The Care of Time (15 page)

I asked expecting another need-to-know lecture. To my surprise she gave me an answer. ‘Stresa on Lago Maggiore.’

‘Who picked that?’

‘It was a collective choice. Communications are very good. We are near an international airport. The Swiss and French frontiers are both within easy driving distance. There are even fast trains if you want them. It is a prosperous petit-bourgeois little town. What appealed to the patron, though, was that it made him laugh. The very name.’

‘Sorry. I don’t get it. The joke, I mean.’

‘Stresa was where two of the most absurd international conferences of the nineteen-thirties took place. In ’thirty-two, fifteen great nations met to agree on economic collaboration for all Europe. And they left thinking that they really
had
agreed. Then, in ’thirty-five, France, Great Britain and Italy – calling themselves the Big Three if you please – met to co-operate in preventing the Nazis’ re-armament of Germany. He thinks that, with Mussolini presiding, that must have been the most absurd conference of all. I don’t know. I wasn’t born.’

‘Zander was only a teenager himself. His family was probably pro-Nazi at the time. Does he still find international conferences a joke?’

‘He thinks the world would do better with secret diplomacy.’

‘Lots of professional diplomatists have the same idea.’

‘You think it’s wrong?’

‘No. I just don’t think that secrets of any kind have much chance of being kept any more. Not for long anyway. You’re the security expert. What do you say?’

‘Some secrets can be kept for long enough.’ Her lips tightened. ‘They
must
be.’

‘I guess so. What’s Stresa like these days?’

‘Oh, it’s picturesque.’ She didn’t sound as if she cared though. Her mind was still on secrets.

Sesto C, which turned out to be Sesto Calende, was not at all picturesque. The same went for Arona. However, I managed to identify the ‘corduroy road’ of the night before. It was an obsolete box-girder bridge over a creek near Arona. The bumps were either clumsy expansion joints or, more probably, steel humps put down purposely to make the traffic cross very slowly.

Soon, on our right, I began to see Lake Maggiore as strips of blue between the high walls of the massive old villas which line the lake shore. When we reached Belgirate, Chihani took the CB radio from the glove box and passed it over her shoulder to Mokhtar. He went through the reporting-in routine for her. The only difference from the night before that I could make out was in the answering voice the other end, a man’s this time instead of a woman’s.

Stresa looks a bit like Cannes before the days of high-rise developers and show-biz festivals. Although it has suffered one or two architectural misfortunes, including a convention centre, and the Corso Umberto Primo now serves as a parking lot for far too many package-tour buses, the prevailing style is still
belle époque à l’italienne
. The souvenir shops are still behind and away from the florid
grand hotels that overlook the lake and its enchanted islands. Just before we made the left turn on to cobbles I caught a last glimpse of Isola Bella. Then, we were in what seemed to be an oldish and not very desirable residential section. Buildings were being demolished. Just short of the railroad tracks we turned into a street which had in it a plumber, an upholsterer and a TV repairman occupying what had once been shops, a cabinet-maker who stacked his lumber in what had once been a garden and an automobile spare-parts stockist in what had been a livery stable.

It was a dead-end street. Set behind tall railings at the end stood a glum old building still showing the outlines on its stucco façade of the ornate letters that had once been fastened to it.
ALBERGO DORIA
, said these rust-stained ghosts,
senza ristorante
. We were back at the safe house.

There were a pair of gates in the railings. As we bumped up over the sidewalk and into the courtyard, I saw that, fixed to a hardwood panel on one of the gates, there was an engraved brushed-bronze plate. It declared solemnly that this was now the Pax Foundation’s
INTERLINGUA INSTITUTE OF COMMUNICATIONS
. It made the rest of the place look even shabbier.

‘What’s the Pax Foundation?’ I asked. ‘Does it really exist?’

‘Certainly it exists. It was registered as a non-profit organization in the State of Delaware eight years ago. It supports the Institute and grants annual scholarships to foreign-language teachers from the developing countries, especially North Africa. The founder believes that the teaching of modern languages, in particular those of the west, is of the first importance. Languages first. Science and technology then follow more easily because the books concerned are no longer closed.’

