Chapter 11

They dropped from the string of boxcars when the train finally slowed for a stop, coming into a spur track along the Molo Vecchio in Genoa’s harbor area. It was just after noon and Grossman was in a foul mood. Three times that morning he had stood balanced at the side of the boxcar, prepared to drop his knapsack and follow it to the grade when he thought the train was decelerating; and three times the engine’s whistle had shrieked delightedly and the train had gathered speed, flashing past people waiting at grade crossings, rattling furiously over switch frogs, echoing loudly through tunnels, tearing through cities and back to the country, pleased with itself, its performance, its freedom. From inside the truck, the windows now rolled down and the heater off, Max Brodsky watched, smiling sardonically.

Leaving the rail yards, they walked along the Corso Quadrio, heading south, the steep hills of the old city rising abruptly on their left, the calm waters of the Bacino della Grazie on their right, the vast Mediterranean visible beyond the stone-block breakwater. Their overcoats had been folded and laid across the backpacks since neither was prepared to abandon them as yet, Grossman for the thought of the colder Lago Maggiore and Switzerland, Brodsky out of natural caution.

They stopped at several bottegas along the Corso Quadrio before Brodsky located a small leather shop where the proprietor, an old man with a skimpy white beard and deep-set rheumy eyes, spoke Yiddish. The old man consulted a worn street directory a moment or two, and then shook his head sadly.

“The Via Sclopis? It’s in Sturla, off the Piazza Sturla. Miles and miles—” He was waving a palsied hand weakly in the general direction of the south. He looked at their heavy knapsacks. “It’s also a very steep climb …”

Max’s shrug indicated they had no choice. “And the Piazza Sturla?”

The hand was waved again, shaking. “Down to the end of the Corso Italia, the very end, to the Boccadesse at the Piazza Nettune. You can’t miss it, stay right along the waterfront. At the Nettune you go up the hill on any cross street to the Via Caprera; it runs parallel. Then turn right to the Piazza Sturla.” He studied the thin pale faces of the two, so different from the swarthy skin of the Genovese, but was intelligent enough not to ask questions. “If you need fare for an omnibus—”

“No, no! Thank you very much.”

They marched along the Corso Guglielmo. Marconi, sweating mightily, with Grossman getting angrier and angrier every step.

“We could have taken bus fare from the old man! A few pennies wouldn’t put him in the poorhouse!”

“We didn’t need to take his money. He was kind enough to help us out with directions. We can walk.”

“Or you could have taken a few pennies from your own money!”

Brodsky looked at him coldly.

“The only money I have is the money you gave back to me. The rest went to Wolf for any expenses he might need when he left Felsdorf with the group. And we don’t need to spend money when we can walk.”

“I know. God gave us feet,” Grossman subsided into a disgruntled silence for a moment and then exploded again. “One night! One night! I stay one night and then I’m heading north!”

“You can head north right now,” Brodsky said shortly. He was tired and in no mood for Grossman’s temperamental outbursts. “Right now you’re going in the wrong direction. North is the other way.”

“One night,” Grossman said direly, threateningly, and fell silent.

The Corso Italia seemed endless; the climb up the Via Felice Cavalotti from the Piazza Nettune to the Via Caprera was brutal. They paused at the top, the square they assumed to be the Piazza Sturla visible to their right, their hearts pumping, their leg muscles trembling, and caught their breath. Below them the sea stretched endlessly to a hazy horizon, a stainless-steel sheet under the glaring sun; to the southeast they could see tiny docks in the far distance, and boats of various sizes tied up at them. Nervi was in that direction, Brodsky knew from studying maps at Felsdorf; possibly the Naomi was there, might even be one of them. The thought put strength in his legs; he started off again, walking rapidly. God! If he had come this far only to miss the boat by a few hours! Grossman came limping after, cursing under his breath.

