The Lovers Page 7

  ‘Nothing unusual in that, gentlemen. Mr Molloy doesn’t waste words. When he wants something done, he’ll tell me. If he wants me to know the why of it, he’ll tell me that too. I’ve always been comfortable with that kind of skipper.’

  ‘And from what he tells us,’ said Farnese blandly, ‘he is equally comfortable with you. Thank you again, Mr Cavanagh.’

  ‘Think about my advice, young man,’ Galeazzi insisted quietly. ‘You have a good mind. It would be a pity to waste it . . . Goodnight.’

  Cavanagh waited while their footfalls receded along the deck and were finally cut off by the closing of the heavy bulkhead door into the saloon. Then he lifted the intercom and buzzed the signal to Lenore Pritchard’s cabin – one short, one long – repeated three times. Miss Pritchard might not grasp the irony, but Molloy most certainly would: in Morse code the signal meant, ‘Full stop. Period. End of conversation’. It was perhaps a subtle piece of wit to waste upon a man sated with sex; but Cavanagh himself had wit enough to know that Molloy’s own games in this love match were only beginning, and that like it or lump it, Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh was one of the pawns on the board.

  At four in the morning Lou Molloy came to the bridge, freshly shaved, clear-eyed and smiling, smelling of bath soap and after-shave. He carried two mugs of black coffee and a basket of hot croissants. His greeting was cordial if a shade theatrical:

  ‘The top of the morning to you Mr Cavanagh. I trust you had an easy night. If you’ll show me where we’re at I’ll take over the watch, while you drink your coffee in peace.’

  Cavanagh recited the helmsman’s litany: course, speed, position.

  ‘. . . Fifteen miles from the light, sir. The loom is visible now. The radar gives us a clear picture of the approach to Calvi. There are no hazards. We should have anchors down at 0600 hours, as near as be-damned. I’ve spoken to the harbour-master’s office by radio. No pratique is necessary for vessels coming directly from mainland France or Monte Carlo . . . I’ve signed off the log, as you see.’

  ‘Tired?’

  ‘No. I’ll wait up until we enter harbour. Everything is new to me. I don’t want to miss any part of it.’

  ‘In that case, I’d like a chat with you.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Any problem about that?’

  ‘None. What’s the subject of discussion?’

  ‘Last night’s little party. You handled yourself very well. I owe you one.’

  ‘It was on the house.’ Cavanagh was studiously casual.

  ‘Whatever.’ Molloy gave him a conspirator’s grin. ‘I like your little touch on the buzzer: dit-dah, dit-dah, dit-dah. It made – what do you call it in music? – a nice coda to the evening. Very dramatic.’

  Cavanagh sipped his coffee and reached for a croissant. Molloy gave him a long, searching look then challenged him.

  ‘I take it you don’t approve of my shenanigans?’

  ‘No comment.’ Cavanagh bristled with sudden anger. ‘I thought we finished this discussion yesterday. This is your ship, your world. They run to your rules. I don’t question that. Now may we drop the subject?’

  ‘Sure. You seem to have grasped the elements of it very well. We pass to the second item.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Immediately after breakfast, I want you to take a message ashore for me and bring me back the answer. It’s a private matter, so you’ll go alone. You may have company on the way back.’

  ‘It sounds simple enough.’

  ‘It is. It’s also very important.’

  ‘In that case, I have a request.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Don’t tell me anything more than I need to know. That way, if anyone questions me I don’t have to lie and there’s no chance of my dropping an unguarded word about your private business.’

  ‘That would make good sense for both of us. Now let me ask you a question. How well are you read in recent church history?’

  ‘How recent?’

  ‘The last twenty years.’

  Cavanagh laughed in genuine amusement.

  ‘What could I know, for Christ’s sake? I stepped straight from college into naval training and war service. For four years after my discharge I was chasing a buck, an education in law, and women – in that order . . . I haven’t even begun to fill all the gaps in my experience and education.’

