THE KEEPER OF THE SOUTHERN GATE
A Synopsis
for
an occult spy thriller
Maurice Rowdon


BACKGROUND: JAMES ELROY MERTON arrives in Rome from
Richmond Va. after an absence of nearly twenty years.
He was last in Rome at the age of about eighteen and
fell in love with an English girl called Laura.
They broke up after a short scene together but no
other woman---including his wife with whom he lived
in various parts of Virginia for over twelve years-
meant as much to him as Laura.
In fact she became
his secret obsession over the years which occult
practices served to strengthen. He was determined
to see her again.
His wife knew nothing about
this.
Nor did his friends.
He never once wrote
a letter to Laura, never once referred to her except
in his secret incantations, never once received news
of her. As the years went on he became convinced
that she was still living in Rome, or had perhaps
returned there after an absence. He swore to
himself that he would one day look for her thete.
To this end he opened a special bank account in
New York.
His savings went into it over a period
of at least ten years: he searched for fair means
and foul to make easy money. His line was real
estate and he found himself (to his satisfaction)
in a racket which involved selling and reselling
the same area of industrial land with increasing
rake-offs, while the land itself remained unexploit-
ed. He also found himself suddenly faced by a
possible malpractices indictment and was advised
by those for whom he was the front-man to get as
far from the USA as he could.
But before this happened his wife filed a
divorce suit for neglect.
For some time now he
had been bestowing no sexual attentions on her,
being increasingly fixed on Laura.
He kept to
his room for hours together, slept alone. He
would recite an old Indian prayer to awaken a woman's
love sometimes thirty or forty times in a day,
waking up at intervals in the night to recite it in
a whisper.
His wife found him increasingly strange.
They remained friends.
You had to remain friends
with James El, as everyone called him. He was a
generous, big-shouldered, healthy looking man with
cheerful alert eyes.
In his mid-thirties he had
the robust authority of a much older man, with the
vigour of a younger.
He had a habit of running
the palm of his hand over his belly when he was
particularly contented.
You couldn't help but
like James El.
He ate and drank well, played
tennis and swam.
For ten years he and his wife
Betty enjoyed a comfortable though not always
exciting life together.
They had two children,


neither of whom turned out delinquents.
The house
was large and comfortable.
Betty knew he didn't
consider himself above a crooked deal now and then.
That was all rizht. She admired his coolness, his
tact and sheer damned courage.
He was used to money
anyway, he'd always find a way out of a tricky situat-
ion.
What she did mind was his growing aloofness,
his hours alone in his room, his weekends alone at
their shack in Maine.
She would have preferred him
to have an affair. Not that he changed outwardly.
But he stopped petting her.
When she asked him what
had gone wrong he said, 'It's going right for the
first time.'
It was just like the wily bastard to
say that.
Betty had married a very different James Elroy.
For one thing he was the son of reasonably wealthy
parents who were expected to leave him a lot of money.
But they didn't die, and increasingly disapproved of
their son.
They urged him to abandon his shady
deals to no avail.
Real estate was his father's
business too since he'd emigrated from Sussex,
England, at the age of thirty and bought some land
on speculation in Florida.
In 1940 James Elroy was
born--and given the Christian names of his father's
favourite poet, James Elroy Flecker.
His father
possibly wanted him to turn out some kind of hero,
and gave him as outdoor an education as possible.
James El could ride and ski and glide and high-dive
so well that by the age of twenty-five he was bored
by all of them and started a paunch instead. Tricky
real-estate deals weren't father's idea of heroism.
When he taxed James El with this he replied, 'Listen,
I like an element of risk in my life. If I didn't
have that I'd die.
Shit, I'm not going to sit around
making a thousand bucks when with a bit of cunning I
can make ten times as much.
Anyway all business is
crooked, you know that.
They're going to ruin the
land they buy for the next thousand years so why
shouldn't they pay a price?'
His father laughed.
But he stopped laughing
when his son gambled away a good part of his fortune.
He cut him off from his inheritance during his life-
time, which meant that his wife, or whomever James El
elected to leave it to,would pick up the considerable
remains of the fortune on his (James El's) death.
As James El said when he heard the news, 'My dad's
not so much hard as pig-headed.'
So the young James El with such brilliant
prospects as an heir whom Betty married was all of
a sudden no longer there.
In his place was a
well-to-do crook.
And a bit of an idealist---which was, if anything,
worse.
In his teenage Roman days he had been a
communist.
Italian communism in the Fifties was


