The Sword of Fate (20 page)

As it turned out I had nothing to fear after all that night as Tortino never put in an appearance. I suppose he was prevented from doing so by some urgent duty. Instead, I met another acquaintance, and this time one whom I was frankly glad to see.

It was just before lights-out that the guards suddenly called us to attention, and a few moments later a rather portly individual, who appeared to have been poured into a spotless uniform and quite obviously was the Prison Governor, came into view, followed by several officers composing his small staff.

I recognised the fat, good-natured face under the peaked gold-braided cap immediately. It was Gonzaga, who used to be the head waiter at the Tiberius Hotel in Capri. I had spent several weeks there in the spring of 1938, and although it was now nearly three years since I had seen him he knew me at once and stopped abruptly outside my cell.

“Well, well,” I said in English, knowing that he understood it perfectly. “This is a pleasant surprise. Do I congratulate or commiserate with you upon this change of occupation?”

He returned my smile and his soft brown eyes were full of humour as he replied: “Et is much easier to keep ze eye on a ’undred cell than on a ’undred tables, an’ ’ere we do not lose ze
customer ef ’e is dissatisfi’. Also, before I bow to ze peoples; now all ze peoples bow to me!”

“Then I certainly congratulate you, Gonzaga,” I said. “Or should I address you as
Comandante
in these days?”

“As you like.” He shrugged good-naturedly. “’Ave you everyzing you want?”

“Yes, thanks,” I replied, “except pens and paper. At Fort Maddalena, where I’ve been for the last four weeks, they wouldn’t give me any, and I’m very anxious to write a letter.”

“I senda you in ze morning,” he said, and with a friendly nod continued on his tour of inspection.

Next morning the promised writing material was brought to me, and I was able at last to write a long letter to Daphnis. In it, knowing that it would be censored, I could only tell her why she had not heard from me before; how I came to be taken prisoner, that I was well and as cheerful as could be expected, and of my undying love for her; but I covered sheets of paper, and it was a great relief to have this privilege of writing to her, which had been denied me for a month.

The day passed without incident, except for exciting rumours, which reached us from goodness-knows-where, that the British offensive was going well; and when I turned in that night Tortino had still not made his threatened visit.

On the Wednesday at about eleven o’clock I was taken out of my cell and the big cage-house, through some corridors to a roomy well-furnished office. Gonzaga was sitting there behind a bulky desk. His big head and heavy bluish jowl made him rather an impressive picture of authority. As he barked at the guards who had brought me in there was nothing of the head waiter about him, at least nothing of the head waiter that the customer usually sees; but once we were alone he smiled and waved a beringed hand towards a chair.

“Ples, Meester Day, you are at ’ome ’ere—sit down.”

“Thanks very much,” I said, taking the chair and a cigarette from the box he pushed towards me. “I’m afraid, though, if you mean to interrogate me I’ve nothing to add to the statement that I have made already.”

“No, no. Zis is not interrogation,” he said quickly. “I am not police spy. I aska you down because for me et is nice to see someone of ze old days an’ for you—why, it maka da little change from sitting in da cell.”

“If that’s the case, I think it’s charming of you,” I laughed. “But tell me: how did you ever become a prison governor?”

“Et was ze great Balbo. ’E persuade me to leave ze Tiberius and take over ze Miramere at Derna. ‘E often come zare but ze ’otel, she go broke an’ I am on ze rocks. So ze Marshal ‘e say: ‘Don’t you worry, Gonzaga. Any man ’oo runna a restaurant so good as you maka de big success in any job. I giva you good post in my Colonial administration.’ One thing goes to anozer, yes, so ’ere I am.”

“That was a bad business about the Marshal’s death, wasn’t it?” I said.

My words seemed to electrify him. His dark eyes flashed and he sat forward suddenly. “Balbo was ze greatest man in alla Italie. Ze greatest, yes, an’ zose pigs, zey kill him!” He made a most unhead-waiter-like gesture with his head over the side of the desk as though about to spit.

I glanced swiftly at the door to make quite certain that it was shut, then I hazarded, “You’re not exactly one hundred per cent for Mussolini, then?”

