Cause for Alarm (25 page)

But I was scarcely listening to him. I was trying to sort out the confusion of my thoughts. Claire! what would she have done? But Claire was not there. In any case, she would have been too wise to have involved herself in such an affair. I tried to strike out along a new line, but eventually I found that it turned back on itself. I was thinking in circles. In desperation I turned again to Zaleshoff.

He was busily crushing a lump of sugar in the bottom of his coffee cup.

“Tell me what you propose.”

He looked at me quickly. Then he put the spoon down, put his hand in his pocket and drew out a small map of Northern Italy. He spread it on the table in front of me. With his pencil he indicated a point north-east of Treviglio.

“We’re just about here. Now we could make for Como and the Swiss frontier. But if we did that we’d be doing precisely what they’ll expect us to do. Even if we got as far as Como, the lake patrols would get us. I propose that we make for the Yugo-Slav frontier between Fusine and Kranjska. We can go most of the way by night trains, so that we can sleep. In the daytime we can double on our tracks across country and pick up the railway at another point. Now, that’s going
to cost money. Trains here are expensive unless you have the tourist discount, and we can’t very well claim that. I’ve got a bit more than you, but it only makes about fifteen hundred lire between us. That’s not enough. Before we leave here I shall telephone Tamara and tell her to get some money to Udine. Then we’ll make cross-country for the railway where it runs south of Lake Garda at Desenzano. What do you think about it?”

There was a pause.

“Well,” I said grimly, “if you really want to know, I think it’s one of the most remarkable pieces of understatement I’ve ever listened to. It sounds like a Sunday-school treat. Auntie Alice will distribute the buns at Udine.”

His brows knitted. He opened his mouth and drew breath to speak.

“But,” I went on firmly, “we’ll leave that side of it out for the moment. What I want to know is why on earth you should choose the Yugo-Slav frontier. What about the French? What about the German?”

He shrugged. “That’s precisely what
they’ll
say.”

“I see. The French, Swiss and German frontiers are going to be stiff with guards, but the Yugo-Slav frontier’s going to be like the Sahara Desert. Is that right?”

He frowned. “I didn’t say that.”

“No,” I retorted angrily, “but you wish you could. I suppose the fact that we’re going to make for the Yugo-Slav frontier wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Vagas is in Belgrade would it? or with the fact that, as I haven’t got a passport, I could not get into Yugo-Slavia from France or Switzerland or Germany without swearing affidavits and heaven knows what else in London first?”

He reddened. “There’s no need to get hot under the collar about it.”

I spluttered furiously. “Hot under the collar! Dammit, Zaleshoff, there are limits.…”

He leaned forward eagerly.

“Wait a minute! Don’t forget that you’ve got close on two hundred and fifty dollars to collect from Vagas. It would look perfectly natural for you to make for Belgrade to collect them. For all he knows, you may be flat broke. You will be, anyway, by the time you get to Belgrade. Besides, what difference does it make? If they catch you, you won’t get much change out of them by explaining that you’d decided, after all, not to cause them any more trouble. You started a good job of work. Why not finish it?”

I regarded him sullenly. “I made a fool of myself once. I see no reason why I should do so again.”

He stared at the tablecloth. “You realise, don’t you,” he said slowly, “that without me to help you, you’ll be sunk? You haven’t got enough money. You’ll be caught inside forty-eight hours. You
do
realise that?”

“I’m not going to wait to be caught.”

He still stared at the tablecloth.

“Nothing will induce you to change your mind?”

“Nothing,” I said decidedly.

But I was wrong.

The proprietor was out of the room, but in the corner of the bar a radio had been quietly churning out an Argentine tango. Suddenly the music stopped. There was a faint hiss from the loudspeaker. Then the announcer started speaking:

“
We interrupt this programme at the request of the Ministry of the Interior to request that all persons keep watch for a foreigner who has escaped from the jurisdiction of the Milan police. He is wanted in connection with grave charges of importance to every loyal Italian. A reward of ten thousand lire, ten thousand lire, will be paid to anyone giving information as to his movements. He is believed to be in the vicinity of Treviglio. He may attempt to pass himself off as
an Englishman named Nicholas Marlow. Here is a description of the man
.…”

Zaleshoff walked over to the instrument and twisted the dial to another station. He returned to the table but did not sit down.

