Ristorante Al Porto Antico
Roasted Branzino
Bass, spitting on a charcoal grill, the coals encouraged to a brighter fierceness by the use of an ancient electric fan. The fish served with the silver skin blackened and splitting to reveal white flesh, perfectly tender, scented by dill. Served with golden, crusted potatoes scooped from a wide, blackened iron tray and a scattering of tiny Taggiasca olives of Liguria, reddish in colour and deliciously sweet, scented with thyme, bay and rosemary. The best, the only way to cook this magnificent fish.
Accompanied by a Ligurian Rossese di Dolceacqua. Bright to the eye, with the fresh tang of herbs and blackcurrant. An intensely aromatic wine. The slightly resinous bouquet whispers of its Greek origins.
Stella Snelling’s Memorable
Mediterranean Meals
In Genoa, they took a taxi from the station to the Grand Hotel Savoia overlooking the port. Drummond booked them in at the desk.
‘They aren’t here yet,’ he said. ‘Just checked the register.’
‘We’re staying at the same place?’
‘Why not?’ He looked round at the opulent interior, all marble floors and red and gold furnishing. ‘Didn’t know for sure that they’ll tip up here but this is where they all stay. The ones with money, anyway. With a few bob stashed away. Or …’
‘If they are being sponsored?’
‘Essatamente.’
Double doors led from their room out onto a balcony overlooking the harbour. Drummond had slid a few extra notes over the counter to obtain that view. One good thing about the Italians, they were eminently bribeable.
‘I’ve got a few people to see. Why don’t you go shopping?’ Drummond peeled off more lire. ‘Buy something smart for this evening. I thought we’d dine at the hotel.’
Dori took him at his word. There was plenty of choice on the Via XX Settembre and the streets around. She managed to find a Madeleine Vionnet evening gown in black silk, a wrap and a bag to go with it, even a pair of heels. Le signore tedesche, German ladies, the woman in the shop told her, selling everything to raise the fare.
Back at the hotel, she had a bath and washed her hair. She looked at her face in the mirror, removing the sticking plaster Kay had applied. The wound was healing well. If she arranged her hair just so, it hardly showed.
After her bath, she lay down on the bed, meaning merely to rest through the heat of midday. When she woke, it was late afternoon. Drummond was leaning on the balcony, studying the harbour through binoculars.
‘Consular Offices. We’ve been warned off. MI6 and all that,’ he said with his back to her, his voice bowstring taut, vibrating with the anger he was suppressing. ‘Don’t upset the Cousins. The von Stavenows are off limits. Looked after every step of the way. There’s a big liner down there. The Don Giovanni, waiting to load up with Nazis, due to sail to Argentina tomorrow. I’m going to check the passenger lists in the morning, but it’s my bet they’ll be on it.’
‘They’re here?’
He turned round, square hands gripping the binoculars so hard, Dori thought he might tear them apart.
‘Arrived this afternoon. My guess is he’ll be outside the Consulate getting visas from the Argies. The street is full of tall blond men in Homburgs standing in a queue.’
‘Is there nothing we can do?’
‘Take a pop at him, you mean?’ He gave a ragged, humourless laugh. ‘I wish I could. “Hands off, Bulldog,” that’s what I’ve been told. Our chaps have done a deal with the Yanks. Leo waving his paws in the air hoping for scraps.’ He put down the binoculars and came towards her. ‘Put your glad rags on. We’ll start with cocktails in the bar. Don’t want them feeling they’re home and dry.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’ve got a bit of time, though.’ He kissed her neck. ‘You smell very good. I wonder what we can find to do between now and cocktail hour?’
The bar was full of people in evening dress. Dori’s new gown could have been made for her and the dress suit Drummond had cadged off someone at the Consulate fitted him perfectly. Dori took his arm. They made a handsome couple.
A man in a white tie and a tailcoat was playing tinkling jazz on a grand piano. The tables were occupied by couples, hardly speaking. There was an air of waiting, of quiet tension about the room.
