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"Keep your head down, Pietro," snapped the General out of nowhere. "Keep your head down and put your coat on—and then come up here."
Boselli looked about him wildly, clutching the precious tape recorder to his chest. Better a broken ankle than a broken tape recorder —it was small, but it had an expensive weight and feel to it even apart from its contents.
"My coat?"
"They're not blind, man. That white shirt of yours stands out like a surrender flag. Cover it up!"
The shirt blended in rather well with the stones, thought Boselli, and his jacket felt like an overcoat in the heat. But an order was an order.
The General lay full length in the dirt, half under a bush on the lip of the bank, a large pair of binoculars beside him.
Boselli began to scramble up, his boots slipping in the loose pebbles. When he had reached the level of the General's feet he stopped, steadying himself with his free hand.
"Beside me—here," ordered the General, indicating a dusty patch just within the shadow of the bush. It was clear that he expected Boselli to prostrate himself similarly, which was all very well for someone in battle dress and combat jacket, but which would put the finishing touch to the suit's degradation.
Unhappily he edged his way up the last stage of the incline and stretched himself alongside his master.
"Good. Now have a look at the place," said the General dummy2
briskly, offering the binoculars.
It was just as hot in the shadow as in the open, but the General showed no sign of discomfort. In fact quite the opposite: he radiated an air of well-being and good humour—
it was obvious that he was enjoying himself playing at being an operational commander again after so many desk-ridden years.
And so he might, thought Boselli, because no ordinary commander would have been able to cut through all the interdepartmental, inter-force rivalries so easily. When the General whispered, people moved; when he spoke they jumped; when he growled they broke the sound barrier. He had known this before, but he had never participated in it actively, and the memory of what he himself had achieved in the past few hours using the General's name steadied him now. There were morale-raising rewards in pretending to be a man of action, always provided one could keep out of the front line.
As if to support this conclusion came the distant sound of the spotter plane, making its second pass exactly on schedule. It droned high over their heads, corrected its course to pass directly over the hill and disappeared over the mountains beyond.
Boselli wedged his dark glasses above his brow, blinking for a moment in the harsh light, wiped his sweaty palm on his trousers, and accepted the binoculars.
It took him ten fumbling seconds to adjust them—the dummy2
General must be as blind as a bat—and then the hilltop came up in focus, first the vines, then the outbuildings, and finally the dilapidated farmhouse itself. But there was not a sign of movement anywhere, and he could see nothing more in close-up than he had been able to see with the naked eye half a mile down the gulley of the watercourse, in the grove of trees where the cars were hidden.
He lowered the binculars and stared at the landscape around.
The ground directly ahead was bare and scrubby for perhaps half a mile, maybe more, until the first row of vines. Away to the right he could see the naked line of the track which must lead to the farm from the road. It was poor country and the wine from those grapes would be harsh—a land of bare subsistence living.
"Well?"
Boselli shrugged. "If this is the place—it looks uninhabited."
"It is the place."
"They could be lying."
He realised that he didn't know—would never know—who
"they" were. It had been just a voice calling the number they had given from a public callbox—at the Stazione Termini.
"Disobeying an order coming all the way from the Kremlin?"
The General snorted. "I really don't think that's very likely.
Besides, I know it is the place."
Boselli waited for enlightenment.
"According to the local police it is owned by the brothers dummy2
Giolitti, but unless I'm very much mistaken their real name is Prezzolini . . . and they were both founder-members of the Bastard's execution squad in the old days." The General nodded up towards the hill speculatively. "This is the place."
He turned back to Boselli. "And now, Pietro—you have arranged everything?"
"Yes, General—" Boselli checked his watch, "—the helicopter will be here on the hour. The spotter plane—"
"That was on time. It has made two passes." The General nodded. "Just enough to alert them, but not quite enough to frighten them. The chopper will do that."
"And it is necessary to frighten them?"
"Oh, yes. That is the psychology of it—Dr. Audley's psychology. You must remember that this is really his operation, Pietro. We have merely implemented it."
Boselli had been remembering little else in his spare moments ever since that first call to Moscow, and he was no nearer resolving the contradictions in the General's behaviour. For two things were clear to him beyond all else: the General wanted George Ruelle dead—and the General was proposing to let George Ruelle slip through his fingers.
Admittedly, any attempt to take Ruelle from his hilltop would almost certainly result in the death of the Englishwoman, which would be regrettable. But the English had only themselves to blame for the situation, and the deaths of Armando Villari and the policeman, never mind dummy2
that old score from 1943, demanded final settlement. The General was an honourable man, of course, and would keep his word—Boselli had no quarrel with that. What he could not reconcile was that the General had agreed to give his word in the first place.
"General—" Boselli searched for a way of saying what was in his mind, or at least some of it, and came to the conclusion that it was probably written on his face anyway.
"We must let Dr. Audley save his good lady first," said the General. "After that—we shall see how things develop. But now I would like to hear that tape of yours, eh?"
Biselli unzipped the black leather case and drew the recorder out.
"From the beginning, General?"
"I think so. I know you said over the phone that it was not exactly informative."
"Except where the Russian—Panin—said that he had given orders that the Party would find out where Ruelle was hiding, General. Otherwise he denied everything."
"No leakage of secrets? No traitor?"
Boselli shook his head. "He insisted that the German's death was due to natural causes—that the record was correct."
"And did Dr. Audley seem surprised—or disappointed?"
"No, General—not at all."
"Of course he didn't, Pietro. He never expected the Russians dummy2
to admit anything. Like all savages they are very sensitive about such things."
The General's mouth twisted sardonically. "And frankly, if I was in their place I wouldn't have admitted anything either."
"And yet he trusted them to get him the information he wanted."
"And was not disappointed, Pietro—for here we are—" the General nodded towards the hill, "—and there the Bastard is."
Boselli frowned. The General's high good humour was positively unsettling, but this was no time to suggest by further questions that he, Boselli, was out of sympathy with it because he was too stupid to understand what was going on.
He had never thought of himself as stupid before, but it was clear that he had missed the significance of whatever it was that pleased the General.
He reached forward to the tape recorder.
"But of course he didn't trust them," said the General. "It is as well for you to understand that, because you may have to deal with this man Audley again and you must learn how his mind works."