chapter one

IT STARTED out all wrong.

The westbound plane was four hours late, with a twenty-minute hold at Istanbul on Pan Am Flight 204 from Bangkok. By the time Durell arrived in Geneva, it was eight o’clock in the evening.

Then, coming in off the passenger ramp and having his passport stamped—there had been no time to establish a cover and he was using his diplomatic passport as an economic attache—he literally ran into Anton Pacek.

It couldn’t be avoided. It was one of those things that just happened, and no amount of careful planning could avoid it. Pacek seemed as surprised as Durell, although he was too professional to give anything away. Durell walked through the crowded air terminal as if nothing had happened, and although he was late and his orders had been marked with urgency, he took the time for a cup of coffee and then walked over to the kiosk to buy a pack of American cigarettes.

He did not have to look around to know that Pacek was still with him. The Czech had decided to follow along.

He wondered if the KGU man had actually been waiting for him at the airport. Durell did not think so, because Pacek would have been more careful about bumping into him and allowing that startled, face-to-face meeting. But obviously Pacek had recognized him—after all, they both had been in the business for a long time—and Pacek was an expert, able to improvise a spot decision when necessary. Equally obvious, Pacek’s discovery of Durell’s arrival in Geneva had required a quick change in KGU plans.

He chose a public telephone at random and called 61-51-61. The lights were coming on in the terminal building and the booth felt hot, although it was early September and there was a cool wind off Lake Geneva at this time of year.

“Gallerie Chez Ellen,” a woman’s voice said.

“The package is here from Bangkok,” Durell said.

There was a small silence, an exhalation. “Sam?”

“Right.”

“Your plane was late?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad you’re here. Lordie, I’m glad you’re here. How are you, Sam?”

“Just fine, Ellen. And you?”

“Waiting for you on the proverbial pins and needles. I haven’t much time. None of us do. I’m so glad they sent you, though.”

“You sound as if it’s a crash job.”

“Isn’t it always, Sam?”

He didn’t reply for a moment. Through the glass doors of the booth, he saw Pacek walk by, a barrel of a man with his black Homburg perched squarely on his round head. Pacek looked older, Durell thought, but his hard face and thrusting underlip were as stubborn as before; but then, they were all pushing it harder now, and the business took it out of you, one way or another, faster than life on the outside. He returned to the telephone.

“Ellen, it’s been almost three years since I was last here in Geneva. I wasn’t expected, was I?”

“I’ve missed seeing you, Sam. Nobody expected you.” “Then why was Pacek waiting for me?”

“Who?”

“Major Anton Pacek, KGU, State Security, usually works out of Prague and does the Lowlands territories under cover of an industrial technician in mining machinery and dust control operations. He’s damned good in his cover line, too. A fine engineer. He was head of STRAS, their murder arm, for a while. He’s the one who killed Bobby Langstrom in Amsterdam, remember?”

“Has he seen you?” Ellen asked sharply.

“We bumped into each other, for a fact. Grunted apologies and went on. But he’s been a mustard plaster for the past ten minutes. Why?”

“I don’t know, Sam.”

“Is your place bugged?”

“No. Art Greenwald came through just last Tuesday and fanned everything. We’re quite clean here.”

“Major Pacek doesn’t make it look that way.”

“It’s got to be an accident, Sam. Sam, listen, we haven’t much time. You’ll have to shake him and get over here as soon as you can.”

“All right, Ellen.”

He hung up. Anton Pacek was buying some Dutch cigars

at the nearby counter. Durell walked the other way. Pacek did not follow, but Durell, who was always careful, did not assume that the KGU man had lost interest or hadn’t used the minutes during the phone call to get a shadow-tail on him. He went into the terminal restaurant and sat down as if he had time to kill and ordered coffee and a sandwich.

Durell was a tall man, heavily muscled, with black hair streaked with gray at the temples. He had a lean face and calm dark blue eyes that shaded to black when his Cajun temperament betrayed him into anger. He had an athlete’s grace of movement and clever, strong gambler’s hands, inherited from his Grandpa Jonathan down in the bayou country below New Orleans. He was a sub-chief in the K Section of the Central Intelligence Agency, and before that he had been with G2 in the Pentagon and, long years ago when it all began, with the old OSS in Europe. It was lonely and dangerous work, but he could not now imagine any other kind of life for himself.

When ten minutes passed, he spoke to the waitress briefly and got up and walked quietly out of the terminal, leaving his meal on the table. He moved directly to the taxi stand and got into the first cab without turning his head to look back. He gave the driver the address of the Hotel de la Paix on the West Shore, on the Quai du Mont-Blanc.

Durell did not think he was tagged, so he tried to relax and enjoy the change from Bangkok’s steamy monsoon season to Switzerland’s high, dry September air. Geneva’s downtown streets were brightly lighted and crowded, and from the quays along the Rhone you could see the brilliant Jet d’Eau, the hundred-foot fountain they floodlighted as it spurted from the surface of the lake. The tides of tourists had ebbed since Labor Day, and most of the Americans you saw here were relatively permanent residents—Madison Avenue types with crew cuts and gray flannels and Ivy League voices. American investment corporations and U.S. government missions to the endless conferences here had jostled the medieval, Calvinist city into a building boom that was still going on, Durell noted, although it was three years since his last passage through here.

Leaving the cab, he walked through the busy lobby of the Hotel de la Paix and came out again and took another taxi down the quay-side promenades. He got out after a few blocks and walked to the right, along the Quay des Bergues flanking the Rhone, crossed on the Pont de l’lsle and walked down the Rue de la Corraterie to the Grand Theatre.

He was not being followed now.

The Gallerie Chez Ellen was the CIA safe house and message drop operated by Ellen Armbridge. From the park which contained the university and Geneva’s famous monument to the Restoration, Durell walked along winding, cobbled streets in the Old Quarter, up ramps and stone stairways to the Grand-Rue. There was nobody behind him. The evening air was warm and peaceful. From the Bourg de Four, the ancient square dreaming of past centuries, he turned left, then left again, and found himself on the Rue Saint-Pierre. The art shop was in a little street just off it, at No. 8.

The house was tall and narrow, squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder with its medieval neighbors. The lower floor had been remodeled to accommodate the shop, and the three upper stories were used for living quarters. The top floor, under the steeply pitched slate roof, was a message center and communications relay drop, crammed with miniaturized radio equipment. Below were some bedrooms where couriers could rest, and a conference room. The floor immediately above the art shop was Ellen’s personal apartment.

She had been hired by the chief, Dickinson McFee, over six years ago, Durell recalled—and he himself had recommended her. She was a fine young woman attending the university at Geneva then, of independent means, with a calm mind, quick insight and impeccable taste. Her interest in art had led naturally to the setup of the Gallerie Chez Ellen. She was an expatriate whose work for K Section had often proved invaluable.

The shop was closed when Durell arrived. There was a Manet in the window, nothing more. He walked past it under the chestnut trees that were just beginning to turn brown in the September air. At the far corner there was a cafe, and he heard the sound of students singing there. The quarter was given over to dormitories and pensions used by the youngsters and some of the faculty. The street seemed quiet and serene.

He turned the corner, reached a narrow alley with stone steps going up between the old buildings, walked to the end of it, and found the green-painted wooden door unlocked. He walked in and up a flight of steps and rapped a brief signal on the second-floor door. Ellen let him in.

“Hello, Cajun. It’s so good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too, Ellen.”

“Come on in. What did you do with Pacek?”

“Ditched him.”

“That man always gave me the shivers. Is he the one who really killed Bobby Langstrom?”

“We think so.”

He followed her down the hall, thinking that the time since he’d been here had served only to improve and mature her fine figure. She wore a simply tailored suit of tiny brown and white checks, with a white silk blouse that featured a high standing collar. Her shoes were Parisian. When he’d last seen her in the shop downstairs, she wore business-like reading glasses; but she wasn’t wearing them now. Her perfume was delicate. Ellen Armbridge was a lovely woman in her mid-twenties. She was tall, with straight shoulders and dark auburn hair and deep brown eyes that reflected her quiet intellect.

“Sit down, Sam. You must be tired.” Her voice was faintly throaty. When he saw her face in the lights of her sitting room, he thought she had been crying. But he wasn’t sure. She looked troubled, and her smile was a bit forced. “You’ve had a long flight from Bangkok.”

“The world gets smaller every day,” he said.

“I’m glad they sent for you, though, instead of someone nearby.”

“I was helping the economic mission we have in Prince Tuvanaphan’s territory—something to do with a tin purchasing deal, about five hundred tons. The Czechs are dickering for it, too. Does that explain why Pacek was at the airport?” “He couldn’t have been waiting for you because of a leak at this end, Sam. Maybe Bangkok did it. But I think it was an accident, as you suggested. It’s too bad. He’ll know you’re here because of Tuvanaphan.”

He said drily, “That’s more than I’ve known up to now.” “Didn’t they brief you in Bangkok?”

“I got on the plane last night. They said you’d have the story.”

“Yes. Well, it’s all in my lap, that’s true. Si Hanson from the consulate is in on it, though. Do you know Silas?”

“F.B.I. attache on foreign duty.” Durell nodded. “Yes, I know him.”

“What’s the trouble, don’t you like him?”

“We get along. Is it a criminal problem?”

“Si thinks so. You know how his office is—jealous of their jurisdictional prerogatives. I told him this was our own baby, now, but I didn’t give him the details. I thought I’d leave that to you. You’ll have to work with him, Sam.”

He waited. It seemed to him as she turned to pour him some bourbon—she claimed she kept it especially for him and that it came from a still near Bayou Peche Rouge—that Ellen’s voice was a little too tense, and the lavender shadows under her brown eyes didn’t belong there. He said nothing about it. Dimly through the front windows he could hear the sound of the students singing in their cafe on the Rue Saint-Pierre.

Her hand wasn’t quite steady, either, when she gave him the drink. There were small lines at the corners of her mouth. She looked vulnerable, he thought, and he wondered why, because she had always been self-sufficient and coordinated.

“Ellen.. ”

“I know,” she said ruefully. “I’m upset and you can see it. You always were quick at sensing how people felt, Sam. And tolerant. But it’s all this pressure. Doesn’t it ever let up? Won’t it ever end?”

He shrugged. “It’s the world we live in. It never bothered you before.”

“It never hit me like this before.”

“Are you personally involved in this, Ellen?”

“No. Well, yes. I wish . . .” She bit her lip. “I hate this work. I used to think it was a good thing, but now I hate it. I want to go home. I’ve asked the chief to let me off the hook. I want to go back to Illinois and live like everybody else, in a white clapboard house on Elm Street, with a husband who sells automobiles, perhaps, and comes home regularly at five. I’m tired of wondering how I’m going to die, Sam. I’m tired of hearing about Bobby Langstrom in Amsterdam, and how John Peters was drowned in Hong Kong, and Eliot Singer got pushed in front of a train in the London Underground. And then there are all those who just disappear, and we never hear of them again or know what happened. I’m sick of it, Sam.”

“Take it easy,” he said.

“I’m sorry.” She smiled thinly. “It’s no business for a woman.”

“Women have their place in it,” he said bluntly.

“I know all about that part of it, too.”

“As a matter of fact, I heard you were planning to get out. I heard you were planning to marry some fellow out of the local office—someone named Jack Talbott.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“What’s the matter. Did he jilt you, Ellen?”

“Worse than that.”

“How much worse?”

“He’s the reason we had to send for you, Sam. He’s been accused of stealing the Dwan Scrolls from Prince Tuvanaphan, here in Geneva. It can blow the tin-purchasing deal sky-high. Jack has disappeared. The scrolls are gone, too, as of yesterday. We have to find those paintings and we must find Jack, too. You might have to kill him.”

chapter two

SHE SPOKE quietly, but the way she sat with folded hands and looked across the tasteful room at him betrayed her real disturbance. It was too bad, Durell thought, because she had been graded very high in the files back at No. 20 Annapolis Street, in Washington—the headquarters of K Section. As a sub-chief, Durell had the data on his scattered crew at his fingertips. He could quote verbatim from those dossiers.

Ellen Armbridge—unmarried, age 26. Goucher graduate in liberal arts; two years at the Sorbonne in Paris. Both parents dead; only child. Home town, Springfield, Illinois. Height five-four; weight 118. Appendix scar; birthmark on left shoulder. One love affair in Paris during student years at the Sorbonne. Successful as a buyer and seller of art antiques. Quiet dresser; hair dark auburn, eyes brown, complexion fair. Trained at the Maryland Farm, accomplished in judo, graded AA in marksmanship with small arms, adept with a knife, rated 720 on psychiatric tests, speaks French, German and Russian.

“Ellen . . .”

She smiled again. “I know, Sam. I just don’t know how you go on the way you do.”

“We have to go on. That’s the job.”

“It’s so dark and secret, this war. It doesn’t ever seem to end.”

“Perhaps it won’t, in our lifetime. Tell me about Jack Talbott.”

“Sam, I know what you’re thinking. You believe I’ve allowed an emotional involvement to color my judgment. I assure you, it hasn’t. I know what it’s like for all of us, living the way we do, and I know the danger of allowing personal attitudes to influence decisions. I’ve leaned over backward in this. I wouldn’t let you down, Sam, no matter how much it hurts me.”

“I believe you. Are you in love with the man?”

“I was,” she said quietly. She looked at her folded hands. “Perhaps I still am.”

“Do you think he stole the Dwan Scrolls?”

“Yes. I think he did.”

“That puts you on a pretty sharp hook, Ellen.”

“I’ve been thinking about it all day, waiting for you. I know you’re already figuring on sending me back home, at once. But I don’t want to go now, until this is settled. I want to know all about it, the good and the bad.” Her smile was wan. “I was afraid of you, Sam—of what I might say to you and how much I’d be tempted to color the facts, from a sense of loyalty to Jack. But there’s only one loyalty in this business, isn’t there? We do the job, and that’s all there is to it. Even if your best friend is in danger, you abandon him if necessary, isn’t that true?”

“Yes,” Durell said.

“Have you ever done that, Sam?”

“Yes,” he said again.

“But how could you . . . ?” She paused and drew a quiet breath. She was a very pretty woman, he thought; and a deeply disturbed one. He felt sorry for her, but this attitude was only on the surface, and it did not affect the decision about her that he had already made. “I’m sorry,” she continued. “I’m not very efficient tonight. The human factor always crops up, like Hamlet’s conscience, and you’re being very patient, Sam.”

“I can wait,” he said.

“No, we can’t. We’ve only got three days to settle this deal. That’s the ultimatum that Prince Tuvanaphan gave us.” “Ultimatum?”

“Do you know about the Dwan Scrolls? I think they are Tuvanaphan’s most precious possession. Anyway, they were, until they were stolen from him last night. It’s been a delicate matter, keeping the prince amenable to our suggestions.

It isn’t a matter of internal meddling with his state, Sam— you know the directives against that, these days. But in the matter of purchasing the tin output from his country, Noramco Tin has been making good progress here in Geneva. The Czechs have their own mission working on Tuvanaphan, and you know what happens when they get their technicians and ‘experts’ into a neutralist state as vulnerable as Tuvanaphan’s. The State Department encouraged Noramco Tin to buy up everything the prince has to offer. We had a directive from Joint Chiefs and the National Planning Board indicating that Washington thinks the Czechs may be acting as a front for the Chinese here, but we’re not sure. The negotiations have been going on for several weeks, and they looked successful, until last night.”

“When the prince’s paintings were stolen by Talbott?” “Yes.”

“I’ve heard of the Dwan Scrolls,” Durell said. “There are four of them, right? Silk paintings on rolls about three feet wide and ten feet long; but they can be rolled up into a pretty compact package. Weren’t they on exhibit at the Museum in Rome recently?”

“That’s right. Normally, you don’t look at scroll paintings all at once, you know. You unroll them and study a section at a time.” Ellen’s voice was professional. “They were done by a wandering Buddhist pilgrim, a painter named Peng Dwan, who went down into Southeast Asia about the year 741 A.D.—during the T’ang Dynasty. Rather ancient and most precious relics, Sam; remarkable examples of Chinese art. Their monetary value might run into half a million dollars, the way prices for art have been going these days.” “Prince Tuvanaphan doesn’t want them back because of the money, though,” Durell suggested.

“No. The Dwan paintings depict various scenes of the Emperor’s pilgrimage to Shu—the ancestral land that Tuvanaphan rules as his birthright; and where he has the tin mines we’re bidding for, against the Czechs. The prince is very proud of the scrolls, naturally. The seals of kings and emperors of all his lineage are painted on the scrolls, rather like an authenticated genealogical table.”

“What were the scrolls doing in Rome recently?”

“He lent them to the Museum there as a gesture of good will and cultural interchange, so to speak. They were only on exhibit for two weeks, but they created an enormous stir in the art-collecting world. Too much so, perhaps. Every crook and greedy collector in Europe drooled over them.”

“Were they stolen in Rome?”

“They were taken right here in Geneva, last night. Tuvanaphan planned to take the scrolls back home with him as soon as the tin deal was settled. It was in the bag for us, Sam. Jack was doing a wonderful job. The prince trusted him completely, and Jack made himself Tuvanaphan’s right-hand man. Which makes his betrayal all the worse for us, of course. The prince has the enormous pride and arrogance of so many small men. Jack went down to Rome with some of the prince’s men to bring the Dwan Scrolls back to the suite at the hotel here in Geneva. And last night the scrolls and Jack both disappeared.”

Durell said quietly, “Ellen, have you been thinking about Anton Pacek? It could be his work. If we were winning out on the tin deal, it’s possible that Jack was snatched by the KGU, along with the scrolls, to put the blame on an American and turn Tuvanaphan against us.”

“Don’t you think I’ve considered that?” Ellen asked sharply. She stood up and walked across the room to the window, then turned and regarded him across the length of the carpet. The sound of student singing came again from the Rue Saint-Pierre. “Don’t you think I’ve tried to believe that this happened and that Jack is innocent and maybe hurt or dead somewhere? I wish I could convince myself of it!” “Why can’t you?”

“I have to be honest with myself,” she said quietly. “No matter how much it hurts.”

“Then you’re sure Jack is the thief?”

“Tuvanaphan claims Jack was seen leaving the Hotel de la Paix, where the prince’s suite is, with a package that could only have been the scrolls. One of Tuvanaphan’s men was slugged, and when he was brought around, he said Jack did it.”

“Pacek could have paid the man for that story.”

“True. And Pacek could also have paid Jack to do exactly what he was seen to do.”

“Would Jack go sour like that? You knew him well, Ellen. You were in love with him. Still are, right? You had every chance to judge him and know his capacities.”

“I’ve judged him,” she said grimly. “We had to use Jack Talbott on the economic mission because of his past association with Tuvanaphan. Jack is an adventurer, the kind of American who rolls and brawls all around the world. He was trained as an engineer—Silas Hanson will give you his run-down sheet—and he got to know Tuvanaphan pretty well when he did some exploratory mining work in the prince’s territory back in ’57. Tuvanaphan trusted Jack, and that made the deal just duck soup for us—but now it’s all blown up by Jack’s going sour and stealing the prince’s precious paintings.” “You say Tuvanaphan gives us three days?”

“He’s going home then. He wants the scrolls back when he leaves. He’s furious, naturally. He feels betrayed, and he’s transferred his anger against Jack to all Americans, including Noramco Tin. You can bet Anton Pacek is happy at this moment.”

“He didn’t look too happy at the airport,” Durell said. Ellen frowned. “I don’t understand that. But in any case, we have three days to find Jack and get the scrolls back into Tuvanaphan’s hands. Otherwise, we’re just mud. General Dickinson McFee put a high priority on this job, Sam. That’s why he pulled you halfway around the world to handle it.”

Durell stood up. He looked tall and muscular in his dark suit. He wore a white button-down shirt and a dark blue knitted necktie, and in the special pocket tailored in his coat he carried the usual snubby-barreled .38.

“If there’s a time limit, I’d better get started. We don’t really know if Jack Talbott is our target or not. I’d better go over his apartment first. You have the address?”

“I’ve already fanned it,” she said.

“You have a key?”

Her eyes regarded him calmly, but there was a faint flush on her cheeks. “Yes. That’s the way it was with us.”

“I don’t care about that. Did you find anything?”

“He’s not there. I’ve called several times, too. The consulate doesn’t know where he is; he didn’t show up at his desk this morning, naturally. The only thing I found was an address written on Jack’s telephone pad—a place called Villa del Sol, on the Lausanne Road, the north shore of Lake Geneva. I checked it out while waiting for you. It belongs to an Italian nobleman, a man of utterly impeccable reputation, named Count Bernardo Apollio.”

“The Apollio?”

Ellen’s eyes were shadowed. “Yes, the art collector.”

“It ties Jack in a bit, doesn’t it? But from what I’ve heard of Apollio, the man is above reproach.”

“Well, he has a four-million dollar art collection specializing in Chinese antiques,” Ellen said quietly. “And a beautiful American wife. Jack saw the wife occasionally in Rome when he went down there on mission business.”

Durell watched her closely. “Was she competition for you, Ellen?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being feminine, or vaguely jealous, even mentioning her.”

Durell considered this. “Is Apollio or his wife at this place called Villa del Sol, in Geneva?”

“There’s no answer on the phone out there.”

“I’ll check it out,” Durell decided. “Or I’ll have Si Hanson do it.”

Ellen said, “Do you want another drink before you go?” “No, thanks. You say Si is touchy about this thing?”

“In one sense, it’s a criminal case involving an American national—Jack Talbott. So it comes under the F.B.I. attache abroad, naturally. We get along pretty well, despite the usual interdepartmental jealousies. But Si is fine. We can’t call in the local police, of course—I had to talk fast to get Tuvanaphan to keep quiet about the stolen scrolls for the next three days. And Interpol can’t be used, either. Our work doesn’t permit publicity.”

“The quieter, the better, in our business.”

“Sam . . . about Jack and me . .

“You don’t have to tell me any more,” he said.

“There’s still a chance you’re right about Pacek grabbing him to make it look as if an American took Tuvanaphan’s paintings. It’s a small chance, but I want to hope for it.” She paused. “I hope for it very much. But in that case, they might have killed Jack already, isn’t that so?”

“If Pacek took him, yes. But we have to look at the other side of it. Jack Talbott may have done this on his own, but it isn’t likely he took this enormous chance just on impulse. He doesn’t seem to be that sort of man. If he did it, he had to be motivated by something more than just money, considering the risks involved. He’d know how we’d step on him. And for a big bull of a man like Jack, the something more could well be a woman.”

“I don’t know,” Ellen murmured. She looked pained. “If you’re thinking about the Contessa di Apollio, I just don’t know. That would hurt even worse, personally.”

“Is it possible there was another woman?” Durell persisted.

“I can’t say. I know you don’t want to be cruel, Sam, but I’m not in a position to judge.” She paused again and regarded him gravely. “If Jack is guilty, you’ll have to do the job on him, won’t you?”

“Perhaps.”

“Jack can be dangerous, though. He’s tough, he’s knocked around a lot. He always talked about making a big haul some day. It’s true, he had money on his mind. Maybe the other side got to him, or maybe he couldn’t resist the temptation of those valuable paintings. But you’re right, I think his motivation would have to be more than just the money. He’d know how irrevocable a step it would be to steal the scrolls. So maybe there was another woman.” Ellen spoke with quiet distaste.

“In any case, there are plenty of unethical art dealers in Europe who’d buy the scrolls from him. And if he’s guilty, he’s aware of how final his move is and how we’ll hunt him down. So he won’t be caught easily.”

“What are you getting at, Ellen?” Durell asked.

“I don’t want Jack to kill you, Sam.”

“He won’t.”

“I can’t help it. I’m scared about this.”

“We all know what fear is like,” he said gently.

“But this is worse, for me. The trouble is, I always knew Jack had a bad streak. But I was lonely, and he worked for the consulate and he seemed all right, and he has an enormous strength of personality as well as a certain physical attraction.”

Her voice was thin with tension. Her face was very pale. She got up again and walked the length of the room and then turned back to regard Durell with strange eyes.

“Please be careful, that’s all.”

“I intend to be.”

“I mean, don’t jump to any conclusions. Silas is convinced that Jack is our target. I still don’t know, but I don’t trust myself. It’s such a mess for me—I ought to count myself out of this whole operation because I can’t be truly objective. You see, I don’t want Jack to kill you—and I can’t bear the thought that you might kill Jack.”

“Take it easy, Ellen. Do I have an appointment with Prince Tuvanaphan? I’d like to see him.”

“Yes, he wants to see the man who’s taking charge here, too. That’s you, Sam. He’s at his hotel. Has a big suite there and lives in unrestrained splendor, naturally. I’m afraid you’ll find him arrogant and quite adamant about wanting the scrolls back. I doubt if you’ll shake his conviction that Jack is the thief. All of which,” she added resignedly, “puts the tin deal up in the air. Noramco Tin swings a lot of weight in Washington. I’ve had a coded cable from National Security and even one from Senator Goodhughman—though how the senator gets into it, I don’t know.”

“The senator represents a lot of tin stock,” Durell said drily. He got to his feet. “If we only have three days, I’d better get on my horse, Ellen.”

“Yes. And come back, Sam. I’ll wait up for you.”

He kissed her briefly. Her lips were cold.

“Take care, yourself,” he said.

chapter three

IT WAS a few minutes after nine when Durell walked away from the art shop. He had slept on the plane from Istanbul, knowing he could never be sure when the next chance for rest might come. He was a careful man, practicing caution until it was second nature to him, and he never took anything for granted. It was a way of life he could not change after all these years, and he could not conceive of any other pattern for himself.

He made a mental note to cable Washington tonight and have Ellen Armbridge withdrawn from foreign duty. Somebody else would have to operate the apparatus based on the safe house off the Rue Saint-Pierre. It was too bad, but it was better than letting her get killed. As Ellen had said, many good men had died in various obscure corners of the world, but there was another kind of attrition in the business, a slow fraying of nerves over the course of weeks and months of watchful tension; a slackening of alertness, of pulse and reflexes. The strain could destroy you as easily as a bullet, he thought. Breakdowns were uncommon, but they happened. And in Ellen’s case, her personal involvement and emotional state could mean a slight shading of judgment at a critical moment that could lose the ball game.

He walked to the Grand-Rue, turned right, and passed several small cafes and hotels. The evening was cool and pleasant. The sidewalks were moderately crowded. Young couples from the university strolled in the shadows of the chestnut trees, and auto traffic on the narrow old streets was quite thin.

He noticed the tail before he went two blocks, but he gave no sign that he knew he was being followed. He kept walking, trying to spot the second member of the team. Usually there were two shadows, one deliberately overt and clumsy to claim the quarry’s attention, and the other much more subtle, perhaps exchanging personnel from time to time, to carry out the final purpose of the surveillance.

But he could only spot the one man.

He was a rather stout man, wearing a pale topcoat and a wide-brimmed hat. Not Anton Pacek, of course. Pacek had a dozen men under his command. What disturbed Durell most was the fact that he’d been picked up so close to Ellen’s house. It meant the art gallery was under observation and known to others. Geneva, being neutral territory, could not be kept as clean as other places, but it was a bad sign that the safe house was under observation. His shadow could be a Swiss security cop, of course; but somehow he did not think so.

At 9:15 Durell turned into a narrow street of stone houses that led up by a series of ramps and twisting steps toward St. Peter’s Cathedral and the sweeping view of Lake Leman. His shadow hesitated, then followed, walking about fifty paces behind him. There were deep, alcoved doorways on either hand, and at the top of the second flight of stone stairs, Durell stepped into one and waited.

The shadow paused. There was no one else on the street, although there were lights in the tall, narrow windows of the medieval buildings on either hand. Durell was patient. Finally, the stout man in the pale topcoat came on.

He knew the other was suspicious of his abrupt disappearance and would be ready for trouble, and when the man drew abreast of the doorway, Durell moved with quick precision. He stepped out just behind the light topcoat, his left foot forward, his left arm slightly lowered, his right hand striking fast just below the back of the man’s hat. You could kill a man like that, or paralyze his neural centers and simply stun him. Durell kept the blow relatively light.

The man grunted and stumbled to his knees on the cobblestone street. Durell stepped to his right side, caught his right arm and pulled it up and back across the shoulder blades and hauled his quarry erect on uncertain legs. In the dim glow of the street lamp, the man’s eyes looked glazed. He had a saddle nose, broad cheekbones, and a wide mouth; he needed a shave. His tie was a garish silk print.

“Let’s go in here,” Durell said quietly.

He forced the man into the dark, recessed doorway. For a moment he felt quick resistance, and he applied pressure at the elbow and the man swore softly and bumped against the entry wall.

“Comment?”

“Don’t try your bad French on me, my friend. You’re not Swiss.”

“Let go of me!” the other gasped.

“Your English sounds worse. You must have had a Brooklyn teacher at KGU school. Why are you following me?”

“I am not. . .”

“Let’s see your passport.”

“You have no right—this is Swiss territory. . . .”

“Go call a cop,” Durell said. His voice was savage. He applied more pressure to the man’s elbow and sweat popped out on the broad face and saddle nose. “Go on, yell.”

“Please—it is painful.”

“I’ll make it worse.”

“M’sieu Durell . . .”

“You know my name. What else do you know?”

“Nothing! I am only paid to watch you.”

“Since when?”

“An hour ago. Shortly after you arrived.”

“You work for Major Pacek?”

The man’s wide mouth closed stubbornly. His eyes reflected wet hatred. Durell did not really expect to get anything from him, under the circumstances. The man breathed hard, resisting his grip on his arm. It was possible he might call the police after all, although everyone in the business knew the value of a quiet operation. On the other hand, it might occur to him that the balance of sacrifice might be in his favor if he yelled for the cops and thus delayed Durell’s work. He had only three days. The others might be able to afford a few days in the local jail; but Durell could not.

He made it quick.

The chunky man uttered no sound as Durell delivered a blow to the side of his neck. Durell caught him as he felL, lowered him quietly to the alcoved doorway. There was no alarm. The street was still quiet. He felt the man’s pulse with a sense of detachment; there was nothing personal in what he had done to this man. He saved that sort of thing for people like Major Anton Pacek.

Ten minutes later he was in a taxi heading for a bridge over the Rhone and the Hotel de la Paix.

The prince received him at once. A retainer in a native uniform bowed and murmured that His Highness had been waiting for some time, and would Durell please come this way. Durell followed through several lavishly decorated rooms into the largest reception chamber of the suite. Although the servants wore native costumes, Prince Tuvanaphan, seated in a high-backed chair at the opposite end of the room, wore a gray business suit and an immaculate white shirt and dark necktie. His feet, in tiny, highly polished English shoes, did not quite touch the floor.

“M’sieu Durell,” he said in French, “we were growing most impatient. The thought crossed our mind that perhaps we were not important enough to demand the attention of American officials in this matter.”

“My plane was delayed,” Durell said quietly. “I’ve only just arrived from Bangkok. I was engaged there in working with our mission and associates from Noramco Tin.”

“You are an engineer?”

“No.”

“A—ah—trouble-shooter. You have the look of such a man. A type of American much like M’sieu Talbott.”

“I do not think we are alike,” Durell said.

The prince smiled blandly. He had a round, brown face and a self-indulgent, full-lipped mouth like the precise carving of a Buddha. His eyes had all the warmth and depth of gray stone. The eyes were interesting, Durell thought, perhaps indicating French parentage somewhere in the past generation. A scar marred the symmetry of his Annamese features, running from one corner of his mouth in a pale crescent, ending just under the lobe of his left ear.

“We must soon return to my own land,” the prince said, “where matters require my attention three days from now. Have you been—ah—briefed about my ancestral paintings?"

“I understand you feel sure that Jack Talbott took them without authorization.”

“He stole them,” the prince said bluntly. “And we entertain no other consideration except to seek their prompt return. How you accomplish this, we leave to you. But it must be done.”

“Are you sure Jack Talbott is responsible for your loss?” Durell persisted. “We do not question your good faith, but in a matter where the objects are so valuable, surely you must see that they would be coveted by every thief on the Continent.”

“We are not concerned with the monetary value of the Dwan Scrolls. For us, they are sacred. They represent our ancestry for over twelve centuries. They are our most precious possessions. A man like Mr. Talbott, whom we trusted and indeed were about to entrust with certain mining leases in our country, might well be representative of the good faith of the American industrial enterprises we were prepared to negotiate with.”

“To put it bluntly,” Durell said, “you feel that if Jack Talbott is a thief, all Americans are thieves?”

“One’s opinion is colored by personal misfortunes. Since you are the man placed in charge of the matter by your government, we shall speak plainly. We want to have the Dwan Scrolls in our possession when we board the plane three days from today. We insist upon it. Otherwise, all negotiations between your people and our ministers are at an end.”

It was difficult to accept the arbitrary and autocratic will of the little man, Durell thought. The prince was an absolute ruler, shrewd, self-indulgent, but cleverly capable of walking the tightrope of Southeast Asian politics. And politics made strange bedfellows. There were no rules in Durell’s business except those that demanded success.

The interview was brief, and Durell, who habitually underestimated his qualities as a diplomat, managed to maintain a tactful silence in the face of Tuvanaphan’s blunt accusations. The evidence against Talbott was slim—scanty enough to rate suspicion. Talbott and two of the prince’s retainers had returned from Rome at six-thirty last night, and the scrolls had been put away in one of the bedrooms of Tuvanaphan’s suite. An hour later, Talbott was discovered to have left the apartment, and the servant on guard in the storage room was found unconscious. Brought around, he stated flatly that Talbott had done the slugging and took the scrolls.

When Durell asked permission to question the servant, Tuvanaphan flatly refused. Durell, on the other hand, could not produce Jack Talbott, as Tuvanaphan demanded. The interview came to an impasse.

“We have made our feelings quite clear,” Tuvanaphan smiled. His scar showed white on his round, brown face. “We are not vindictive. We leave Talbott’s punishment to you. But all conversations with North American Tin are necessarily at an end until this matter is satisfactorily settled.”

It seemed to Durell as he was ushered out through the anterooms that Prince Tuvanaphan was seeking a deliberate excuse to break off the tin negotiations. He was not sure of this, however. The man’s petulant character coincided with his present behavior. The thing to do was to find Talbott and return the scrolls at once. Ellen had no information on Talbott’s whereabouts. But Silas Hanson had been digging all day, and he decided to see Si at once.

There was a slight delay, however. The anteroom to Tuvanaphan’s suite was a large hexagonal chamber with several doors leading at odd angles from the entrance. The servant who had ushered him in stood by with a meaningless smile.

“One moment, sir,” the man said. “There is someone here who wishes to speak to you in private before you leave.”

At the same moment, one of the doors in the anteroom opened and Major Anton Pacek came in.

Durell felt a small shock of alarm, but nothing showed on his impassive face. Pacek was smiling with all the warmth of a crocodile’s yawn. He wore a dark-brown suit that covered his heavy, muscular body with the deft grace of a box. Despite his stubby figure, Pacek walked with a peculiarly light grace across the carpeted foyer. His square hand was held out to Durell.

“Please, Mr. Durell. This is neutral territory.”

Durell ignored the man’s hand and Pacek, smiling, dropped it. “You seem upset, my friend.”

“I’m not your friend,” Durell said.

“Ah, you are so angry.”

“I’m not. What are you doing here, Pacek?”

“Perhaps the same as you. We have been talking business, Tuvanaphan and I. Nothing more. A simple commercial arrangement between his country and mine.”

Anton Pacek was Moscow-trained in the KGU, Durell knew. The man had the thickest neck in the world, -with beefy arms and shoulders, blue jowls, and a steel tooth that gleamed with his smile. His small blue eyes were brilliant, amused, and intelligent. Durell knew from Pacek’s dossier in K Section’s files that Pacek had graduated with highest honors from Moscow University; prior to that, he had studied engineering in Berlin. He had been awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner and, ironically, the American Medal of Merit after World War II. His animal appearance was deceptive. Behind the compact fortress of Pacek’s physique was a dangerous and brilliant mind.

“Come with me, Durell, and we will talk outside. It is perfectly safe.”

“Safe for whom?” Durell asked, aware of the man’s bland and patronizing air.

Pacek shrugged. “Shall we call a temporary truce? We understand each other.”

“Do we?”

“We can talk outside, please. The walls have ears.”

“You ought to know,” Durell said.