‘Teutonic-looking lot aren’t they?’ Drummond remarked. ‘You could add another chapter: The Rats of Hamelin Lose their Master and Make a Run for It. What are you drinking?’
‘A Negroni, since we’re here.’
‘Whisky for me,’ he said to the barman. ‘And whatever that is for the lady.’ He turned around, drink in hand. ‘Look at them. Dressed up to the nines. Practically wearing their iron crosses. Think they’re safe now. Almost home and dry. No more yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir. Subservience doesn’t sit well with the Hun.’ He turned away and studied the room in the mirror behind the bar. ‘Should be in gaol, the lot of them.’ His gaze ranged over the rest of the tables. ‘The Italians are as bad. Bunch of Fascists. And the Argentinians for that matter.’ He finished his drink and ordered another. ‘Makes me sick. What a crew. Here they come. Trunks have arrived, I see.’
Kurt and Elisabeth. He looked tall and slender, graceful in black evening dress. Dori was gratified to see one arm strapped and under his jacket. One bullet must have found a home. She was wearing a finely pleated, pale-cream Delphos dress. Pre-war Fortuny. The silk shimmered as she walked, the simple, graceful lines following the contours of her figure. Murano glass beads glinting down the sides of the gown. A diamond collar glittered above the high neckline, matching earrings caught the light. They made their way between the tables, arm in arm, looking enough like film stars to turn every eye in the room, smiling from side to side, accepting the general gaze as if it was their due.
‘What are we going to do?’ Dori asked, watching them to their table by one of the long windows overlooking the harbour.
‘Nothing,’ Drummond replied without taking his eyes off them. ‘Can’t do anything. Of special interest. Under the protection of our friend Tom McHale, not to mention Leo and everybody else up to and including the Pope himself, I shouldn’t wonder, as part of the new crusade to save the world from the Communists. So, it’s nothing doing, Bulldog. Let them scamper away into the Pampas with the rest of the rats.’
He leaned back against the bar staring intently, willing them to look back. When they did at last, he gave them a wide grin, mirthless and ghastly, and raised his glass in mock salute. The von Stavenows’ gaze arrested for a moment then moved on with no other visible sign of recognition.
‘Fuck off to you, too.’ Drummond drained his glass. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ He sniffed. ‘It’s getting too ripe for me in here. Take you to a little place I know. Food’s really good. Authentic.’ He laughed, again there was no humour in it. ‘You can add to your collection with a genuine Genoese recipe.’
Dori wanted to leave just as much as he did. She and Drummond were on the side of the victors but it certainly didn’t feel like it. It felt the opposite, as though victory had gone to Kurt and Elisabeth. She watched the two of them, leaning towards each other, close, intimate, hands clasped across the stiff, white linen. They appeared to be laughing. Elisabeth leaned towards him, saying something. A waiter rushed over to ease back her chair as she stood.
‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’ Dori checked her bag. ‘I’ll meet you outside.’
The ladies’ powder room was all cream marble, gold taps and green onyx basins, silk-backed Venetian chairs in front of banks of mirrors. Dori dropped lire into the bowl on the attendant’s table and gestured with her head towards the door. The crone scooped up the notes and was gone.
Dori locked the cubicle and waited. Whatever orders Drummond had received didn’t extend to her. Or to Elisabeth von Stavenow. The outer door opened and closed again. A toilet flushed, water ran. Dori counted to twenty, then twenty again, and eased back the catch.
In the mirror, she could see into the powder room proper. A woman was sitting at one of the chairs, makeup placed in front of her, lipstick, compact, mascara, like an actress getting ready for a show. She was intent on her own reflection, brushing her hair with a Mason-Pearson brush.
‘I think that belongs to Edith,’ Dori said from the door.
The brush stopped in mid stroke and then continued, taking the hair back from the forehead and to the side, following the deep, shining waving line.
