There are boats and boats. The Queen Elizabeth is a boat. So was the thing I rowed one August afternoon on the lake in Central Park, with Lily Rowan lolling in the stern, to win a bet. Guido Battista’s craft, which took us across the Adriatic, was in between those two but was a much closer relative of the latter than of the former. It was twelve meters long, thirty-nine feet. It had not been thoroughly cleaned since the days when the Romans had used it to hijack spices from Levantine bootleggers, but had been modernized by installing an engine and propeller. One of my occupations en route was trying to figure out exactly where the galley slaves had sat, but it was too much for me.
We shoved off at three p.m. Monday, the idea being to land on the opposite shore at midnight or not long after. That seemed feasible until I saw the Cispadana, which was her name. To expect that affair to navigate 170 miles of open water in nine hours was so damn fantastic that I could make no adequate remark and so didn’t try. It took her nine hours and twenty minutes.
Wolfe and I had stuck to the stuccoed hideout, but it had been a busy night and day for Telesio. After listening to Wolfe’s plan, opposing it on various grounds, and finally giving in because Wolfe wouldn’t, he had gone again for Guido and brought him, and Wolfe and Guido had reached an understanding. Telesio had left with Guido, and I suppose he got a nap somewhere, but before noon Monday he was back with a carload. For me to choose from he had four pairs of pants, three sweaters, four jackets, an assortment of shirts, and five pairs of shoes; and about the same for Wolfe. They weren’t new, except the shoes, but they were clean and whole. I picked them more for fit than looks, and ended up with a blue shirt, maroon sweater, dark green jacket, and light gray pants. Wolfe was tastier, with yellow, brown, and dark blue.
The knapsacks weren’t new either, and none too clean, but we wiped them out and went ahead and packed. At the first try I was too generous with socks and underwear and had to back up and start over. In between roars of laughter, Telesio gave me sound advice: to ditch the underwear entirely, make it two pairs of socks, and cram in all the chocolate it would hold. Wolfe interpreted the advice for me, approved it, and followed it himself. I had expected another squabble about armament, but quite the contrary. In addition to being permitted to wear the Marley in the holster, I was provided with a Colt.38 that looked like new, and fifty rounds for it. I tried it in my jacket pocket, but it was too heavy, so I shifted it to my hip. I was also offered an eight-inch pointed knife, shiny and sharp, but turned it down. Telesio and Wolfe both insisted, saying there might be a situation where a knife would be much more useful than a gun, and I said not for me because I would be more apt to stick myself than the foe. “If a knife is so useful,” I challenged Wolfe, “why don’t you take one yourself?”
“I’m taking two,” he replied; and he did. He put one in a sheath on his belt, and strapped a shorter one to his left leg just below his knee. That gave me a better idea of the kind of party we were going to, since in all the years I had known him he had never borne any weapon but a little gold penknife. The idea was made even clearer when Telesio took two small plastic tubes from his pocket and handed one to Wolfe and one to me. Wolfe frowned at it and asked him something, and they talked.
Wolfe turned to me. “He says the capsule inside the tube is a lullaby — a jocose term, I take it, for cyanide. He said for an emergency. I said we didn’t want them. He said that last month some Albanians, Russian agents, had a Montenegrin in a cave on the border for three days and left him there. When his friends found him the joints of all his fingers and toes had been broken, and his eyes had been removed, but he was still breathing. Paolo says he can furnish details of other incidents if we want them. Do you know what to do with a cyanide capsule?”
“Certainly. Everybody does.”
“Where are you going to carry it?”
“My God, give me a chance. I never had one before. Sew it inside my sweater?”
“Your sweater might be gone.”
“Tape it under my armpit.”
“Too obvious. It would be found and taken.”
“Okay, it’s your turn. Where will you carry yours?”
