The Keys of Hell

She leaned back and looked up at the stars. When she spoke, it was as if she were reciting a lesson hard-learned.

‘Paul Chavasse, born Paris 1928, father French, mother English. Educated at Sorbonne, Cambridge and Harvard universities. PhD Modern Languages, multilingual. University lecturer until 1954. Since then …’

Her voice trailed away and she looked at him thoughtfully. Chavasse lit a cigarette, no longer tired. ‘Since then … ?’

‘Well, you’re on the books as a Third Secretary, but you certainly don’t look like one.’

‘What would you say I did look like?’ he said calmly.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Someone who got about a lot.’ She swallowed some more champagne and said casually, ‘How was Albania? I was surprised you made it out in one piece. When the Tirana connection went dead, we wrote you off.’

She started to laugh again, her head back, and behind Chavasse a voice said, ‘Is she giving you a hard time, Paul?’

Murchison, the First Secretary, limped across the terrace. He was a handsome, urbane man, his face bronzed and healthy, the bar of medals a splash of bright colour on the left breast of his jacket.

‘Let’s say she knows rather too much about me for my personal peace of mind.’

‘She should,’ Murchison said. ‘Francesca works for the Bureau. She was your radio contact last week. One of our best operatives.’

Chavasse turned. ‘You were the one who relayed the message from Scutari warning me to get out fast?’

She bowed. ‘Happy to be of service.’

Before Chavasse could continue, Murchison took him firmly by the arm. ‘Now don’t start getting emotional, Paul. Your boss has just got in and he wants to see you. You and Francesca can talk over old times later.’

Chavasse squeezed her hand. ‘That’s a promise. Don’t go away.’

‘I’ll wait right here,’ she assured him, and he turned and followed Murchison inside.

They moved through the crowded ballroom into the entrance hall, passed the two uniformed footmen at the bottom of the grand staircase and mounted to the first floor.

The long, thickly carpeted corridor was quiet, and the music echoing from the ballroom might have been from another world. They went up half a dozen steps, turned into a shorter side passage and paused outside a white-painted door.

‘In here, old man,’ Murchison said. ‘Try not to be too long. We’ve a cabaret starting in half an hour. Really quite something, I promise you.’

He moved back along the passage, his footsteps silent on the thick carpet, and Chavasse knocked on the door, opened it and went in.

The room was a small, plainly furnished office, its walls painted a neutral shade of green. The young woman who sat at the desk writing busily was attractive in spite of her dark, heavy-rimmed library spectacles.

She glanced up sharply and Chavasse smiled. ‘Surprise, surprise.’

Jean Frazer removed her spectacles. ‘You look like hell. How was Albania?’

‘Tiresome,’ Chavasse said. ‘Cold, wet and with the benefits of universal brotherhood rather thinly spread on the ground.’ He sat on the edge of the desk and helped himself to a cigarette from a teak box. ‘What brings you and the old man out here? The Albanian affair wasn’t all that important.’

‘We had a NATO intelligence meeting in Bonn. When we got word that you were safely out, the Chief decided to come to Rome to take your report on the spot.’

‘Nice try,’ Chavasse said. ‘The old bastard wouldn’t have another job lined up for me, would he? Because if he has, he can damn well think again.’

‘Why not ask him?’ she said. ‘He’s waiting for you now.’

She nodded towards a green baize door. Chavasse looked at it for a moment, sighed heavily and crushed his cigarette into the ashtray.

The inner room was half in shadow, the only light a shaded lamp on the desk. The man who stood at the window gazing out at the lights of Rome was of medium height, the face somehow ageless, a strange, brooding expression in the dark eyes.

‘Here we are again,’ Chavasse said softly.

The Chief turned, took in Chavasse’s appearance and nodded. ‘Glad to see you back in one piece, Paul. I hear things were pretty rough over there.’

‘You could say that.’

The older man moved to his chair and sat down. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘Albania?’ Chavasse shrugged. ‘We’re not going to do much there. No one can pretend the people have gained anything since the Communists took over at the end of the war, but there’s no question of a counter-revolution even getting started. The Sigurmi, the secret police, are everywhere. I’d say they must be the most extensive in Europe.’

‘You went in using that Italian Communist Party Friendship cover, didn’t you?’

‘It didn’t do me much good. The Italians in the party accepted me all right, but the trouble started when we reached Tirana. The Sigurmi assigned an agent to each one of us and they were real pros. Shaking them was difficult enough, and the moment I did, they smelt a rat and put out a general call for me.’

‘What about the Freedom Party? How extensive are they?’

‘You can start using the past tense as of last week. When I arrived, they were down to two cells. One in Tirana, the other in Scutari. Both were still in contact with our Bureau operation here in Rome.’

‘Did you manage to contact the leader, this man Luci?’

‘Only just. The night we were to meet to discuss things, he was mopped up by the Sigurmi. Apparently, they were all over his place, waiting for me to show my hand.’

‘And how did you manage to get out of that one?’

‘The Scutari cell got a radio signal from Luci as the police were breaking in. They relayed it to Bureau Headquarters here in Rome. Luckily for me, they had a quick thinker on duty – a girl named Francesca Minetti.’

‘One of our best people at this end,’ the Chief said. ‘I’ll tell you about her one of these days.’

‘My back way out of Albania was a motor launch called the Buona Esperanza, run by a man named Guilio Orsini. He’s quite a boy. Was one of the original torpedo merchants with the Italian Navy during the war. His best touch was when he sank a couple of our destroyers in Alexandria harbour back in ’41. Got out again in one piece, too. He’s a smuggler now. Runs across to Albania a lot. His grandmother came from there.’

‘As I recall the original plan, he was to wait three nights running in a cove near Durres. That’s about thirty miles by road from Tirana, isn’t it?’

Chavasse nodded. ‘When Francesca Minetti got the message from Scutari, she took a chance and put it through to Orsini on his boat. The madman left his crewman in charge, landed, stole a car in Durres and drove straight to Tirana. He caught me at my hotel as I was leaving for the meeting with Luci.’

‘Getting back to the coast must have been quite a trick.’

‘We did run into a little trouble. Had to do the last ten miles on foot through coastal salt marshes. Not good with the hounds on your heels, but Orsini knew what he was doing. Once we were on board the Buona Esperanza, it was easy. The Albanians don’t have much of a navy. Half a dozen minesweepers and a couple of sub-chasers. The Buona Esperanza has ten knots on any one of them.’

‘It would seem that Orsini is due for a bonus on this one.’

‘That’s putting it mildly.’

The Chief nodded, opened the file that contained Chavasse’s report and leafed through it. ‘So we’re wasting our time in Albania?’