The answer was unquestionably no. With his metabolism, he needed many
times the food of an ordinary person; his performance at table, in
fact, was spectacular.
Something was wrong. I was shaken out of my self-absorption; I hurried
to find Benedetto dell'Angela, and told him that Zorchi was gone.
It didn't take long for us to find the answer. The underground hideout
was not large; it had only so many exits. It was only a matter of
moments before one of the men Benedetto had ordered to search returned
with an alarmed expression.
The exit that led through the subway station was ajar. Somehow Zorchi
had hitched himself, on his stumps, down the long corridor and out the
exit. It had to be while we were eating; he could never have made it
except when everyone was in one room.
How he had done it did not matter. The fact remained that Zorchi was
gone and, with him, the secrecy of our hiding place.
X
We had to move. There was no way out of it.
"Zorchi hates the Company," I protested. "I don't think he'll go to
them and--"
"No, Wills." Slovetski patiently shook his head. "We can't take a
chance. If we had been able to recapture him, then we could stay
here. But he got clean away." There was admiration in his eyes. "What
a conspirator he would have made! Such strength and determination!
Think of it, Wills, a legless man in the city of Rome. He cannot avoid
attracting attention. He can barely move by himself. And yet, our men
track him into the subway station, to a telephone ... and that is
all. Someone picks him up. Who? A friend, one supposes--certainly not
the Company, or they would have been here before this. But to act so
quickly, Wills!"
Benedetto dell'Angela coughed. "Perhaps more to the point, Slovetski,
is how quickly we ourselves shall now act."
Slovetski grinned. "All is ready," he promised. "See, evacuation
already has begun!"
Groups of men were quickly placing file folders into cartons and
carrying them off. They were not going far, I found later, only to a
deserted section of the ancient Roman Catacombs, from which they could
be retrieved and transported, little by little, at a later date.
By sundown, Rena and I were standing outside the little church which
contained the entrance to the Catacombs. The two of us went together;
only two. It would look quite normal, it was agreed, for a young man
and a girl to travel together, particularly after my complexion had
been suitably stained and my Company clothes discarded and replaced
with a set of Rome's best ready-to-wears.
It did not occur to me at the time, but Rena must have known that
her own safety was made precarious by being with me. Rena alone had
nothing to fear, even if she had been caught and questioned by an
agent of the Company. They would suspect her, because of her father,
but suspicion would do her no harm. But Rena in the company of a wanted
"murderer"--and one traveling in disguise--was far less safe....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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