“Zat one! Bah!” he snapped his fingers. “At one time, yes, ’e was good for Italie, but zese last years ’e ’as been bad for Italie. You ’ave an English saying, no? ‘Zose whom ze gods wish to destroy zey first maka dem mad.’ II Duce ’e losa ’is ’ead and ze Italian peoples zey foota da bill. But we giva politics ze go-bys; et is better zat we not talk too much. Instead, we splitta da bottle.”

Getting up, he went into an inner room to return with a gold-foiled bottle of Asti Spumanti and some glasses. The wine was dead cold and had evidently just come off the ice. I abominate sweet champagne, but I am very fond of rich wines such as Tokay, Chateau Y’Quem and the great Hocks; and sparkling Asti has an aromatic flavour that is all its own, so while we talked of the old carefree days when he had been a great
hôtelier
and I had been a guest at the Tiberius in Capri, I thoroughly enjoyed my share of the bottle.

I hardly liked at first to ask for the latest news, but on my remarking that surely it was the rumble of distant gunfire which was drifting in through the partly opened window, he said at once:

“Ze British ’ave given us ze great surprise. On Monday zey go
zip
through our outposts. On Tuesday zey are outside Buq Buq. Zis morning Sidi Barrani ’as fallen.”

“Good God! Do you mean that?” I exclaimed.

He hunched his shoulders and spread out his hands in a rather pathetic gesture. “We ’ave no warning an’ ze British tanks zey
are veree fast. Ze firing you ’ear is below ’Alfaya Pass where ze British try to storm et an’ retake Sollum.”

“If they advance much further we’ll be in the front line here,” I grinned.

He shook his head. “Fort Capuzzo et is veree strong an’ zere is also much good fortifications at Bardia. Now we know ze attack comes we meet et.”

He evidently saw my face drop as he laughed and went on: “I guess what you are zinking. Ef you stay put ’ere Capuzzo she falls an’ you are rescue. But don’ fool yourself, Capuzzo will not fall. Also war prisoners we do not keep ’ere. Zey go firs’ to Tobruk, zen to Italie.”

He had caught the wild hope that had just flamed in my mind, but extinguished it in the same breath.

“When are we likely to be moved?” I asked.

“Veree soon—tonight, tomorrow night. I cannot tell until I getta da order.”

We talked again of Capri, fine cooking and great wines, until we had finished the bottle of Asti Spumanti; then, just as he was about to summon the warder, I gave him my letter to Daphnis and asked if he would censor it personally and post it for me.

He agreed at once and I felt that, although it would have to go
via
Italy, the Balkans, Turkey and Palestine to reach Egypt, and might be among mail destroyed in a ship or ’plane by British action while crossing the Sicilian channel, there was still a reasonably good prospect of its reaching its destination in due course. After thanking Gonzaga most heartily for his kindness I was taken back to my cell.

That evening, down in the dining-hall, all the British prisoners were in a great state of elation. I had naturally passed on such news as I had received from Gonzaga, but where the others had obtained theirs I have no idea. It is always something of a mystery as to how prisoners get their information, but it is well known that important news always reaches men living in captivity pretty nearly as quickly as it does other people. Everyone knew that the British offensive, now nearing the close of its third day, had met with a most amazing success. Sidi Barrani had been cut off and surrounded before the Italians realised what was happening. Thousands of prisoners and great quantities of stores which the Italians had prepared for their advance into Egypt had fallen into our hands, and our columns were said to be pressing on for all they were worth, with the Italians fleeing before them.

Gonzaga had seemed quite confident that they would be able
to hold our thrust on the frontier, but these stories of our successes filled all of us with feverish excitement, and every one of my brother officers had the same idea as I had had that morning. If our comrades were pushing on at such a rate they might take Fort Capuzzo and rescue us before the Italians had a chance to pack us off into the interior.

Personally I was not at all sanguine about our chances, as a mighty fortress like Capuzzo would take a deal of subduing, but when Teddy Bannister and I got back to our cell that evening we discussed at great length the problem of if there was any way in which we could manage to prevent ourselves from being shifted, and we both decided to feign illness.

That was unfortunate, as when orders came through for our removal half an hour later, and we were told to get our few belongings together, it transpired that every single officer, N.C.O. and man among the British prisoners of war in Fort Capuzzo had had the same not very brilliant idea.

