Not till then did I realize that Nicky and Stella were with me in the wheelhouse.
'I thought I told you to get below,' I said angrily.
'No fear!' said Nicky enthusiastically. That was too good to miss.'
'Please do as I ask. You're only in the way here,' I said coldly. 'Higgins will bring you coffee and sandwiches.'
When I joined them half an hour later, the coffee and sandwiches were still untouched. Stella was sitting on my bunk. This was the first time I had seen her face and not even the harsh glare of the deckhead light could mar the flawless beauty of its perfect oval, the olive complexion, the patrician little nose, the plaited coils of hair, lustrous and silky, black as a raven's wing. Not even her swimming eyes and tear-smudged cheeks could do that.
'Oh Lord!' I said tiredly. 'What's up now?'
'Professional disagreement,' Nicky said shortly. His black hair was more tousled than ever. 'Look, Mac, there's been a slip-up somewhere. A leak from base is almost impossible. So it must have been Stella. Somewhere, somehow, in the past day or two, she made a mistake. She must have.'
'But I didn't, Nicky,' she whispered huskily. 'I swear I didn't. I didn't put a foot wrong. Honestly, Nicky,'
He looked — and sounded — pretty weary.
'OK, OK, Stella. Let's leave it at that.'
Nicky and I went outside and stood leaning on the rail. After a minute I turned to him.
'Nicky.'
'Yeah?'
'You don't seriously suspect her, do you?'
He turned slowly and looked at me.
'Just how damned stupid can you get, Scotty?' he asked. His voice was cold, hostile. Abruptly, he turned and left me.
I was alone with my thoughts. I had plenty to think about.
'What do you reckon Admiral Starr made of it all?' Nicky asked.
I finished off my Benedictine, put my glass down thoughtfully and smiled at him. Eight hours' sleep had put us both in an infinitely better humour.
'Difficult to say. He's a cagey old bird. Personally, I think he's as much in the dark as we are.'
'Just about what I figured. Hullo, here's Stella.'
He nodded towards the street door of the Triannon and waved.
She was worth waving at, I thought soberly. Dressed in a plain button-through white frock, quite uncluttered by any jewellery, she looked, and was, a lovely and desirable girl.
Nicky must have been watching my face.
'She's quite something, isn't she, Mac?'
I nodded slowly, but said nothing.
'Couldn't blame anyone for falling for her,' he murmured. The smile on his face was half a question. 'Even you, Mac.'
'I might at that,' I replied quietly.
He looked at me, a curious, enigmatic expression on his face.
'Don't, laddie, don't.' He grinned. 'It's like I told you, Mac — in our line of business, it's just too much grief. 'Evening, Stella.' He smiled at her and turned towards the barman. 'A Dubonnet for the lady.'
Conversation was desultory for a few minutes. I lit a cigarette, peered into the bar mirror and said suddenly: 'You two made your peace yet?'
Stella smiled. 'Yes.'
'I thought so.' I reached round her and firmly disengaged the hand which I had seen in the mirror gently closing over Stella's.
'Ah, ah, Major Ravallo!' I said severely. 'Don't touch! Not in our line of business — too much grief, you know.'
They looked at each other, then at me, and laughed.
I felt suddenly tired. Not sleepy — just tired. The rain had stopped and a moon was struggling to break through the watery clouds. The facia clock stood at 4.15. Another one hundred miles to London.
It was the first and last meeting with Nicky, I reflected, that was etched so clearly in my mind. The years between, in hazy retrospect, were a kaleidoscopic blur.
We three — Stella, Nicky and I — had grown very close to each other. With the crew of the 149, we had been a great team — at first. Three times our base of operation had shifted
— Palermo, Salerno, Naples. Eleven times we had set them down, singly or together, on the enemy coast, and each time picked them up without mishap. The completely selfless devotion to their job of my crew — especially Wilson and Passiere, both of whom had twice refused promotion — was extraordinary.
But, towards the end, there had been a steady deterioration — in several ways. Laughter, I could see, came less and less readily to Stella's eyes. She had grown thinner, was intense at times, at others listless and despondent. Scarcely a week went by but she saw Forts, Liberators and Lancasters battering targets in her own homeland — twice, to my certain knowledge, on information supplied by herself. It must have been hell for her.
Nicky, too, had changed. The laughing cavalier of the Malta days had vanished. Taciturn and uncommunicative, he rarely smiled. It was his homeland too, of course. Perhaps it was Stella, but I was pretty sure it wasn't. Nicky, after his one brief lapse in Malta, followed his own example and armoured himself in indifference towards her. They rarely spoke together without bickering.
Again, in the winter of '43, a mixed battalion of Rangers and Commandos, leapfrogging the Allied Army, had landed on the coast in a quiet bay selected by HQ and guaranteed clear by Nicky and Stella. Half-an-hour after the last man had gone ashore, the battalion had been cut to pieces by a Panzer division. It could have been coincidence.
A month later, the largest arms and ammunition drop of the war had fallen into German hands. The waiting Partisans had been wiped out — completely. That, too, could have been coincidence — but coincidence couldn't explain how the enemy had obtained the correct recognition signals and the agreed sequence of flare markers.
Finally, in the late Spring, eight agents had been set down near Civitavecchia by the 149. For three nights we had waited for radio signals. None came. We did not need to ask what had happened.
It was growing light now on the A1, but there was no corresponding lift in my spirits. I felt again that same nameless sadness, that same heaviness of heart I had felt on that blazing summer afternoon as I had made my way to Admiral Starr's office in Naples. I had known, subconsciously at least, why he had sent for me.
Admiral Starr, too, had changed. He was tireder now, his face more lined. And he was brutally frank.
' "Betrayal" is a nasty word, McIndoe,' he said heavily. The time has come to use it. Thousands of British and American boys are being maimed and killed every month. Kid gloves are out. Agreed?'
I nodded silently.
'We have no proof,' he went on bitterly. 'Not a scrap. But this I do know. Three coincidences are just three too many. Also, after that battalion massacre, the base security staff was completely changed. It made no difference. The leakage is at your end, McIndoe. The logic of it is simple.' He paused, and smiled thinly. 'I assume I am above suspicion.'
He looked down at his hands.
'Ravallo and his friend are both Italian-Americans,' he went on quietly. 'US Army Intelligence swears both are absolutely loyal. I'm not so sure. Neither, I suspect, are you, McIndoe.'
He glanced at me under his bushy eyebrows — to see how I was taking it, I suppose. Again I said nothing.
'You will meet them in Anzio tomorrow,' he continued harshly. 'You will tell them that, owing to a base HQ leak, this will be their last mission. You will lead them to believe that this is a normal mission organized by our base security staff. This is untrue. Only you and I, McIndoe, know of this. Both will be allowed to come and go as they wish until they embark on the 149. Understand?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Can you trust your chief and radio man?'
'Implicitly, sir.'
'Good. You will take them and them alone into your confidence. Inadvisable, perhaps, but unavoidable. They are to deny all access to deck signalling equipment and the radio room. Any questions?'