“Christ, no.” Hake thought silently for a moment. At the steps to the hotel he said, “You know, all that seems pretty chickenshit to me. You’re just annoying people. You’re not doing any real damage.”
“I see! And that is not worthy of your efforts, Master American Spy? What a pity! But it is exactly this that we must do, on a small scale or large! The lit match in the mailbox. The phone off the hook. The emergency cord pulled in a tram at the rush hour. Each is tiny, but together they are great!” -
“But I don’t see—”
“But, but, but,” said Mario, “always there is a ‘but’! I have no time to explain these simple things to you, Hake. I have much to do. Go inside. Swim in the pool, meet some signorinas—you may take off your bracelet, and then you will see! And I will meet you tonight for dinner—and,” he twinkled, “perhaps I will have a surprise for you! Now go, I do not wish to be seen too often in your hotel.”
But when they met later, Mario’s mood had changed again. He drove the three-wheeled Fiat-Idro vengefully along Capri’s narrow roads. After ten minutes of it, Hake asked, “Are you going to tell me what you’re angry about?”
“Angry? I am not angry!” Mario snapped over the noise of the wind. And then, relenting, “Well, perhaps I am. I have had sad news. Dieter is in jail.”
“That’s too bad,” Hake said, although in his heart he was not moved. “What’s he in for?”
“For the usual thing, of course! For doing his job.”
Mario drove in silence for some minutes, and then, surprisingly, his face cleared. Hake stared around to see why. They were passing through an olive grove, where crews of Ethiopian laborers were cutting down trees, stacking them and burning them. The smoke drifted unpleasantly across the road. It was a hot evening anyway; the wisps of steam from the Fiat’s exhaust vanished almost at once into the air, and the laborers were glistening with sweat. But Mario seemed pleased. “At least some things go well,” he said obscurely. “Now observe, we are almost there.”
Their destination turned out to be an open-air trattoria on the brink of a precipice. They drove under a vine-covered arch, atop it a bright liquid-crystal sign that showed what looked like an ancient Roman peasant being shampooed with a huge fish. The name of the place was La Morte del Pescatore. Mario tossed the Fiat’s keys to a parking attendant, and led the way between tables and waiters to a banquette overlooking the cliff.
And there, beaming at them, was Yosper.
“Well, Hake!” he said, rising to shake hands from the meal he had not waited to start, “so we meet again! Are you surprised?”
Hake sat down and spread his napkin on his lap before. he answered. When he had seen Yosper last it had been in Munich, along with Mario and Dieter and the other two young thugs who had accompanied him; and none of them had responded by word or hint to any of his overtures about the Team.
“Not really,” he said at last.
“Of course you weren’t,” Yosper agreed heartily. “I knew you understood we were part of the gang in Germany.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
“Oh, come on, Hake! Didn’t they teach you anything in Texas? All information is on a need to know basis, that’s doctrine. There was no need for you to know; you were doing fine without it. And declassifying is always contra-indicated when it might jeopardize a mission. Which it could have; who knew what you might take it into your head to do? The whole point of what you were doing was that you were a simple man of God, doing the Lord’s work in Europe. What better cover could you have than to believe it yourself?” He raised a hand to forestall Hake. “And then, of course,” he said, “that was just your first training mission. We all do a blind one first. That’s doctrine, too. Can’t expect special treatment, can you, Horny?”
“Can Dieter expect special treatment?” Mario put in sullenly.
“Oh, Mario, please. You know that Dieter will be taken care of. A few days, a we^k or two at the most—well have him out of there. Don’t we always?”
“We don’t always get put in a Neapolitan jail,” Mario responded sulkily.
“That’s enough.” There was a distinct silence, and then Yosper continued on sunnily, “Now, as I’m well ahead of you, why don’t you both order? There’s excellent seafood here. Though not, of course, local.”
After a moment, Mario began ordering methodically from the most expensive items on the menu. He did not meet Yosper’s eyes, but the old man was only looking amused. Hake settled for a fritto misto and a salad, unwilling to load his stomach in the heat. When the waiter had gone, he said, “Is it all right to talk here?”
“We have been, haven’t we? Don’t worry. Mario will let us know if anyone is pointing a microphone at us.”
“Then let me tell you what I’ve done about our project. I told Mario that last night I found some interesting leads in the newspapers. This afternoon I went to the American Library and did a little research. There’s useful stuff. The most interesting is a new Islamic cult that preaches a return to purity, no intercourse with infidels, four wives to a man, instant divorce—for men, of course—and all the rest. Just like Mahmoud himself. It’s not here on Capri. It’s mostly in a place called Taormina, but there’s also a center in a town named Benevento. According to the map, that‘s up in the hills, not very far from Naples.”
Yosper nodded judiciously, mopping up his salsa verde with a chunk of bread. “Yes, that sounds promising,” he conceded.
“It sounds like just what I’m supposed to be looking for!” Hake corrected. “Or almost. I’m not sure that Curmudgeon wanted me to get involved with Islam. I got the impression that he was thinking more of some fundamentalist Christian sort of sect— What’s the matter?”
Yosper had put down his bread and was scowling fiercely. “I don’t want to hear blasphemy,” he snapped.
“What blasphemy? It’s the operation I’m assigned to, Yosper. My orders are—”
“Fuck your orders, Hake! You are not going to despoil the word of God. Stay with your Mohammedans, who the hell cares about their false idols? Don’t mess with your sweet Redeemer!”
“Now, wait a minute, Yosper. What do you think I’m doing here?”
“Following orders!”
“Whose orders?” Hake demanded hotly. “Yours? Curmudgeon’s? Or am I supposed to make up my own little trick-or-treat pranks like Mario, blowing fuses and setting fire to mailboxes?”
“You are supposed to do what you’re told to do by the officer in charge, which in this case is me.”
“But this mission—^” Hake stopped himself as the waiter approached, wheeling a table with a solid-alcohol lamp under a huge chrome bowl. By the time the waiter and the maitre d’ had finished collaborating on Mario’s fettuccine Alfredo, Hake had a grip on himself.
“All right,” he said. “How about this? Suppose I found some Christian revivalist to preach abstinence, to cut the population down? I know it would be slow, but—”
Mario chuckled. “In Italy?”
“Yes, in Italy. Or anywhere. Perhaps it shouldn’t be abstinence but birth-control, or even homosexuality—”
Mario was no longer laughing. “That’s not funny.”
“I don’t mean it to be funny!”
“Then,” said Mario, “it’s funny. Grotesque, even. Not the homosexuality, but your bigoted, out-of-date attitude toward male love.” He had stopped eating, and the look on his face was hostility and wrath.
Yosper intervened. “You two quit fighting,” he ordered. “Eat your dinner.” And after a moment he began a conversation with Mario in Italian.