Flight From Honour (2 page)

“The Governor doesn’t care what we do with the money. He certainly doesn’t give a fart for our arts, he just wants to play us off against the Italians. And that’s fine with me: I’m going to have an important Italian played right off the field.”

“But how do I explain what’s happened to the money?”

“You’re the Treasurer, what do you usually say? Claim an Italian embezzled it. The rush isn’t my fault, it’s that unburied corpse of a Count suddenly coming up with a real plot for once.”

“You aren’t going to do anything to him?” The Treasurer became even more worried.

“No. For him, I need real proof. He’s too much of an ancient monument.” He sounded regretful, all the same. “
And
he’s been sucking up to the Governor lately. But he can’t be the ring-leader of whatever they’re plotting, not from a table in the San Marco.”

“So you’re no closer to finding out what that is?”

“I
haven’t
found out, anyway. The French boy was just carrying messages he didn’t understand. I had to pretend to be on their side, and he’d have got suspicious if I’d started stubbing out cigars on his balls.” He squinted at his watch, lying on the table, and began buttoning the black cape.

The Treasurer took a deep breath and said: “Then we – you – are going to have a man done to death without even knowing what he’s guilty of?”

“I know he’s guilty of trying to start a war between Austria and Italy. What else? – it’s the only way they can ever own Trieste. They may
think
they can steal the foundations without the house falling down, that the Austrians won’t fight for their only real port, but . . . whoever wins such a war, it won’t be us.”

He shook his cape fiercely. “This is too damned hot to get angry in. I’m going to boil inside it.” He shook it again to let more air in. “And if sending an interfering Italian by express train to Hell prevents a war, it’s cheap at the price . . . They’ll be here in a few minutes: Jankovic will show them up. You and the money just stay out of sight until we come down again.”

*        *        *

The small room at the top of the tenement was also damp, but at least the broken shutters leaked in a little air that didn’t smell as if a mule had just belched it. It was lit only by a single candle, its flame wavering in the draught. On the table beside it, spread on a black cloth like religious relics, were an ornate dagger, a little wooden cross, a pistol and a small blue bottle.

The man in the black cape, now wearing an executioner’s hood as well, said in sonorous Italian: “The bottle contains a deadly poison.”

The other two men looked at it. Both were dark, wearing tightly buttoned black suits and broad-brimmed, high-crowned hats. It was helpful in that light that one was a head taller than the other; his name was Silvio (he said) and he was the one with some brains; now he was looking at the bottle sceptically. In fact it was filled with tap water – but from a tap in the tiny courtyard behind the building, so the masked man reckoned he might have been telling the truth.

“You will swear,” he said, still keeping his voice low and ponderous. He indicated the smaller man, Bozan. “You will swear first. Repeat after me: I swear by the sun that warms me . . .”

“I swear by the sun that warms me.” Bozan had no problem in sounding toneless. He spoke seldom, and usually as if his voice and what it was saying were quite separate from anything he might think or feel – if indeed he did either. The fashionable mind-doctors in Vienna would have a banquet with this one, but it was policemen who knew the type and the only cure: on the next train or under it. Then call the doctor.

“By the earth that nourishes me . . .”

“By the earth that nourishes me.”

“Before God, by the blood of my ancestors . . . On my honour and on my life . . . That I will from this moment until my death . . . Be faithful to the laws of this society—”

Silvio suddenly burst out: “We didn’t come here to join any fornicating society and promise a load of pigshit! You hired us to do a job. The only thing we’ll swear is that if you don’t come up with the money we’ll stuff you and your society both up the arsehole of your ancestors! Isn’t that right?”

“Quite right,” Bozan said, just as solemnly as he’d been swearing selfless loyalty a moment before. I was right about him, the masked man thought. In fact I was right about both. He tried to restrain a satisfied smile, then remembered the hood concealed it anyway.

“But we must be assured of your true dedication to our cause,” he protested.

“You show us gold and we’ll show you dedication,” Silvio assured him.

“But the other Committee members of the Ujedinjenje—”

“Piss on the other Committee members. If they want a load of oath-swearing, let them pick a couple of students who can’t wipe their own arses or recognise a police detective if they fell over him. We’re professional men.”

The man with the shovel who walks behind the Emperor’s horse has a more prickly pride than the Emperor himself, the hooded man reflected. But he persisted. “I have the first instalment downstairs. In various gold pieces, as you requested. But I must insist that you remember you are working for the Ujedinjenje ili Smrt.” He was determined to get that name into their heads. Into Silvio’s, anyway. “And the vengeance of the Ujedinjenje ili Smrt has a long arm—”

“And a black hand at the end of it – if you read the newspapers. Is that why it has to turn to us when it needs a proper job done?”

“Very well. If you will follow me downstairs . . .” Even for that short time he felt uneasy having them behind him.

*        *        *

The vibrations of the Treasurer’s nerves were almost audible as Silvio counted the coins and moved his lips in currency exchanges. In the grey light his face seemed an unfinished sculpture, all the features too prominent and the skin rough and pocked. At last he seemed satisfied with his own arithmetic and pushed the coins over to Bozan, who began to play with them, stacking, shuffling, mixing them, and tipping them to watch the glints. He seemed happy, inasmuch as he seemed anything; his face was round, smooth and frighteningly innocent and untouched.

The man in the hood and cape had kept them on and was stifling, but he went doggedly on. “His name is Senator Giancarlo Falcone, He used a different name here – Vascotti – perhaps you’d remember that, he may always use it again. But we’re quite sure of who he is. His father was Triestine. Now comes the difficult part – which is why we need men of your great experience.” He paused for either man to show he’d taken in the flattery, but got nothing. Silvio’s tetchiness seemed assuaged by the sight of gold and he sat calmly waiting; Bozan was still playing with the coins like pretty beach pebbles.

“He has a villa near Venice and another in Turin. We believe he’s there now. But we don’t want him killed in Italy if possible. The Italian police will invent their own motives and play politics with it. So I want you to go to Turin – do you know it?”

“Like my mother’s purse.” Silvio had relaxed enough to smile, showing uneven teeth, probably broken in the early days when he was making a reputation on victims who fought back.

“Good. Find lodgings and send the address to Jankovic, care of the Poste Restante there. He will make arrangements for you, he knows languages, other countries, you can rely on him. But we rely on you for the real work.” This was delicate ground; honour was involved. “And that will come when Falcone leaves Italy.”

“Is he suspicious?”

The hooded man paused, trying to think as well as stifle. “In Trieste he was jumping at his own footsteps. But he isn’t used to being suspicious, so it probably comes and goes. He’s important, so he thinks he’s clever, which should make it easier for you.”

Silvio might have agreed, but wasn’t going to show it. He just grunted.

“If you have no questions . . . ? The Committee has one other request, but it’s no more than that.” He groped under his cape and laid an automatic pistol on the table, politely keeping the muzzle pointed towards himself. “We’d be grateful for your opinion on this if you care to use it in the execution. You may already know it: the new English Webley .455-inch.”

Bozan had stopped playing with the coins and was staring at the gun with glistening eyes. Then his pudgy little hands stabbed like biting snakes, seized the pistol and flickered over it like snakes’ tongues, finding the magazine catch, snapping the empty magazine out and in again, cocking the action, sighting it . . . in a moment he seemed to have a lifetime’s experience of it. The Treasurer stared with horrified fascination.

The hooded man laid two handfuls of short, heavy cartridges on the table and watched them snatched up and slipped expertly into the magazine. He glanced at Silvio, ignoring the theory that you watched the eyes of the man with the gun. He was relieved to see that the other, more normal, eyes seemed quite calm.

So he continued: “You note that it fires an exceptionally heavy bullet for an automatic pistol. This may or may not be to your taste. There might also – for us – be the advantage that, if the bullet is recovered and identified, the English Secret Service could get the blame. But that’s a small matter.”

Silvio smiled and stood up. “We’ll think about it. Now put it away and come along, Bozan.”

Bozan unbuttoned the bottom of his jacket and swiftly tucked the pistol out of sight. Silvio then made the mistake of reaching for the gold; Bozan’s hands slapped down on the pile and he made a whining sound like a disappointed dog. Silvio sighed. “All right. You can play with them later, but bring them along now.” His look challenged the other two to comment, but they said nothing. In fact, the Treasurer was holding his breath, and went on holding it until they heard the front door crash shut. Then he let out an enormous gasp.