“That’s not a bad price, Marlow, not at all a bad price! They’re doing you proud.”

I did not answer.

He sighed. “Well, I suppose you’ll be wanting the local police post. I wish you joy of it.”

Except for the radio, there was silence in the room. I was conscious that he had walked across the room and was examining the Capri poster.

“If you’re going to telephone your sister before we leave,” I said slowly, “you’d better do it now, hadn’t you?”

I was staring at my empty plate. When I felt his hand on my shoulder, I jumped.

“Nice work, pal!”

I shrugged. “I have no choice.”

“No,” he said softly, “you have no choice.”

Z
ALESHOFF
was not gone long.

“There’ll be five thousand lire for us at Udine when we get there,” he said when he got back.

“But what about your sister?”

“She’s got some things to clear up, then she’s leaving for Belgrade to keep a line on Vagas. She’ll meet us there.”

“You’ve got everything planned beautifully, haven’t you?” I said, not without bitterness.

“Naturally. It’s better that way.”

He paid the bill and we set out.

For a quarter of a mile or so we retraced our steps; then we struck out in a north-easterly direction.

It was a cold night and cloudy. I was wearing a thin overcoat
and I had no scarf; but the pace that Zaleshoff set soon made up for those deficiencies.

To begin with we exchanged a few desultory remarks. Soon we fell silent. Our footsteps grated in unison on the flinty road. My mind seemed with my fingers to have gone numb. I felt emotionally exhausted. All that I was conscious of for a time was a dim, unreasoning resentment of Zaleshoff. He was responsible. But for him, I should be sleeping comfortably in my room at the Parigi. I thought, absurdly, of a favourite shirt I had left among my things there. I should never see
that
again. I tried to remember where in London I had bought it. Perhaps they wouldn’t have any more shirts like that. Zaleshoff’s fault. Useless to tell myself that Zaleshoff had done no more than make suggestions, that what I was paying for now was the fit of bravado, of temper which had led me that night in Zaleshoff’s office to telephone Vagas. Zaleshoff was the villain of the piece.

Out of the corners of my eyes I glanced at him. I could see him in dim outline, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, plodding along beside me. I wondered if he was conscious of my dislike, of my mistrust of him. He probably was. He did not miss very much.

And then I had a sudden revulsion of feeling. It was not true to say that I disliked him; you could not dislike him. I felt suddenly that I wanted to put out my hand and touch his arm and shake it to show that I bore him no ill-will. I wondered idly, unemotionally, if, had Vagas already received my second report, or had Zaleshoff been able to transmit it to him in any other way but through me, I should have been helped in this way. Probably not. I should have been left negligently to my fate. Zaleshoff was a Soviet agent—I had come without effort to take that fact for granted—and he had his work to do, he had the business of his extraordinary government to attend to. I supposed that, strictly speaking, I, too, was a servant of that government. Oddly enough, I
found that idea no worse than curious. Vagas’ suggestion that I was a servant of
his
government I had found highly-distasteful. Perhaps that was because I liked Zaleshoff and disliked Vagas, or because one had paid me and the other had merely offered to do so. Still, it was odd. After all, I had no particular feelings about either of their countries. I knew neither of them. When I thought of Germany I thought of parades, of swastika banners flapping from tall poles, of loudspeakers, of stout field marshals and goose-stepping men with steel helmets, of concentration camps. When I thought of Russia I thought of dark, stupid Romanoffs, of the Winter Palace, of Cossacks, of crowds streaming in terror, of canopied priests swinging censers, of Lenin and Stalin, of grain rippling in the breeze, of the Lubianka prison. Yes, it was odd. I found suddenly that we were slowing down. Then Zaleshoff cleared his throat and muttered that we turned right. We passed the fork in the road and increased our speed again. The moon shone for a moment through a thin patch in the drifting clouds, then disappeared again. In the darkness the silence walked with us like a ghost.