quite different from the later militant, trade-union
oriented variety.
There was a lot of poverty still,
and a group of ardent teenagers, most of them Italian,
gradually influenced James El to believe that more
in.jections of American capital into the country
would throw it eventually into civil war and thus
ruin Europe's 'little garden' once and for all.
The industrialisation of the country, at that time
in its early stages, should not be left in the
corrupt and venal hands of DC politicians but
proceed slowly and rationally on the basis of five-
and ten-year plans.
James Él began to go to PCI
meetings, and was frequently at the communist
headquarters by the Palazzo Colonna.
At that time he was picking up good pocket
money translating treatises and documents into
English, and had a small apartment in the Via
Margutta, its windows looking down into the courtyard
of RAI headquarters. Here he gave small parties
from time to time and came to know a good many
ministry officials, partly through his translation
work and partly because, being a potentially wealthy
young American, he attracted a lot of social attention
anyway. He found himself at most of the important
vernissages and mixed with the artists of Via
Margutta. He came to know a minister or two.
The war had given the Angl 0-Saxon a certain aurora
of authority and desirability in Italian eyes which
still hadn't worn off. Italy was insular, law-
abiding.
Italians had not yet begun to travel.
Smarting from feelings of inferiority due partly
to the failure of fascism and partly to the survival
of an agricultural system which had changed little
since mediaeval times, the Italian looked on the
foreign world (minus Germany) as entirely desirable
and even wise.
Combined with contempt for his
fellow-Italians, this idealisation created a serious
psychological imbalance which communism helped to
breach.
James El had a good time in Rome.
It was a
life so unexpected, so different from anything he'd
even dared to dream that he never wanted to leave.
It saddened him to see that Italians wanted to become
like everybody else and have gas stations along the
Via Appia' rather than stay poor and bored in a
little garden.
And communism seemed to him the
only way of giving Italy wealth while preserving the
garden. He had discussions (even with the ministers,
who listened only because he was American).
They
went on far into the night.
His head was full of
ideas.
Rome was like a voluptuous village.
Terror-
ism was unheard of. He strolled down to the little
bar each morning to take his coffee with the RAI
people.
In those days a scuffle in the street
would collect a crowd.
Rome had its thieves but
they were disciplined under known leaders, like


The Giant in the Campo dei Fiori. On the terrace of
James El's apartment you could smell the fields outside
the city when the wind was favourable. Later Rome's
air pollution became as bad as Chicago's.
RALPH MARRIOT was one of his closest buddies in
the old days.
They were the same age and a day rarely
went by without them seeing each other.
Not that
James Él ever felt close to him. No one knew anything
for certain about Ralph.
He was supposedly English
but never went near England.
Where his money came
from was anybody's guess but he never seemed short of
it. In the night-long discussions he usu ally kept
quiet, watching and listening amiably.
The discussions were brusquely cut off one day
by a telephone call from the dreaded Questura,
Mussolini's internal security police who were retained
under the new constitution.
Éven James El's heart
did a jump.
He was told to go to headquarters at
once and announce himself.
He took a taxi, still
unshaven, and to his astonishment was ushered into
the office of the Questore himself.
It wasn't the
Questore himself but a high-ranking official: the
point had been made though---he was considered
important.
For two hours the genial, lazily smiling
official sat talking to him on the other side of a
vast desk.
Occasionally he put a question to him and
at once cut short the answer with a casual, half-heard
remark about its irrelevance. The gist of it was
that James El had been trailed everywhere during the
previous six months.
He'd been seen visiting PCI
headquarters several times, so had his girl (he was
living with a student called Luciana---this at a
time when you could still be fined L1000 for kissing
a girl in the street).
Now what was an American
of his social status doing mixed up in all this? the
official wanted to know.
One could understand about
the girl Luciana, she was Italian and therefore knew
no better, and anyway she was a woman (any female
driving a car or wearing trousers caused mirth in the
streets of Rome). Wasn 't James El a little young to
get himself into what might be a very dangerous way
of life?
Shouldn't he return to the States and go
to Harvard as his father wished him to? Did he
understand that being a minor he could be sent back
to the States at any time?
Did he want that?
"We know all your movements," the official kept
repeating.
At the end of the two hours James El heard the
official say, "Now wouldn't you like to help your
country?"
"Well, you know a lot of our communists, I mean
the top ones. You know the sympathisers who'd join


