The man on the left dropped the rope, turned to the wall, unfastened a chain from a peg, and played it out through a pulley on the ceiling. Peter Zov’s feet got to the floor, and his arms were lowered, but only until his hands were even with his shoulders. He swayed from side to side as if he were keeping time to slow music.
“That should improve your manners temporarily,” the man in the chair told him. “I was saying that I realize you must satisfy that fool, Gospo Stritar, that you serve him well, but you must also satisfy me, which is more difficult because I am not a fool. You could have carried out that operation without the slightest risk of arousing his suspicion, but instead you went to America on a mission for him, and now you have the impudence to come here and expect to be welcomed — even to be paid! So I am paying you. If you answer my questions properly the payment may be more to your taste.”
“I had to go,” Peter Zov gasped. “I thought you would approve.”
“That’s a lie. You’re not such a blockhead. Those enemies of progress who call themselves the Spirit of the Black Mountain — you know their chief target is the Tito regime, not us, and it suits our purpose for them to make things as difficult as possible for Belgrade. There is little chance perhaps none, that they will be able to overthrow the regime, but if they do that will suit us even better. We would march in and take over in a matter of hours. Our hostility to the Spirit of the Black Mountain is only a pretense, and you understood that perfectly. The more help they got from America the better. If that lackey of a crook, that Marko Vukcic who made himself rich pandering to the morbid appetites of the bloated American imperialists — if he had increased his help tenfold it would have been a great favor to us. You knew that, and what did you do? At the command of Belgrade you went to America and killed him.”
He made a gesture. “If you thought we wouldn’t know, you are so big a fool that you would be better dead. The night of March fourth you entered Italy at Gorizia, with papers under the name of Vito Rizzo, and went on to Genoa. You sailed from Genoa as a steward on the Amilia on March sixth. She docked at New York on March eighteenth, and you went ashore that night and killed Marko Vukcic and were back on the Amilia before nine o’clock. I don’t know who briefed you in New York, or whether you had help in such details as stealing the car, but that’s of no importance. You stayed aboard the Amilia until she sailed on March twenty-first, left her at Genoa on April second, and returned to Titograd that night. I tell you all this so you may know that you can hide nothing from us. Nothing.”
He gestured again. “And on Sunday, April fourth, you came here to explain to these men that you had been unable to carry out our operation because you had been sent abroad on a mission. You found a woman here, drinking vodka with them, which was a surprise to you, but a greater surprise was to find that they already knew where you had been and what your mission was. Mistakes were made, I admit it; I only learned of them when I returned to Tirana yesterday from Moscow. They told you that they knew about your mission, and that alarmed you and you fled, and not only that, after you left they told the woman about you. They blame the vodka, but they will learn that it is not a function of vodka to drown a duty. Later they corrected their blunder by disposing of the woman — that is in their favor — but they will have to be taught a lesson.”
His tone sharpened. “That can wait, but you can’t. Up with him, Bua.”
Peter Zov sputtered something, but Bua ignored it. He had it on Peter in bulk, so when he pulled the chain not only Peter’s arms went up but also the rest of him. When the feet were well off the floor Bua hooked the chain on the peg and picked up the end of the rope and was ready to resume. So was his colleague.
“Of course,” the man in the chair said, “you had to come when you got my message yesterday, since you knew what to expect if you didn’t, so that’s no credit to you. You can get credit only by earning it. First, once more, how many boats patrol out of Dubrovnik, and what are their schedules?”
“Damn it, I don’t know!” Peter was choky again.