“I think we can talk business,” Pacek said. “We are both reasonable men. I respect you, Durell. We all know about you, and some of us fear you. I do not. But I respect your abilities as one of my most dangerous opponents. A matter of regret, naturally, that you continue to work so blindly for your imperialist masters.”

“Drop the propaganda,” Durell said. “Let’s not waste time.”

“My apologies. You are pressed for time, indeed. I know of Tuvanaphan’s ultimatum to you. It is so deplorable.”

Durell went down to the street with the man. He knew that Pacek would not risk the Swiss police interfering if he tried anything in the hotel. The evening was still pleasant. Pacek nodded toward the quays by the river, where a number of people strolled. It was not quite ten o’clock. Knowing the price put on his head by the KGU years ago, Durell’s senses were sharpened acutely and he wondered if the desire to eliminate him might lead Pacek to take the chance of breaking the rules here. He could not spot anyone behind them. He guessed that Pacek was armed, and even if he weren’t, there are ways of killing with a blow of a hand, a rolled-up newspaper, a needle deftly plunged into the body. He did not permit Pacek to walk too close to him. And Pacek, in his turn, took the usual routine precautions. They were enemies, but they were professional men who knew how to take advantage of every situation, and Durell was willing to play it by ear for the moment.

“We can talk here.” Pacek turned onto the nearest bridge across the Rhone. A cool wind swept up the river from the lake. “They have called you on an emergency basis, right?”

Durell said nothing.

“Have you located Jack Talbott yet?” Pacek asked.

“Surely you ought to know.”

“It is always very bad when one of your own team either turns private or turns sour,” Pacek murmured.

“So far I haven’t heard one scrap of evidence against Talbott,” Durell said.

“Oh, he stole the prince’s precious paintings, all right.” Pacek laughed. His small, brilliant eyes looked up at Durell’s lean height with amusement. “One must use the tools that come to hand, sometimes, but I am really surprised that your apparatus put such faith in a man as psychiatrically unstable as your Mr. Talbott.”

“What has Talbott told you?” Durell probed.

“Have I spoken to him? Did I say so? Ah, you think we have your man, eh?”

“It’s possible.”

“The prince is very annoyed with all Americans, at this moment. Naturally, we are pleased. Unless you deliver his paintings, he is petty enough to give the tin contracts to the State Ministry for Metallic Ores. The papers are ready for Tuvanaphan to sign. And he will sign them, Mr. Durell. A small victory for our side.”

“We have a little time to work with,” Durell pointed out. Pacek had not claimed to know where Talbott was. But even if he was bluffing, there was no way to verify it. Durell leaned lightly on the stone bridge parapet. The water below moved with a swift, dark rush from the lake and gurgled against the abutments. On the quays, auto lights made regular paths of bright illumination. Passersby on the bridge paid no attention to Pacek or himself. He stood ready for any move Pacek might make, his body loose and easy. He knew that Pacek could be quick and powerful. It could all be over in a matter of seconds with someone like this Czech.

He looked at the man’s square face. “I wish,” he said softly, “that I’d been in Amsterdam a couple of years ago.” “Oh, yes. You refer to Robert Langstrom.”

“Bobby was a friend of mine.”

“His death was one of the misfortunes of our private war, Durell.”

“It wasn’t necessary to kill him.”

“We thought it was. I am sorry he was your friend.”

“He was as close a friend as one can get in this business, Pacek. Now get to the point.”

Pacek’s steel tooth flashed when he smiled. “Have you decided to eliminate me, Durell?”

“Only if it seems useful.”

“I have made the same decision about you. So we understand each other. And I give you some gratuitous advice. We do not trust each other, naturally, and you may not accept my word. But I ask you, for your sake, since I admire you so much—one can respect an able opponent, no?—that you drop this entire matter. This particular gambit is already lost for you, Durell. We have Tuvanaphan in our hip pocket, as you say.”

“He’ll change his mind when I return the scrolls.”

“But you must find them first.”

“I’ll find them.”

“They may not be in Switzerland by now.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“And Talbott may be far away from here, too.”

Durell looked at the brilliant blue eyes. “Don’t you know for sure, Pacek? Don’t you have him?”

“You find it difficult to accept betrayal by one of your countrymen, is that it?”

“It’s easier to think that you took him, along with the scrolls, and framed the setup to prejudice Tuvanaphan in your favor.”

“Of course. It is natural for you to think so.”

“Is it true?” Durell asked bluntly.

He did not expect an answer, and Pacek was silent. His wide frog’s mouth was tight and hard for a moment as he stared down at the dark waters of the Rhone. A taxi went by and beeped its horn very lightly and Durell turned his head with care, not quite allowing Pacek out of his line of vision; he watched the cab out of sight. The few passersby on the bridge paid no attention to them. He did not see anyone loitering nearby, either.

It was to Pacek’s advantage to keep him guessing, yet Pacek wanted something from him. That was obvious. Some kind of deal might be arranged, Durell thought. In this business, you had to be practical and keep an open mind at all times.

He had Pacek’s dossier at his fingertips, and certain items flickered through his thoughts. Anton Pacek had been the mastermind behind the Druja affair in Yugoslavia, and Pacek had helped Billings and Connors to defect from Australia and the Woomera Base. The man was quick, cunning and dangerous, with the shrewdness of a peasant and the wit to survive against all opposition. A master of languages, Pacek’s English was beyond reproach.

He thought of Bobby Langstrom, who was careless just once, and who had died at Anton Pacek’s hands. He looked at the man’s hands now, square and stubby and powerful, resting on the concrete bridge balustrade. He looked away from them.

“I would like to suggest,” Pacek said quietly, “that we both try to be reasonable. Frankly, I am disturbed that you were called into this affair. We did not anticipate a man like you arriving on the scene. I have my orders, you understand. Failure cannot be tolerated. You pose a certain threat to me, Durell, and I respect you, as I said. So I would like to see you leave Geneva at once. It can be easy. I can arrange a false trail to take you to Paris, for example. You can stay there for three days. Failure for you does not bring the consequences that failure might mean for me.”

“I’d like to see your own people hang you,” Durell said. “Are you offering me a bribe?”

“Do you want money?”

“You know you couldn’t offer enough.”

“Of course.”

“Then is it a threat?”

“Only a suggestion. I will brook no interference. One must try to be impersonal, but in this case, I would take it as a deliberate effort, on your part, to destroy me, if you remain here to find Jack Talbott.”

“You’re giving things away.” Durell smiled. “There’s a chance I can find him, then. Apparently, this has more than ordinary importance for you, Pacek.”

“Yes. Certain matters—certain rivals in KGU headquarters—well, no matter. I have my own problems, as I am sure you have yours. We are both pragmatic men, and life can be good if one squeezes its juices hard.”

“I understand,” Durell said. “You’re due for the Sub-Ministerial post in VAJA, aren’t you?” VAJA was the topmost circle of elite in Pacek’s KGU in Prague. “The trouble is, Berentov has the job now, and he’ll cut your throat to keep you from knocking him off his perch.”

Pacek grinned slyly, his bright eyes all but disappearing in the crinkling folds of flesh. “Your information is surprising.”

“It’s accurate and up-to-date. If you slip now, you go down all the way. Is that why you’re so anxious to have a clear field here?”

“Durell, I do not want to have to kill you.”

Durell smiled. “You won’t.”

“I would make it my personal goal to do so, if you interfere with me here.”

“What are you afraid of, Pacek?”

“I am not frightened. I am simply determined to succeed here.”

“If you’ve killed Talbott. .

“I have not,” Pacek said bluntly.

“Is he alive?”

“I cannot say.”

“Are the scrolls in Geneva?”

“I cannot say that, either. I simply warn you. Go to Paris. Go anywhere. But do not stay in Geneva or you will regret it.” Durell had too much respect for Pacek’s intellect to accept what he said at face value. Yet he couldn’t probe the real reasons for Pacek’s remarks. He still could not tell if Pacek had snatched Talbott and the paintings, as Ellen wanted to believe. But all at once his intuitive feeling was that Pacek was as mystified as himself. It was to Pacek’s advantage, of course, to delay everything for three days and get Tuvanaphan’s signature on Czech contracts. But Pacek didn’t like to work in the dark, either.

Durell was suddenly convinced that Jack Talbott was not in Pacek’s hands. It was one of those hunches that flash through you occasionally and usually are best ignored. But Durell’s heritage as a gambler, derived from his old Grandpa Jonathan in Bayou Peche Rouge, could never deny instinct. He started to turn away, then looked back at Pacek.

“I think one of us will be killed before this is over, Major,” he said quietly. “It seems to me you’re worried more than you should be about this whole affair. You’re too anxious to keep me out of it.”

Pacek looked angry. “I intend to do just that.”

“Is that why you sent your man tailing me in the Old Quarter? I’ll give you a little help,” Durell said. He smiled dangerously. “Your boy was supposed to keep me from seeing Tuvanaphan tonight, wasn’t he? I’ll tell you where to find him, if you like. He was quite clumsy.”

“I do not know what—”

“You know what I’m talking about. I left him in a doorway off the Grand-Rue, near the Cathedral. You can pick him up there if you hurry—and if the police haven’t already grabbed him.”

Pacek looked dangerous. “I see. I wondered how you . . .”

He paused, then shrugged his square shoulders. “Very well, then. We understand each other.”

“Good night, Pacek,” Durell said.

He walked away.

chapter four

DURELL used a public telephone to get Si Hanson at the consulate. It was past ten o’clock now. Hanson sounded impatient. “I’ve been waiting for contact, Cajun. I’ve got a little bundle for you. Tried to get Ellen, but there’s no answer on her wire. Did you see her?”

“Yes. Where can we meet?”

“I’ll pick you up in my car. On the quay, right?”

“In ten minutes,” Durell said. He started to hang up, and Si said quickly, “Sam?”

“Yes?”

“Try Ellen’s place, will you? I don’t know why, but I’m worried about her quiet phone.”

“All right.”

While he waited for Hanson, he called the number of the Gallerie Chez Ellen. The phone rang and rang. He frowned, wondered where she had gone, or why she didn’t answer. He still felt a residue of uneasiness from his talk with Anton Pacek. He did not underestimate the man, but on the other hand, while Pacek’s private desperation was of no personal concern, it could be used to goad him into some act that might blow the whole thing onto the front pages. Pacek might decide it was to his advantage to publicize Tuvanaphan’s accusations against Talbott. Pacek’s attempt to establish a kind of confidential, professional liaison with him had to be regarded with utmost suspicion.

He walked from the bridge to the quay and Si Hanson showed up as promised, in nine minutes. He drove a French Floride, a small, bright convertible that stuck out like a sore thumb. Si pulled up to the curb and leaned over to open the door.

“Hop in, Sam. Welcome to ‘Smithville.’ ” It was the name usually given to neutral Switzerland. “Good to see you.”

“The same, Silas.” When the chunky FBI man started his car and turned purposefully back to the Old Quarter, Durell said, “Where are we heading?”

“Was there any answer at Ellen’s?”

“No.”

“We’ll stop there first.”

“I’d like to fan Talbott’s apartment as soon as possible,” Durell suggested.

“I’ve already done that. I’ll open the book on this thing, as long as we’re working together on it.” Hanson grinned. He had short-cropped white hair and a ruddy face that gave him a youthful look, a snapping vitality expressed in the crisp way he moved and talked. Durell was glad that Hanson was the FBI representative here. There were times when inter-departmental rivalries hampered a proper accommodation between K Section and the Bureau. But when the two outfits clicked, efficiency was stepped up tremendously. There wouldn’t be any trouble with Silas, he thought.

Hanson said, “At first it looked like a straight criminal complaint, Sam, involving an American abroad, and this dropped it in my lap. Talbott is our man. I know Pacek is in town. . .

“I’ve already had a cozy chat with him.”

“Have you? Well. I don’t think Pacek has our boy, but he probably wishes he did. Talbott did this little item all on his own, the sour son of a bitch.”

“Have you got a run-down on him?”

“Sure.” Hanson took pride in a photographic memory that permitted him to recite verbatim almost anything he’d ever read. “John Leverett Talbott, age 32, six-four and two-twenty, all beef, bone, muscles and brains. No pushover, Sam. Born in Sangerville, a crossroads burg in Mississippi; wrong side of the crossroads, however. His father, John, Sr., a tenant farmer fighting cotton shares. Mother a millinery clerk in the town, ran away a year after Jack was born. Jack did well in the local schools, though. Tried to marry the mill-owner’s daughter, got slapped down in soap-opera style, and went off to some jerkwater engineering college in Oklahoma. I’ve sent some cables Stateside to check on the frustrated love affair. Might have made him class-conscious in the wrong way, though you might not blame him.”

“We’U see,” Durell said.

“He played football, too. Big hero. But he never got over his across-the-tracks status. Bronze Star in Korea, a real killer with a rod. Didn’t make officer rank, and I haven’t found out why, yet. Pentagon hasn’t replied to that. But it makes a good picture of a man tempted to go wrong.”

“How did he get to Southeast Asia?”

“Took his discharge in Tokyo after Korea, did some black-market profiteering, drifted down to Taiwan and got kicked out of there on some importing scandal. Tried Hong Kong next, and the British ushered him aboard a ship that got him to Laos for a short time, working as a mercenary for one of the local princes.”

“For the Pathet Lao?”

“No, he was still with us, then. This was in ’59. There’s a rumor he picked up a native wife, an Annamese girl, but she’s disappeared. George Hagen is working that end, out there—he’s chief of the Bureau’s Southeast Asia department. Anyway, our boy turned up in Pnompenh as a buddy of Prince Tuvanaphan—probably met him at a cocktail party where the guests weren’t as carefully chosen as back home in Sangerville. Jack had heard about the abandoned tin mines —the French made a stab at working ’em back in ’34, but gave it up. Jack is a great organizer. He did exploratory work, got the mines opened again, and netted a fine source of revenue for our little prince. We thought Jack would sew up the deal for Noramco Tin after that; Tuvanaphan trusted him, liked having the big fellow around.”

Hanson sighed and took one hand from the steering wheel to scrub his brush of white hair. Then he reached into an inside pocket of his sport coat and flicked a photograph into Durell’s lap. “There’s a picture of our boy. Seen him before?”

“No. I’d remember, if I had.”

It was a face not easily forgotten, Durell thought. Talbott was huge, standing beside Ellen Armbridge in one of Geneva’s parks. He had tight curly blond hair, pale brows and a nose that had been broken several times. He was smiling, but even in the prosaic snapshot, you could see that his eyes were cold and remote. The face was tanned; the jaws showed muscular knots just under the earlobes, which were small and pressed close to the side of the man’s round skull. He had his arm around Ellen in a casually possessive way, and Ellen was laughing. Durell frowned a little.

“Who took this shot?”

“I did,” Silas said. “We’d had lunch together, and I thought - it might be an item for the file. I didn’t really expect trouble with him then, though . . . By the way, Sam, have you got a place to sleep?”

“I left my bag at the airport.”

“You can bunk with me, if you like.”

“If we get a chance.”

Durell returned the snapshot. He had absorbed it thoroughly, noting every point of identification; and he knew he would recognize Jack Talbott anywhere, any time, if he ran into the man. He said, “About Jack’s ambitions—were there any recent money troubles, such as in Tokyo or Taiwan?”

“None that I know of. I talked a bit with Jack these past two weeks while he handled the tin negotiations. We used to have an occasional drink together. For his size, he’s like a big cat. Hard as nails, very conscious of his physique, and really tough, but a quick and eager mind. Conscious of his background, too, and determined to make a pile of hay some fine day. Rather juvenile ambition of going home to Mississippi and driving around in a big-finned car to lord it over the local socials who rejected him when he was a kid.”

“But no specific money deals he mentioned?”

“He talked always in generalities, Sam, and that’s where the bitterness came out.”

“What about women?” Durell asked. “You suggest he stole the Dwan Scrolls only for money, but Talbott seems too smart to ruin everything for himself just for that. If all he wanted was money he could have just sold out to the other side. There has to be a reason why he took these particular works of art and not something simpler—more easily negotiable. Someone had to shove him off-balance enough to send him into this and Talbott wouldn’t have been shoved too readily by another man—but a woman . . .”

“There was Ellen.” Hanson’s voice changed. “She knew what she was doing when she fell for him, and I think this whole thing has socked her for a ten-count. Jack could bowl ’em all over with his smile and physique. He had other dates when he went down to Rome, though—Countess Apollio, for one. I don’t know if he was two-timing Ellen with her, or not.” “Do you think Ellen has been in touch with Talbott since last night?” Durell asked.

“Why not ask her?”

“I have. Now I’m asking you.”

“Look, she’s one of your people, not mine. I like Ellen. She’s a fine person. If it hadn’t been for Jack, I’d have made a play for her myself. You don’t find women like her every day of the year.” A touch of anger sharpened Si’s voice. “Don’t you trust your own personnel?” “I don’t trust anybody, Silas. I can’t afford it. Do you think Jack Talbott is still in Geneva?”

“I’ve got some men checking the airlines and bus and railroad terminals. His car is still garaged, so he didn’t drive out over the Alps to Italy or France. I’ve had to be gentle with this, Sam. We don’t want the Swiss cops to get into it.” “You sound sore about something,” Durell said.

“No, it’s nothing.”

“What is it?”

“Well, this deal started out as a straight criminal case under my jurisdiction and I don’t mind telling you I ache to get my hands on that bastard.”

“Because of Ellen?”

“I guess she comes into it, yes.”

“What else?”

“Well, there’s you,” Hanson said.

“It’s not just a criminal case now, Si. Are you sore because I’ve been put in charge?”

“Forget it. We’ll work together all right.”

“About Ellen . . .” Durell began.

“You don’t have to worry about her. She knows it was a mistake to get involved with a knothead like Talbott, and it’s water under the bridge. If she says she hasn’t heard from Jack since yesterday, it’s the truth. Oh, I know it ties together —Ellen’s cover as an art dealer would make it easy for him to dispose of the scrolls. Do you really believe she’s in it, Sam?” “I don’t want to believe it. But if Jack was such a lady-killer, there could be another woman involved—such as this Countess Francesca di Apollio.”

“The trouble with you fellows,” Si complained, “is you’ve got an inborn question mark about everybody and everything. You take nothing for granted. I don’t know how you live with yourself. I tell you, Ellen is clean. She may feel broken up about Jack, and all that. . .”

“So you think Talbott knows Ellen’s real job, Si?”

“I doubt it. Ellen is pretty careful.”

“That’s not good enough. It could mean trouble, if Jack and Pacek get together. I don’t think they’re together yet, though. But it’s in the cards that Pacek will break his back to take Talbott under his wing, just to delay and embarrass us. Do you figure it that way?”

“Sure,” Silas Hanson said. He frowned slightly. “But I’m wondering about another woman triggering Jack Talbott into this. It could be. Not Ellen, I’m sure, but I hear this

Francesca Apollio is a pretty hot number. Jack ran down to Rome occasionally and I put a routine dragline on him. He saw Francesca Apollio occasionally.” Silas grinned, but he looked less cherubic when he talked about Talbott. “I also fanned Jack’s apartment today. He took some clothes and his bank account is cleaned out, which indicates his boyhood trauma about money; even with half a million in old Chinese paintings, he couldn’t abandon a couple of thousand bucks. I checked the bank. He took the money himself, and he was alone. None of Pacek’s goons were holding a rod in his back. The concierge at his flat says he left about eleven p.m. last night with just one suitcase; he called a cab and vanished without a word to the concierge about when he’d be back.

So you can forget about Pacek starting this.”

“All right,” Durell said. “We’ll see Ellen and then start tracking him. Ellen gave me an address she found in his apartment—the Villa del Sol, belonging to Count Apollio. The count—or his wife—keeps coming into this.”

“I know the villa,” Hanson returned. “It’s about twenty kilometers up the lake.”

“Have you checked it out?”

“Not yet. I didn’t think . . .”

“We’ll look into it after I talk to Ellen again.”

Most of the tall, stone houses were dark, when Durell returned to the Rue Saint-Pierre. The university students had left the cafe and there were no more sounds of singing from the corner. Ellen’s windows were also dark, and Durell frowned slightly because he had not expected her to turn in until he checked back with her. He wondered why she hadn’t answered the phone, and a sense    of caution made him     ask Hanson to drive past the art shop without stopping, in order to park around the corner.

“What is it?” Silas asked.

“I’m not sure. It looks dirty to me.”

“The dead phone? No lights?”

“I think we’d better be careful.”

“Hell, Jack wouldn’t dare come here. And Pacek wouldn’t move that fast. And why against Ellen?”

“You never know.”

They got out of the Floride and walked back along the brick pavement under the dark shadows of the trees. The old houses slept while their neat doors gleamed with dark fresh paint, highlighted with brass knockers. Out of habit, the two men walked in silence and looked in each of the alcoved front doorways as well as below the grillwork fencing that led to an occasional basement door. The street was empty. Durell paused a short distance from the art shop window.

“There’s a light in the back,” he said.

A dim radiance seeped down from the stairs behind the shop, touching a few paintings on exhibit on studio easels. Brass and copper gleamed quietly on the shelves inside. Durell looked up and down the narrow, cobblestone street, aware of a cool breeze rustling the brown tree leaves. He still felt uneasy. There were several other shops on the ground floors of the houses nearby, one an antique place, the window cluttered with Swiss bric-a-brac, another a bookstore exhibiting European paperbacks aimed at the university trade. To the left, the little street lifted in a series of stone steps under archways and a Gothic public clock that abruptly bonged the hour of eleven. The deep notes reverberated in the silence.

He drew a deep breath. “Si, take two minutes, then pick your way in through the front shop door. Do it fast and make it quiet. I don’t think anybody’s waiting for you, but watch it, anyway. Don’t go upstairs. Go to the back of the shop and wait for me there. I’ll come in the back way, as I did before.”

Silas shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

Something in his tone halted Durell. “Si?”

Hanson turned and saw Durell standing in the shadows of the tree growing in its square of earth in the sidewalk. The light from the distant street lamp made Durell’s tall figure blend with the darkness, his dark suit invisible, but a stray highlight touched his hard jaw and reached up to the flat planes of his ruthless head and the thick black hair, streaked with gray at the temples. Another gleam of light touched his white shirt collar. His face and head seemed disembodied for a moment, his shadowed eyes implacable with the look of a hunter. A flicker of irrational fear crossed Silas Hanson’s gaze.

“Hanson, let’s get it straight now,” Durell said. “In this business, your life could depend on me in the next five minutes. Or it could be the other way around.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Hanson said uneasily.

“So you either obey orders, or get out.”

“Get out?”

“Right now.”

“Listen, Sam . . .”

“I’d rather do this alone than have you begrudge an order I give you.”

Hanson blew air out of his surprised mouth. Then he smiled suddenly and looked boyish again. “Right you are, Cajun. I understand now why they talk about you the way they do. I feel better. I’ll be glad to go along with you. You’re the boss.”

His tone was different this time.

A few moments later Durell let himself into Ellen’s house through the back alley door he had entered before. There was a small difference. The back door, opening into a small storage room behind the shop, stood two inches ajar in the night. He was careful going in, using all the rules to guard against surprise. But nothing happened. No one waited for him in the darkness beyond. He walked through the storeroom, using the faint radiance that seeped down the stairway, and saw Hanson standing in the rear of the shop itself. As Hanson looked up the pale gray-painted stairway, Durell took the gun from his pocket, nodded and went up first.

The door to Ellen’s apartment was at the landing on top of the first flight of stairs. It was closed. The steps continued on up to the third and fourth floors, and Hanson glanced up there, where blackness brooded. Durell shook his head; his sense of alarm had sharpened abruptly.

He framed his orders almost soundlessly. “Watch the steps going up. I’ll crack the inside.”

Hanson nodded.

The door wasn’t locked. Durell exerted pressure on the knob with his fingertips, dropped his left shoulder a little, and suddenly opened the door and went in fast, stepping close to the swinging panel. He could not be taken by surprise this way, and no one waiting just on the other side of the door could reach him.

But the precautions were unnecessary.

The living room he had visited only an hour ago was empty—and yet not empty. It was the same, and yet not the same. Something had come and gone here, leaving a sense of its presence. He stood very still. Light jumped ahead of him from the antique brass and parchment lamp that hung from its chain on the landing where Hanson watched. The light showed an upset Queen Anne chair, the rumpled Sarouk carpet, one Venetian blind torn from the back window and lying in a heap of spilled slats on the floor. Durell exhaled softly.

“Ellen?” he called.

He felt an aching need for some response, whether from friend or foe. The apartment which had been so serene only a short time ago told its own story in the overturned furniture, the crumpled rug, the smashed alabaster vase. Someone had shoved Ellen’s small, brass-handled mahogany desk with enough violence to crack the plaster in the wall. He saw blood, dark and glistening, on the white doorjamb to the bedroom. It looked as if someone, staggering, had clutched it for support. He sniffed the air. He could not smell anything. Another door led from the living room to the small kitchen in the back and the bath, done in white and gold. Beyond that was Ellen’s bedroom.

There was a sound from the doorway and he turned his head. Si Hanson looked very pale standing there.

“Is it Ellen?”

“I don’t know,” Durell said. “I think we’re alone.”

“Do you want me to look upstairs?”

“Yes.”

“Or maybe I’d better wait. . .”

“Go ahead, Silas.”

When Hanson went up the outer stairs, Durell moved down the short hall between the bathroom and kitchen to the bedroom door. It was slightly ajar. More blood had stained the white rug here. Hanson hadn’t seen it. There was a dark smear on the flowered wallpaper, as if a body had been hurled against the wall and had slumped, sweaty and bloody, to the floor. One of Ellen’s Parisian shoes lay on its side just within the doorway. On the bedroom threshold was her pale brown skirt, a torn and bloody feminine blouse, a small blue-steel .28 Colt with an ivory handle.

Durell picked up the gun. It hadn’t been fired. He remembered it, having seen Ellen with it three years ago.

He went into the bedroom.

chapter five

SHE WAS dying, but he did not touch her or try to help her. To touch her would be to kill her, and he did not want her dead, now or ever. But there was nothing he could do about it, because he had returned too late.

Her breathing made a soft, irregular susurration in the quiet bedroom. The walls here were painted a pale daffodil yellow, and a very good Corot hung over the antique Italian tester bed. She was not on the bed. She lay propped in the far corner of the room, half-sitting, her shoulders squeezed between the wall and an ivory French Provincial chest of drawers. One leg was doubled under her, and Durell thought it might be broken; but that was the least of her injuries.

She looked like a doll that some idiot had battered and broken in a frenzy of rage, and then thrown carelessly aside.

“Ellen?” he said gently.

Only her eyes were still alive. They had been fine and lovely and intelligent, reflecting her composed nature, and he remembered her quiet, somewhat self-conscious humor. Humor did not belong in his business, he thought.

“Ellen, are you listening?”

She was naked. Her clothing had been torn off and what remained of it was strewn in shreds around the room. There was blood on the bed, on the clothes, on her long tanned legs, on her stomach. A great many things had been done to her in a very short time, reducing what had been perfect and lovely to a splintered, ravaged mechanism that was dying with each gasping breath she took. He straightened and took a blanket from the prim-looking bed and put it over her, moving very carefully; but aside from that, he did nothing. There was nothing that could be done now.

A door closed quietly in the living room behind him. That would be Silas, looking, hunting, moving about. Durell kept his attention fixed on the girl.

“Ellen, honey, it’s very important. I know it hurts. I want you to talk to me, honey. Can you come back just a little? Can you try? Please, Ellen. Try to understand me.”

“Hello—-Sam,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry I got back too late. Tell me who did it, Ellen. Make it fast, if you can.”

She shook her head.

“Was it Pacek?” he asked.

“N-no. . . .”

“Jack Talbott?”

She nodded. The gesture was very fragile.

“Jack came back here? He’s been in Geneva all day? He has the scrolls?”

“Yes . .. yes. . . . I hurt, Sam. . . .”

Her voice trailed off. He did not press her for the moment. Everything in him rebelled at the sight of her, because of what had been done to her. The work of a maniac, an implacable brute. He wanted to shout at her, to make her tell him all about it, but he was afraid that if he raised his voice or even knelt closer to her, the fragile crystal of her life would suddenly shatter and she would be gone forever. He heard Silas Hanson come in and stand beside him. The FBI man sucked in his breath and began to swear in a thick, monotonous voice that was choked with hatred and shock. “Shut up, Silas,” Durell said.

“I can’t stand it. I can’t look at her, Sam.”

“Then don’t.” Durell’s voice was harsh. “Get on the phone to the Consulate and ask for our doctor to get over here, understand? Tell him to make it quick and quiet.”

“All right. I didn’t find anything upstairs. Was it Jack?” “Yes. There’s nothing here, is there, Ellen?”

Si went into the other room to the telephone. Ellen’s battered lips and bruised cheeks tried to smile. “Just. . . me. . ."

“You’ll be all right, Ellen.”

“No . . . you always were a . . . sweet Cajun . . . liar, Sam.”

“How long have you been here like this?”

“Half . . . hour . . . a lifetime . . .” She paused. She opened her eyes wide and looked straight at him with a startling and significant surge of vitality. “Sam?”

He tried to smile at her.

“Sam, I always . . . hated this business.” Her voice was stronger. “Did you—know that?”

“Yes, I suspected it.”

“Why did I—stay in it?”

“For the same reason any of us stay in, Ellen. Somebody has to do these jobs. We chose it, and we’re stuck with it.” “Wanted to . . . go home. . . . Wanted to . . . marry him.”

“We all want to go home, Ellen.”

“When—you home last, Sam?”

“I don’t know. Six or seven months ago. Do you think you can drink some brandy, honey?”

“No . . . he—my insides—”

“He wasn’t really a professional, was he?”

“Worse. . . . If it was . . . one of Pacek’s . . . be more merciful . . . I think.” Her mouth quavered. The broken lips began to bleed again, the blood running slowly, like her dying pulsebeat. Her eyes slid away from him; her lids

closed. “He walked in . . . like nothing had happened. . . . Wild. . . . Talked of big—plans, lots of—money. Said . . . tired of being government . . . errand boy . . . boot-boy for . . . Tuvanaphan.”

“Take it easy,” he said, alarmed by her surge of energy. She shook her head with mechanical slowness; her throat moved when she swallowed pain. “No. . . . I asked . . . why he still . . . Geneva . . . why he—he came to me. . . .” She shivered. “Sam, I—I was so . . . wrong. Knew all— about me. My job . . , K Section . . . He said I—I was . . . insurance.”

“Insurance?”

Her words came more haltingly, and Durell pieced it together to get a vivid picture of Jack Talbott walking in here, big and handsome and smiling, self-confident. Ellen had been surprised. She had tried to talk him into giving himself up, before Pacek or Durell caught up with him. He had bragged he wasn’t afraid of any man. He had started something and he was going to finish it. He didn’t give a damn what troubles he was making for the government. However, he said, he’d been double-crossed.

“Double-crossed?” Durell interrupted. “By whom?”

“Didn’t . . . say,” Ellen whispered. “Think . . . woman.” “Her name?”

She shook her head slowly. “Once I. . . trusted ..

“You loved him, you mean,” Durell said.

Her eyes closed. “Yes . . .”

“And he did this to you, himself?” Durell whispered.

“Yes .. ”

Si Hanson said thickly, “For God’s sake, Sam, do you have to sandbag her with it now?”

He did not look around. “Yes, I have to.”

“It’s damned inhuman.”

“That’s right. That’s it, exactly.”

Tears ran down the girl’s bruised face. Silas had not seen what was done to the rest of her, since Durell had covered her naked body with the blanket before the FBI man returned from searching the upper floors of the house. Silas had known Ellen better than he—as well as any of them knew each other—and Durell did not want Silas to remember the way she really looked now. He could count on Hanson to keep his head, because this was a thing they all knew; but Durell saw no point in making it worse for the other man.

Bad enough they had come back half an hour too late. Bad enough she was dying.

He was angry, but anger was a luxury he could not afford, and he put it aside deliberately. He was shaking, and he made himself draw a deep, steadying breath. He gestured slightly for Silas to stay with her and went out into the other rooms.

The doctor from the consulate would be here in a few minutes, but that wouldn’t help. He searched the house quickly, although he knew that Si was thorough. There was nothing here, no one but Ellen, and she would soon be gone. He preferred to remember her as she had been before; but he knew he would always think of her now as the bloody and discarded doll thrown in a broken heap in the corner of her room. And the worst of her torment was not physical, he thought. She was going out knowing she had failed.

He turned and walked back fast into the bedroom.

“Ellen!”

Silas turned, lifting himself from his kneeling position beside her, and said savagely, “Leave her alone!”

“Stand clear, Si. . . . Ellen, what did you mean—when Jack said you were his insurance?”

“Knows . . . you’re after him.” She whispered with her eyes closed. Durell watched her breathing falter, but he could not let her silence go on. He started to speak again, and she said abruptly, “Jack knew . . . my real work. . . . Hasn’t gone to— Pacek yet. But he will if you—if you try to—try to take him. . .

“What will he go to Pacek with?” Durell insisted. “The scrolls? They’re not all that important. That’s no insurance.” He saw a waxen pallor cross the girl’s face, and he stood over the dying girl with his face anguished. “What did Talbott get from you, Ellen? Why did he do this to you? What was it, honey?”

“I tried—my gun—and he beat me.” She shuddered violently. “Got the . .. 22 Form . . . for Fremont apparatus . . ."

"Fremont’s crew? How many?”

“I’m so—sorry. . ."

“How many?” he repeated harshly.

“Four men. . . . Names, covers, assignments . . . all in Middle Europe. . . .” The girl opened her eyes suddenly and looked fearfully at nothing at all. “Couldn’t help it . . . he hurt me . . . so much . . . like a wild man. . . .” Her voice trailed off and her words became a low muttering in her struggle to breathe. “Took my—gun . . . and my knife . . . and made me tell. . . . I’m sorry . . . sorry. . .

Durell straightened. The Fremont apparatus and the 22 Form was a courier operation involving four of the best men in K Section. He felt utter dismay. As operator of the message center in Geneva, Ellen had enough information to condemn each of the four people to sudden and ugly death. And now Jack Talbott had that information.

The telephone rang.

In the momentary silence, the soft sound of the bell shook the apartment like an explosion. Silas jumped, and was checked by Durell’s hand on his arm. Durell looked down at Ellen, then shrugged.

“Wait a moment.”

The phone rang again. And again.

“I’ll take it,” Durell said. “He wouldn’t be calling back here, after what he’s done to her.”

“It could be Pacek.”

The telephone rang once more.

Silas said, “I told my men checking the terminals that I’d be here if they found anything useful.”

Durell sighed. “Go ahead, then.”

Silas went into the living room and picked up the phone. His tension cleared at once and he spoke briefly, gave a curt order for two reservations on Flight 23 Swissair for Rome and Naples, and hung up. His scrub-brush of white hair gleamed in the pale apartment lights. Some of his color had come back.

“That was Daniels. Talbott just took the 2300 Swissair flight to Rome. His ticket went all the way through to Naples.” “Why didn’t your man stop him?”

“It was too late for that. I’ll call Zuccamella in Rome—he’s our man there now. We’ll get the sonofabitch.”

“Was Talbott’s luggage checked out?”

Silas nodded. “Yuh. Jack didn’t have the Dwan Scrolls with him. Just a briefcase.”

“All right, call Zuccamella.” Durell turned back to the bedroom. Ellen lay in her corner with her eyes closed. He knelt beside her, an agony of impatience in him.

“Ellen, why?” he asked harshly. “Why did Jack force the apparatus layout from you? Is he going over to Pacek?”

Her eyelids fluttered. “Don’t—know. . . . Said . . . it was insurance . . . so you wouldn’t kill him. . ."

“We’ll get him,” Silas said thickly. “Don’t worry, Ellen. I’ll kill him myself.”

“Save your breath,” Durell said quietly. He stood up. “She’s dead.”

chapter six

DURELL spoke thinly to Si. “Wait down in the shop for the consulate doctor. Don’t use any lights; don’t let any disturbance touch the street. If Pacek had a hand in this, he may call the cops to embarrass us. But we’ll assume we can keep it quiet.”

“But Ellen’s body . . .” Si protested.

“Use the doctor’s car. He can be discreet. Take her to the consulate. Arrange to have the medical certificate state that she died of an unsuspected coronary condition; the doctor will go along with it. Don’t do anything to make the Swiss police curious. Make the funeral quiet. Closed casket.” “Sam, she has a family in Illinois.”

