Hilda was still kneeling beside the couch. Hacket and Reece were there looking much cleaner. ‘Here’s your doctor,’ I said to Hilda.
Hacket started forward at the sight of Sansevino. Then Reece brushed past him and seized Sansevino by the shoulder. ‘What happened to Shirer?’ he hissed. ‘Did you kill him? What happened?’
‘Let him go,’ I ordered. I could see Recce’s fist clenched, ready to lash out. His chagrin at realising how he’d been duped was eating into him, destroying his reasoning. I hit him across the knuckles with my pistol. ‘Let go, damn you!’ I shouted at him. ‘Haven’t you any sense? The man’s a doctor.’
He stared at me, his expression a mixture of shocked surprise and anger. I pushed quickly between him and Sansevino. ‘There’s your patient, doctor,’ I said. ‘Get that leg set properly. Make a slip and I’ll start shooting.’
He looked at me. ‘Please, Mr. Farrell. You do not have to threaten. I know the responsibilites of my profession.’
‘You can hardly expect me to take a remark like that very seriously,’ I answered.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I do what I think is necessary. I told you that before. However, I do not expect you to believe me. Do you mind if I wash?’ As I followed him, he added, ‘You do not have to worry. I shall not run away.’
As we returned to the room I heard the sound of the piano. Zina was sitting there, playing — her fingers drifting easily, lingeringly over the keys and a dreamy expression on her face. She stopped playing as she saw Sansevino. ‘So you have found it, eh?’ he said. ‘You feel better now?’
‘I feel marvellous, Walter. Wonderful.’ She glanced towards the black, louring sky beyond the windows. ‘I do not care any more.’ Her fingers rippled along the keys.
Sansevino crossed to the couch, stripped the blankets off Maxwell’s body and then began to cut away the clothing from his injured leg. ‘Get me some water, please. Warm water. Also sheets for bandages and some pieces of wood. The banisters from the stairs will do nicely. Zina! Get me the morphia and my hypodermic.’ It was extraordinary. He ceased to be the man who’d tried to murder us up there in Santo Francisco. He was just a doctor faced with a surgical problem.
He got the clothing cut away and stood for a moment looking at the bloody pulp of flesh. At one point the white of the bone was showing. He shook his head. ‘It is very bad.’ His tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth. Then he went over to a desk in the corner and opened the bottom drawer with a bunch of keys he’d taken from his pocket. He brought out a small roll of surgical instruments. ‘Go and tell Miss Tucek I also need some boiling water, please.’ I hesitated. Reece and Hacket were outside, knocking out the banisters. There was only Zina in the room. ‘Hurry, please. Go on, man. I shall not hurt him. What would be the point?’
I went out into the kitchen. Hilda had a bowl of warm water. I carried it in while she got some hot water for the instruments.
When I got back Hacket and Reece were standing over the doctor. As soon as Hilda had brought in the hot water and he had sterilised his instruments, he began work. He was deft and quick and he worked with complete concentration. I watched, fascinated, as the long sensitive fingers moved over Maxwell’s flesh. It gave me a horrible, almost masochistic sense of pleasure. It was as though I could feel them on my own leg, only this time I knew there’d be no pain for me.
Gradually the broken limb took shape. Then suddenly he was bending over, straining at it, forcing the bone into place whilst a high, thin scream issued from Maxwell’s mouth. He straightened up at last, wiping the sweat from his face with a towel. ‘It’s all right. He will not know anything about it afterwards. He is drugged.’ After that, splints and bandages, and then he was pulling the blankets up and rinsing his hands in the bowl.
‘He will be all right now,’ he said, wiping his hands on the towel. ‘Would you be good enough to give me a drink, please, Mr. Hacket?’
Hacket passed him a stiff cognac. I became conscious again of Zina playing and realised she had been playing all the time. Sansevino gulped noisily at the liquor. ‘You see, I have not lost my touch.’ He was smiling at me. There was no double meaning intended. He was genuinely pleased that he’d done a good job. ‘When we get back to Napoli we will have that leg in plaster and in a few months it will be as good as ever.’ He paused, searching our faces with his dark eyes. ‘I take it you do not wish to die here in the lava?’
‘Just what are you getting at?’ Hacket asked.
‘I, too, do not wish to die. I have a proposition to make.’
Reece took a step forward. ‘If you think—’
Hacket caught him by the arm. ‘Wait a minute. Let’s hear what he’s got to say.’
‘I think I can arrange it so that we all get out,’ Sansevino said. ‘But naturally I expect something in return.
‘What?’ Hacket asked.
‘My liberty — that is all.’
‘All!’ Reece exclaimed. ‘What has happened to Petkof and Vemeriche? And probably there are others.’
‘They are alive. You have my word for it. I do not kill unless I have to.’
‘You didn’t need to kill Shirer.’
‘What else was I to do? The Germans make me do their dirty work for them. When they lose the war I know what will happen. I shall be arrested and sentenced to death by your Allied murder courts. I do not like to be killed. If it is a question of my life or someone else’s—’ He shrugged his shoulders.
‘It was not a case of your life with Roberto. You did not need to kill Roberto.’ Zina had stopped playing and had come towards us.
Sansevino looked at her. ‘Roberto is a peasant,’ he said contemptuously. ‘What does it matter to you? You use him as an animal. There are plenty more animals.’ He turned to Hacket. ‘Well, now — what is it to be, signore? We can all die here together — or we can come to an arrangement.’
‘How do we know you can get us out?’ Reece asked. ‘If you know how to get away, why haven’t you gone already?’
‘Because I cannot go without you. As for whether I know how we can get away — if I do not, it will not be necessary for you to keep your side of the bargain. Well?’
‘All right,’ Hacket said.
Sansevino looked at Reece and myself. I glanced at Hilda. Then I nodded., Reece said, ‘All right. How do we get out?’
But Sansevino didn’t trust us. He got a sheet of paper and made Reece write out a statement that we were convinced he was really Shirer, that he’d done everything possible to help us to locate Tucek and Lemlin and that Roberto was shot when crazed with fear. It was so much a repetition of what had happened at the Villa d’Este that it seemed unbelievable that we weren’t back again in that hospital ward.
‘Very well.’ Sansevino pocketed the piece of paper. ‘And I have your word, gentlemen?’ We nodded. ‘And yours, Miss Tucek? And you all agree to hold Maxwell and the other two to this promise?’ Again we nodded. ‘Good. Then I think we had better start. There is a plane in the outhouses halfway towards the road.’
‘A plane?’ Hacket echoed in astonishment.
Hilda had jumped up. ‘Oh, what a fool I am! Of course. That is what Max was trying to tell us when he was on the cart. We saw it land whilst we were waiting out there on the road.’ I remembered then Zina saying — What about the aeroplane, Walter? and Sansevino reply — Ercole has gone to Naples in the jeep.
‘But who’s to fly it?’ Reece asked. ‘Maxwell can’t. Have you got an antidote to the drugs you’ve given Tucek and Lemlin?’
Sansevino shook his head. ‘No. Mr. Farrell will fly us out.’
‘Me?’ I stared at him, sudden panic gripping me.
‘You are a flier,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you land Reece and Shirer behind our lines?’
‘Yes, but—’ I wiped the sweat out of my eyes. ‘It’s a long time ago now. I haven’t flown for—’ God, it was ages since I’d flown a plane. I couldn’t remember the position of the instruments. I’d forgotten the feel of the stick. ‘Damn it,’ I cried, ‘I had two legs then. I haven’t flown since—’