In the east the sky became pale and smoky. The trees and a line of pylons sprang out in silhouette against it like scenery against a dimly lighted cyclorama. The sky yellowed. The silhouettes changed slowly into three dimensional figures. A slight breeze sprang up.

I peered at my watch. It was half-past five. We had been walking without a break for over six hours. I had on only thin “pavement” shoes, and the roads had been rough. My feet were sore and swollen. My eyes were smarting and I felt weak at the knees. Zaleshoff saw me glance at my watch.

“What time is it?”

I told him. It was the first thing either of us had said for several hours.

“What about a shot of cognac and a cigarette apiece?”

“I could do with both.”

In the half light I could see that we were walking along a narrow road between fields lying fallow. It looked very much the same sort of country as that we had landed in from the train. We sat on a pile of flints by the side of the road. Zaleshoff produced the brandy and we drank some of it out of the bottle. We lit cigarettes.

“Where are we?” I said.

“I don’t know. There was a signpost a kilometre or so back, but it was too dark to read it. How are you feeling?”

“Not too bad. And you?”

“Tired. We must have done about thirty-five kilometres or so. It’s not bad for a start. There should be a village or something a little way ahead. We’ll push on for a bit. Then you can hide up somewhere while I go and forage for something to eat. We’ve got to eat.”

“Yes and we’ve got to sleep.”

“We’ll think about that too.”

We finished our cigarettes and set off again. The cognac had done me good, but my feet were worse for the rest and I felt myself developing a limp. Somewhere, not very far away, a cock was beginning to crow.

We walked on for another hour and a half. Then we came to a stretch of road bounded by a wood of young birch trees. Zaleshoff slowed down.

“I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you stopped here. I think we must be pretty close to a village now and there may not be such good cover as this farther on. You’d better take the brandy. You may get cold and, anyway, I don’t want to take it with me. I may be gone some time. But don’t move away and don’t show yourself near the road. There’ll be farm labourers about soon now. Have you got plenty of cigarettes?”

“Yes.”

“All right then. I’ll see you later.”

He tramped off down the road. I watched him out of sight round the bend, then threaded my way through the trees to a spot sheltered by some bushes about twenty-five yards from the road. I sat down thankfully on the ground and prepared to wait.

Zaleshoff was gone nearly two hours. The sun had risen and was glancing through the trees, but it was still cold. Soon I gave up sitting on the ground in favour of a sort of sentry-go pacing between two trees. Fifty times I looked at my watch and fifty times I found that the hands seemed not to have moved. Once, a man passed along the road whistling. My heart was in my mouth until he had passed. I resumed my pacing. After a bit I drank some more of the cognac. My stomach was empty and the spirit made me feel sick. I began to wonder if Zaleshoff had perhaps been arrested until I remembered that there was no reason why he should be. Then I made up my mind that he had regretted his offer to get me out of the country and made for the nearest railway station and a train back to Milan. That, too, was absurd. He was probably, I decided, having a good breakfast of hot, crisp rolls with a great deal of ice-cold butter and scalding coffee. I suddenly became ravenously hungry. I could almost smell the hot yeastiness of those rolls. The swine! The least he could have done would have been to get me a bite to eat. Then I began to think of Claire. I ought somehow to let her know what was happening. Pelcher, too. Perhaps I could send them telegrams. No, that would be awkward. The Italian authorities might trace the telegrams back to the sending office and thus find out where we were. I must be careful, discreet. I could send them a letter each. That would be all right. Zaleshoff could not object to that. Better perhaps, though, not to tell him. But I had not got any note-paper or envelopes. I should have to tell him. As I paced up and down my mind wandered on. But of all the many reasons
I had to feel sorry for myself, the one that made the others seem trifling was the lack of those hot rolls. It was, no doubt, just as well that it was so.

I was disturbed in these reflections by the snapping of a twig. I started violently. Then Zaleshoff hailed me softly. I pushed my way through the screen of bushes that hid me and found him struggling with a number of paper parcels.

“Oh there you are!” he said.

“You made me jump. Where have you been all this time?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. Help me with this stuff.”