‘She won’t be needing it, will she? Not any more.’ Elisabeth continued to brush out her hair, bringing up the shine. Satisfied at last, she shook her head, her hair falling into perfect waves and folds of bronze and gold. ‘What are you doing here, Dori?’ She snapped open her compact. ‘It’s too late to stop us. You missed your chance.’
‘Edith. You used her.’
‘Didn’t you?’ Elisabeth began to apply mascara with brisk upward strokes. ‘The British Secret Service, the Americans. You all used her. Naïve, an innocent. The perfect vehicle. We both used her. Let’s not be coy about it. She was surplus to requirements.’ Elisabeth shut the mascara box and uncapped her lipstick. ‘Not a good thing to be.’
The lipstick was carmine red in a Marcel Rochas silver tube. Dori had given one just like it to Edith. She watched Elisabeth applying the colour, working her lips together. What kind of woman would steal another woman’s lipstick? Such pettiness was deeply revealing. In that moment, Dori knew. Elisabeth had ordered the kill.
‘That’s Edith’s, too.’
‘Not her colour,’ Elisabeth said as she examined her reflection in the mirror. ‘It was wasted on her.’ She turned her head this way and that looking for flaws. Satisfied, she collected her makeup and put it away in her handbag. ‘Now, I must go.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Dori held her hand down by her side. The berretta was small, snug in the palm. She raised it slowly. Elisabeth watched her in the mirror. They both knew that she wouldn’t miss, couldn’t miss at this distance.
‘Maman je dois faire pipi!’
A shrill voice, a child’s voice. The door banged open. Dori lowered the gun as a little girl ran into the room. The child stopped in mid pace to stare at the two women with her big dark eyes.
‘Je suis désolé,’ her mother came in after her. ‘Excusez-nous.’
‘Pas du tout. Nous avons terminé. Pas devant les enfants.’ Elisabeth whispered to Dori, ‘That wouldn’t be nice.’ She smiled, touching her lips to Dori’s injured cheek. ‘Lebewohl, meine liebe. Lebewohl.’
With that she was gone. The kiss on Dori’s cheek felt like a fresh wounding. The red came away as she rubbed, staining her fingers like blood.
Drummond took her to a little osteria in the old port close to the water. It was dark inside, cave like, lit by candles guttering in wax-encrusted bottles set on rough wooden tables. The menu was chalked on the wall in Ligurian dialect. It didn’t really matter. They only served fish. Branzino.
‘Rossese di Dolceacqua, nothing very special,’ Drummond poured the wine. ‘Doesn’t have to be if all you want to do is get drunk. They’ve won, Dori. We’ve lost. Here’s to ’em.’ He raised his glass. ‘Bottoms up. Fuck ’em, I say. I hope the ship hits a mine in the mid-Atlantic. One of theirs, preferably.’ He grinned. ‘Wouldn’t that be ironic?’ He sat back. ‘Oh, well, can’t win ’em all.’ He lapsed into silence for a while and sat brooding, arms folded. ‘I do hate to lose, though,’ he said finally, his voice low, almost distant. All his anger and frustration distilled into absolute resolution. ‘I do so hate to lose.’
‘I do, too.’ Dori joined in his mood. ‘How could I have let her get away from me?’
‘Life goes on, eh?’ He finished his wine and poured them both another.
‘Not for Edith.’ Dori bit her lip hard and looked away, almost overwhelmed by a sudden surge of sorrow and despair.
‘I say, don’t take on, old girl.’ Drummond took her hands in his. ‘It’s like in the war. Chap’d go down, wouldn’t come back, quite often several chaps, but it was bad form to sit about moping. Does no one any good. Get up and get on. Which is exactly what we are going to do, so cheer up,’ he chucked her under the chin. ‘Let’s see a smile. That’s better.’ He gave her an answering grin. ‘We’ll have a bloody good dinner. Food’s excellent here, better than that ghastly hotel. Nothing worse than Italian bloody haute cuisine. Then we’ll work out what we are going to do.’ His smile disappeared. ‘Because this is not over.’
