‘I hope you are not in trouble, signore?’ The clerk beamed at me as though he had said something funny.
‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do you not know who that is? It is il capitano Caselli of the Carabinieri. A very clever man, Capitano Caselli — very clever indeed.’
I handed him four thousand lire notes. ‘You can keep the change,’ I said and picked up my bag. ‘I’m ready now, Mr. Hacket,’ I told the American. ‘Can we stop at a post office? I must send off a cable.’ All I wanted now was to get out of Milan.
‘Sure we can. We’ve plenty of time.’
We arrived at the airport at ten to eleven and the first person I saw as I went into the passenger hall was Reece. He was talking to a stout little man with a bald head and long sideboards. He didn’t see me as we went through. We checked our bags and passports and then sat waiting for our flight. Shortly after eleven the flight from Prague was announced and I saw Reece go out to meet it. I wondered whether Maxwell was arriving. I didn’t see why else Reece should be meeting the Prague plane. A few minutes later our own flight was called and we went down the ramp to the aircraft.
For the second time in the space of a few days I felt a sense of great relief as I found a seat and sank back into it, safe inside the fuselage of an aircraft. The door was fastened and we began to taxi out to the runway. We had a smooth take-off and as the plane rose and Milan vanished below us in a haze of smoke, a great weight seemed to be lifted from my mind. Milan was behind me now. Ahead was Naples, and all I had to do was lie in the sun and relax, just as Hacket had said. Almost for the first time since I’d met Jan Tucek in his office at the Tucek steelworks I felt safe and free.
CHAPTER FOUR
To land at Pomigliano Airport we made a wide sweep that carried us right over Naples. The Bay was a deep blue and Capri an emerald isle. White blocks of flats clawed their way up to the Vomero where the brown bulk of the Castel San Elmo looked out over the city. In the distance the grey ash heap of Vesuvius shone white in the sunlight, a little plume of smoke hanging like a trick cloud over the crater.
‘Looks kind of peaceful, doesn’t she?’ Hacket said. He hadn’t stopped talking since we left Milan. I knew all about his wife and family and the colliery screening business he owned back in Pittsburgh, and I welcomed the change of subject. ‘You wouldn’t think to look at her that she’d produced some sixty major eruptions in the last four hundred years.’ His pale grey eyes gleamed behind the thick, rimless glasses. He gave a chuckle and dug me in the ribs. ‘See Naples and die — eh? Guess the fellow Who dreamed that one up must have been here when she was in eruption.’ He sighed. ‘But she doesn’t look very active now. And I come all the way from Pittsburgh to see that mountain. Geology is my hobby.’