“In my handiest pocket. Threatened with seizure and search, in my hand. Threatened more imminently, the capsule out of the tube and into my mouth. It can be kept in the mouth indefinitely if it is not crushed with the teeth. The case against carrying it is the risk of being stampeded into using it prematurely.”
“I’ll take the chance.” I put the tube in my pocket. “Anyway, if you did that you’d never know it, so why worry?”
The lullabies completed our equipment.
It was considered undesirable for Telesio to be seen delivering us at the waterfront, so we said good-by there, with the help of a bottle of wine, and then he took us in the Fiat to the center of town, let us out, and drove away. We walked a block to a cab stand. I guess we weren’t half as conspicuous as I thought we were, but the people of Bari didn’t have the basis for comparison that I had. To think of Wolfe as I knew him best, seated in his custom-built chair behind his desk, prying the cap from a bottle of beer, a Laeliocattleya Jaquetta sporting four flowers to his left and a spray of Dendrobium nobilius to his right; and then to look at him tramping along in blue pants, yellow shirt, and brown jacket, with a blue sweater hanging over his arm and a bulging old knapsack on his back — I couldn’t help being surprised that nobody turned to stare at him. Also, in that getup, I regarded myself as worth a glance, but none came our way. The hackie showed no sign of interest when we climbed into his cab and Wolfe told him where to go. His attitude toward obstacles was somewhat similar to Telesio’s, but he got us into the old city and through its narrow winding streets to the edge of a wharf without making contact. I paid him and followed Wolfe out, and had my first view of the Cispadana sitting alongside the wharf.
Guido, standing there, left a man he was talking to and came to Wolfe. Here where he belonged he looked more probable than in the pink living room. He was tall, thin except his shoulders, and stooped some, and moved like a cat. He had told Wolfe he was sixty years old, but his long hair was jet black. The hair on his face was gray and raised questions. It was half an inch long. If he never shaved why wasn’t it longer? If he did shave, when? I would have liked to ask him after we got acquainted, but we weren’t communicating.
Telesio had said that with the three hundred bucks I had forked over he would take care of everything — our equipment, Guido, and a certain waterfront party — and apparently he had. I don’t know what kind of voyage it was supposed to be officially, but no one around seemed to be interested. A couple of characters stood on the wharf and watched as we climbed aboard, and two others untied us and shoved the bow off when Guido had the engine going and gave the sign, and we slid away. I supposed one or both of them would jump on as we cleared, but they didn’t. Wolfe and I were seated in the cockpit.
“Where’s the crew?” I asked him.
He said Guido was the crew.
“Just him?”
“Yes.”
“Good God. I’m not a mariner. When the engine quits or something else, who steers?”
“I do.”
“Oh. You are a mariner.”
“I have crossed this sea eighty times.” He was working at the buckle of a knapsack strap. “Help me get this thing off.”
My tongue was ready with a remark about a man of action who had to have help to doff his knapsack, but I thought I’d better save it. If the engine did quit, and a squall hit us, and he saved our lives with a display of masterly seamanship, I’d have to eat it.
Nothing happened at all the whole way. The engine was noisy, but that was all right; the point was, it never stopped being noisy. No squall. Late in the afternoon clouds began coming over from the east, and a light wind started up, but not enough to curl the water. I even took a nap, stretched out on a cockpit seat. A couple of times, when Guido went forward on errands, Wolfe took the wheel, but there was no call for seamanship. The third time was an hour before sundown, and Wolfe went and propped himself on the narrow board, put a hand on the wheel, and was motionless, looking ahead. Looking that way, the water was blue, but looking back, toward the low sun over Italy, it was gray except where the sun’s rays bounced out of it at us. Guido was gone so long that I stepped down into the cabin to see what was up, and found him stirring something in an old black pot on an alcohol stove. I couldn’t ask him what, but a little later I found out, when he appeared with a pair of battered old plates heaped with steaming spaghetti smothered with sauce. I had been wondering, just to myself, about grub. He also brought wine, naturally, and a tin pail filled with green salad. It wasn’t quite up to Wolfe’s production the day before, but Fritz himself wouldn’t have been ashamed of the salad dressing, and it was absolutely a meal. Guido took the wheel while Wolfe and I ate, and then Wolfe went back to it and Guido went to the cabin to eat. He told us he didn’t like to eat in the open air. Having smelled the inside of the cabin, I could have made a comment but didn’t. By the time he came out it was getting dark, and he lighted the running lights before he went back to the wheel. The clouds had scattered around, so there were spaces with stars, and Guido began to sing and kept it up. With all the jolts I had had the past two days, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Wolfe had joined in, but he didn’t.
