A FOREST OF EYES

DAY ONE

The window was dirty. Outside, the oppressive sirocco wind drove the sea into ridges curded with grey crests. Along the coast the fronds of the tufted palms and the loose jasmine and bougainvillaea pads on the villa walls were fretted in the warm air currents. Beyond the bone-grey line of the headland the distant coast was a dark purple smear like a wet brush mark. Vladimir Zarko watched the dust-wraiths on the sea-road and the stolid, herd-like swaying of the holm oaks on the island of Lokrum across the water.

A fly made an angry noise in the deep embrasure and began to butt against the museum window, moving up and down with a fat, iridescent panic. A shadow of irritation on his amiable face, Zarko drew his silver pencil from the breast pocket of his blue suit and pressed the blunt end against the creature. Carefully he wiped the end of the pencil and turned away. Any other day he would have let the fly be, but today . . . Men and women under that sultry wind found themselves propelled into extremes of character, a jest became an insult, anxiety an intolerable burden.

He smiled to himself as he walked, unheeding the still cases with their faded peasant costumes, the long shelves with their dull pottery and labelled lumps of quartz, remembering the words of his father. On a day of bad sirocco take a flagon of wine and go up into the Karst, find a cave and sit and drink alone. Wine and a solitary cave had been his father's solution for most troubles. His father had been a

wheelwright and had broken his neck in a drunken stumble.

Zarko walked down the long gallery, a short, plumpish middle-aged figure, and as he went he took out his handkerchief and wiped his face free of sweat. Even though the museum was in the fortress overlooking the small harbor, within walls of thick biscuit-colored limestone, the air was hot and damp.

Near the door the attendant, an oldish man in a faded blue uniform, was sitting on a backless wooden chair behind his counter. He looked up as Zarko came into the hallway and moved towards the door. Momentarily the book he was reading dropped to his knees.

'The sirocco comes early this year, comrade. By this evening it will be gone."

Then, on an impulse, Zarko turned and went across to the attendant. The books men read these days were always of interest.

''What are you reading?" He spoke loudly, his voice ringing uneasily in the shadowed roof-spaces. The attendant looked at him, unsmiling, and then raised the book so that he saw the title. It was a book of verse by the Croat poet, Vladimir Nazor. At the sight of the name, the sharpness behind his question dissipated and he smiled.

"It is a good name—Vladimir."

"Good poems too." And with an ingratiating note the man quoted—

"All that was under the embers, Smouldering within our hearts Like fire blazes-Comrade Tito! Tito! Tito!"

Zarko nodded approvingly and passed on, through the great wooden doors to the broad parapeted walk that linked the fortress to the inner harbor. As he went through the door, the attendant watched, waited for the slow swing of the door

to settle and then, with an unhurried glance around the empty hall, he gathered the spittle in his mouth and spat expressively and with great content into the water bucket by his chair.

Along the wall of the harbor rowing and fishing boats jostled each other in the choppy surge. Zarko lowered his head a little against the pulse of the hot wind and hurried along the embattlement to the steep steps at the far end which led down to the quay. The scrubbed tables in the small angle of the harbor which was the fish market were empty, and a couple of fishermen were curled uncomfortably into a wall niche, smoking and talking. Zarko passed them and the few people on the quay, giving no sign of his awareness of their existence. But he was aware of them all, and could have catalogued their life history, their dependability, their prospects and their fears. He was aware, too, of the town on his left, of the rising jumble of grey and yellow houses, the blunt upthrust of churches and the dark, climbing alley-ways and, on the far side of the small harbor, beyond the bathing beach, and the old houses around the Ploce Gate, the grey slopes, olive-studded and yellow-patched with pyre-thrum of Mount Sergio.

The loggia of the Gradska Kavana faced the harbor, only a stretch of cobbles separating it from the water's edge. All the tables were empty. Nobody sat outside on a day of sirocco. The wind teased cruelly at the pink and yellow blooms in the flower boxes along the edge of the loggia, and two sheets of a newspaper swirled in the warm air across the stones like a pair of fantastic dancers. Through the large-paned windows at the back of the loggia Zarko, as he threaded his way through the empty tables, saw that the cafe interior was crowded. As Zarko went into the crowded cafe he was greeted by a rush of tobacco smoke, the warm smell of coffee, the surge of voices and the thin, gentle sound of the orchestra. The room was long and broad, like a crypt of gigantic size,

great pillars springing from the floor to branch sturdily into the low roof.

Zarko sat down at an empty table near the orchestra. A waiter, quickly and without instruction, brought him a glass of water, his coffee and a daily paper.

The townspeople of Dubrovnik he knew well. During the winter they had the place to themselves. But now, it was the summer, the beginning of the tourist season. Scattered amongst the familiar groups were Hungarians, Czechs, and a few Poles, officials who had come from Belgrade and Zagreb, youth parties passing through from Kotor on their way up to Split and Rijeka. At the far side of the room, near the serving counter, four peasant girls drank together, their dark hair braided, the brocade and stiff linen of their costumes shining white and yellow. Zarko smiled as he noticed they had kicked off their shoes under the table. Above them on the wall was a large photograph of Marshal Tito, and something in the conjunction pleased him. A new life, a new beginning . . . the country had always needed that, he had always needed it.

Out of the lot, he found his interest, his true curiosity, reduced to four people. He lifted his paper and leaned back against the wall seat, adjusting himself so that he could read and observe still.

To his right the orchestra began to play a Serbian love song and the girl standing by the piano stepped forward a little as she sang. She was tall, her breasts small and set high. He smiled as he watched her, for the sight of her stirred old memories in him. She was like all her family, leggy and with that fair hair which in childhood was almost white, deepening with the years to a pale gold. In the old days, when he had been with his father, he had touched his cap to her when they had gone to the villa to work. Now, she had to work and he wondered what thoughts lay behind the smile she showed to the people here. Her own smile she kept hidden.

In the old days as a young man he had often rowed her and her mother across to Lokrum ... he remembered the thin, eager body of the child, restless, leaning over the side of the boat to snatch at passing seaweed. Her mother had always tipped him well . . . But now all that was changed.

He turned a page of his paper, and slid around so that over his arm he could see the table immediately to his left. Two Englishmen sat there. Everyone knew they were English and everyone preserved the polite fiction of pretending they were not there. One of them was drawing on a piece of paper. He watched them. They took no notice of anyone else. The one who was drawing seemed slightly younger than the other. He was dark, and in the lapels of his linen suit he wore a blue iris bud. The face, raised from the drawing for a moment, was long, quietly humorous, yet with an odd solemnity about the mouth. 'Robert Hudson/ Zarko played silently with the strange syllables, then, remembering the details which had followed them down from Belgrade, added, 'thirty-six, engineer, treat with all courtesy/ The other was the shorter, and fleshier, his hair fair, his face creased from some joke which had occupied him from birth, the lips pouting, sensual, his body sprawled back in his chair, so that Zarko could see the wrinkled socks above his shoes and a line of bare flesh below the out-thrust trouser-legs. 'John Raikes/ and then, his own comment, the official information forgotten, 'not to be trusted alone with a woman or a bottle.'

The girl came to the end of her song and a ripple of applause disturbed the cafe talk. Zarko saw Raikes raise his face towards the girl, and he began to clap vigorously, the sound like the noisy beat of pigeon's wings. His companion glanced at him, amused, and then looked casually across at the girl. Then he turned back to his drawing.

Zarko's attention went beyond them to the next table. An elderly man sat there with a glass of rakia before him. He was thin, unshaven, his face grey and beaded with tiny sweat

drops. His lips moved with a soundless anger at the sight of Zarko. He got up suddenly and began to walk towards Zarko. The orchestra was playing a noisy dance, drowning the girl's voice. Ten paces from Zarko, the man halted, drew a revolver and fired a single shot. The bullet passed through Zarko's newspaper, over his shoulder and glanced off the stone wall behind him in the direction of the orchestra. At the sound the music stopped, the cafe voices were suddenly suspended in surprised echoes and faces were turned towards Zarko and the man. He stood there, rather stupidly now, swaying a little, as though the effort had left him weak, and Zarko knew he would not fire again.

Noise and movement returned to the room like the angry wash of sea breaking over pebbles. Men and women stood to their feet and called, some moved back into the protection of the thick pillars, others pressed forward, and two armed militia guards came hurrying across the cafe, thrusting people out of their way, and seized the man. Something about his stupidity and bewilderment turned the first rough grasp of their hands into a gentler, protective hold. The revolver was taken from his hand, prized loose as a father takes a dangerous toy from a fright-shaken child. Zarko stood up and went to them. He looked at the man and then around at the waiting cafe.

"It's all right. Please return to your tables."

Behind him the orchestra, reinforcing the note of authority, began to play and the girl's voice struggled against the volume of sound.

"Take him away. I'll come later."

The guards eased the man between them, controlling his loose steps and led him down the room towards the street doors at the far end. Zarko watched them go. As he stood there he saw the Englishman, Hudson, rise from his table. The man moved past him and then stepped up to the orchestra. He saw Hudson take the girl's left wrist and motion her

to stop singing. For an instant she rejected the injunction with a shake of her head, but the man took her elbow and drew her firmly down from the platform. Her left wrist was lined with blood where the bullet, ricochetting, had struck her.

Zarko went over. Hudson looked up at him.

"It's only a graze, but a doctor ought to look at it."

The girl shook her head as he began to bind her wrist with his handkerchief. Zarko called to one of the violin players. "Telephone for a doctor."

The girl spoke. "No. I can walk to him. He lives only across the square." She turned to the Englishman and smiled. "Thank you." Zarko saw that it was a smile quite different from the one she used when she sang.

Hudson stood up.

"I'll come with you."

"No." She slipped away from him. "That would make me feel it is serious." The smile was still there but the note in her voice was definite.

She moved away across the cafe, and Hudson went back to his table. Zarko followed him. He was interested in this Englishman who spoke Serbo-Croat so well.

Hudson looked up at him.

"My congratulations on your escape."

Zarko gave a half-bow and then, remembering his official position, and the people at other tables who, pretending a polite disinterestedness, were watching, straining to hear each word, he said—"It was regrettable. Please don't think that such things happen often in Dubrovnik."

Raikes laughed. "The old man didn't seem to like you. I wonder why?" The brown face was lined with an impudent smile.

Zarko smiled gently. "I'm sorry for him. His son is in prison ... for treason . . ." He let the phrase linger between them, watching them. "When we get old we can see no

wrong in our sons. You must not form a wrong impression of our country. Today, in Yugoslavia, we have a great work before us, and we have many difficulties ..." As he spoke he leaned forward a little to see the drawing on the paper in front of Hudson. The Englishman looked up and caught his interest.

"We know. Work and difficulties. Every country in the world is the same." He pushed the sheet of paper towards Zarko, turning it so that he could see the neat sketch of the cafe. "Do you like it?"

Zarko looked from the drawing to the two men and then with a note of apology said, "Forgive my curiosity." He went on, "If there is anything I can do for you while you are in Dubrovnik, please come and see me. Vladimir Zarko. I am Chief of the People's Militia—the police."

He bowed again gently and walked away.

They watched him go. Hudson lit himself a cigarette.

"Why didn't you go with the girl to the doctor?" Raikes asked.

"In this country—even if a girl's just been shot—she doesn't accept a helping hand from an Englishman. Not right under the nose of the chief of police."

"A pity. She looked interesting."

Hudson smiled at him, and then beckoned to the waiter.

Raikes was standing on the small veranda of his room when Hudson entered. He was looking through field glasses at the island of Lokrum across the water.

There was a damp towel on the floor and clothes over the chairs. The bed was crumpled where he had been lying on it after lunch and on the floor by the bedside table was a pile of books. Hung from the fastener of the inside window shutters was a long trailer of brown seaweed powdered with sand and along the window edge a collection of brightly-colored and oddly-shaped seashells.

"What do you want?" Raikes spoke without turning.

Hudson went to the pile on the floor.

"The book you took from my room in Belgrade/' he said, picking the book out of the pile. When he had last seen it, it had been new, unread, waiting with a fresh primness for his reading. Now the paper cover was torn and stained, the boards bent and curved from bad packing. As he riffled the pages, stale shreds of tobacco gritted between the leaves. He held it up between his fingers fastidiously.

"Do you ever have nightmares in which you're being chased round an untidy hotel bedroom by an enormous dog-eared, gravy-stained book?"

"Did you say book or blonde?" Raikes spoke without turning.

"Book."

"No."

Raikes dropped the glasses and half-turned. The hot wind from the Adriatic stirred the fair damp hair, and the plump face was lined with an unrepentant smile.

"My whole life has been one long fight against my untidy nature." Raikes chuckled and turned to his glasses.

"I should say the last fight took place in here five minutes ago. Your nature seems to have won again."

"Go to hell." Raikes said it gently, adjusting the focus of his glasses.

Hudson went and stood by his side. Below them was the hotel terrace and then the rough drop of the ground to the sea, a slope cut into terraces, grey rock, cactus and pine-fringed walks and little beds of flowers overhung with undipped banks of shrubs, mimosa, bougainvillaea and jasmine which filled the air with a syrupy sweetness.

"What are you looking at?"

"There's a woman bathing from one of the villas further along." His head nodded to the left.

' 'Yesterday, when I came in at this time you were watching as well/'

"She bathes every day."

Hudson smiled as he eyed Raikes; there was an extravagance of manner and spirit about the man which attracted him, the untidy hair, the ready good-humor and his boyish delight in complicated toys such as the expensive Swiss watch on his left wrist, elaborate with a date mechanism, split-second hand, self-winding, dustproof, waterproof, and seldom showing the right time.

"I wonder which you watch more—the woman bathing or the boats passing through the channel?"

Raikes lowered the glasses with a slow movement and turned. His look was now unsmiling. He stood with the glasses couched against his chest, the blue silk shirt limp over the broad muscles, brown arms flecked with a fine down of fair hair. Then he said quietly: "You're very observant."

"That's the way I was born."

Raikes moved into the room and picked up a cigarette from the floor by the dressing-table. As he lit it, he said:

"I know—careful, observant, and probably brought up by a maiden aunt."

Hudson laughed, and picking up the wet towel from the floor threw it at him. Raikes caught it and went on, "Well, Fm going for a stroll along the coast. Who knows, I may meet the bathing lady."