The Via Sclopis rose at a steep angle from the Piazza Sturla, the tall stone and stucco houses climbing one above the other as if each were attempting to brace itself against the mountainside and obtain a better view than its lower neighbor. The two men came to the address they wanted, and slipped off their knapsacks gratefully, wiping the sweat from their faces. The street was deserted, its cobbled pavement hot under the afternoon sun that reflected itself from the pastel plaster and the shaded windows of the houses. Possibly everyone was having a siesta, Brodsky thought, and drew back the bell pull set in the center of the heavy door. There was a faint tinkle, muffled by the door’s bulk; then a window shade was pulled to one side enough to allow a cautious eye to examine them carefully. A moment later Morris Wolf had opened the door and was pulling them hurriedly inside. He grinned at the two men broadly, the grimace twisting his scarred face into a macabre distortion. He reached up, patting Brodsky on the back, nodding at Grossman.

“You made it!”

“And you’re still here,” Brodsky said with profound relief. He hadn’t realized how tense he had been. “I was afraid I’d get here too late and miss you.”

Wolf’s grin disappeared abruptly. He shook his head.

“Come upstairs and we’ll talk about it.”

The three men climbed the narrow steps one at a time to the next floor. A door at the end of a passage opened and the scowling face of an old woman in black, heavily mustached, glared at them a moment before the door was slammed shut. Brodsky looked at Wolf inquiringly.

“Our charming hostess,” Wolf said in explanation. “She hates our guts. Not anti-Semitic, I think, or at least not only anti-Semitic. She’s just anti-people. But her husband keeps her in line, or at least has so far. He likes money. Fortunately,” he added, “the old lady doesn’t know where the boat is, just that it’s somewhere south of here. Well, so is Naples.”

He opened a door and ushered them into a large room with cots and sleeping bags scattered about, although at the moment the only occupant of the room was a husky man sitting at a desk in one comer, writing something. He looked up as the door opened and then came to his feet, smiling broadly, his hand outstretched.

“Max!”

“Davi!” He turned to Grossman. “Davi Ben-Levi of the Mossad. You missed him at Belsen and at Felsdorf. Ben Grossman.”

“I’ve heard of Ben Grossman,” Ben-Levi said, and shook hands. “So you’ve changed your mind?”

“No,” Grossman said shortly. “I’ll be going to Switzerland tomorrow. I’m just staying for the night.”

“However,” Brodsky said quickly, “I’ll be going to Palestine with you.”

Ben-Levi sat down on one of the cots. “If any of us go,” he said somberly.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve got trouble,” Ben-Levi said, and then paused as if trying to calculate exactly where to start. He took a deep breath and began. “To start with, the British have patrols all over this area, foot patrols on shore, patrols out to sea. Anything that looks like a ship capable of heading for, or reaching, Palestine is checked out thoroughly. They also have all the Italian carabiniere—the police—checking constantly as well. The carabiniere are afraid not to; a lot of them were fascisti and the British are capable of putting on some vicious pressure. And they also offer bounties that not only interest the police but people, too. So it isn’t easy. If anyone thinks a ship looks the least bit suspicious, they search it. If they find the slightest thing that even smells of an attempt to reach Palestine, the ship is interned and the crew is given a hard time. If they aren’t put in jail, they stand a good chance of being put in an internee camp if they aren’t Italian. So it’s been almost impossible to get Italian captains or crews; we’ve had to depend on our own people, and they are not experienced sailors.”

Brodsky frowned. “It’s been that way for some time,” he said slowly. “We’ve always known the British aren’t going to let us get to Palestine if they can help it.” He had put his knapsack to one side and was sitting opposite Ben-Levi.

“Yes, we’ve always known that. So this time we got together and figured out a way to fool them. The boat we have was originally a fishing boat, a trawler, so every day we would take it out and fish. Our captain is an Italian Jew dead set on getting to Palestine; he’s had a lot of experience in ships. Unfortunately, he’s about the only one. We also have two or three others who speak enough Italian to get by if we’re ever hailed; I’m one of them. Sometimes we’d take the boat out in the daytime, sometimes at night, whenever the fish are running, which is the way the fishing boats do around here. And while we were trawling, we had men inside working on putting up bunks where people could sleep, building toilets, putting in a small kitchen for cooking, a small dispensary. And after our day’s—or night’s—fishing, we’d come back to the dock and take ashore our catch—”

“You actually fished?”

