She lapsed into fluent Albanian. “Isn’t it a little unnerving? Don’t you ever get your wires crossed?”

“Not that I can recall,” he replied faultlessly in the same language. “I can’t afford that kind of mistake. If it’s any consolation, I still can’t read a Chinese newspaper. On the other hand, I’ve only ever met two Europeans who could.”

“With that kind of flair plus your academic training, you could pick up a chair in modern languages at almost any university in Britain or the States,” she said. “Doesn’t the thought appeal to you?”

“Not in the slightest. I got into this sort of work by chance, and by chance I possessed all the virtues needed to make me good at it.”

“You mean you actually enjoy it?”

“Something like that. If I’d been born in Germany twenty years earlier, I’d probably have ended up in the Gestapo. If I’d been born an Albanian, I might well have been a most efficient member of the sigurmi. Who knows?”

She seemed shocked. “I don’t believe you.”

“Why not? It takes a certain type of man or woman to do our kind of work – a professional. I can recognize the quality, and appreciate it, in my opposite numbers. I don’t see anything wrong in that.”

There was a strained silence as if in some way he had disappointed her. She reached for the tray. “I’d better take these below. We must be getting close.”

The door closed behind her and Chavasse opened the window and breathed in the sharp morning air feeling rather sad. So often people like her, the fringe crowd who did the paperwork, manned the radios, decoded the messages, could never really know what it was like in the field. What it took to survive. Well, he, Paul Chavasse, had survived, and not by waving any flags, either.

Then what in the hell are you doing here? he asked himself, and a rueful smile crossed his face. What was it Orsini had said? The things we do for the ladies. And he was right, this one was something special – something very special.

The door swung open and Orsini entered, immense in his old reefer coat and peaked cap on the side of his head. “Everything all right, Paul?”

Chavasse nodded and handed over the wheel. “Couldn’t be better.”

Orsini lit another of his inevitable cheroots. “Good. Shouldn’t be long now.”

Dawn seeped into the sky, a gray half-light with a heavy mist rolling across the water. Orsini asked Chavasse to take over again and consulted the charts. He checked the cross-bearing Francesca had given him and traced a possible course in from the sea through the maze of channels marked on the chart.

“Everything okay?” Chavasse asked.

Orsini came back to the wheel and shrugged. “I know these charts. Four or five fathoms and a strong tidal current. That means that one day there’s a sandbank, the next, ten fathoms of clear water. Estuary marshes are always the same. We’ll go in through the main outlet of the Buene and turn into the marshes about half a mile inland. Not only safer, but a dammed sight quicker.”

THE MIST ENFOLDED THEM UNTIL THEY were running through an enclosed world. Orsini reduced speed to ten knots and, a few moments later, Carlo and Francesca came up from below.

Chavasse went and stood in the prow, hands in pockets, and the marshes drifted out of the mist and their stench filled his nostrils. Wildfowl called overhead on their way in from the sea and Carlo moved beside him and crossed himself.

“A bad place, this. Always, I am glad to leave.”

It was a landscape from a nightmare. Long, narrow sandbanks lifted from the water, and inland mile upon mile of marsh grass and great reeds marched into the mist, interlaced by a thousand creeks and lagoons.

Orsini reduced speed to three knots and leaned from the side window, watching the reeds drift by on either side. Chavasse moved along the deck and looked up at him.

“How far are we from the position Francesca gave?”

“Perhaps three miles, but the going would be too difficult. In a little while we must carry on in the dinghy. Much safer.”

“And who minds the launch?”

“Carlo – it’s all arranged. He isn’t pleased, but then he seldom is about anything.”

He grinned down at Carlo, who glared up at him and went below. Chavasse moved back along the deck and joined Francesca in the prow. A few moments later the launch entered a small lagoon, perhaps a hundred feet in diameter, and Orsini cut the engines.

They glided forward and grounded gently against a sandbank as he came out on deck and joined them. He slipped an arm around Francesca’s shoulders and smiled down at her.

“Not long now, cara. A few more hours and we’ll be on our way home again. I, Guilio Orsini, promise you.”

She looked up at him gravely, then turned to Chavasse, a strange, shadowed expression in her eyes, and for some unaccountable reason, he shivered.

NINE

FRANCESCA COOKED A HOT MEAL, PERHAPS the last they would have for some time, and afterwards Carlo and Chavasse broke out the large rubber dinghy, inflated it and attached the outboard motor.

When they went below for the Aqua-lung, Orsini was sitting on the edge of the table loading a machine pistol. The top of one of the salon seats had been removed and inside there was a varied assortment of weapons. The submachine gun, a couple of automatic rifles and an old Bren of the type used by the British infantry during the war.

“Help yourself,” he said. “A selection to suit all tastes.”

Chavasse picked up one of the automatic rifles, a Garrand, and nodded. “This will do me. What about ammo?”

“There should be plenty in there somewhere.”

There were three boxes stacked together. The first contained grenades, the second, several pouched bandoliers. Chavasse picked one up and Orsini shook his head.

“That’s an explosive we used during the war for underwater sabotage. I’ve had it for years.”

“A hell of a thing to have people sitting on,” Chavasse said.

Orsini grinned. “Just the thing for fishing. You stick a chemical detonator in a piece as big as your fist, heave it over the side and wait. They come floating up by the thousands. I’ll take some along, just in case we need to do any blasting.”

Chavasse found the ammunition in another box, loaded his Garrand and strapped a bandolier containing a hundred rounds about his waist. He helped Carlo up top with one of the Aqua-lungs and they stowed it in the prow of the dinghy along with several other items of equipment. As they finished, Orsini and Francesca came up on deck.

She was wearing an old reefer coat of Carlo’s against the cold, the sleeves rolled back and a scarf tied around her head, peasant-fashion. She seemed calm but was extremely pale, and there were blue shadows under her eyes.

Chavasse squeezed her hand as he helped her into the dinghy and whispered, “Soon be over. We’ll be on our way out again before you know it.”

She smiled wanly, but made no reply, and he clambered into the dinghy beside her and sat on one side, the Garrand across his knees. Orsini followed, seating himself in the stern. He glanced up at Carlo and grinned.

“If all goes well, we could be back by this evening. Certainly no later than dawn tomorrow.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Always you look on the dark side.”

Orsini pressed the automatic starter and the powerful motor roared into life. Wildfowl rose from the reeds in alarm, the sound of them filling the air. As Carlo released the line, the dinghy moved forward quickly. Chavasse had one final glimpse of his dark, saturnine face scowling at them over the rail and then the marsh moved in to enfold them.

THE REEDS LIFTED OUT OF THE MIST LIKE pale ghosts on either hand, the only sound the steady rattle of the outboard motor. Orsini consulted his compass, turning from one narrow waterway to the other, moving always toward the position on the chart Francesca had given them.