Back in his room, Hudson drew the shutters against the heat and the yellow haze of light and lay on his bed. His book remained unopen at his side. He had known Raikes just over three weeks, and when they had first met he had thought he was going to dislike the man. But that feeling—which he knew had arisen from his hurt pride in not being allowed to carry out this Yugoslav negotiation by himself—had soon gone. They both liked one another, and their friendship had

developed rapidly in this country where they had few contacts with other people.

He reached out his hand for the box on his bedside table and, seeing the red star of Tito on the side of the Drina cigarette as he lit it, he remembered the girl in the cafe, and the quiet competent authority of the Chief of Police. Poor girl, to sing in a cafe was bad enough, but to sing in this town under the galaxy of red Communist stars and with the face of Tito frowning pugnaciously from every wall . . . He went to sleep, half-hearing in his first movement into oblivion the distant sound of quarrying going on high up on the slopes of Mount Sergio behind the Hotel Argentina, and seeing a sweep of fair hair falling over the girl's cheeks as she bent to watch him bandage her wrist. Her dress, he had noticed, was of good quality, but her shoes had been shoddy. That was typical of this country ... a good coat and patched trousers, a gold watch on a cheap waistcoat, nylons and a skirt six years too short . . .

A waiter woke him at four o'clock with a glass of lemonade. As he drew back the window shutters, Hudson saw that the sirocco was going.

Later, he went down the main stairway of the hotel. The place was quiet, clean and with the air of a chapel from the soft light which filtered through the colored glass windows. The few other guests he knew would still be sleeping, prolonging their siesta against the unpleasant day. In the hallway, the reception clerk, a dark Serb with his hair en hrosse and a face pitted with pox marks, sat at his desk writing. Hudson dropped his key on the counter and the man looked up, and nodded. Raikes, Hudson remembered, had insisted that every hotel receptionist was a police spy. This man, sitting back in his shadowy cubicle, under the hanging key tabs, that were like some strange fruit, watched by the dark eyes of the inevitable Tito portrait high on the wall, marked each movement of the guests.

As he left Hudson could imagine the man writing furiously

. . . "first Englishman went out at 2.30 p.m. Second Englishman followed at 4.30 p.m. Bulge in pocket of second Englishman might be hand grenade . . ."

and then, folding the report and thrusting it, in a mad Alice in Wonderland whirl of activity, into some secret posting box.

He turned to the right along the narrow coast road, playing still with the fantasy, and yet knowing that underneath there was that bitter trace of truth. What a country, he thought, where every other man is a police informer. It was with a sense of relief that he congratulated himself on his innocence. He was an engineer, nothing else, and at the moment this country wanted him. He had nothing to fear . . . Walking slowly, he put his hand in his pocket and drew out the orange he had brought from his room.

From Dubrovnik the coast swept in a curve to the southeast, to the headland which marked the foot of Mount Sergio. The road rose gently from the town towards the headland, and along it on either side were villas and hotels. Their gardens and walks terraced the broken cliff face and most of them were half-hidden by tall growths of palms and pines, sunk in the soft cushions of oleanders and azaleas, showing here and there a white angle of wall against creepers or the slim, jasmine-wreathed upthrust of a pillar. Once the houses of the cosmopolitan rich, most of the villas were now empty, others given over to half-a-dozen families whose washing signalled from loggia to balcony, whose pullets scratched among the weedy beds of unattended zinnias and petunias. The Hotel Argentina lay halfway along the road to the headland and, just beyond it, a smaller road, rutted and dusty, broke away from the coast road and wound at a lower level towards the headland.

It was this track which Hudson took, moving slowly, pausing now and again to lean over the low wall to his right to

look down into the overgrown gardens. The road itself was bordered with a thick cactus growth, agaves that thrust their dead, heraldic stems ten and twelve feet into the air, and prickly pear with red and yellow flowers studding their spiny pads. At the end of the track was a disused Benedictine Abbey, dark and shuttered, the bell gone from the tiny belfry over the main door, and the angles of the thick walls damp and malodorous from serving the convenience of a careless public. Hudson hurried around it and followed the track out to the hillside, now free of villas. The wind had veered and the oppressive dampness and heat were lifting. A rift slowly widened in the sky to the southwest and for a moment a clean wash of sunlight poured through, enlivening the leaden stretch of water between the mainland and the island into a dancing bed of blue and white chips. A few fishing boats were creeping round the end of Lokrum, heading up into the wind, and from the thinning haze the far islands moved up into position like ponderous men-of-war emerging from the smoke and confusion of some noiseless battle.

Out here the track divided into a fingering of tiny paths, some running away uphill through the wind-crabbed olive trees, others sloping down the cliff, through patches of grey limestone litter and the felt-grey clumps of sage to small coves and beaches. Where the track divided was a small notice in red and white paint, written in three languages, Serbo-Croat, German and French. It read— Keep to the path. Hillside mined. The paint was weathered, the wording almost undecipherable and the board loosely propped against a cairn of stones.

Hudson hesitated, and then moved on, keeping to the main path. The whole of the coast had been mined by Germans and Italians, by the partisans and Chetniks, and very few of the mines had been cleared except from the roads and the main hill tracks.

A gull came shrieking down the hill, slanting across the

wind. On the path before him, a hundred yards away, rising as though from the ground as they moved over the curve of the cliff, he saw two men. They were an old man and a youth, peasants. The old man's face was shadowed under a battered straw hat. The youth wore a short cotton singlet and thin blue-and-white striped trousers which the wind pressed against his young limbs. They came towards him with slow, careful steps, and he stood and waited for them. Their faces were marked with the strain of the load which they carried, stretcher-wise, between them. They came up to him, and as he blocked their path, they halted and he saw that they carried between them an old door. On it, covered by a sailcloth, lay something long and bulky. They stood stiffly, looking at him, waiting for him to give them passage, and the old man's face was solemn, resigned, as though prepared to wait, but the youth, throwing the long hair back which the wind fanned over his face, made an impatient movement and shifted the grip of his hand on the door edge for relief.

The movement tilted the door a little and from under the near edge of the sailcloth something stirred. Hudson saw a brown arm drop free of the cloth. It hung stiffly, the fingers outspread. On the wrist was a watch, an elaborate Swiss watch with a date mechanism, split-second hand, self-winding, dustproof, waterproof . . .

Unshocked as yet, in a pause of curious unemotional numbness, Hudson stepped forward. He lifted the cloth, but his gesture was clumsy, the hard material, pulled by its own weight, slithering half from the body. Hudson closed his eyes against the unexpected horror, but against his lids the beastliness persisted, the damp fair hair, the red grimace of flesh that had been face, the ripped and lacerated torso . . . There was nothing there of the man he had known except a pulped formlessness. He heard the youth swear. Opening his eyes, Hudson saw that he had part of the door supported on one

knee and with his free hand was pulling the cloth back into position.

The old man twisted his head round, like a horse in shafts curious over the delay, and the youth swore again and frowned at Hudson and they moved forward. As they went he followed them.

Late that afternoon, in his office in a building which abutted on to the church of Sveti Jacov, Vladimir Zarko received a telegram from the Department for the Defense of the People, Obilicev venae 5, Belgrade. It was in code, and came direct to him, by-passing the normal police channels of the Federal Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Apart from being the Police Chief of Dubrovnik he was, and this was more important, a reliable Party member and also an agent of OZNA, the secret political police. The telegram read—

Milo Lepovitch arriving tomorrow. Procedure two.

$$ueAA tf)o *Jvof $0******

DAY TWO

Zarko stood looking out of the window of his office. Just below him was the roof of the church, its stone tiles etched with green and yellow lichen. Beyond it, framed by the edge of the squat bell tower and the untidy line of gables of the opposite houses, he could see part of the main square. The morning crowd had thinned around the vegetable and fruit stalls and the peasant women sat by their baskets and trestles, knitting and talking, reluctant to pack up and make their way back to their village homes and the little patches of garden and field outside the town. Zarko was a man who drew a constant delight from familiar things. He liked the view from his office and knew it intimately. If a door or window in the sloping panorama of houses and gables was left open when it was usually shut, he noticed it. If the office cleaner moved one of the big leather chairs a few inches out of its usual position, the strangeness was the first thing to greet him in the morning when he entered his office. Routine and method were virtues, and he liked to feel that he had the right answer to any situation. At this moment he knew that he should be extending his sympathy to the Englishman who sat in the room behind him. To one of his countrymen he would have given readily the open sympathy which their open grief demanded. But whatever this man felt he was keeping to himself. Zarko turned away from the window and said abruptly— "You're an engineer?''

"Yes."

"And your friend?"

"He was a technical consultant from the Export Division of our Board of Trade. He had been loaned to my firm to help with this contract."

"Contract?"

"Don't you know about it?" Hudson watched the broad, squat figure as it moved from the patch of sunlight by the window and came to the desk.

"All I know is your name, that you are an engineer, and that you are the guest here of the People's Government." Zarko sat down. Now that they were talking he felt more comfortable. He smiled. "And that I have been told to treat you with every courtesy. If you are able to tell me more . . .?"

"Why, yes. My firm is negotiating a contract to supply pit-head machinery and mining equipment to your Ministry of National Economy. Raikes and I have spent three weeks in Belgrade going over specifications and contract details. My job was the purely engineering side. He was looking after the official side, finance and delivery details . . ." It was a relief to be giving facts about Raikes rather than accepting sympathy for a loss which had affected him deeply. . . . "Except for a few small points everything is completed, but the final ratification of the contract can't be made until your Mr. Kidrich, the Minister of National Economy, returns from Hungary in two weeks' time. While we were waiting for him to return, we came here as guests of your Government."

Zarko nodded. Then said quietly, "My government would wish me to extend the deepest regret for this tragic accident."

"Thank you. I should like to know what happened."

"Your friend went bathing from a small beach at the end of the headland. He left his clothes on the grass above the beach and as he walked back he stepped on a mine. The whole of that part of the coast is mined and we have been unable to clear them all. No one saw it happen. The two

peasants discovered him some time after the accident. Last month two boys were killed higher up the slope. We put up notices—but people have such belief in their own luck. What more can we do?"

As he spoke Zarko rose and lifted from the floor by a set of filing cabinets a green tin box. He opened the padlock on it with a key from his ring and began to set out the contents on the desk. Hudson recognized the clothes which Raikes had been wearing; a blue shirt, grey flannel trousers, leather sandals and the things from his pockets, a wallet, a crumpled red silk handkerchief, a penknife and a set of poker dice advertising Martini Rossi vermouth. He looked away from the desk and his eye caught the white flash of pigeons' wings as they circled above the roof of Sveti Jacov. He was going to miss Raikes, and it was going to be some time before the sense of loss disappeared.

"With your permission I will have a man collect his effects from the hotel. They can go with these and I will send the lot off to your Embassy." Zarko began to put the things back in the box. "Your Embassy has already been informed, of course. I shall make a list of everything which perhaps you will be kind enough to check? He was a Protestant?"

"No. Roman Catholic."

"That makes it easier. Everything can be arranged for tomorrow." Zarko locked the box and put it back by the filing cabinets.

"Where is he now?"

"In the morgue—downstairs. You would like to see him?"

"No."

"If there is anything more I can do . . ."

Hudson stood up. "You've been very kind. I appreciate it." This man was being helpful. Of course Raikes and himself represented a valuable industrial development, the supply of machinery and equipment so badly needed by a crippled industry, and because of that they were privileged persons,

housed in a 'high category' hotel. If this plump, good-natured policeman were to handle him wrongly, his job would be forfeit, and yet he had a feeling that beneath the official helpfulness there was in this man a genuine sympathy and friendliness.

Zarko half-bowed. "I regret my services could not have been offered in pleasanter circumstances/' He went to the door with Hudson and holding it for him said—

"You speak Serbo-Croat very well."

"I learned it in a prisoner-of-war camp from a Czech officer. He was a night club entertainer in Belgrade in the old days." Hudson saw the lift of interest in the man's expression at the last phrase.

"In the old days? In the bad old days . . ." Momentarily the correction carried provocation. "What do you think of Yugoslavia today?"

The challenge was met skillfully.

"She's travelling a very rough road."

"True. But the road is leading in the right direction." Zarko spoke vigorously and the smile was gone from his face.

"Maybe. Goodbye, and thank you for your courtesy." Hudson inclined his head and moved out into the dark passage. Zarko watched him for a moment, then slowly closed the door and returned to his desk. He sat down and stared at the portrait of Tito on the wall.

In the main square Hudson hesitated. It was nearly lunch-time. For a moment he debated whether he would go straight back to the hotel, a twenty-minute walk, or first have a drink. The hesitation reminded him of the loss of Raikes. The man had had a habit of forcing his own plans on other people. Raikes would have said, "We need a drink," and would have been on his way, knowing that the other would follow. It was Raikes who, when a two weeks' wait in the contract procedure had arisen, had said, "Dubrovnik's the place." For

someone used to making and following his own plans, Hudson realized that with Raikes he had been uncharacteristically docile.

He decided to have a drink.

In the Gradska Kavana, he ordered a pivo. The place was less crowded than the previous morning. The orchestra was playing quietly, almost to itself. Hudson sat sipping his beer. One or two people looked at him curiously and he guessed that the news of Raikes' death had spread. He wondered if the incident would do anything to break down their reserve. To talk to an Englishman was unwise. People were polite, but their conversation seldom went beyond the formalities of greeting and parting.

As he sat there the girl with the orchestra began to sing. He noticed that she wore a black silk band over the bandages on her left wrist. She was pleasant to watch. She was pretty and had a thin, boyish body, and he wondered if she got enough to eat. Raikes had been very interested in her, he remembered—but then Raikes had been interested in all pretty women. He recalled Raikes, his voice heavy with wine, discussing the exchange values of a bar of chocolate and a tin of corned beef in the countries of Europe, and saw Raikes pinching the bottom of the chambermaid in their Belgrade hotel. There was no ban on intimacy with English people for hotel employees, Raikes had declared, they all had instructions from OZNA to make the closest contact. Most espionage work was done either in a bar or in bed . . .

The girl finished her song and with a sudden hurried concern, as though they were late for some other appointment, the orchestra players began to pack up their instruments. They were a quiet, black-coated little party, mostly elderly. They hurried past him and were gone. The girl stayed, leisurely tidying away the sheet music. Then she threw a light overcoat over her shoulders and came down from the stand. She came across to Hudson.

"You were very kind to me yesterday. I am sorry I did not thank you properly."

"People ought not to settle their private quarrels in cafes. How is your wrist?"

"Very well." She said it demurely, like a little girl thanking her hostess for a nice party. She held a little paper packet out to him.

