Alistair Maclean by Partisans (V1.1)

Author:Partisans (V1.1) [Txt] [Partisans (V1.1) [Txt]]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

FIVE

It was three-thirty in the morning when Petersen woke. His watch said so. He should not have been able to see his watch because he had switched the light off before going to sleep. It was no longer off but it wasn’t the light that had wakened him, it was something cold and hard pressed against his right cheekbone. Careful not to move his head. Petersen swivelled his eyes to take in the man who held the gun and was sitting on a chair beside the bed. Dressed in a well-cut grey suit, he was in his early thirties, had a neatly trimmed black moustache of the type made famous by Ronald Col-man before the war, a smooth clear complexion, an engaging smile and very pale blue, very cold eyes. Petersen reached across a slow hand and gently deflected the barrel of the pistol.

‘You need to point that thing at my head? With three of your fellow-thugs armed to the teeth?’

There were indeed three other men in the bedroom. Unlike their leader they were a scruffy and villainous looking lot, dressed in vaguely para-military uniforms but their appearance counted little against the fact that each carried a machine-pistol.

‘Fellow thugs?’ The man on the chair looked pained. That makes me a thug too?’

‘Only thugs hold pistols against the heads of sleeping men.’

‘Oh, come now, Major Petersen. You have the reputation of being a highly dangerous and very violent man. How are we to know that you are not holding a loaded pistol in your hand under that blanket?’

Petersen slowly withdrew his right hand from under the blanket and turned up his empty palm. ‘It’s under my pillow.’

‘Ah, so.’ The man withdrew the gun. ‘One respects a professional.’

‘How did you get in? My door was locked.’

‘Signer Pijade was most cooperative.’ “Pijade” was Josip’s surname.

‘Was he now?’

‘You can’t trust anyone these days.’

‘I’ve found that out, too.’

‘I begin to believe what people say of you. You’re not worried, are you? You’re not even concerned about who I might be.’

‘Why should I be. You’re no friend. That’s all that matters tome.’

‘I may be no friend. Or I may. I .don’t honestly know yet. I’m Major Cipriano. You may have heard of me.’

‘I have. Yesterday, for the first time. I feel sorry for you, Major, I really do, but I wish I were elsewhere. I’m one of those sensitive souls who feel uncomfortable in hospital wards. In the presence of the sick, I mean.’

‘Sick?’ Cipriano looked mildly astonished but the smile remained. ‘Me? I’m as fit as a fiddle.’

‘Physically, no doubt. Otherwise a cracked fiddle and one sadly out of tune. Anyone who works as a hatchet-man for that evil and sadistic bastard, General Granelli, has to be sick in the mind: and anyone who employs as his hatchet-man the psychopathic poisoner, Alessandro, has to be himself a sadist, a candidate for a maximum-security lunatic asylum.’

‘Ah, so! Alessandro.’ Cipriano was either not a man easily to take offence or, if he did, too clever to show it.

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