It had got pretty chilly, and I took off my jacket, put on the sweater, and put the jacket back on. I asked Wolfe if he didn’t want to do the same, and he said no, he would soon be warming up with exercise. A little later he asked what time it was, my wristwatch having a luminous dial, and I told him ten past eleven. Suddenly the engine changed its tune, slowing down, and I thought uh-huh, I knew it, but it kept going, so evidently Guido had merely throttled down. Soon after that he spoke to Wolfe, and Wolfe went to the wheel while Guido went to douse the lights and then returned to his post. There wasn’t a glimmer anywhere on the boat. I stood up to look ahead, and I have damn good eyes, but I had just decided that if there should be anything ahead I wouldn’t see it anyway, when I saw something pop up to shut off a star.
I turned to Wolfe. “This is Guido’s boat, and he’s running it, but we’re headed straight for something big.”
“Certainly we are. Montenegro.”
I looked at my watch. “Five after twelve. Then we’re on time?”
“Yes.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic. “Will you please help me with this thing?”
I went and helped him on with his knapsack and then got mine on. After a little the engine changed tune again, slower and much quieter. The thing ahead was a lot higher and had spread out at the sides, and it kept going up. When it was nearly on top of us Guido left the wheel, ran in and killed the engine, came out and glided around the cabin to the bow, and in a moment there was a big splash. He came gliding back and untied the ropes that lashed the dinghy to the stern. I helped him turn the dinghy over, and we slid it into the water and pulled it alongside. This maneuver had been discussed on the way over, and Wolfe had informed me of the decision. On account of the displacement of Wolfe’s weight, it would be safer for Guido to take him ashore first and come back for me, but that would take an extra twenty minutes and there was an outside chance that one of Tito’s coast-guard boats would happen along, and if it did, not only would Guido lose his boat but also he would probably never see Italy again. So we were to make it in one trip. Guido held the dinghy in, and I took Wolfe’s arm to steady him as he climbed over the side, but he shook me off, made it fairly neatly, and lowered himself in the stern. I followed and perched in the bow. Guido stepped down in the middle, light as a feather, shipped the oars, and rowed. He muttered something, and Wolfe spoke to me in an undertone.
“We have twelve centimeters above water amidships — about five inches. Don’t bounce.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Guido’s oars were as smooth as velvet, making no sound at all in the water and only a faint squeak in the rowlocks, which were just notches in the gunwale. As I was riding backward in the bow — and not caring to twist around for a look, under the circumstances — the news that we had made it came to me from Wolfe, not much above a whisper.
“Your left hand, Archie. The rock.”
I saw no rock, but in a second there it was at my elbow, a level slab a foot above the gunwale. Flattening my palm on its surface, I held us in and eased us along until Guido could reach it too. Following the briefing I had been given, I climbed out, stretched out on the rock on my belly, extended a hand for Guido to moor to, and learned that he had a healthy grip. As we kept the dinghy snug to the rock, Wolfe engineered himself up and over and was towering above me. Guido released his grip and shoved off, and the dinghy disappeared into the night. I scrambled to my feet.
I had been told not to talk, so I whispered, “I’m turning on my flashlight.”
“No.”
“We’ll tumble in sure as hell.”
“Keep close behind me. I know every inch of this. Here, tie this to my sack.”
