‘It’s the killer dose! It’s the killer dose.’ He repeated the words several times, the words a babble of near-incoherent terror.
‘And you die in agony?’
‘Yes, yes! Yes, yes!’ He was gasping for breath like a man in the final stages of suffocation. ‘Agony! Agony!’
‘Which means you have administered this yourself. There can be no pity, Alessandro, no mercy. Besides, you could still be telling a lie.’ He touched the tip of the needle against the skin. Alessandro screamed again and again. George applied the clamp.
‘Who sent you?’ Twice Petersen repeated the question before Alessandro rolled his eyes. George removed the pad.
‘Cipriano.’ The voice was a barely distinguishable croak. ‘Major Cipriano.’
‘That’s a lie. No major could authorize this.’ Careful not to touch the plunger Petersen inserted the tip of the needle just outside the vein. Alessandro opened his mouth to scream again but George cut him off before he could make a sound. ‘Who authorized this? The needle’s inside the vein now, Alessandro. All I have to do is press the plunger. Who authorized this?’
George removed the pad. For a moment it seemed that Alessandro had lost consciousness. Then his eyes rolled again.
‘Granelli.’ The voice was a faint whisper. ‘General Granelli.’ Granelli was the much-feared, much-hated Chief of Italian Intelligence.
‘The needle is still inside the vein, my hand is still on the plunger. Does Colonel Lunz know of this?’
‘No. I swear it. No!’
‘General von Lohr?’
‘No.’
‘Then how did Granelli know I was on board?’
‘Colonel Lunz told him.’
‘Well, well. The usual trusting faith between the loyal allies. What did you want from my cabin tonight?’
‘A paper. A message.’
‘Perhaps you’d better withdraw that syringe,’ George said. ‘I think he’s going to faint. Or die. Or something.’
‘What were you going to do with it, Alessandro?’ The tip of the needle had remained where it was.
‘Compare it with a message.’ Alessandro really did look very ill indeed. ‘My jacket.’
Peterson found the message in the inside pocket of the jacket. It was the duplicate of the one he had in his cabin. He refolded the paper and put it in his own inside pocket.
‘Odd,’ George said. ‘I do believe he’s fainted.’
‘I’ll bet his victims never had a chance to faint. I wish,’ Petersen said with genuine regret, ‘that I had pressed that plunger. No question our friend here is – was – a one-man extermination squad.’ Petersen sniffed at the test-tube, dropped it and the ampoule to the deck, crushed them both beneath his heel and then squirted the contents of the hypodermic on the deck.
‘Spirit-based,’ Petersen said. ‘It will evaporate quickly enough. Well, that’s it.’
In the passage-way, George mopped his forehead. ‘I wouldn’t care to go through that again. Neither, I’m sure, would Alessandro.’
‘Me neither,’ Petersen said. ‘How do you feel about it, Alex?’
‘I wish,’ Alex said morosely, ‘that you had pushed that plunger. I could have shot him as easy as a wink.’
‘That would have been an idea. At least he’d have gone without the agony. In any event, he’s all washed up as an operative of any kind or will be as soon as he gets back to Termoli. Or even to Ploce. Let’s fix this door.’
All eight water-tight clips were engaged and with each clip in turn, to muffle sound, Alex held in position the pad that had been so lately used for another purpose, while George hammered home the clip. When the eighth had been so dealt with, George said: ‘That should hold it for a while. Especially if we throw this hammer overboard.’
‘Let’s make sure,’ Petersen said. He left and returned within a minute with a gas cylinder, a welder’s rod and a face-mask. Petersen was, at best, but an amateur welder but what he lacked in expertise he made up in enthusiasm. The completed result would have won him no prizes for finesse but that was unimportant. What was important was that for all practical purposes that door was sealed for life.
‘What I’d like to do now,’ Petersen said, ‘is to have a word with Carlos and Michael. But first, I think, a pause for reflection.’