the party if ever it became powerful.
They include
a number of our civil servants, as you know. You
speak fluent Italian.
All useful stuff." Here he
leaned forward.
"Has it occurred to you that you
could supply us with useful information? I can give
you the name of someone at your embassy you could go
and see."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"You could earn a bit of money too---more than
translations bring you."
"I told you, it's out of the question."
The result of this interview was that his soggiorno
was cancelled and he was given 72 hours to get out of
the country.
The police told him his father wanted
him back.
Jnst a month before this he'd met Laura, the blonde
English girl.
They started an affair---and as suddenly
it went wrong.
She denied she felt anything for him.
They had a series of incomprehensible rows.
There
was trouble with Luciana, the girl he was living with,
when she found out.
He was perplexed, confused,
especially as Laura was a quite different woman in
bed. Only years later did it occur to him that some-
one was pulling his character down behind his back.
He left his apartment in Luciana's hands, furniture
and all, and flew from Ciampino airport intending never
to return and believing he might forget Laura. His
last week in Rome had been a turmoil of people turning
their backs on him, and inexplicable rebuffs, even in
his own bar on the Via Margutta. He felt like a child
all over again---needed the large cool parental house
in Colonial Heights with its wire netting over the
windows and a swimming pool behind the trees.
All his father said was, "Get yourself into a bit
of trouble?"---then a chuckle and a proud shake of his
head.
It was being trailed at the age of nineteen, and
the espionage offer by a high-ranking official, that
gave James El his first taste of the sweetness of
danger. It never left his system.
Back in Virginia
he enjoyed long days at the pool with his new girlfriend
Betty, who was in her first year at Sarah Laurence,
and he even thought he was in love with her.
And
he was bitterly angry with Laura, which helped him
believe he was finished with her.
Another couple
of years and he married Betty, now out of college.
He tried to forget that he'd enjoyed a life in Rome
of a quality he'd never dreamed about before. Little
nostalgic scenes kept coming to mind.
Only one thing
reconciled him to a marriage largely organised by
his parents,and a home and a job: his secret deter-
mination to lead a dangerous life, somehow, somewhere.
He looked around for risk all the time. And when
he started up in real estate with an office of his


own he soon saw the possibilities. The shadier
the client the better he liked him.
And the clients
were quick to realise this.
He enjoyed clandestine
meetings at roadside coffee houses.
It excited him
to employ investigation agencies.
He began making
money so fast that his father became alarmed.
But
Betty loved it. She persuaded him to buy a bigger
house, and felt safe enough to get pregnant. They
holidayed twice a year.
Only when the second child came along did he
realise that he intended to return to Laura however
many years it took him.
He heard from Ralph occasion-
ally, the slack, amiable, newsless letters you'd
expect him to write. Nothing about Laura.
thought of flying to Rome to see her.
But what was
the use?
You can't make a woman love you.
least this is what he thought for a long time. His
crooked deals and countless girlfriends began to take
precedence.
But then he met an interesting woman twenty years
his senior who was said to have clairvoyant powers.
They'd hardly been introduced when she told him he
was in love with a woman far away with whom he'd
been incarnated in many previous lives.
He would
one day return to her and realise a happiness with
her which he'd never experienced with another woman.
"But she doesn't love me."
"She doesn't know she loves you.
That's
different."
It was she who gave James El his Indian love-
incantation to recite.
After that came hand-reading,
the Tarot, various techniques of divination and
finally magic itself, when he'd known her a year or
more and shown himself an ardent pupil.
He took to
it like a duck to water. The secretiveness, the
sense of a growing inner power that was quite
invisible to the outside world was if anything more
exciting than the crooked real-estate deals.
seemed to have just as much to do with danger.
His personality changed.
He was less irritable with
Betty. He gave fewer parties.
His marriage started
going down, though it took a further five years to
get to the bottom.
Never once did Laura overhear
him reciting the love-incantation, though she frequent-
ly stood outside his door listening. He could feel
her approach. He performed lengthy ceremonies with
magical accoutenents and vessels, within a circle
chalked on his pinewood floor. He began to receive
'information' in a mediumistic way and increasingly
foresaw future events.
The confirmation of these
flashes by later events gave him increasing confidence.
He 'saw' that Laura was with another man but that the
man wouldn't last long: and she wasn't in love with
him.
He began planning his return trip to Rome.
Breaking with 3etty and even the kids wasn't going to
be difficult because really it had already happened.