I took his sweater, passed a sleeve under the straps, and knotted it with the other sleeve. He moved across the slab of rock, taking it easy, and I followed. Since I was three inches taller I could keep straight behind and still have a view ahead, though it wasn’t much of a view, with the only light from some scattered stars. We stepped off the level slab onto another that sloped up, and then onto one that sloped down. Then we started up again, with loose coarse gravel underfoot instead of solid rock. When it got steeper Wolfe slowed up, and stopped now and then to get his breath. I wanted to warn him that he could be heard breathing for half a mile and therefore we might as well avoid a lot of stumbles by using a light, but decided it would be bad timing.
The idea was to get as far inland as possible before daylight, because we were supposed to have come north through the mountains from Galichnik, and then west toward Cetinje, and therefore it was undesirable to be seen near the coast. Also there was a particular spot about ten miles in, southeast of Cetinje, where we wanted to get something done before dawn. Ten miles in four hours was only a lazy stroll, but not in the dark across mountains, with Wolfe for a pacemaker.
He developed several annoying habits. Realizing that we were at the crest of a climb before I did, he would stop so abruptly that I had to brake fast not to bump into him. He would stumble going uphill but not down, which was unconventional, and I decided he did it just to be eccentric. He would stand still, with his head tilted back and swiveling from side to side, for minutes at a time, and when we were well away from the coast and undertones were permitted and I asked him what for, he muttered, “Stars. My memory has withered.” The implication was that he was steering by them, and I didn’t believe it. However, there were signs that he knew where he was; for instance, once at the bottom of a slope, after we had traveled at least eight miles, he turned sharply right, passed between two huge boulders where there was barely room for him, picked a way among a jungle of jagged rocks, stopped against a wall of rock that went straight up, extended his hands to it, and bent his head. Sound more than sight told me what he was doing; he had his hands cupped under a trickle of water coming down, and was drinking. I took a turn at it too and found it a lot better than what came from the faucet in Bari. After that I quit wondering if we were lost and just roaming around for the exercise.
No hint of dawn had shown when, on a fairly level stretch, he decelerated until he was barely moving, finally stopped, and turned and asked what time it was. I looked at my wrist and said a quarter past four.
“Your flashlight,” he said. I drew it from a loop on my belt and switched it on, and he did the same with his. “You may have to find this spot without me,” he said, “so you’d better take it in.” He aimed his light to the left down a slope. “That one stone should do it — curled like the tail of a rooster. Put your light on it. There’s no other like it between Budva and Podgorica. Get it indelibly.”
It was thirty yards away, and I approached over rough ground for a better look. Jutting up to three times my height, one corner swept up in an arc, and it did resemble a rooster’s tail if you wanted to use your fancy. I moved my light up and down and across, and, using the light to return to Wolfe, saw that we were on a winding trail.
“Okay,” I told him. “Where?”
“This way.” He left the trail in the other direction and soon was scrambling up a steep slope. Fifty yards from the trail he stopped and aimed his light up at a sharp angle. “Can you make it up to that ledge?”
It looked nearly perpendicular, twenty feet above our heads. “I can try,” I said rashly, “if you stand where you’ll cushion me when I fall.”
“Start at the right.” He pointed. “There. Kneeling on the ledge, the crevice will be about at your eye level, running horizontally. As a boy I used to crawl inside it, but you can’t. It slopes down a little from twelve inches in. Put it in as far as you can reach, and poke it farther back with your flashlight. When you come to retrieve it you’ll have to have a stick to fork it out with. You must bring the stick along because you won’t find one anywhere near here.”
As he talked I was opening my pants and pulling up my sweater and shirt to get at the money belt. Preparations for this performance had been made at Bari, wrapping the bills, eight thousand dollars of them, in five tight little packages of oilskin, and putting rubber bands around them. I stuffed them into my jacket pockets and took off my knapsack.