“Of course.” Ben-Levi smiled briefly. “It’s been the mainstay of our food, and we’ve also sold quite a lot. The old man here handled it for us.” His smile faded. “We figured the British would get used to our going out and coming in at all hours, our unloading fish and stretching our nets, and eventually they’d pay no attention to us.”

“And it didn’t work out?”

“It worked out fine. It worked out just the way we figured. We also thought if we tried to bring all our people from the camp and from the safe-houses at one time—most of them have been at an Allied camp outside of Rapallo like Felsdorf, except the British treated the camp as a concentration camp, not like the Americans at Felsdorf—the British would become suspicious and figure something was up. And search every boat in the area. So over three weeks ago we began bringing our people out, three or four at a time, putting them up here for a day, some in other houses, getting them on board one at a time at night—”

“Three weeks ago?”

Ben-Levi nodded somberly.

“That’s right. Some people have been living on that boat for over three weeks …”

“But, how—?”

Ben-Levi took a deep breath and went on.

“We picked the strongest, of course, or those with any carpentry ability, because they were the ones who finished the bunks and the kitchen and everything else. They’d take turns coming up on deck when we were out of sight of land, or when we couldn’t see any other ship. But when we got back to port they had to stay below, keeping quiet, not showing a light or making a sound …”

“Three weeks?”

“Yes. Some have been on board that long, some a few days less, some two weeks or more. And lately we’ve been bringing the women and children aboard. We thought we were ready to sail. The morale is getting low …”

Brodsky frowned. “How many people are on board right now?”

“About two hundred …”

“And why haven’t you sailed?”

“We’ve been in port two days, all set,” Wolf said bitterly, cutting in. “We have trouble with our engine, and our engineer is sick in the hospital. And nobody else knows a damn thing about the engine. Jews! If we needed accountants, we could float the ship to Palestine on balance sheets!”

“And we don’t dare bring in an outsider,” Ben-Levi said. “We can’t get out to sea to air the place out, or to dump our waste, or even to cook a decent meal. We have no electricity—the batteries ran down. We don’t even have a fan—it’s like an oven in there. It’s only a matter of time before the British begin to get suspicious and check out this ship that never sails, or never repairs its engine. Or until they even begin to smell us. Or,” he added bitterly, “until we have to bring some of the children out and get them into a hospital!”

“Where’s your captain?”

“At the hospital with our engineer right now. He’s all right at sea, but he isn’t an engineer. He sees to our supplies, which keeps him busy. He comes back to the boat every night.”

Brodsky frowned at the floor for several minutes while everyone waited for his opinion. He looked over at Grossman. “Ben, do you know anything about engines? Marine engines?”

Grossman hurriedly held up a hand.

“No! No! I’m not getting involved in this! Tomorrow I’m leaving for Switzerland. You and your boats and your Palestine and Zionism have nothing to do with me!” He looked aggrieved. “I’ve said that often enough, you know that.”

“I know,” Brodsky said quietly, “but you can’t get to Switzerland without money. You pretend to think you can, but we both know better. There are no free rides in Italy just by wearing a little cap with a few stripes on it. No free meals. No friendly truck drivers. The British are here in force, and you can’t speak either Italian or English. How far do you think you’d get? If you could have jumped the train in Bolzano or Trento, you couldn’t have made it. Make it from Genoa? Don’t make me laugh!”

Grossman felt himself get hot. “I—”

“You won’t get a mile out of this town without being picked up by the British or the Italians and deported back to Germany. Or put in a detainee camp. Look at you! Without me, you’d still be in Germany! You can’t even beg for food; you don’t know the words!”

