“Certainly. I’ve killed bats in it.”
“There are no bats in it now. The Albanians, under the whip of the Russians, have cleaned it up some, and they like to stand in the tower and look across the border. For a while they kept a squad there, but now not so many. I had told Carla that if there was a spy among us working for the Russians it would surely be known to the Albanians at the fort, and they would be in touch with them, and I’m sorry I told her that because it gave her the idea. She decided to go herself to the fort, go straight to them, and offer her services as a spy. I told her it was not only dangerous, it was absurd, but she wouldn’t listen. If you think I should have kept her from going, you will please remember that in her mind it was possible that I was myself the spy. Besides, I would have had to restrain her physically. She had decided on it.”
Wolfe grunted. “So she went.”
“Yes. She went early Sunday morning. I couldn’t keep her, but I persuaded her to make an arrangement with me. I knew how things were in the fort. There are places to sleep and a place to cook, but there is no plumbing. For private necessities there is only one place to go, a little room on the lower side that is more like a cell, with no light when the door is closed, because there is no window.”
“I know that room.”
“You seem to know everything. When you knew it, it was not furnished with a bench to sit on with holes in it.”
“No.”
“It is now. I figured that if Carla were left free to move at all, she would be allowed to go to that room. A few meters from it, on the other side of the corridor, is another room whose outer wall has crumbled, not used for anything — but of course you know that too. The arrangement was that I would be in that other room at nine o’clock that evening, and Carla would walk past it to the cell. That was all we arranged. We left it to circumstances whether she would enter the room to speak to me, or I would join her in the cell, or what. But she was to walk past the room unless it was absolutely impossible, as near nine o’clock as she could, for if she didn’t I was going to find out why.”
Pasic turned his head to cock an ear in the direction of the ledge, heard nothing whatever if my ears are any good, and turned back. He went on, “There is a thing I would like to mention, since you too are from America, where there is plenty of good food. There are still a few men in Montenegro with some pride, and I am one of them. On Saturday, after Carla arrived, I sent a man down to a farm in the valley and he brought back eight eggs and a piece of bacon. So Sunday morning before she left Carla had for breakfast three of the eggs and some slices of bacon, and she said it was better than American bacon. I want you to know that her last meal in Montenegro was a good one.”
“Thank you,” Wolfe said courteously.