“Call me Tensing,” I said, and went to the point indicated and started up. Wolfe changed positions to get a better angle for me with his light. I hooked my fingertips onto an inch-wide rim as high as I could reach, got the edge of my sole on another rim two feet up, and pulled, and there was ten per cent of it already done. The next place for a foot was a projecting knob, which I made with no trouble, but then my foot slipped off and I was back at the bottom.
Wolfe spoke. “Take off your shoes.”
“I am,” I said coldly. “And socks.”
It wasn’t too bad that way, just plenty bad enough. The ledge, when I finally made it, was at least ten inches wide. I called down to him, “You said to kneel. You come up and kneel. I’d like to see you.”
“Not so loud,” he said.
By clinging to a crack with one hand I managed to get the packages from my pockets with the other and push them into the crevice as far as my arm would go, and to slip the flashlight from its loop and shove them back. Getting the flashlight back into the loop with one hand was impossible, and I put it in a jacket pocket. I twisted my head to look at the way back and spoke again.
“I’ll never make it down. Go get a ladder.”
“Hug it,” he said, “and use your toes.”
Of course it was worse than going up — it always is — but I made it. When I was on his level again he growled, “Satisfactory.” Not bothering to reply, I sat down on a rock and played the flashlight over my feet. They weren’t cut to the bone anywhere, just some bruises and scratches, and no real flow of blood. There was still some skin left on most of the toes. Putting my socks and shoes on, I became aware that my face was covered with sweat and reached for my handkerchief.
“Come on,” Wolfe said.
“Listen,” I told him. “You wanted to get that lettuce cached before dawn, and it’s there. But if there’s any chance that I’ll be sent to get it alone, we’d better not go on until daylight. I’ll recognize the rooster’s tail, that’s all right, but how will I find it if I’ve traveled both approaches in the dark?”
“You’ll find it,” he declared. “It’s only two miles to Rijeka, and a trail all the way. I should have said very satisfactory. Come on.”
He moved. I got up and followed. It was still pitch dark. In half a mile I realized that we were hitting no more upgrades; it was all down. In another half a mile it was practically level. A dog barked, not far off. There was space around us — my eyes had accommodated to the limit, but I felt it rather than saw it — and underfoot wasn’t rock or gravel, more like packed earth.
A little farther on Wolfe stopped, turned, and spoke. “We’ve entered the valley of the Moracha.” He turned on his flashlight and aimed it ahead. “See that fork in the trail? Left joins the road to Rijeka. We’ll take it later; now we’ll find a place to rest.” He turned the light off and moved. At the fork he went right.
This was according to plan as disclosed to me. There was no inn at Rijeka, which was only a village, and we were looking for a haystack. Ten minutes earlier we would have had to use the flashlights to find one, but now, as the trail became a road, there was suddenly light enough to see cart ruts, and in another hundred paces Wolfe turned left into a field, and I followed. The dim outline of the haystack was the wrong shape, but it was no time to be fussy, and I circled to the side away from the road, knelt, and started pulling out handfuls. Soon I had a niche deep enough for Wolfe. I asked him, “Do you wish to eat before going to your room?”
“No.” He was grim. “I’m too far gone.”
“A bite of chocolate would make a new man of you.”
“No. I need help.”
I got erect and helped him off with his knapsack. He removed his jacket, got into his sweater, put the jacket back on, and down he went — first to one knee, then both, then out flat. Getting into the niche was more than a simple rolling operation, since its mattress of hay was a good eight inches above ground level, but he made it.
“I’ll take your shoes off,” I offered.
“Confound it, no! I’d never get them on again!”
“Okay. If you get hungry ask for room service.” I knelt to go to work on another niche, and made it long enough to stow the knapsacks at my head. When I was in and had myself arranged, facing outward, I called to Wolfe, “There’s a faint pink glow in the east across the valley, ten miles away, above the Albanian Alps. Swell scenery.” No reply. I shut my eyes. Birds were singing.