For my part I thought it was all a part of the twisted mentality of the little doctor that he should bring these two, Reece and Shirer, to the hospital and then move us to a separate ward. It was hell for me being cooped up in that tiny room, forced into the company of the two men I had destroyed. They should have been out in the hills above Bologna organising the partigiani. Only the fact that my plane had been hit by ack-ack and crashed after dropping them had led to their being captured. It was hell having them for company — a worse hell than the frightful pain of those operations. Shirer had understood, I think. He wasn’t a young man and he had seen a good deal of suffering in the coal mines of Pittsburgh, which was his home. The fact that he was an American Italian also probably had something to do with it — it made him more sensitive and perhaps his code wasn’t so rigid.
Reece, on the other hand, was solid and unimaginative. He came from Norfolk of a long line of Puritan ancestors and for him right and wrong were as clear as white and black. Two years in Milan as an engineering student had hardened, rather than softened his outlook on life. From the day he arrived at the Villa d’Este and Sansevino explained to him how it was that he had been captured, he never spoke to me. The fact that I had been engaged to his sister made his reaction all the more violent. He didn’t take Sansevino’s word for it. He cross-examined me. And when lie realised that it was the truth, that the third operation had finished me, then he withdrew into himself, hating me for being the cause of his not finishing the job he’d been sent out to do.
It wasn’t so bad in the big ward. But when we were moved into the little room overlooking the lake, it had been torture to me. I could feel the silence still. It would grow and grow until suddenly Shirer would break it, going out of his way to talk to me. He had made a little chess set and we played by the hour. But all this time I was conscious of Alec Recce’s presence, knowing that sooner or later he would inform his sister of what had happened.
The memory of those days was so vivid that even the sounds of the plane and the sight of the Alps standing white along the horizon couldn’t blot out their memory. Then, thank God, the two of them had gone. Sansevino had arranged it. I was up and about then, getting my stump accustomed to the pain of bearing my weight on the cup of the wooden leg they’d given me. But I couldn’t go. And I was glad I couldn’t go.
They left on the 21st April. Sansevino had given them civilian clothes and all the necessary documents. They left just after midnight — first Shirer, then Reece. They were to rendezvous at the vehicle park, take an ambulance and drive to Milan where they would be looked after by Sansevino’s friends.
I thought at the time that Sansevino had been relying on the document we had all signed to save him from being arrested for war crimes when the war was over. It never occurred to me that in arranging their escape he was trying to come to terms with his conscience. Yet that must have been the reason for his sudden act of generosity, for next morning he was dead at his desk. His orderly had been instructed to bring me to him first thing in the morning, at 7 o’clock. It was we who found him. He was in full uniform with all his Fascist decorations, slumped in his chair, his head lolling back and a black bloodstain on his shoulder. The little Beretta with which he’d shot himself was still clenched in his hand. Oddly enough his dark glasses still covered his eyes, though the force of the explosion had driven them almost to the end of his nose. Some queer sense of justice must have induced him to arrange it so that I should actually be one of those to see him after he’d taken his life.
As for Reece and Shirer, something had gone wrong. I heard afterwards that they’d been stopped at an unexpected road block and had been killed whilst attempting to climb to the Swiss frontier. That’s what I had been told and I had never doubted the truth of it. Certainly I had made no attempt to check up on it. Why should I? The very last thing Reece had said to me was, ‘I have written to Alice telling her everything. That letter may not reach her and I may not come through. But God’s curse rest on you, Farrell, if you ever try to see her again. You understand?’ And I had nodded, too emotionally destroyed to say anything. His letter, however, had got through. Her reply was waiting for me when I rejoined my unit at Foggia. Maxwell himself had handed it to me.
God! I could remember it all so clearly. And here I was, flying through the Po valley to see Reece again. Ahead of us I could see Lake Maggiore, like a piece of lead laid flat in the brown fold of the hills. And beyond, in a golden shimmer of sunshine, the Plain of Lombardy was rolled out like a map. I wiped the sweat off my brow and picked up the paper. My eyes drifted aimlessly over the headlines until they were caught and held by a story headed: ISAAC RINKSTEIN CONFESSES. One paragraph stood out from the rest: Rinkstein has admitted to making heavy sales of diamonds and other precious stones to certain industrialists, the chief among them being Jan Tucek, chairman and managing director of the Tuckovy ocelarny. This is regarded as indicating that he has been active against the State. Men who convert their fortunes into such easily portable goods as precious stones usually have a guilty conscience. Tucek is believed to have been selling vital industrial and military information to the Western Powers.
I put the paper down and stared out of the window. We were over Verona now and the road from Venice to Milan cut like a grey ribbon through the green sheet of Lombardy. I was hoping that if Tucek had crashed, as Max feared, he had crashed beyond the Czech frontier. At least he’d have a chance then. But through the farther window I could see the jagged molars of the Alps grinding against the black vault of a storm. I knew what it was like to crash — the rearing, shattering impact and then the sudden stillness of intense pain and the smell of petrol and the fear of fire. That’s how it had been when I’d crashed in the Futa Pass. But there I’d managed to find an open stretch of moorland. Up here in the Alps it would be into a snow-covered peak or against some pine-clad slope they’d crash. There was all the difference in the world.
Thinking about Tucek, I forgot myself, and it was not until the sound of the engines slackened and the port wing dipped that I looked out of my window again. Milan lay along the horizon, sunlight glittering on long streamers of smoke blown by the wind from the tall factory chimneys on the outskirts. The solid bulk of a gasometer came up to meet us. Then we were skimming the spire of a church and running in towards a line of pylons. The lights came on in the indicator ordering safety belts to be fixed. The door to the cockpit slid back and one of the crew repeated the order. The sun-baked flat of the airfield came up to meet us and in a moment the concrete of the runways was streaming by and we had landed in Milan.