The Black Mountain

"My God, no!" Courtney laughed. He drew his head back and roared. It struck me as pretty boisterous for a diplomat. 283 Chapter 16 At noon the next day, Friday, we sat in our cabin on B deck on the Basilia. She was to sail at one. At the Forelli Hotel in Genoa we had eleven hours sleep on good mattresses, and a good breakfast. Wolfe could walk without shuffling or staggering, and my bruises weren't quite as raw. We were listed as Carl Gunther and Alex Gunther, had paid for the tickets, and had a little over six hundred bucks in our jeans. It was an outside cabin, twice as big as our cell in the Bari can, with two beds and two chairs, and one of the chairs was upholstered and Wolfe could squeeze into it. But what about Peter Zov? All Wolfe had been told was that he would enter Italy at Gorizia Wednesday night, cross to Genoa by way of Padua and Milan, and be on the Basilia as a cabin steward by Thursday night. Wolfe had wanted to know what his name would be, but Stritar had 284 said that would be decided after he got to Genoa. Of course we knew nothing about where Zov would get his name or his papers, or from whom, or how the fix was set up for him to replace a steward. We didn't know how good the fix was, or whether it always worked or only sometimes. As we sat there in the cabin, we didn't give a damn about any of that, all that was eating us was, was he on board or not? If he wasn't, did we want to sail anyhow and hope he would come later? Didn't we have to? If we abandoned ship just because Zov didn't show up, wouldn't that be a giveaway? "There's an hour left," I said. "I'll go and look around some more. Stewards are popping in and out everywhere." "Confound it." Wolfe hit the chair arm with his fist. "We should have kept him with us." "Stritar would have smelled a rat if you had insisted on it, and anyway he wouldn't buy it." "Pfui. What is ingenuity for? I should have managed it. I'm a dunce. I should have foreseen this and prevented it. By heaven, I won't start back without him!" There was a knock at the door, I said, "Come in," it opened, and Peter Zov entered with our bags. 285 "Oh, it's you," he said in SerboCroat. He put the bags down and turned to go. "Wait a minute," Wolfe said. "There is something to say." "You can say it later. This is a busy time." "Just one word, then. Don't go to any pains to keep us from hearing you speak English. Of course you do -- some, at least -- or you couldn't be a cabin steward on this boat." "You're smart," he said in SerboCroat. "Okay," he said in American, and went. Wolfe told me to shut the door, and I did. When I turned back he had his eyes closed and was sighing, deep, and then again, deeper. He opened his eyes, looked at the bags and then at me, and told me what had been said. "We ought to know his name," I suggested.

"We will. Go on deck and watch the gangway. He might take it into his head to skedaddle." "Why should he?" "He shouldn't. But a man with his frontal lobes pushed back like that is unpredictable. Go." So I was on deck, at the rail, when we shoved off, and had a good look at the city stretching along the strip at the edge of the 286 water and climbing the hills. The hills might have impressed me more if I hadn't just returned from a jaunt in Montenegro. By the time we had cleared the outer harbor and were in open water most of my fellow passengers had gone below for lunch, and I decided that now was as good a time as any for getting a certain point settled. I went back down to the cabin and told Wolfe, "It's lunchtime. You've decided to stay put in this cabin all the way across, and you may be right. It's not likely that there's anyone on board who would recognize you, but it's possible, and if it happened and it got around, as it would, the best that could result would be that you'd have to write another script. But we're going to see a lot of each other in the next twelve days, not to mention the last six, and I think it would be bad policy for us to eat all our meals together in this nook." "So do I." "I'll eat in the dining room." "By all means. I've already given Peter Zov my order for lunch." "What?" I stared. "Zov?" "Certainly. He's our steward." "Good God. He'll bring all your meals and you'll eat them?" "Yes. It will be trying, and it won't help 287 my digestion, but it will have its advantages. I'll have plenty of opportunities to discuss our plans." "And if he gets ideas and mixes in some arsenic?" "Nonsense. Why should he?" "He shouldn't. But a mart with his frontal lobes pushed back like that is unpredictable."