“Notify them. But have the burial arrangements made quickly. She should be interred here. If her family wants her body back, the red tape will take a few weeks and by then there won’t be any further inquiries.”

“Sam, she was my friend. It seems pretty cold, what you propose. She was brutally murdered, tortured—”

“She was my friend, too.” Durell looked strained. “We’ll do something about it, Si. Now go wait for the doctor and brief him.”

“What will you be doing?”

“I’ve got to take this place apart—dismantle the whole apparatus—call Washington—burn everything.”

“Everything?”

“We can’t leave evidence for the Swiss cops to connect with K Section, Si. We’ll bum the house. Now get going.” Durell knew his way around the building from previous visits. On the fourth floor, under the steep slate roof, he found the short-wave radio and the yellow phone that was a direct line to a wholesale bric-a-brac dealer in Paris. The dealer would connect him with a modeling and couturier shop. There was no help for it. The Fremont apparatus had to be pulled apart and destroyed; its agents behind the Curtain had to be contacted by courier, on a crash program. No chances could be taken if Jack Talbott knew their covers and work assignments. They were all dead men, if Talbott talked to Anton Pacek.

He worked with an enormous feeling of time and opportunity eluding him, juggling the lives of four brave people who were doing a job that was risky enough, without the threat of treachery waiting to destroy them. The courier’s job would be dangerous, too. He might be sending the courier into a trap. But it had to be done.

His calls were brief, the service efficient. Then he yanked the yellow telephone off its wires and tossed it aside. Washington would be in a flap by morning. A red alert would turn No. 20 Annapolis Street upside down with urgency. Maybe four lives would be saved. Maybe.

Durell destroyed the radio, scattering its parts through the two upper floors of the house off the Rue Saint-Pierre. There were quiet voices downstairs in Ellen’s apartment, and then the sound of men descending to the art shop with an obvious burden between them. He looked down at the street from the attic window. A consulate car was parked there. He saw Si Hanson’s white brush of hair and another stoutish man; between them, they carried a blanketed bundle that was all that remained of Ellen.

Durell swallowed a taste of copper in his throat. When the car moved off down the dark, placid street, he set about his incendiary work. Every K Section safe-house had emergency provisions for swift destruction, and he knew the location of several of these incendiary devices. He set one on each of the two top floors, then went down to the shop below.

Si Hanson had returned, looking haunted.

“All set?”

Durell looked at the ceiling. “It’ll go up fast enough. The house won’t be gutted—but enough of it will burn to wipe out what has to be destroyed.”

There’s a plane for Rome at one o’clock,” Si began. “Shall we take it?”

“Yes. But first I want to look at Villa del Sol. Talbott was here two hours ago. Maybe that’s where he was hiding all day, with the scrolls.”

“Sam, about these agents of yours he can finger—if he throws in with Pacek . . .”

“Then they’re dead men,” Durell said flatly. “Let’s go.

The doctor can handle Ellen’s body all right, can’t he?” “I gave him instructions, yes.”

“Right. We haven’t time to be cagey here, Si. We’ll just go down the line with it—check out the villa that Jack knew about and maybe visited, and get back here in time for the Rome flight. We’ll play it by ear. If you get a chance, dig out a make on Count Apollio. I’m only trusting to my memory and the things I’ve read about him. Something new may have cropped up. He married that American girl, Francesca, not long ago, and we know Jack saw her in Rome, enough for Ellen to be jealous about it. But we’ll keep an open mind for now.”

He wished for a less conspicuous car than Si’s red Floride, but there was no help for it. Smoke began to curl into the shadowed art shop when they locked the front door behind them. The street was quiet. Durell told Si to drive, and they headed for the highway north of Geneva that twisted along the lake shore beyond the romantic pile of the Chateau d’If. Durell watched the mirror for a time, but he was sure they were in the clear.

“Nobody is tailing us,” Si said.

He nodded. “Pacek may have gone ahead, if he had a tap on Jack’s phone. Don’t underplay it. You can be sure Pacek had wires on Jack from the minute the negotiations with Tuvanaphan first began.”

Durell settled back and closed his eyes, but his mind was receptive, rejecting several patterns of thought that came to him. It was too soon for firm conclusions, but they had this one lead, and the knowledge that Talbott was just one jump ahead of them, flying to Rome. He felt better than an hour ago. With Si driving, his alert senses picked up the sound of the engine, the irregularities of the road, even the taut sigh of Hanson’s breathing. He knew he was strung too high for safety. He knew the men in the Fremont group, and he hoped they could be warned in time, but that was out of his hands now. His job was to get Talbott, to retrieve the stolen information, to keep the man from going over to Anton Pacek.

After fifteen minutes of steady driving, Si Hanson murmured, “We turn off here, Sam. This is it. It’s a well known place. The Count doesn’t use it much, though.”

Durell nodded and sat up. The road twisted up from the lake by a number of steep switch-backs, and after another minute Si braked and halted. A guard rail loomed against a sheer drop of several hundred feet to the moonlit water below. The wind soughed in the pines and sheltered them in deep shadow. Durell got out and closed the door soundlessly. Si snapped off the lights. It was 11:46. The night sang with the pressure of the towering Alps around them.

The road had been built for a series of elaborate villas here. Lights glowed a hundred yards above them on the next bend of the road. But the Swiss-style house just ahead squatted in total darkness behind a high cement wall. Si stood beside Durell, breathing quietly. The sound of an occasional car on the highway far below blended with the whisper of wind in the surrounding woods.

“The gates are probably wired—the Count is famous for demanding privacy, Sam. But nobody seems to be here now.” Si paused. “But somebody must have been here recently for Jack to have noted the telephone number. Do we both go in?”

“You cover the outside,” Durell said. “I’ll give it a quick sweep.”

They walked silently along the eight-foot wall, ducking under the low pine branches until Durell selected a spot in deep shadow. Then he jumped, caught the coping, hauled himself up, flattened on top of the wall, and dropped lightly inside the chalet grounds. Si Hanson followed a moment later. At a nod from Durell, Si settled down on watch from this vantage point within the estate.

The house perched with an air of emptiness on the steep lawn ahead. Durell turned left to the driveway inside the ornate iron gate where moonlight glimmered on scuff marks, indicating that a car had been driven on the grounds at least within the last day or two. Crickets sang in the shrubbery. Shadows brooded under the wide Swiss eaves, but the moonlight that shone through the pines was too bright to please him.

The place looked clean. He circled the house, his footsteps soundless. A series of stone steps led up the embankment behind the garage. The chalet boasted the usual Swiss scrollwork under the eaves, and a porch on the second floor overlooked the lake. Lights gleamed from the boats down there, and the other villas nearby scattered yellow gleamings along the shore to accent the dark loom of the mountains.

A painted coat of arms was carved over the rear door that opened into the second level from the back of the house. The moonlight traced a Bourbon lily below three prancing goats that cavorted in a wooden frieze against a symbolic golden sun. Durell considered the steps going up and away from the back door. Nothing moved up there, except the thick sweeps of the pine branches.

Count Bernardo Apollio was something of a legend in modern Italian society; a nobleman of taste and wealth and Norman ancestry dating back to the Crusades. Durell had seen his picture in the Rome society papers—a narrow, handsome face with pale yellow or gray hair. The face had impressed him as being haughty, with anger in the dark eyes directed at the impudent photographer. Count Apollio was an anachronism in this modem world, Durell thought, living in the past and resenting the tides of unrest that rocked the globe these days.

Only two minutes had passed since he left Si Hanson. He turned from the back door, curious about the stone steps here, and mounted the hillside above the chalet. A wooden rail curved beside a road that also approached the chalet from above, and a glint of metal shone from a small Opel sedan parked just above the rear ornate gateway.

He stood still, shocked that he had almost walked straight into the car. No one seemed to be in it; but he watched it patiently for several long breaths, eliminating the shadows that moved in the pines behind it. Then he walked quietly forward and put his hand on the hood. The metal was warm. The car had arrived on this back access road only a few minutes ago.

He opened the driver’s door and looked in. There was a pungent odor of cigar smoke. A man had come here. And was still here. He sought for the scent of a woman in the car, too, but there was nothing to show that the man wasn’t alone. A sticker on the windshield showed that the Opel was from a Geneva auto rental agency. Durell withdrew and turned his head to consider the chalet.

He was on an eye-level with the roof from this point and could look down into the rear windows. It let him glimpse a faint light that flickered and went out in one of the back rooms. It came from a small flash probing the floor in there, and it would have been invisible from the ground level.

Durell turned and circled the chalet, drifting like a shadow under the pines. At the gate he checked the bolts and then followed the wall inside the grounds until he silently approached Si Hanson, watching the house from the darkness under a huge pine near the driveway. Durell touched him and

Si jumped and turned with appalling speed, his arm starting a karati blow. Durell was faster, checking him with a grip on his wrist. He whispered quickly, “Take it easy.”

The FBI man grunted. “You were asking for a broken neck, friend.” He wrung his wrist slightly. “Find anything?” “Somebody beat us inside. An Opel is parked on the back service road. One man, I think. Smokes Italian stogies.”

“Count Apollio? He owns the joint.”

“Apollio wouldn’t " smoke those cigars. And he wouldn’t sneak in and search his own bedrooms. I don’t think it’s Jack Talbott, either. Stay here a bit longer and cover me, Si.” Hanson started to protest, then shrugged. Durell returned to the chalet, circling the immaculate flower beds, and tried the rear door. It was not locked, and there were no signs that it had been forced. So the man inside had a key. He paused, orienting himself in the darkness. Waiting, he heard a soft footstep above, presumably from the same bedroom where the light had flickered briefly.

He crossed the tiled kitchen that gleamed with Swiss brass and ceramics around a copper-hooded stove. A carved set of stairs led up from the large living room, furnished with Italian provincial, decorated with the white tactile shine of marble busts and a stone fireplace. The air smelled of lemon oil. Durell halted on the gallery at the head of the stairs. Silence and darkness brooded around him.

A hall led to the back rooms. There was an open door to the left, another large bedroom behind him that took up the entire front of the chalet, with a magnificent view of the moonlight on Lake Geneva. His nerves tightened. He could smell the other man here—an odor compounded of sweat and cigar smoke.

He was about to start forward when the door at the back of the hall burst open and the man charged out. He was not surprised, but the ferocity and strength of the other’s rush, after the brooding quiet, was almost too much. He tried to ride the impact as the man crashed into him. He stepped back and took the weight on his hip and thigh. His foot slipped slightly on the waxed floor, and the fine adjustment of balance needed to make the man’s momentum work against him was lost. He felt an instant of shock. The other grunted, lurched to the head of the stairs. He was not a professional, Durell thought or this moment of off-balance might have been disastrous. Instead of following it up, the stranger tried to escape while Durell was still on his feet.

But he did not anticipate the knife.

The man whirled at the head of the steps, and Durell glimpsed a square, coarse face twisted with rage. The heavy brows were arched, the eyes wild. The knife ripped up with a gutting motion. Durell jumped back, not wanting to use his gun because of the questions he had to ask.

“Put the knife away,” he said softly in Italian. “I am not from the police.”

The man’s breath hissed. The knife swept up again as he crouched, stocky legs flexed, an inexorable menace in his squat body. Then he suddenly threw the knife with a quick, underhand motion that came from long practice. Durell jumped and felt the blade flick at his coat sleeve. The man plunged downstairs, running fast, his short legs driving him toward the front door.

Durell leaped after him, but the loss of a moment to avoid the knife gave the other man a long lead. He darted out the back door, started toward the parked Opel, thought better of it, and plunged into the pine woods. He was quick and silent. Durell deliberately made his pursuit noisy, to alert Si Hanson.

He wanted to capture this man. They might get some answers, and they needed answers because there was nothing else to go on except the word that Jack Talbott had boarded a plane for Rome. He moved quickly, descending under the pines with the chalet at his left. He did not see Hanson. He took his gun out and held it ready, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

An owl mourned somewhere in the woods. The crickets were silent. Traffic hissed on the highway far below, beside the lake. But it seemed a long way back to civilization.

The man was about forty feet ahead, moving along the edge of the lawn where the shrubbery offered concealment. Durell was careful. An amateur could be more dangerous, in some respects, than someone in the business. There was need for quiet, too. It wouldn’t do to interest the Swiss police.

He had left Silas at a point where the FBI man could watch the front of the big chalet. The fugitive had stopped in the shadows near the iron gate. Durell stepped into plain sight. He did not think his quarry was armed now, after throwing the knife. And he wanted Silas to know where he was.

It turned out to be unnecessary. A thud came from the dark slope, and he ran across the lawn, watching the shrubbery thrash in violence. Then the bushes were still.

“Si?”

The FBI man rose from the shadows, his hands open, fingers splayed wide. “Got him, Cajun. A tough old bastard.” “Let’s have a look at him.”

“How come he got away from you?” There was the faintest rebuke in Si’s voice. “He’s not all that mean.”

“I wanted to give you the pleasure,” Durell said.

There was tension in Hanson, an aftermath of the shock from Ellen’s death. Durell knelt beside the man sprawled on the fine sod under the shrubbery.

He was about forty, heavily muscled, with a weathered face and thick black hair peppered with gray. The man’s blue suit was cheap; his dark shirt and flowered necktie went with the coarse face. He lay on his side, one leg doubled, his mouth open, eyes partly closed. The whites glittered blankly. Durell felt for his pulse.

“I don’t like the way he’s breathing, Si. What did you do to him?”

“I didn’t want him to get away.”

“You hit him pretty hard. Was it in the throat?”

“You wanted it quick and quiet, didn’t you?”

Durell lifted the man’s hands. The fingers were calloused and stubby and dirty. There were rope marks on the homy palms. He sniffed at the fingernails.

“He’s a fisherman. You can smell the fish.”

“Let’s see if he has any papers,” Si suggested.

Just then the man made a strangling sound and shuddered in reflex. Durell flipped open the cheap suit and found a worn wallet and a passport. The passport was Italian, unused except for a recent entry and departure stamp from the French border and an entry date into Switzerland for yesterday.

“Bruno Bellaria,” he read. “From Isola Filibano.”

“That doesn’t tell us much.”

“Isola Filibano is Count Apollio’s private domain, Si. An island. Filibano is his, and so is this chalet. He only uses this house in winter, but the island has belonged to the Apollio clan for a thousand years. There’s a fishing village on it, and I’d bet this man came from there. It fits, doesn’t it?” “It’s beginning to look easy,” Si Hanson said.

“Too easy. I don’t like it.”

There was an unsealed envelope in an inner coat pocket, containing about thirty thousand lira in crisp notes, presumably the man’s traveling expenses. There was no letter

inside, no other papers. But the imprint on the envelope was that of the Hotel Sentissi, on the Via Partenope, 142, Naples. Durell returned the money and envelope and passport, careful to leave no fingerprints on anything.

“See if you can bring him to, Si. I think friend Bruno is on his way out.”

“Hell, I didn’t hit him that hard,” Silas protested.

“Some men aren’t as strong as they look. He’s going into shock. I’ll dust the house again, meanwhile.”

“Maybe the Dwan Scrolls are there,” Si said hopefully.

“It never comes that easily.”

He re-entered the chalet by the rear door. His examination of the lower floor was swift and expert. There was no sign of the stolen paintings, and only a few points to indicate the chalet had recently been occupied. A woman had lived here for a day or two, he guessed. The count’s wife? Had Jack visited here for a few clandestine nights of love? He went upstairs and checked the big front bedroom. The huge, four-poster bed was stripped and unused. He moved down the hall to where Bruno Bellaria had been searching the back bedroom.

It was small and feminine, yet touched by a mood of austerity. White curtains gleamed at the windows. There was a tester bed in ivory and gold with the Apollio sun crest carved on the headboard, a dainty carpet, a small tiled bath. The gilded closet doors stood open. Inside there were only two simple cotton frocks on padded hangers, with labels from D’Ingredi of Roma. The dresses were size twelves, he judged. A faint scent of soap and violet sachets touched him. He searched the floor, because Bruno Bellaria had been shining his flashlight here when Durell first spotted him from the back road. But he found nothing.

He straightened, pinched his nostrils, frowned in the scented darkness of the bedroom. On one wall was an oil portrait that had to be that of the Contessa d’Apollio. He considered it carefully for a long minute, absorbing the dark hair that fell thickly to shoulder length. She had a Modigliani throat, long and pale; a rather wide mouth; pale greenish eyes. The nose was prim, the eyes were wanton. She looked young—in her twenties—but the eyes were older. It would be interesting to check cut the Countess Francesca. She was supposed to be an American, half the count’s age. The portrait, a half-figure, indicated firm breasts, a slender waist, a hint of ripe hips. He thought of Jack Talbott meeting this woman in Rome, moving in the rarified social strata of Italian society with her. It didn’t jell. From what he knew of Jack, the man was rough, an adventurer, self-tutored in social grace. This woman looked elegant and refined, the wife of one of the richest men in Italy. Had Jack actually met her here in this isolated chalet the last two nights? And where was she now? And why was Bruno Bellaria, who could be employed by Apollio, searching the place? Had he been sent by a jealous husband to check on an errant wife?

Durell shrugged. The answers would come, sooner or later. He checked the bathroom routinely, considered the gilded tub with swan’s heads for legs, the tall Venetian mirror, the scent of perfume. He ran his finger around the marble wash basin. A drop of water clung to his fingertip. A long, dark woman’s hair was also in the basin.

The Dwan Scrolls were not in the chalet. He spent a total of ten minutes inside, then left the house for the last time, walking quickly. Si Hanson and the Italian were still where he had left them on the lawn.

But there was a small difference.

In the ten minutes he was gone, Bruno Bellaria had died.

chapter seven

IT WAS a maxim in Durell’s line of work that it was always better to keep things quiet and detached from local police interference. Silence was essential. You could not afford to lose time, and publicity could mean a disastrous delay. No delay was permitted here, although the dead man spelled all these things, and more. He looked at Si Hanson.

“What happened?”

“He suddenly choked and died.”

“You ruptured his throat?”

“I guess so. Maybe I did hit him too hard.” Si scrubbed his short white hair. His face was blank, offering no plea or apology. His pale eyes were hard. “It’s too bad.”

Death was always at your elbow, Durell thought. He did not know Bruno Bellaria. But he would have felt better if the dead man was in the profession, knowing the risks and accepting them. He was sure that Bruno had been an amateur, perhaps not even aware of the enormity of what he had stumbled into so briefly. He’d been a fisherman accustomed to the sun and sea, probably poor, perhaps with a stout wife and six children in a stone hut by the beach where he dried his nets. His wants would be simple—red wine, pasta, a card game with friends as rough and earthy as himself. But he lay inert now, the sun and the sea gone forever, the taste of wine souring in his broken throat, on a Swiss mountainside under an autumn moon.

“He could have told us a lot,” Durell said.

“Maybe. I didn’t intend to kill him, Sam. I was thinking of poor Ellen, and maybe I hit him too hard, that’s all.”

The object of the dead man’s visit here would have to be learned somewhere else. Durell looked at his watch. It was 12:05. At one o’clock, he and Hanson were due to board the Rome plane, after Jack Talbott.

He had the feeling this was a dead end, and there was not enough time to nail things down in Switzerland. He felt the pressure to go on with the hunt. And he had something to work with, now. He had Count Apollio, the wife with the sexy eyes, and Jack Talbott. They formed a pattern, of sorts. He wondered how much of the pattern was known to Anton Pacek. There was no sign that Pacek had been here. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. The problem was to find Talbott before Pacek made a deal with him. Talbott had a club to use, however, in the stolen information about the Fremont apparatus; it would have to be handled delicately. The man was dangerous, in more ways than one. “Sam?” Silas Hanson said. “I’m really sorry, Sam.”

“For this man?”

“Well, yes. He could have told us what he was doing here, as you say. I guess I’m off to a pretty bad start.”

“It’s just one of those things,” Durell said.

“You can throw me out of it, and I’d understand. But listen, I guess I loved Ellen. Tomorrow I’m going to have a hard time believing she’s dead—and it’s a nightmare to think of how she died. Let me go on with it. I want Jack Talbott. I promise I won’t do anything without your okay. But I want him. One way or another, I’ve got to get him.”

“You can’t let personal feelings push you around in this, Silas.”

“I know. I’ll be careful. I know about the racket. If you don’t crack up with busted nerves and end up sitting in a corner crying like a baby, you get a knife in the gut or get shoved from a subway platform or you just disappear into Siberia having the personality brainwashed out of you. I’ve been trying not to think too much about Ellen, but I let go when this Bruno Bellaria came charging at me. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Forget it. I think we’re still in the clear, if we get this cleaned up.”

They worked swiftly. Durell carried the dead man up the hill to the access road above the chalet. Si Hanson removed all traces of the brief, lethal struggle in the shrubbery. Durell put the dead man in the parked Opel and Si joined him there.

“Follow me and pick me up when I ditch this,” Durell said.

He drove the rented car carefully down to the highway. Si followed in his red Florida. Traffic had slackened somewhat, but there were still occasional lights in the villas on the lake shore, and a few boats still moved out on the placid water. He turned toward Geneva, although he would have preferred a more remote spot; but time pressed him, and when he found a side lane that led to the water’s edge, he turned into it, driving between thickly fenced shrubbery. At the end of the lane there was a drop of about thirty feet into the lake. The nearest house was a hundred yards to the west, and it was dark. If anybody occupied it, Durell hoped they were sound sleepers.

It did not take long to set the Opel on the slope, start it, and jump out. The car smashed through the rustic barrier at the end of the lane and hung there for a heart-stopping moment. Then it fell, with its burden of the dead Bruno Bellaria behind the wheel. The noise seemed enormous, and heavy waves battered the shore. Durell stood at the broken fence and saw that a swimming float had been struck by the plunging car and was dragged halfway under the surface by its mooring chain. It was too bad, because it meant that the car and Bruno would be found in the morning; but it couldn’t be helped.

He walked back to Si. “It’s a good thing we’ll be in Rome in a couple of hours.”

“Zuccamella is a good man,” Hanson said. “He’ll nail Jack at Fiumicino Airport. It ought to be simple.”

“I’m glad you find it simple,” Durell said. “But Jack doesn’t have the scrolls with him, remember? He hid them somewhere; or else, if we accept what Ellen said before she died, he was double-crossed and somebody else has the paintings and Jack is off on a private vendetta of his own. He took a big step when he swiped Tuvanaphan’s property. He can’t ever go back to his old life. And he knows we’re after him now. He’s not a fool. He got a hammer-lock on us with the stuff he forced Ellen to give him. So we can’t just walk up to him and collar him.”

“Why not?”

“Suppose he’s arranged to get the Fremont stuff to Pacek if we nail him?”

Si looked pale. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“We’ll have to walk lightly,” Durell said. “And don’t forget we’re dealing with the cream of Italian society in Count Apollio. So we’ll play it by ear as we go. Let’s get to the airport first.”

“About the Countess Francesca . . .”

“We’ll have a little talk with her,” Durell said grimly. “Sooner or later.”

chapter eight

FRANCESCA awoke with a memory of fear and confusion. The persistent sunlight shining in her eyes annoyed her. Cesare’s naked arm was heavy where he had flung it across her breast in his sleep. She sighed and closed her eyes again and listened to his breathing in the bed beside her, and she smiled, remembering the heat of their reunion last night. It had only been four days, yet he behaved as if she’d been away a year. Once his jealousy of Jack Talbott had been put to rest, everything was all right. Wonderful, in fact.

She turned gently and looked at his narrow face and harsh mouth. She could never study him without feeling a little fear, and yet she loved his cruelty, as she loved everything about him. Really, he belonged in the Borgia times, in Firenze, with his fine aristocratic nose and short, curly black hair and conspiratorial eyes. Not to mention, she thought with an inward smile, his total lack of morals.

Well, she was no better. And she felt a dangerous luxury in admitting it. But then, everything was dangerous—being here with Cesare, and what they had done together. It was the zenith of cruelty, in a way. She was as cruel as Cesare, or would be judged so, if everything came to light too soon. They had taken steps that could never be retraced, but she didn’t care. It was done, and she was happy. Soon the old life would be over forever.

She slid carefully out of bed and stood naked beside Cesare in the hot, sunny hotel room. It was ten o’clock in the morning. From below the open windows, she heard the sea crash on the rocks below Montecapolli, not far from Sorrento. The Monte-capolli-Imperiale was quiet, except for someone shouting on the tennis court. From the windows she could see across the misty bay to the dim cone shape of Vesuvius, and beyond, partly smothered by more smog and mist, the vague complex of Naples. Nearer at hand, the sea was so intensely blue that it hurt her eyes.

It was really too hot to bear it, Fran thought, and she moved languidly to the bath, her body pale and soft except where the sun had touched her face and arms. Cesare still sprawled on the tangled bedsheets. He didn’t really know her at all. He thought he was playing a monstrous joke on Bernardo Apollio, taking her this way. Some day she might tell him the truth. But not now. It all depended.

The water pressure at the Montecapolli-Imperiale was irregular, and everything was tepid, overheated by the September sun. She showered with voluptuous pleasure, as if she could rinse away the occasional terrors she had felt yesterday. Talbott could never find her now, she thought. He’d be angry, because she had made a fool of him, but Cesare could take care of things from this point onward.

From the bath window she could look straight down the cliffside to the terrace where people were breakfasting. American tourists, she thought. When they watched her pass yesterday, with her Rome coiffure and haughty carriage, moving as Bernardo had taught her to move, they never dreamed she had once been plain Frannie Smith, slinging hash at Joe’s Diner in Oscalum, Missouri.

To the left of the terrace was the beach where the local fishermen drew up their red and green boats among the delicately hulled yachts moored there. Their long fish nets were spread over the black sand. Most of the tourists here were still asleep—the Americans, whom she hated because they reminded her of what she had been; the noisy Germans; the tidy Swiss; and the careful French. She looked farther out across the vaporous Bay of Sorrento to the dim mountains of the Amalfi Drive, indistinct in the morning haze, and then to her right to Naples, an hour’s drive away along the mainland autostrada.

When she returned to the bedroom, she knew Cesare was awake, although his eyes were closed. She was sensitive to his breathing, as she was intimate with everything about him. His naked, muscular body was like an antique statue, awakening lively and abandoned things in her. She let the sea wind dry her skin as she stood before the mirror at the foot of the bed. Cesare was watching, and this was exciting, too. She ran her hands across her breasts and down her hips and thighs, satisfied with her reflection, satisfied that he couldn’t complain. . . .

“Frannie Smith . . .”

His drowsy voice shattered her mood as if the glass had been smashed. “Don’t call me that!” she said in anger.

“Cara . . .” He smiled lazily.

Her Italian was Rome-accented. “I’m Francesca Lucchesi di Apollio,” she snapped. “Do I look like a Fran Smith?”

“Certainly not.”

“Look at me!” she shouted. “Do I look like her?”

“I can see you. And hear you.” His drawl was lazy. “And you sound like her, no? Come here, cara.”

“Call me by my right name, first.”

He sighed. “Francesca.”

“Again!”

“Francesca, I love you. What time is it?”

She pouted. “A little after ten.” Her black hair was piled exotically on top of her small, finely shaped head. She had powdered her body after the shower and put on violet eye makeup and splashed her rich and musky perfume all over herself. Cesare favored it. She felt him study her and she shivered, as if he had caressed her.

He saw the shiver and laughed. “You slept well?”

She relented and smiled. “Thanks to you, darling.”

“You have a terribly autocratic temper, countess. One learns all the bad things first, like the naughty words of a new language, eh? First the tantrums of the nobility, then—perhaps —the genuine traits of a lady. Come here.”

She knew what he wanted and she knew she would yield, but she held back, sulking. “It’s late. I must go back, darling.” Abruptly his eyes darkened and he pushed his long, muscular legs out of bed. “That’s enough, Fran. Never tell me what to do. You accomplished the job in Geneva very well. You made a fool of that Talbott—although I wonder how far you had to go . . .”

“Far enough,” she said sulkily. “I hate him. I’m afraid of that man.”

“He is confused by now, perhaps in the hands of the Americans.” Cesare laughed harshly. “Charged with theft, yet without the goods, eh? A pretty mess for them.” He moved to her across the sunny hotel room and held her; his skin felt rough. “You must understand that every word is important now—too important for jealousy or tantrums. You must do everything I say, without question, without argument, you see?”

“Darling, let’s not quarrel.”

“I do not quarrel. You obey me. Is that clear?”

“Yes. You’re hurting me, Cesare.”

“But you were not so afraid of Talbott that you did not enjoy some part of the affair, you bitch,” he said softly. He smiled. “You are basically a whore, Frannie Smith.”

He slapped her hard as he held her, nude, against him. Her head snapped back with shocking pain. At the same moment he released her and her naked foot slipped on the tiled floor. She stumbled against the mirror. The glass felt cold and hard against her naked body. Her eyes reflected astonishment.

“Why, you no-good . . .” she began in English.

“Ah-ah.” He laughed. “Frannie Smith again?”

“Listen, you bum, nobody slaps me around.”

“Back in that—what did you call it—that hash house, eh?” He pinned her painfully to the mirror. “It does not take much to remove the veneer that Count Apollio so carefully applied, trying to make you a lady, does it?”

She moaned. “Oh, you’re no good, Cesare, you’re a son of a bitch—”

“And you are really a common little tramp, right?”

She steadied herself with a deep breath. Even this was exciting, and she forced her anger aside and spoke quietly.

“Why did you do that, Cesare?”

“Good. This voice is better. You were supposed to waken me at nine o’clock sharp, cara.”

“Yes, but you were sleeping so peacefully.” She faltered, afraid of him, yet drawn to his harsh physical presence. “I didn’t have the heart to disturb you, honey.”

“You are a fool. I told you, every detail is of importance now. You tell me everything went all right in Geneva. But my brother Bruno has not telephoned yet, has he?”

“Not yet. Please let go of me, Cesare.”

He released her, his dark eyes smoldering. “You think Bruno is an old, simple-minded fool, a stupid fisherman? Ah, but he taught me the meaning of hatred, the continuity of enmity through the generations. A genius of hatred, that is Bruno. It kept him alive through some bad times, you see.”

“Yes, he taught you well, you, the baby brother. And he made you evil, too, a real bad one, Cesare.”

“You say this because I took you from your husband?” He smiled crookedly. “And what kind of husband is Apollio to you?”

“You know what he is.”

“Yes, a cipher of a man. And Bruno did it to him. And I thank Bruno for it.” His dark eyes were bleak and brooding. “And you, Francesca, my naked one? I am your husband’s sworn blood enemy, part of a vendetta between our families that goes back two hundred years. But you share my bed, betray your husband with his worst enemy. How cruel and evil can woman be?”

She frowned. “But it’s not my feud, Cesare.”

“You married it. And the blood that spills should concern you.”

“You’re not going to kill him,” she said quickly.

“No,” Cesare said. He let her go. “But I have you, his wife. And next to that, what is most dear to him? His honor, of course, the honor of Apollio. And I shall destroy that, cara.” His tone became brisk. “And now get dressed. There is much to be done today, and thanks to you, I am late already.”

She stood on the balcony over the bright blue sea while he showered, and fear coiled in her again. Frannie Smith, she thought bitterly—the Contessa di Apollio. She had come down a long and hazardous road, and she owed nothing to anyone. She knew what it was to fight and claw for a decent meal, for a room of her own away from the drab Missouri farm she knew as a girl. She had used men as rungs in a ladder to work her way up, driven by a demon to better herself. In the process, she had educated herself. Between the intervals of men, she taught herself how to talk and walk. It had been ludicrous, of course. She made many mistakes. But step by step, she overcame them. The men were useful—the young and the old, the fat and the lean, the lusty and the variants.

She began by slinging hash in the diner, taught herself a tap routine, and left with the first flash act she could find. St. Louis led to Chicago, then New York. She was never a good dancer; but she made up for it with her body, with the art of love that she learned as she went from man to man.

Cesare was right. She was a bitch, a whore. It had been easy, because men came naturally to her and she enjoyed them all.

But money, big money, the hot and driving core of her ambition, escaped her until she got to Europe, when Johnny Scarpa organized the flash act to tour Morocco and Marseilles. She was still Frannie Smith then. But she recognized opportunity when that private act aboard Apollio’s yacht was ordered. Instinct told her at once all about the count. She had accepted his invitation to remain as his guest aboard the yacht. Why not? One man was not that much different from another.

But Bernardo Apollio was different. Handsome, elegant, refined to the point where he was suspect in Frannie Smith’s eyes. She was aware from the beginning that there would be an “arrangement.” He wanted a wife, but he would have none of the society women he knew, and he did not explain why. He wanted someone unknown, unrelated to his past. It was a deal—especially when she learned he was one of the richest men in Italy.

His eyes held a grave sadness that she hadn’t understood then. He was like a sleekly bred greyhound, soft-spoken, inordinately proud. His friends were few. Mostly, he lived like a hermit in his island palazzo on Isola Filibano, occasionally visiting the villa here at Montecapolli or the chalet in Switzerland. He pointed out that she would be bored. She did not believe it. Not with all that money. But it was true.

And he never slept with her.

She had never seen him naked, nor did he ever make any advances. A cipher, Cesare called him. A nothing as a man.

He taught her to be gracious, coached her in Italian, in the manners suitable to a countess. She had a native wit that helped her grasp the outward forms easily, and he was pleased with her. But they never made love together.

Nor did he ever settle any money on her.

She had to ask for every lira she wanted. He never refused. But there was nothing left over for a private nest-egg. So the money wasn’t enough. Not without a man to go with it.

Well, Cesare was a man, certainly. And if all went well, she’d have the money, too. Little Frannie Smith would have everything she’d ever wanted.

Her face still smarted where he had slapped her. She turned quickly when he came out of the bath, wearing gray slacks and a white shirt open at his bronzed throat.

“You will go to Naples at once, cara,” he said abruptly. “I have been thinking about Bruno. He can take care of himself, but he has not returned, and you must go to the Hotel Sentissi for me. You can use my car.”

“Alone?”

“Of course, alone. I am due at the monastery. For two weeks, the local people set their watches by my coming and going to scratch the dust off their old relics; and this morning, of all times, you have made me late.”

The thought of Naples on this hot day was depressing. She said petulantly, “Surely the frescoes can wait. You can come with me.”

“And the Dwan Scrolls? Everything else is ready.”

“Cesare, will we really get a lot of money for them?”

“Yes.”

“And we’ll be rich, you and I?”

He smiled and said, “Very rich.” He touched her cheek with his rough fingertip. “Now be a good girl and obey me. I am worried about Bruno. You are sure he mailed the scrolls to himself at the Sentissi?”

“I was with him at the General Post Office in Geneva. After Talbott handed them to me at the villa, I went with Bruno and we mailed them. It went well, except that he forgot the receipt, as I told you, and left it in the villa somewhere. So I went ahead to the border and he went to the chalet to hunt for it. We didn’t want to leave anything useful for the Americans.”

“How could he have forgotten it?”

“He was excited, I guess. I told him to hide it in his shoe, but he put it on a table in the bedroom. We went off without it and he had to go back, that’s all. He’ll turn up.”

Cesare frowned. “Well, the paintings must be at the Sentissi now. Understand, Francesca, we walk in danger. The Americans will look very hard for us.”

“They don’t know about us. They’ll look for Jack.”

“And if they catch Talbott? He will speak of you. So we make no mistakes. You go to Naples and bring the scrolls to me, at the monastery. And then I make the arrangements with your husband.” Cesare laughed. “First his wife—then his honor.”

“I don’t understand you,” she sighed.

“You don’t have to.”

chapter nine

AT FOUR o’clock that morning, while Francesca still slept in Cesare’s arms, Durell stood in the damp wind that blew across Rome’s Fiumicino Airport and listened to bad news, from an apologetic Zuccamella. Zuccamella occasionally did work for K Section, and he was regarded as reasonably secure. He was a fat man with a beak of a Roman nose, a high forehead, and untidy clothes. His eyes were excited and annoyed, all at once, as he spoke to Durell and Silas Hanson.

“I had prepared everything, but he was not on the plane! Oh, I was ready for your Signor Talbott. Ready and waiting. But he was not among the passengers.”

“What happened to him?”

“I do not know.”

“The plane stopped at Milan on the way, didn’t it?”

“Si, signor.”

