“My God, no!” Courtney laughed. He drew his head back and roared. It struck me as pretty boisterous for a diplomat.
XVI
At noon the next day, Friday, we sat in our cabin on B deck on the Basilia. She was to sail at one. Everything was under control except one thing. At the Forelli Hotel in Genoa we had eleven hours sleep on good mattresses, and a good breakfast. Wolfe could walk without shuffling or staggering, and my bruises weren’t quite as raw. We were listed as Carl Gunther and Alex Gunther, had paid for the tickets, and had a little over six hundred bucks in our jeans. It was an outside cabin, twice as big as our cell in the Bari can, with two beds and two chairs, and one of the chairs was upholstered and Wolfe could squeeze into it.
But what about Peter Zov?
All Wolfe had been told was that he would enter Italy at Gorizia Wednesday night, cross to Genoa by way of Padua and Milan, and be on the Basilia as a cabin steward by Thursday night. Wolfe had wanted to know what his name would be, but Stritar had said that would be decided after he got to Genoa. Of course we knew nothing about where Zov would get his name or his papers, or from whom, or how the fix was set up for him to replace a steward. We didn’t know how good the fix was, or whether it always worked or only sometimes. As we sat there in the cabin, we didn’t give a damn about any of that; all that was eating us was, was he on board or not? If he wasn’t, did we want to sail anyhow and hope he would come later? Didn’t we have to? If we abandoned ship just because Zov didn’t show up, wouldn’t that be a giveaway?
“There’s an hour left,” I said. “I’ll go and look around some more. Stewards are popping in and out everywhere.”
“Confound it.” Wolfe hit the chair arm with his fist. “We should have kept him with us.”
“Stritar would have smelled a rat if you had insisted on it, and anyway he wouldn’t buy it.”
“Pfui. What is ingenuity for? I should have managed it. I’m a dunce. I should have foreseen this and prevented it. By heaven, I won’t start back without him!”
There was a knock at the door, I said, “Come in,” it opened, and Peter Zov entered with our bags.