“A truck driver gives you a lift and asks where you’re going,” Wolf said, getting into the act. “You think he’s offering you something to eat and you say ‘Salami.’ He takes you to Bologna.”

“Ben,” Brodsky said with finality, “without money you just can’t make it.” He slapped his forehead. “Why are you so stubborn?”

“I can get by,” Grossman said, but he didn’t sound so confident.

“‘By’ is right,” Wolf said. “You went by Switzerland once, you’ll go by it again.” He personally considered Grossman a shit to want money to help the Mossad, but he knew this was not the time to mention the fact.

Grossman considered, then looked up. “How much money?”

Brodsky looked at Davi Ben-Levi.

“Fifty American dollars,” Ben-Levi said without hesitation. “And a ride out of Genoa on a truck, as far as Tortona. That will get you well on your way. You can catch a train or a bus north with that much money, and have plenty left over.”

“What if I can’t fix the engine?”

Again Ben-Levi didn’t hesitate. “You’ll still get the fifty dollars, just for trying.”

Wolf looked irked; there was no expression at all on Brodsky’s face.

“And the ride to Tortona?”

“And the ride to Tortona.”

“What have I got to lose?”

“Nothing,” Wolf said bitterly. Only my respect, he added to himself, and you lost that a long time ago!

Grossman and Brodsky changed to outfits Ben-Levi had, similar to the ones he and Wolf were wearing. They were the clothing of fishermen, worn trousers stuffed into the tops of rubber boots, heavy sweaters that itched uncomfortably in the heat, and knitted caps that were greasy and smelled of fish. All the clothes smelled of fish, for that matter. An old man, summoned from the back of the house where he could be heard in altercation with his wife, disappeared with a toothless smile to reappear a few minutes later before the house, at the wheel of an ancient Chevrolet stake-body half-ton truck. The truck also stank of fish. The truck waited while they climbed in, shaking itself from side to side with ague. If this was the truck that was to take him to Tortona, Grossman thought, he would have to rebuild it in all probability to get them out of town.

The old man put it in neutral and let the truck coast down the steep Via Sclopis, gathering speed. It shot across the Piazza Sturla, narrowly missing an omnibus, two trucks, a wagon selling tortoni Napolitano, and a group of schoolchildren who scattered screaming before his wheels. He steered the truck into the Via Dei Mille without any visible concern and let it continue to coast at breakneck speed to the bottom and across into the Via Cinque Maggio, swinging the wheel negligently around a slower vehicle here and there, applying the accelerator only when his speed had diminished slightly on the level oceanside road. He turned and grinned at the men in the open stake body, speaking through what had once been an isinglass window of the cab but was now open space.

“Buono, no? Combustible costoso …”

It occurred to Grossman that for a few extra dollars the old man might be willing to take him all the way to Lago Maggiore; or he might agree to the trip for a motor tune-up, something the old truck could stand. Things were looking up once more! What was Brodsky always saying about his God? Well, it seemed his God had broken down their engine to help him, not the Jews. The thought made him smile and he stared out at the level sea, preferring its view to watching the traffic scatter as the old man bravely wound his way through it as fast as he could, the engine coughing and sputtering. There was no sign that the vehicle had any brakes at all, or at least the old man never applied them.

The truck coasted to a stop a bit off the road at a point where the coastal highway came closest to the cliffs leading precipitously down to the Portoccilio, the small port of Nervi. The old man remained behind to guard his truck against vandals or thieves while the four men climbed down the steep flight of rickety steps that led to the narrow shingle beach and the small pier below. There was only one ship there, which Grossman had to assume was the Naomi. He stared in disbelief. Two hundred people on that? The ship was no more than sixty or seventy feet long with a beam of less than fifteen feet, an old trawler with the general air of failure, with flaking paint, an ensign drooping in disgrace, and laying so low in the water that it appeared to be sinking in place. Grossman calculated quite correctly that it was not its load that made it so precariously low, but the fact that its bilge pumps were not working, or were not capable of containing the leakage if they were. The ship carried a small deckhouse forward, with a rooftop that may have once served as a flying bridge in better days, but whose railing had long since succumbed to high waves or rolling seas. On either side of the engine well that lay between splintered coamings aft of the deckhouse, davits angled out for securing the trawls. A narrow companionway led below from the confined space between the engine well and the deckhouse. The entire ship smelled of age and disaster.