“Did Jack Talbott get off there?”

“I telephoned there. It seems as if he did. But you see, he had a through ticket to Naples, and it was unexpected—” “That’s all right, Gian. You couldn’t help it.”

“I have a man working on it in Milano. But who can tell where Signor Talbott is at the moment? He could be anywhere.” Durell had slept a little on the Swissair flight from Geneva, but he’d had no dinner to speak of, and since his arrival from Istanbul, time had stretched itself out like a surrealist image. He could see no end to it at the moment.

It was not true that Talbott could be anywhere but he had a three-hour start, and you could draw a series of lines around Milan—one marking the limit of auto travel, another that of the rapido trains, and a third for a further air hop. He felt sure Talbott was still in Italy. But in three hours, he could have lost himself either in the northern lake country around Como or gotten as far down as Sicily. He turned to Hanson.

“You’ll have to back-track, Si. Fly to Milan, trace everything—taxis, hotels, car rentals, train schedules.”

“Sam, he wouldn’t stay there. What would he do in Milan?” “Nothing—or anything. It’s got to be done.”

“And you?”

“I’ll go on to the Hotel Sentissi, in Naples. It’s our only lead, except for an overt approach to the Countess Apollio or her husband. I’m betting my apples that the wife is mixed up in this with Talbott. Talbott is too smart and tough to have made a break like this without strong urging from the outside; he knew before he started that we’d come down on him like a ton of bricks. He knew the risks. The only thing to figure is that his normally cool calculations were distorted by an emotional angle—a tie-up with the countess, I’d guess. If that’s the case, we can be pretty sure that Talbott trusted her with the scrolls, and she double-crossed him.”

“Where will I meet you?”

“I’ll leave word in Naples,” Durell said.

The day was hot and sultry. A haze hung over the Bay of Naples and the mountains toward Pompeii. Durell had a quick breakfast at the air terminal and took a taxi to the Hotel Sentissi on the Via Partenope. The harsh espresso coffee made him wish for the Louisiana blend he preferred. The driver swung down to the waterfront and passed the big luxury hotels in the Santa Lucia area, with its terraced restaurants and docks and the massive bulk of the Castell, dell’Ovo looming against the blue sky. At this early hour, the streets were still relatively empty.

The rococo facade of the Hotel Sentissi dominated the Via Partenope for most of a block. Durell walked through the echoing lobby and restaurant, where waiters were sleepily getting the sidewalk tables ready for the day’s business. There were tubbed palms on either side of the reception desk, a series of colorful advertisements for shops in the Galleria Umberto, and American Express and CIAT posters on the walls.

He got a room without difficulty. It was on the sixth floor, and he followed the slim bellboy who insisted on showing him the way, although he had no luggage. There was a coat of arms in gilt paint on his door, and the same emblem had been generously scattered throughout the lobby.

“The Sentissi belongs to Count Apollio?” he asked.

“Si, signor. A very, very rich man.”

“Does the count ever stay here himself?”

The bellboy smiled. “No, signor. Never here.”

Durell peeled off several hundred lira notes. “What about the count’s servants?”

“No, signor, I am sorry . . .”

“I am looking for a man named Bruno Bellaria. He registered here several days ago. He left on a business trip, but he may be back by now.”

“You must be joking, signor. No Bellaria would patronize an establishment owned by Count Apollio. It is because of the vendetta, signor. It would be unthinkable—it would be like the sun rising in the west—impossible.”

“But Bellaria registered here,” Durell insisted. He gave the boy more money. “Can you check it for me? At once.”

“Si, signor. Molte grazie.”

“And see if there is any mail for him.”

“Signor, I cannot—”

“I just want to know if anything arrived for Bruno Bellaria from Switzerland, understand?”

“One moment only, signor. I will call you back.”

Durell gave the boy more money. “And see if you can get me some fresh shirts, a small suitcase, and new linen.”

“This is a great deal of money for that, signor.”

“You can keep the rest of it.”

The boy bowed, bowed again, and left the room with his black eyes bright and alert. Alone, Durell stripped and showered for five minutes. The telephone rang while he toweled himself. It was the bellboy.

“Signor, he is registered. Room 402. But there is no mail.” “You’re sure?”

“Certain, signor.”

“All right. Get me the fresh shirts.”

Fifteen minutes later a heavy-set woman with enormous hips brought the package, but not the suitcase, and Durell dressed, smoked a cigarette, and watched the Bay of Naples brighten under the morning sun from his balcony window. He could see Vesuvius now, and a distant blur on the bright horizon that would be Capri. The traffic grew noisy in the street below. He thought of Ellen Armbridge, and how she had died. It was one of the difficulties of the business that most of the people you worked with were brave and dedicated and quietly wonderful, and when you lost them, you lost some support for yourself, too. He shook off the thought, and left his room to go down to the fourth floor.

Room 402, registered in Bruno Bellaria’s name, was in a much less elaborate wing of the hotel, rarely seen by tourists; its rooms were primarily occupied by local businessmen who wanted the prestige of the de luxe Sentissi address. The room he wanted was at the end of a long corridor, and the window at the end offered only a view of a blank brick wall and a littered courtyard where laundry hung to dry against a yellow fence. The corridor was as wide as a Grand Central ramp, tiled in blue and yellow, with a faded runner in the center. Durell paused outside 402 and listened, but there was no sound from inside. The antique lock offered no problems to his pick. He was through the doorway in less than twenty seconds.

It was just a room, rather threadbare in Baroque grandeur, also adorned in each ceiling corner with the Apollio coat of arms in faded paint and chipped plaster. The tall windows offered no better view than the one in the corridor. He thought of the bellboy’s reference to a feud between Apollio and Bellaria. There had been no time to pursue it with the youngster, but he intended to. Feuds were still common enough in southern Italy, but it put a different light on Bruno’s presence in the count’s chalet in Geneva. Bruno couldn’t be one of Apollio’s men. It might rule out the count altogether—but it did not eliminate the count’s wife.

The wardrobe closet held a shabby brown suit, a pair of cracked black shoes, a cheap suitcase containing two blue shirts and a knife, a narrow stiletto with a wicked blade that winked in the sunlight. He remembered how Bruno had come at him with a blade ready to gut him in the dark chalet, and he felt less sensitive about the way Silas had inadvertently killed the man.

The room yielded nothing. He debated waiting there, but the pressure of time and the knowledge that Talbott was loose somewhere with the Fremont data, that Pacek was undoubtedly busy tracing him, and that the Dwan Scrolls were still missing, all combined to put a relentless pressure on him.

He left the room and went downstairs and took a taxi to the nearest newspaper office and spent an hour reading about Count Apollio. There was remarkably little. The man was a handsome, eccentric recluse, the last of a long and noble line. His marriage notice to Miss Frances Smith, of America—no other address was given—was pointedly brief. The count liked privacy, and used his money and influence to obtain it.

Nowhere in the recent copies he had time to scan was the name of Bellaria mentioned. But the newspaper stories, such as they were, if not openly hostile to the count, were touched with veiled allusions to the count’s “unpopular” wartime position and hinted at some undefined but “monstrous” tragedy. Durell pored over the flowery Neapolitan journalese language, but nothing specific could be obtained.

He gave it up for the moment and bought a current newspaper to read the headlines. There was no mention of Prince Tuvanaphan and nothing about the theft of the paintings. But another item caught his eye and he walked thoughtfully to a cafe and sat down to read it carefully.

Deirdre Padgett was in Naples. And she, too, was staying at the Hotel Sentissi.

He had not seen her for five months. The last time had been a long weekend at her rose-brick Colonial home in Prince John, Maryland, on the shores of the Chesapeake. An image of her tall, quiet presence, her serene gray eyes and lovely oval face moved in him with a sudden, grievous impact. He had tried to forget her, to stay out of her life, because emotion had no part in his business, and he would not involve her in the dangers he endured. They were in love, and they had been lovers; but he would go no farther. He could not risk opening a chink in his solitary armor for enemies to destroy him, through her.

She was a fashion reporter for a Washington newspaper, and she was often in Europe. When they met occasionally, they took their brief hours or days together as he could offer them, and she no longer questioned it.

He was disturbed that she was in Naples, covering a fashion show of movie-colony people from Rome. His first impulse was to ignore it and try to avoid her at the Sentissi. But he wanted to see her. And she might be useful. Deirdre knew everyone and everything about society, both at home and abroad. She was not interested in gossip for itself, but her job took her to places where it was inevitable that certain information came to her.

Durell did not want to use her this way. He had always resisted drawing her into his work. It was the keystone of their relationship, the crux of their personal difficulties.

When he left the newspaper office he found a public phone and called the Sentissi. The desk clerk was quick and efficient, replying to his inquiry.

“Signorina Padgett? One moment, please.”

Deirdre sounded slightly sleepy, her Italian faintly spiced with a Maryland accent, and the sound of her rich voice kept Durell silent for a moment, resisting the quick excitement he felt, and then yielding to it.

“Hi, Dee. Sam, here.”

She was silent. Then, faintly, “Sam? Really?”

“Really.”

“In Naples?”

“Ten minutes away. I saw your name in the newspapers just now. I’m registered at the Sentissi, too.”

“But, darling, the last I heard, you were in Bangkok, or somewhere.” She paused. “Are you really here?”

“Yes.”

Her voice changed. “But not to see me.”

“Partly, Dee. What difference does it make?”

“It always makes a difference, Sam, darling. How long will you be in Naples? Or mustn’t I ask?”

“Three days, at the most,” he said.

“I’ll drop everything, Sam. See how shameless I am?” He felt the soft laughter in her voice. “I’ve been sitting on the balcony, watching people come and go. I haven’t really gotten out of bed, yet. I’ll stay right here and wait for you.” She sounded briefly tremulous. “Sam, I didn’t even know if you were still alive.”

“I am. Very much, honey. I love you, Dee.”

“And I love you, you big stubborn Cajun.” She paused again. “Sam, darling, darling, come quickly, please?”

“I’ll come back to the hotel as fast as I can. . . . Dee, do you know Countess Apollio?”

“Oh.” There was an abrupt silence.

“Do you?”

Deirdre’s voice had cooled. “I’ve met her.”

“Is she in Naples now?”

“Montecapolli. Near Sorrento. Her husband has a villa there. And a palazzo on Isola Filibano. Very exclusive. And a chalet in Switzerland . . .”

“I know. Can you arrange an introduction, Dee?”

“I can, but I won’t. I don’t like her.”

“Why not?”

She said, “I thought you looked me up because you wanted to see me, Sam.”

“I do, but I need some help, Dee, and I haven’t much time. Can we talk about it when I see you?”

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “we’re all going to Isola Filibano for some picture-taking early tomorrow morning. There’s a crowd here from the Rome movie colony—very special people, indeed. Luigi Patrelli, Dom Angelo, and that famous gal with the fantastic proportions, Gina Cantani.”

“I didn’t think anyone could go to Isola Filibano without Count Apollio’s permission. He owns the whole place, doesn’t he?”

“Not quite all of it. In the confusion after the war, when they hanged Mussolini and all, a small tract at one end was sold off to Patrelli and Dom Angelo, and they built some villas there and sold them, in turn, to select friends. It’s a constant battle with Apollio, of course. He’s tried every legal trick in the book to renege on the deal and force them off the island; but he is not the most popular man in the world around here since the war. Old memories and hatreds and injuries die hard in this part of Italy. Apollio finally built walls, ran watchdogs all over the place, got the fishermen in the village to refuse supplies and services. But Dom Angelo and Patrelli were just as stubborn. They stuck it out.”

Durell said, “Apollio’s unpopularity goes back to the war?” “Being what he is, he naturally sided with the regime. There was an underground movement among the fishermen on Isola Filibano against the Fascisti. It was headed by an old family named Bellaria, nobility gone to seed, because of a centuries-old rivalry and vendetta with the Apollio family. Apparently Count Bernardo used his favored position under Mussolini to act the feudal tyrant. There are all sorts of rumors about how the old feud with the Bellarias, which had just about died out, flared up again during those years. At the end of it, when the Fascists were overthrown, there was some pretty horrible vengeance taken. Nobody knows the true story of it all, even today. There are whispers that one of the Bellarias—Bruno, I think it was—did something horrible to Apollio. Whatever happened, nobody saw Bernardo Apollio for three years after the war ended. Then he showed up again, and things have been relatively quiet ever since, although they say the vendetta goes on because of new hatreds and injuries incurred during the war.”

“About Isola Filibano,” Durell said. “I may want to go there with you.”

“Because of Frannie Smith, your countess?”

“Not my countess, Dee, but—”

“I’m sorry I sound like a snob, Sam. She’s here in Naples this morning, you know. I saw her arrive from my window just ten minutes ago. Then Gina Cantani came in after her, red as a beet with fury because of the way Francesca swept in with a grand arrival. Francesca was alone for a change, too.”

Durell felt a quick tightening of his nerves. “You say she got to the Sentissi just ten minutes ago? She hasn’t left yet, has she?”

“I don’t think so.”

“All right. I’ll see you soon, honey. I’m coming back to the hotel right now. Wait for me.”

“Not indefinitely,” Deirdre said. “Not in bed.”

He took a taxi back to the Sentissi, urging the driver to hurry. The one-way traffic to the Via Partenope seemed to crawl against his sense of urgency. It could not be a coincidence that the Countess Apollio had arrived at the Sentissi here in Naples this morning where Bruno Bellaria was also registered. He only hoped she was still there when he returned.

Nobody seemed to be on watch in the Sentissi’s lobby, but it was crowded now with tourists. He took the lift upstairs to the fourth floor. The wide corridor to Room 402 was empty, the shadows exaggerated after the brilliant sunshine on the street. Durell paused outside Bruno Bellaria’s door. It stood partly ajar. A long finger of buttery sunlight lay on the tiled floor. The click of a high heel came to him from inside. He listened, but he heard nothing else. He went in fast.

The girl was surprised. She was at the closet, packing the dead man’s cheap clothing into the equally cheap suitcase Durell had inspected earlier. Her back was toward him and she was partly bent over and he appreciated the tightness of her short skirt. Her jet-black hair was in a tightly teased mop, carefully arranged to look casual. A heavy emerald ring flickered on her left hand, and even from the doorway, Durell could make out the now-familiar sun emblem of the Apollio crest on her ring.

She could be no one else but the Countess Francesca Apollio. It all fitted. The lead to Talbott in Switzerland had led them to the Apollio chalet outside Geneva; Francesca had been there a day or two ago; and Bruno Bellaria had been in Switzerland, too. Now in Bellaria’s room here at the Hotel Sentissi he had finally caught up with the girl. It was a three-way pattern that involved Talbott with Francesca, and Francesca with Bruno Bellaria.

Her white woven bag lay on the bed. Durell picked it up before she knew he was in the room. Then she straightened with a gasp, whirled around, and stared at him.

Surprise made her speak in English. “Who—what do you think—?”

“Countess Francesca Apollio?” he asked quietly.

She stood with her back to the wall, fear draining the color from her piquant face. Her rich underlip trembled. She made a little gesture with her hands, as if to push away the sight of him, and whispered, “Who are you?”

“Don’t be frightened. Are you looking for Bruno?”

“Yes, but how did you—?”

“He hasn’t come back yet,” Durell said.

She drew a deep breath. It was deliberately designed to create an effect as her firm breasts were delineated against her white silk blouse. The effect was most successful. She smiled. There were deep dimples at the corners of her mouth.

“You’re an American, aren’t you?” she asked huskily. “It’s good to talk English again. I get so sick of—well, you know. It’s so tiresome. How do you know Bruno, by the way?”

“I met him in Geneva, shortly after you left.”

“But I wasn’t there.”

“You were.”

She launched herself at him without warning. She tried for the door, leaping like a sleek little cat. Durell threw out an arm, caught her, swung her around and flung her toward the bed. Her hair flew wildly with the impact; her legs scissored, flashed, and her high, spiked heels lashed at him. He dodged, caught her again as she rolled quickly across the bed and tried for the door again. Her body was soft and full, but possessed of a desperate strength. She clawed at him, and her breath hissed. A string of pearls around her throat broke and scattered all over the tiled floor. Her dark eyes flickered, and she tried to knee him. She knew all the dirty tricks of the game.

But Durell knew a few more.

He caught her wrist and twisted it back between her writhing shoulder-blades. The musky scent of her perfume reminded him of that white-curtained bedroom in the Swiss chalet last night. She was the one who had been there.

He threw her on the bed and she bounced, lashed at him with her heel again. He caught her ankle, pulled off the shoe, and threw it aside. She came up trying to scratch him, and he slapped her—not hard, but hard enough.

She whimpered and wriggled away to the headboard, tucked her legs under her and began to swear at him in a gutter language laced with a strong Missouri accent.

He grinned at her.

“Frannie Smith, of Missouri.”

“Oh, you bastard. Who are you? Where is Bruno?”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“The fish in Lake Geneva are eating him.”

“You sonofabitch, did you kill him?” “I suppose I’m responsible,” Durell said. “I’m looking for Jack Talbott, honey—and the Dwan Scrolls.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she snapped. “You can’t treat me like this. I’m an important person around here, understand? The cops will lock you in the clink and throw the key away. I’ll see to it, I’ll see you rot. .

“Take it easy, Fran. The home town is showing.”

She cursed him and at the same time managed to look helpless and appealing. “I don’t know what you want from me.” “I told you. Jack Talbott, first.”

“I don’t know him.”

“You slept with him. Or teased him into thinking you would. You got him to steal the Dwan Scrolls from Prince Tuvanaphan, and then you crossed him and used Bruno Bellaria to help you get the paintings out of Switzerland.”

“You’re off your nut, buster.”

“I want Jack. He’ll kill you, you know, if I don’t catch up with him first.”

“I’m not afraid of him.” She flushed. “I mean, I don’t know who he is, and you can’t scare me with all this kookie talk. You’re not a cop, are you?”

“Something like that.”

“How a good-looking guy like you can act so nasty. . ."

She moved her hips and extended one leg and then tucked it in again. Her eyes looked innocent. “You play rough, buster, but I can show you a few tricks to make you wish you were never born.”

“I don’t doubt it, sweetheart. You don’t look or sound much like a lady, though, right now. The count would be disappointed in you.”

“He doesn’t know I’m here.” She paused, annoyed. “I mean, when I tell him how you molested me . . ."

“Why don’t you call him right now?”

She glared at him.

“Or call the cops, why don’t you?”

She made a spitting noise. “You can’t keep me here. I won’t tell you anything. I don’t know who you are or why you’re bothering me, but you’ll be sorry. You’ll be dead, buster.”

Durell said nothing. He stood tall and lean, his blue suit hardly disheveled by his struggle with the girl, his eyes dark and somber, regarding her. After a moment she licked her lips, her pink tongue darting out over her full red mouth.

“May I have my shoes back?” she asked quietly.

“You were used to walking barefoot once, weren’t you?” “Don’t remind me. Those days are gone forever.”

“Where are the scrolls, Fran?”

“I don’t know.”

“You came here to meet Bruno and pick them up, didn’t you? Are you working with your husband?”

She laughed. “You don’t know Bernardo, do you?”

“I intend to.”

“You’re going to tell him about this?”

It was obvious, then, that Count Apollio didn’t know about his wife’s activities, Durell thought. He was out of it. Or maybe the girl was deliberately trying to mislead him. He did not underestimate her. He guessed that Countess Francesca di Apollio, nee Frannie Smith, had a quick, shrewd mind behind her petulant voice and voluptuous body.

He said: “Fran, you’re in more trouble than you suspect. Jack is going to kill you, don’t you know that?”

“I’m not afraid of any man,” she whispered.

“I might kill him for you, if you help me.”

“Yeah? What are you, a hit man?”

“In a way.”

“You never give a straight answer, do you?”

“I might swap a few, if you cooperate.”

“You can’t do anything to me. You put a hand on me again, and I’ll yell, don’t worry, and I’ll think up some answers for the cops later. I’m getting out, and you won’t stop me.” She threw her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, her lips parted angrily. Then all at once the color drained from her cheeks, and her eyes darkened with terror as she looked beyond Durell. It was a warning, but not enough. He thought for an instant that she was trying a simple diversionary tactic, and for one slight moment he did not turn his head. When he did, it was too late.

The big blond man seemed to explode through the doorway and fill the room. Francesca screamed, but the sound was drowned out by the crash of the man’s fist against Durell’s head. He staggered, caught his heel against the iron foot of the bed, and spun around. The man was fast, not losing a split second of his advantage. Durell got a whirling, dizzy impression of enormous size and power, of cruel good looks, of a small scar on the cheekbone, and tight blond hair. He had caught up with Jack Talbott—or Talbott had caught up with him.

There was no time to think of anything but survival. The man’s fist was like a rock, smashing at his face. Durell rolled across the bed, fell to hands and knees on the other side, started to rise when Talbott leaped, spread-eagle, over the bed and smashed him to the floor again. There was no let-up, no respite. He felt staggered by the silent ferocity of the attack. He got his fist in the other’s throat, ground at the larynx, and gained an instant’s reprieve to roll free. “Francesca!”

The girl paused in the doorway, looking back. She held her shoes in her hand, and her dark hair swung heavily to cover one side of her face. A little smile of triumph touched her lips as she looked at Durell.

Then she was gone.

Durell looked into the muzzle of Jack Talbott’s gun.

It was as big and fathomless and unwinking as the death that brooded in the man’s eyes. Talbott was sweating. A little tremor shook his shoulders, but the gun was steady.

“Where is Cesare Bellaria?” Talbott whispered. “Where is she going to meet him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You came down from Switzerland?”

“Yes,” Durell said.

“Government man?”

“K Section.”

“I’ll have to kill you, then.”

“That won’t get you the scrolls back.”

“To hell with it. First I get a piece of that bitch.”

“Like you did with Ellen Armbridge?”

“You called it, friend. You lay off, understand? You know what I got from Ellen.”

“Yes,” Durell said. “I intend to get it back.”

“In a pig’s ear. That’s my little life preserver, eh, friend? You touch me, and our mutual acquaintance, Major Pacek, gets all the dope on your playmates behind the Iron Curtain. I guess you figured all that out, already.”

“You didn’t have to kill her,” Durell said.

“Ellen?” Talbott shrugged his massive shoulders. “She was stubborn and stupid, like you. So lay off. Give me a few days. Then you can take it like a bird. I’ll send you the Fremont stuff, in Geneva. Until then, stand clear.”

The big man exuded an animal tension, listening with his head cocked to one side. The door was open, and from far down the wide corridor came the clang of the elevator lift. There had been no alarm. Talbott wore a shaggy tweed coat, a white shirt that looked as if he’d slept in it, a green necktie loose at his muscular throat. There was a dark red glow behind his eyes. Durell thought of his own gun, of all the tactics he knew for this, but he did not move.

“You’re lucky,” Talbott said. “You’re smart. You know what happens if I don’t show up in a certain place at a certain time?”

“I suppose you’ve arranged to mail the stuff to Pacek,” Durell said. “But I think you’re bluffing.”

“Still, you’re not sure, are you? You can’t take the chance that Pacek gets the names of your pals behind the Iron Curtain, can you? And don’t give me any jazz about being a patriotic American. I was never happier than when I got out of the country. It never did a damned thing for me. Nobody did. So I’m doing something for myself. Too bad about your tin deal with Tuvanaphan, but that goes down the drain and I collect some dough and something extra from that little bitch who double-crossed me.”

Durell shook his head. “It didn’t make sense at first.”

“What didn’t make sense?”

“Why a smart boy like you did such a stupid thing as to steal the Dwan Scrolls. You knew you were slitting your own throat with us. You knew we’d suspect you and get on your tail. It would have been simpler and easier to understand at first if you simply sold data to Pacek. But the girl got you into it, didn’t she? She snuggled up to you and threw you for a loop and got you into it. She needed you and used you, right? A bright lad like you doesn’t sit into a game with the cards stacked against you unless there’s a bonus—such as Francesca, right?”

“Shut up,” Talbott growled. He trembled. “Shut your mouth.”

“Aren’t you going after Francesca now?”

“Hell, I can find her. Maybe she did throw me a curve. But it fitted with my other plans. Turn around, friend.”

Durell made his manner one of dispirited defeat. He did not know if it fooled Talbott, but it was the only thing he could think of to keep the man from blowing his head off. His easy compliance made Talbott relax just a little, and when the big man took a step toward him, Durell kept turning, flexing his right knee. Then he dropped his head and shoulders and slammed his fist into Talbott’s belly. It was like ramming concrete. But it deflected Talbott’s blow with the gun just enough. As it was, the weapon tore at Durell’s ear and slashed into the side of his throat. He hit Talbott again, felt the same impact on steely muscles, and saw the man grin and heard him laugh an instant before the gun came down again.

This time Talbott’s aim was better.

Durell hit the tiled floor and knew nothing more.

chapter ten

SOMEONE shook him and said pleadingly, “Signor, signor, please. . . .” He pushed away the offending hand and shoved with both palms flat on the cool tiled floor and grabbed for the bed as it seemed to fall away from him. His head ached. The left side of his face felt peculiar, and he touched it with careful fingers and found crusted blood from his lacerated ear. He swore softly and tried to focus on his watch. It was like looking at it under turbulent water.

“It is 10:15, signor. What happened here?”

He lifted his head, which seemed to weigh two tons, and saw the bellboy. “What’s your name, son?”

“Pietro, signor. You wish me to call a doctor?”

“No, I’ll be all right, Pietro. It was an accident.” Durell straightened with an effort. “You haven’t called the cops, have you, son?”

“No, signor.”

“Good. That’s worth a thousand lira to you.”

“Molte grazie. I get you a hot towel, yes?”

The room still vibrated with the aura of Jack Talbott’s violence. He was alive, though, and it had only been the first round. He had the measure of the man, and had touched the insane driving force of him. There would be another round, and soon. Jack Talbott couldn’t count on his insurance forever. Give Paris and Washington another day—two, at the most —and the people in the Fremont group might make it home clean and clear. You hope, he told himself. Working against Jack Talbott was like trying to do a hundred-yard sprint with a ball and chain around your legs.

Pain hammered in his head. The bellboy gave him a hot, wet towel and he took it into the bath and washed carefully at the blood on his neck and ear, relieved to uncover only painful scratches. He might have had a cracked skull if he hadn’t managed to divert Talbott’s blow.

“I have the small suitcase, signor. And a razor.”

Durell looked at Pietro. “Suitcase?”

“I sent the shirts up earlier, with Carmela, signor.”

“That’s right. Thank you. They’re in my room?”

“Yes, signor.”

“Fine. I’m all right now. Thanks again, Pietro. By the way, you didn’t happen to see the Countess di Apollio in the hotel the past hour or so, did you?”

“The boss’s wife? Who could miss her?” Pietro’s gamin face grinned, and his dark eyes shone lewdly. He made a quick, Neapolitan gesture of obscenity with his hands. “There is something, in that one. She was in the lobby, signor, collecting mail from the parcel room. For her husband, I think. It was only fifteen minutes ago. Then I had a call from an American couple on this floor and I saw this door open and peeked in and saw you, signor, on the floor. I thought you were dead.” Durell stared at the boy. “What kind of mail did the countess collect?”

“It was a parcel, pretty big.” Pietro gestured, indicating a size that might well have been the Dwan Scrolls, carefully rolled and wrapped. Durell swore softly, and the boy watched him curiously. “It made me envious,” Pietro said, “the way she carried that parcel.”

“Envious?”

“She hugged it, signor. It would be a sensation . . . !” Durell grinned. “You are irreverent, Pietro.”

“Ah, no, signor. I adore beautiful women.”

“May you have a long life in which to enjoy them.”

He gave the boy some more money and went down to the lobby a few moments later. He did not think the desk clerk would be as easy to pump as Pietro, and he did not even try. Francesca was long gone, of course. And there was no sign of Jack Talbott.

He had told Deirdre over the telephone that he would be at the Sentissi to see her within ten minutes. An hour had gone by since then. She was not in her room. The desk clerk suggested that he go to the Santa Lucia waterfront, with its cluster of restaurants that ringed the harbor and the massive Castell dell ’Ovo. He walked there. Naples was wide awake and noisy now in the hot sun, and the waterfront boulevard was jammed with traffic. At Santa Lucia a small knot of onlookers had gathered along the sea wall of the yacht basin to stare down with admiring eyes—they were mostly men, and a few thin-lipped women—at the scene being photographed on the beach. Against a background of old ruined piers and stone abutments artfully draped with fishnets, a dozen models posed in costumes that varied from next year’s spring frocks to vestigial swim suits designed to make the girls look even more nude than they actually were in the dazzling Neapolitan sunlight.

Reflector shields behind the photographers on the beach sent blinding flashes of light here and there as they were adjusted to back-light the girls. A select group of men and women were gathered around a buffet table that scurrying servants had set up on the beach, and a row of folding chairs had been placed near the scene for these spectators. The whole thing had the air of a party that had lingered on from the night before.

Durell recognized a number of world-famous personalities from the Rome movie colony—Dom Angelo, short and fat and bouncy, rumored to have three mistresses living together in a villa near Positano—he was a major producer of Italian art films, the latest having won awards at the Cannes Festival; and there was Patrelli, the tall, skeletal director of Sidewalk Shadows, morose and unhappy among the animated, overrouged young girls bouncing about in their skimpy Bikinis. It was rumored that Patrelli adhered to a Lucullan philosophy and was dying of cancer of the stomach. The fantastically overdeveloped redhead, who looked more naked in her low-cut white summer dress than the young girls draped among the fishnets, could only be Gina Cantani. Durell went down the stone steps to the beach and worked his way through the noisy, drinking and eating crowd in search of Deirdre.

She was working at a small table under a scarlet and gold sign that advertised one of Rome’s most extravagant couturiers. Her head was bent over a notebook, and he felt a sudden quickening of his pulse and a gladness that cheered him. He had known many women in his life, but there had never been anyone like Deirdre.

A director was shouting something in explosive Italian to the models, posed with masked faces among the ruined beach piers. Deirdre looked up then and saw Durell walking toward her across the dark sand.

There is a moment now and then when unity is achieved with a slow look, a smile that goes deep. She wore her dark hair brushed smoothly back in a French knot at the nape of her neck. Small jeweled earrings that matched her gold dress

winked close to her head. She lifted a hand and started to rise and then Durell was beside her.

“Sam. Oh, Sam, I’m such a fool. But it’s been so long. I felt as if my heart had stopped.”

“Mine, too. You look wonderful, Dee.”

“You don’t. What happened to your ear?”

He touched it. “Is it bleeding again?”

“It looks as if a cat chewed on it. Our gal Fran?”

“Not exactly.”

“You went to see her first, didn’t you? I waited in my room as long as I could, but. . ."

“Love me, Dee?”

“Always. I’m certainly a fool. And shameless.” A faint flush touched her cheeks under her wide gray eyes. She was the most beautiful woman in the world for Durell. He touched her hand and she stood up. “Where do you want to go, Sam?” “Somewhere for a drink and talk.”

“Our kind of talk? In public?”

“That’s for later.” He smiled. He knew her so intimately, every nuance of her marvelous body, every fine aspect of her mind. “I need your help now. Can you leave this children’s game?”

“Of course. I was just making notes for a feature story to cable home. These people are only slightly insane, darling. I’m much worse—about you.” She took his arm and he felt the pressure of her breast against him. “Do you need my help in your work? Is that it?”

“Sort of.”

“How ironic. All these years you keep me out of your real life, darling, by insisting I can never be part of your work. I dreamt about this moment often, about a time when you’d need me like this. I’d laugh at you and make you crawl.”

He smiled. “I do, anyway, for you.”

“Not so I notice it. You’ll pay a heavy price, my good man. Are you sure it will be worth it?”

“Dee, I just want a little information, nothing else.”

“Oh, no. All or nothing, that’s my motto.”

“It’s too dangerous to take a bigger part in it, don’t you understand? I don’t even like to be seen with you when I’m working. It makes us both vulnerable.” He thought of Pacek; the Czech could exact almost any price, if he got his hands on Deirdre. And then he thought, No, I wouldn’t pay it. I’d have to let her go. Given a choice between finishing this job and Deirdre, I’d have to forfeit Deirdre. It couldn’t be otherwise, in this business. You can’t make rules for others and not for yourself. Then he thought of Talbott and how Ellen Armbridge had died, and he tried to imagine how he would feel if something like that happened to Deirdre. But he could not. And he could not tell her about it, either. He took her arm and led her to the street above the beach and looked for a taxi. There were none, but there was a sidewalk cafe a block away, and he walked toward it with her. He thought she was trembling slightly. He said, “It’s really dangerous just for you to be seen with me now, Dee. Can’t you believe that?”

“I believe it. And I don’t care. Whatever happens to you, I want to happen to me, too.”

“We’ve gone over all this before.”

She sighed. “Yes, and we will again. I get such nightmares, Sam—I sometimes think I can’t stand it, I’ll just fall apart, wondering where you are and what you’re doing.”

“It’s just my job,” he said.

“Why must it be you? Why couldn’t you be an ordinary auto salesman or an advertising executive; and then we could have a home in the suburbs and a lot of kids. . . .” She paused and smiled ruefully. “I know it’s your job and you’ve got to do it. But sometimes I hate it and cry over it. And over the two of us.”

He ordered Cinzanos at the bar and they sat under a striped canopy at a small wooden table with wire chairs. It was too early for the cafe to be busy, although the Piazza Vittoria nearby was filling up. Across the waterfront street, the Bay of Naples sparkled happily in the sun. A cruise ship was coming in from the direction of Ischia, and the little ferry to Capri bounced on the bright blue water. Southward, the conical summit of Vesuvius thrust up through the haze in the sky.

“Sam, this is so nice, I wouldn’t even let myself dream it could happen,” Deirdre said. “Do you know how often I just stop work and feel overcome with wanting you? But you can’t do that, can you? It would be too dangerous for you.”

“It’s a matter of maintaining perspective,” he said.

“Oh, Sam, aren’t you ever coming home? Won’t we ever live like ordinary people again?”

He knew what she meant, and he tried to picture a life where you didn’t have to wonder who waited for you behind every door you opened, or think twice about turning a comer carelessly. He did not know if he could live such a life again. Deirdre sighed, sipped her vermouth, looked at the bright

arc of the bay. Traffic whispered on the street, but it was like a shadowed, serene cave under the striped awning. An image of Jack Talbott’s ferocity touched him; he put it aside.

“All right,” she said. “What do you want to know? How can I help you, Sam? You asked me about the Countess di Apollio, nee Frannie Smith. It’s a hateful point to start.”

“Is she really so disliked, Dee?”

“It isn’t a matter of snobbery. I don’t care which side of the tracks she came from, or how she pulled herself up by her garter belt.” Deirdre smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry. Just talking about Francesca makes me sound like an alley cat. You’ve met her, I gather. Quite a dish, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to bed with her?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Oh, damn you,” she whispered. “I love you and I hate you, darling. Will you go to bed with me?”

He grinned. “Any time.”

“I’m not like Francesca, though. If she wants you, she’s got good taste; but she lacks a soul, Sam. Did you ever meet someone who gives you the chills and knows she has no soul? That’s Frannie Smith—amoral, despicable, a bitch.” -“Why are you so down on her?”

“Do you know Count Bernardo Apollio?”

“Not yet. I hope to.”

“He sees no one he doesn’t select first. Anyway, Apollio has one of these vendettas going that are prevalent from Sicily on up to the Campania. The other family is named Bellaria.” She looked at him with alert gray eyes. “You know about this?” “Some.”

“There are three brothers. Rafael, the eldest, is quite gentle and lives and fishes on Isola Filibano. Bruno, the middle one, is vicious, lives on hate. The youngest—much younger than Bruno or Rafael—is Cesare. A handsome brute, I must say. A touch of an archaeologist, a classic art expert.”

“A collector?”

“No. A digger. Restorer. Handsome and talented.”

“So?”

“So our darling Fran, the wife of Apollio, chooses his worst enemy to go to bed with—namely, Cesare Bellaria. She wins the brass ring for indecency. Everybody knows about it, at least in the decadent circles I’ve traveled with lately.”

“Does Apollio know?”

“He couldn’t. It’s not possible.”

“Are you sure?”

“Apollio would cut him to little bits and feed him to the fish.” Deirdre grinned roguishly. “Apollio is a handsome and cultivated gentleman. I could go for him, myself. But he’s also got that sort of temperament, Sam, that could make the whole thing blow up into an awful tragedy.”

“So the husband is the last to know,” Durell mused.

“Isn’t he always?”

He said bluntly, “Would you say that Apollio is an unscrupulous art collector, Dee?”

“A thief? Buying stolen masterpieces?” She shook her head. “No. If you’re after the count, you’re on the wrong track. I’d say it was impossible.”

He trusted her judgment, but it left a hole in the pattern that had been forming in the back of his mind, and he wasn’t sure where to go from there. Deirdre touched his hand and he said: “I’d like to judge Apollio for myself. Do you have any idea where he is right now?”

“Of course. We’ll be neighbors—that gang on the beach over there, and Apollio—on Isola Filibano tomorrow. Right now he’s at his villa in Montecapolli, though. Cesare Bellaria is in Montecapolli, too, working on some monastery ruins. It’s incredible that Cesare’s cuckolding of his worst enemy hasn’t caused Vesuvius to explode.”

“The count isn’t that much of a recluse, is he?”

“I couldn’t get you to see him for diamonds, darling.”

“But can you get me to Isola Filibano?”

She looked long at him. “I might, Sam.”

“Wangle an invitation for me with that crowd of creeps on the beach, will you, Dee?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to help you kill yourself, Sam. You’re always telling me to stay out of your business, and now you want me to help you with this; but of course you won’t tell me anything about it. I hope you notice what a good girl I’ve been, containing my curiosity and not asking you a word about what you’re really after.”

“You know I wouldn’t tell you, anyway.”

“I know, but all the same, my feminine instincts make me wonder about your interest in our Frannie. I wouldn’t take you to Isola Filibano without going myself, you know. That’s one of the conditions, whether you think it’s wise or not. That’s the way it is, darling. All or nothing, this time. If you want my help, you take me with you.”

He grinned. “That may not be as hard as you think. Are you staying at the Sentissi tonight?”

“Are you making me a proposition?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, sir. But I won’t be in Naples. The whole crowd is moving to Montecapolli for more pictures this evening, and then we go to Isola Filibano.”

Durell was thoughtful. “What sort of place is this monastery where Cesare Bellaria is working?”

“Picturesque, isolated, on top of the mountain. Not many people go there. It’s not a tourist attraction yet.”

“It might be useful,” Durell said slowly, “if you could induce your camera people to use it as a background for their publicity shots tonight.”

Deirdre stared at him. “Just what are you up to?”

“I’m not really sure, Dee. Just stirring up the pot.”

She looked at him critically. “You’re grim about this one, aren’t you? I can tell by the way your eyes get so dark when you think about it. You’re not with me at all, darling.”

“I’m sorry, Dee. It’s a question of time. And some good people may get killed, if I’m not fast enough or smart enough or lucky enough.”

She shivered slightly, although the air was warm with bright sunlight and an atmosphere of September gaiety hovered over the city. “Let’s not talk about it any more. Let’s just talk about ourselves, Sam. Tell me that you missed me, please. Tell me how much you want me.”

He felt alarmed. “What is it, Dee? What are you looking at?” “That man who came into the cafe and sat down behind you. The way he stares at you . . .”

Durell turned and saw, seated at the next table, Major Anton Pacek.

chapter eleven

PACEK smiled and lifted his wine glass in a salute. He looked like a frog, his wide mouth loose and open. In his Russian-made dark suit that fitted him like a box, and a light wide-brimmed fedora, he looked out of place on the sunny Neapolitan waterfront.

Durell turned away again. He did not want to alarm Deirdre or betray any special interest in her, either. Maybe Pacek wouldn’t attach any importance to her. If he did, and if he used it, the thing could act like a hammerlock on Durell’s movements. Pacek was quicker and smarter than he had supposed, getting down here so soon. It did not seem possible that he had been tailed down through Italy, but it never paid to second-guess someone like Pacek. He also knew that Pacek would start digging for information about Deirdre, inevitably.

“Is that man a Russian?” Deirdre asked quietly.

“A Czech.”

“I don’t like his looks. Why is he smiling at you, Sam? Does he know you?”

“He knows me. And now he knows you. I may have to kill him.” He saw her surprise, and added briefly, “We’ll get out of here now. Don’t take my arm. Act formally, as if we’ve only recently met. I’ll take you back to the beach. But keep an eye out for him, and when I see you tonight, let me know if he’s been hanging around— or any other persistent strangers.”

“All right, Sam.”

“And don’t go anywhere alone from now on.”

He paid the camerare, left a tip, and escorted Deirdre out of the cafe into the sunshine. He did not look at Pacek again, and Pacek did not follow. Neither did anyone else. Deirdre was silent on the way back to the beach where the photographers and models were still screaming at each other while the motion-picture greats lolled in their canvas chairs at the buffet tables among the scurrying waiters. He did not kiss her when he left, not knowing what eyes might be watching and not wanting her to seem important to him.

He left word at the consulate for Si Hanson and returned to the newspaper office to do more reading about Apollio and his art collection. Perhaps Pacek’s appearance was one of those unfortunate accidents. He tried to make himself believe this and then recognized the folly of wishful thinking and accepted the fact that he had placed Deirdre in danger almost before he could begin here.

Since there was nothing more to do in Naples, he rented a Fiat and drove to Montecapolli, just above Sorrento. The place was a fishing village clinging to the steep mountainside above the Amalfi Drive, with a sweeping view of the Bay of Naples to the north. The heat was suffocating. There was a small beach below the Imperiale and another nearby of black

sand where the fishermen’s nets were spread on stakes. Durell parked in a small lot next to the tennis court and went into the hotel. It was long past noon, and he had no trouble reserving a room. He left word at the desk for Silas and went out to look at the town.

He did not approach the Montecapolli monastery at once. Accessible only by a narrow footpath, it perched on a high crag above the village; its buttresses and ruined walls overgrown with vines. In the village piazza there were tourists gathered, and now and then a bus lumbered through the town. To the east were the high villas clinging to the cliffside that plunged down into the sea.

He walked to the gate of the largest house, where the familiar emblem of goats capering above a rayed sun indicated the House of Apollio. The flower-bordered lane was quiet and peaceful. An antique iron bell made a harsh clanging when he pulled on the chain and stirred up a small group of hummingbirds in the shrubbery.

Durell gave his name to an elderly gatekeeper and waited, watching the hummingbirds return to the shrubbery. He was surprised when the man returned in less than five minutes and opened the heavy, iron gate. He had expected to be summarily turned away. There was a brief emerald lawn, a flight of white marble steps to a loggia, a walk around a balustraded terrace to the back of the square stone villa. There were two sun umbrellas and tables here, facing a small allee formed of carefully trimmed cypress trees that accented the whites of antique marbles from Pompeii and Herculaneum. The stone Chinese lanterns in the garden did not seem inappropriate.

Count Apollio was a man who smiled rarely. His face was a serene, narrow mask, classically handsome and dignified. Breeding had refined the delicate head that was both strong and intellectual, then refined it again to carve his Roman nose and chiseled mouth. Yet even as they shook hands, Durell felt that something was lacking. Perhaps it was in the way Apollio moved, or the careful grooming of his smooth gray hair. His elegance was too great to discount as either affectation or effeminacy.

His chiseled mouth smiled; nothing else changed.

“I have received you as a matter of courtesy, Signor Durell.” His English was precise, Oxonian. “I trust your visit will be brief, since I can anticipate its object. I shall not waste your time or mine, you see. I was informed less than an hour ago that a man from Isola Filibano was found drowned in Lake Geneva, near my villa there. Are you in a position to verify this statement?”

“I am. The man was Bruno Bellaria,” Durell said.

“You are sure of this?”

“Quite certain.”

Apollio looked down at his hands. They trembled ever so slightly. A little smile touched his lips, and then he sighed. “I am sorry.”

“Sorry? He was your enemy.”

“My affairs are no concern of yours. My enemies are mine to deal with, on my own terms. I am sorry he died this way. I would have arranged it—otherwise.”

“You feel cheated, is that it?” Durell asked.

“You are a perceptive man.” Apollio sighed again. His eyes seemed to look for an instant into a past that was both ugly and regrettable, and for a moment an expression of intensity shaped his mouth that made his hatred for the dead man almost tangible enough to touch. It went beyond all ordinary emotion, Durell thought. It was much too great to have had its roots in some ancient rivalry between two noble houses. This was the twentieth century, and however much the Count reverted to past codes, there was something too personal in his voice and attitude toward Bruno Bellaria’s death to be explained by such notions.

When Apollio looked at Durell again, his handsome face was once again a polished mask.

“The world is a better place now, with that man dead. You are an American, Signor Durell, and my wife, who recently visited Geneva, was the friend of a Signor Talbott who worked in your consulate there. Am I correct in this?”

“Remarkably,” Durell said, and waited.

“Your lack of surprise pleases me, sir. I live a reclusive life, but I am not out of touch with matters that concern me or threaten the pattern of existence I have chosen.”

“What else do you know, Count Apollio?”

“I do not invite you to be seated or join me in a drink. Such courtesy would be hypocritical. You are not welcome here.” Apollio frowned slightly, and something more clouded his eyes. His hair was a pale yellow where it wasn’t gray, a heritage of Norman and Bourbon blood. His slender height was like a fine steel blade. He wore a pale blue jacket, a silk shirt open at the throat with an Ascot scarf, fine slacks and open mesh black shoes. It was cool on the garden terrace, and a breeze blew through the boxwood and cypresses from the Bay of Sorrento.

“I suspect,” Apollio went on, “that you are here to discuss my wife. I cannot permit it. She is with me now, but you may not see her. Do I make myself clear? I have received word that the dead man in Geneva may have been associated with the countess in some way, but I reject this summarily. You are in Italy now, signor, and your inquiries must be directed to the local police. But you will be wasting your time. I suggest you go back to Switzerland and forget the entire matter.”

“Do you really know why I’m here?” Durell asked.

“I assume you are an associate of Signor Talbott, who has been paying unwelcome attentions to my wife.”

“And that’s all?”

“Perhaps there is an official capacity?”

“Last night,” Durell said bluntly, “together with the death of Bruno Bellaria, there was another murder, and a theft of the Dwan Scrolls. You have one of the finest collections of antique Chinese sculpture and paintings in Europe, I understand, in your home on Isola Filibano.”

Apollio’s face was blank. “Art thefts do not concern me.” “But you’ve heard of the Dwan Scrolls?”

“Naturally. They are masterpieces.”

“Have you heard of them recently?”

“If you mean if I have been approached to buy them from the thief,” Apollio said, smiling thinly, “I must answer no. I would not, of course. I excuse your bluntness. You are an American. I generally do not like Americans, although I married one and made her my countess. That is a different matter. So I do not accept an insult where I am sure none is intended.”

“We have reason to believe,” Durell said, “that your wife and Talbott were involved in the theft of the Dwan Scrolls.” Apollio’s eyes flickered. “Please leave now, signor.”

“I would like your opinion on what I’ve just said.”

“It is not worthy of reply. Is that enough?”

“Not quite. Are you sure your wife is here in this house at this moment?”

“Of course.”

“Then I suggest you keep her with you for the next few hours, and watch over her when you return to Isola Filibano tonight. She is in danger. I think she may be killed.”

Apollio smiled thinly. “Signor, your dramatic statements are intended to shock me, no? But you fail. I do not really know who you are, or in what capacity you come here with these charges and alarms. But I reject them. If you are an official with the American government, I have no contact with your offices, and desire none. If you are—a free-lance, shall we say? —I still will not deal with you. My wife is not in danger. Not while I live. And if she were, I would attend to her safety in my own way. I bid you good day, Signor.”

“You don’t even ask about the source of danger to your wife?” Durell asked. “You can’t keep the world outside your walls, you know. Not forever. No more than you can keep your wife within the walls you’ve tried to build around her.”

Apollio went pale. “You came here as a stranger and I was good enough to admit you to my house, Signor Durell. . .” “Because you wanted to verify what you yourself were afraid of,” Durell said.

“I fear nothing!”

“Fear is the better part of valor. If you love your wife, you will watch over her with particular care in the next few days.” “Who would harm her? She has done nothing!” The man was very white now. His lips were bloodless. “You insult me, you insult my wife, signor. The things you suggest . . .” He paused. “I wish to hear no more! Please leave!”

Durell stood up, tall and dark in the peaceful sunlight. “You want to know no more because you already have made your own plans, is that it?” He paused. “Well, you needn’t call your servants or the police. I’m going now. But you will see me again.”

He left quietly, and the gatekeeper, who limped a little, walked a pace ahead of him in his hurry to open the gate. The hummingbirds seemed to be gone for good from the shrubs that lined the path. Durell looked back at the big, square house. It could have been the summer villa of an ancient Roman, two thousand years ago—classic and austere, impregnable, wrapped in a somber strength and security of its own law.

He shook his head and walked down the steep path to the village streets, and from there to the Hotel Imperiale.

chapter twelve

THE telephone rang, sending a probing finger through the shadowed room, but Durell was awake before it sounded, reached out from the bed and picked it up quickly and spoke his name. The voice in the receiver said: “Silas here.” “Make it three minutes.”

“I’m down in the lobby.”

“Good enough.”

“You’re not alone?”

“No,” Durell said.

“Well, it’s nice to know you’re human, after all,” Hanson said, and rang off.

The moon was enormous, golden and unreal, flooding the tiled balcony and open doorway with unnatural brillance. An orchestra was playing American twist music in the Imperiale’s ballroom, and the beat came in gyrating waves, drowning out the sound of the surf below. Durell started to get out of bed, and Deirdre’s hand held him.

“Darling?”

“Silas just called.”

“So soon?”

“We’ve had a lifetime together just now, Dee.”

“I know. I’d like another. Without a telephone,' without Silas, with no one in it but you and me.”

He looked down at her on the bed. He had slept for two hours, through the worst heat of the afternoon, waiting for her to arrive from Naples. There had been no other move to make until now. It was ten o’clock. Silas had arrived at three, hot and frustrated after his flight down from Milan, and perhaps suspecting that Durell had deliberately side-tracked him. He had traced Talbott down to Naples and a car-rental agency, and then had lost him and gone on to pick up Durell’s message.

“I ran into Jack,” Durell said quietly. “He almost chewed off a piece of my ear.”

“And you let him go?” the FBI man asked sharply.

Durell told of Talbott’s threat to turn over the Fremont data to Pacek. “And our friend from the KGU, Major Pacek, is hanging around waiting to make contact, too.”

“Old home week,” Si murmured. “And the scrolls?”

“The countess has them—or did, this morning. She picked them up at the Sentissi and got away when Talbott blundered in. I think she turned them over to Cesare Bellaria. He can hide the paintings temporarily in the monastery on top of this hill!”

“Why don’t we go look?”

“We will, tonight,” Durell said.

He picked up his gun now from the bedside table and Deirdre sat up in bed, watching him with grave eyes. She looked wonderful. She had never been more desirable, yielding freely, giving and taking in a mood of love that held an undertone of sad resignation.

“Sam?” she whispered. “Will you marry me, Sam?”

“Dee..

“I know. Not while you’re still in the business. But can’t you ever resign?”

“Some day.”

“You may get killed first, and I couldn’t bear that. I’d want to die, too. Can’t I go with you now?”

“No. And keep the door locked while I’m gone.”

“I can’t. At eleven o’clock I’ve got to be at Dom Angelo’s party, on his schooner. Then we all sail to Isola Filibano for more pictures, more pretty young things draped nude on the rocks, a drinking and swimming party for the rest of the week. I’ll have the fashion story done by then, and I’ll have to go back to Rome, Sam. I’m a working girl, remember?”

“There never was a lovelier one,” he said, smiling.

She looked sober. “You frighten me, Sam. The way you look. I think you might kill somebody tonight. Or get hurt—”

“Don’t, Dee. Please. It’s my job.”

“I know. Kiss me, and go quick.”

“I’ll see you at Angelo’s orgy.” He smiled again, but his face was shadowed. He put the gun away and kissed her. Her lips felt cold, and he remembered the warmth and smoothness of her body, fitted against his, demanding and giving. He ached for her. “I’ll be there by twelve, crashing the gate. Don’t flirt too much with all those rich Romans.”

He left quickly then.

Si was waiting in a shadowed corner of the terrace above the yacht basin. The FBI man gave Durell a quizzical look, started to speak, then simply nodded and they started off, climbing the cobbled village streets away from the hotel. A series of narrow stone steps between the fishermen’s houses led to the piazza and the lighted cafes. The piazza, with its Romanesque church and elaborate Renaissance Town Hall, was filled with young men and women walking in the ritual evening stroll around and around the square.

“Is the town clean?” Durell asked.

“I haven’t spotted Pacek. Believe me, I looked. And nobody’s seen Talbott, either.”

“They’re both here. Has the countess left her villa?”

Silas shrugged. “She’s supposed to attend this party the movie people are giving on one of the yachts. Then she sails for Isola Filibano with her husband.”

Silas wore a dark shirt and dark slacks and sneakers for the job ahead. They both carried small flashlights in their pockets. Durell’s gun felt bulky and hard in his waistband, cold against his stomach. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it tonight.

“It’s just a hunch,” he told Si, “but I think the scrolls are either in the monastery already or they’ll be hidden there tonight. So maybe we’ll run into Talbott, too.”

Si’s pale brush of hair was the only visible part of him as they climbed the shrubby shadows above the town toward the dark bulk of the monastery ruins.

“I want him, Sam,” Si said. “I can’t help it, I can’t stop thinking about Ellen.”

Durell thought of Deirdre, of her tumbled dark hair and warm, willing body. “Take it easy, Silas.”

The monastery seemed to grow out of the crag as if it were a part of the mountain, its buttresses and foundation walls springing from the rugged mountainside to soar in ruined, tumbled splendor in the moonlight. There was only the one access path below its arched walks. No one seemed to be around. An air of melancholy hovered over the ruined building.

The entrance was through an ornate doorway into a subchapel, shrouded in gloom, where the dust of centuries danced in the moonlight. The smell of old stone and the ghosts of a thousand sandaled monks pervaded the air. A ruined altar was outlined in a shaft of moonlight that shone through a gap in the wall. A curved stairway of stone led up to a galleried walk.

There was no hint of other intruders. A makeshift scaffold of old lumber had been erected against the south wall and heaps of carefully chipped plaster and flaked paint made dark mounds in the tentative glow of Durell’s flashlight. An old tarpaulin was tossed in a heap in one corner of the chapel. Durell prodded it with his toe, uncovered sculptor’s chisels, a shovel, several brushes. He lifted his head and stared at the wall and looked briefly at the emerging Veruglio frescoes that Cesare Bellaria was working to uncover from under the centuries-old grime and plaster. A huge arm and pointing hand gestured downward toward him.

“Cesare’s work is genuine, anyway,” Si whispered.

They scouted the lower floor quickly. There were cavernous kitchens, open to the elements on the north where the outer walls had crumbled into disordered blocks of stone; subcellars that wandered along heavily arched, dusty corridors where small creatures scampered and twittered and flicked away at their approach. Above the sub-chapel was a long corridor with a double row of cells where the monks had slept in privation and solitude.

“This place is too big,” Si suggested. “If the scrolls are here, it would take a dozen men a week to take the stones apart and find them.”

“We’ll wait,” Durell said. “I don’t think we’ll be alone for long.”

He chose one of the cells on the second floor with a window that gave him a vantage point from which to watch the single path up the mountainside. The odor of dust filled his nostrils. A wooden crucifix was still fastened to the wall over a narrow niche that must have provided a pallet area for the occupant. They settled down and waited.

He was used to waiting, accepting the pattern like putting on an old glove. He thought of Deirdre, and knew that one part of him wanted the things she did—a peace and security in which to live, a quiet routine of domestic problems, to sleep in the same place every night. It would be strange to return to the original personality of that boy he’d been in Bayou Peche Rouge. The boy was gone forever, and there was no turning back. There was nothing he could do about it now, anyway.

He waited.

Deirdre moved in him, alive, whispering.

An hour passed before Jack Talbott showed up.

The bitch, Talbott thought, the dirty double-crossing bitch! He had slept in the hills, and it had not improved his state of mind. She’d get what she deserved, he told himself, and he’d do it himself and enjoy her screams for mercy; but there wouldn’t be any mercy, not from him, because nobody in this rotten life had ever given him a break. He’d show her what it meant to make a fool of Jack Talbott. His thoughts were explosive, driving him up the path to the monastery with a hard stride, but not too fast, and not without care, because he hadn’t liked what he’d seen in Durell’s eyes back in Naples. He should have killed Durell then. But he’d been shaken by stumbling into Fran, and he’d wanted to take after her, and there had been that brief confusion. But he might have to do more killing before it was all over.

The scrape of his own footstep on the chapel floor made him freeze in the shadows, listening; he heard only the quick, erratic beat of his pulse. It was all right. Fran would come here with that damned Cesare and he could take ’em both, maybe right when they were making love, here on the dusty floor. But not before he got the paintings back. A series of erotic images flickered through his mind as he pictured Fran and Cesare in the acts of love, the twining limbs, the naked bodies, the little sounds—the last sound, too, when he killed them.

The bitch! And he never got to first base with her, for all her teasing in Rome three weeks ago, when she first put the whole idea into his head.

Yes, she’d started it carefully, telling how they’d both been dragged up through Southern and Midwestern poverty, in the cotton fields of Mississippi and the zinc mine towns of Missouri. Under their new facades as Italian countess and diplomatic expert they found the same despair that had spawned them. He should have known better, because the bitch thought as he did, always looking for the better chance. All that talk, though, about the husband who had millions and doled out liras to her in careful accounts, and how tired she was of it, and how frustrated she was, being married to a man who was nothing and never went to bed with her. . . .

Talbott’s mouth framed a harsh string of curses. She’d played him for a sucker, but she didn’t really know him. What he did to Ellen Armbridge was nothing to what Fran had waiting for her.

He chose a place behind the ruined altar in the sub-chapel to wait, his big bulk melting gracefully into the shadows. She would come here. She had to. It was easy to figure, the way she’d crossed him and came running back to Cesare, to hand him the fortune in those paintings. They’d stash the scrolls here until they made a contact to sell them. She’d been careless, talking about this place; it wasn’t hard to trace her. Women could be stupid, too confident that they could handle men with their bodies, using hips and breasts as if they blinded a man every moment of the day, thinking themselves superior this way.

He’d teach her.

He waited.

Silas whispered, “Can you hear him, Sam?”

“Yes.”

“He’s down there now. We can take him.”

“Wait.”

“I can’t wait. When I think. . .”

“We need the scrolls.”

“He doesn’t know where they are. He’s waiting here for the girl and this Cesare, her boy friend, just as we are. Suppose they don’t show? How can you be sure they’ll come here?”

“Shut up, Si.”

“But how can you be sure?”

“I figured she hasn’t had a chance to deliver them to Cesare yet. She took them from the Sentissi, but she went straight back to Apollio’s villa. Cesare hasn’t been working in these ruins for two weeks just for nothing. He’s got a cache arranged for the paintings, until he can get a fence for them.” “Or Francesca’s husband.”

“I don’t know,” Durell said. “But if we miss and Cesare hides the scrolls here, it would take twenty men rooting around for a week before we recover them. By that time, Prince Tuvanaphan will be back in Cambodia and the tin deal goes down the drain to the Czechs.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“I do,” Durell said. “That’s my job.”

chapter thirteen

FRANCESCA came up the path quickly, the wind blowing her skirt around her legs; she had to gather up the material in one hand to keep her steps unhampered. She felt a little breathless but it wasn’t from the climb or her haste; she always felt like this when she was to meet Cesare. She enjoyed the game, the excitement, the planning; the way she kissed Bernardo good night, pleading a headache to retire to her room early, and then waiting, wide-eyed, tension running through her legs and thighs and breasts. Apollio was a little different tonight, she thought. They were going to sail in the morning, back to Isola Filibano. She hated going back to that rocky isolation. But then, Cesare would be there, too, to close the deal, and then they’d go away for good. Meanwhile, there was this last tryst, to meet him where he would hide the paintings.

She entered the monastery by the back way and paused in the musty, yawning shadows of the kitchen area. Cesare wasn’t here yet. She could sense the emptiness of the place; and yet it wasn’t entirely empty, she thought. She couldn’t see anyone, but she hesitated, feeling something different about the ruins.

From the back entrance she could look down on the sleeping rooftops of Montecapolli to the yachts and the lights in the piazza. Tomorrow Apollio expected to imprison her again on his island. Two years of it, she thought bitterly. She had tried hard enough to keep the bargain they’d made. But she was young, and the sterility of their life at Isola Filibano was too much for anyone to take. She felt a little giggle rise in her throat, an anticipation of imminent freedom. Apollio’s angry thirst for revenge would drive him to follow her and Cesare. But the world was a big place, and with the money from the scrolls, they could vanish into the freedom she’d wanted ever since she was a little girl.

She knew her way around the ruins, having spent long night hours here in Cesare’s arms. She took the back stairs to the upper floor where she could watch for Cesare’s arrival.

She did not know all of his plans; but he would be pleased with her tonight. She’d followed instructions, gotten the package from the Sentissi, then taken the local train for Sorrento. She’d been terribly surprised—even frightened—when he appeared on the train, too, slipping into the seat beside her as soon as they left the station.

“Darling,” she’d said, “I thought you were working at those silly frescoes this afternoon. What a nice surprise!”

“The foxes have to be clever at this game, cara.” Cesare’s eyes were brilliant as he took the paintings from her. “Tell me about the Sentissi.”

He listened briefly, his narrow, handsome head tilted a little. He made a small sound when she mentioned Talbott’s appearance. He looks so cruel, she thought, and for a moment she expected him to be angry again. But then he explained what he was doing on the train.

“I walked over the mountain from the monastery—so no one saw me in Montecapolli,” he had said. “They think I’m chipping away at stone and mortar up there. It was a long walk to the bus. To be a fox means to throw everybody off the scent, cara. I shall get off at Sorrento, the stop before Montecapolli. You go straight back to Apollio, understand? No one must see you with me.”

“I don’t know what you’re up to,” she objected.

“You do not need to know. I will meet you tonight, as usual. One more last night at the monastery.”

“Won’t that be dangerous? Apollio wants to sail..

“Yes. And the deal can best be closed on Isola Filibano.

So I changed the plans. We will not hide the paintings in the monastery, because I did not anticipate a few things. I’ll take the scrolls to Filibano on my boat. I’ll probably be there before you.”

“Then perhaps we shouldn’t meet tonight.”

His grin was hard. “You do not understand what I say about a fox? We throw the dogs off the scent. We meet as if we were going to hide the scrolls. The men after us are not fools, Francesca. They are dangerous, and we move in quicksand. And first we must see how really clever these men are.” “I’m afraid of Jack Talbott,” she had said.

“We will settle him tonight. I cannot tolerate having him on the scene. I’d hoped the Americans would take care of him in Switzerland, but he shows unexpected initiative.”

She had always been a quick thinker. “You’re setting a trap for Talbott at the monastery tonight? Cesare, we mustn’t—”

“Kill him? You worry about murder?”

“It’s different from what we started out to do.”

“You need not worry. Frannie Smith would not worry.”

She said sharply; “I’m not Frannie Smith any more.”

“Of course. I apologize. I will see you at the monastery, however. You must be there.”

She said, with a touch of bitterness, “As bait?”

“As beautiful bait,” he said, nodding.

She had not hidden when she climbed the hill, and it hadn’t been as pleasant a walk as others. She trusted Cesare. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her, and it would be good to get rid of Jack Talbott. There was something unnatural about him, and she remembered how Cesare first sent her to flirt with him when they decided to use him to steal the paintings. He had seemed big and tough, but vulnerable then, like all the other men she had used. Now he was different. Now he loomed on the horizon of her mind like some dark storm cloud moving to overtake her.

She halted at the top of the stairs. A draught of cool air swept down the vaulted corridor with its ruined doorways to the monks’ cells. She shivered suddenly. Geometric patterns of moonlight shone on the stone floor ahead. Where was Cesare? It wasn’t fair of him to stake her out like a lamb, as bait for the tiger. But she had to trust him. It was too late to turn back now.

When she passed the door to the cell where Durell and Hanson waited, she heard his swift step behind her an instant before his hand clapped hard over her mouth and stifled her cry. She knew it wasn’t Cesare. Her terror flared, and she tried to kick backward, all her gutter instincts ablaze as she struggled to free herself. Durell pulled her easily back into the cell and turned her so she could see Si Hanson.

“Take it easy, Fran. We won’t hurt you.”

Durell’s voice was a whisper, almost soundless, but quite distinct. She struggled wildly for a moment, then subsided when she recognized him from the Hotel Sentissi.

“Where is Cesare?” he whispered. She shook her head, dark hair flying. “Isn’t he here?”

She made sounds behind his hand. She tried to bite his palm, and he added, “Don’t you know Talbott is waiting for you?”

She stiffened abruptly, her eyes wide. She looked at Si Hanson, with his white hair and youthful face. She did not know who he was. But although she was afraid of Durell, she was more afraid of Jack Talbott. She made small sounds of surrender behind Durell's hand.

“Don’t scream, don’t give yourself away, understand?”

She nodded and he took his hand away; she drew a deep breath and slumped against the stone wall of the cell. She couldn’t hear anything in the ruins. She looked up at Durell’s tall, somehow ominous figure.

“Where is Jack?” she asked quietly.

“Downstairs, in the chapel. Do you know it?”

“Y-yes.”

“He’s waiting to kill you, you know.”

“Yes,” she said, stronger this time.

“Did you come here to meet Cesare?”

“You know everything. You ought to know the answer to that one, too.”

“Does he still have the scrolls?”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her voice lifted slightly, and Durell raised a hand in warning. She swallowed and was silent. She was suddenly worried about Cesare, and resented his use of her for this trap. These men were not as stupid as Cesare thought. He made a mistake, planning this thing for tonight. He hadn’t expected Durell to be here, too. It could all fall to pieces, if . . .

“Silas,” Durell said in that peculiarly silent voice. “Go down and take him.”

She saw the white-haired man start and grin and take a gun from his pocket. “You really mean it?”

“Don’t kill him. Just take him.”

“My pleasure,” Si said.

He was gone immediately, without sound. Durell, alone in the tiny room with the girl, looked at her curiously. Enough moonlight came through the narrow window to make her face clearly visible. The look in her eyes was puzzling. She seemed to be fearful, yet she smiled as if at some small, secret joke she intended to keep to herself.

“What will your friend do?” she asked.

“Take Talbott out of the picture, just for now.”

“Then you’re really after Cesare, aren’t you?”

“It’s the scrolls I want, not your boy friend.”

“You make it sound nasty—about Cesare and me. I don’t have to stand around here and . . .”

“Yes, you do. Now shut up.”

Surprisingly, she was quiet. Durell strained to hear Si Hanson’s progress down the steps to the chapel, but he couldn’t detect anything. Fran smiled, a small Mona Lisa expression. In the moonlight, the essential hardness of her features was softened; she looked young and lovely. She stood provocatively, one hip askew, leaning against the wall as if she were perfectly content with events. He wondered at her calmness. He was taking a chance with Talbott; he had hoped not to clash with the big man until other matters were settled first, to safeguard the Fremont group. But this couldn’t be helped.

“When is Cesare getting here?” he asked the girl.

“I don’t know.” She grinned. “I think you’re all crazy. Just because a girl has a little harmless flirtation . . .”

“Not harmless. Two people have died already, and . . .”

A small sound stopped him. He was sure their whispers couldn’t have been heard beyond the cell doorway, but the sound that came to him was sharp and distinct, a little click like a pebble dropping on the stone floor. He went to the hall and paused. The moon was gone for the moment, lost behind a drifting cloud. The vaulted corridor seemed empty, but he couldn’t be sure. He tried to decide from which direction the sound had come—from the back stairs to the kitchen area or the main steps down to the chapel. He wasn’t certain.

He took his gun and gestured to Fran to join him. She showed no reluctance. She had no wish to stay here alone in the shadows.

It was time he heard from Silas, he thought; he wondered

if Hanson had made the clicking sound. Maybe he shouldn’t have sent Si against someone like Jack Talbott. Si wanted very much to put Talbott on ice, and that knife could cut two ways. Maybe the FBI man had been too eager and lost his way.

He made another gesture to Francesca and she followed quickly down the back stairs to the kitchen area. The moon came out again, like a lifting curtain, and made strange shadow shapes in the vaulted chambers. Serpentine, Moorish columns supported the barrel roof. He waited for the girl to come up beside him, not relishing having her at his back.

It was ironical, he thought, that his primary concern should again be that Talbott come to no immediate harm. Maybe he would end up killing the man—but not just yet. Jack still had the insurance he’d bought with Ellen’s life. Obviously, if Fran was not surprised that Talbott was here, she was expecting Cesare to take Talbott out of the game tonight. They had their own little plans, those two; and while Durell wouldn’t care less, day after tomorrow, for Jack’s skin, he didn’t want things going awry just now.

He heard the clicking sound again.

And a soft thud, a kind of smacking noise, and a sigh. Francesca halted.

“What was that?”

“Maybe Cesare,” he suggested.

“But Cesare isn’t due yet, and he uses the back way—” She paused. “You’re a smart sonofabitch. You make me sick.”

Durell grinned in the dark. “Stay with me, even if it hurts. There’s a good chance you might get killed.”

“I’m not afraid.”

He went forward. She hesitated, then followed. From the ruined kitchens, sprayed with moonlight shafting through the broken walls, a wide corridor led through the main area of the monastery church. The high dome had fallen in long ago, and huge blocks of stone, too big for the local fishermen to haul away to construct their houses, lay in shattered heaps on the floor of the nave. Durell circled them and took shelter in the deep shadows of an arcade of fat marble columns. The arched doorway to the private chapel loomed before him.

Francesca breathed lightly in his ear. He could smell her perfume, feel the soft pressure of her body against his arm. “What is it. . . ?” she began.

And then everything came apart.

Someone began running, without heed to the noise he made, across the chapel floor. A man, Durell guessed, from the sound of the shoes on the rubbly floor. He yelled, “Hold it!” and fired high as a warning. The shot sounded deafeningly in the empty ruins. Someone yelled, and he ran forward, ignoring the girl, worried about Silas. A body careened into him out of the black shadows. He saw a wedge of a face, felt the shock of a hard shoulder against his middle, and smelled sweat and panic. Durell was thrown back against one of the thick stone columns and drove forward again. The other man was on his hands and knees. It wasn’t Si—no white hair was visible. He didn’t think it was Talbott, either. The other lunged up, a knife blade glinting in his hand. There was a small sound as the knife went past him and clinked against the stone column at his back.

Francesca screamed.

Durell caught the man with a jab in the stomach, heard the whoosh of air driven from the other’s lungs, a choked curse in Italian. The man was hurt, and tried to snake away, and Durell hit him again with the barrel of his gun and heard him stagger, his feet making erratic scraping noises on the stone. And then the roof fell in.

He did not know if it was Francesca or someone else who hit him from behind. He was aware of blinding disorientation, a slamming impact as he hit the floor. Someone stumbled into him, gave him a gratuitous kick. He tried to get up, pushing with hands and knees on the floor, aware of dismay. He had lost his gun. He yelled for Silas, and heard his voice as a low, inchoate mutter, and then, for the second time that day, everything whirled away into a dizzy circle of colored lights.

chapter fourteen

HE HAD crawled for about ten miles, it seemed, over dusty stone and cold rubble. His arm lay across someone’s chest, and that someone groaned in steady rhythm with every breath. He thought he was making the noise himself, but he wasn’t. It came from the man he had fallen across.

He pushed back and felt a stab of pain in the back of his head and then forgot it, because the other man was feeling much worse.

“Silas?” he whispered. “Si, what happened to you?”

The FBI man moved and sighed with relief. His arm and left side were dark with blood, and another matting of blood darkened Hanson’s brush of white hair. “I’m glad you’re alive, Cajun. He hit you with a piece of stone.”

“Who did?”

“I think it was Talbott. But I’m not sure.”

“You didn’t get to him first?”

“He wasn’t here. Somebody came in the other way, while I was still scouting. He stuck a knife in me.”

“How bad is it?”

Silas Hanson grunted. “Nothing fatal—I hope. I’ve lost some blood, though. Still dripping. Slashed along the ribs and nicked my arm. I’m sorry, Cajun. I guess it was this Cesare fellow.” “Could be. And your head?”