The decks of the liner were crowded with people, waving and smiling down at the crowds on shore. It could have been a Pathé Newsreel, except there were no streamers and the flags strung from the funnels were faded and ragged. Corrosion stained the grey paint, seamed the water line red and wept down from the hawsehole that held the anchor chain. The ship had seen better days.
‘Bit of a rust bucket,’ Drummond was leaning over the balcony balustrade. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t make it.’ He trained binoculars on the passengers leaning on the rails. ‘No wonder they’re all smiling. Getting clean away. Won’t be smiling soon.’ He laughed. ‘That thing is a tub, she’ll roll all over the place.’
‘Can you see Kurt and Elisabeth?’
He shifted the binoculars. ‘Just leaving the hotel. Got them right in my sights, I could get both of them if I had Jack’s Lee Enfield. He’s in a light suit, pale-grey fedora; she’s in a polka-dot dress, black hat, red feather. That should make it easier. Ready?’ Dori nodded. ‘Let’s go.’
They left the hotel. She indicated for Drummond to go left while she stayed behind and on the right. They tracked the von Stavenows through the streets leading down to the Porto where the ship was waiting. It was easy to keep them in sight, the grey fedora, the bobbing feather, difficult to get close enough to kill.
At the dockside, there was a melee of leave takers and those boarding. A hold-up had developed, the crowd bunching. A man in uniform stood at the bottom of the companionway checking documents and tickets. Dori could sense the tension building around her, shouts of Was is los!? There was a surge in the crowd as impatience turned to a panicking realization that their chance of escape might be snatched away at the last moment.
Drummond gave her the nod. The von Stavenows were almost at the companionway, near the centre of the surging, spreading queue. They would be distracted, occupied by their anxiety to get on board. Dori insinuated herself between the sweating, jostling people, squeezing through any small gap, working her way nearer while Drummond did the same from the opposite side. The silencer made the gun heavy, unwieldy, not ideal at such close quarters but necessary if they hoped to get away. Dori measured off the space between them and the targets in yards, feet, finally inches. She would take her; Drummond would take him.
Dori was so close now that she could smell her sweat masked by talcum and sweetish, musky perfume; see the damp circles under her arms, blue polka dots rendered slightly transparent by the dampness between her shoulder blades. Just one more ebb of the crowd and she would be close enough to jam the barrel into the fifth intercostal space between her ribs, angled up to make absolutely sure that the bullet ripped through her heart.
‘Excuse us ma’am. We can’t allow that.’
Two men moved in on her. The gun was wrenched from her. Strong hands clamped her arms to her sides. She saw Drummond struggling with a similar pair. He managed to butt one of them with a quick jerk of the head. The man recoiled, blood blooming from his smashed nose, but he didn’t let go. The other man administered a sharp rap on the back of his head. His captors braced themselves to take his weight.
If there had been a disturbance in the crowd behind them, the von Stavenows didn’t notice. The delay had been cleared away. They were free to go on board. As they climbed up the swaying metal gangway they were laughing and smiling like the rest of the passengers, not quite believing their luck. They paused at the top, turning to wave as if they were royalty.
The gangplank was brought in. The hawsers were cast off. The anchor rattled up. The engines started, the propellers churning the water, horns sounded and the ship steamed out into the bay accompanied by the whistles and hoots of smaller vessels. The von Stavenows joined others at the rail, staring back at the receding port, the last of Europe, before turning to go down to their cabins to begin their new lives.
‘Aren’t you going to wave them goodbye?’ McHale stood by Dori’s side, with a firm grip on her arm. He gazed out at the receding liner.
‘What have you done to Drummond?’
‘Oh, he’s OK. Got a hard head. My guys have taken him back to your hotel. There will be no more of this.’ McHale looked at her, his pale-blue eyes almost colourless. ‘You tell him that from me.’