He'd saved up enough money to buy himself a lucrative
business once he'd settled in Rome again.
By no
means a communist now, he informed himself about the
American companies and subsidiaries in Italy, including
the real-estate activities.
Laura by this time had
become his obsessive concern, haunting him day and
night, and replacing all sexual activity.
He had
been warned too that celibacy was a powerful aid to
the efficacy of magic.
He was sure that the incantation was working on
Laura. About six months before he left the USA he
began 'wotking' on her man so that she would be
separated from him by the time he reached Rome.
And providence helped him get away even faster
by tipping the police off about some of his crooked
dealings. Recently he'd been sailing perilously close
to the law in an effort to make ever bigger profits.
Now he had to get out whether Betty liked it or
not.
The police investigations deteriorated the
marriage even further so that (providence was very
kind) getting out looked like the only sensible
thing to do even to her.
It was all going so
nicely---until she plonked a legal injunction on
him and got a nice fat settlement which absorbed most
of his savings. Legal fees to protect him against
an indictment, and generous 'gifts' to keep key
people quiet, took care of the rest.
By the time he left for Rome he had just enough
to keep him alive for six months---if he was careful.
THE STORY:
1. He found a cheap room on a monthly basis in a
hotel behind the Pantheon, a noisy district he'd
never liked very much.
By now Rome had become Italy's
crime-city No 2 after Milan. Physically the centre
of Rome hadn't changed but everything else had.
The
road to Frascati he had so often used in the old days
was clogged with jerry-built tenement blocks.
The
weather seemed to have collapsed.
It rained incessant-
People said you didn't get the old heat any more.
It was just like any other European city now.
But he found his favourite Trastevere trattoria
much as it had always been, only cleaner and the food
better.
There were many of the old faces, including
Ralph's.
Not that James El had any sense of homecoming.
He was nervous, sometimes distraught, without knowing
why. He hadn't written to Ralph to say he was coming.
He strolled in unannounced and walked to the old table
for ten places.
Ralph looked astonished but within
five minutes it seemed they'd been together all these
twenty years. He had the sickening sensation that


these years had just been lost---useless and pointless.
The only excitement he found was in the thought that
he was in the same city as Laura at last.
As always
Ralph was the perfect information-desk.
After a life-
time of dolce far niente he was a dossier on everyone
of importance in the city, its underworld too. Only
he didn't know about Laura, or so he said.
He'd lost
touch with her.
But he promised to find out all he
could.
"For all I know she's married to a raisin merchant
in Smyrna, 11 he said.
"But she isn't."
"How do you know?"
"I just know."
Ralph shrugged and it seemed to James El that he
looked foxy.
One evening he told Ralph he needed money and
noticed an immediate change of expression on Ralph's
face. His mind had begun to work fast.
His eyes
narrowed with calculation, gazing at James El across
the table.
"What kind of work are you after?"
"Something with danger in it."
He felt uncomfortable with Ralph but then he
always had. Over the intervening years he'd begun
to suspect that it had been Ralph principally who had
trailed him in the old days, and tipped off the
Questura. Why hadn't the Questura warned Ralph too,
why hadn't he been thrown out of the country like
James El?
After all he'd nearly always accompanied
James El to communist headquarters. It all seemed
to make sense, and fit in with Ralph's life-style.
Now he began to suspect that it had been Ralph
who'd pulled down his character behind his back.
Strangely, he didn't mind.
All it meant for him was
that in the old days Ralph had been the abler man,
and that he himself had lost.
Now he was going to
win.
More and more James El looked on life as a
matter of magical or clairvoyant technique.
the old days he'd had no power of this order.
Now
he had. So in the old days he'd deserved to lose.
In the old days Ralph had been his master.
Now
he was going to be his servant.
James El got a lot of information about Ralph
mediumistically. He 'saw' a man who'd become as
valuable as a walking Switzèrland to the various
combatant groups in Rome. He was needed less for
direct information than for the contacts which could
lead to the information: also as a mediator between
two sides which found it difficult to meet openly.
When there was an assassination or 'top' murder,
a bomb outrage or a major kidnapping (nearly every
week these days) Ralph was suddenly a more important
man than before, proportionately to the political
significance of the crime.