  ‘I like that. I like it a lot!’ There was genuine pleasure in Molloy’s tone. ‘No better pupil than a man who knows the depth of his own ignorance. It’ll be my great pleasure to give you some personal instruction, beginning now. We’ve got the best part of two hours of plain sailing and since you’re waiting up, let’s talk about the two gentlemen you had on the bridge. Count Galeazzi is officially known as the “Architect of the Sacred Apostolic Palaces”. That, of itself, makes him an important man, a high Vatican official. However, and much more significantly, he is an old friend and adviser to the Holy Father. Because he’s a layman, he is not bound by clerical constraints and he deals, at the highest levels, with banks and other financial institutions all round the world. He is also Giulia’s godfather – although that’s not the reason he’s on board now. Prince Farnese, Giulia’s father, is head of one of the old papal families. He is a consultor to the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State. He is connected to most of the old Catholic aristocracies of Europe. That’s the circle I’m marrying into: old families, old alliances, Vatican politics. Let me tell you Cavanagh, I’ve had to do some very fast study to bring myself half-way up to pace with these people. They need me; but they think they can bend me to all their purposes. They’re wrong! I don’t have any illusions about them. I’m important to them only because I’m one of their lifelines to the power and the money and the political networks of the United States. Also they trust the Irish. We’re like the Poles – undiluted Catholics, with all our prejudices intact. We’re totally impervious to reason or the virus of the Reformation. Spelly taught me that – Francis Cardinal Spellman – God bless his cotton socks and his devious Irish soul. He also taught me that the only loyalties you can count on in Rome are those you buy on the instalment plan – because you know they’ll stay bought until the last instalment is paid. And the most important lesson of all perhaps, was the one he repeated over and over: “Lou, this Church of ours, Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic, is an empire, bigger and more complicated than the Roman or the British or any other in the last two thousand years. You can live in it for a lifetime, as I have, and never figure out the complexities of it and the conflicts and contradictions that go on within it every day. How do you cope? I’ll tell you. You make your profession your faith, loud and clear, and you make sure everybody hears it. That makes you part-way safe. Nobody can accuse you of heresy or schism – no matter what else they can cite against you. Next you come out hot and strong against the Communists. They’re the real Antichrist, and the Holy Father is committed to a worldwide crusade against ’em. The United States is in the forefront of that crusade, with the President and Joe McCarthy and John Foster Dulles and me too, by God! With those two points on the board, you’re half-way to winning. But,” says Spelly, “when you get to Rome, you have two other rules to learn: never assume that what you see is what is; never believe that what you’re told is the whole truth. It’s only when you’ve grasped that – and the Romans know you’ve grasped it – that you begin to win respect and make progress . . .” Do you understand what I’m telling you, now?’

  ‘I think I do.’ Cavanagh gave him an embarrassed grin. ‘But I’m asking whether it’s worth walking such a long way round to get the eggs. I’m a simple soul. I learned my first religion from the penny catechism – and asked my first real questions when a torpedo hit us and I lost four shipmates. I have no intention of marrying into the Almanach de Gotha or staying celibate and getting my name in the Annuario Pontificio as a household prelate!’

  ‘The latter I can understand.’ Molloy laughed. ‘The Almanach de Gotha? Don’t knock it Cavanagh!
You’re young yet and you’ve still to learn how many secret rooms the law can open to you. A simple soul is it? I hope I’m not around when you discover how devious you really can become. Anyway let’s finish your briefing for this morning’s excursion.’ He pulled the note pad towards him and began to jot down the names for Cavanagh. ‘First item: you go ashore and walk to the Café Aleria in the square. You’ll find a man sitting alone at one of the sidewalk tables. He’ll be drinking a Pernod and reading a copy of yesterday’s Nice-Matin. He’s American. He answers to the name of Jordan. You tell him Lou Molloy sent you and that you’ll pick him up on the way back. Grab a taxi and head out to the Mas de la Balagne, which is a farm about half-way to Île Rousse. At the Mas you ask for a man called Sampiero Paoli.’

  ‘Let’s hold it there a moment. What language are we speaking? The name is obviously Italian.’

  ‘The family is old Corsican. The language is Corsican dialect, or French.’

  ‘Who am I? How do I identify myself?’

