If you can spare him—
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"I beg your pardon, signore—professore?"
"Is there anything you're doubtful about?"
"Doubtful?"
Mother of God, but that was an understatement!
Audley regarded him keenly. "You didn't seem very interested in what I was saying back there."
Not very interested? Well, if that was how he had appeared Boselli supposed he ought to be grateful that he had concealed his absolute dismay so well. It had certainly not been lack of interest, but rather the resignation of the bullock in the slaughterhouse yard.
"I was listening." That was true enough; he could even remember the Englishman's words exactly. The trouble was that they were now just a string of remembered sounds without the life breath of meaning. "You are going to tell the truth."
"Pretty much, yes. The only thing I'm not going to tell him is that it's the KGB itself we've consulted. He mustn't even suspect that, or we're done for."
"I understand."
That was not quite true, either, since Audley had omitted to say what this miraculous truth of his was, or how it was going to change George Ruelle's plans. But the General hadn't seemed unduly curious about it, and neither was Boselli now.
He was cast as an onlooker again, and the bullock's lethargy dummy2
was overpowering.
Anyway, the truth was there, up in the farmhouse, waiting for him. And so was Ruelle. And he could escape neither of them.
Except for the bumping of the car on the potholes and summer-hardened ruts, they didn't seem to be moving: it was the farm that was coming towards them, first on one side and then on the other, and finally on the last straight hundred metres dead ahead. He couldn't take his eyes off it.
"You're going too fast," murmured Audley. "Go slowly—we must do everything slowly now."
The tyres slithered as Boselli braked too hard. He hadn't been aware of his speed, and the Englishman was absolutely right: whatever fear he felt at coming to this place would be matched by the alarm their arrival must cause here. Fear made men trigger happy, and these pigs had already shown themselves to be that.
The farm resolved itself into a tumbledown collection of buildings almost encircling them, with two other cars tucked in the shadow of a crumbling barn—a little Fiat 600, old and battered, and a larger pale green vehicle of a make Boselli didn't recognise.
"Stop here."
Obediently Boselli halted in the middle of the yard.
"Get out slowly—and for God's sake keep your hands in view.
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They'll be expecting something from you, if anyone."
Boselli couldn't understand what the Englishman was driving at, but there was no time to ask for an explanation.
He knew only that his hands seemed to have become large and clumsy, and he didn't know where to put them for safety.
In the end, as he came round the front of the car, he found that he was holding them loosely in front of his chest, as he did at home when he was looking for a towel to dry them.
"Stop!"
The voice was as loud as a pistol shot behind him.
"Don't move—and don't turn round."
The second part of the command was superfluous: there was nothing in the world which would have moved Boselli one hair's-breadth from where he was standing, and for a moment he was afraid his heart was obeying also.
"Raise your arms—higher—now walk towards the wall ahead
— slowly—"
The wall? Up against the wall?
"You—move!"
Boselli's legs managed an unwilling shuffle.
"Stop! Now lean forward on your fingertips."
Boselli knew what to do: he had seen it on the films and in photographs—the helpless prisoners lined up without dignity against a thousand walls already pitted at man-killing height.
Through the roughness of the walls he was joining this dummy2
multitude of the half-dead.
A heavy boot struck the inside of his right foot without warning, kicking it farther away from the other. The sudden extra weight on his other leg made his left knee buckle, so that for a moment he thought he would lose his balance.
"Stand still!"
Boselli froze while a rough hand explored his body, one side at a time, from ankle to crotch and then from waist to armpit.
"All right—you can stand up." The voice sounded farther away, as though its owner had decided that they were still dangerous even though unarmed. "Turn round."
Boselli turned slowly. It was not Ruelle, certainly, though the age was about right, and not the confederate from England either, the man Korbel. The stained working clothes and the three-day beard suggested one of the Prezzolini brothers, the ex—executioners. And so did the machine-pistol in his hands: where the man was dirty and unkempt, the gun was spotless.
"I want to talk to Ruelle," said Audley abruptly.
"What about?"
"About my business—and his."
"How did you know where to come?"
"You know who I am, then?"
"I said—how did you know where to come?"
"And I said I'll talk to Ruelle."
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The man stared belligerently at Audley, then gestured with the gun towards the house.
"Inside."
It was something to have survived the first encounter, but the doorway of the farmhouse, with shuttered windows on each side, didn't look inviting: it was like the opening of a black pit.
As he passed under the low lintel—the Englishman ahead of him had hunched his head to negotiate it—the smell of savoury cooking was the first and strongest sensation to register, rather than any impression of the room's contents.
And then there was no time to take in anything apart from sordid litter on the table just ahead of him, a blackened saucepan, bottles and a half-eaten loaf.
"Ruelle—" Audley snapped.
They were to the right of the table, no mistaking this time, even in the slowly clearing half-light—no mistaking even though he had never seen these men in the flesh.
"How did you get here?" Ruelle echoed the Prezzolini brother's question, but with much greater menace even though he carried no gun to back it up.
"The Police brought me."
"The Police!"
It was the man alongside Ruelle who spoke, in a thick foreign accent which Boselli couldn't place until he recalled that it had been Southern Russia from which Korbel had set out dummy2
thirty years before.
Ruelle was silent for a moment, then he reached inside his coat and drew out a large automatic pistol from his waistband. "Guido— cover the front. I'll call you when I'm ready. I'll deal with these."
The light from the doorway was cut off for an instant as Guido ducked outside without a word; the old habit of obedience hadn't lapsed with time. But it was Ruelle's last phrase which petrified Boselli.
Audley ostentatiously looked at his watch. "Peter Korbel—
you know me. And you know I'm not a fool—"
"You brought the Police," Ruelle cut in fiercely. "I warned you
—"
"No!" Audley bit back just as fiercely. "I said the Police brought me. There's a difference."
"Not to me."
"You idiot—they've been on to you from the start. They saw you at the airport. You brought the Police to me!" Audley turned back to Korbel, reaching slowly across his chest and taking the white handkerchief from his outside breast pocket.
"There's a little window on the north side of this house, a narrow one just above ground level. Hang this out of it."
Korbel stared at him, his broad, creased face still frozen with the shocked imprint of the word "police" on it.
"Why?"
"Because if you don't they'll be swarming all over you in—"
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Audley looked at his wristwatch again "—just under six minutes."