Tomorrow can look after itself.’
At the end of the meal, Giacomo and Lorraine rose and crossed to the main table. Lorraine said: ‘I tried to have a walk, stretch my legs, this afternoon, but you stopped me. I’d like to have one now. Do you mind?’
‘Yes. I mean, I do mind. At the moment, this is very much a frontier town. You’re young, beautiful and the streets, as the saying goes, are full of licentious soldiery. Even if a patrol stops you, you don’t speak a word of the language. Besides, it’s bitterly cold.’
‘Since when did you begin to worry about my health?’ She was back to being her imperious self again. ‘Giacomo will look after me. What you mean is, you still don’t trust me.’
‘Well, yes, there’s that to it also.’
‘What do you expect me to do? Run away? Report you to -to the authorities? What authorities? There is nothing I can do.’
‘I know that. I’m concerned solely with your own welfare.’
Beautiful girls are not much given to snorting in disbelief but she came close. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll come along with you.’
‘No, thank you. I don’t want you.’
‘You see,’ George said, ‘she doesn’t even like you.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘But everyone likes George. Big, cheerful, likeable George. I’ll come along with you.’
‘I don’t want you either.’
Petersen coughed. Josip said: ‘The Major is right, you know, young lady. This is a dangerous town after dark. Your Giacomo looks perfectly capable of protecting anyone, but there are streets in this town where even the army police patrols won’t venture. I know where it’s safe to go and where it isn’t.’
She smiled. ‘You are very kind.’
Sarina said: ‘Mind if we come, too?’
‘Of course not.’
All five, Michael included, buttoned up in their heavy coats and went out, leaving Petersen and his two companions behind. George shrugged his shoulders and sighed.
‘To think I used to be the most popular person in Yugoslavia. That was before I met you, of course. Shall we retire?’
‘So soon?’
‘Through the archway, I meant. George led the way and ensconced himself behind the bar counter. ‘Strange young lady. Lorraine, that is. I muse aloud. Why did she sally forth into the dark and dangerous night. She hardly strikes one as a fresh-air fiend or fitness fanatic.’
‘Neither does Sarina. Two strange young ladies.’
George reached for a bottle of red wine. ‘Let us concede that the vagaries of womankind, especially young womankind, are beyond us and concentrate more profitably on this vintage ’38.’
Alex said suddenly: ‘I don’t think they’re all that strange.’
Petersen and George gave him their attention. Alex spoke so seldom, far less ventured an opinion, that he was invariably listened to when he did speak.
George said: ‘Can it be, Alex, that you have observed something that has escaped our attention?’
‘Yes. You see, I don’t talk as much as you do.’ The words sounded offensive but weren’t meant to be, they were simply by way of explanation. ‘When you’re talking I look and listen and learn, while you’re listening to yourselves talking. The two young ladies seem to have become very friendly. I think they’ve become too friendly too quickly. Maybe they really like each other, I don’t know. What I do know is that they don’t trust each other. I am sure that Lorraine went out to learn something. I don’t know what. I think Sarina thought the same thing and wanted to find out, so she’s gone to watch.’
George nodded a judicious head. ‘A closely reasoned argument. What do you think they both went out to learn?’
‘How should I know?’ Alex sounded mildly irritable. ‘I just watch. You’re the ones who are supposed to think.’
The two girls and their escorts were back even before the three men had finished their bottle of wine, which meant that they had returned in very short order indeed. The two girls and Michael were already slightly bluish with cold and Lorraine’s teeth were positively chattering.
‘Pleasant stroll?’ Petersen said politely.
‘Very pleasant,’ Lorraine said. Clearly, she hadn’t forgiven him for whatever sin he was supposed to have committed. ‘I’ve just come to say goodnight. What time do we leave in the morning?’
‘Six o’clock.’
‘Six o’clock!’
‘If that’s too late-‘
She ignored him and turned to Sarina. ‘Coming?’
‘In a moment.’
Lorraine left and George said, ‘For a nightcap, Sarina, I can recommend this Maraschino from Zadar. After a lifetime-‘
She ignored him as Lorraine had ignored Petersen, to whom she now turned and said: ‘You lied to me.’