  ‘You’re nobody, a messenger, a mail-man. You hand over a letter. You wait for the answer.’

  ‘Which should be.’

  ‘A man, a Frenchman. You deliver him to Jordan and bring them both back to the Salamandra.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘That’s it. Any problems?’

  ‘No problems, just a question.’

  ‘Ask it.’

  ‘Why the double shuffle? You need me to drive the boat, sure; but why do you need a go-between to deliver an envelope and pick up a live body?’

  ‘I quote,’ said Lou Molloy, softly. ‘I quote verbatim, from young Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh himself. “Don’t tell me anything more than I need to know. Don’t explain who, why or wherefore . . .” Did I get it right?’

  ‘You did, Mr Molloy. I must be wearier than I thought. If you’ll excuse me I’ll take the coffee mugs down to the galley, then freshen myself up with a shower and a shave.’

  ‘If you need to get laid as well,’ said Molloy cheerfully, ‘call on Lenore. She’ll oblige you any time. I like to keep a happy ship. Remember that Cavanagh! A happy ship!’

  From the deck of the Salamandra d’Oro the harbour of Calvi looked like a large, land-locked lake, surrounded by broad sandy beaches, with the old town tucked into the north-east corner out of reach of the winds. The flat hinterlands of the Balagne were closely farmed, with olive groves, orchards of citrus, almonds and peaches, plots of vegetables, and flocks of goats grazing on the coarse pastures near the seashore. It looked peaceful and prosperous, but Galeazzi, in his trenchant fashion, pronounced it ‘. . . unhappy, unhealthy and economically unsound. Italy occupied it during the war with eighty thousand troops. The Germans sent in about fifteen thousand. Their casualties from malaria were much higher than their combat losses. The population has been halved since 1936 by emigration and, although they’ve got rid of the anopheles mosquito, the place is still rent by family feuds and vendettas. Most of the criminal activities of the French Riviera are run by Corsican families . . . If the place has a future at all, it must be in tourist development . . .’

  Which raised again for Cavanagh the elementary question of why they had come here. No one else was going ashore. The boys had put out the swimming ladders and stretched the sun awnings on the afterdeck. Molloy had given him what he had been pleased to call ‘the envelope’, which was in fact a flat sack of unbleached cotton, containing unspecified materials, taped like an old-fashioned poultice around his chest and covered by his shirt. Cavanagh protested mildly.

  ‘It’s bloody uncomfortable and it makes me feel foolish, as though I’ve strayed into a B-movie.’

  ‘You’d feel a lot more foolish if you dropped it in the water or left it in the taxi.’

  ‘Aye, aye sir!’ said Cavanagh glumly, and made his way to the waiting dinghy. He was ashore within a couple of minutes and tied up at the little stone jetty near the fishing basin.

  The town itself was already as hot as an oven. The striped awning of the Café Aleria provide a small relief from the glare, but none from the eddies of hot, dusty air that rose from the cobbled sidewalk.

  The café was clearly a resort for local fishermen who had wisely occupied the shady interior. The solitary fellow drinking Pernod at a sidewalk table looked like Marcello Mastroianni with a crew-cut. He was dressed in cotton slacks and shirt and a pair of local espadrilles, and he had an engaging schoolboy smile. Cavanagh approached him and put the question:

  ‘Are you Mr Jordan?’

  ‘I am.’ The accent was eastern seaboard USA.

  ‘I’m from the Salamandra d’Oro. Mr Molloy sends his compliments.’

  ‘That’s nice; but I hope you’ll be bringing me more than compliments.’

  ‘I’ll bring what I’m given. Those are the only instructions I have. You’ll be waiting here?’

  ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘Where can I pick up a taxi?’

  ‘You have to telephone.’ He flipped Cavanagh a jeton. ‘Inside the bar. The number’s just above the telephone.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  The taxi took ten minutes to arrive and was driven by a laconic fellow with dark, greased hair, a drooping moustache and a leery eye. The vehicle and the driver stank of stale Gauloises: Cavanagh wound down the window, stuck his head out into the slipstream and prayed he wouldn’t be sick.