The odor struck them as they climbed the narrow gangplank and stepped on deck. Any doubts Grossman had had about the capacity of the ship were dispelled; it had to take at least two hundred people to produce that stench. He tried to hold his breath as he walked to the engine well and looked down. The hatch had been removed and now leaned against the ship’s rail. He stepped down into the well; here at least the odor of diesel fuel overpowered the smell from below decks.

He bent over the engine, studying it. There was a sudden wail from below decks, brought from an open porthole, instantly muffled. He could imagine the heat below, and the discomfort; but that was no problem of his. Wolf and Brodsky had disappeared below. Above him Davi Ben-Levi waited and watched.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t know. Let me look a minute, will you?”

The engine was a four-stroke single-acting cross-head design, going back, he calculated, to the time of the First World War or earlier. Still, someone had given it rather decent care. The engine itself was spotless, the side rods shone, there was no puddle of lubrication oil in the well to expose either poor packing or sloppy consideration for the engine, the bearings holding the eccentrics to the crankshaft were snug and looked as if they had only recently been babbitted. He pressed the eccentrics back and forth, noting the solid feel as they refused to give. He looked up.

“Externally it seems all right. Exactly what seems to be the trouble?”

Ben-Levi shrugged. “It doesn’t start.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean. I’m telling you—you throw the lever over to start it and nothing happens. Mr. Grossman,” Ben-Levi said, “if we knew what the trouble was, we’d be halfway to Palestine by now.”

Which I doubt in this piece of junk, Grossman thought sourly, and bent back into the engine well again. He found the air line that fed the caps of the cylinders and began to trace it. It disappeared from the well, running under the deck planking in the general direction of the small cabin. He came to his feet and investigated. Inside the deck housing was an air receiver and off to one side an air compressor. The gauge on the receiver read zero. He walked to the bank of storage batteries and read the instruments, shaking his head at the ignorance of this bunch of amateurs who hoped to get to Palestine on this wreck of a ship; in his opinion they should not have been allowed to take a rowboat out on the Nekkar. He walked back to BenLevi, shaking his head.

“Without your diesel you can’t generate electricity. Without electricity you can’t run your air compressor. Without your air compressor, you can’t start your diesel. It’s that simple. Don’t you have any spare air? Who designed such a stupid system?”

Ben-Levi flushed. “Our engineer checked it out. He’s sick—”

“You’re probably better off without him. Someone drained the air receiver, God knows why—”

“Our what?”

“The tank that stores the compressed air.”

“We had to get some air down below. Some of the children were feeling faint. We ran a hose down from the tank—”

“And drained off any chance you had of starting the diesel. And now everyone below has been a lot worse off for the past two days. God, what colossal ignorance!”

“So we were ignorant,” Ben-Levi said, his face white. “What can we do now?”

“You can send the old man off for a tank of compressed air. Or a tank of oxygen, if he can’t get air. I can hook it up and get the diesel started, if there isn’t anything else wrong. With the diesel you can start your generator, and you’ll have electrical power, and compressed air, and fans and everything.”

“I’ll go with him right now!”

“Bring back two tanks,” Grossman said, “in case some idiot decides to drain that receiver again.”

“Right!” Ben-Levi said, and ran for the steps.

Grossman walked off the boat to wait, going down the beach to avoid that overpowering smell. It was as bad as Belsen. But at Belsen he had been unable to do anything to help; here he should have the problem resolved in a short time. There was satisfaction in that, and not just for the money or the ride the following morning. He was still an engineer; he could still do a job. Why couldn’t people understand that? It was the same challenge he had faced at Maidanek with the ovens and the gas chambers; he had only been resolving a problem. But they still would have tried him and hung him had they caught him. People just didn’t understand …

Brodsky came up in the growing darkness.