"What's this?"

"Your handkerchief."

He opened the packet and found his handkerchief.

"Won't you sit down and have a drink?"

She shook her head and drew back a little, and he realized the wariness in her.

"No ... no, I don't think I'd better."

"Please do."

"No. I must go." She said it stubbornly, and again the small girl was there, doggedly repeating a lesson learned at home before the party. Hudson knew the reason, the same old reason—never talk to a foreigner in a public place. She drew her coat across her shoulders firmly, preparing to go, and said quietly—

"I'm sorry about your friend." Before he could answer she was gone, moving swiftly away between the tables.

A waiter came to him and began to clear his table.

"What is the name of the girl who sings here?"

The man straightened, holding an empty beer bottle in his hand. For a moment he sucked reflectively at his teeth, a movement which gave his mouth a lean, doggish grin.

"Franja. Franja Pazan."

"Franja?"

"Yes." The waiter wiped the table top with an exaggerated carefulness. "The beer is four dinars."

Hudson stood up, handing him a ten-dinar note.

"It is a pity that tipping is against the law. Otherwise you could have kept the change."

The man's teeth showed in a sardonic twist of the mouth as he put the note into his wallet. "Thank you, signore." He held the table aside as Hudson moved away.

Hudson walked back to the hotel and had lunch alone on the terrace. His table was drawn up against the wooden balustrade and through the loose sprays of blossom that dropped from the pergola which covered the terrace, he could look down the slope of the cliff to the palm walk and little garden above the private bathing beach. At the end of the month the place would fill up, but for the moment there were only five other groups of guests. They were all taking their lunch now. Beyond a quick nod of the head, a noncommittal remark about the weather, none of the guests had ever made any attempt to become friendly and he knew that the same restraint which operated with the girl Franja existed here, too. But from Raikes—who had had an unabashed curiosity about other people and who had questioned the waiters—Hudson knew a little about the guests.

At the next table along the terrace sat a Polish professor, an authority on viniculture who, each time the waiter placed a carafe on his table, grunted and scowled at the wine like a magistrate recognizing a hardened offender with whom he had had trouble before. He sat hunched over a book during meals ignoring everyone but the waiter. He was about fifty and bald except for little wings of hair above his ears, and wore gold-rimmed thick-lensed glasses. He was dressed always in a neat, grey suit with an open-necked shirt. Wherever he went, he carried his camera and a small tin specimen box on which was neatly printed his name—Brussiak, J.

Beyond him was a harassed little man from Split, thin, shabbily dressed, with a scrawny neck, a wedge-shaped face and nervous, flickering eyes who seemed to spend the whole of his time quarrelling hopelessly and in an undertone with his large wife and trying to control the adventurous wanderings of his two children, a boy of ten with a sullen face and

tight blue serge shorts and another boy of about three who was plump, fair-haired, with a mischievous angel face and a supreme disregard for his parents' non-fraternizing orders. Madeo, the smaller boy, wandered from table to table throughout the meal. Everyone liked him and he seemed to subsist on the tidbits proffered by the rest of the company. For Raikes and Hudson he had, in the three days they had been there, developed a passionate friendship which had increased his father's nervous indigestion and made his meals even more of a trial than before. The family Ransko, Hudson felt, offered a problem in genetics. The precocious, friendly Madeo seemed to owe nothing to father or mother. As his father turned from him now and began a low-pitched expostulation with his wife, Madeo wriggled down from his seat and came trotting along to Hudson. He grinned, belched slightly, and held up a piece of paper and a pencil.

"Face."

It was an order well understood. Hudson, who liked children, took the paper and pencil and drew a man's face, large, bold and with a leering, ferocious expression. Madeo straining to the table height watched, fascinated. Hudson gave the face a plumed helmet, a widespread pair of whiskers and a wink. He had an easy talent with a pencil which Madeo had discovered on their first acquaintance. He handed the paper back to Madeo, who studied it carefully, then looked up at him and nodded gravely, commending him for having produced just what he had in mind. Then, with a sudden shriek of laughter, the child turned and began to make the round of tables, shaking off the attentions of his brother who had been sent to retrieve him. The brother gave up the attempt to stop him and meekly attended on the ritual. Each table was visited in turn and the drawing held up to be admired.

Hudson watched him, smiling, and ignoring the angry look which he received from the Ransko table.

Brussiak looked at the drawing critically, grunted, patted

the boy on the head and gave him a piece of the apple he was eating. Madeo outflanked his own family's table and trotted into the vine-hung courtyard at the end of the terrace where three more tables were occupied.

Close to the fountain in the center of the court, a Yugoslav colonel sat eating by himself. His dove-grey uniform with its red stars and gold braid was perfectly cut. As Madeo tugged at his arm, he half-turned and took the drawing. Hudson had a glimpse of a tanned, broad face and a net of wrinkles about the pale blue eyes.

"Madeo!" The mother called, but the Colonel waved his hand at her placatorily and, picking up the empty sugar bowl from the table, put it on his close-cropped head. He held his finger across the top of his lip and leered ferociously at Madeo, imitating the drawing. Madeo gave a low gurgle of delight and sat down. The Colonel picked him up, gave him a cherry from the top of his trifle and sent him off with a pat on his bottom to the next table.

Shadowed by his brother and followed by calls of decreasing conviction from his mother, Madeo finished his rounds. On the other side of the fountain sat a young couple from Zagreb. Hudson had seen them wandering about the town, silent, hand-in-hand, lost in the beatitude of their newly-married bliss. Madeo's drawing left them unmoved, but they gave him a small cake which he pouched expertly in his right cheek as his brother offered to hold it for him. At the last table in the angle of the courtyard overlooking the sea sat a thin, tight-lipped man in a dark grey suit, wearing a white cloth cap. A typical Marxist, Raikes had called him, a fanatical factory foreman rewarded for a high production record by a fortnight in a high category hotel. And now, Hudson thought, determined to enjoy himself and proclaiming it to the world by exchanging a dark cap for a white one, but after that unable to think of anything else to do except sit and worry about the factory and the anticipated drop in produc-

tion during his absence. The man frowned at the drawing, transferred the frown to Madeo, who beat it down with a grin that exposed the pouched cake for a second. For a moment the tight lips loosened, the somber eyes wavered and another small cake was handed to Madeo who promptly pouched it in his left cheek.

Madeo turned and headed back towards Hudson, but his father reached out an arm and intercepted him. Madeo was dumped into his chair, receiving an expert slap across the buttocks as his father lifted him. He sat for a moment, debating the merit of tears or laughter, then with a curiously adult shrug of his shoulders his plump face assumed a wide solemnity and he settled down to the noisy business of masticating his winnings.

Hudson sat on over his coffee until all the others had left the terrace. Just as he was about to leave, the waiter who served his table came and stood by his side. The man gave him a faint smile and for a moment his eyes avoided Hudson, his hands playing gently along the edge of the table, fingering some invisible keyboard.

"As I always serve, monsieur . . . the other waiters and the staff here . . ." His eyes came up and met Hudson's frankly and for the first time the face, the blank waiter's face, became a real face, demanding attention . . . "They have asked me to express our sorrow at the unfortunate incident. Mr. Raikes was a very pleasant person. We shall all miss him." A hand came up and rubbed at the square, blue jowl.

There was no doubting the genuineness of the man's attitude, and Hudson felt himself glad to be offered sympathy.

He stood up. "Thank you." Then as the waiter with a slight bow of his short body began to turn away, "What's your name?"

"Joseph . . . Joseph Dragovar, monsieur."

Hudson put out his hand and touched the man's arm. "Thank you, Joseph . . . and the rest of the staff."

That afternoon Zarko arrived with one of his men and with Hudson in attendance, went into Raikes' room and collected his belongings. Hudson stood by while everything was packed away in two suitcases and listed carefully by Zarko's man. When the list was completed Hudson signed it and a copy was made for him.

When they had finished the room was bare, impersonal. The only note to remind him of Raikes was the long trailer of seaweed hanging by the window and the collection of shells on the ledge. Hudson picked up one of the shells and stood examining it.

"You intend to stay here?" Zarko's man had gone with the cases and the Chief of Police stood by the door, ready to depart.

"I don't know."

"If you wish to go we could arrange hotel accommodation at Split or on one of the islands. There is a very nice hotel at Kula."

"Thank you. I'll let you know."

He went back to his room after Zarko had gone, and for the first time since he had been in Dubrovnik found time heavy on his hands. He sat down and wrote a full report of the affair to his firm. He knew nothing of Raikes' relations, not even for certain that he was unmarried, though he guessed he was. His firm could pass on the news and when he got back he would go to see the family. He went down to the town to the post office with his letter and afterwards walked over the hill to Gruz, the port which carried all the commerce and traffic for Dubrovnik. By the time he got back it was already dark. In his room he slipped on his swimming trunks, threw a dressing gown over his shoulders and went down to the sea. As he passed the dining terrace, he saw that most of the guests were already eating. He was in no hurry. Every evening since his arrival he had made a habit of swimming before dinner.

The bathing place was a series of concrete platforms laid down amongst the rocks immediately below the palm garden. A little flight of steps cut into the bare stone led down to it.

Hudson dived and swam out through the dark water. Raising his head he could see the black, ragged outline of the tree-covered island. He lay, suspended in the warm oblivion of sea and sky, so that as the long swell running down from the far lights of Dubrovnik swung him up and down it seemed that he hung in some medium which was neither water nor air. Tiny beads and streamers of phosphorescence trailed away from his arms and body, and for a moment he was a new constellation, the swimmer, in a firmament full of strange stars and planets, the steady brillance of hotel and house lights, the flickering meteors of car lamps swinging down the coast road and the colored borealis from the mouth of the Gradska Kavana shining through the harbor gap. From the land came a slow breeze, fatigued with the burden of rich, flower scents.

Suddenly, between him and the island, came the clear, passionate sound of a man singing, a melody whose words were fused by distance, leaving only a rich amplitude of sound. Then a dozen great golden flares burst out of the black folds of the night, and sea and sky fell back to their proper places. Hudson, clear above the singing, heard a man swear—almost the first word his Czech cabaret entertainer had taught him— and he knew that close to him was the small fleet of sardine boats that congregated here each night to prime and light their acetylene bow flares before dropping down the coast to their fishing.

He swam back and, as he pulled himself out of the water, he decided that he would stay on in Dubrovnik. In a way it would be keeping Raikes company as long as he could. As a reason this was sentiment of the worst kind, even Raikes would have condemned it. But of all the men he had ever met he knew now that Raikes had come closest to offering,

and he to accepting, the one thing he had never felt any great desire to have, friendship. He pulled on his robe and went up the steps. Tonight he would drink to Raikes' memory. Joseph, the friendly Joseph, ought to be able to find something which would change the tone even of Professor Brus-siak's grunt.

Milo Lepovitch had been inside Zarko's office five minutes when Zarko decided that he did not like the man, and he was shrewd enough to realize that Lepovitch did not like him. The man had looked around the comfortable little room, which always evoked a sense of affection and pleasure in Zarko, and the tight lines about his prim mouth had marked his disdain. Touches which made the room human for Zarko . . . the little pot of calceolarias on the shelf over the empty fire grate, the photograph of his wife and child on the desk, the rag rug on the tiles inside the door worked in a bright Montenegrin design by his wife before their marriage . . . none of these pleased Lepovitch. Zarko guessed what this precise, efficient young man from Belgrade was thinking. He saw himself exactly as he appeared to Lepovitch ... a comfortable, not too exacting provincial policeman, enjoying the fruits of an office which had come as the reward for Party work. He decided not to get the rakia bottle from his desk cupboard, approving his own meanness and quite unworried by any opinion Lepovitch had formed of him. These young men from OZNA headquarters in Belgrade were all the same, lean, ruthless wolves, who felt no one could keep up with them in the chase. Lepovitch had no idea that he, too, was an OZNA man. They would work together and they would watch one another. It was a system which insured a double security. A constant watchfulness was necessary if the destiny marked out for his country were to be achieved.

Procedure two. That meant that he was to hear this man's report, work with him and give him all the assistance he

needed, that Lepovitch was to remain in the background and that the final responsibility for all actions lay with him, Zarko.

He leaned back in his chair, lit himself a cigarette and stared at the moths fluttering around the electric light above his desk. Lepovitch remained standing, walking with controlled, unhurried steps between desk and window as he talked.

"It is of the highest importance that this man should not leave the country. We know he exists, we know some of the names he has used in the past, but at the moment we don't know where he is, what he looks like or what his true nationality is."

"It's a promising start." Zarko half-smiled. Lepovitch swung round and frowned, and inwardly Zarko groaned. The man had no sense of humor. It would make working with him that much harder.

"All we know is in that report." Lepovitch nodded at the green file on Zarko's desk. "It's felt that at this moment he is in Dubrovnik somewhere."

Zarko picked up the report and flipped the pages as Lepovitch resumed his pacing and went on. Unpardonably, Zarko ceased to give him his full attention. He watched him but his words made only a high-pitched tremor of sound. Whatever he said would be in the report. The talk was merely to impress, to affirm his own competence and grasp of an important mission. Zarko guessed that he was one of the wrong kind, a careerist, in his heart not caring a button for the ideal which was dear to so many of his countrymen. Zarko had done many things of which he disapproved in his heart, but they had all been justified as means to the establishment of a regime which ultimately offered to him and others a prospect of human justice and concord, an equality of expression and rights which was important enough to make all means subservient to the end. But through all this he had never lost sight of his own essential humanity. This Lepovitch . . .

What was he? Twenty-six, perhaps, tallish, lean, trained to a physical hardness which was obscured by his neat brown suit, schooled to an impersonal efficiency which marked the thin, severe face, without a shadow of compassion to soften the still, grey eyes behind the rimless glasses. He was incomplete, a man who had missed his youth, who had forgotten how to laugh in his desperate anxiety to succeed. Not yet thirty, and already the brown hair above the ears was tipped with ash grey flecks. Zarko suddenly felt sorry for him. There had probably been no youth for him, no laughter, no carefree ripening . . . only the rough comradeship of war, the strain and exhaustion of partisan life, a leap from boy into man and afterwards the fight to maintain a place in a pack of careerists all as ruthless as himself.

"So you see, as a result of this contact in the British Embassy, we have every reason to believe that this Englishman, John Raikes, is much more than a trade official. That is why I am here, Comrade Zarko. To find out all I can about Raikes and to watch him. He isn't the man we want, but he is working with him, and means to help his escape/'

"John Raikes?" Something of Zarko's surprise edged into his voice.

