‘I do not know anything about Tucek,’ she replied. ‘But I know where he kept the others you speak about. It is in the old monastery of Santo Francisco.’
‘Come on then.’
By the time I caught up with them Max had the car turned and he was waiting for me with the door open and the engine running. The stream of refugees seemed already to be thinning. Most of those who had fled on foot had already passed. Only those who had stopped to salvage some of their belongings were still on the road. We passed bullock cart after bullock cart piled to a crazy height with furniture, bedding, children and livestock. As we forced them off the road, with the blare of our horn the loads canted over at a crazy angle.
Zina was in the front beside Max. I could see the shape of her head against the white swathe of the headlights and the glare of the lava streams. ‘Hurry. Hurry, please.’ She was getting scared again. It was hardly to be wondered at. The scene was like something out of the Bible — the bullock carts and the terror-stricken people fleeing from the wrath of the Lord. And then I caught a glimpse of the village of Santo Francisco, a black huddle of ancient houses outlined against the blazing wrath of Vesuvius. The red glare of the lava streams was ahead of us and on either side of us. Santo Francisco was doomed and I thought of the fire and brimstone that had put an end to the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. It must have been very like this.
‘Pray God we’re not too late.’ It was Hilda who had spoken and I realised suddenly that she was clutching my hand.
On the far side of the back seat Hacket said, ‘This is the craziest thing I’ve ever been mixed up in.’ He leaned towards me across Hilda. ‘Farrell. Do you mind telling me what it’s all about?’
Hilda answered for me. ‘It’s my father. This man Sansevino has shut him up somewhere in Santo Francisco.’ I think she wanted to talk, for she went on, telling him about her father’s escape from Czechoslovakia. I looked at my watch. It was just after four. In little over an hour it would be light. A great shower of sparks rose out of the crater glare and lifted to the black cloud above that was shot with intermittent stabs of forked lightning.
‘Any moment that damned mountain’s gonna blow its top,’ Hacket muttered. His voice trembled slightly. But it wasn’t fear. It was because he was excited. He had come all the way from America to see this volcano and I think he was as near to being happy as he’d ever be.
We were entering the village now. The crimsoned stucco fronts of the houses closed in on us, throwing back the roar of the car’s engine and blocking out the sight of Vesuvius. The streets were quite deserted. The last of the refugees had left. There wasn’t a cat or a dog, not even a chicken, to be seen. It was as though we were entering a lost town.
We passed a shop where a candle still guttered on the counter and vegetables piled the shelves. The doors of the houses gaped open. In a small piazza a cart stood forlornly, abandoned because one of the wheels had broken under the strain of the furniture heaped on top of it. By the village pump a small child sucked its thumb and stared at us with big, frightened eyes.