Partisans by Alistair MacLean Read Free Book Online Page B

‘Another courtesy of the high seas. Lessens the rigours of total war, I must say.’
    â€˜My feeling exactly. No thanks, I may say, to our Admiralty who are as stingy as Admiralties the world over. Some of the supplies come from my father’s wine cellars – they would have your threestar sommeliers in raptures, I can tell you – some are gifts from foreign friends.’
    â€˜KruÅ¡kovac.’ George touched a bottle. ‘Grappa. Pelinkovac. Stara Å ljivovica. Two excellent vintages from the Neretva delta. Your foreign friends. All from Yugoslavia. Our hospitable and considerate young friend, Pietro. Clairvoyant? He thinks we go to Yugoslavia? Or has he been informed?’
    â€˜Suspicion, one would suppose, is part of your stock-in-trade. I don’t know what Pietro thinks. I don’t even know if he can think. He hasn’t been informed. He knows.’ Carlos sighed. ‘The romance and glamour of the cloak-and-dagger, sealed-orders missions are not, I’m afraid, for us. Search Termoli and you might find a person who is deaf, dumb and blind, although I much doubt it. If you did, he or she would be the only person in Termoli who doesn’t know that the Colombo – that’s the name of this crippled greyhound – plies a regular and so far highly dependable ferry-service to the Yugoslav coast. If it’s any consolation, I’m the only person who knows where we’re going. Unless, of course, one of you has talked.’ He poured himself a small scotch. ‘Your health, gentlemen. And yours, young lady.’
    â€˜We don’t talk much about such things, but about other things I’m afraid I talk too much.’ George sounded sad but at once refuted himself. ‘University, eh? Some kind of marine school?’
    â€˜Some kind of medical school.’
    â€˜Medical school.’ With the air of a man treating himself for shock George poured some more grappa. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a doctor.’
    â€˜I’m not telling you anything. But I have a paper that says so.’
    Petersen waved a hand. ‘Then why this?’
    â€˜Well you might ask.’ Momentarily, Carlos sounded as sad as George had done. ‘The Italian Navy. Any navy. Take a highly skilled mechanic, obvious material for an equally highly skilled engineroom-artificer. What does he become? A cook. A cordon bleu chef? A gunner.’ He waved his hand much as Petersen had done. ‘So, in their all-knowing wisdom, they gave me this. Dr Tremino, ferryman, first class. Considering the state of the ferry, make that second class. Come in, come in.’ A knock had come on the door.
    The young woman who stepped over the low coaming – she could have been anything between twenty and thirty-five – was of medium height, slender and dressed in a jersey, jacket and skirt, all in blue. Pale-complexioned, without a trace of make-up, she was grave and unsmiling. Her hair was black as night and swooped low, like a raven’s wing, over the left forehead, quite obscuring the left eyebrow. The pock-marking, for such it seemed to be, high up on the left cheekbone, served only to accentuate, not diminish, the classical, timeless beauty of the features: twenty years on, just as conceivably thirty, she would still be as beautiful as she was at that moment. Nor, it seemed certain, would time ever change the appearance of the man who followed her into the cabin, but the sculpted perfection of features had nothing to do with this. A tall, solidly built, fair-haired character, he was irredeemably ugly. Nature had had no hand in this. From the evidence offered by ears, cheeks, chin, nose and teeth he had been in frequent and violent contact with a variety of objects, both blunt and razor-edged, in the course of what must have been a remarkably chequered career, It was, withal, an attractive face, largely because of the genuine warmth of his smile: as with Carlos, an