Si touched his scalp in surprise. “Hell, I didn’t even feel that one. I’ve got a turkey egg there, all right.”

“You didn’t see the other man clearly?”

“No. Listen, what about the girl? Is she all right?” “Francesca? She must be long gone.”

“Like hell. Look at her, over there.”

Durell turned slowly. She lay in a pool of moonlight on the chapel floor, her dark hair a flood of raven against the stone, her skirts hiked up over her hips. He walked over to her, a little unsteady on his own feet, but not worrying about any noise he now made. Cesare had outsmarted them, he thought grimly. But he hadn’t taken Talbott out of the play, thanks to his being here with Silas. He could chalk up damned little else to the credit side. The paintings were still missing. And Talbott was still in the hills around Montecapolli.

He knelt beside Fran and saw that she was just coming to. Her eyes flickered as he touched her cheek and she gave a little moan and then tried to shrink and scramble away from him.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You were knocked out.”

“I’m not—I don’t know what happened,” she said thickly. “Oh, God, my head. And my dress is ruined.”

“Cesare left you in the lurch, that’s what happened.”

She sat bolt upright, staring. If she was at all concerned about her semi-nudity, she paid no attention to it. “Ah, you cops are all such liars!”

“It’s true. He’s gone. Cesare didn’t bother to help you. You and he were trying to booby-trap Talbott, right? To get him off your heels?”

“Oh, shut up,” she said. “My head aches.”

“Get on your feet, Fran. We’re moving out of here.”

“Not with you. I can make it alone.”

“You either come along, or I send for Apollio to take you

home. That might be awkward, trying to explain to your husband just what you were doing here.”

She breathed thin hatred. “Oh, you are a bastard.”

“Give me a hand with my friend,” he said.

Silas was able to walk. For the first few minutes, it was a case of the lame leading the halt, Durell thought. The girl was no help, being concerned only with her headache and the damage to her dress. Silas paused when they stood outside in the fresh wind that blew in from the Bay of Sorrento.

“You need a doctor,” Durell said.

“I can patch myself up,” Hanson insisted. “Just a scratch, that’s all it is. It looks worse than it is.”

“And it will feel worse by tomorrow. You’re bound to stiffen up. There’s a little clinic I noticed in town. I’ll drop you off there. Tell them you slipped and fell.”

“On a knife?” Hanson asked wryly.

“Just stick to that, and they’ll assume it was one of the local fishermen and won’t press you to make formal charges.” “Are you putting me out of this, Cajun?”

“I’m sorry,” Durell said. “I have to.”

The way down the mountain seemed a lot longer than when they had come up, and several times Silas grudgingly asked for a moment to rest. The girl stuck close to Durell’s side. She was strangely silent, a hint of anger evident in her face as she scanned the night around them. Durell could guess what she was thinking, and hoped to make use of it as soon as he took care of Si.

It was decided it would be best if Hanson made his way to the clinic alone, for the last block or two. It was still before midnight, and Montecapolli’s bars and cafes were bright and crowded. A dance band was playing on the Imperiale’s terrace. Lights still shone in the clinic windows. Once Durell saw the clinic doors close after Hanson, he returned to where Francesca stood in the street. Her dress was smudged with dust and cobwebs and torn along one hem, but she still managed to look part wanton and part countess. Her mouth was sullen. She still thought about something she didn’t like to think about.

“I want to talk to you,” she said abruptly. “I don’t care if my husband is waiting for me. Let him wait. I’ve been wondering about Cesare leaving me in that damned place, not at all worrying about me. . .”

“Well, these Italians are impetuous lovers,” he said. “In and out, quick, buona sera and ciao. Good evening and so long. Do you feel all right?”

"I feel awful. Can I go to your hotel and have a drink? A little brandy would help. Or bourbon.”

“We’ll make it bourbon,” Durell said.

He chose the darkened side streets around the piazza to reach the hotel. The Imperiale’s music was lively, and everybody was out front on the terrace, watching the parties on the moored yachts in the basin. There was even some swimming, off the black beach nearby.

Durell gave Francesca the number and key to his room and went into the bar and bought a fifth of bourbon and started up the stairway with it. Someone spoke his name and he paused and turned and looked down at Anton Pacek.

The Czech wore a white suit this time, and Durell wondered aloud if the life of the Western bourgeois imperialists might finally be wearing the man down. But Pacek did not respond to his remark. The man’s face was a slab of stone.

“You look as if you had some difficulties this evening, Mr. Durell.”

“And you look out of place, Pacek. The bull in the china shop. The suit doesn’t become you.”

“You are flippant. But you failed tonight, eh?”

“That depends on what I was after,” Durell said.

Pacek said flatly, “You do not have the Dwan Scrolls.” “Neither do you.”

“But I shall get them.”

“We’ll toss for them—when they come to light.”

“I merely suggest again—it would be better if you forgot this affair and went to Rome or Paris. I could provide a reasonable amount of evidence as a cover for your superiors. And any amount of money you wish to name, Durell.”

“Go to hell,” Durell said, and walked up the steps and out of the man’s sight.

The sound of running water in the tiled shower greeted him. Francesca’s tom frock lay on the bed, her shoes had been kicked to the edge of the carpet, her stockings hung over the back of a gilt Renaissance chair. Durell put down the bottle of bourbon and walked into the bathroom. Francesca took this moment to turn off the water and step out from behind the curtain.

“Aphrodite rising from the sea,” he murmured.

She didn’t mind. “Bernardo has been teaching me mythology, so thanks. I just couldn’t stand all that dust and grime on me. You don’t mind my making myself at home here?”

He looked at her pink, glowing body. “My pleasure.”

“You like me?” she asked, smiling. Her underlip was wet and glistening. Her eyes were brilliant, slanted at the corners. She put her hands under her breasts. “I think we can get along very well, don’t you?”

“I’m not so sure. What would Cesare say?”

“That’s what I want to talk about. I’m mad at him. He just left me there in all that dirt and didn’t even bother to fine out if I was dead or alive.”

“He was in quite a hurry to leave.”

“Yes, but Jack might have killed me!” she snapped. “Anc Cesare didn’t give a damn.”

“Weren’t you supposed to make Talbott hold still while Cesare took care of him?”

“Something like that.”

“You were to hold Jack up while Cesare stuck a knife ii him? But Cesare got the wrong man, he stuck poor Silas. And Jack is still hiding in the hills, looking for you. You double crossed him, and he hasn’t forgiven any part of that.”

Francesca shivered. “Oh, God, I’m afraid of him. I’ve neve: been afraid of any man before.”

“Let’s crack the bourbon,” Durell suggested. “You need help—and maybe I’ll give it to you. Get your clothes on, though we haven’t time for fun and games, Frannie. And I want to keep my mind on business. Neither am I a convenient outlet for you to get some imagined revenge on Cesare for leaving you in the lurch as he did. So get dressed.”

“Oh. All right.”

He poured bourbon in water glasses for both of them downed his, poured another, and watched her sip at the liquor Her eyes were big and frightened. She was in no hurry to get her clothes on. She wrapped herself in a towel he tossed to her and concentrated on her glass.

“Now tell me about the scrolls,” Durell said. “What i Cesare going to do with them? You gave them to him after yoi left the Sentissi in Naples, didn’t you?”

“You’re so smart—yes, I did.”

“He has them now?”

“I guess so.”

“Who is he going to sell them to?”

“My husband,” she said.

“You’re lying, Fran.”

“No, he’s making a deal with Bernardo, all right.”

“Your husband is an honorable man.”

“Not when it comes to his art collection.” She sneered. “And I’m not going to help you any more. I just decided. You’re trying to take advantage of me because I’m sore at Cesare right now, but maybe Cesare knew you’d take care of me, anyway, and you’d get me out of there. And he wanted to stay after Jack. That’s why he left the monastery.”

“Fran, Cesare doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die,” Durell said. “You know he’s using you to finish whatever job Bruno Bellaria began on Count Apollio.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she snapped.

“You know about the feud between the Bellarias and the Apollios, don’t you?”

“That’s old, old stuff. Nobody believes in that kind of thing any more.”

“Just the same, something seems to have happened during or after the war to bring it back to life again,” Durell insisted. “Your husband apparently used his political power to step on the Bellaria brothers, and Bruno retaliated somehow in a way that none of these people have forgotten. It must have been something pretty horrible. Don’t you know what it was?”

She stood there, smiling at him secretively.

Durell said impatiently: “You ought to face facts, Fran, before somebody blows the whistle on you.”

“It won’t be you,” she retorted. “I’m not scared any more. You can’t do anything to me, anyway. You won’t call the local cops, and if you did, it wouldn’t do any good. I’m the Countess di Apollio, you know, and that’s a name that cuts pretty deep around here.”

“Fran, I want your help. Is Cesare going to Filibano?” He paused. “You’re going with your husband, aren’t you?”

She stood up, let the towel fall deliberately, and walked nakedly away from him. Durell considered her smooth flanks and undulating bottom and wondered about the count’s apparent tolerance in allowing another man to possess her.

Deirdre chose that moment to walk into the room.

There was an awkward pause; then Francesca laughed. “My, our Mr. Durell is a busy man. But it’s all right, honey,” she said to Deirdre. “Believe it or not, it was strictly business— and not the sort of business you think.”

Deirdre arched a perfect, inquisitorial eyebrow at Durell, and he shrugged, wondering if he could explain it to her. Francesca held her frock over her head and wriggled into it, slipped on her shoes, and looked around for her handbag. Deirdre gave it to her, smiling with sweet venom.

“Sorry you have to rush off, darling. But have no regrets about Sam. We’ll see you on Isola Filibano.”

“Honey, if you can make out better than me,” Fran said thinly, “you’re welcome to him.”

She slammed the door on her way out.

Durell poured himself another drink.

Deirdre said quietly, “Oh, you are an oaf!”

“I suppose so.”

“You look as if somebody beat you up again.”

“Somebody did. Si Hanson is in the local hospital.”

“Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I’m not sorry I interrupted the way you were questioning that little tart, but I’m sorry you were beaten and Si was hurt. Will he be all right?”

“In time. He’s more disappointed than hurt. Dee, I need your help. Please don’t act like a child.”

“Like a jealous woman, you mean.” Deirdre paused. “ I can’t help it, Sam. For all these years you keep telling me to stay out of your business, it’s too dangerous for me, you can’t tell me anything. Now suddenly you need my help. Why should I give it to you, darling? Will it change anything between us? Will it make you come back to the States with me and liv like everybody else?”

“No,” he said truthfully.

She sighed and looked unhappy. “All right, what do you want me to do?”

“Time is running out, Dee. I’ve had a long day and long night, and there’s less than forty hours left before th whole thing dies in my hands. I don’t want some good people I know in Eastern Europe to die, either. I have to get to Isola Filibano now. Count Apollio is going there, but I can get an invitation from him. Now you’re going with Dor Angelo, right? So I want you to get me aboard with your movie crowd, at once.”

Deirdre stared. “Is that the help you want from me? That' all? To get to Isola Filibano?”

“I could probably rent a plane. . .

“Not for Isola Filibano. There isn’t enough level land on that rock for a fly to come down on. But I can manage with Dom Angelo, Sam. I’ll take you to him right now. Deidre’s gray eyes glinted wickedly, and her smile was wry. “Dom Angelo will do anything for me, darling.”

“Why?” Durell asked.

“He wants to marry me. And right now I feel like taking him up on his offer.”

chapter fifteen

AT TEN o’clock the next morning, Durell stood at the rail of Dom Angelo’s schooner, moored in a tiny cove at the foot of Isola Filibano’s dark, soaring mass. The morning was clear and blue, as only mornings in spring and autumn can be in the Tyrrhenian. The sun was warm. He stood beside Dom Angelo himself, although he wasn’t sure Angelo remembered his casual invitation to join the party last night.

Deirdre had kept her promise. They had checked out of the Imperiale and gone down to the dock to join the party on the boats. It took only a few moments to assure that there was room for him on the schooner. The fat, bald man with the big black moustache was too busy watching the models to do more than nod a casual assent.

Knowing that Deirdre was in a forward cabin with the models, he had slept easily, with two dour photographers from Rome to share the stateroom. He hadn’t seen her yet this morning. Some of the passengers had gone ashore, to walk their hangovers gingerly up paths and terraces to the villas that sparkled like cubes of sugar in the hot sunlight.

Isola Filibano was a small island, about four miles long and only a mile in breadth. At the main harbor there was a small fishing village folded into the convolutions of the rugged coast. Durell could see the fishing boats offshore, and several others that had come into the port just before their own arrival. He wondered if Jack Talbott had bribed passage on one of them. And he didn’t forget Pacek’s remarkable ability to turn up everywhere, either.

“That boat there,” Durell pointed. “It’s the only private craft in the village harbor, except for Count Apollio’s.”

“Ah, that one.” Dom Angelo patted his perspired forehead. He wore shorts and a bright yellow silk shirt and Moroccan sandals. “It belongs to Cesare Bellaria, a bright and handsome young man. With the Bellarias, we have no difficulty. But Apollio—he is a terror. He tries to buy us out, he sets dogs upon us if we set one foot beyond the property we bought, he brings lawsuits against us. A most uncooperative gentleman.”

“And rich,” Durell said drily.

“He owns the island—every stone, house, fisherman and wife and child, every dog and goat—except this little piece here that I and my friends were fortunate to secure as a place in which to rest.”

“Nobody seems to be resting much,” Durell observed “Ah, but public relations are the breath of life to th motion picture industry, signor. We tie in the fashion sho\ with the release of my latest picture, you see. And the young ladies are charming.”

Durell looked at them, the mannikins and starlets in theit bikinis, sunning themselves on porous rock or swimming in the limpid cove around the boats moored beneath the villas. Some of the photographers had wandered into the village in search of local color and were already returned, rebuffed by a hostile population. They were compensated for their disappointment by Dom Angelo’s young ladies.

“Signor.” Dom Angelo sighed. “You look at the Bellaria boat? You know young Cesare?”

“I think we met last night.”

“He is a good friend of Apollio’s countess. But a tragedy will end that affair, I am sure.”

“I’ve heard that there were three Bellaria brothers, but all I hear about is Cesare,” Durell probed. “Do the other still live here and carry on their vendetta with Apollio?”

“Ah, the vendetta! A delicious story! I would have a scrip written, but one would not dare—the count is quick with hi lawsuits, eh? The Bellarias still own a scrap of headland however—over there, beyond the village. I walked there once to look for a locale for a scene I was shooting, but there is no hospitality on this island. We were ordered back by Bruno—a wild and dangerous man. A pity, because the eldest brother Rafael, seems quite pleasant.”

Durell studied the headland Dom Angelo pointed out and then saw the bulk of a huge house perched on its highest point above the village. Turning, he stared up at the dizzy volcaniic heights of the main peak. Sunlight flashed from a number of windows in what he already knew to be Apollio’s palazzo. He made up his mind on his next step, excused himself, and went below to breakfast with Deirdre.

There were no taxis, no autos of any kind on Isola Filibano The village power plant was a large diesel engine located in an old German blockhouse dating back to World War II and its irregular pulsing came now and then on the errant wind that blew from the sea. The island was pock-marked with sulphur springs, and wisps of steam were visible against the craggy slopes of the mountain. The volcano that formed the island had not erupted since the sixteenth century, but earthquakes and tremors were still almost an annual affair.

It was like moving two hundred years into the past, Durell thought, as he walked into the village. He had waited until after lunch for his first chance to leave his host, and another hour after that because Deirdre insisted he stay to watch the first photographic setups for the models. There were half a dozen villas in the colony, and everyone had been assigned to bedrooms ashore with a kind of slapdash abandon that created some strange bedfellows. It looked like a wild weekend party for Dom Angelo.

There was no trace of Talbott or Pacek, and Cesare did not appear to join the crowd on the beach. Durell borrowed field glasses from Dom Angelo and studied the huge pink palazzo on the mountain. There were medieval walls and square towers and big iron gates, including the ever-present blazon of Apollio arms. He detected only an occasional dim movement of a servant in the courtyard up there.

The harsh Mediterranean sunlight made it impossible to move about unobserved. He had several ideas for action, but he confined himself to patience until most of the members of the villa colony fell into an exhausted siesta after lunch, and the sounds of festivity died to a muted hum in the heat of the afternoon.

A stony path led along the craggy shore for a mile into the village. The sea thundered at the base of the porous cliffs and eddied in emerald swirls and secret pools between the miniature headlands. He met no one on the path, saw nothing alive except two goats and an old tethered horse cropping dispiritedly at the low-growing brush. There were some terraced olive groves outside the village and a few level patches where truck gardens were established. Most of the village men were gone to sea for the day. Durell wandered through traditionally narrow streets with cut-stone paving, wondering how many eyes watched his progress from behind the yellow and blue shutters. In the piazza, a few fishermen’s wives in black gave him startled looks and muttered, “Buon giorno,” but when he started to speak, they turned their heads and hurried away.

The bar in the square was closed. A priest came out of the small Romanesque church that faced the sea and walked with black robes kicking dust across the stones. Durell decided against trying to question the man. He went down to the beach.

Apollio’s yacht was a sixty-foot, diesel-powered beauty moored behind the old stone mole like a gull, gleaming with polished brass and dark mahogany. Cesare’s boat, appropriately tied up on the opposite side of the little harbor, was an old and battered auxiliary sailer. A crewman was polishing brass on the Apollio vessel; Cesare’s thirty-footer looked deserted, drowned in reflected sunlight from the harbor water, Durell walked along the beach and out on the stone pier to look it over more closely.

Nobody seemed to be aboard. An air of slovenly maintenance marked Cesare Bellaria as no natural sailor. The high cabin amidships needed paint; the canvas on fore and main mast was old and patched, carelessly furled. He went to the low doorway aft, ducked his head and stepped in.

The air in the cabin was twenty degrees hotter than out on deck and felt dead and musty. He searched quickly, considering the unmade bunk, opening all the compartment drawers checking the chart cabinet. The forward, smaller cabin was crammed with old coils of line, sails, broken blocks. He went through it all, nevertheless. The engine was an old four cylinder Gray, rusty and needing attention. The engine-room itself was a tiny cubby with a small skylight of frosted glass One of the panes was broken. He went aft and searched the transom cubby.

He spent twenty minutes altogether in searching the dilapidated boat, enduring the stifling heat below-decks. The scroll were not here.

The hatch doorway to the cabin was a bright rectangle of sunlight as the auxiliary ketch swung to the tide and le the afternoon sun shine in. Durell stepped up on the ladder and started out on deck—-and there came a thwack! and jagged splinter of wood flew from the hatch combing.

He did not hear the shot.

Instead of ducking back into the cabin, where he would be trapped, he threw himself forward and flung himself behind the shelter of the cabin wall on the seaward side.

A second bullet scarred the blue paint on the cabin roc and screeched out to sea. Again he did not hear the shot which meant a silencer; and most likely a rifle held by someone up on the black and ocher headland nearby.

The tide lapped peacefully against the hull as he crouched there. At his back was the long mole and across the harbor, th white and immaculate shape of Apollio’s yacht. The shots had come from the landward side, however. The sun beat like a hammer on the nape of his neck. He moved to the end of the cabin and risked a glimpse of the shore.

The headland soared up from the stone pier with a few zigzag goat paths scarring its scrubby cover. At the end of the headland was the dilapidated Bellaria place, like a dark cube against the brilliant sky. To the left was the village. A new fishing boat, of somewhat different design from the Filibanos’, had come in and docked at the community pier while he’d been searching the cabin. The different design meant it had come from the mainland. He wondered who had arrived in it.

The third shot, when it finally came, nicked the mainmast, going far wide. The aim was getting worse.

Maybe the last shot was designed to entice him into the open. He decided to accommodate the hidden sniper.

He got up suddenly and ran, hurdled the boat’s rail, hit the stone pier and kept going. Nothing happened. There were no more shots. The sun shone peacefully, the wind blew laundry hanging from the village’s stone houses, and the tide made small purling sounds on the black sand.

He walked fast until he reached the shelter of the first village street, and then saw Deirdre crossing the square. She was still some distance away. He walked toward her with a crawling sensation between his shoulder blades. A few old men sat in front of the church and drowsed in the sun. As he came around the bulk of the church he heard some one call, “Miss Padgett!” Deirdre paused and then walked toward the scattering of tables outside the cafe across the cobblestoned square.

A newcomer had made himself at home there.

It was Anton Pacek.

It was unfortunate, Durell thought later, that Deirdre saw him at that moment and changed direction to join him instead of answering Pacek’s quiet call. She hesitated, then walked with her long, graceful stride, her dark hair loose in the sunlight, her tan linen sun-dress clinging to her curves.

“Sam? I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Durell thought of the sniper. “I almost wish you hadn’t found me, hon.”

“Isn’t that man in the cafe the same one we noticed in Naples? How does he know my name, Sam?”

“He knows everything. Too much.”

She regarded him gravely. “You look strange. Has something happened?”

“Fortunately, no.” Three shots. “Nothing.” He took her arm, aware of Pacek smiling at them. “Pacek has seen you with me twice, now. That gives him a fat lever. He knows who you are, and he’s got a memory like a computer. Right now he’s leafing mentally through my dossier, and since he’s found your name on it, he’ll try to throw me out of the game. He’ll try to get at me now—through you.”

She paled. “I’m sorry, Sam. But I can take care of myself.” “I’d rather do that job. You’d better stick with me for the next few hours, Dee.”

“I’d like nothing better, darling.”

Pacek lifted his wine glass in a mock salute from his seat in front of the cafe. His squat body and thick neck looked as if he’d been hewn out of the dark stone of the island.

His smile was the grimace of death.

The Bellaria place had once been painted a dark yellow over the stucco, but most of the paint had peeled off or been scoured away by winter winds, and the building had a faded, scabrous look of near decay. It was built in seventeenth-century style, with some rococo additions, around a central courtyard. Parts of the main gate of scroll-work iron was missing, probably sold off as scrap or taken by the Fascisti twenty years ago to melt down for guns. Durell walked with Deirdre into the courtyard, saw that three of the four wings held only empty, yawning windows, and turned to the small servants’ area to the right. It was the only habitable area left in what had once been a proud and rich residence.

“What are we doing here?” Deirdre asked. She wore shoes with moderately high heels, and leaned on Durell’s arm to pick her way across the irregular cobblestones. “How do you know about this place?”

“Somebody took a pot shot at me,” he said, “from one of these windows, less than half an hour ago.”

“And we’re walking into it, just like this?”

“I’m ready for the pot-shotter, now.”

They were almost to the front door when the old man appeared. He called out to them in a quavering voice, wishing them good evening, and then told them to go away, that this was private property and no tourists were welcome. Durell explained in his best Italian that he was not a tourist and that he was looking for Cesare Bellaria.

“My brother is not here,” the old man said. “I am Rafael Bellaria. Why do you seek Cesare?”

“His boat is in the harbor now. Where is he?”

“I do not know, and do not want to know.”

As they approached, Durell saw that the old man had recently—very recently—been slashed across the forehead with something like a gun butt. There was a welt and a split in the flesh over his left temple, and dried blood. Rafael had thick white hair that hung heavily over his ears, a weathered and seamed face, and the same calloused fisherman’s hands as his brother Bruno in Geneva. He wore a dark brown vest over a striped shirt that was old-fashioned enough to need a gold collar stud. His trousers were blue denim, his cracked shoes serviceable. Here was none of the sophisticated elegance of Cesare, the baby brother of the family. And there was less of Cesare’s tigerish qualities in Rafael’s weather-beaten eyes.

“Well, you are here, you are welcome to Bellaria’s hospitality,” Rafael said. “Come in, you and the young lady.” “Who put the cut over your eye, signor?” Durell asked.

“I am an old man; I fell.”

“You fell against Cesare’s gun?”

The shaggy, pale brows lifted. “It was not Cesare.”

“Who shot at me when I was on his boat, then?”

“I heard no shots.”

“I was on Cesare’s boat, and somebody up here used a rifle and silencer to try to pick me off.” Durell looked down the mountainside at the harbor. The motor sailer was like a toy etched on the bright water. “If it wasn’t Cesare, who was it?”

“Let me get you some wine,” the old man muttered.

Durell and Deirdre followed him inside. Apparently Rafael lived in only two rooms, a huge beamed sitting room and a kitchen, equipped with a kerosene stove. There was no electricity, to judge by the smoky oil lamps in the place. The furniture, old and worn, might once have been worth a fortune; it could still be worth a fortune, refurbished and set in a window in one of the Via del Babuino’s antique shops in Rome. Rafael shuffled about and poured red wine into three crystal cups and sat down and stared at them.

“You are from the mainland police?” he asked Durell. “No.”

“We need police here on Isola Filibano. There is no law, you see. Only what Count Apollio declares to be the law. Why do you look for my young brother?”

“Cesare is in trouble. He knifed a man in Montecapolli and he helped to steal some valuable art treasures in Geneva. He may get killed if he tries to pull a deal with Count Apollio.”

“Yes. To everything you say—yes.”

“Haven’t you been helping him?” Durell asked.

“I am an old man, and he is young, hot-headed and bitter. He plays with fire, eh? He plays with the contessa. This is a thing everyone knows. He wants to repair this house, to make much money and bring back old glories. I tell him and Bruno the old days are gone forever—like my youth, like the aristocracy. The old hatreds were almost dead; they were cold, like ashes. And then Bruno blew upon them with his hatred during the war and the flames shot up again. It is difficult to understand. Cesare is young and I am old and I live in yesterday’s dreams, but it is Cesare who wishes to restore what is a dream, and it is I who accept and wish to live in today.”

“Have you told Cesare how you feel?”

“Many times. He only laughs. He and Bruno laugh at the old brother. I am senile, they say—an old fool. And today? I hear that Bruno is dead.”

“Yes,” Durell said.

Rafael looked at him. “Did you kill him?”

“Not exactly. But he is just as dead.”

The old man sighed. “It was wrong, what Bruno did. A terrible thing. No man deserved such punishment as Bruno gave Apollio, whatever the hunger and terror and need for revenge at the end of the war. It would have been better if Bruno shot him.”

“What did Bruno do to Apollio when he got the upper hand, here on the island?”

“I cannot say.”

“You know what it was, though?”

“Yes. It was unspeakable. Bruno was my brother, but he was not a good man; and if young Cesare dies because of this thing, it will rest with Bruno’s ghost.” Rafael looked gently at Deirdre and his voice changed. “You are lovely, signorina. But you should not be here.”

“I want to know who shot at me,” Durell persisted.

“It was a stranger. An American, like you.”

“A big man, with yellow hair?”

“Yes. He looks for Cesare, to kill him. Cesare saw him coming and ran away. The stranger was like a madman. He came on a boat last night—maybe Giuseppi’s; he was in Naples these last two days. He went through the empty rooms of my house like an angry wind.”

“His name is Jack Talbott,” Durell said.

“I do not know his name. I did not ask.” Rafael touched the split, puffy flesh over his eye. “He had a rifle, a thing on the end to make it quiet. It went phut! and made not enough noise to frighten a bird. But I heard it and saw him shooting at you on Cesare’s boat. I thought he was shooting at Cesare, and the boy is still a baby, he is my little brother, and I wished to save him. So this man with the wild eyes turned and struck me and then ran away. I did not see him go. I was dreaming on the floor for a long time. And then you came. It is all I can tell you. No one is here now.”

“When Cesare saw Talbott coming and ran away, did he have the paintings with him? You know about the paintings and how they were stolen, don’t you?”

“I know.” The old man grimaced. “Cesare took them.”

“Just half an hour ago?”

“Yes. I do not know where he went. He can hide on the mountain. It is wild and lonely there, and he knows it well. He can hide until he finishes his business—or is killed.”

Durell believed the old man’s story. There was a gentility in Rafael that was at odds with the qualities in his brothers. In Rafael, poor and bedraggled, the traditions of aristocracy somehow survived. The man was honestly worried.

“Rafael, will you help me?” Durell asked bluntly. “If I can, in turn, I will help your brother Cesare, although he has done many bad things. But he hasn’t killed yet, and maybe I can stop him from that.”

“You are a good man, signor. Are you worried about the signorina, because this Talbott man shoots at you?”

“Yes. He may try to hurt her, too.”

“The signorina could be safe here.”

Durell said, “I was thinking of that.”

“This is a big house. He searched it once and found nothing. There are many empty rooms, many suites. No one goes there, not even Cesare. The signorina could stay for a short time and I would keep her company, if she wishes, in one of the empty rooms in the back. No one would find us there.” Durell stood up. “I won’t be gone for long.” He looked at Deirdre. “Do you understand, Dee? Pacek saw you with me; Talbott must know about you, too. You’ve got my hands tied, if they reach you.”

“But I want to stay with you, Sam.”

“It will be better here, just for an hour or two.”

She spoke in English. “I like this old man. I trust him. But I don’t like the thought of our separating. Somebody shot at you. Maybe it was Talbott, maybe not—Rafael isn’t too sure about things. So please be careful.”

“I’m always careful.” Durell said.

chapter sixteen

FRANCESCA picked her way daintily down the rocky goat-path in the cliffside. She knew the way well, having found the path last year in her determination to join Dom Angelo’s parties. After all, she told herself, this was not the feudal ages. She would not be kept behind walls, guarded by sullen men and fierce dogs, immured in the palazzo far from fun and gaiety. She was still young, and being a prisoner was not part of the deal with Count Apollio. The terms of their marriage hadn’t been fulfilled, anyway. There had never been a consummation. So why shouldn’t she have some fun when Dom Angelo showed up?

Lordie, she thought, how Bernardo hated them all! Sometimes when the wind blew right across the volcanic wastes of Isola Filibano, they could hear the music from the villas and see the lights of the yachts collected for a weekend party down there. At such times Bernardo watched her even more closely. But he was a fool. She wasn’t afraid of him. She was more afraid of missing a night with Cesare.

The thought of Cesare brought a chill of excitement, although the late afternoon sun held a barrel of molten heat pouring down on the rocks. From the path, the horizon seemed to reel in blue-white shimmerings. A couple of fishing boats were out there, suspended between sky and water. The surf crashed viciously on the rocks below, but she didn’t look down, because she was afraid of getting dizzy. She carried her high-heeled gold shoes in her hand and walked barefooted, her expensive frock blowing in the hot wind, lifting about her thighs and hips in playful abandon, as if the very elements themselves wanted to seduce her.

Cesare had warned her to stay in the palazzo until he came there tonight, but she couldn’t wait. She had never been a patient person, and nothing could happen to her on Isola Filibano. Bernardo ruled everything here with an iron fist, like he tried to rule her.

Rebellion made her thrust out her full, fleshy under-lip. Her skin was flushed under the tan, heated by the sun and exertion and her anticipation. Cesare would get angry, if he was with the movie people down there, but she could handle him. All men were easy to handle. It was silly to be afraid of any of them.

And that included Durell, she told herself firmly. She thought briefly of his tall figure, his dark hair, his sober blue eyes that seemed to look right through her. She shivered. There was something about him that was different from the others. But he wasn’t on the island. He couldn’t possibly get here.

She jumped nimbly from the last rock to the hot sand of the beach at the foot of the cliff. The sand was hot enough to make her yelp, so she ran down to the water’s edge where she could walk through the cool, foaming surf. The movie colony villas were just beyond the second point of a little cove where sometimes, when she was stuck here with just Bernardo for company—and he wasn’t much fun, poring constantly over his eternal catalogs, listing new items in his art collection—she came here to swim in the nude, to dream and feel the sun and water on her body. . . .

He must have been watching her all the way down the goat path, she thought later. Watching and waiting, like an animal ready to spring.

She did not see him until it was too late.

She was already in the second cove, and she crossed just below the huge, corroded boulder where he must have been sprawled like a lizard on a rock, disregarding the searing stone and broiling sun. The impact when he jumped down on her drove the breath explosively from her lungs, knocked her face into the hot dark sand. She did not know what had happened. There was no time to think. She tried to scream, but her mouth was in the sand and she choked and gasped and spit some of it out and tried to roll free of his enormous weight pinning her down. She heard a roaring in her ears, like a tremendous tidal wave crashing on the rocky shore. Something struck her across the back and darkness surged through her mind. And again. She heard a gasp, a grunt. She thought illogically of the ruin of her dress and wondered where her slippers had gone. They had flown from her fingers with the impact.

Then she felt herself cruelly hauled up by one arm so that she swung like a rag doll, limp and yielding, in a dizzy semi-circle at the end of his long arm.

“Hello, Fran.” He grinned. “You’re a mess, hey?”

She could not focus on his face, and terror squeezed her throat. Then her vision suddenly cleared and she saw him, enormous against the blazing, brazen sky, his tight curly yellow hair like an unholy halo around his head.

“Jack. . . .” she whimpered.

“Yeah. Jack Talbott.”

It was like being struck by lightning to see him here, where she thought she was safe. She’d been worrying about Bernardo’s anger, about Cesare, about the danger from Durell. She had almost forgotten about Jack.

He let her go abruptly, and she fell, sitting on the sand, undignified, her legs sprawled, the silk frock roiled around her thighs. Her black hair tumbled and blew in the wind. He looked even bigger from down here, his feet spread in the sand like some colossus, his head tilted, his big shoulders hunched. He looked so different from the handsome, well-groomed man she had flirted with in Rome and Geneva. His face was hard, and there was no mercy in his eyes.

“You didn’t expect to see me, hey?” His voice was as brazen as the sky that reeled above her, booming louder than the surf. “You thought you had it made, Frannie?”

“How—how did you get here?”

“I stole a boat. It wasn’t easy.”

“Jack, you don’t understand. . . .”

“You bitch,” he said. “Whore. I’ll Mil you.”

“No, Jack, I can explain! Please. . . .”

He slapped her, leaning forward, his big hand slicing the air, cracking across her jaw to knock her backward. Her legs flew wide, the silky dress blew over her hips. He paid no attention to her body, but he breathed strangely. She thought frantically of screaming for help. Help was so near, really— just on the other side of the point, beyond this isolated cove. Somebody might hear her, in the villas beyond.

But she was afraid to scream.

Her face hurt where he’d slapped her, and her body felt crushed by the weight of his leap upon her. One leg ached and sent shooting pains up through her hip. She wiped sand from her cheeks. Her makeup was a mess, she thought irrationally; her hair had come down and streamed in the wind. Spume from the breakers smashing on the rocks nearby blew across the black beach.

Like a scene from hell, she thought dimly, like from the Bible that Pa used to read on the farm. And Jack Talbott was Satan, lusty and dark against the sky.

He leaned over her. “It’s the end of the line, Fran. Now listen to me. I got here on just one thing—the need to kill you. Don’t think I couldn’t or wouldn’t. I’ve done worse. Nobody beats me out like you did. You owe me a lot. We played a nice little game in Rome, by your rules, all safe and dandy for you. We never got to bed, even though you gave me hot pants. And in Geneva you cut me out again.

I waited for you, Frannie. I gave you the scrolls and went back to work to see what would happen and then I went to the chalet and waited. You never came back. I was dumb, I guess. I didn’t figure it for a couple of hours.”

“I couldn’t help it,” she whispered. She told herself to stay calm. She had never been closer to ultimate danger. Men had been angry with her before, had sworn to beat her and cut her. But she’d always been able to talk her way out. She said, in a small voice, “He made me run away. He wouldn’t let me wait, Jack. Honest. He scared me.”

“Who?”

“Cesare.”

He jeered. “Your real boy friend?”

“I used to—he was just someone I saw now and then, when Bernardo let me go to Rome alone.”

“You slept with him, huh? But not with me.”

“Jack, don’t . . . "

“Listen, I threw away everything for you, Fran. The big chance to get some real dough, to get somewhere after all the dirty, grubby years. I told you all about it. You gave me the idea in the first place. I wouldn’t have planned it this way. But you made me a little crazy, to throw everything into one big gamble like this. Does that make your dirty little heart feel good, the way you made a fool of me?”

She was afraid to answer him.

He kicked her. His big foot lashed out, caught her in the hip, flung her a little away in the dark sand. She tried to get up and he let her rise and stagger toward the water. Pain and panic drove her a few steps, until he caught her again and flung her, bonelessly, to the sand again. He fell on top of her, spread-eagling her. The hot sand seared her thigh and her cheek where he pressed her into the scratchy grains. Terror leaped wildly in her. His weight was enormous, crushing her. His breath was hot, smelled of whiskey He needed a shave, and there were red-gold bristles along his muscular jaw.