  The Mas de la Balagne was about five miles out of Calvi. It was approached by a driveway which wound through an impressive avenue of old chestnut trees to a stone farmhouse built four-square around a cobbled courtyard with a double door of ancient hewn timber. Outside the door was a rusted bell, mounted on a wooden pillar. Cavanagh rang the bell, which had a cracked, discordant sound. A few moments later, an elderly woman appeared in the doorway at the far side of the courtyard and beckoned him to come to her. By the time he reached the door she had disappeared and in her place stood a dark, stocky fellow with greying hair and no trace of a welcoming smile. He asked in French:

  ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘I have a message for Sampiero Paoli.’

  ‘I am Paoli. What’s the message?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m wearing it under my shirt.’ He opened the buttons of his shirt to display the cotton envelope. ‘May I come in?’

  The stocky one stood aside to let him enter a big stone-flagged kitchen with a long, scarred table, a carving block made from a tree trunk, onions and leeks hanging from the beams and a big iron stewpot steaming on an old, black, wood oven. Cavanagh stripped off his shirt, peeled the strapping from his body and handed the fabric envelope to Paoli. He said:

  ‘I was told there would be an answer.’

  ‘Wait here. There’s wine on the table. Help yourself.’

  He walked out carrying the package and a long, pointed knife which he picked up from the carving block. Cavanagh crossed to the table and poured himself a cup of wine from an earthenware pitcher. It was white and cool but rough and unwelcoming as the country itself. The first mouthful gave him heartburn, so he sipped the rest of it slowly and carefully. He was almost at the dregs of the cup when Paoli came back, empty handed. He asked:

  ‘What did you think of our wine?’

  ‘It’s rough,’ said Cavanagh with a grin, ‘very rough.’

  ‘It’s rough country.’ A faint flicker of humour lit up his dour features and he beckoned Cavanagh to follow him through the rear door of the kitchen, down a long passageway that gave onto a stretch of cultivated land. Beyond the plots were a series of hillocks rising to a low escarpment. Paoli pointed upwards:

  ‘It is necessary to walk a little.’

  They walked perhaps half a mile, winding through the first low mounds, then climbing to the plateau of the escarpment. There, dark against the sky, stood three dolmens, each a flat slab of stone resting upon huge, rough-hewn uprights. Cavanagh stared at them in amazement, groping through the ragbag of memory for fragments of archaeology. He asked Pao
li:

  ‘What are these?’

  ‘We call them the table-stones. They are the burying places of the ancient people. There are many such, all over the island. Since the war, more and more scholars are coming to study them.’

  He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted in French:

  ‘Holà Tolvier! Your man has arrived!’

  There was a brief period of silence, then a man emerged from the shadow of the furthest dolmen. He was dressed in rough peasant clothes and he carried a shotgun. He approached with slow, cautious steps. His voice was harsh and hostile.

  ‘Hands up. Palms towards me.’

  Cavanagh raised his hands slowly. He turned to Paoli.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘This is the answer to your message. You’re taking him back to Calvi.’

  Cavanagh turned back to the armed man. Suddenly and irrationally he was angry. He shouted in French:

  ‘I’m putting my hands down. If you want to shoot, go ahead. I’m unarmed. I was sent to fetch you. Only a damned fool kills the messenger before he’s heard the message.’

  Tolvier lowered the gun and took a few more steps towards them. He demanded curtly:

  ‘What’s the message?’

  ‘You are to come back to Calvi with me. There’s a man called Jordan waiting for you at the Café Aleria. If you’re the man he’s expecting, I’m taking you both out to the Salamandra d’Oro, which is a motor vessel registered in the United States. That’s all the orders I have.’

  ‘And this Jordan?’

  ‘He could be a man from Mars. I think he’s American. I had thirty seconds’ conversation with him.’

  Tolvier turned to Paoli.

  ‘Is this true?’

  Paoli shrugged.

  ‘The money has been paid. This fellow delivered it. What more can I tell you? I kept my part of the bargain. Now you have to make your own decisions.’

  Tolvier stood for a moment, looking from one to the other. Then he snapped the safety catch on the shotgun and tossed it to Paoli. To Cavanagh he said abruptly: