October Men (3 page)

“And you are here too,” replied Boselli acidly. He mopped his brow with the big silk handkerchief his eldest daughter had given him on his last birthday, fancying as he did so that Villari had chosen even those words “steamed up” with deliberate scorn also. For all his North Italian, almost Scandinavian blondness, the younger man showed not a sign of discomfort in the swelter—it was Boselli himself, the Roman, who was already wilting.

But that bitter little thought raised another much more interesting one which momentarily chased away Boselli’s private discomforts. There had to be a reason for the General to recall this gilded Clotheshorse from his leave beyond the fact that he happened to be here in Rome. If the General had wanted someone from Venice or Messina —or Benghazi—he wouldn’t have thought twice about summoning him. So it was Villari and none other that he wanted now. And since Villari combined fluency in the North European languages with the right colouring and an ability to withstand extremes of temperature, cold as well as hot, it must be that Villari was needed to check up on Audley in England.

Which meant that the General was committed to a line of action, or was at least on the very brink of commitment.

And that was a useful thing to know, even though he had not as yet the faintest idea what Audley—

Villari suddenly loomed up directly in front of the desk, cutting off this intriguing line of reflection. He placed his hands precisely on the two corners—the desk creaked alarmingly as it took his weight—and leaned forward until his face was less than fifty centimetres from Boselli’s.

“Little man, little man—“ Villari’s smile was as devoid of good humour as it was of friendship “—I can hear the cogs and wheels whirring in your little brain but you haven’t answered my question. And when I ask a question I expect you to provide an answer.”

Boselli sat up stiffly and drew back in the same instant, the faint smell of expensive cologne in his nostrils.

“I haven’t been told to answer any questions,” he snapped. “I have no authorisation to answer questions.”

“Authorisation?” The grin became frozen, but there was a glint of anger in Villari’s eyes now. “You have the soul of a clerk, little Boselli. A clerk you were born and a clerk you will die.”

He straightened up slowly. “But I don’t need to lose my temper, because I have my own way with clerks. It’s a very simple way—let me show you how I treat clerks who bandy words with me. You could call it my authorisation—“

He put his hand in the middle of Boselli’s desk and with an unhurried movement, before Boselli could even think of stopping him, swept half the surface clear.

A second too late, unavailingly, Boselli jerked forward in an attempt to stop the cascade of paper, grabbing desperately and clumsily, catching nothing. Villari watched him scrabbling on his knees for a moment and then, as though bored with the whole affair, turned away towards the window again.

“You’re—mad,” Boselli heard himself muttering in anguish as he sorted the jumbled documents. “It’ll take me hours—hours—“ He cut off the complaint as he realised that it would only give Villari more satisfaction. He had no dignity left to salvage and no hope of lodging any sort of complaint without further humiliating himself (the crafty swine had calculated that exactly). Silence was all that remained to him.

But silence did not seem to worry Villari. He merely waited until the papers had been shovelled more or less into their correct files, and the files had been piled more or less in their original places, in a mockery of their original neatness. Then he advanced again.

Instinctively Boselli set his hands over the files in a pathetic attempt to protect them.

Villari laughed.

“If you could see yourself!” He shook his head. “Better death than disorder! So we start again, then: who is the man Audley? Speak up, clerk.”

Boselli sighed. “What makes you think it is Audley who concerns you?”

Villari looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, as though undecided as to whether or not to assault the files again. Then, to Boselli’s unbounded relief, he relaxed; the game of bullying had palled, or more likely the need for information from a beaten opponent commended itself more urgently.

“Well, he seems to concern you, little Boselli. His name is written all over your files—three folders all to himself, and one from the Foreign Ministry. What a busy fellow he must be!” The manicured hand pointed carelessly. “And isn’t that a photograph too?”

He tweaked open one of the covers and twisted round the contents.