“Where are the paintings, baby?”

“I don’t have them,” she gasped.

“Who does?”

“Cesare.”

“Always Cesare, hey? Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

His knee was forced painfully between her legs. “You’re all dolled up, you were going to meet him. Do you want me to kill you right now, instead of your being sensible?”

“You’ll kill me anyway,” she said.

“Maybe not. Where is Cesare?”

“He went home.” She wanted to shriek at him, but she kept her voice at a gasping whisper. “He went there. He brought the Dwan Scrolls with him.”

“He isn’t there now. Is he going to sell them to Count Apollio?” He began to laugh, and she could feel the lurching movement of his big chest and hard stomach on her body “To your husband?”

“Yes. That was the whole idea.”

“For how much?”

“Cesare thinks he can get two or three hundred thousand from him. And then . . .”

“Then you run away with Cesare, hey?”

She was silent.

Then she said in a sudden, cold voice, “Get off me.”

“I like it here,” Jack Talbott said. “This is the most time I ever made with you, you bitch. You want to scream? Gc ahead, scream.”

Her mind felt suddenly icy and calculating. She was Frannie Smith, and she had been in tight spots before. Maybe neve) so bad as this, because there had never been a man like Jack Talbott, and she’d made a serious mistake about him but she always got out of trouble by being smart, by using the weapons she had, by manipulating men in one primal direction. She was frightened, but she couldn’t let him see that, because she knew instinctively he would enjoy her feai and it might stimulate him to do terrible things to her.

She began to curse him in alley language, stripping away all her facade of aristocratic manners so laboriously overlaid on her by Bernardo. She did nothing else. She lay under his crushing weight and cursed him, her voice rising thinly above the hammering and crashing of the nearby surf.

He was surprised. He lifted himself a little, so she could breathe a little more easily.

He frowned. “Frannie, you’re supposed to be a lady.”

“I’m just like you, you bastard,” she grated. “I’ve been on the make all my life, and I’ve got a good thing going for me now. Nobody—no punk, no crazy man like you—is going to take it away from me when I’ve almost got it made.”

“But you’ve got money. . .

“Not my own.”

“You could get a settlement from your husband.”

“You don’t know Italian law very well, do you, stupid? You don’t know anything. I thought you were like me, at first. I thought you knew the score for both of us. We both came from the same place, Jack. From the dirt, you hear? And if you let them, they keep pushing you back in it and rub your nose in it all the time. Well, I’m not going to let them do it to me again.”

He moved his head and blocked out the blinding glare of the sun. His face wore a curious expression.

“You bitch,” he whispered. “You had me fooled.”

“Yes?”

“I thought you’d really become a lady.”

She laughed, although the bruises he had inflicted hurt all through her belly and ribs. “You really did? I got the act down better than I thought.”

Then his mouth began to shake, and for a horrifying moment she thought he was going to cry, and this frightened her worse than all the other things he had done. There was a redness behind his eyes that she didn’t understand.

“I thought you were a lady,” he said again.

“I’m no better than you,” she said viciously, and her Missouri twang rasped in her voice. “A tramp on the make.” He stared silently down at her, and the look in his eyes silenced more invective from her. He was utterly still. The hot sun blazed down, the beach burned blackly, the surf hissed. He didn’t even seem to be breathing.

Finally he moved, very slowly, and reached a big hand to catch his finger in the low neck of her frock and, almost lazily, with ease, he tore it, splitting the rich silk down the middle. She wore nothing underneath. It was still her pride that she needed nothing. He pushed the torn dress aside and watched her breasts lift and fall as she breathed in fright He seemed cold and objective about it.

“I’ll take mine now,” he said, in a voice so low she could hardly understand his words.

She was not afraid of men this way. But something in him made her heart lurch and her body exploded with the need to escape. She knew he would hurt her beyond her ability to survive. She rolled out from under him as he straddled her took him by surprise, and scrambled to her feet in the yielding sand and twisted away toward the mountain path He jumped up and blocked her way. She spun out of reach of his spread arms and ran to the water’s edge. The white sun was a blinding wall before her. Barefooted, she splashed into the first seething wave, stumbled and fell. The water shocked her, made her torn dress cling like wet snakes to her breast! and thighs. She got up again and he caught her and threw her into the water. It ebbed, foaming around her, and the black sand ran out from under her writhing body.

“Don’t—oh, please____!”

She felt him tear at her, and a part of the wet dress flapped across her face and gagged her mouth. She coughed and choked and tried to writhe away. The next wave covered her and he pushed her head into the water and she could not breathe. She could not see him, either, but she suddenly felt his hard nakedness upon her, pinning her into the sand and water. Her lungs exploded with the need for air and she lurched up. His hand caught her breast in a cruel grip, She tried to scream, and could not. Then, like an explosion, she felt his thrust, the impact of him tearing into her, the weight of him on her stomach and flanks, driving demoniacally in his vengeful fury.

He let her breathe. Now and then the sea washed with little hissings and foamings over them both. His body plunged and tore at her. There was no pleasure in it, none of the whimpering ecstasy she always obtained from a man. For the first time, the taking was not of her choice or design. She felt humiliated, destroyed. She was aware of his gusty breathing, his limited strength and potent masculinity. She felt drowned and naked in the wet sand and the sea.

When he was finished, he stood up like a wet, sandy animal and breathed deeply, looking down at her, and then without a word he walked a few steps above the water mark on the beach and picked up his clothes. She could not remember when he had tom them off. She sat up, pulled futilely at the wet, clinging shreds of her party dress. She could not remember where she had left her shoes. The sea washed around her legs, but she felt dirty and defiled. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before.

“Now,” he said. “Where is Cesare?” His voice was like a darkness, spreading over her. “Where is he hiding?”

“His house is beyond the village,” she said dully.

“He’s not there. Where would he be?”

“I don’t know. But I hope he kills you.” She added with childish spite, “He’s a better man than you. He’ll kill you.”

“I doubt that. Neither will you. You’re not going to be around any more. You’re finished, Fran.”

“Now? After . . .”

“Now. In the water, baby. You drown. It’s really very simple.”

He started for her again. And now she knew she had to save herself or he would finish the destruction he had begun. For an instant she could not move as he loomed against the sky. The cove was quiet except for the brief mewing of a gull that slid across the point on a river of scalding air. Even the sea seemed quieter. His shadow loomed, his body big in gray slacks and white shirt that blinded her with reflected, reddish sunlight.

She got up and ran.

In her bare feet, she was able to splash through wet sand and shallow water where his shoes held him back. She fled to the right, unable to circle him to get to the villas beyond the point. The surf dragged at her ankles, her wet dress flapped between her legs. She heard him shout and looked over her shoulder. He was coming fast, bounding cat-like over the sand, splashing through a tidal pool. A boulder intervened and she dodged up the beach, her lungs straining with fear. She could not escape him. There was a sheer wall of rock at the other side of the cove, and a narrow crevice through which she had come only twenty minutes ago, walking in innocence, without fear.

“Fran!”

He had cut the distance in half.

“Fran, don’t run! You can’t get away!”

She scrambled up the rock and hurled herself through the crevice. The rough lava tore at her shoulder as she careened against it. She gasped, whirled around—and saw to her surprise that he was not behind her any more.

She looked farther and saw him standing alone on the beach, his arms limp at his sides. Why had he given up? He had meant to kill her, surely. For revenge, for making a fool of him, for destroying his life by getting him to steal the scrolls. And she had really done it all for Cesare. No, not for Cesare.

Just for herself.

The thought steadied her. She stood looking down at the cove where everything had just happened. Jack Talbott was walking away, not interested in her any more.

She wondered where he was going. He had already been to the Bellaria place, he’d said. And Cesare by now was talking to Bernardo, her husband, closing the deal they had arranged. Bernardo wanted the scrolls, it was all agreed, even to the truce that enabled the two men to meet today.

So it would be all right. By the time Jack Talbott caught up, she’d be safe.

Safe?

All at once a weakness took her and she sank to the rocks where she stood and covered her face with her hands. And something happened that had not happened to her since she had been a little girl, back in the mountains of Missouri.

She began to cry.

chapter seventeen

DURELL found her ten minutes later.

No one else noticed Jack Talbott clambering down the high bluff behind the villa colony on the beach. A swimming party was in progress while two radios played at once, and the laughter and shrieks, mingled with the music, seemed to crack the quiet peace of the evening. He had been sitting on the terrace of Dom Angelo’s villa, talking to the fat little Roman who alternately complained about his wife and pinched or squeezed one of the young models draped around his chair.

He had seen no sign of Talbott or Cesare, either in the village or here; so seeing the big man loom briefly against the sky and then blend with the shadows of the bluff, as he picked his way down to the cove, was like an apparition— totally unexpected.

“And Signorina Padgett?” Dom Angelo was saying. He poured his drink down the back of one of the girls, and she shrieked and jiggled appropriately. The fat man did not even

smile. “She is a lovely lady, your signorina. I miss seeing her.” “She’ll be along soon.”

“Ah. You have hidden her somewhere for yourself, eh?” Durell looked at Angelo, but the man seemed innocent. “Something like that,” he said.

He had been thinking it was time to get back to Deirdre, being satisfied that Talbott was not among these people. Yet here he was, and there was something strange and blind in the way he walked. From the terrace, the ground fell away in a series of serpentine steps to the pier and the moored yachts. There were few trees on the island, except for the imported plantings around the villas. A swimming party was going on around the pier, in the shadows cast by the headland, and Durell thought the girls there had gotten rid of even their scanty swimsuits. Their bodies flashed white and slender, and the men seemed to pursue them like dark and hairy satyrs, clumsy against the agility of the girls in the water.

Talbott looked neither to right nor left as he walked past the pier and continued on toward the fishing village. He did not see Durell sitting on the terrace above. Durell noted the man’s wet slacks, the torn shirt sleeve, a faint red scratch on Talbott’s jaw.

Dom Angelo said, “Do you know that man, signor?”

“I think so.”

“Everyone wonders about him. I understand he bribed a fisherman to bring him to Isola Filibano. But he will have to sleep on the boat that took him here—there are no quarters for strangers in this place. Is he an American?”

“Yes,” Durell said. He stood up. “Excuse me.”

The two girls curled around Dom Angelo and looked at Durell with smiling eyes. He smiled back and left, but he did not go after Talbott. He walked in the direction Jack Talbott had come from.

He found Francesca a few minutes later. She still sat in a corner of the rock on the second point beyond the cove. -The sun was setting, a monstrous and swollen red mass engorged by the shimmering sea, and there were dusky shadows among the porous rock. He would have missed her if he hadn’t heard the strange little animal sounds she made.

She did not look up as he approached He saw her tattered, bedraggled condition at once, noting her torn dress, bare feet, and tumbled hair. He guessed what had happened. He was relieved to find her alive, and when he thought of Ellen

Armbridge, back in Geneva, he wondered that Talbott had spared her.

“Francesca?” he said gently.

She did not take her hands from her face, but her body shrank against the dark niche of stone where she cowered. “Fran, it’s all right. This is Sam Durell.”

She was still for another moment. The whimperings ended. But she did not look at him.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No. Yes. Go away.”

“Was it Jack Talbott?”

When she didn’t reply, he knelt beside her. The shadows thickened rapidly around them. They might have been alone on a desert island, so heavy was the pall of isolation about them. The sea muttered, the gulls cried, the wind made small sounds in the rocks and blew little curlicues of black sand around their feet. Durell took her wrists and lowered her hands from her eyes and saw her bruised face.

“I thought you were tougher than this, Fran.”

Her voice was dull. “This was different.”

“Can you get up? Can you walk?”

“Where can I go?”

“Back to your husband,” he said.

“No, I can’t go there. I’m finished there.” She gestured dismally to her tom dress. One breast was bared, and she fumbled to cover her nakedness. “How can I go back like this?”

“I’ll help you.”

“Why? You’re a cop, aren’t you? I never got any help from cops. They were always after me, back home. I hated them. Nobody ever understood how it was with me, back home.” “Did Jack understand?” he asked.

Her blue eyes widened, then narrowed. She wiped tears from her face with a child-like, swiping gesture. “I don’t know what to do. He’ll kill Cesare. I know he will. I used to be a little afraid of Cesare, you know? He was so hot-tempered, so—so Italian. Emotional. But Jack is worse. He’s wild but he’s cold, all at the same time. Cesare can’t stand up to that. I never dreamed it would be like this. And now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I think I’ve spoiled everything.”

She paused and looked at him and said in a small voice, “Will you help Cesare? You said you’d help me. After all this time and the knocks I got, the way men never meant anything but trouble or a way to get ahead, I’ve gone stupid. Maybe I love him. But Jack is like a crazy man, and he’ll kill him. He did things to me, but it wasn’t as if he was angry, or anything; it was cold, cold.” She began to shiver with the memory. “Will you help me?”

“If I can. You’ll have to tell me the truth, though, about the scrolls,” he said.

She nodded. Her dark hair clung limply to her cheeks, still wet from the sea. “I went to see them with my husband, Count Bernardo, when they were on exhibit in Rome, three weeks ago. Bernardo wanted to buy them. But that Prince Tuvanaphan wouldn’t sell, of course. Bernardo said he’d give a quarter of a million dollars to add them to his Oriental collection. I never saw him act like that before. He’s usually cool and calculating about buying new items. But he kept talking about the scrolls all the time. Finally I got the idea. He’d buy them from any source, no matter how he got them.”

“You’re sure of this?”

“I’m not stupid that way,” she said. “I know when somebody is in the market for something. So I told Cesare about it. Cesare and I have been . . . seeing each other . . . whenever we could, for the last few months. Bernardo doesn’t know.”

“You mean you think he doesn’t know.”

Francesca looked up. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing. You and Cesare decided to steal the scrolls, then?”

“Sure, but we didn’t know how,” she whispered. “Then I met Jack and it all became simple. He’s like me, crazy for money. We were brought up in dirt, he says. Some people don’t mind staying there, but not me. And not him. I told him I had a ready market for the paintings if he could deliver them. I—I had to promise a little more, though.” “Yourself?” Durell asked quietly.

Her laughter was harsh, a raw noise in her throat. “He thought I was a genuine lady. He wanted me for the same reason I married Count Apollio. A step up, you know? He thought I was a real countess, and when he found out I wasn’t, he just—he just stopped coming after me. I guess it saved my life. But I know what I am—what I’ll always be.”

Durell said, “So you and Cesare double-crossed Jack in Geneva after he turned the scrolls over to you; you had Bruno mail them and you picked them up at the Hotel Sentissi yesterday morning and gave them to Cesare. He was going to hide them in the monastery, but he changed his minH and —- brought them here.”

She nodded slowly.

“And he expects to sell them to Count Bernardo? You really believe that?”

“Sure, I believe . . She stared. “What do you mean?” “Your husband is a man of honor. Honor means more to him than anything else. Do you really think he’d buy the Dwan Scrolls, knowing they were stolen?”

“Sure, he said he would.”

“But would he buy them from Cesare Bellaria, his worst enemy? Don’t you think he knows about you and Cesare?” Her lips were pale. “What are you getting at?”

“And as for Cesare,” Durell persisted. “You really think Cesare will make a deal with Apollio and take money from him, when there is such hatred between them? It doesn’t add up, Fran. I’m sorry for you.”

“Sorry? But. . . ."

Looking down at her, he felt a familiar sense of excitement and sudden illumination as the vaguely disturbing pattern suddenly shifted as in a child’s kaleidoscope and took on a new design in dark and somber colors. He felt a sense of urgency, of imminent disaster. The girl stood up. Her face was white. She started to speak, but her mouth shook and she was silent for another moment.

“I’ll try to help you,” he said again. “But I doubt if I can.” She looked fearful. “What are you trying to tell me? I can’t have been so wrong. I know men, I know how they think.”

“Not these men. Not Talbott or Cesare or Apollio.”

“Oh, you’re a devil,” she whispered. “Why are you putting these ideas in my head?”

“Where is Cesare now?”

“He’s gone to Bernardo. I didn’t want to be there when he closed the deal. He said he’d get there by dark.”

“With the scrolls?”

“Yes. He brought them to the island on his boat. After last night, at the monastery, he was afraid to leave them on the mainland.”

“One more question, Fran. Who stabbed Silas Hanson?” He saw her look blank and added, “The man who was with me at the monastery last night.”

“Oh. Cesare did it. He was taken by surprise. I guess he didn’t realize—everything was happening at once.”

“You saw Pacek last night, too, didn’t you?”

She looked blank again. “Who?”

“Anton Pacek.”

“I don’t know anybody by that name.”

He was finished with her now. “All right, Fran. I think you’d better fix yourself up the best you can and go back to your husband.”

“I can’t go back like this.”

“I think it will be all right—if you tell him the truth.”

“The truth? I couldn’t!”

“He might understand,” Durell said.

She saw him turn away. “Where are you going? Are you just going to leave me here like this?”

“There isn’t much time. I’m sorry, Francesca.”

He walked away, moving faster with every step.

chapter eighteen

THE MOON had not yet risen from the sea when Durell crossed the cobbled piazza of the fishing village and turned down the beach path toward the Bellaria place. There were lights in the fishermen’s bar and a low rumble of conversation against the shadowed night. The church squatted against a scarp of rock and from its square tower came the iron clangor of a bell. A man passed him, tugged at his ragged cap and muttered, “Buona sera, signor,” and went into the cafe. Two young girls, shepherded by a stout woman in black, hurried past; he caught a glimpse of their white eyes sliding to observe him, and the quick impatience in the woman’s voice, and then they, too, were gone. He reached the end of the street and passed the beach where the fishing boats were drawn up and took the path uphill to the Bellaria house.

He wished he had Si with him, to cover some of the things that had to be covered; he could not be in two places at once. He did not know what was happening at Count Apollio’s; perhaps he should have gone there first. But Talbott looked as if he’d been heading this way again, and an apprehension for Deirdre drove him this way, too. He hoped she was still out of the affair, but he wasn’t sure.

The Bellaria palazzo loomed ahead, the ruined terraces and crumbling marble balustrades making geometrical patterns in the starlight. The huge building was all dark. Durell ran across the lower terrace and circled the building to the back courtyard and then entered the way he had gone in before. No lights shone in the ornately carved windows. He wanted to shout Deirdre’s name, but the silence pressed his voice back into his throat.

He crossed the court and paused in the shadows, looking up at the tall, dark windows on three sides. Nothing anywhere. The door was open to Rafael’s living quarters, and he walked through to the small kitchen where the kerosene stove was still burning. Rafael had been cooking his supper. A gray enamel coffee pot bubbled there. Durell moved on through the gloom amid all the dusty, ruined splendors of the house.

Nothing stays the same, he thought. Time and man work their havoc with what was once strong and beautiful, eroding and ravaging. Once the Bellarias and Apollios had been equals, the one the ancient blond Norman invader in coat-of-mail and long-sword, with bowmen and ships to strike at the Saracens across the sea; and the other the short and dark, indigenous lords of the land, accepting an alliance against heresy only to find the ally pre-empting the domain all around.

The invader had won, to judge by this ruin, Durell thought. He walked through the arched doorway and up a flight of worn stone steps and across a huge reception hall with a fireplace large enough to roast an ox.

“Rafael?” he called softly. “Deirdre?” A smell of disaster filled the high, vaulted rooms.

He found a bedroom off the main hall, a Spartan chamber filled with starlight and the first gleamings of the rising moon. There was a small iron bed, a huge old wardrobe.

Rafael Bellaria was sprawled on the floor beside the bed. The old man’s sparse beard was bloody, like an inkstain in the moonlight. An oil lantern had been smashed, and there was the smell of kerosene on the stone floor. Durell crossed the room with care, knelt beside the old man, and felt his pulse. As he did so, Rafael opened his eyes.

“Signor?”

“What happened here?” Durell asked.

“The man came back. He took your signorina.”

“When?”

“I do not know. I have been unconscious. My head—I cannot remember. He came suddenly, while I was talking to your signorina about America. She is a lovely girl.” Rafael’s voice was resigned. “One pays for violence with other violence. My head aches, young man. Help me to my feet. A little wine . . .”

“You aren’t hurt otherwise?”

“For me, a crack on the head in other years would have broken the stick that did it. Now I am not so sure.”

Durell was relieved that the old man was all right. But when he thought of what might be happening to Deirdre, a cold fury filled him. “You didn’t see the man clearly, though?” “Which one?” Rafael sighed.

“There were two of them?”

“Yes, two, one after the other. The first beat me and asked for my foolish young brother, Cesare. He saw your signorina and asked her to come with him. Naturally, she refused. But he was like a wild man, even when he spoke softly. One feared his silences more than his shouting.”

That would be Talbott, then, who came here first.

“And the second man?” Durell asked.

“The first, the blond devil, beat me and struck me,” Rafael said. He tried to smooth his bloody beard. There was more blood on his vest and striped shirt. He walked unsteadily across the room and sat down on the bed. “I was still conscious. He slapped the signorina and took her with him. And only minutes later, the ugly man like a barrel came along. Was he a Russian?”

“A Czech,” Durell said. “His name is Anton Pacek.”

“Yes, now I remember. He told me, when he asked for you, signor. I did not like anything about him. That one was worse, in his way, than the first devil.”

“I’m sorry I brought you this trouble, Rafael.”

“You did not bring it. My brothers did all this, trying to carry on a vendetta that is best forgotten. No one can even remember why it started, so why carry it on? It is like the struggle of beasts without reason. One wants only a little peace, the sunshine and bread, wine and fish, and the smell of the sea. What man needs more? But Bruno and Cesare would not let it rest. Bruno fed on hate; Cesare fed on jealousy and lust.”

“The blond man—did he say what he wanted?”

“He wanted Cesare’s life. What else?” Rafael sighed. “Cesare was not here, so he went to Apollio’s, and took your signorina with him.”

“For insurance,” Durell said grimly. “I must leave you, old man. Will you be all right?”

“I shall live,” Rafael said, and smiled through his bloodstained beard.

chapter nineteen

COUNT BERNARDO APOLLIO watched the anguish on Lombardo’s face and regretted the confusion he caused in the old servant’s mind. Lombardo had been his father’s valet, and his grandfather’s stableboy; he stood now in the study doorway and wrung his shaking hands. Apollio lit a small, thin cigar and was pleased to see that his own hands were quite steady.

The study was his favorite room in the big palazzo atop Monte Filibano. Its arched windows offered a moonlit view of the fishing village, far below, and the whole of the southern shore except the western tip of the island. This was blocked off by a hedgerow of pruned cypresses planted ten years ago to shut out the intrusion of the new villas. He had built long walls there and used barbed wire and dogs to prevent the movie people from trespassing an inch beyond their property.

He often took pleasure in the concept that this room reflected his entire life, with its books and jade vases and the Michelangelo wax study of Adam’s hand. It was his greatest treasure. The palazzo was crammed with Roman and Greek statuary, with Chinese stone sculpture and long galleries of Renaissance paintings, but it was all summed up in the few small treasures contained in this room—a small tower chamber, octagonal in shape, with its heavily carved desk of inlaid olive wood, the worn leather chair, the case of antique weapons gleaming behind glass doors.

He looked gently at his aged, trembling servant in the doorway. Lombardo knew there was savagery abroad tonight, and in his old age, Lombardo was fearful and shaken. Apollio smiled at his own calm. He had waited too long to give way to emotion now. He spoke quietly.

“Has the countess returned yet?”

“No, sir,” Lombardo said quickly. His voice shook. “What shall I tell the young Bellaria?”

“Show him in.”

“But, Bernardo, it is impossible!” The old man presumed on his age and his memory that reached back to Apollio’s boyhood, and at times he spoke to the Count as if he were a child again. “It is too dangerous. Not for you, of course, but you do not want to involve yourself with such a man!”

“It will be all right. Has he a package with him, Lombardo? Yes? Then let him come up.”

“And the countess?”

“We will find her later. Go, Lombardo.”

The old man’s head trembled and bobbed in a nod when he left. Apollio got up from the desk and looked down from his study window to the gate. The moonlight was clear, painting silver radiance on the walls and ancient entranceway. A strange tableau was evident in the courtyard down there. The tall, dark figure of Cesare Bellaria, whose feet had never walked here before, was surrounded by Louis and Germano and the big, growling dogs held back on chains. Apollio watched Lombardo’s shaky old form emerge and talk to the other men; he could almost hear their surprised protests. They withdrew the dogs reluctantly. He could not see Cesare’s face, but he was carrying the Dwan Scrolls.

A taste of acid filled Apollio’s throat, and he was chagrined at this evidence of nerves, after all. Hatred was an evil flower, fed with injury and pain, nurtured with silent tears. It would not do to lose control at this last moment. He turned back to the softly lighted study and sat down behind the desk and put his hands flat on the polished top and waited.

In less than a minute, Lombardo ushered Cesare in. The old man said nothing, but stood in the doorway, hesitant and appalled. Apollio waved a hand.

“You may go, Lombardo.”

“You will not need me?”

“No. You may go to bed, Lombardo.”

“I could not sleep, sir.”

“Try.” Apollio smiled. “Sit down, Cesare.”

Cesare stood tall and slim and muscular in dark slacks and a thin black sweater and dark sneakers. His narrow head leaned forward a little on his wide shoulders, and his long nose looked white. His breathing was quick. So much the better, Apollio thought, considering the younger man. He himself, at forty, felt self-sufficient at this moment when old enemies met. He had never seen Cesare at this close distance, although he knew every line of that inimical face. The blood spilled between their families in past generations wavered for a moment like a dark red curtain between them.

“Sit down,” he said again. “I see you have brought the paintings.”

Cesare’s voice was too loud. “Yes, I brought them. Have you the money?”

“It is here. In cash. American dollars, as arranged.”

“Let me see it.”

“Let me see the scrolls first.”

“I warned you there must be no tricks,” Cesare said harshly. He put the bulky package on the desk, with an insolent gesture. “Here they are, all four of them.”

“Unwrap them, please,” Apollio said.

“You do not trust me? These are the Dwan Scrolls—”

“No, I do not trust you. You are young, Cesare, and impetuous, and you make my house stink with the smell of your hatred. But for now we will do business together.”

“May my father forgive me,” Cesare whispered. “Let us be quick. It is too much to endure.”

“It is not easy for me, either.”

The younger man, Apollio thought, really did not know how difficult it was. He felt impatient, smelled the smell of death, and was touched by alarm lest he give himself away. The young think they are clever, but they do not know how to plan in patient detail. And when they are surprised by manipulated events, they feel cheated and betrayed. Cesare would be surprised tonight. He had such clever, confident eyes!

Apollio made a languid gesture. “Please open the package. . . . By the way, do you know about Bruno, in Geneva?”

Cesare stood very still. “Perhaps.”

“Bruno is dead. Someone killed him and dropped his body in the lake. Did you not know about it, boy?”

Cesare’s breath hissed. He had unwrapped part of the parcel, but now he stood frozen. “It is a lie. I heard—but never mind. No Apollio can be trusted. Bruno told me all about you, how you worked with the Fascists, how you were Mussolini’s friend, how you squeezed the people dry and how, in the riots after the Americans took Rome, the fishermen came up here to the palazzo . . .”

“With Bruno leading them,” Apollio said quietly.

“Yes, Bruno, my brother. And Bruno settled things with you.”

“Nothing is ever settled in this life. However, let me see the paintings, Cesare.”

Cesare did not look quite as confident as before. He carelessly threw the paper wrappings from the mail parcel to the

floor. There were only two lamps in the room, one on Apollio’s desk, the other on a table next to a leather chair. Cesare twisted the shade so it acted as a spotlight when, with a small flourish, he let the scrolls fly open, unrolling as they went, to drape against a long refectory table, glowing softly in the light.

Apollio caught his breath and half rose from his chair. He was a collector of beauty, but he had forgotten how much beauty existed in these scrolls. He walked slowly around the desk to the splashing cascade of muted colors, ignoring Cesare’s crooked smile of contempt. For a moment, all was forgotten as he considered the paintings.

The artist, Peng-yi Dwan, had indeed been a master of the brush. Soaring pinnacles merged with muted sky and road and twisting watercourse where two small pilgrims, dwarfed by nature’s immensities, paused to survey the intricate landscape. The seals and calligraphy of past emperors and Asian princes only served to add to the pattern of exquisite, sensitive design. Apollio moved toward a scroll, turned it back, considered the next, spreading the four-foot wide silk a few inches at a time as he studied the four Dwan Scrolls. The room was brightened and beautified by their presence, made somehow sacred by their reflected perfection. His resolution wavered.

They were his, if he wanted them. No one would ever know. The suspicion now centered around Isola Filibano would fade away, in time. And he would have the rest of his life to bask in the beauties of these works, to cherish them in long hours of leisurely contemplation, alone and in privacy.

Yes, it would be easy to change his plans and accept the scrolls here and now. The arrangements that Cesare had offered would still hold good. And where did the defense of one’s honor end, when honor and manhood were long lost to the enemy? It would be a surrender to this young man who had betrayed him with his wife; and yet to own the Dwan Scrolls might be victory enough. . . .

He heard the sound of Cesare’s soft, contemptuous laughter and turned to look at the tall, dark man.

“The collector’s greed makes your face ugly, Apollio,” Cesare whispered. “You have seen the paintings. Now I wish to see the money.”

Apollio felt the other’s contempt like the shock of cold water thrown in his face. His wavering ended. He nodded, returned to his desk, and used an old brass key to unlock one of the lower drawers.

The money was there. And the gun.

He took the money out first, from its large brown envelope, and used a dagger, purported to be the work of one of Cellini’s students, to slit the seal. He put the knife aside and dumped the American currency over the top of the desk.

Now it was his turn to watch greed and lust transform the other’s face.

“Do you wish to count it?” he asked quietly.

Cesare sneered. “You are a man of honor, they say. Is it necessary?”

“The money is all there, as agreed. I would like you to count it, however, to assure yourself that the arrangements we made have been correctly consummated.”

Cesare’s shrug was too casual. His conspiratorial eyes looked wet and shiny as he considered the pile of currency. “It must be pleasant to be so wealthy that you can indulge yourself this way—with money your family stole and squeezed from the fishermen, looted and ravaged from the Bellaria holdings long ago.”

“We need not talk of that. The House of Apollio does nothing dishonorable.”

“No? You buy stolen art. I am no worse a thief than you.” Apollio said quietly, “I do not steal another man’s wife.” He took the gun from the desk and rested his hand on the desktop. The gun was steady, pointing at Cesare’s belly.

It was very quiet in the study. They might have been isolated from all the world, remote from all intrusion. In the light that showered in yellow brilliance from the desk lamp, Apollio’s handsome face looked different, as cold and static as his Heraculaneum marbles. Cesare started to jerk back, then froze. His dark glance jumped from the gun to Apollio’s face. He began to smile, his eyes gleaming; his handsome head was again cocked slightly to one side.

“What are you going to do?” he asked quietly.

“I intend to kill you,” Apollio said. “Your brother Bruno, long ago, took my manhood. You have already taken my wife. You do not deny it? No, of course not. And now you think to take my honor by turning me into a common thief.” “But you told Francesca you would give anything—you gave the impression you were in the market for the Dwan Scrolls, however they might come to you.”

“Precisely.” “So you told her this to get her to conspire with me to steal the scrolls?”

“Yes.”

“Deliberately offering yourself as a market?”

“You are a clever young man.”

“All that, just to get me up here tonight, at this moment, to kill me?”

Apollio drew a small breath. “We come from devious people, you and I. Revenge that comes spontaneously is not enough. It must be planned and savored like fine wine, in advance. I could guess your scheme—to sell me the scrolls, and later, when you were safely far away, tip off the police that I had them in my possession, to dishonor me completely. Right?”

Cesare smiled tightly. “Yes, that was my plan.”

“I have guessed it all along—just as I knew of your affair with my wife, since it began.”

Cesare’s voice lifted. “You’re no good to her—so why shouldn’t she find herself a lover?”

“I would not have objected—had it been anyone but you.” “She loves me,” Cesare rasped.

“She loves no one, I am sorry to say, except herself.”

“You don’t know her,” Cesare said cruelly. “How can you guess what she’s like in bed? You never knew that.”

“I could imagine it. I knew what it was like before the day that Bruno and I met in the courtyard here, just under this window. It was only a year after you were bom.”

Cesare laughed. “I understand now. You couldn’t kill me appropriately, when I was in bed with Francesca. That would be scandalous, with your name in all the yellow rags printed in Rome. The House of Apollio would be made ridiculous. You couldn’t stomach that. So you planned to make a thief of me first, to get me here with stolen paintings in my possession; then kill me and tell some prefabricated story to the police to make you a hero recovering precious art treasures and unfortunately killing the thief when he approached you to fence the goods. No doubt you have it all arranged with the police, eh?”

“Yes,” Apollio said. “All is arranged.”

“And not a word in the papers about Francesca and me, the true reason for your murder.”

“Precisely.”

“You think Fran will keep silent?” Cesare asked.

“Do you doubt it? She will have only me, after you are dead. She will try to face me with lies, but we will both know the truth. She will be a better wife, after tonight.”

Cesare began to sweat suddenly. He no longer looked arrogant. The sweat made his face look slick, and small beads rolled down his cheeks around the corners of his eyes. Behind him, the Dwan Scrolls, tossed carelessly on the long table, glowed in silent splendor, filling the room with their magnificence. His tongue flicked at his Ups. He looked at Apollio’s gun.

“So it was all a trap.”

“Yes. Just as you planned to betray my possession of the paintings to the police, afterward.”

“Well, then,” Cesare said hoarsely. “Go ahead and shoot me. If I am killed, Francesca will go to the Americans, or make a deal with Talbott, who stole the paintings first.”

Apollio stood up, his movement fluid and graceful.

“Go to the door, Cesare.”

“No. Kill me here.”

“Not in this room. The door, please. We will go to the courtyard.”

Cesare knew he was very near death. His heart pounded, the blood thudded in his veins; there was a thin screaming of his nerves, a twisting in his belly. He had nothing to lose, he thought. He jumped for Apollio’s gun.

As he leaped, his eyes fixed on the black Beretta, it was as if time halted and he saw everything in infinite, slow motion; he saw Apollio’s finger jerk, the knuckles whiten. The muzzle flashed. The bullet hit him in the side, twisted him in midair, brought him down sprawling across the desk. A feeling of savage triumph filled him. The jeweled dagger still lay on the desk where Apollio had put it aside after opening the packet of money. Most of the money splashed to the floor as Cesare grabbed for the knife. He heard the gun crash again, but nothing touched him the second time. Apollio twisted, trying to get away from the desk, lifting the gun. Cesare had the knife. He lunged across the polished desk, seeing only his enemy’s body, soft and vulnerable to the shining steel.

He heard Apollio gasp as the blade went in.

It made a small thudding sound, and Cesare felt the heat and wetness of blood on his fist wrapped around the hilt. Apollio fell back and Cesare let go. He had plunged the knife deep into Apollio’s stomach, but Apollio did not fall. He dropped the gun, however. And both men stood swaying, their eyes locked with hatred.

Apollio looked down at the knife in his stomach. Cesare watched incredulously as the older man smiled. Was it a smile of triumph? Of final success? He felt dazed. There was a numbness spreading in his side where the bullet had gone in.

Turning, in silence, Cesare walked rigidly and very carefully from the room.

chapter twenty

DURELL found Apollio fifteen minutes later. The gates to the palazzo grounds stood open, and the tall figure of the count was just emerging as Durell came up the road. Apollio carried a rifle in the crook of his right arm. His left hand was pressed tightly against his stomach. In the moonlight, the man’s face looked pinched and waxen. The eyes lived only like glittering dark coals.

Behind Apollio, a cluster of whispering, agitated servants crowded the gate. Apollio turned and ordered them back in a harsh, brittle voice. They retreated a step or two, but did not vanish as he demanded. Then one of them—-the old man, Lombardo—saw Durell and cried out and Apollio’s gun came up quickly, then lowered.

“Signor Durell. I did not know you were in Filibano.”

“I’m looking for Cesare,” Durell said flatly.

“He was here. He is gone, now.”

“And the girl—Signorina Padgett.”

“I do not know her.”

“Was anyone following Cesare?”

“No. But come with me, please. We must find him. We have some business to settle. You came for the paintings?” Apollio smiled thinly. “Cesare tried to sell them to me. We had—an argument. It was stupid of me. But your scrolls are safe, upstairs in my study. You need not worry about them now. You say you are looking for a young lady?”

