‘How deep was the ash when you came up to the villa, Mr. Hacket?’
‘The ash? Oh, about three or four inches, I guess. It must have been that because I got some inside my shoes.’ He took a pull at his drink. ‘Do you reckon it’s going to be like it was the time Pompeii was destroyed? About three foot of ash fell at first and then there was a breathing space. That’s why most of the inhabitants were able to escape. It was only those that came back later who got buried. If it lets up at all I reckon we ought to get out while the going’s good, eh?’ He shook his head. ‘Incredible what this mountain can do!’
There was a sudden pounding on the front door. Hacket turned at the sound and then said, ‘That’s probably the rest of the party. I told them if I didn’t come back it would mean I’d found the villa. They said they’d follow me if it got worse.’
Shirer sent Roberto to open the door. A moment later two dusty figures were shown into the room. It was Maxwell and Hilda Tucek all right, but they were barely recognisable under the film of ash that covered them. The lines on Maxwell’s forehead were etched deep where ash and sweat had caked. For a moment they stood quite still in the entrance, their eyes searching the room. The contrast between Hilda and Zina was very marked. Zina was still clean, but she was trembling and her eyes bulged like a startled rabbit. Hilda, on the other hand, was quite calm. It was as though Vesuvius and the falling ash were nothing to her.
Sansevino went forward, his hand outstretched. ‘It’s John Maxwell, isn’t it? My name’s Walter Shirer.’
Maxwell nodded. He was looking across the room towards me. The white mask of his face looked old and very tired.
‘You remember, we met at Foggia — before Farrell dropped me over Tazzola?’
Maxwell nodded. ‘Yes, I remember.’
‘Come on in and have a drink. Guess I wouldn’t have known you in that make-up if Hacket here hadn’t told me you were coming up. Cognac?’
‘Thank you.’ Maxwell introduced Hilda Tucek and then Sansevino turned to me. ‘Perhaps you’d get them a drink, Farrell?’
It was clear he wasn’t going to give me a chance of talking to Maxwell alone. I hesitated, on the point of blurting out the truth — that the man they thought was Shirer was Sansevino and that I had. what they all wanted tucked away inside my leg. Sansevino was standing slightly apart from the others so that he could command the whole room. One hand was thrust into the pocket of his jacket and I knew he had a gun there, the gun he’d taken up from the piano. The atmosphere of the room suddenly seemed strained and on the edge of violence. I went over to the drink table and in the sudden burst of conversation that followed my movement I sensed relief.
‘Tell you who came to see me the other day — Alec Reece. You remember Alec Reece, Maxwell? He was with us. …” Sansevino was talking to ease the tension — talking too fast, and he shouldn’t have called Maxwell by his full name. He’d been Max to everybody on the station at Foggia.
I got the drinks and then Hacket was talking — talking about the mountain again. ‘It’s incredible to think what: hat mountain can do. Why in the eruption of 1631 heavy stones were thrown a distance of 15 miles and one weighing 25 tons fell on the village of Somma. And only a hundred years before the volcano was dormant with woods and bushes growing on the slopes and cattle actually grazing in the crater. There was one eruption in the early eighteenth century which lasted from May to August and covered Naples.
He went on and on about Vesuvius. He was chock-full of guide-book statistics. It got on my nerves. But it was Zina who suddenly screamed at him — ‘For God’s sake, can you not speak of nothing but your damn mountain?’
Hacket stared at her open-mouthed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Guess I didn’t realise.’
‘You do not realise because for the moment you are safe inside this villa and cannot see what is happening outside.’ Zina’s eyes blazed with anger — anger at her own fear. ‘Now, please shut up, will you. Everything that you have described may happen to us at any moment.’ She turned to Roberto. ‘Go and see what it is like outside, please. As soon as the ash ceases to fall we must get away from here quick.’
Roberto left the room. He was back a moment later, coughing and wiping his face with a dirty rag. ‘Well?’ Zina asked him.
He shook his head. ‘It is still falling.’
Sansevino had been watching her all the time. Now he said, ‘Zina. Suppose you play to us. Play something gay — something from Il Barbiere.’
She hesitated. Then she went over to the piano. She began to play the scandal song. Shirer looked at Maxwell. ‘You like Rossini?’
Maxwell shrugged his shoulders indifferently. Hacket moved over towards Sansevino. ‘I suppose you were pretty fond of opera, even as a kid?’
Sansevino nodded abstractedly. ‘Trouble is I didn’t get much of a chance to hear it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Good God, man — I was a miner, until 1936. Then I got a job with the Union and moved to New York.’
‘But the miners had their own operatic company.’ Hacket was looking at him with a puzzled frown. ‘They gave shows free.’
‘Well, I never went. I was too busy.”
Sansevino took my empty glass and went across to the drink table. I could see Hacket watching him. ‘That’s queer,’ he murmured.’
‘How do you mean?’ Maxwell asked him.
‘The opera company was sponsored by the Union.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Funny how some people never know what’s going on in their own home town.’
Maxwell was watching Sansevino and as he came back with another brandy for me, Maxwell said, ‘By the way, Shirer, you remember that message I gave you for Ferrario at Tazzola?’
The other shook his head. ‘I don’t remember much about that mission. I was suffering from loss of memory by the time. I reached the Swiss frontier. My memory is very patchy.’
‘But you remember me?’
‘I tell you my memory is patchy. Another cognac?’
‘I still have some, thanks.’ Maxwell was swilling his drink round in the bottom of the glass. He didn’t look at the other and his voice was casual as he said,’ Remember the fellow who was with you the night they arrested you at Polinago?’
‘Mantani?’
‘Yes. I always meant to ask you this if ever I met you again. Did he take you to Ragello’s trattoria or did you take him? When I interrogated him, he swore that he’d warned you Ragello was a Fascist and that you’d just laughed at him. Did he warn you?’
‘ He did not. I think it was I who told him it was dangerous. Miss Tucek — another drink?’
She nodded and he took her glass.
Maxwell was standing right beside me and quite softly he said, ‘You were right, Dick.’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
‘The man who owned the trattoria where they were picked up was called Basani, not Ragello,’ he answered.
I didn’t say anything, but Vesuvius seemed suddenly remote. The volcano was right here in this room and at any moment someone would touch the spark that would send it off. My hand slipped to my jacket pocket, folding round the cold, smooth metal of Zina’s automatic. Only Hacket was outside it all. He was still the tourist with his mind on Vesuvius. But the others — they were all tied together with invisible threads: Hilda and Maxwell searching for Tucek, Sansevino searching for what rested in the shaft of my leg. And all the time Zina played — played Rossini, flatly, without any life, so that the music had the quality of tragedy. And over by the door Roberto stood watching her. I felt my nerves tightening in that electric atmosphere so that I wanted to shout out that I’d got what Sansevino wanted — anything to break the tension which was growing all the time. And all I could do was wait — wait for the moment when it would reach snapping point and break.