“Hmm… Not a particularly prepossessing type. In fact he reminds me of a bouncer I met in a club in Hamburg—he thought he was a hard man.” Villari sniffed at the memory, then held the photograph up at arm’s length for a more critical look. “The suit’s okay— you can’t beat the English for tailoring—but he’s filling it too much … a big tough guy running to seed.” He nodded to himself. “A bit like that actor of theirs who’s always getting into scrapes with the cops. Another tough one.”

Boselli smiled inwardly then, permitting himself to be drawn into the game at last by Villari’s crass error of judgement.

“You’re looking at the wrong half of the face. Look at the eyes and the forehead.”

Villari blanked off the squashed nose and square jaw with his other hand and stared at the photograph again. He shrugged. “So—a hard man with a brain. But don’t let him fool you, clerk: if you let him talk you into a dark alley he’ll still break you in small pieces and feed you to the birds.”

“Then he has kept that side of his character remarkably secret,” observed Boselli with prim satisfaction. “He has a doctorate from the University of Cambridge in England—he is Dr. David Longsdon Audley.”

Villari flicked the photograph carelessly on to the table, so that it skidded across the open file and fell to the floor beside Boselli’s foot. Then, with elaborate indifference, he turned away towards the window for the third time.

Only this time Boselli watched him with a tremor of satisfaction. It was little enough recompense for that act of vandalism, but it was a start. And there was more to come.

“He’s been a member of Sir Frederick Clinton’s self-styled Research Group for quite a few years,” he went on with smug innocence. “I’m rather surprised you haven’t heard of him.”

Villari appeared not to have heard. For several minutes he remained gazing at the distant skyline as though it interested him, deepening Boselli’s pleasure appreciably. Of course he would have heard of the old fox Clinton, and possibly even of the Research Group. But the records showed that he had never encountered either of them personally—perhaps another reason why the General was using him now—and he was too puffed up with his own importance to admit it to Boselli. Conceding ignorance would be unthinkable for him, very different as it was from brutally demanding information.

Finally Villari spoke, only to Boselli’s chagrin he did so in almost accentless English.

“This Dr. Audley—is he a
dottore
doctor or a
professore
doctor?”

Boselli struggled with the mixture of foreign and Italian words for a moment, and before he could quite disentangle the sentence Villari had grabbed the chance of explaining it with deliberately patronising helpfulness.

“An historian,” Boselli cut through the explanation irritably. “He is an historian.”

“A historian?” The interest trickled out of Villari’s tone. “A teacher of history?”

“He writes—he’s written a history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. And he’s written books on medieval Arab history. He—“

Villari waved his hand. “Okay, okay—he’s a real historian too. So what has he done to interest us?”

Boselli looked at him unhappily for a few seconds. Then he shrugged—there was no way of skirting the question and no way of answering it. “I haven’t the faintest idea. He—General Montuori, that is—he instructed me to examine our information on him—on Audley, I mean. He didn’t tell me why.”

“And naturally you hadn’t the guts to ask him. That figures.”

“When the General wants us to know, he’ll tell us. He knows what he’s doing.”

Villari reached over and hooked the telephone off its cradle with a ringer. “And I like to know what I’m doing.” He started to dial.

“It’s no good ringing the General’s secretary,” Boselli stood up in alarm. “She promised to let me know the moment the General was free.”

“I’m not phoning that old cow—tits to her! I’m phoning the General.”

Boselli was appalled and elated at the same time. The General’s private number was sacrosanct: this Clotheshorse would be hanged, crucified, flayed and impaled. But it was his—Boselli’s—phone on which the unthinkable crime was being perpetrated, rendering him an accessory. At the very least he would be banished to some far-off province still ruled by the Communist Party.

“Hey, General—Armando Villari here, General—“

“Armando—good to see you again, my boy!” The General came beaming from behind his vast desk towards Villari, without even a glance for Boselli.

“General.” Villari acknowledged the enthusiasm as though it was nothing less than his right, but with a touch of caution now. “This is a hell of a time to want anyone to work.”

“Hah!” The General embraced him, keeping his arm round the broad shoulders as he turned back towards the desk. “I know you, boy, I know you! It’s those big German girls of yours—you like the big girls, eh? I know it—don’t deny it, boy—I remember them myself when I was your age. Fine breasts and wonderful hips! What hips they had!”

