So I told him the whole story. When I had finished he said, ‘Why was Tucek so anxious for you to see him when you got to Milan?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
He frowned. ‘And he came to your hotel that night?’ He looked across at me. ‘Has anybody tried to contact you since you’ve been in Milan?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I told him then about the telephone conversation I’d just had. Somehow the sense of menace I’d attached to it seemed to recede as I told it to Reece.
When I’d finished he didn’t say anything for a moment, but sat lost in thought, toying with the drink the waiter had brought him. At length he murmured the name Sismondi, rolling it over his tongue as though by repeating it aloud he could make contact with something hidden away in his memory. But then he shook his head. ‘The name means nothing to me.’ He swilled the pale liquor of his cognac round and round in the glass as though he couldn’t make up his mind what line to take. ‘I wish to God Maxwell was here,’ he said. Then he suddenly knocked back the drink. ‘I want you to do something,’ he said quietly, leaning across the table towards me. ‘You probably won’t like it, but—’ He shrugged his shoulders.
‘What is it?‘I asked.
‘I want you to go and see Sismondi.’
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I don’t want anything to do with it. It’s none of my business.and—’
‘I know it’s none of your business. But Tucek was a friend of yours, wasn’t he? You were in the Battle of Britain together.’
I thought again of that shattered windshield with the black oil smoke pouring through it, the flames fanning out from the engine cowling and a voice in the headphones saying: Okay, I get him for you, Dick. Jan had probably saved my life that day. ‘Yes,’ I said.