CHAPT ER SAMPLE.
He could see the half-dead fig tree in the
darkness, just as it had been twenty years before.
And the fountain made the same tinkling noise,
echoing across the courtyard.
But there was some-
thing different this time.
He could hear soft
footsteps and yet no one was there.
At first he
thought they were his own as he stepped lightly
across the cobbles.
He stood still to make sure.
But they went on, slower than his own, and uncannily
soft, hardly like human footsteps at all.
In the
old days the apartment windows above, on all sides
of the courtyard, had been brightly lit and festive
but now they were mute behind closed shutters.
course it was winter and still cold.
But in the old
days you could open your window in March and feel a
hint of the sweltering summer months ahead.
Not
now.
Rome was hidden-under heavy mists that stank
of car-exhaust.
Why hadn't he told the porter he was here?
He'd slipped past the tiny lighted office with his
head averted.
These days you had to be careful
about being found in dark
unidentified.
places
People were scared.
They carried guns under their
jackets---lawyers, business men and shopkeepers, whoever
had money to lose. But somehow he couldn't face that
porter.
All he asked was to be able to stand in
the courtyard looking up at his old apartment windows,
just for a nostalgic minute.
These days you didn't
do such things.
The porter wouldn't have believed
him for a start.
To his horror the steps started close by him,
perhaps a foot away.
And no one was there.
The
barren fig tree, spiky and leafless, hung over the
fountain-bowl like a stag's horns.
The wall behind
was mouldy and chipped.
He looked round in the
shadows.
Were the steps inside his head?
Had he
brought something sinister with him from that sticky,


nervous afternoon in Richmond when he'd been told
behind a gas station on the highway to Colonial
Heights to get out of the USA as fast as he could?
He slipped past the office into the narrow Via
Margutta again.
It was half past nine and most of the city was
at dinner.
He'd never seen the street look so
deserted.
The daily murders, thefts, muggings
and assassinations had enforced an unofficial curfew
on this most earthy and voluptuously sceptical city.
He had an unpleasant sensation that he was being
trailed everywhere.
This was more than possible now
that he'd contacted Ralph.
He was on his way to
meet him now: the evening date at Gino's trattoria
had once more established itself.
Most of the
other regulars from the old days had died or moved
out of Rome or become too important to be seen there
any more.
Ralph fascinated him.
He could see the
lies flickering across his face like tiny silver fish
as he talked and waved his long hands.
James El crossed the Garibaldi bridge into the
brash and popular district he'd always loved best
with its noisy narrow lanes.
But this time all he
could think of as he stepped into the vine-covered
terrace with its strip lighting was that Gino the
proprietor hadn't once stepped out of the kitchen to
shake him by the hand since his return.
The fact
that Gino was possibly dying and not even in Rome,
being in his mid-eighties, occurred to him but
didn't alter his feeling that because of his association
with Ralph he was being avoided by the respectable.
You could never be sure what lay behind Ralph's
glances, casual as they invariably were.
He flashed
you little glances when he thought you weren't lcoking.
Besides a weak mouth he had a broad unlined brow as
if thought and care were unknown to him.
He went in
for wind.jackets summer and winter, and tight Italian
slacks and highheeled shoes that were unsuitable for
his age and out of date anyway.
Ralph was alone at a table for two.
They shook