"Yes. He is to know nothing about me, of course."

Zarko rose from his chair. "Don't worry. He'll never know that you exist. Come with me."

Lepovitch gave him an inquiring look which he ignored. From his desk drawer Zarko took a bunch of keys and led the way out of the room.

The building had once been the house of a wealthy wine exporter. On the stone staircase the fluted roof curves were painted with flower garlands and plump cupids. Above each arch at the turn of the stairs were groups of faded tritons, mermaids and fauns. The steel studs in the heels of Zarko's boots rang harshly on the worn steps. They went down to the main, tiled hallway and a relaxed militia guard stiffened

as they appeared. The door to the office on the right was open and the sound of a man's voice on the telephone echoed thinly in the great hall. From the roof an enormous Bacchus leered down at them, one eye closed with damp, a great hand cupping the flaking breast of an abandoned matron while the other spilled wine from a goblet into the unturned face of a pouting nymph. At the end of the hall they went down a short flight of steps to what had been the old cellars. They stood in a subterranean corridor, whitewashed, still and cold under the bare electric light.

Zarko unlocked a thick wooden door at the end of the short corridor, switched the light on and motioned Lepo-vitch to enter.

They were in the long length of a wine vault, the side arches cleared now of bottle racks, the low ceiling of mortared stones whitewashed. There was a thin, antiseptic smell and a hostile coldness that seemed to pulse from the stones of floor and roof. At intervals down the length of the vault were four great slabs of marble supported on concrete blocks. The slabs were empty except one, to which Zarko led Lepovitch. On it lay something draped in a white sheet. Zarko fingered the edge of the sheet and looked at Lepovitch.

"John Raikes went bathing yesterday afternoon. He stepped on a land-mine and was killed. His funeral is tomorrow morning. This is John Raikes." He whipped back the sheet, but he kept his eyes on Lepovitch, watching him closely. For a moment he saw the thin lips tighten. Then Lepovitch turned and looked at him. He said quietly—

"There was no need to be dramatic. You could have told me in your room."

"You would have insisted on seeing him."

Lepovitch turned back to the body.

"Yes." He took the sheet from Zarko and drew it clear of the body. The arms were folded across the mutilated chest. Zarko moved around the slab and as he did so he no-

ticed the watch still on Raikes' wrist. Fie leaned forward and began to unfasten it. It would have to be put with his other effects. For a moment he held the hand, remembering the two Englishmen in the cafe, and to avoid the horror of the dead, the beastliness which had been a face, his eyes and mind escaped in a concentration on detail. He saw the small damp, fair hairs where the watch had been stand up slightly against the brown skin.

Lepovitch reached out for the smashed watch.

"He was wearing this when he was killed?"

"That and a pair of trunks. I have all his other stuff in my room and a full report which you can read."

Lepovitch handed the watch back. He looked at Zarko and momentarily the shadow of a smile touched his mouth. Then he turned back to the body and began to examine it with a deliberation which Zarko found hard to watch. He raised the hands, straightening the fingers as though he expected to find something clutched in the stiff grip, and lifted the earth- and stone-scarred legs. Then with an impatient movement he spread the sheet over the body and turned away. He lit himself a cigarette. Over the flame of the match he eyed Zarko and again the faintest trace of a humorless smile touched his lips. Something in the smile, the suggestion of contempt behind it, raised a passing feeling of uneasiness in Zarko. He was suddenly anxious to leave the vault, suddenly not so sure of this man as he felt he had been.

"I've some rakia in my office. I can show you his things and tell you what I know about him while we have a drink."

Lepovitch nodded and let the smoke trickle loosely from his mouth. He said quietly, "It is a pity he is dead. We might have learned something from him." He shrugged his shoulders and moved towards the door. "Still, even from the dead, if a man is intelligent enough, he can learn something."

Later, in his room at the Hotel Imperial, Lepovitch wrote

the first of his daily reports. It would go by air in the morning to Captain Rudi Vuksan, his chief, at the Belgrade headquarters of OZNA.

He paused in his writing, staring through the open window at the star-powdered sky above the dark bulk of the citadelled town. Before'him on the table was a travelling photograph of his wife. As he turned back to his report, he glanced at it, and the stir of some inner, seldom expressed gentleness loosened the tight lines of his mouth. Then in his precise script he went on writing . . .

Attached is the official police report of the circumstances of the man's death and a list of his effects which, for the moment, remain in Comrade Zarko's possession. There are certain aspects of this investigation which, although it would be premature at this moment to place any great hopes on them, lead me to the opinion that this initial set-back may not prove to be entirely to our disadvantage.

Regarding Vladimir Zarko: My first impression is not favorable. The man has a certain bourgeois affability which I suspect to be less of a mannerism than an incompletely eradicated political tendency. His efficiency and intelligence are not outstanding. However, a more reliable assessment can only come from a longer association. . . .

lam***

DAY THREE

After the darkness of the little church, the sunlight in the cemetery was blinding, a hardness of light which intensified all sound and laid a pitiless enamel of color over shrubs and flowers and on the rich marbles of the tombs. Hudson raised his eyes from the gently swinging red and gold of the priest's orphrey. Over the heads of the little party now moving down the main walk to the gates, he saw the lizard skin of the sea, stretched tightly to the horizon, whorled with pale greys and greens and flecked with the glare of silver. Beside the gate two cypresses, black against the sun, held themselves in offended exclamation points, seeming to tremble with a devout vigilance each time a noisy tram swung up over the hill and past the gates.

There had been few people at the ceremony; himself, Zarko and the Yugoslav colonel. Colonel Grol had come to him at dinner the previous night, given the liebfraumilch which Joseph had found for him a quizzical look, and had then expressed the condolences of the guests for Raikes' death and had requested to be allowed to attend the funeral. They were at the gates of the cemetery now, getting into the car which waited for Zarko. Hudson had declined Zarko's offer to ride back with him. He wanted to walk. Raikes' coffin had been slid into one of the pigeonholes which honeycombed the long wall that formed an angle of the cemetery. A marble slab had been lifted and fitted loosely over the opening and now awaited the mason who would fix it that afternoon. On the

ledge below the opening had been placed the wreaths from the hotel, from Zarko and from Hudson.

The priest touched him on the elbow.

"It is not good to stand too long in the sun with the head uncovered, my son."

Hudson looked round and saw a scored, ancient face, a skin that was blotched with the grey patches of age, but the eyes were dark, clear and surprisingly youthful. He put on his hat and began to move away. The priest went with him a few steps. They paused, an awkwardness between them for which words could do little.

"In the old days we used to see many English people in Dubrovnik. Not all of us have lost our affection for them." Hudson looked at him, cocking his head to one side. The priest raised his arm, shaking his loose sleeve free, and scratched the back of his head and for a moment there was an almost impudent look about his face. Hudson knew the difficulties of the Church in this country and he recognized for a moment a spirit which he knew must still be strongly alive in this and all other Eastern European countries. Then, as though he wished to excite no confidence, that to have shown the edge of the old spirit was enough, the priest added quietly, "You are a Catholic?"

"No, father."

"We all shelter under the same roof. I shall do penance for saying so, but perhaps it is of little importance through which door we enter the house. If you wish to, please come to see me while you are here."

Hudson thanked him and moved away towards the gates .. .

Later, in the noon-tide stillness of the cemetery, a girl slipped through the small wicket gate from the hillside and crossed quickly to the new burial place. She placed a bouquet of white roses on the ledge and, slipping back, crossed herself. She was short with a sturdy, vigorous quality, and wore a blue apron over a rough white dress and a red scarf pulled over

her dark hair and knotted under her chin. Pinned at the bosom of her dress was a small cameo brooch with the head of Mercury on it. Her face had the coarse, good looks of a peasant, the skin browned and firm with health, and her hands were seamed and red from hard work. With a nervous glance around her, she moved away and disappeared through the small gate. The roses on the hot ledge were a blinding point of light in the hot sun. Attached to the stems by a ribbon was a small piece of blue card and written on it in an unformed hand, the words—As long as memory lasts so will my love . . .

When Hudson reached the town he found the main street full of lunch-time strollers. Whatever this crowd might think about the political purpose which shaped their lives from Belgrade, little sign of it showed. There were shopkeepers, schoolchildren, girls from the gymnasium, little groups of peasants standing at alley corners, here and there a militia man, red star in cap and carbine slung over shoulder, and knots of soldiers on leave, swaggering by the bright-eyed girls. Hudson would have liked to talk to them, would have liked to know what the shopkeepers thought about the imminent municipalization of their shops, to question the children about the modern history they were taught, and to have an honest opinion from the peasants on co-operative marketing . . . but questions in this country were hard to put. There were always the militia guards, the soldiers, the informers, and from the house walls the cold eye of the Marshal glowering above the slogan— Zivio drug Tito.

Hudson went through the Gradska Kavana on to the loggia which overlooked the small harbor. He sat down at a table where he could see the great upthrust of the fortress on the right and the long line of coast running away to the left. He ordered half a bottle of the local white wine and sat lost in a broody contentment, withdrawn from the noise and movement of the cafe. Without Raikes this country was even

more like a prison in which one could find none of the consolations offered behind barbed wire. During the war the other prisoners with him had formed a solid community. Here each man was his own prison, locked up with his own thoughts. Even the conversation between friends was cautious, a false affability . . . and for him, a stranger in the prison, the isolation was even more complete. To talk to him would be showing an unwise interest in the forbidden land of liberty to the west.

A shadow fell over the table. He looked up. Colonel Grol was standing above him, his back to the sea, his strong, white teeth breaking across his smile. He looked like a big, clean, pink butcher dressed up in fancy uniform, the star of Tito on his breast, a highly polished revolver holster at his hip, a creation of gold braid and braggadocio.

''Mr. Hudson, you look lonely. Mademoiselle Pazan and I would be happy if you would join us at the hotel for lunch."

Hudson rose. The girl from the orchestra was standing by the Colonel, one hand resting lightly on his arm. Involuntarily Hudson glanced back through the glass doors at the orchestra which was still playing. Franja Pazan caught the look and smiled.

"Even singers, Mr. Hudson, have their free days." She spoke with an assurance which Hudson had not noticed in her before.

"I should be delighted."

The Colonel glanced from Hudson to the girl. "You know each other?"

"It was Mr. Hudson who—" She raised her bandaged wrist.

"Ah, of course." Then to Hudson. "You are a man of great resource. Franja—we must watch him. Any man who can smell out two bottles of liebfraumilch from the hotel is not to be trusted." He laughed, throwing back his shoulders.

"The Colonel really means that he hopes you will be able

to repeat the miracle at lunch." A smile touched her mouth for a moment.

Hudson moved with them to the steps leading down to the harbor side. "Miracles always come easier at night, but I'll see what I can do."

"We should have invited him for dinner." The Colonel paused by the rowboats drawn up for hire at the harbor wall. "Who knows—we might have got a bottle of Pommery 1921."

Hudson shook his head. "No, I'm not in that class. But from something Joseph said I think we might manage a bottle of hock."

To save the long walk around by the road, the Colonel hired a boatman to row them back to the hotel. On the way over the girl said little. She sat facing Hudson and laughing, a little perfunctorily he thought, at the constant jokes made by the Colonel. The Colonel's jokes were like the Colonel, big, obvious, and with a tendency to prove noisy. And during lunch it became clear that his conception of conversation was one in which other people said what they had to in the pauses when he gave his complete attention to his glass and plate.

Hudson sat listening, wondering what the relationship was between this man and Franja. He found it hard to decide why he had been invited, and harder still to decide what immunity it was that allowed the Colonel to utter remarks which, in this country, had the explosive quality of an adroitly tossed hand grenade.

"There are only two things which matter for me, Mr. Hudson—my country and the man who is directing it. I can give my allegiance to a man but not to any ideology. I'm a soldier. Policy I leave to others. When I meet a rogue I call him a rogue—even if I know he is also a Party member." He paused to drain his glass of hock.

"Isn't such frankness . . . dangerous?"

"A soldier takes danger in his stride. Give me a man worth following, Mr. Hudson, and one who loves his country as

Marshal Tito does—then I'll follow him. All soldiers are hero-worshippers. If Marshal Tito said tomorrow that Communism was taking us along the wrong road—then I'd believe him. Once you settle on your hero you can never allow yourself doubts." He put his glass down with a tiny crash and beamed at them. At that moment the waiter came up and told him he was wanted on the telephone. When he had gone Hudson looked at Franja.

"Explain him. He should have been liquidated long ago."

She laughed. "He's Colonel Grol, one of Tito's closest friends, his only friend some people say. Maybe Tito likes to have one completely outspoken man near him. Anyway, he survives ... he has a great deal of influence."

"Is he your friend, too?"

"No. An acquaintance. We met in Belgrade."

Joseph, the waiter, brought them their coffee, and they were silent as he served them. Then Colonel Grol came back.

"The Commandant of the Dubrovnik Garrison wants to see me. He is sending out his car at once. Would you come back with me or wait for the boatman?" he asked Franja.

Hudson saw her hesitate. Before she could reply he said quietly—

"It's a pity to bounce about in a car so soon after lunch. W T e could sit in the garden and wait for the boatman."

"Do you mind?" Franja glanced at the Colonel. The man laughed.

"No. Sensible thing to do. I wish I could stay with you. I know what the Commandant wants—he wants a transfer. Soldiers are never content." He paused for a moment before leaving them and then with a frank smile, added, "Don't take too much notice of what Franja will tell you in confidence about this country, Mr. Hudson. Getting a foreigner in a quiet corner and pouring out your heart to him is a national habit these days. A good soldier must have his grumbles, so

must a good civilian. Suspect the ones who never grumble, Mr. Hudson . . ."

They went down to the palm walk and sat on the wall overlooking the sea.

"He's too outspoken to last." Hudson watched her as he spoke. She was staring across at the island, the wind lifting her hair gently, the profile of her face cut clearly against the far sky. He went on: "He's very clever. After what he said, you don't feel you can confide in me. He's put up the barrier."

She turned and laughed quietly, and his answering smile gave her a sudden warmth. He knew how she was feeling and had broken through her embarrassment.

"I don't have to say anything. You've seen this country. People have talked to you—"

"Yes. At the end of a railway corridor, leaning over the parapet of a bridge, sitting on a park seat, and always the head jerking first over one shoulder, then the other to see who's watching or listening. The 'tic totalitario' the Italians call it."

"It's a disease."

"Only people with stiff necks are safe."

She laughed, this time unguarded. She felt safe, free to say the first thing that came into her mind, and curiously she felt no need to say it.

"How long will you be here?" The question was spoken before she was fully conscious of its being formed in her mind.

"Quite a long time—two weeks, maybe."

Quite a long time. To her it was no time. She was conscious of a quick, rising bitterness directed against him. He could sit and talk to her, give her a brief freedom, and then he would go. Nothing would have touched him. He came from a different world. She looked at him, saw the creased skin about his eyes as he stared at the island and the glittering

sea; he looked contented, strong, sure of himself . . . everything she lacked. Then she was ashamed of herself, knowing that this was only a shadow passing over the pleasure she felt in sitting here with him. But the moment had somewhere betrayed itself to him. He turned and touched her hand where it rested on the wall between them.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"I'm a good listener. You can say what you like to me."

She swung off the wall. "The boat's coming."

He stood beside her, ignoring her words. "Will it help if I say it for you?"

"I'm sorry. I suddenly felt mean. I think I hated you for being able to go so easily."

Hudson knew that inside her, held back now by habit rather than fear, was a spate of words piling up like a flood-stream against sluice gates.

"So you should. Say you hate me because Fm free, say you hate your own fear, say that you want to tear down every photograph of Tito you see, say you hate the sky at night because all the stars have turned red—"

"Please—" She caught his arm, stopping him, and he heard her breathe heavily, a shedding of some emotional pressure which restored her. Then she went on quietly, holding his arm as they went down to the rocks to meet the boatman. "Colonel Grol warned you not to take too much notice of what I would say."

Hudson steered her over the rocks to where the boat lay waiting.

"The Colonel gave us a false start. We'd better begin again. Tomorrow afternoon we'll go bathing together and then you can come back to the hotel for tea. Do you agree?"

She looked at him for a moment holding his hand for support as the boat edged in. And she knew she wanted to see

him again, wanted to be with him and this time be free to laugh and enjoy herself. She smiled and nodded.

Before dinner, Hudson went down for his usual evening swim. He threw his robe into the little cubicle built against the rock face and stood for a moment anticipating the pleasure of the water. Since lunch he had been disturbed, and he knew the reason for it had been Franja. All his life, his relations with women had been straightforward, uncomplicated liaisons brought about by a simple responsiveness on both sides. Emotion for him had seldom been more than a decorative pretense fashioned about a common affection, comradeship and his own unashamedly sensual nature. No parting had ever left him wounded, no pleasure had ever seemed to hold any greater potential than could be drawn from the passing moment. But with this girl, who attracted him as so many other women had done, he knew that there could never be any simple question of an uncomplicated response. She was disturbed in herself, she was unhappy and resentful of her unhappiness. For that she had all his sympathy. But there was an integrity in her which would demand more than pretense. He knew she would never be satisfied with what he had to give.

He swam out through the darkness, and ahead of him he saw the rising bulk of the island, and heard the voices of the sardine fishermen carried gently across the water. In a little while their bow lights would burst into roaring life. Treading water he could just make out the shape of their boats a hundred yards form him. He swam towards them, curious and, because of the darkness and undefined limits of the water, glad to have an objective. When one moves, one must move towards something, he thought. Movement without object was unsatisfying, and then, amused by his own pretentiousness, he wondered if there would be any value in making an anthology of the ponderous thoughts which keep men com-

pany when they are alone. Swimming seemed to bring them out in him as heat brings out a rash. A man was lucky if once in his lifetime his thoughts threw up unconsciously one well-turned epigram.

He heard the dull rattle of an oar dropping on to bottom boards and looking up he saw that one of the boats had drifted towards him. He pushed the loose hair back from his forehead, watching the phosphorescence drop from his arm, and trod water as the black shape of the boat moved gently down upon him. When it was a few yards from him he turned on his side and struck out to move clear of its way. As he did so a voice called softly and he thought he heard his own name. He stopped swimming and the voice came across to him gently.

"Signore. Signore Hudson."

The boat came nearer and now he saw, rising from its low silhouette, the solitary plug of a man's form standing in the bows. Behind him was the dark shadow of another man seated in the stern.

"Signore ..." The sound was touched with a gruff urgency, pitched low, almost a whisper.

Hudson swam forward close to the boat. He raised a hand and drifted, fending himself from the side.

"What do you want?"

"Signore Hudson?"

"Yes. How do you know my name?"

The man looked down at Hudson and in the starlight and the pale luminosity from the phosphorescence that washed away from the boat's side Hudson saw his face. For a moment he was back in his childhood, in his aunt's house, lying in bed and staring at a painting of the Last Supper. Most of the apostles had faces like this one, long and bearded and with an air of stern good-humor. The man couched himself against the gunwale and the loose linen coat he wore swung open to show his bare hairy chest.

"Signore Hudson, it is very important . . ." He spoke with an Italian inflexion, a voice which was strong, authoritative even in a whisper. "You must swim to the island. Over there—" He pointed through the darkness to the island about a hundred yards away. "There is a white stone. Swim there."

Hudson stared up at him, frowning.

"What the devil's all this about?" He dropped away from the boat, and the man leaned over, reaching out one arm towards him and motioning it towards the island as though by the action he would in some way speed him on.

"It is very important . . . Signore." Then with a chuckle he drew back and the boat, moving on the drift between island and main shore, dropped away.

Hudson started to swim slowly towards the island, keeping before him the pale shape of the stone which had been whitewashed to serve as some channel mark for the fishermen. In a few minutes he felt the first touch of weeds and then his feet brushed roughly against an underwater boulder. He held himself flat, paddling forward gently like a dog until he could get a hold on the first of a jumbled pile of rocks which marked the shore. He drew himself up, stood with the water dripping from him and then, with a shake of his head to clear the water from his face, stepped forward from rock to rock towards the white stone, which stood at the edge of the thick border of scrub behind the beach.

A yard from the stone he paused. Shadowed against its near side was the figure of a man. He leaned with one elbow on a spur of the stone and waited for Hudson. Then, as though impatient, when Hudson made no move, the shadow detached itself from the rock and came forward. A voice said—"Catch" and a raincoat was thrown towards him. Hudson took the coat and slipped it over his shoulders and the movement was accomplished in a queer state of mental nullity. In a moment, he knew his heart would begin to race,

and with that would come a familiar control, a refusal to acknowledge shock.

"I'm sorry to do it this way. There are cigarettes and matches in the coat pocket, but don't use them until we get into the scrub/' The words finished in a half-laugh, a gentle note of embarrassment, almost apology, and with the movement the man lifted his face a little and the starlight showed the familiar features of Raikes. The moment Hudson had heard the voice say "Catch" he had known it, and now to cover a mixture of gladness and anger, he found himself say-ing-

"You'll be glad to hear we gave you a respectable funeral/'

Raikes laughed again, this time with some return of his old assurance, and he took Hudson by the arm. "Moments like this are very awkward. When the day of resurrection comes people will stand about and look at one another and wonder what to do next. Believe me, I've been standing here like a scared schoolboy for the last half-hour/'

Hudson moved forward towards the scrub with him.

"From the raincoat and the cigarettes, I gather youVe got a lot of explaining to do/'

"I have. We'll do it over a drink/'

Raikes paused as they entered the scrub and faced Hudson. Then he said very simply—"Thank you, Hudson."

"For what?"

"For taking it the way I expected you would."

"Don't overestimate me. I'm not going to believe it until you produce the drink. Then I'll know you're really alive."

Without a word Raikes turned and began to follow a small track through the juniper and low oaks. As they crested a small rise Hudson saw a long finger of searchlight flash out from the far end of the island on the seaward side. Its beam dragged across the water in a semicircle, paused and then swept back. Over his shoulder Raikes said quietly—"There's an army post at the far end of the island."

They dropped down the side of a small slope and stopped outside a log hut built back into the fall of the ground. Raikes entered and Hudson followed. The door was closed. Hudson heard the scratch of a match and in the small gleam saw Raikes move to a table and light a couple of candles stuck in bottles. The light wavered for a moment, reluctant, feeble, then gathered strength and burned up clear and strong and the details of the hut came forward from the shadows.

"Welcome to Liberty Hall." Raikes hooked a stool forward to the table and, as Hudson sat down, reached for a bottle from the window shelf and poured a couple of drinks. He sat down at the other end of the table, raised his glass and they drank. Hudson put down his glass.

"Whiskey?"

"Yes. There's still some about—if you know the right people."

"If you want the good things in life it's important to know the right people."

"Sometimes, just to stay alive, it's important to know them."

Hudson smiled. "I prefer it if you begin at the beginning and go straight on."

"It's difficult."

"I'm a patient listener."

"I want your help."

"Begin at the beginning."

"I'm only going to tell you as much as you need to know. If anything goes wrong . . . then what you don't know you can't tell."

"That seems logical."

"It's practical, too. Every country in the world has means of making men speak. What they don't know they can't tell." He was silent for a moment, finishing his drink. "Listen, I spent a great deal of my boyhood on this coast. My

father—he was a London wine importer—had a summer house on one of the islands. I speak the language like my own and I have friends in the country. One of them is in Dubrovnik— the fisherman who spoke to you just now. During the war I was up and down this coast on Naval Intelligence. This fisherman, Sandro, worked for us—he still does. But now he's had enough. You can only carry on so long. Now, he's going back to Italy. That's where he came from. I'm not a Board of Trade Official, but I do have a semiofficial government position."

Hudson filled his glass as Raikes paused waiting for his reaction. Half-a-dozen small memories from their days in Belgrade came into his mind. "It's a nice way of putting it. Go on."

"I came to this country with you for two reasons, one because we like to make a legitimate entry and exit if we can, and two, because when we heard Sandro was getting out we hoped it would be possible for him to take someone else with him. I was given the job of arranging for that person to go with Sandro."

"And this someone else?"

"All I can tell you, and it's all you need to know, is that it is someone at the Hotel Argentina. What I want you to do is to pass a message from me when the time comes, explaining how the escape is to be made. After that you can forget the whole business."

Raikes paused to drain his glass and Hudson could see that for all his outer calm he was enjoying himself. His own feelings he held firmly in check until the confusion should have cleared.

"You're not telling the story very well. It's gappy. Who was it that was killed by a land-mine, and why couldn't you have stayed alive to pass the message yourself?"

"The man who was killed was Luca—one of Sandro's sons. We were boys together and we were often taken for brothers

. . . I'm sorry about Luca but it was one of those damned things. He came out to meet me with a message from Sandro. He swam ashore from his boat and as he was going back to the beach ... it happened. While I was in Belgrade I'd learned from our people that OZNA had probably got wind of my real business—so, I decided to die. You saw the body?"

"Yes."

"It wasn't difficult to arrange. Luca and I were much the same build, same hair. So I smashed up my watch and put it on him and then I swam out to his boat. When you're dead you get a great deal more freedom in a country like this. I live out here undisturbed. They don't allow tourists on the island and Sandro and I meet at night. As soon as the escape is organized the only job left is to pass the message. When the time comes I'll give you something which will make recognition easy. Agents, you know, often work in the dark. All I know is that this person is at the hotel and that three governments, including our own, are determined to see that the escape comes off. If anything goes wrong that person won't give OZNA a chance to make him speak."

"A very important person."

Raikes nodded. "So important that they haven't even trusted me with full details."

Hudson stood up and moved slowly to the window which was blocked with a sack. The hut held only a table and two stools and in one corner a pile of blankets neatly folded. The neatness was unlike Raikes, though he realized now that underneath the outer untidiness and sprawling good humor of the man there must be a shrewd intelligence. He looked from the blankets to Raikes and then he said quietly—

"Why were you so sure that I would help you?"

Raikes swung round, puzzled, but before he could reply there was a sound from outside, the slip of heavy shoes over a loose patch of stones and then the deliberate sound of foot-

steps on the sandy turf outside the hut. Hudson stepped back into the corner of the hut, facing the door.

"It's all right. It's Yelitsa. She brings me food twice a day." Before he could say more the door opened and a girl came into the hut. She wore a red scarf drawn over her dark hair and held a paper parcel cradled in her arms, pressed against the stiff blue and white cloth of her dress, to the bosom of which was pinned a cameo brooch showing the head of Mercury. She looked at Raikes and then from him to Hudson. For a moment, in the soft candlelight, her eyes watched them both, dark, sullen eyes, and the face which had a broad, peasant beauty was marked with a faint resentment.

'There is only bread and salad and beetroots." She put the parcel on the table and turned to go.

"Thank you, Yelitsa/'

The girl shrugged her shoulders and went out.

"Pleasant girl."

"She's Sandro's daughter-in-law. The old palace on the island which was built by Maximilian is now an orphanage. She works in the kitchen there. She never says much. She was very fond of Luca, and in a way I suppose she feels I'm responsible for his death."

"Was he her husband?"

"No. There's another son, Tulio. They've been married three years." Raikes pulled the parcel to him and began to eat. His mouth full of beetroot he looked up at Hudson. "Why shouldn't I be sure you would help me?"

"You've only known me a few weeks. How did you know I'd take the risk? I've got my firm's contract to think of if anything went wrong. I also have a high personal regard for my own safety."

"I know your war record. I know all about the prison escapes you organized, and I also know why you never escaped

yourself. I learned as much as I could about you before I ever saw you—"

"Because you thought you might need my help?"

"No. Because I like to be informed about my travelling companions. I never contemplated asking you to help until I saw poor old Luca lying on the beach . . . then I saw how I could go underground so long as you would do one very simple thing for me. You don't want me to go into heroics, do you? To talk about liberty, and the fight against tyranny . . . ? YouVe seen this country. All you've got to do is to pass one simple message . . . Let's face it, Hudson, you know damn well you'll do it."

"Go to hell!" He came back towards Raikes and stood over him, lighting a cigarette.

Raikes went on. "You don't want to be too long away from the hotel. You're a creature of habits—that's how I knew that I could get in touch with you. Don't break any of the habits."

Hudson sat down and leaned his elbows on the table. "I want an answer to some questions." The decision to help had been taken a long time ago, now there was an automatic consideration of detail, the return of an old delight in planning.

"Go ahead."

"If you've taken Luca's place—how is it that friends and neighbors will not miss the real Luca from wherever he lived?"

"Luca was a rolling stone. He'd only been back in Dubrov-nik three days before he was killed. He was working on the Youth railway up at Sarajevo. Luca comes and goes. For the moment, he's gone."