The man in the hood ripped it off and gulped for air, red-faced and streaming sweat. “Sweet Jesus forgive me for ever having eaten lobster.” He took a half-smoked cigar from a saucer and relit it, breathing the smoke as if it were all the scents of Paradise. “And where in God’s name did you find that hood? It smelled as if a dog had died in it. Also I must have swallowed a kilo of fluff.” He spat to prove it.

The Treasurer was staring at his own hands on the table-top. “I’m still shaking. Just look. Where do you find people like that?”

“It’s my job to find people like that. And their job depends on being found.” He stood up and began unbuttoning the cloak. “And what do you expect mercenary assassins to be like? – it isn’t a job you drift into because the baker doesn’t need an apprentice.”

The Treasurer nodded gloomily. “That Bozan . . . is he the one who does the killing?”

“I’d imagine so.”

“I don’t want to imagine any more than I’ve seen.” Then, immediately contradicting himself: “Imagine having him after you . . .”

“It’s all they exist for – but Jankovic will keep them in order. Without him, they’d be lost north of the Alps.” He had stripped off the cloak and the shabby old trousers that might have showed beneath it. He bundled them into an old travelling bag. “And don’t forget all the junk upstairs.”

“Was all that business with the oath really necessary? And did you have to give them a gun? Seeing the way that Bozan . . .” He shivered.

“Men like that want to know who they’re working for. They don’t care, they just like to know. So now they think they’re working for Colonel Apis and his regicides in Belgrade. And that’s all they can tell anybody if they get caught. Nothing to do with Austria or us, just the Serbs. Nobody looks for motives from them.”

“Are they likely to get caught? And all that money going to waste?”

The other paused in his dressing to give the Treasurer a twisted smile. “Now I hear the ring of true concern. No, of course not, not before they kill Falcone. They won’t have done anything to be caught for. But afterwards . . .” he shrugged and smiled; “there’s always the chance of Jankovic dropping a hint that they had a gun like that. It’s still quite rare.”

“So if they use that gun, it betrays them?”

“Betrayal? You talk of
betraying
that trash? Do you really want them wandering free?”

“No, of course not,” the Treasurer said hastily. “Just . . .” Then he changed the subject. “So all that about the English Secret Service was nonsense, too? Thank God. We certainly don’t want them involved. Aren’t they supposed to be the best in the world?”

“One hears things.” He had buttoned up his working clothes and picked most of the fluff out of his scalp. “But they’re only men.” He put on his cap and looked around, but there wasn’t a mirror in the room. Quite likely not in the whole building. “How do I look?”

The Treasurer hardly glanced at him. “Like what our
masters
pay you to be: an upright and honourable Captain of Police.”

3

Brussel’s civilian aerodrome lay in the south-eastern suburb of Etterbeek, only a few minutes by train from the Quartier-Leopold station. It didn’t look impressive, but aerodromes never did: just a few stark wooden sheds floating on the last of the early morning mist. But to O’Gilroy it could have been the new Jerusalem.

He headed for a group of men standing back from a single monoplane which was being fussed over by a couple of mechanics. Most of them were clearly Belgian; that is, wearing gloomy dark suits or sombre, sturdy overcoats. One man stood out in his light fawn suit, light hat and a bronze-coloured overcoat draped dashingly around his shoulders. O’Gilroy decided this must be his man, and shook his head disapprovingly at his prominence.

“Excuse me, sir, but would ye be Senator Fal-con-e?” He pronounced the name as if reading it, badly.

“Yes?” Falcone looked at him critically. The new man was tall and loose-limbed inside a rather stiff tweed suit of the sort Continental cartoonists used, accurately, to denote Britons travelling abroad. He had a lean, bony face, dark hair under a tweed cap, and a wry, almost sneering expression.

Now he nodded. “The Embassy said ye wanted someone to watch yer back. I’m it. Conall O’Gilroy.”

They shook hands. O’Gilroy went on: “I asked for ye at the hotel and they said I’d be finding ye out here. No trouble at all, they jest told me.”