‘By the founder you mean Karlis Zander or Dr Luccio, I guess.’

‘Why not? The cause of educating the young is very dear to him. He keeps an office here, as you saw.’

‘Still, now that it’s doing duty as a safe house, I take it the
Institute doesn’t have any student teachers in residence at the moment.’

‘Obviously not. That is another count against the enemy. For the last intake of students we had to make other arrangements. It is a pity that the founder chose Italy. We could have been more secure in Switzerland.’

‘But also more closely supervised. Right? How can you be sure that the enemy won’t connect the founder with the Foundation?’

We had climbed out of the car. She tossed the key to Mokhtar and thought before she answered.

‘How could they? The founder’s name in the legal records is none of those that you or they have heard. Here our status as a foreign charity is long-established.’ She had begun quoting from the book again. ‘Our visitors, both students and others, have always been very quiet and well behaved. We cause no trouble and we give no offence. We buy all our supplies and services from the local people and we pay cash. But we remain private and dull. You looked at the old sign marks on the wall. Yes, we could paint them out. With paint we could make everything outside look much better. We would also attract attention and arouse curiosity. You know, before this became a bad hotel sixty or seventy years ago, it was the weekend villa of a Milan silk merchant. What happened was that the last of the big hotels put up below spoiled his view of the lake. They say that he died of a broken heart. We don’t want old stories like that revived because we make it look like a villa again. Better that it stays looking like the bad hotel that nobody wanted at the end of an uninteresting little street.’

As she led the way in I had a sudden suspicion about that book from which she kept on quoting. She was writing it herself.

The fat girl with the blue glasses was not on duty. At the reception desk this time was a more imposing figure. He was handsome, stern-looking and fiftyish. With his dark-grey suit he wore an immaculate white shirt and a pearl-grey silk tie.
He glanced carelessly at me and gave Chihani a curt nod.

‘You’ve taken your time,’ he said in French. ‘He has been asking why you were not here. Lunch has been kept back. What happened? Did you have problems?’

‘No problems, Jean-Pierre. Mr Halliday had to hire a car and chauffeur. He was twenty minutes late. It is Friday remember.’

Jean-Pierre turned his attention to me. ‘Are you carrying any kind of arm or weapon?’ he asked. His English was good but careful.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Would you like to search me?’

He had a petulant upper lip. It twitched impatiently. ‘I ask only to save us both from embarrassment, Mr Halliday. We have metal detectors in the penthouse entrance hall. Now, you brought your hotel room key with you I think, May I, please, have it?’

I handed it over. He passed it to Chihani, dismissed her with a casual wave and then came out from behind the desk. ‘Come this way, Mr Halliday, please.’

He behaved, and indeed looked, rather like the martinet manager of a very grand hotel who has taken personal charge of the arrival of a distinguished guest. The only thing immediately wrong with that picture became visible when he lifted the hinged section of the desk counter to come through. On the shelf just below the counter was a sawn-off pump gun and an open box of 20-gauge ammunition.

I had been ready for the stairs again, but he ushered me instead through a curtained archway on the far side of the small lobby. In its hotel days the room beyond must have been a lounge or writing room. It still had the flowered wallpaper. Now, it was furnished as a classroom with twelve or fourteen desks, a blackboard on an easel and a record player with twin speakers. An opening behind the blackboard led to a short corridor. At the end was what looked like the door to a small closet.

He unlocked the door with a serious-looking modern key and swung it open. Inside there was a wrought-iron gate and
an elevator of a kind I had believed long extinct, even in Europe. It was shaped like a birdcage with room for two slim persons one of whom had to operate a large control lever. He opened the gate and motioned me inside.

I looked at him doubtfully and was favoured with a chilly smile. ‘It was installed before the house was a hotel,’ he said. ‘At least, that is what I am told. It is said that the owner suffered a cardiac crisis. The hotel used it for breakfast service to the rooms. We have had it checked. The engineers were surprised and proud to find it safe.’

I stepped in. The floor dropped with a thud. It wasn’t a big drop but it was startling.

‘That is normal,’ Jean-Pierre said, ‘a safety device.’