“If Cesare was not being followed . . .”

“At least I didn’t see anyone. . .. Have you seen my wife?” “Francesca is all right,” Durell said flatly.

“Come, then. We will follow Cesare.”

Durell thought for a moment that the man was merely ill. Apollio had put on a light-weight cotton jacket, with large pockets designed for cartridges and hunting materials. He said, “Do you know where Cesare will go?”

“I know his favorite place. He used to hide there as a boy. I think he will be going there. I wounded him, but he is still on his feet. I am usually a good marksman,” Apollio said slowly. “But I did not do so well tonight. You have hunted mountain lions, signor?”

“Once or twice.”

“Then you know what a wounded animal of that sort is like. He must be found at once. Come, we have not much time.”

Apollio turned and again ordered his servants back into the courtyard. They retreated reluctantly. Then he turned and walked to the left, onto a footpath that seemed to cut straight across the low scrub of the mountainside. Durell followed, not relieved by the knowledge that Talbott had taken Deirdre and was probably stalking Cesare this very minute. The moonlight made the rocky landscape unreal, as if created by the daubs of a surrealist painter. The porous boulders looked like giant bones invaded by wormholes. He thought he heard a faint shouting and barking of dogs from the palazzo behind them; but an upthrust of rock cut off his view when he turned his head. He could see only a few faint lights from the fishing village below. A cool salt wind blew over the island and brushed his face.

“Apollio, are you sure you know where he has gone?” “There is a place the Bellarias still own—another ruin, but smaller than that where they live. Once, as a boy, Cesare hid there. The villagers helped to find him. And I helped, too. It was an ordinary act of kindness to help. Matters were quiet between the Bellarias and me, then. He will have gone there, like a wounded animal. It is where the underground gathered before you Americans came and destroyed Mussolini. There are old walls, a few cellars—it was a Norman castle once, and before that the Moors used it as a stronghold.” “You sound strange.”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure you shot him?”

“I am sure.”

“Did he—what did he do to you?”

“It does not—matter.”

They were almost to the mountaintop when Apollio collapsed. Afterward, Durell wondered at the man’s endurance to go so far and fast with the knife wound in his stomach.

They were in a desolate place, out of sight of any lights. Tall volcanic crags soared up on either hand, and the path had led into a narrow crevice, like a rock chimney lifting to the island’s summit. From all around came the bubbling of hot springs. The smell of sulphur was strong in the night air, and now and then wisps of steam, as if created in some red underworld, drifted across the ledges and crannies in their path.

Apollio went to his knees beside one such sulphur pool with shocking abruptness. The rifle fell from his hands and clattered on the stone. Durell saved it from falling into the hot, steaming water and knelt beside the gasping man.

“I apologize, signor. The loss of blood . . .”

“Where did Cesare get you?” Durell rasped.

“My own knife—in the stomach—no, do not touch me!’’ Apollio shouted violently.

“What really happened?”

“I planned to turn him over to the police, as a thief. It would be the end of the Bellarias. It took many weeks to plan it—to tell Francesca I would buy the scrolls. I am a little ashamed of the scheme now. . . .”

“You’re bleeding badly,” Durell said. “You need a doctor.”

“Do not touch me!” the man gasped.

“Do you want to die right here?”

“I would rather die—here, alone—yes . . .

“I don’t understand. I’ve got to stop the bleeding.”

Apollio could not resist. Durell ripped open his coat, unbuttoned his shirt, undid the fine leather trousers belt and tugged gently away from the wound, exposing the man’s stomach and loins. Apollio fought him with feeble hands. Durell had seen worse knife wounds, but he was not a doctor, so he could not tell how serious the internal damage might be. It was not the wound that made him freeze, that halted his pulse.

Apollio lay still now, eyes closed, his face death-like in the moonlight. All around them, the mountain was quiet except for the ugly bubbling of the sulphur springs.

Durell’s voice was shocked as he looked, just once, at the dark scar between the man’s legs that marked emasculation.

“You’ve been mutilated.”

“Yes.” Apollio’s whisper was a hiss of spiritual pain. “It happened—during the war, at the end, when the underground rose up and drove out the Fascisti. They came for me, naturally. I had done what I thought best and worked with the regime. One loses perspective during troubled times. Bruno Bellaria led the underground. They burned and pillaged and sabotaged, all through the war. I had ordered some of his friends shot. But it was a long time ago.”

“It was Bruno who did this to you? This is what really lay between you? It was not the old feud, the old vendetta at all.” “Yes. Bruno did it. The old rivalry was a romanticism that died long ago. Then Bruno did this. They were going to hang me. And one night he—he came to the cell. He ordered me tied, hand and foot. And stripped. He had a woman with him—she is dead now. It does not matter. The—the woman helped him. But he used the knife. And laughed at me when I begged him to kill me. He had won for the Bellarias after all, you see. There are no more men in the Apollio family. There never will be more.”

“You must be pleased that Bruno is dead.”

“It does not please me. I would have liked to kill him myself.”

Durell tore the man’s fine linen shirt into bandage strips and worked rapidly to stanch the flow of blood from the knife wound. He did not look at the man’s scar again.

“Yet you married,” he said quietly. “You married Frannie Smith.”

“Francesca. I made her my countess.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps I was lonely,” Apollio whispered.

“Did she know?”

“I told her—immediately afterward. It was an agreeable arrangement for her. She was free, as long as my honor was publicly maintained. I trusted her. She never divulged my shame to anyone. She wanted money. She is a simple creature. In bed, I could do nothing for her, and this was understood, naturally. She was discreet until she—she met Cesare. . .

“No man could blame you,” Durell said softly, “for whatever you’ve done.”

“It was foolish. One grows maddened by grief, by self-pity—and by love, too. . ."

“You loved Francesca?”

“I still do.”

“Are you in pain now?” Durell asked abruptly.

“No. Not yet.”

“Good. If you don’t move—if you don’t try to crawl or walk and start the bleeding again—you’ll be all right. But I have to leave you now.”

“I understand. I will tell you the way. It is worse than a goat’s path, and very dangerous. Cesare knows it, and a few fishermen. No one goes to the old ruins any more. The villagers think the place is accursed.”

“How do I get there?” Durell asked.

Apollio told him in a few brief words. There would be moonlight for several more hours. He felt a momentary reluctance to leave the wounded man, but an image of Deirdre in Jack Talbott’s hands spurred him to his feet. He took Apollio’s rifle with him when he left.

chapter twenty-one

HE SAW the ruins long before he could approach closely. A few clouds silvered by the moon made strange shadows slide upon the torn landscape. Once he passed an ancient olive grove planted on a terrace; the stone walls were tumbled, the trees grown wild and twisted by the wind. It was a wilderness. There was a stone hut at one end of the abandoned grove, but the door had rotted away and inside there was only the smell of some small wild animal that had made its lair there. He pushed on.

He wanted to run, to cover the distance instantly. He had lost precious time since Deirdre was taken from the Bel-laria place. Anything might have happened to her by now. Talbott was something wild, implacable in his desire to cause harm and death.

The path narrowed as it approached the upper reaches of the dead volcano. A low crenellated wall appeared against the shredded clouds. He walked slower, silently. He carried the rifle, and his gun was in his pocket. There was no sign of life. Suppose Apollio had been wrong? Why would Talbott come here, even if he knew of this place? He could only assume that Jack would be hunting Cesare, and Apollio was sure that Cesare would be here. It was a long chance, but he could not take the time to scour the whole island. That could be done later, if no one was here.

He paused and looked at the ruins ahead. He wished he could have scouted the place in daylight. The moving shadows were tricky. He forged ahead, a tall dark shadow among the others. He was the hunter, but this was not like hunting, as a boy, in the Louisiana bayous. There, the life of foliage and animals had been overpowering; here, all was barren, crusted over with molten rock, pocked by ugly bubbling springs. The path skirted one of the springs now, and the sulphur smell and steam filled the air. When he passed it, he found himself on a small, rocky clearing, quite close to the ruined castle.

There was little left of the old structure. Too many generations of fishermen had come here with cart and mule to haul away the cut stone for their village huts. One main wall and half a tower, round and turreted, still stood in recognizable shape. The rest was a tumble of broken stone, of rubble and treacherous holes and yawning, rubbish-filled dungeon rooms. Nothing moved. There was no sound against the distant bubbling of hot springs behind him.

Two ruined walls flanked a natural ramp that crossed the last crevasse to the crumbled entrance, and Durell hesitated, studying the alley-like way he had to cross to gain the crest. It was a perfect trap—and had been designed that way a thousand years ago, to funnel enemies into a sluice-like passage.

He studied the shadows. He considered the rocks.

Nothing.

In this craggy, grotesque place, anyone could plan a deadly game of hide-and-seek, he thought. Talbott had not come here. He had not brought Deirdre here. He had wasted precious time in the long climb up here.

He could never forgive himself if anything happened to Deirdre. You were supposed to be callous in his business, to abandon friends if necessary; but Deirdre was not in the business, he had only asked her for a bit of help. It had been enough to expose her to destruction. How long had he warned himself against just this sort of chance? How often had he hurt her, by refusing to share what he could with her? He had shared now—but only the danger, only the blood.

He heard her scream a split-second before the shot.

The ruined walls gave back the echoes of her voice from every direction. His start and reflex leap to the right saved him. The bullet cracked past him, shattering on the rock at his back. He threw himself to the ground, holding the rifle, then sprang for the shelter of the walled passage. A second shot rang out. The bullet chipped stone a few inches from his head. He raised his head and tried to see where the sniper was hidden. But there was nothing to see. Only the cool moon, the jagged ruins of ancient Crusader splendor, crumbling into dust.

“Sam!”

It was Deirdre’s voice, and it ended as if a big hand had been clapped across her mouth. To stay here was like standing at the end of a shooting gallery, waiting to be knocked down. He could retreat to the wasteland below; or he could try a run forward, hoping to reach shelter in the gateway ahead.

He got up and ran forward.

One more shot cracked past him, and he dodged from one shadow to another. His breath whistled in his throat. He reached the gateway and hurled himself flat against the stones. They felt cold and dry. He raised his head to the clouded sky.

“Jack!”

His voice echoed and rang curiously. He waited, then looked back the way he had come. He thought he saw movement on the mountainside below, where the sulphur springs bubbled and steamed. But he could not be sure. There was no time to wonder about it. He eased around the gateway into a flat moonlit area.

Long ago, from this vantage point, all the island and sea approaches could be watched and guarded. Now there was only the dust of dead history waiting for another bloodletting.

“Deirdre?” he called softly.

There came a brief scrape of a shoe, a muttered curse. The sound came from the left. Water trickled somewhere, and a wisp of vapor moved across the crenellated wall. At some time long ago, a new mineral spring, born in the bowels of the old volcano, had burst through the rocks to fill several of the subterranean chambers. He smelled the pungency of sulphur.

There was another footstep. He moved that way, under a Gothic arch and around some shattered blocks, then paused in a pool of shadow. A long wall led ahead, with further arches, vine-grown and vague, making an architectural pattern before him. To one side there were several doorways leading into inner rooms. The footsteps had come from one of them. He turned his head, considering the crumbling roof, the edge of the wall. Steam drifted ahead, and the spring inside made sudden erupting noises.

“Durell!”

Talbott’s voice rang out like a brazen alarm.

He waited. He did not know if the other man could see him. Something squeezed his stomach, and he knew it was panic—not for himself, but for Deirdre.

“I’ve got a gun at her head, Durell! Stay right there!” “All right,” he called softly.

“You came to make a deal?” Talbott called.

“Maybe.”

“You’ve got something to deal with?”

“I’ve got the scrolls,” Durell said.

“With you?”

“No. But I know where they are now.”

“What about Cesare?”

“I don’t know where he is.”

It was like talking to the wind. He could not locate the direction of Talbott’s voice. There was a kind of taut frenzy in it, a controlled passion, that made him fear for Deirdre. She was silent now. Had he knocked her out, or worse? Except for that first outcry, she had been silent.

“Deirdre, can you hear me?” he called.

Talbott’s laughter clamored with echoes. “She can hear. I got a hand over her mouth and a gun at her head.”

“Let her speak to me.”

“No. Where are the scrolls?”

“Let the girl go first.”

“I haven’t time for bargains. Tell me where the scrolls are. Does Cesare still have them?”

“No.”

“Then who does?”

“Let me see the girl,” Durell said. “I want to be sure she’s all right.”

“Drop your rifle first.”

He let Apollio’s rifle fall noisily to the stone floor He was sure now that Talbott’s voice came from one of the ruined doorways to the right. Between those doors and the low wall to his left was a long paved area about a hundred feet in length. Patterned shadows of moonlight made geometrical shapes that diminished in size with distance. Was it the first door? Nothing moved there that he could see—no dim pallor of peering face, no glint of white eyes. Then the second. That had to be it. The third was too far away. Yes, the second doorway. Talbott waited and watched him from there.

He had the feeling as he let the rifle go that Talbott might shoot him down then and there. He still had the .38 in his coat pocket. He could draw it fast enough, but unless he had some warning, he was offering himself in sacrifice, for no gain.

“Deirdre?” he called again.

“Sam, go back!” she suddenly cried.

He was not sure for a moment what was happening in that dark doorway. He thought he heard a footstep behind him— but then an eruption of steam suddenly came from the door he watched, with a sudden bubbling of the volcanic spring inside. Apparently the spring erupted with some regularity, being quiet in between. It took Talbott by surprise. There came a cry, then a coughing, choking sound.

Durell moved instantly, his shoes digging at the stone, lunging to cover the distance all at once. A dark shape staggered out of the doorway in the boiling cloud of noisy vapor. Talbott had Deirdre by her arm, dragging her cruelly to escape the inferno inside. Deirdre cried out and Talbott cursed between his gasps. Then Durell smashed into him, his shoulder low, slamming into the man’s stomach as his free arm grabbed for the gun in Talbott’s fist.

For a moment everything was confusion. The cloud of steam was like a wet gag suddenly thrust down Durell’s throat. Talbott wrenched away, cursing. The crash of his gun seemed oddly muted. The sulphur spring chuckled viciously from the black hole in the ruins.

Talbott’s shot went wide. Durell felt the gun kick in the hand that held Talbott’s wrist. The man’s arm was hard, his strength the strength of madness. Coughing, they both willingly fell from the steamy doorway and collapsed in a tangle to the stones outside, rolling over and over. There was only a low parapet on the opposite side of the paved court. Talbott came down hard on Durell and Durell squirmed back, still holding the man’s gun hand. All at once he felt nothing under his shoulders and head. He twisted, looked sidewise, saw that Talbott had maneuvered him through a broken area of the parapet. Under his head and shoulders was only dim, moonlit air, the edge of a cliff that fell away for hundreds of feet to a ravine below.

“You’re finished, chum,” Talbott gasped. A huge vein pulsed in his temple. “Done, now. You outsmarted yourself.”

Durell tried to heave himself free but Talbott grabbed the edge of the parapet, using it as leverage to force Durell over the wall. Durell got one leg free and brought his heel savagely into Talbott’s back, slammed the man’s gun against the stone. A bone cracked in Talbott’s hand with a small popping sound. The big man only grinned.

“Where’re the scrolls, hey? Who’d you give ’em to? Was it Frannie? Does she have them?”

It was as if he never felt the pain of his broken hand. But the gun was loosened. Durell concentrated on that. Talbott heaved, suddenly slammed his forearm across Durell’s throat. If he could get leverage, Durell thought, he could lift Talbott overhead and send him flying out into the space yawning under him. But Talbott might drag him along. The man was strong, too strong to risk it. He thought he heard a thin warning cry from Deirdre. He could not breathe with the pressure of Talbott’s heavy arm across his throat. Darkness whirled across the sky, blotted out the moon. He smashed Talbott’s hand on the rock again. The man grunted. Moisture spattered across Durell’s face. And suddenly the gun was free.

Talbott exploded backward as if he had been shot. But Durell hadn’t pulled the trigger. The man’s knees were bent and he started to rise. Durell lifted, saw Talbott’s foot lash out in an effort to kick him over the cliff. He dodged, rolled aside, came up with the gun free in his hand.

Talbott laughed and backed away.

“You won’t shoot,” he whispered.

Durell looked for Deirdre. She stood near the doorway where Talbott had hidden her. The spring inside had stopped its bubbling and vaporing. He saw that she was all right, unharmed except for her torn and smudged clothing. He thought he had never seen a more wonderful sight.

“Dee?”

“I’m fine, Sam.”

The fire and pain slowly left his throat. Talbott backed away, his voice thin and bounding from the wall behind him.

“You can’t blame a guy for trying. And there’s no need for anything drastic. We can make a deal. . . .”

“No deal,” Durell said.

“I’ve got the dope on the Fremont people. If I don’t show up in Milan tomorrow, Pacek gets it. You’ve only had two days to dismantle the group and get them back to the West. It’s not enough time, and you know it. Pacek will nail them all. He needs that kind of a feather in his cap just now. A lot of your friends would get knocked off, pal.”

“Have you talked to Pacek yet?”

Talbott’s voice thickened. “Look, I tried for something, I took a shot at the big chance. It meant a lot of dough, no more orders from punks and bastards who didn’t have half of what I’ve got. I took it. You blame me for that?”

“I blame you for a lot of things. Ellen Armbridge for one,” Durell said quietly.

“Ellen?”

“The way you killed her.” Durell looked at Deirdre. “Get over here, Dee.”

Talbott grinned. “So you rub me out, anyway?”

“Yes.”

“Just like this?”

“Yes.”

Talbott started to laugh and say something more, then paused and stood there with his mouth open. He looked at Durell and knew that ordinary morality did not apply to Durell or to Durell’s business. Deirdre made a soft sound and moved until she stood beside Durell. He did not look at her again. He was thinking of his worry lest she die as Ellen had died.

He had what he wanted now. He had the scrolls; they were waiting at Apollio’s for him; he had Deirdre safely at his side. He had Talbott at the end of his gun.

He thought of the men in the Fremont group behind the Iron Curtain. Was Talbott bluffing? If Talbott got the treasonous information to the wrong people, those men would die.

It would be too costly to pull the trigger.

He started to lower the gun.

And another voice spoke from behind him.

“You are finally being sensible, Mr. Durell.”

He turned and saw Anton Pacek behind him.

chapter twenty-two

THE MAN from the KGU had moved as quietly as a cat. In the moonlight that now shone and now faded, his solid figure looked as chunky and heavy as before. His wide frog’s mouth was smiling; his eyes were not. In his fist was a gun, leveled at Durell.

“Yes, we will all be reasonable now,” Pacek said.

Durell did not lower the gun he’d taken from Talbott. He had an impulse to turn fast and fire; but he knew Pacek’s reputation for speed and ruthlessness. Whatever happened, Pacek could squeeze off one shot—and he would aim at Deirdre. He felt the girl move closer to him and wished she wouldn’t, because it gave him a bit less freedom of movement. Yet he was glad she was near enough for him to touch her.

Jack Talbott was speaking, moving toward Pacek, his voice quick with relief, his big body suddenly loose and easy.

. . make a deal with you. Been trying to make a connection, Major Pacek. I’ve got something for you, something you’d like very much to have.”

Pacek’s face was stony. “I know all about it.”

“Then we make a deal?”

“You have the names of the American agents who make up the so-called Fremont group?”

“Yes, of course, I got hold of it in Geneva.”

“You killed the Armbridge woman for it?”

“Well, I had to, but—”

“Where are these names?”

Talbott laughed. “Look, I was going to make you pay through the nose for them, pal, but things haven’t worked out exactly like I wanted, understand? First off, I want those scrolls —and that’s good for you, too, because if Prince Tuvanaphan doesn’t get them by tomorrow night, he closes the tin deal with you and that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Pacek said shortly.

“So I want those scrolls.”

“I do not have them.”

“I can find ’em. I just don’t want you to interfere when I take them, right? You don’t need them. But they’ll set me up for life when I make a connection to sell them. Also, you help me get off this damned rock and back to the mainland, right? I’m broke, understand. I’ll need some money to carry me over until I sell the scrolls.”

“Shut up,” Pacek said.

Talbott’s head snapped up. “What?”

“You talk too much. It is I who have the gun.” Pacek turned his head slightly. “Mr. Durell, you are wise not to attempt to use yours while this man babbles. Please drop your weapon now.”

Durell released the gun he had taken from Talbott. It clattered noisily on the stones, and Talbott started to pick it up, then looked at Pacek and let it lie there. Durell waited for the next moment, not knowing if Pacek supposed the gun was his own. He still had his .38 in his pocket. He spoke quickly, to keep the KGU agent off balance, if possible.

“You won’t make it, Pacek. Not off this island. You can’t help Talbott or yourself. Apollio is onto the whole thing. He runs this place, and he’ll clamp down on every boat on Isola Filibano. You’re trapped here.”

Pacek smiled. “I met Apollio on the way up here. I saw his wound. He is in no condition to practice his antiquated, feudalistic authority.” Pacek grinned broadly. “But I left him alive, if his life concerns you.”

“Every man’s life concerns me.”

“Ah, yes, the noble sentiments of Western humanism. Fortunately, I am not hampered by such bourgeois scruples. We are enemies. I offered you a chance to avoid all this in Geneva; I suggested you go to Paris. You chose not to. So you must accept the consequences, you and your young lady.”

“Leave her out of this,” Durell said. “She knows nothing about it. It’s not her business.”

“But it is, because you are concerned about her. So I use your concern to my advantage.” Pacek paused. The wind on the mountaintop made moaning noises in the crannies of the ancient fortress. The moon was momentarily hidden by ragged clouds blowing in from the sea. Pacek turned his head toward Talbott, dimly agitated in the gloom. “I accept your conditions, Talbott. You may keep the Dwan Scrolls. I believe you will find them in Apollio’s palazzo. I am interested in them only as they make Prince Tuvanaphan resent all Americans. I impose one condition, however. We all remain here until sundown tomorrow, when the Prince’s ultimatum expires. When the scrolls are not returned, he will sign the tin contract with my own mission in Geneva. And I am sure he will permit us then to send our technicians into his country. It is the first step toward eventual victory.”

“It’s a deal,” Talbott said hoarsely. He bent his head, with its tight, curly blond hair, toward Durell. “But this man must be killed. I’d like to do it myself.”

Pacek said flatly, “And the girl?”

“She ought to be silenced, too.”

“That would make things simple for you?”

“It would give me a head start.”

Pacek considered him stolidly. “Perhaps I could induce you to work for me, Talbott. We would be indebted to you. We could buy the scrolls from you ourselves, put the money in a numbered account in Switzerland—any currency you name— and then we will return the scrolls to Tuvanaphan at an appropriate time—say, a month from now—and tell him we have recovered his precious heirlooms for him. He would be most grateful to us, then.” Pacek laughed harshly in his thick throat. “Or we could make arrangements to clear you with your own people, Talbott, and you might return to your former position— although really you would then be working for us.”

“As a double agent?” Talbott asked. “I’m not sure—”

“You have no love for your own people. What have they done except push you down and deny you a chance to improve yourself?”

Talbott licked his lips. “I might like that.”

“Well, we will discuss it later. For now, I want the names and cover identities of the people in the Fremont apparatus. I want the data you took from Ellen Armbridge.”

“They’re worth something, too.”

“Naturally. They are worth your life.”

“You wouldn’t kill me,” Talbott said.

“I would. Like a fly. I want those names.”

“They’re in Milan. I expected to make a deal with you, anyway.”

“They are not in Milan. You were followed everywhere from the moment you left Ellen Armbridge’s house in Geneva, to the plane, to Milan and Naples and this place. You did not mail anything, deposit anything, hide anything. You have the data on your person. Please give it to me now.”

“But I. . .”

“Now!”

There was a change in Pacek, a solidifying of his square, rock-like body. The moon came out from behind the clouds and touched the stone passage between the parapet and the ruined building. It seemed to Durell that he could hear the thunder of the sea a mile away down the mountainside. It was only anger pounding in his blood. He knew Pacek would do exactly as he pleased. Pacek would kill him and Deirdre— probably Jack Talbott, too. But you couldn’t convince Talbott he was of no real use to the KGU; he could not be trusted.

He still had his own gun. He had diverted Pacek’s attention by throwing away Jack’s weapon. He could still take one last chance to break free—but then he saw Cesare walking up the ramp to the fortress ruins. The count had said he had shot Cesare, but here he came, moving with a light, long stride, sliding from shadow to shadow. No one was looking that way except Durell. He could see the glint of a gun in the man’s hand. Pacek was talking to Talbott, demanding the Fremont data; Talbott was still trying to drive a bargain in the face of imminent death. Neither saw Cesare pause, put out a hand to steady himself, and then lift his gun.

The heavy sound of the shot was Pacek’s first warning. It was doubtful if Talbott ever heard it. The big man was talking fast to Pacek, protesting he did not have the data on his person. The bullet hole appeared as a small, round hole just above the bridge of his nose. It was a heavy caliber slug, and it blew half his skull out the back. Blood and bone and brains spattered the wall behind him. He went backward, thudding against the stone, and collapsed like a balloon that suddenly lost its air.

Instantly Durell swept Deirdre aside, dropping her to the ground, out of the line of fire. He got his gun out with the same movement, but Pacek was slightly faster, twisting his solid, tank-like body and slamming two, then three shots at Cesare. Afterward, Durell wondered if Cesare had gone first for Talbott because of what Talbott had done to Francesca; but he was never sure about it. Pacek’s three shots found their mark. Cesare whirled, did a small dance as if on tip-toe, and came stumbling toward them, his gun slamming again and again in reflexive action of spasmed fingers. The bullets spattered everywhere.

Durell shouted a warning to Pacek and had his gun on the enemy agent when Pacek whirled with his weapon up. Durell had no choice. He fired just once. There was no need to fire again. . . .

It seemed a long time before the echoes winged away across the twisted mountaintop and were swallowed in the tangled walls of the old ruins. Silence gradually flowed back, except for the eternal moan of the sea wind that swept over Isola Filibano.

Durell lowered his gun.

“Deirdre?”

“I’m all right, Sam,” she whispered. He saw her on the paved parapet and helped her to her feet. She was trembling a little. “Sam, I never thought it would be ..

“Don’t think about it, please.”

“I can’t help it, I—I’m going to be sick.”

He left her and walked over to Anton Pacek. The man was dead. He got up and knelt beside Cesare Bellaria. Cesare’s dark face shone with sweat. There was blood on his stomach, staining his slacks, and more blood oozed from a wound in his right lung.

“I am going to die?” Cesare whispered. “First Apollio and then this man tried to kill me. . ."

“You knew the stakes,” Durell said quietly.

“But I was betrayed! Francesca..

“She’s quite safe, I’m sure.”

He went over to Jack Talbott and turned him over and searched the pockets. Remembering Ellen, he felt no regret, but wished none of it had happened in the first place. It had happened though, and in his business there was no room for wishful thinking.

He found what he wanted in an inner pocket. Pacek had been right. Talbott bluffed about having cached the Fremont data, and had kept his “insurance” with him. It was all there in a small black book with coded symbols. The Fremont people were all safe. Washington already would have ordered their recall and replacement; but they had been safe all the time, as long as Talbott kept this book with him. He’d never had a chance to betray them.

Durell put the book in his pocket and walked back to the parapet where Deirdre waited. She looked at him as if he were a stranger. Perhaps he was, at this moment. She looked at the gun in his hand and at the small booklet, and he put both the gun and the book away and she drew a slow, tremulous breath.

“Are they all—dead?”

“Two of them,” he said. “We’ll get help for Cesare.”

“One of them said Count Apollio was wounded.”

“Cesare knifed him. Whichever way it works, I think the feud between them is ended.” He sighed and touched her hand. He looked at Talbott’s body. “He was a murderer and a traitor. And Pacek killed one of my best friends in Amsterdam, some time ago. He would have killed you and me, too, not because it was really necessary, but simply because it would have been more convenient for him that way.”

She shuddered and he took her in his arms and drew her close to him. For a moment he felt a resistance in her, and then she melted against him.

“Sam, take me away from here,” she whispered.

“Let’s go,” he said.

chapter twenty-three

THE Hotel Imperiale in Montecapolli basked in bright sunshine. A sea breeze had washed away yesterday’s humidity, and the sky and water sparkled with countless diamond-points of light. In Durell’s room, a fresh wind blew through the open balcony doors and stirred Deirdre’s dark hair on the pillow beside him. She slept peacefully.

They had returned in Dom Angelo’s boat, after several delays past midnight on Isola Filibano. The excitement that stirred the villagers and the motion-picture colony still seethed on the island when Durell and Deirdre sailed for the mainland. It was dawn before they checked back into the Imperiale.

He looked at his watch, moving his arm carefully so as not to disturb her sleep. Past two in the afternoon. He had been late joining her here, after they checked in. He had phoned Geneva and spoke directly to Prince Tuvanaphan, promising a return of the Dwan Scrolls that night. Tuvanaphan had been pleasantly agreeable, once he was assured the scrolls were undamaged and in Durell’s possession. There was no doubt that the contracts with Noramco Tin would now go through.

He felt little satisfaction in it. Count Apollio would live, but it was a question whether the future for him could be called living. The man had used his considerable influence with the mainland police, using radio-telephone to report the violence on Isola Filibano. When Durell left, he gave Apollio a silent promise to forget what he had discovered of the man’s mutilation.

Durell thought of Frannie Smith, the contessa, and smiled grimly. She had been at the palazzo, mute and chastened, when he returned with Deirdre. She handed him the scrolls at once when he demanded them.

“How is Apollio?” he had asked at once.

“Bernardo is resting all right,” she said quietly. “The local doctor says he’ll be fine in no time at all.”

“Will he, really?”

She looked truculent. “Sure. Why not?”

“He knows all about you and Cesare—and what Talbott did to you. Will you stay with him?”

“He wouldn’t have me,” she said flatly.

Durell looked long at the dark-haired girl. She seemed different, but he could not be sure.

“Do you want to stay with Apollio, Francesca?”

“I’m not Francesca. I’m Frannie Smith—a tramp, that’s all. I’ll always be Frannie Smith.”

“Not necessarily. He tried hard to make you into a countess.” She looked at her hands. “I’m afraid he had poor clay to start with, Mr. Durell.”

“I suspect he did pretty well, until Cesare came along.”

“Yeah.”

“Why not ask him?”

She lifted her head. “Ask if I could stay? I told you, he wouldn’t want me now.”

“Try, Fran. You have nothing to lose.”

She smiled, tentatively at first, then with a spirit of challenge. “You’re right. Nothing at all to lose.”

Durell, looking at the sleeping Deirdre, her dark hair fanned over the pillowslip, wondered if Francesca had managed to choose her words wisely to the wounded count. He thought it might work; he wasn’t sure. He did not believe in miracles. You’re born out of stuff that stays with you all your life; there are no great changes in character, no sudden birth of noble virtues. She was Frannie Smith, and she had thrown away the big chance of her life when she became Cesare’s woman. Usually you never get a second chance. Maybe it would work. Maybe there wouldn’t be any more Cesares in her life. But he doubted that. It was inevitable, considering what the count was and lacked, because of Bruno’s vendetta.

Still, he hoped it would work.

He dressed quietly, not wanting to disturb Deirdre. There were dim cries from the tennis courts behind the hotel, and from the yacht basin came the obstinate sputtering of a marine engine. Deirdre’s breathing was deep and steady. He thought her mouth looked as defenseless as a child’s in her sleep. He thought he had never seen a lovelier sight.

When he was dressed, he took the package that contained the Dwan Scrolls and carried them to the entry hall and leaned it against the wall. Then he walked back into the bedroom and sat down on the bed beside the sleeping girl. They had made love in the dawn, watching the light quicken and turn pink and gold on the sea, in the Bay of Sorrento. She had clung to him in wild response, grateful to be alive, happier still that he was alive. Afterward they stood together on the terrazzo balcony and watched the light on the sea and drank coffee brought up to the room by a sleepy-eyed but knowledgeable bellboy.

“Sam,” she had said, “are you finished with this job?”

“Yes. Just about.”

“Where will you go from here?”

“I don’t know. Washington will tell me soon enough.”

“Can’t we have a little time for ourselves?”

“I think so,” he had said.

He loved her with greater tenderness than he had known before. She had been a little triumphant, teasing him gently because of the other times when he had refused to admit her to his activities in the business.

“You see, darling, it wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Bad enough,” he said. “Weren’t you frightened when Talbott had you?”

“A little, yes. But then I thought of how you go through even worse times in your work.”

“Not always. Most of the time it’s routine analysis and interpretation of data from field reports. There’s no glamor, nothing like that. When things break open, it usually gets dirty, as it was on Isola Filibano.”

“I don’t mind. If I could work with you again..

“No,” he said. “I don’t want you in it. . .

He sat on the bed and watched her now as she slept. A church bell rang from the piazza of Montecapolli; the notes were like iron against the crystalline September air. He bent over and kissed her cheek. Her eyes opened and she smiled sleepily at him, a look of contentment shaping her mouth.

“Sam, darling. You’re all dressed.”

“I’m going to see Si Hanson,” he told her. “He’s coming along fine—already up and on his feet in the clinic—but I thought I’d drop in on him for a few minutes.”

“All right.” Then she frowned slightly. “This afternoon I’ll have to get my stories cabled on the fashion show, you know. You’ve made me neglect my own work terribly.”

“There will be time enough to catch up,” he said. He kissed her again. “I’ll see you soon, Dee.”

“Hurry back,” she said.

He got up and left the sunny bedroom, walked away from the sight and scent and beauty of her, and when he was in the foyer, out of her view, he picked up the package containing the Dwan Scrolls and left the hotel.

There was a local train to Naples, and from there he could fly to Rome and then Geneva in time to deliver the paintings to Prince Tuvanaphan before evening. He would call Deirdre from the Fiumicino Airport in Rome. There was no other way to do it.

The longer he waited, the more difficult it would be to leave her. It was better to go as suddenly as he had appeared, to cut it short, sharp and clean.

He made a phone call to the clinic and spoke to Si Hanson, and then he walked to the local railroad station. He had twenty minutes to wait for the train. He carried the scrolls with him across a small square and sat in the sun at a pavement cafe and ordered coffee and rolls. He tried not to think about Deirdre, waiting for him back in the Imperiale.

He had finished his second cup and was ready to return to the station when she appeared, walking with that light, floating grace he could recognize anywhere, in any crowd. She wore a white linen sun dress that clung beautifully to her body; her dark hair gleamed with life in the Sorrento sunlight.

Then she stood before him, gray eyes smiling, her purse in one hand, her mouth smiling, too, and she tucked her hand in his arm and walked with him for a few steps to the railroad station.

“Have you bought your ticket already, Sam, darling?” she asked quietly.

“Yes, Dee. I suppose—I know you’re angry. . .

“But I’ve got a ticket, too. I knew you had to be in Geneva tonight. If the mountain won’t go to Mohammed, I thought, then I’d go along with you, Sam.”

“You’ve got your story to get out.. .

“It can be done from Geneva. You’ll be in Geneva for a few days, won’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. And he said, “Dee, I love you.”

“That’s all that matters,” she told him. “It’s not all that matters to you, but it’s enough for me. Do you mind?”

“No. I just thought it would be easier. . .

“But how do I know I’ll ever see you again, Sam?”

He was silent, because you never did know. He looked at her and grinned, and the sunlight seemed brighter and more benign. It was true; he would be stuck in Geneva for some days, cleaning up the affair, writing his reports, helping as a sub-chief in K Section to set up a new control point to replace Ellen Armbridge’s apparatus and reorganize the Fremont group once more. A lot of paper work, but it would be like having regular office hours for a number of days.

“Thank you, Dee,” he said.

They walked side by side to the little railroad station and he bought some flowers for her from a vendor on the platform and then they waited for the train to come in.

THE END

of an Original Gold Medal Novel by

Edward S. Aarons

Table of Contents

chapter one

chapter two

chapter three

chapter four

chapter five

chapter six

chapter seven

chapter eight

chapter nine

chapter ten

chapter eleven

chapter twelve

chapter thirteen

chapter fourteen

chapter fifteen

chapter sixteen

chapter seventeen

chapter eighteen

chapter nineteen

chapter twenty

chapter twenty-one

chapter twenty-two

chapter twenty-three