hands and as he sat down he felt a sudden yearning
for the heady effects of the trattoria's home-grown
frascati.
A litre carafe of it was put before him
almost at once and he downed a glass in a few gulps.
"Worried?" Ralph asked him.
Then, without
waiting for an answer, "I talked to a friend of mine
called Johnny Lucubrese. He was probably still in
nappies when you were living on the Via Margutta.
He'd like to see you.
Tomorrow at the Flora, about
midday, in the bar downstairs."
"How will I recognise him?"
"He'll recognise you."
Next day it was just like the old Rome, bright
and warm with something buoyant in the air.
He took
a taxi to the Via Veneto and sat in a traffic jam
for twenty minutes cursing himself for not having
walked.
"What's the hold up?" he asked the driver.
"Another murder.
It was on the radio just
now." Very laconic and flat.
"Some minister.
They tried to kidnap him but it didn't come off,
three of the kidnappers were wounded, but they got
him first."
"What a mess."
The driver made no response to such an obvious
remark.
He got to the Flora ten minutes late and Johnny
was already there, an easy-going, well-dressed type
with long black hair and manicured fingers.
They
went upstairs and sat outside in the stink of the
slow-moving traffic.
"I've seen you around with Ralph," Johnny told him.
When they'd drunk their coffee in silence they
walked to the top of the hill into the Borghese
Gardens.
He remembered how the summer sun had
scorched the grass brown in the old days.
And the
annual horse jumping competitions.
He was surprised
to find that Johnny was nervous too.
"This evening somebody's going to phone you.
Hang about your hotel room between eight and nine."


"There's no phone in my room."
"She'll call you downstairs won't she?" Johnny
said with a trace of disgust at his simplicity. "All
you do on the phone is just listen and say yes and no
and fine and things like that.
Don't ask questions
or make comments."
"We'll meet here again tomorrow, same place and
time.
Now before you come I want you to call at
the Banco di Roma and have a look at your balance."
"You know I have an account there?"
Johnny said nothing to this, only gave him a
look of slight contempt.
"I'm doing this to oblige
Ralph.
I'm only passing messages.
I don't know
any more about it than you do."
Next morning James El found that his account
had been credited a thousand dollars.
He just nodded
to the clerk and handed back the statement without
enquiring where the credit came from.
Then he
strolled up the Via Veneto and waited for Johnny a
second time.
But he didn't come.
James El gave
him an hour and then returned to his hotel.
As for the phonecall the previous evening, it
hadn't come either.
But now, just ten minutes
after he got in from the Flora, the woman at the
desk downstairs knocked at his door and said, "Telephone."
The man at the other end spoke in English with
a slight Italian accent.
"This is Mike.
I'm glad
to find you at home. How are you?"
"I shall be leaving for Genoa round two o'clock
on Wednesday, so we could meet at the station.
only need a couple of minutes together.
It'll be
nice to see you again after so many years."
"I hope you'll be free to join me in about a
month's time at my country place.
I'll let you


The phone went dead.
For the first time since
his arrival James El felt like laughing.
He went
downstairs and drank a coffee at a little bar across
the road and stroked his belly with his hand, smiling
to himself.
They put a thousand good bucks in your
account for playing kid's games these days! Well,
well, he wasn't going to stop them.
And all of a sudden he felt at home.
listened to the shrill sound of the children playing
outside, and the clock of the nearby English Jesuit
college striking two. He felt the first warmth of
the spring sun as it invaded the damp of the bar
and cars roared past outside not a foot from the
entrance.
Yes, he was back in Rome!
And he meant
to spend that thousand bucks because it was the first
of many instalments. He'd hire a car and take a day
off at the sea, maybe Anzio, and have a fish dinner
there with a nice white wine from Nettuno, just like
old times.
Then would come stage two: finding Laura.
Or rather, getting Ralph to do so. James El breathed a
sigh of relief that at last his life was in risk
again.
They'd have to trail him to the coast
that day.
It made his blood go round a little
bit faster.
Ralph professed himself completely mystified
by the phonecall, and even by Johnny's behaviour.
As for the sudden appearance of a thousand dollars
in James El's account, he thought it amusing.
"Are you sure it wasn't a draft from the
States?" he asked with an easy laugh.
James El knew well enough that he was becoming
involved in espionage.
But his evening divinatory
exercises, and the mediumistic messages he was
getting with unfailing regularity, seemed to assure
him that all was well, he would somehow keep his
hands clean and emerge master of the situation after
all.
But more than this, he was ready to sacrifice
anything in order to reach Laura. He believed that
the work would be a perfect means to achieve this.
And he was right.
Ralph explained what he 'thought' the work
involved.
"They need a good front man for these operations,
not that I know what the operations are.
Probably
something to do with real estate, since you've always