‘How does this sound,’ Petersen said. He was seated at Carlos’ desk, a scotch in front of him and, beside it, a message he had just drafted. ‘We’ll have Michael send it off by and by. Plain language, of course. COLONEL LUNZ. Then his code number. YOUR WOULD-BE ASSASSINS AND/OR EXTERMINATORS A BUNCH OF INCOMPETENTS STOP ALESSANDRO AND OTHER BUNGLERS NOW CONFINED FORE CABIN COLOMBO BEHIND WELDED STEEL DOOR STOP SORRY CANNOT CONGRATULATE YOU GENERAL VON LOHR GENERAL GRANELLI MAJOR CIPRIANO ON CHOICE OF OPERATIVES REGARDS ZEPPO. “Zeppo”, you may recall, is my code name.’
George steepled his fingers. ‘Fair,’ he said judicially, ‘fair. Not entirely accurate, though. We don’t know that they are assassins and/or etc.’
‘How are they to know that we don’t know? Should cause quite a stirring in the dovecote. Not too much billing and cooing, wouldn’t you think?’
George smiled broadly. ‘Colonel Lunz and General von Lohr are going to be fearfully upset. Alessandro said they knew nothing of this set-up.’
‘How are they to know that we didn’t know,’ Petersen said reasonably. ‘They’ll be fit to be tied and ready to assume anything. I’d love to be listening in to the heated telephone calls among the named parties later on today. Nothing like spreading confusion, dissension, suspicion and mistrust among the loyal allies. Not a bad night’s work, gentlemen. I think we’re entitled to a small nightcap before going to have a word with Carlos.’
The wheelhouse was lit only by the dim light from the binnacle and it had taken Petersen and his two companions some time to adjust their eyes to the gloom. Carlos himself was at the wheel – at a discreet word from Petersen the helmsman had taken temporary leave of absence.
Petersen coughed, again discreetly, and said: ‘I am surprised, Carlos – I would almost say acutely distressed – to find a simple honest sailorman like yourself associating with such notorious and unscrupulous characters as General Granelli and Major Cipriano.’
Carlos, hands on the wheel, continued to gaze straight ahead and when he spoke his voice was surprisingly calm. ‘I have never met either. After tonight, I shall take care that I never shall. Orders are orders but I will never again carry one of Granelli’s murderous poisoners. They may threaten court-martial but threats are as far as they will go. I take it that Alessandro has talked?’
‘Yes.’
‘He is alive?’ From the tone of his voice Carlos didn’t particularly care whether he were or not.
‘Alive and well. No torture, as promised. Simple psychology.’
‘You wouldn’t and couldn’t say so unless it were true. I’ll talk to him. By and by.’ There was no hint of urgency in his voice.
‘Yes. Well. I’m afraid that to talk to him you’ll have to have yourself lowered in a bo’sun’s chair to his cabin porthole. Door’s locked, you see.’
‘What’s locked can be unlocked.’
‘Not in this case. We apologize for having taken liberties with an Italian naval vessel but we thought it prudent to weld the door to the bulkhead.’
‘Ah, so.’ For the first time Carlos looked at Petersen his expression registering, if anything, no more than a polite interest. ‘Welded? Unusual.’
‘I doubt whether you’ll find an oxyacetylene lance in Ploce.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘You might have to go all the way back to Ancona to have them freed. One would hope you are not sunk before you get there. It would be a terrible thing if Alessandro arid his friends were to go to a watery grave.’
‘Terrible.’
‘We’ve taken another liberty. You did have an oxyacetylene flame. It’s at the bottom of the Adriatic.’
Although he could see no gleam of white teeth, Petersen could have sworn that he was smiling.
FOUR
As the seas had remained rough throughout the crossing and had hardly moderated when they reached what should have been the comparative shelter of the Neretva Channel between the island of Peljesac and the Yugoslav mainland, the seven passengers who were in a position to sit down to have breakfast did not in fact do so until they Had actually tied up to the quay in Ploce. True to Carlos’ prediction, because they had arrived after dawn and were flying a ludicrously large Italian flag, the harbour garrison had refrained from firing at them as they made their approach towards the port that not even the most uninhibited of travel brochure writers would have described as the gem of the Adriatic.
Breakfast was unquestionably the handiwork of Giovanni, the engineer: the indescribable mush of eggs and cheese seemed to have been cooked in diesel oil, and the coffee made of it, but the bread was palatable and the sea air lent an edge to the appetite, more especially for those who had suffered during the passage.