"How is the escape to be done?"

"You don't have to know that."

"When then?"

"In a week, maybe longer."

''How will you give me the message for whoever it is at the hotel?"

"Each night Sandro goes out with the sardine boats. They always light up at the same time. When I want you he'll cover and uncover his light three times, just after it's lit. Watch for it. Then swim out here within the hour."

"Just how much about you and this affair does the Yugoslav Department for the Defense of the People know?"

Raikes smiled. "OZNA? I'd be a happy man if I knew. At a guess I should think they know a little less than you. They think I'm dead. They know what I was, and they know somebody is wanting to get away. They may even know that that somebody is at the hotel, but I doubt it."

Hudson was silent for a while. For ail his intelligence, Raikes was a romantic—when Luca had been killed he had been unable to resist the romantic gesture. Any police department which suspected Raikes would surely check the identity of the body carefully. Hudson knew that it was a step he would never have taken.

"You seem certain that they won't suspect you're still alive?"

"They may, but I think not. Anyway I had to disappear. Another day and they would probably have taken me into protective custody. That would have ruined everything. Somebody in OZNA had got to know too much. I had to disappear."

"If things went wrong, completely wrong . . . what help would you or I get from the Embassy at Belgrade?"

Raikes smiled and sliced a beetroot in half. "The answer to that, Hudson, is two words of one syllable, a phrase common to both of us as ex-officers. Have another drink before you go?"

"No thanks. I've been away too long."

Hudson rose. Raikes followed him to the door.

"Enjoy your bed at nights and think of me on the floor."

Hudson glanced at the pile of blankets in the corner of the hut.

''Who folds your blankets in the morning? Yelitsa?"

"No. I do it myself/'

"You're a very tidy person—when you're working."

"You notice too much." He paused for a moment, and then went on with a surprising note of sincerity in his voice, the approach almost of sentiment. "I'm very grateful to you . . . and so will a lot of others be, I hope."

Hudson laughed gently, fending of! the discomfort which always touched him when people showed too clearly their emotions. "It's not my fault, is it, if I happen to like jigsaw puzzles. I'll leave your coat by the stone. You can pick it up later." He felt Raikes touch his arm and then he was out in the darkness moving through the bushes back to the sea.

He slipped in and began to swim quietly towards the hotel. The channel was a good three hundred yards broad and he took his time, not because he wanted to think, but more because he wanted a period by himself in which he could deliberately turn away from thinking. His excitement bared by the challenge to step outside the ordinary limits of daily routine, had to be held back so that the mind should become free for thought which would owe nothing to any extravagance of spirit. He swam on, watching the colored lights along the hotel terrace grow clearer, strung like a cheap necklace across the dusky bosom of the shadowed slope.

Given any other approach Zarko felt that, after a moment's natural chagrin, he might have freely added his own admiration to this man's triumph. His respect for the other's intelligence was now confirmed, though this in no way made him suspect his own stupidity—it was merely that the other had started with an advantage which he could not possess. The phrase "There is no doubt" hung before him like the taunt of a red cloak to draw him on, and he knew that because of

his nature, but more because of the other man's nature, he would have to challenge it.

Lepovitch was sitting on the arm of the leather chair beyond the desk. His hands were in his pockets and his lean body had lost some of its stiffness, as though in his triumph he could afford to relax some of his defenses against this man who was so obviously his inferior in intellect.

"There is no doubt/' Lepovitch repeated the phrase, and his dry delight in it was carried in the voice woundingly, "and I am surprised that the facts should have escaped a man who holds your position. One of the responsibilities of public position today is eternal vigilance. The State has so many enemies."

Zarko got up to ease the disturbance in his stomach and while he prepared his defense, found part of his mind making again the old resolution to confine himself at supper to one plate of soup. He went to the mantel shelf and touched one of the calceolaria blooms tentatively, holding the spotted lip down. Then he turned.

"The responsibilities of my position have nothing to do with it! This man Raikes was a guest in our country to whom I had to be courteous because of the value of his contract. I don't have to tell you how valuable that contract still is. Your advantage was that you came knowing that he was an agent. So you saw more than I did. The question of intelligence or extra vigilance doesn't enter into it."

Lepovitch realized the truth in the defense, but he had no intention of acknowledging it.

"We shall gain nothing by arguing that point. More important now is how we are to proceed." He stood and walking up and down began to marshal the parade of details and possibilities and he felt a familiar cold rush of excitement rising in him, the pure pleasure which springs from a mind feeding on a problem that challenges both imagination and intellect. "Raikes we know is not dead. Somebody else was

killed by the land-mine. At this moment Raikes is in or near Dubrovnik." He paused and looked at Zarko. "We share now all the facts, all the suspicions, and neither of us possesses an advantage over the other . . ."

This Zarko knew was another challenge. The race would begin without handicap on either side. Let's see who would win. Lepovitch had no doubt of the result.

'True/' Zarko was cautious.

"This man Hudson. You've spoken to him. Do you think he genuinely believes that Raikes was dead?"

Zarko recalled Hudson in this office. "I'm sure of it."

Lepovitch laughed. "I'm not. What would be easier than for Raikes to disappear and this, apparently, innocent companion to carry on with such part of Raikes' work as he felt wise to delegate to him. Doesn't it strike you as odd that two men, friendly, working on the same contract, should be unaware of the real truth about one another? I think it's more than likely that they are both agents."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

Zarko had forgotten his animosity now. His mind held place only for the succession of probabilities and, if his mind worked with less precision than Lepovitch's, it did have the advantage of an understanding of the frailty of human nature. "Hudson is a highly specialized engineer. He comes from a famous English firm and he is here to provide us with mining equipment which we badly need. Raikes was an agent—but that doesn't prove that Hudson's one."

Lepovitch was at the window, looking out across the lighted house fronts, feeling on his face the warm air of the night. "So you think we shouldn't bother with him?"

"He must be watched, of course, but it must be done in a very careful way. If he is innocent and we handle him wrongly and he causes trouble both you and I will hear something from the Ministry of National Economy. You know

what a blunder like that would mean, Comrade Lepo-vitch . . ." Zarko paused, enjoying himself, for he knew where this man's fundamental loyalty lay . . . "the end of your career—"

Lepovitch swung round, his face taut. "And yours'/' he snapped.

"Quite. But I can always go back to the wheelwright trade my father taught me. What have you got behind you?"

Lepovitch knew the man was laughing at him, and he knew too that there was nothing behind him, nothing to which he would want to go back. He escaped now in a return to professional competence.

"Then he must be handled carefully. That is your business. Put your men on him, put them on the business of this unknown body we've buried with all the archaic honors of a half-dead religion, and when we have facts I shall know what to do."

Zarko nodded. He took the rakia bottle from his desk drawer and set two glasses. As he poured the first one, he said gently—"Don't worry about Mr. Hudson. I know exactly how to handle him. In fact I'm looking forward to it. Will you have a drink?"

Lepovitch picked up his hat from the chair and moved to the door. "No. I still have some work to do."

Zarko raised his glass. "So have I, but I find a glass of rakia at this time of night clears my thoughts. You're a young man, you don't need such stimulants. Good night."

Lepovitch gave a half-grunt in return and went out, pulling the door sharply after him. Zarko sat back with the glass and chuckled. The man was dangerous and he was clever, but he had his weaknesses and, since he chose to be unpleasant, he had no compunction about playing on them. He looked up at the portrait of Tito. He thought, with quite a different direction of emotion: because one man is great, because the idea which inspired a country is right, it would

be unreasonable to expect that greatness and idealism from all men.

In his room at the Hotel Imperial Lepovitch wrote up his daily report. He wrote rapidly, but carefully, forgetful of the cigarette on his ashtray which slowly smoldered down to a tiny grey trunk.

. . . and a detailed examination of the body immediately established the fact. Due to excessive mutilation a comparison of the features with the passport photograph was impossible. Raikes was a man from whom one would expect a normal standard of cleanliness. The toe- and fingernails of the body were very dirty, an ingrained dirt such as one might expect from a workman. In addition, the skin under the wrist watch strap had the same tone of sunburn as the rest of the arm. Any man who wears a watch habitually, as Raikes must have done, would have had a whiter line of skin under the strap . . .

. . . steps are now being taken to trace Raikes, establish the identity of the dead body, and to watch the remaining Englishman, Hudson. In my opinion I am inclined to think that he is, and has been, actively concerned in this mission with Raikes, but at this point owing to the high industrial importance of his position in this country, I have given the strictest injunctions that he is to be handled with care. In the meantime I should appreciate any information you can obtain about him, even if it is only the official information contained in his London visa application . . . I should like the dossiers of the guests now at the Hotel Argentina. The man we want may well be among them. The importance of this affair justifies this step, even though one is a foreign national and two others persons to whose names I do not for a moment attach anything but the highest respect. The records of the hotel staff and servants will be checked from the Bureau of the People's Militia here. The hotel guests are:—

1. Lieutenant Colonel Ilyra Grol. Ministry of War, Belgrade. Identity Reg. No. Belgrade. WL.874329.

2. Dr. Jan Brussiak. Polish National from Wroclau. Loaned

to Ministry of Agriculture by Polish Government in connection with re-establishment of viniculture and anti-phylloxera research on certain Dalmatian islands.

3. Irinej Ransko (with wife, Leska, and two children, Madeo and Stanye). Shipwright from Split. Political Commissar in People's Shipyard. Vacationing under workers' high production category system. Identity Reg. No. Split. OP. 54911368.

4. Drava Sumitch, and wife Maria. Zagreb. Tanjug news agency. Sub-editor. Honeymoon. Special category reservation as Political Commissar Journalists' Association, and as author "Red Star of the Mountains." Identity Reg. No. Maribor. S.7263195.

5. Zarija Djilas. Belgrade. House of Representatives deputy. Identity Reg. No. Rijeka. S.49498103.

... In view of my original comment on Vladimir Zarko, it should be pointed out that while all the facts at my disposal were equally available to him, he lacked the requisite vigilance and intelligence to make the same use of them. There are some men who, having fought well in the great struggle against fascism, and having been rewarded, are content to live on their past glories. Contentment is the first sign of a reactionary disposition . . .

He paused. What he had said about Zarko was enough for the moment to satisfy his personal dislike of the man. Further he could not go without facts. In this business no one was trusted. At this moment Zarko might be reporting on him.

His report finished, he made a copy of it for his file, and then sat down to write to his wife, who was in a People's Sanatarium in the Kozara Mountains. The expression on his face, his manner of writing, were quite different, for he loved his wife. She had been in the Sanatarium now for over a year, and in all that time he had only seen her twice. He wrote until long after midnight.

12j

DAY FOUR

The embrasures in the battlements of the fortress block which, housing now the museum, formed the southern tip of the encircled little harbor, made very good seats. Hudson sat with his back against the warm biscuit-colored stones, his feet swinging free over the two-hundred-foot drop to the tiny mole below, which ran out to the sea like a stiffly pointed index finger. There was a small breeze to temper the rising morning heat, and perched aloft he was enjoying for a while the pleasure of looking down on the city and the harbor with a sense of idle omnipotence. If one had the energy, it would be easy to reach out and rearrange the muddled sprawl of cream and pink houses into neat formations up the grey-stoned hill slopes. A white schooner was lying at an awkward angle against the inner quayside. The touch of a finger would bring it into line and restore a geometrical nicety to the harbor boats. He heard someone coming up the steep steps that led to the flat fortress top.

"Good morning, Mr. Hudson. I was told I should find you here."

Zarko was standing behind him, his face perspiring a little from his climb, his panama hat held in his hands to let the breeze play across his short hair, the trousers of his white linen suit drawn tightly up as though some invisible power were holding him by his braces, keeping him upright. The iron grey eyes were laughing.

"I have to talk to you and I thought it might be pleasanter

to do it somewhere where we were completely alone. Perhaps I should tell you that since you left your hotel this morning you have been followed."

Hudson slipped his legs inside the embrasure and helped himself to a cigarette from the packet which Zarko proffered. When he was smoking, he said quietly, watching Zarko's face, "By a thin fellow in a grey striped flannel suit, blue tie, a patch on the upper of his right brown shoe, and not the slightest interest in art?"

Zarko half-bowed. "Exactly." And as he said it, his heart was full of a strange warmth. No matter what this man might or might not be, he had the kind of humor and unsurprised intelligence which appealed to him.

Hudson nodded. "He was hovering around while I looked at the Ragusianos in the Duomo; the architecture of the Rector's Palace fidgeted him and he was frankly bored by Ono-frio's fountain. He was so obviously out of place that I knew he must have other interests."

"Did you mind?"

"Why should I? Practically every foreigner who comes to this country is watched by the police. It would be rude of me to object to a custom so well established. But it does make me curious."

"Why?"

"I should like to know the reason why the process had been delayed until today. Until now I've been left alone. When a man loses a privilege he has a right to know why it has been withdrawn."

Zarko laughed, a private inner chuckle which arose not from what Hudson said, but from the fleeting thought of what Lepovitch's reaction would be if he could have been present now. He replaced his panama and then, tucking his hands up under his armpits so that his elbows protruded like the stumpy wings of a fledgling, he began to pace gently up

and down, casting a glance at Hudson now and again as he spoke.

"Do you mind, Mr. Hudson, if I make a speech?"

Hudson smiled. "My experience of men who start with that phrase is that no matter if anyone else does mind they'll still make the speech. Go ahead."

"Very well. Mr. Hudson, I don't know what your politics are, but I'm prepared to believe that you are quite sincere about them. I should like to think that in return you would grant me the same degree of sincerity. I am a Communist. Yugoslavia is a Communist country. I believe, Mr. Hudson, that in Communism lies her true destiny, that it is the only system which will give us those things which all men desire."

"Of course, you know, I think you are mistaken?"

4 'Maybe, but my belief and the belief of thousands like me is the important thing. There are governments who can't tolerate our belief, Mr. Hudson, and they work against us in our own country. It is part of my duties to expose such activities. At times circumstances force us to use methods which seem harsh, but our justification is that no system is perfect. We must protect what we cherish with the weapons at hand. Later on, the practices which are forced on us now will happily become redundant, but until that moment we believe that the importance of the individual is of little weight."

"I'm not going to argue. This is your speech. But some other time I could debate that point with you."

"I'm going to be very frank with you. Your friend Raikes was a British agent . . ." He paused, but the other was leaning back against the stones watching him with an expression of quiet attention.