“Where’s Davi? What about the engine?”

“I think the engine is all right. Some idiot drained the air receiver just to get some air down below. Without air pressure the diesel won’t start. Some start on batteries, some by compressed air; this one starts on air. Not that it would make any difference; your batteries have been drained, too, using lights and fans and God knows what without the deisel.”

“And Davi?”

“He went to get some compressed-air tanks.”

“We’ll be all right after that?”

“I think so. Unless you’ve used all your fuel up for cooking, these past few days.”

Brodsky frowned. He hesitated a moment and then spoke slowly.

“Ben—”

“Yes?”

“We need someone to take the engineer’s place.”

Grossman laughed.

“Max, Max! If I were dying to go to Palestine, which you know I’m not, and if I were ten times the Zionist you are, which you know I’m not, you couldn’t get me on that boat. In fact, I wouldn’t get on it now if it wasn’t tied to the pier.” His smile faded. “Max, you’re crazy to attempt a trip like that in that piece of junk.”

“How do you know?” Brodsky sounded bitter. “You didn’t bother to even go below. All you saw was the engine.”

“I saw the ship lower in the water than it should be. Your bilges are full, your ship leaks. Oh, the pumps will help some, but the fact is that ship is not seaworthy. It’s suicide to go in it.”

Brodsky shrugged. “Then I guess we’ll all commit suicide.” He looked up at a shout from the top of the cliff; Davi was trying to start down the steps with one of the heavy tanks. Max dropped the conversation and hurried up the steps to help him.

They wrestled the two tanks down the cliff and aboard the ship. By the time everything was ready for Grossman to begin work it was dark and he had to do the job by the light of flashlights and the two kerosene lanterns the ship boasted. By nine o’clock he had made the necessary connections of the compressed-air tank to the cylinder heads; he held his breath as he opened the valve. There was a moment’s hesitation as the air rushed in, then slowly the diesel pistons began to move. One stroke and the engine caught, beginning to run. Grossman hurried to the deckhouse, watching the instruments on the electrical panel; when he was assured the generator output was normal, he put the air compressor into operation and watched the needle on the air receiver slowly begin to climb. He threw another switch and the ship’s lights came on; there was a small sound of relief from below decks, instantly checked. The fans began to circulate air again; there was the sound of a toilet being flushed as the pumps went back into action.

Grossman wiped his hands on a bit of waste. “You’re all set.” As far as the diesel is concerned, he thought, but as far as this piece of junk of a ship is concerned, you’re in deep trouble. He turned to Ben-Levi, who had watched every move he had made. “Never let the air pressure in the receiver go down. If you lose pressure for any reason, be sure and find out why. If it’s a broken line, replace it. Then get started again using the spare tank the way I got it started. In fact, you can recharge those air tanks from the receiver, once the pressure is up. It’s a simple connection.” He looked around at the faces watching him; their expressions demonstrated a combination of pleasure to have the diesel operating again together with doubt that they could keep it that way without technical help. Grossman spoke quickly to forestall any further attempt to draft him for the job of engineer. “You’ll be all right. When do you plan to leave?”

“As soon as possible,” Ben-Levi said. He took some money from his pocket, peeled off some bills, and handed them to Grossman. “I want to thank you. We all want to thank you. We’ll take you back to the house, get our things, and be off. You can stay there tonight—they’ll feed you, if the old lady doesn’t poison you—and tomorrow the old man will drive you to Tortona. I’ll tell him on the way back. And good luck.”

“Thanks. And good luck to you.”

“I’ll say good-bye to you here,” Wolf said. “Max will bring my things.” He grinned. “I don’t want to risk another trip in that truck if I can help it.” He held out his hand; Grossman shook it. He was surprised to think he would miss the little man.

“This time I’ll tell you what you told me once,” Grossman said, smiling. “Wolf—I hope you know how to swim.”

