly. "Jack Butler did a rundown on him a few weeks ago, as a matter of fact, after that business of ours in Cumbria. . . . More out of curiosity than necessity, really, because everyone thinks they know everything about Korbel, and none of it matters anyway. But Jack has a more orderly mind than most—he likes to be sure.
"According to him Korbel deserted to the Wehrmacht, he wasn't captured. Told 'em he was a Volga German and made his story stick— or stick well enough for them to recruit him and ship him off to the Italian front. The whole world was fighting here anyway, so he'd fit in whatever he was."
That was true enough, reflected Richardson. The armies which had descended on poor old Italy had been absurdly polyglot. On the Allied side there had been everything from Maoris and Red Indians to Berbers and Japanese Americans, dummy2
and the ex-Red Army men fighting under the German banner had even included two bewildered Tibetans who strayed across their Himalayan frontier accidentally years before. He himself was a living testimony of that racial confusion, with an Amalfitan mother and a father from Tunbridge Wells.
"Butler reckons he'd aimed to join the winning side, but when he got this far he realised he'd miscalculated. So in '43
he mustered out again—and became a Ukranian again too—
and joined up with us after the Salerno breakout."
Again Audley paused. But the drift of his information was clear enough: Korbel had been here in Campania, changing allegiance again, at the exact moment when Ruelle had started operations—Richardson frowned as the curious contradictions in this coincidence began to occur to him.
Even if Korbel and Ruelle had known each other all those years ago their connection now was still very odd indeed. If the Russians had, for reasons which were still totally obscure, decided to investigate Audley's Italian mission, then it would not have been Korbel's job to start things moving—
and even if it had, he would never have called on a bloody-minded old has-been like Ruelle to undertake the job.
In fact, the more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed, because the Russians hadn't even recruited Korbel until the mid-fifties —and by then the Italian Communists had already dumped Ruelle. "David—" he tried to sound half-jocular, "—
you wouldn't be putting me on, would you?"
"Putting you on?" Audley looked at him questioningly.
dummy2
"About Korbel?"
"About Korbel getting through to his old pal Ruelle."
As he stared back at Audley the sheer copper-bottomed absurdity of it mushroomed: not just the idea of Korbel suggesting the recruitment of Ruelle, but of the London KGB
resident listening to him, getting through to Moscow Centre . . . and then Centre calling up the Rome resident—
damn it, the thing required simultaneous brain storms in London, Moscow and Rome: it was like piling the improbable on the unlikely, all on a foundation of the incredible—and no one should know that better than David Audley himself: perhaps that was the strangest thing of all.
Richardson was glad he hadn't sounded too serious. It left him room for a touch of stupidity.
"Well, it's one hell of a coincidence, David." He grinned.
"And the Russians don't go much on the old boys' network, either, surely?"
"Old boys' network?" Audley blinked. "No, they don't... in fact there's probably nothing in it—"
And that touch left Audley room to wriggle out. Which he was promptly doing.
"—You're quite right, Peter. But either way it doesn't matter, because we can leave Korbel to Sir Frederick and Ruelle to General Montuori, anyway. They don't concern us, thank God."
If there was one sure thing now, thought Richardson, it was dummy2
that Korbel and Ruelle concerned him very much indeed.
"We concentrate on Narva, you mean."
Two sure things, rather: Audley still knew one hell of a lot more about Korbel and Ruelle than he was admitting.
"Right." Audley bobbed his head in agreement.
"And 'we' means me, David."
"Right."
"And Boselli comes along for the ride."
Shrug. "If that's the way you must have it."
"It's the only possible way."
Audley raised both his hands, fingers spread, in acceptance.
"So— we all go to see Narva. Right!"
And thirdly and sadly: ex-friend David was one big ruddy liar.
XIII
AT LEAST THE General's new instructions made things easy
—that was one good thing: all he had to do was to make sure the Englishmen didn't make a run for it, which under the circumstances of the General's conversation with Sir Frederick Clinton they were most unlikely to attempt.
Nor was it the only good thing, by any means. One had to beware of optimism, particularly as Villari had not yet regained consciousness after his operation. But there was dummy2
hope even there, for if he survived his memory might well be vague about that last split second: the farther the whole episode receded into the past in Boselli's own mind the more vague the truth became and the more he felt disposed to believe what was now the official story. That was the way history was formed after all—by the acceptance of what people wanted to believe.
The important thing was that the General was pleased with him so far. Admittedly, some of that approbation was founded on his edited account of the interview with Richardson, whom he had represented as shrewd and tough and unco-operative, but from whom he had none the less extracted useful information about Narva and the political implications of his industrial espionage activities.
Privately Boselli was convinced that Richardson was by no means as formidable as he had suggested, but that like all the native inhabitants of these parts he was merely untrustworthy and overweeningly sure of himself—and his English blood had merely reinforced those defects of character.
The man Audley was a very different proposition. He had watched the fellow during dinner and had gained very little enlightenment beyond the confirmation of what had been recorded in the dossier: that superficial appearances were deceptive, and that behind the bulkiness of the athlete running to seed—that had been Villari's assessment—there lurked the sort of intellectual he instinctively feared.