"Really?"

"More than that. Your friend Raikes is not dead. It was not his body which was buried."

"How do you know this?" The natural surprise in Hudson's voice served him better than any premeditated reaction.

''I cannot give details. But it is so. Where he is at this moment we do not know. But we shall find out. You will appreciate, Mr. Hudson, that we cannot overlook the chance that you, too, may be a British agent/'

Hudson laughed. "Why don't you ask me the question frankly?"

"Mr. Hudson—you know perfectly well it would be idle. If you are innocent you will say No. And if you're guilty you will say No."

Hudson nodded. "Since the answer won't help you, I won't give it. But there is one point I would like cleared up. Why am I getting this special treatment?"

"Because you are a special person, Mr. Hudson. You will be watched, but if you are innocent you can do exactly as you choose and no one will annoy you."

"It's rather hard on the man who follows me, isn't it?"

Zarko chuckled. "He'll be relieved by others, and anyway it will do him good to learn something about his own town." He paused and then went on swiftly, the words thrusting at Hudson with a quiet menace. "But if you're guilty, Mr. Hudson—much as I like you—don't think that my personal regard for you will influence your treatment. In some ways, perhaps, it might be better if you left Dubrovnik."

As Zarko spoke, Hudson found himself thinking that Raikes really had been untidy in his romantic attitude towards distant risks. The substitution of bodies had worried him when Raikes had told his story. More than ever now he had to help him, and it was not going to be easy against as shrewd a man as Zarko. He flicked his cigarette over the battlements.

"You know the English better than that, I think. We're a pigheaded race. As you say, you mustn't annoy me. Not, at least, until the contract details are finished. I'm a partner in our firm. I could easily make things very awkward . . ." He waved a hand easily as he saw Zarko stir. "No, no . . . I'm

not even vaguely annoyed. I'm just making your own point for you. In the meantime, I intend to stay in Dubrovnik."

"In that case, would you mind handing over your passport to me? When you are ready to leave it will be returned."

"Of course not." Hudson took his passport from his inner pocket and handed it to Zarko, who stood for a moment flipping its pages.

A point of awkwardness threatened to interpose itself for the first time between them, and as though they both recognized a common obligation to avoid it, they turned and moved together across the flat roof-top to the head of the steps.

Zarko slipped the passport into his pocket. "You've been very reasonable about this. Thank you, Mr. Hudson." Then, as they came down to the parapet, with a broad smile, dismissing everything which had passed between them, Zarko went on—"One night you must come and have dinner at my house. I have a small daughter who is learning English at the Gymnasium. She would welcome the opportunity to plague you with it."

Hudson laughed, accepting the invitation, and then watched the rotund, jerky figure move away down the walk towards the town. Then he turned and strolled across to a man who sat on the wall outside the entrance to the Museum. He looked bored, disinterested, staring down his crossed legs at the patch on his right shoe.

Hudson stood above him, but the man did not raise his face.

"I'm going through the town to the Bank to cash a traveller's cheque, then I'm walking back to the hotel along the footpath above the town. I thought you'd like to know our program."

The man made no reply. Hudson moved off towards the town and as he went down the steps to the harbor side, the

man raised himself slowly from the wall and began to follow him.

The rowboat bringing Yelitsa Venetti from Lokrum swung alongside the harbor steps. As she stepped out, she saw Hudson walk along the quayside past the fish market stalls. With resentful eyes, she followed his slow, easy movement as he disappeared into the thin crowd and through the narrow archway abutting the Rector's Palace. She hated Englishmen.

Over the heads of the few people who were standing at his little stall buying fish, Sandro saw Yelitsa come towards him. For a moment their eyes met and he knew that everything was all right. Ignoring the other women, he wrapped some fish in an old copy of the Narodne List and handed the parcel to Yelitsa as she came to the end of the table.

"Tulio is at home. He has had the old pains again—' He smacked with one hand against the loose folds of his blue shirt, and the brown leonine face crinkled into a smile above the thick beard. "Give him something good to eat."

"Tulio eats too much." She took the parcel and turned away, going through the archway into the main piazza and along the wide stradone towards the far end of the town. She turned left and mounting a long flight of shallow, cobbled steps came out into a small square in front of a church at the top of the rise. The square was hard, pressed earth and a few young children played in it. She turned down the Ulica Jesac, a narrow alleyway, darkened by the houses that towered along it, steep cliff sides of flaking plaster and paint, and jutting balconies crowded with lines of drab washing and plants growing in old tins.

The Venetti family lived in a four-room flat at the top of one of the houses. Yelitsa went up the dark stairs and let herself in to the main room which was living room and kitchen. Its one window looked out at the bare wall of the opposite

house. The light was feeble, its strength filtered through the growth of plants on the balcony.

Tulio was sitting at the wooden table, his feet on a chair, one hand scratching at the stubble on his chin as he read a coverless book.

"Yelitsa!" He was surprised. "You were coming tomorrow/' He got up slowly.

'The Superintendent altered the days."

She put the fish down on the table and slipped the shawl from her shoulders. As she dropped it to a chair Tulio took her by the shoulders and kissed her. She knew what he wanted but made no move to recognize it. After a moment she pulled away from him. Without a word she began to unfasten the cloth bundle she had brought. Tulio leaned against the wall by the charcoal range and watched her. He was a heavy-faced man of about forty, blue-jowled and with a thin, overgrown body. Tulio read every paper, every book he could get, but he was stupid—the words, the information, went into him and disappeared.

Yelitsa brought out four eggs, a piece of bacon, a bottle of olive oil, some pimento and a slab of bread which, although not white, was whiter than any bread the townspeople could buy.

Tulio came to the table. 'They eat well at the orphanage. It's a pity we couldn't arrange to be orphans."

"The children of fallen partisans have a right to it." She said it curtly.

"All children have a right to it."

"Do you want to eat . . . now?" When they had first married—after Luca had gone away—it had given her pleasure to serve him. He was always hungry, for food and for her, and some primitive response in her had always found her ready to satisfy him. When Luca had come back Tulio had teen too stupid to see the reluctance in her.

"For the food, there's no hurry. But I'm hungry." He

laughed as he said it, and reached out for her. The hard stubble of his chin pressed against her cheek as he rubbed his face against her and she felt the tips of his teeth close gently on her ear. She held herself against it and caught at his hand as it reached across her body. Tulio picked her up suddenly. As his hand slipped to a hold against the warm flesh of her leg, he laughed.

"Yelitsa . . . What's the matter? Aren't you hungry, too?" With his hand on her, the stale smell of tobacco and fish from his clothes touching her nostrils with a new repugnance, she knew she had to have time . . . time for something which had taken possession of her mind. She bit his shoulder through the cloth of his coat and he dropped her, standing back. Something in his manner, the hurt expression of a small boy suddenly withheld from pleasure made her laugh and through her laughter she said hoarsely, "The Superintendent chose the wrong day. If you are hungry then you must eat. It is not my fault/'

Tulio looked at her stupidly for a moment, and then as he understood he swore. He turned away and kicked childishly at the chair by the table.

"Go out and get a drink. While you're gone I will cook." He picked up his book and a cloth cap and stood for a moment at the door. He smiled at her, his disappointment accepted stoically.

"When we get to Italy, you'll stay at home." He went out and she turned to the preparation of the food. But in her movement from the fireplace to the sink against the window wall, her eye was caught by a plush-framed family group: Sandro and his now dead wife, Carlotta, and the two boys; Tulio with his dark hair plastered across his forehead in a cowlick and Luca with one hand holding a sailboat. She stared at the photograph, at Luca, as though for a moment she felt she could get some response from him, but the round, unusually solemn face stared back at her without ex-

pression. Anger darkened her sullen eyes as she moved away.

When the Englishman had arrived, Sandro had decided to go back to Italy. She had never wanted to go. This was her country, she was happy here—but Luca wanted to go. Because of him, she had been willing to go, too. Once in Italy, Luca would take her away from Tulio for good. But now Luca was dead, and the simple emotional demands of her nature determined what she would do: Luca's death should be revenged. This done, then the whole business of a flight to Italy would be stopped. Sandro and Tulio would never know the truth, but they would stay here, and in time—the working logic of her peasant mind faced the future frankly—Luca would be a memory and she would be content with what Tulio could offer.

She went into her bedroom and from a box in the yellow wardrobe took out a packet of cheap blue letter paper, a pen, and a bottle of ink. She put them on the small bamboo table by the window, rolling back the white, lace-edged cloth in case she spilled ink. Very deliberately, and with a concentration and stiff dedication of the whole of her body, for this was no easy exercise to her, she began to write, disguising her hand as best as she could. ". . . the Englishman is not dead. He is hiding in Lokrum in a hut at the north end." When she had finished she sealed the note into an envelope and returned the materials to the wardrobe. Then she slid the envelope into the top of her thick black stockings, pinning it safely through the paper to the thick selvage that stretched around her thigh. As she went out into the main room she heard the heavy step of Sandro coming up the stairs.

Hudson and Franja spent the afternoon together on the town beach, a narrow curve of sand below the coast road where it ran out from the Ploce Gate. The beach was divided into a reserved section, served by a bathing establishment and a cafe, and a small charge was made for entrance; the other

part of the beach was free. Hudson noticed as he lay on the sand with Franja that his follower had gone into the free section and was sitting with his jacket and shoes off", casting an occasional glance at the privileged classes on the other side of the wire fence.

Before Franja's arrival he had debated whether he should tell her that he was being followed, and give her the chance to withdraw from the meeting. But when he saw her she had so obviously decided to enjoy herself that he had no heart to spoil her pleasure. They swam, lay in the sunshine and talked, and he found himself in the presence of quite a different personality. She was friendly, gay and with a quick, natural enthusiasm. He liked the boyish directness with which she treated him, getting up when she was too hot and running to the sea without a glance to see whether he was following after her remark 'It's hot—I'm going to swim." He followed the slim, well-formed figure in its green bathing dress, and they swam out to the raft. By the time they had walked back to the hotel and had their tea, a quick friendliness existed between them.

As she left him, she said, "Well, if Comrade Zarko calls me to his office and tells me I'm being too friendly—at least he can't take away this afternoon. I've enjoyed myself."

"Do you think he will?"

She shook her head. "Someone will tell him. This town is full of eyes and mouths and ears. But I don't care. Now I must hurry or I shall be late for the orchestra."

She was gone, her white skirt swinging, and Hudson found himself holding down a moment of savageness that such simple pleasure must be taken only in a spirit of rebellion.

Later, before dinner, he was still thinking about her when he went down to the palm walk to smoke a cigarette in the cool and to keep an eye open for a possible signal from Raikes. He found Dr. Brussiak sitting on the low wall of the palm garden overlooking the swimming place.

Brussiak looked around as he heard the slap of Hudson's loose sandals across the concrete path. The end of his cigarette glowed suddenly as he drew at it and the pale circle of his face was held for a moment against the shadows, the thick lenses of his glasses circled momentarily with a red reflection. Then as the glow subsided he was a hunched patch of darkness lined against the ripple-edged spread of the sea below. As Hudson passed him the man spoke in English.

"Mr. Hudson. May I speak with you?"

Hudson lit his cigarette before answering. Outside the hotel he was being watched, but Zarko would not ignore his life here, and that afternoon he had decided that either one of the guests or the servants would have been given the job. Momentarily he considered Dr. Brussiak in the role.

"Certainly."

"Forgive me . . . but I have a favor to ask you." There was a note of embarrassment in the man's voice.

"If I can help you-"

"At lunch today, you were reading a book. As I passed your table I saw what it was. I would . . ." The voice was hesitant. "I would very much like to borrow it . . . only for a little while."

Hudson laughed gently. "But of course. Are you so fond of Keats?"

The little hunched figured stirred.

"Very. But it is so hard to get English books now, and my own copy ... I have lost somewhere long ago."

"I shouldn't have thought he was your poet. A man who could say—

'Hence Burgundy, Claret and Port; Away with old Hock and Madeira'—?"

Brussiak laughed, a low, guarded sound. "Poets are seldom good judges of wine, Mr. Hudson." "I'll bring it along to your room sometime."

"No, no, Mr. Hudson. Please do not do that. You understand ... If you would just leave it on your table, say at dinner tonight, I would pick it up when you are gone . . ." With the embarrassment was now a note of apology for a state of affairs which needed no explanation between them.

"I understand. Ill leave it for you." Even as he spoke the man had slid off the wall and was moving slowly away. Hudson felt a rising anger against this country where even a simple favor had to be asked in a shadowed corner . . . And then his anger was gone. For all he knew, it might not have been a simple request. Someone in this hotel wanted to escape, someone in this hotel would be watching him . . . and who could tell which was which?

He sat on, smoking in the darkness. Near the island he heard the familiar, dulled sounds from the waiting fleet of boats and after a while the bow flares broke into life, but no signal came to him and finally he went to the hotel.

Before going down to dinner, he picked up the volume of Keats' poems. As he locked the door of his room, he wondered how long it would be before his room would be searched. Perhaps it already had been.

Joseph brought him his soup and as he ate he watched the other diners over the top of the poems propped against the water jug.

Colonel Grol was dining with some civilian guests from the town; the honeymoon couple were holding hands under the table as they waited for their fish; the severe-faced man in the white cap was picking his teeth; Brussiak was grunting at his book; and at the Ransko table Madeo had just upset a glass of water over his father's knees. Each table was a little island in the leafy-hung delta of the terrace, and there was no communication between them except the smooth black and white traffic of the impersonal waiters.

As he drank his coffee, Madeo swivelled in his chair and eyed him solemnly. Deliberately Hudson winked at Madeo

and then made a ferocious face. Madeo exploded into sound and movement. He gave a high crow of delight and wriggled from his chair swiftly. Before his father's hand could reach him he was trotting towards Hudson. He halted at the table, legs apart.

"Again."

Hudson shook his head.

"Your turn."

Madeo's eyes widened. Then he screwed up his face into a tight crinkled mask and stuck out his tongue.

"Madeo!"

Madeo was lifted by the slack of his rompers and carried off by his father, who gave Hudson an angry glance.

Later, as the Ransko family moved back into the hotel, the father came over to Hudson. He stood by the table, a thin, wispy creature, nervous but resolute, his Adam's apple moving slowly against the goose flesh of his long neck as he induced the effort to speak.

"Madeo is a difficult child. It would please me if you did not encourage him."

"I'm sorry." Hudson knew why the man had forced himself to protest. "I promise not to wink or make funny faces."

