Benedetto shrugged. "I do not know who he is. The name they gave was
Elio Barletteria."
That was the suspendee whose place Zorchi had usurped. I sat back,
bewildered. It was true, at least, that I had had some connection with
the man. But--kill him? Was it possible, I asked myself, that the
mere act of taking him out of his plastic sack endangered his life? I
doubted it, but still--
I asked Benedetto. He frowned. "It is--possible," he admitted at last.
"We do not know much about the suspendees, Mr. Wills. The Company has
seen to that. It is my opinion--only an opinion, I am afraid--that
if this man Barletteria is dead, it had nothing to do with anything
you did. Still--" he shrugged--"what difference does it make? If the
Company calls you a murderer, you must be one, for the Company is
always right. Is that not so?"
We left it at that, but I was far from easy in my mind. The dining
hall filled, and we ate our evening meal, but I hardly noticed what
I ate and I took no part in the conversation. Rena and her father
considerately left me alone; Zorchi was, it seemed, sulking in our
room, for he did not appear. But I was not concerned with him, for I
had troubles of my own. I should have been....
After dinner was over, I excused myself and went to the tiny cubicle
that had been assigned to Zorchi and myself. He wasn't there. Then I
began to think: Would Zorchi miss a meal?
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....
We found an ancient piston-driven cab and threaded through almost all
of Rome. We spun around the ancient stone hulk of the Colosseum,
passed the balcony where a sign stated the dictator, Mussolini, used to
harangue the crowds, and climbed a winding, expensive-looking street to
the Borghese Gardens.
Rena consulted her watch. "We're early," she said. We had _gelati_ in
an open-air pavilion, listening to the wheezing of a sweating band;
then, in the twilight, we wandered hand in hand under trees for half an
hour.
Then Rena said, "Now it is time." We walked to the far end of the
Gardens where a small copter-field served the Class-A residential area
of Rome. A dozen copters were lined up at the end of the take-off
hardstand. Rena led me to the nearest of them.