He joined me, closed and locked the outer door, shut the gate and operated the lever. We rose shakily, passed two steel-faced shaft doors and stopped at a third. It had a wide-angle peephole, two locks and a bell-push that could be reached through the elevator gate if you knew how.

It was the family man himself who unlocked the steel door to admit us.

The first surprise was his appearance. Gone was the terrycloth robe. Today he had decided to dress up.

He was wearing a dark-blue silk shirt, well open at the neck to show the gold chain with louis d’or medallion, white gabardine slacks with plaited patent leather belt to match and black crocodile loafers. The buckles on the loafers were just small enough to suggest that the metal they were made of might really be gold. He looked like an ageing playboy who has just spent a small fortune on the Via Condotti or is all set to make a large one in a Beverly Hills boutique.

The second oddity was the decor. Number 17 below, the office and gym, had been good-quality functional. On the top floor a different kind of designer had been at work; the kind who designs interiors for such things as caravans and tries to make them appear to be what they are not. What the designer had tried to make Zander’s ‘penthouse’ look like was a mountain chalet.

As a way of turning a clutter of small rooms under a low mansard roof into one apartment the idea had probably sounded good, especially to a man who needed a bolt-hole in a hurry and for a longish stay. No walls would have to be demolished or replastered. Most of the new interior could be prefabricated from ply-backed panelling and standard ‘built-ins’ and then installed without fuss or exterior mess in a few days. Stock items, from the plastic floor-tiles to the false roof-beams, would be used throughout. The sketches for it might even have conveyed an impression of cosiness. The thing itself had all the charm, and something of the smell, of a cheap furniture showroom. Zander’s expensive finery was almost absurdly
out of place there. He seemed to know it and the eyes above the simper warned that comment would not be welcomed.

His attempt at brisk amiability did not quite come off. ‘Today,’ he said as he raised his hands in greeting, ‘we don’t have to talk about an old book of memoirs, eh my friend?’

‘So I understand. Was it all faked or was part of it real?’

‘Perhaps, when we get to know each other better, I will tell you. Well now, come in both of you.’ He led the way through a doorframe that had obviously been put there to conceal the metal detectors Jean-Pierre had mentioned. Beyond was a bar leading into a dining room.

In the bar he paused. ‘Shall we eat before we talk?’ he said. ‘Guido has worked hard on an ossobuco for us.’

‘Whatever you say, Mr Zander.’

‘Good.’ There was a brass bell on the bar. He tinkled it and then strode through into the dining room. The spray-finished rustic table was laid for three.

‘Jean-Pierre is joining us,’ Zander explained. ‘He is the Pax Foundation’s European director and in charge of all our operations here. You may speak freely before him. It’s warm up here today, Mr Halliday. Would you like to take your jacket off?’

‘I’m okay, thanks.’ And I was. He was the one who was feeling the heat. What he wanted was not his lunch. What he wanted was to know what sort of a reply I was bringing him without having to ask me for it. There was a smell of food coming from his private kitchen now. I began to feel hungry. ‘There’s one thing,’ I said. ‘I didn’t get Monsieur Jean-Pierre’s full name. If he’s in charge of your operations here I think that fact should be included in the initial telex I shall be asking you to send for me later.’

Jean-Pierre had been opening the wine at a waxed-pine side table. He swung around instantly.

‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Jean-Pierre Vielle, but it would be most mistaken to involve the names of the Foundation and its European director in negotiations of this character.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Zander said.

‘The name of the Foundation stands for peace, patron.’

‘I am aware of it, Jean-Pierre.’ Zander was sounding a little testy. ‘But we shall discuss all of these questions later, no doubt. Now, please, let us sit down and eat. You, here on my right, Mr Halliday.’

The food was served by the girl with the blue-tinted glasses and Guido the cook, an intense-looking young man who perspired a great deal and muttered to himself incomprehensibly as he fussed over us. Neither of them was a skilled waiter and both were clearly scared of making mistakes, but they managed. The food was good, the wine drinkable. No coffee was served. When the plates had been cleared, Zander told Vielle to open a second bottle of wine and put it where we could help ourselves. Then he sat back with his hands raised, scrubbed-up and ready to make the first incision.