‘Do you think that wise?’
‘Perhaps not. We are not always wise.’
‘I really think I should be going,’ I muttered. I was feeling dazed, uncertain of being able to control myself. It was Walter Shirer I’d seen dressed up in Fascist uniform sitting dead at that desk. Anger rose up and choked me. The words il dottore were on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to say them, to see him swing round under the shock of discovery and then to close with him and choke the life out of him. But I stopped myself in time. I’d never get away with it. I’d never convince the authorities. And anyway he’d be armed. And then suddenly I knew that if he realised that I was aware of his true identity I’d never get out of the room alive. The ghastly game had got to be played out to the end now. That, and that alone, was clear in my mind. He was coming over to me now with the drink in his hand. ‘Here you are, Farrell. Now just you sit down and relax.’
I took the drink and sank into the nearest armchair. If I was to get out of the room alive I’d got to convince him that I still thought he was Shirer. ‘Funny thing,’ I said. ‘I only discovered a few days ago that you and Reece were alive. The hospital authorities gave out that you’d both been shot while trying to escape.’.
He laughed. ‘We damn nearly did get shot. The ambulance we got away in broke down and we had to take to the hills. Didn’t you ever come across Reece? I thought you and his sister—’
‘She broke it off.’
His eyebrows lifted. Shirer had never looked like that. This man was considering the mental impact of a thing like that, considering it as a doctor.
‘That was not very kind of her,’ Zina Valle said.
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘I would like my drink, please, Walter.’