Wolf stared at him. “A sense of humor?” He looked around the ship, then sighed. “Well, maybe not.”

The darkened car was stationed on the shoulder of the main road, deep in the shadow of a notch cut in the mountainous road to allow room for the passage of trucks. Inside the car the two carabiniere spoke in whispers, although there was nobody within the sound of their voices.

“We should have found out where the boat was, and taken them all at the same time. The old lady said she heard them talking; she said there were hundreds of them. The British would have paid—!” He snapped his fingers to indicate how much the British would have paid.

“Except the old lady had no idea where the boat was,” the second one said. “All she knew is that it’s somewhere south of here. What good is that?”

“Then we should have taken them in the house.”

“And have them jumping out all the windows? And we end up with nobody?”

“If we had more men—”

“We would have had to divide the money more ways.” The second carabiniere frowned at his companion in the darkened car. “This way is better. We know they have to pass here. This way we’ll get the leaders; the British will find out from them where the boat is, all hundreds will be picked up, and we’ll still get paid for all of them. Relax.”

They waited in silence. A car came roaring up the highway from the south; they leaned forward and then back again. Their description of the truck was complete; surely in the Genoa area there couldn’t be two 1931 Chevrolet half-ton stake-body trucks painted purple.

One of the carabiniere reached for a cigarette; he had it to his lips before it was suddenly plucked from his mouth.

“No smoking! They see a lit cigarette in a parked car without lights—”

“They’ll think we’re lovers.” The first man chuckled and took the cigarette from his partner’s hand, putting it back in his mouth. And then froze before he had a chance to light it. The headlights of a small truck had come wavering around the curve ahead of them, one lamp pointing up and the other down. Even at that distance they could hear the clanking of the old engine.

“It’s them!”

The driver put the car in motion and drove slowly out into the highway without turning up his lights. His car effectively blocked the road.

The old man saw the shadow move into the road and stood on what was left of his brakes, fighting the wheel, screaming curses. He managed to swing the wheel to one side, running the truck slightly up the hillside to stop it. He flung open the door and got down, fuming.

“Ignorante! Stupido! Girando un automobile nelle strada senza badare! E senza luce!”

“Sta’zitto!”

The voice roared out of the darkness; lights suddenly flared from the car. The two carabiniere got down and advanced in the glare of their headlights, their batons swinging from their belts. The two came to stand beside the truck and motion to the three men in the back.

“All down!”

The three climbed down and stood beside the old man, who was muttering. “This is the work of my old lady! I’ll bet! When I get home—”

“Quiet! Your papers!”

The old man wet his lips, putting down his fury, smiling a bit, cringing subserviently.

“Who carries papers just to go for a little ride with friends? Look, sir, we’re only poor fishermen. Look at us, sir, you can see. We stopped for a glass of grappino—”

“Your papers!”

The old man sighed and dug into his pocket. He brought out a worn wallet, opening it and thrusting it before the policeman nearest him. The man took it and bent it toward the lights from the police car. He looked up, smiling grimly.

“You said you had no papers.”

The old man shrugged diffidently. “I’m sorry, sir, I forgot. I thought I had left them home in my other pants. But they’re all in order. May we go now?”

“You may not.” He shoved the old man’s wallet into the breast pocket of his uniform. “We’ll attend to you later. You!” He swung around to Ben-Levi. “Let’s see your papers.”

“Papers. Yes …” Ben-Levi reached into his pocket. His fingers fumbled there a moment and then came out with several folded bills. He held them out. “Will these papers do?”

The policeman counted the monev and then sneered.

“Two ten-dollar American bills? You must be joking!” He tucked the bills into his pocket and stared at Ben-Levi. “All right, now! Let’s see your papers!”

“If you insist,” Ben-Levi said, and reached into another pocket. He brought out a folder and snapped it open, holding it at arm’s length. The carabiniere moved to see it; Ben-Levi brought his other hand up and down in a vicious chop, smashing the man to the ground, unconscious.

“Run!”