"Thank you." Ransko gave a stiff nod and turned away.

A little later, when he rose to go to his room, Hudson left the book of poems on his table. At the terrace door Joseph stood in his customary position watching the tables. Hudson gave him good-night, and as the waiter returned the salute he smiled and added, his dark eyes watching Hudson curiously— "Happy is he that is happy in his children."

"You're a philosopher as well as a magician, Joseph."

"The two qualifications of a good waiter, monsieur."

Up in his room Hudson lit a cigarette and went out on to the balcony. The night was cool and pleasant. On the seaward side of Lokrum the twin searchlight beams played gently over the sea. From the terraced gardens below rose

the scent of night flowers and above the dark patches of oleanders and azaleas a thin drift of fireflies hovered, winking and flashing in a slow rise and fall. Away to the left, where the headland ran out to the sea, the land was studded with a dull ocher of house lights and a few gardens away a pale blue radiance rose from the colored glass dome of a villa framed by the dark arabesques of pine trees.

It was a lovely country, but there was a shadow over most of the people. They had fought for this country; but Hudson felt that their victory had not brought them the freedom which they had hoped for. Of their two million war dead only eighteen thousand had been Communists. Of those who lived on how many, he wondered, shared the belief of Zarko, how many paid lip service and waited?

Lepovitch was still angry. And he knew that the anger was not entirely the result of disagreement with Zarko over policy. Zarko had told him that afternoon of the approach he had made to Hudson. It was something he would never have done himself and his first reaction had been anger. Now he was beginning to understand the real cause of his discomfort. Zarko was not as stupid as he had imagined, and his action had indicated a confidence which, he felt, might reach back to some foundation of certainty in his position which demanded more caution in dealing with the man. Zarko's sureness could only mean that Zarko probably had friends in authority who would back him, might mean in fact that he was receiving orders quite independently of Lepovitch. Handling this possibility made the composition of his report more difficult. He wrote slowly, assessing the weight and discretion of each paragraph.

. . . Zarko's line of approach, which at first may seem unusual, has certain advantages, although I am not sure it is the course I would have taken.

If Hudson is innocent, and we had watched him and he had discovered this, he would have had cause for annoyance which might have affected the successful completion of his commercial mission. We have been frank with him, and he has accepted this with a reasonableness which may be a cover for anything.

If he is guilty we gain the shock value of laying our cards before him, and making him take elaborate precautions which may hinder his plans, or cause him to change them. To change a plan in the middle of an operation, as necessarily detailed as this one must be, means inefficiency and weakness somewhere ... It is for this that we wait.

Whenever Hudson leaves the hotel he is watched. A complete cover in the hotel has also been arranged. This morning I searched his room but I learned nothing from it of importance . . .

So far we have no lead on Raikes or the person he is supposed to contact here . . .

He pushed the report away, slipping back in his chair and staring out of the window. He had been circumspect. Whatever happened now, he could cover himself.

DAY FIVE

The friendliness in Zarko's voice was quite genuine.

"Fm not ordering you to do anything, mademoiselle. This is a request which the Republic has a right to make of any citizen." He paused, eyeing her for a moment with a gentle lift of one brow, humor wreathing his large mouth, and his tongue travelled caressingly along the inner line of his upper lip. It was a pleasure to have her in his office, lying back in the deep leather chair, not relaxed, but reserved, holding to herself some comment which he knew would never be released to him. "After all, I gather that you do not find his company exactly . . . repulsive/'

Franja sat forward in the chair, resting her arms on the padded leather and holding her hands together for she knew that parted they would tremble. It was no good telling herself to be calm, that it meant nothing, that she had done nothing. When his note had been delivered asking her to call, she had felt the spirit drain from her.

"Was it arranged then—because of this—that I should meet him at lunch with Colonel Grol?"

Zarko shook his head. Few other women in her place would have put the question. He admired her for it, while he regretted the intransigence which it offered to authority, an intransigence unmerited in this instance.

"No, mademoiselle—believe me—if any arrangement had been made then circumstances and yourself have made it/'

"What has he done?" Franja asked the question quietly,

her eyes following the line of the peasant design on the rug.

"Nothing."

"Then why?"

Zarko stood up and came round to her. He put a hand on her shoulder and he felt the stiffness of her muscles drawn back into themselves. He was sorry for her then and moved away.

"Relax/' he said gently. "You've done nothing wrong, and I'm not asking you to do anything wrong. I shall be frank with you. Our country is young. It has many enemies. Any foreigner in this country is a subject of speculation. Personally, I like Mr. Hudson and I think he is innocent. But I should be a fool if I left it at that."

Franja stood up. She was angry now, and the anger gave her a calmness which steadied her and deceived Zarko. She liked Hudson and she had been happy with him, and his quick sympathy had awakened in her a romantic wishfulness which, in the quiet of her room, comforted her with girlish fancies.

"You want me to spy on him." Her anger left her voice untouched.

"It's an ugly phrase. No. I want you to go as you would wish to go with him. Now and again you can come in here and tell me what you talk about. That's all. But, of course—" He turned back to his desk, speaking without looking at her, for now he felt uneasy at the need for this shabby strategem. "—if he ever says or does anything which makes you suspicious, then it is your duty to inform me. That is the duty of every good comrade."

"Of course."

"But I hope the occasion will never arise. However," he came back now, smiling at her and his hand went to her elbow, moving with her towards the door, "I am very grateful to you for your sensible attitude. There is one thing, though."

"Yes." Franja waited, unwilling now to trust herself to

words, knowing that if she began to speak she might show her contempt and anger.

"Mr. Hudson may wonder at your freedom to be friendly. If so, you can say that, since Colonel Grol introduced you, you feel free to do as you wish. Mr. Hudson is a very intelligent person. He may even ask you if such an interview as this took place. I don't want Mr. Hudson, or anyone else, to know that you have spoken to me."

"I understand."

Outside, by herself in the passage, Franja paused. Her lips were set tightly, holding the tears which rose from disgust for what she had to do and regret for the shadow cast over her brief happiness.

Hudson paused at the top of the shallow steps leading to the dark arch of Sveti Jacov. Through the open door came the pungent smell of incense and in the far gloom he saw the glitter of the altar ornaments. He looked back across the wide street and saw that the man who had been following him all the morning was standing at a house corner studying a printed notice on the wall. He was a plump, mild-featured man who had followed him with the apologetic air of a spaniel, forbidden to come on the walk, yet lurking always a little way behind.

Hudson went into the church, turned abruptly into the nearest side chapel and waited. After a few moments the man came in, moved hesitantly down the aisle as his eyes went round the church, then seeing Hudson, dropped quietly on to a chair by one of the main pillars and sat forward with his head, half-bowed, his eyes shut in an attitude of prayer.

Hudson came out of the chapel and moved towards the altar. An attendant came up and offered to show him around but he shook his head. He moved behind the altar into the choir stalls and there found what he wanted. He sat down, took out his sketch book, and began to make a precise draw-

ing of the carved motif that ran along the front of the stalls. Once or twice he looked back at the man, an apathetic figure framed between the altar rails. When he had finished he stood up and was about to move back into the main transept when his eye was caught by a small door set in the thick buttress of wall behind the choir stalls. He moved over to it and glancing up the wall saw a series of thin window slots. He gave the door a push and it swung half open. The man still sat in his chair, his head a little lower, and Hudson guessed that the coolness of the church after the heat outside had lulled him to sleep. With a smile he slipped inside the door and made his way up the narrow curving stairs which, he guessed, led to the belfry. Halfway up he paused and looked down into the church from one of the window slots. The man was still sitting, but as Hudson watched he raised his head, blinked his eyes and realized he had been sleeping. He stood up and with a worried expression came forward towards the choir stalls, passing out of Hudson's view. For a moment Hudson waited and then he saw the man come back into view and hurry towards the main door and disappear. Hudson went up into the belfry. He came out under the great bell, in a little tower which gave him a view of the sloping town below. To his right the roofs of the houses on the rising slope abutted on to the church, leaning and crowding against it for company and support. A few feet below the level of the belfry the sharp spine of a roof ran away to the blank wall of a building which dominated the slope. It was the old palace in which the People's Militia had its headquarters, and above the pent of the roof where it met the palace wall he found himself looking at the outside of a small window which, he realized, belonged to Zarko's room.

His follower was in the street as he came out. He was looking down the street, his back to Hudson and the temptation was too much. Hudson gave a low whistle and the man

turned. The relief on his face was unmistakable. Hudson smiled as he passed.

"What would happen if I told Comrade Zarko you went to sleep on the job?"

The man, unsure whether he was serious or joking, stared after him stupidly.

That evening the signal came from Sandro. Hudson was sitting taking his dinner on the terrace when he saw it. He watched the bow flares of the sardine fleet come to life and then, after a few moments, he saw the light of the boat nearest the mainland go out three times.

Hudson finished his dinner without hurry and went up to his room. So far he had not discovered who might be watching him in the hotel. The receptionist he felt sure would have had instructions to mark his comings and goings, but the man's position prevented him from watching him about the hotel grounds. There was a young boy of about sixteen who moved about the hotel in dark trousers and a white jacket and seemed to combine the duties of errand boy, kitchen boy and general assistant to the waiters. Once or twice in the gardens Hudson had seen him busy feeding the caged rabbits, pulling lettuce or tidying a flower bed.

He slipped off his clothes and put on trunks. Then he pulled his clothes on over them and went slowly down to the terrace again. He had dined early and some of the guests were still eating. He crossed the terrace and dropped down the angled step flights to the gardens below. Above the bathing place was a terrace, broader than all the others. Its flower beds were studded with small cactus and great pads of geraniums, and it was dark from the overhang of the palms and a few tall pines which rose from its gravelled surface. Hudson went slowly to the far end of the walk and sat on the wall overlooking the rocks. From below the wall a tall agave thrust its stiff candelabra ten feet into the air and around its

base he could see the pale flicker of the long, pointed tongues of its leaves. He lit a cigarette and considered his situation. He had no intention of letting anyone know that he was going into the water. By slipping over the wall he could move in the shadowed security of the rocks to the foot of the garden of the adjoining villa. He had never seen any movement in the overgrown grounds and he felt he would be safe from observation there.

Before he had half-finished his cigarette, he saw the white patch of the boy's coat. He came down the last flight of steps hesitantly, then moved across to the wall at the far end of the walk. Hudson held his cigarette cupped in his hand and watched him. The boy looked over the wall and then came gently along its length towards Hudson where he sat quietly in the shadows. Hudson waited until the boy was a yard from him, and then he said suddenly—

"What are you looking for?"

The boy swung round, startled, and then laughed nervously.

"Oh—I beg your pardon . . ."

"What are you looking for?"

"Madame Sumitch thought she might have left her bag on the wall this afternoon. She sent me down to look. Has monsieur seen it by chance?" The voice was controlled, innocent.

"No."

The boy thanked him and went away. Hudson watched him go up the steps. He sat for fifteen minutes, and then he slipped quietly over the wall and made his way along the rocks. Fifty yards away he paused in the shade of a great fuchsia bush that sprawled over the garden wall of the next villa. He waited again for a while, watching the pale line of the distant wall, but there was no movement to be seen from it. Swiftly he undressed, rolled his clothes into a bundle and thrust them into the heart of the fuchsia bush. Then, keeping in the cover of the rocks, he dropped down into the

warm water of a little gulf that ran in to the steps at the bottom of the garden. He porpoised gently and swam out, keeping under as long as he could.

Twenty minutes later he was sitting with Raikes' raincoat about his shoulders in the triangular shadow of the hut.

"Let's sit out here. Fm getting tired of the inside of that place." Raikes put a glass of rum in Hudson's hands and with a shrug of his shoulders added, "Better not smoke."

Hudson drained his glass before he spoke. It was hard to see Raikes in the dim light but he had the impression that the man was nervous.

"I mustn't stay long. They're watching me. They know you're not dead, too."

"They do?" Raikes was still a shadow, merged against the haphazard shadows of the surrounding bushes. "How?"

"I don't know. Your friend Zarko told me."

He heard Raikes breathe gently, and then his voice, free of nervousness, went on—"All right. I'm sorry about it for you, but you can carry it. As long as they don't know where I am it alters nothing and this is the last time you need come. Everything's arranged."

Raikes was making it sound easy, but he felt uncertain with him. He wanted his instructions and to be on his own again.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Take the message to the hotel. I'm going to give you something which will be recognized and prove that you're genuine. All you need do is wait for him to come to you."

"Him?"

"I know that much. When he makes himself known, tell him the plan. Then you can forget the whole thing."

"Tell me what to say and then—"

But Raikes held Hudson's arm. He whispered urgently— "Quiet."

The authority in the tone held Hudson still and silent. They sat frozen into a strained immobility. Hudson heard

his own heart going. There was the sound of the low wind teasing the grass and leaves, and thin, muted, an age away, the faint noise of the orchestra playing at the Gradska Kavana. Then quite plainly Hudson heard the sounds which had first roused Raikes to wariness. The slow creak of a leather strap and the dry crackle of grass as a foot was shifted with heavy caution. For a moment in the shadow of the hut they looked at one another. Hudson turned his head slowly staring across the shadowed bowl of grass before the hut. On the far ridge the blurred bushes and trees stood up vaguely against the dark sky. He kept his eyes on the ridge, forcing them in a hard focus against the shadows until they began to play him tricks. A bush wavered and moved, darkness became animated and full of menace, and with the treachery of his eyes went a falseness of hearing. The wind was full of fancied echoes and sounds, a lazy slither of earth, the quick rattle of a gravel chip, the long whisper of cloth against branches . . . And then, out of the confusion, unmistakably he saw two men. They rose against the night sky and stood, shoulders clear of the bushes, and he heard the clear sound, careless, assured now, of a swivel ring moving as a rifle sling was gathered up. At the same moment Raikes stood up and his hand held Hudson's shoulder for a second. "Run for it." The whisper hung between them, and then the steady pressure of Raikes' hand forced him away, in the opposite direction. Hudson turned and raced through the shadow of the hut and out into the clearing behind it.

"Halt!"

A dozen men rose now about the ridge and Hudson, running instinctively away from Raikes, bent low, his bare feet noiseless on the soft grass, saw the abrupt movement of an upslung rifle barrel drawing light to itself from the pale stars. Then he heard the ragged rattle of shots and saw the stiff tails of muzzle flashes. He ran, careless now of concealment, and behind him he heard the heavy plunge of boots,