In vain we pleaded that the bean soup, which we had had for our evening meal, had poisoned us, held our tummies, made faces and pretended to twist about in agony. The genial Gonzaga appeared and just laughed at us, ordering his men to pull us out of our cells by the scruff of the neck when the time came if we would not march out of our own accord on receiving the order.

We had been given a quarter of an hour to prepare for our departure, and ten minutes of it had already gone when one of the head warders arrived in front of my cell and behind him I saw Paolo Tortino. The gate was unlocked and Tortino swaggered in, closing it with a clang behind him.

As he was a professional diplomat it had been rather a surprise to see him in an officer’s uniform, but I soon guessed the reason. After Italy entered the war, the number of embassies and legations which Mussolini could continue to maintain abroad was considerably lessened, and it was one of the sounder tenets of his creed that a good patriot should be willing to serve his country in any capacity, so there could be no argument if he ordered a number of his surplus diplomats to become army officers, and Paolo was evidently one of the surplus diplomats who had been detailed for service with a Blackshirt formation.

For a moment he gloated in silence, then he said:

“You have heard, I suppose, that you are shortly leaving for Tobruk on your way to Italy?”

I nodded and he went on, “I was too busy to come to see you before, but when I heard that you were leaving I felt that I must
spare a moment to come over and give you some idea as to your future.”

I shrugged, “The future of all prisoners of war is pretty much the same, so I don’t think you need bother.”

“But yours will be different,” he said, with a malicious grin. “You see, you were at one time in the Diplomatic Service.”

“What’s that to do with it, since I’ve been out of the Service for years?” I enquired. “I certainly can’t claim Diplomatic immunity.”

“Oh no. You can’t do that; but it makes you an especially interesting prisoner, particularly as while you were in the Diplomatic Corps you indulged in espionage. Once a spy, always a spy, you know. I wanted the satisfaction of telling you myself that I’m sending a special chit to the authorities about you to ensure that you receive individual attention.”

His voice had sunk to a lower note, and it was positively dripping with honeyed malice as he finished, “I have taken steps to make certain that you will be treated as a political prisoner and handed over to the
Ovra
.”

My mouth went dry, and I swallowed hard. The Fascists may not be quite as ruthless as the Nazis, but there is little to choose between either in the treatment of their political prisoners by their secret police, and the
Ovra
is the Italian equivalent of the
Gestapo
.

One does not hear so much about the
Ovra
as about the
Gestapo
, and we are too apt to form a picture of the Italian as a lazy, pleasure-loving fellow who is content to loll about in his sunny vineyards, roll his eyes at every young woman he sees and warble ‘O Sole Mio’ in the moonlight.

We forget that some of the most hard-headed, dynamic and unscrupulous men in the world are also Italians—Al Capone and his gangsters, for example. The Italian secret police are staffed by just such men who prefer to wield power as servants of the Fascist State to becoming criminals. Many of them are the assassins of
the old Black-Hand and Camorra which Mussolini broke up, afterwards taking over its professional knifemen for his own purposes.

The instant Paolo Tortino had told me of the revenge which he had planned to take on me for breaking up his engagement with Daphnis I saw myself no longer an ordinary prisoner of war but a poor wretch in perpetual solitary confinement in some damp, dark cell on one of Mussolini’s prison islands; subject without hope or reprieve to any beastliness which the agents of the
Ovra
cared to inflict upon me.

Almost at the same second a way in which I might possibly avert that fate and even turn the tables on Tortino flashed into my mind. With a last malicious smirk he had contemptuously turned his back and strode to the barred gate of the cell, where he was calling to the guard to let him out.

In two strides I was after him. He was a good two inches shorter than myself. It was easy for me to fling my left arm round his neck so that his chin came in the crook of my elbow. Jerking back his head so that he fell against me, with my right hand I wrenched open his pistol holster and pulled the pistol from it. Next moment I had dragged him away from the gate and had the muzzle of the pistol firmly pressed against his spine.

“You rat!” I snarled. “Stop struggling. Not another movement or I’ll empty the whole contents of your gun into your body!”