‘Dear me. What a thing to say.’
‘George here. His “nickname”. The Professor. Because, you said, he was loquacious-‘
‘I did not. “Pontificated” was the word I used.’
‘Don’t quibble! Nickname! Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Professor of Occidental Languages at Belgrade University!’
‘My word!’ Petersen said admiringly. ‘You are clever. How did you find out?’
She smiled. ‘I just asked Josip.’
‘Well done for you. Must have come as a shock. I mean, you had him down as the janitor, didn’t you?’
She stopped smiling and a faint colour touched her cheeks. ‘I did not. And why did you lie?’
‘No lie, really. It’s quite unimportant. It’s just that George doesn’t like to boast of his modest academic qualifications. He’s never reached the dizzying heights of a degree in economics and politics in Cairo University.’
She coloured again, more deeply, then smiled, a faint smile, but a smile. ‘I didn’t even qualify. I didn’t deserve that.’
‘That’s true. Sorry.’
She turned to George. ‘But what are you doing – I mean, a common soldier -‘
Behind the bar, George drew himself up with dignity. ‘I’m a very uncommon soldier.’
‘Yes. But I mean – a dean, a professor -‘
George shook his head sadly. ‘Hurling pluperfect subjunctives at the enemy trenches never won a battle yet.’
Sarina stared at him then turned to Petersen. ‘What on earth does he mean?’
‘He’s back in the groves of academe.’
‘Wherever we’re going,’ she said with conviction, ‘I don’t think we’re going to get there. You’re mad. Both of you. Quite mad.’
FIVE
It was three-thirty in the morning when Petersen woke. His watch said so. He should not have been able to see his watch because he had switched the light off before going to sleep. It was no longer off but it wasn’t the light that had wakened him, it was something cold and hard pressed against his right cheek-bone. Careful not to move his head. Petersen swivelled his eyes to take in the man who held the gun and was sitting on a chair beside the bed. Dressed in a well-cut grey suit, he was in his early thirties, had a neatly trimmed black moustache of the type made famous by Ronald Col-man before the war, a smooth clear complexion, an engaging smile and very pale blue, very cold eyes. Petersen reached across a slow hand and gently deflected the barrel of the pistol.
‘You need to point that thing at my head? With three of your fellow-thugs armed to the teeth?’
There were indeed three other men in the bedroom. Unlike their leader they were a scruffy and villainous looking lot, dressed in vaguely para-military uniforms but their appearance counted little against the fact that each carried a machine-pistol.
‘Fellow thugs?’ The man on the chair looked pained. That makes me a thug too?’
‘Only thugs hold pistols against the heads of sleeping men.’
‘Oh, come now, Major Petersen. You have the reputation of being a highly dangerous and very violent man. How are we to know that you are not holding a loaded pistol in your hand under that blanket?’
Petersen slowly withdrew his right hand from under the blanket and turned up his empty palm. ‘It’s under my pillow.’
‘Ah, so.’ The man withdrew the gun. ‘One respects a professional.’
‘How did you get in? My door was locked.’
‘Signer Pijade was most cooperative.’ “Pijade” was Josip’s surname.
‘Was he now?’
‘You can’t trust anyone these days.’
‘I’ve found that out, too.’
‘I begin to believe what people say of you. You’re not worried, are you? You’re not even concerned about who I might be.’
‘Why should I be. You’re no friend. That’s all that matters tome.’
‘I may be no friend. Or I may. I .don’t honestly know yet. I’m Major Cipriano. You may have heard of me.’
‘I have. Yesterday, for the first time. I feel sorry for you, Major, I really do, but I wish I were elsewhere. I’m one of those sensitive souls who feel uncomfortable in hospital wards. In the presence of the sick, I mean.’
‘Sick?’ Cipriano looked mildly astonished but the smile remained. ‘Me? I’m as fit as a fiddle.’
‘Physically, no doubt. Otherwise a cracked fiddle and one sadly out of tune. Anyone who works as a hatchet-man for that evil and sadistic bastard, General Granelli, has to be sick in the mind: and anyone who employs as his hatchet-man the psychopathic poisoner, Alessandro, has to be himself a sadist, a candidate for a maximum-security lunatic asylum.’