The bitterness rose in Boselli’s throat like bile as he watched the hand squeeze the shoulder affectionately. He recognised the whole vomit-making scene for what it was: through some ghastly aberration of judgement the General was identifying himself with the Clotheshorse, or at least his youth, part of which had been spent back in the Duce’s day training with the German Special Forces in Bavaria. But that was something which was never mentioned now, an episode very carefully overlooked, if not forgotten—that the General should even indirectly mention it now was an extraordinary personal gaffe.

“I’m too goddamed busy for girls, General,” said Villari easily. “You should know that—it’s your fault.”

The General chuckled. “You don’t fool me one bit, boy. You’ll stop chasing when you stop breathing, not one moment before. I’m much more worried that you aren’t keeping up your skiing. You’ll never make the national team now, you know—not a chance of it. And don’t say you haven’t had the leave for it, either.”

Boselli, greatly daring, cleared his throat.

“I have the Audley files here, sir.”

The General still didn’t look at him. Indeed, neither of them gave the least sign that they had even heard him speak. It was just as though he didn’t exist, or that he existed in some other space and time, a shadow man with his armful of shadow documents desperately waiting for someone in a warmer, more real world to notice him. He had a sudden pathetic desire to scream and stamp and throw all his paperwork into the air, and shout rude gutter words.

Instead, he felt himself shrinking, the sweat on his forehead cold in the General’s air conditioning, and he knew he would stand there, meek and eager, until his turn at the end of the queue came. There was nothing new in this, it was the very pattern of his existence. Rather must he watch patiently for the arrival of his moment, when the General and Villari came down to earth. They would need him then—they always did in the end.

“Not a chance is dead right,” Villari gave a snort. “Nobody who works for you has time for fun—or games. It’s getting so a chap can’t even slip through Rome for a day without you catching him. And it’s the wrong season for trouble—this Audley of yours has no breeding.”

“Audley? So you know about him?” The General’s arm delivered a final man-to-man slap and then fell away from the shoulders. He turned abruptly and bent a fierce eye on Boselli at last.

Boselli tried for one second to match the eye and the hard set of the mouth, but his face instantly turned traitor on him with an expression of total obsequiousness.

“I—“ Boselli ran out of words after the first squeak, looking helplessly from one man to the other. From Villari he expected—and received—nothing, neither explanation nor even recognition. And from the General—with the General it was always the same: there seemed to lie between them (at least in Boselli’s mind) unasked for the knowledge that when he had been a pimply youth toying with the idea of the seminary the General had been a daring Bersaglieri captain, raider of British airfields, and then the leader of the Partisan group which had ambushed Panzergeneral Hofacker in the mountains.

And hot on that memory came the comparison of his wife’s sagging body with those of the gorgeous creatures the General always had at heel, despite his age and disabilities.

The General couldn’t help it—he rarely even barked at Boselli. The trouble was, he didn’t have to.

“I don’t know
about
him,” said Villari offhandedly. “I know
of
him, of course.”

“What do you know of him, boy?” the General snapped.

“Not much, to be honest,” Villari gave the General a sidelong glance. “The British don’t concern me directly—or do they?”

“Just answer the question,” repeated the General with a small cutting edge in his voice now which warmed Boselli. This was more like the real man he knew.

Villari sketched a shrug, unsnubbed, as though the matter was of little importance to him, ignoring or pretending to ignore the danger sign. “He’s a university professor, or that’s his cover anyway.”

“He has been attached to a university, that’s true. Go on.”

But only partly true, Boselli thought gleefully. The Clotheshorse was already giving himself away.

“Go on,” repeated the General.

“Well, he writes history books of some sort—about the Arabs, I seem to remember. Or something like that. And he’s one of Sir Frederick—ah—Clinton’s group—“

“And what do you know about
that
,” the General pounced hard.

Villari grinned at him boyishly. “Frankly, damn all, General. Am I supposed to? I didn’t think the British were in my sphere of operations.”