The second policeman started to blow his whistle and Brodsky tore it from his lips, threw it as far as he could in the darkness, and knocked the man to the ground. The old man snatched his wallet from the pocket of the policeman on the ground, jumped into his truck, reversed it, and disappeared back toward Nervi without waiting for the others. Brodsky and Ben-Levi were running into the darkness along the cliff, beyond the scope of the fixed beams from the police car. Grossman tried to go the other way, back toward Genoa and the safe-house, but the second policeman staggered to his feet, his baton in his hand, swinging it viciously. He brought it up and smashed it across Grossman’s head, knocking him unconscious, and in the same motion stepped over his fallen victim to the carabiniere on the ground, dragging the whistle loose from around the other’s neck, and blowing upon it madly, furiously. If they had taken a regular police car instead of his partner’s own car, just so the other could collect expenses, he could be radioing for help now, instead of blowing his head off like a maniac!

Brodsky paused, panting, looking back. In the light of the car headlights he could see Grossman stretched out on the ground, unmoving. With a muttered curse, he turned back. The policeman was blowing the whistle at the top of his lungs, turning his head frantically in the direction of the city, looking for help. Brodsky came out of the darkness and felled the man, clubbing him in the head with all his force. The whistling stopped abruptly as the man collapsed in a heap over his fallen companion. Then Brodsky picked Grossman up in a fireman’s hold and was trotting with him as fast as he could back into the darkness.

There was the high thin sound of a siren rising and falling eerily in the distance, its shrill keening approaching. Someone must have telephoned, Brodsky thought, and slid over the edge of the cliff, hoping the slope at this point would be gentle. He tried to feel his way, bent over with Grossman a dead weight on his back; and then he was sliding, and then tumbling, and Grossman had been lost. Brodsky tried to brace himself, skidding, digging in his heels, trying to stop his precipitous descent with his fingers. He struck the bottom with a jar and then started to feel around for his friend, hoping the noise of his fall had not been noticed by anyone. Where was Grossman? He tried to look back up the cliff but the shadow there was complete. Could he have been caught on a bush or a tree? And how long would it be before the car with the siren had arrived and the cliffs would be swarming with men with flashlights? He went back the way he had come and then stumbled over something soft. It was Grossman. He bent over the still figure, putting his ear to the chest, listening for a heartbeat. It was there, strong and steady. He pulled the flaccid body closer to the base of the cliff and waited, sweating in the darkness.

The siren had paused at the site of the car blocking the road; the car was apparently being moved, and then the spotlight of the police car could be seen weaving about in the night, sliding from side to side of the road, searching for the fugitives. Men were now walking along the edge of the cliff, peering down, their strong flashlights bobbing as they walked and stopped and walked on again. Brodsky waited, pressed into the shadow of the cliff, hiding Grossman with his body, trying to control his breathing, positive his panting would be heard from above. The flashlights lit up the cliffside momentarily and then passed on; there was the sound of a car accelerating. The spotlight disappeared in the distance ahead. The foot searchers had apparently gotten back into the car, but Brodsky took no chances. It was a long time before he moved, and Grossman was still unconscious.

With a sigh the big man finally came to his feet and lifted his friend once again. He realized he was not familiar with the shore line and hoped he could reach the cove with the Naomi in it without having to climb the cliff again, hoped the beach did not run out into the sea, but continued giving footroom until the cove and the ship.

So close, he thought! He stumbled blindly through the coarse sand, holding Grossman in his arms, a dead weight, struggling through the beach in the deeper shadow at the base of the cliff. So close, and now this! That miserable old lady! Still, they had escaped, which was the main thing; and he was suddenly sure that Davi BenLevi had also evaded the search. His knapsack and the other things they had at the house were unimportant; what was important were people, and they were free. He glanced down at the man in his arms, unable to see anything but a bulking shadow in the darkness.

He smiled grimly. If this was God’s way of getting them an engineer, then Wolf was probably right. It seemed an awfully haphazard manner of fulfilling the assignment, no matter what!