been involved in that."
When James El looked
sceptical he added, "I'm only guessing.
You see
your value is that you're a personality, you've got
the right background, you know how to host people
and influence them, you're well travelled---whoever
these people are want you up front for some operation."
He knew Ralph was giving him real information.
"And what about the phonecall?" James El asked
him again.
"What did all that mean?"
"Ah there I can't help you."
And Ralph looked away.
The next few weeks were quiet.
He received
another thousand dollars but no more phonecalls.
He knew he was being trailed and observed.
Ralph
kept a pretty close line on him too, and they were
together most days of the week. Laura had been
traced. She was married but living alone in the
'ghetto' area.
Her husband was called Marco
Petrucci and quite wealthy.
They'd been together
five years or more but were now separated, though
still close friends and at all the same parties.
James El asked anxiously if there'd been children.
To his everlasting relief Ralph said "No." He
slipped Laura's address across the table to him,
and at that moment James El felt he would go to
the gates of hell with Ralph for that service.
Every evening after that he made a point of
passing through the little square where she lived
and looking up at what he guessed to be her window.
Standing below, he concentrated all his 'forces'
on her, sometimes for an hour or more.
In his
hotel room he concentrated his magic on her too,
primitive though his ceremonies had to be in the
tiny room.
He avoided getting to know other women.
met several at the trattoria, friends of Ralph
mostly, among them several attractive American
girls, but he didn't make dates. He wanted no
flies in the ointmentwhen the time came for him to
meet Laura. He remembered a brothel in the Via
Monserrato from the old days where there had often
been lunchtime queues of men from the nearby markets.
Now, with the abolition of brothels, it had become
a small hotel much like the one he was staying at
near the Pantheon.
You took a girl in from the
street, or you booked one at the desk.
James El
preferred the latter way of doing things and found
a sweet Neapolitan kid who curled softly all round
him and worked him hard, so that he would stumble
back to his own hotel feeling contentedly debauched
as dawn came through.
In this way sex desire was
appeased, attachments avoided. He became one of
her steady clients and sometimes he had her over at
his own hotel.
He was beginning to feel that the
old Rome was still alive after all.


After a month like this Johnny met him in the
gardens again and told him he must go to Switzerland
the following day. He would fly to Zurich.
"Book a room at the Bau au Lac, do it by phone
from your hotel lobby.
Talk as loud as you like.
When you get to Zurich take a taxi there direct from
the airport.
Walk into the lobby and through into
the lounge. Order some coffee. Go to the hotel
desk and look as if you're confirming your room: but instead
you can invent a name and ask them if the gentleman
has arrived yet. When you've drunk your coffee
order a taxi at the desk and then go to the Hotel
Excelsior where you'll find a room already booked
in your name. By the way, travel light, just one
piece of hand luggage. Stay in your room between
six and seven every evening until a man knocks on
your door and introduces himself with the following
question: 'You are the American gentleman I met on
the plane aren't you?'.
Your answer will be, 'How
nice of you to look me up.
I'm just on my way out
to dinner.
Won't you join me?t"
"Isn't that rather corny dialogue?" James El
asked, marvelling again at the childishness of it
all.
"I didn't write it," Johnny said with a suggest-
ion of disgust.
"And do we go out to dinner?"
"He'll take you along the lake towards Zollikon.
I mean walking. It's quiet there."
"And what's he going to talk about?"
This time Johnny simply gave him a long hard
look.
"When he's told you everything you go back
to your hotel and dine there. And you leave as
early as possible the next morning, returning to
Rome via Milan."
The man who came to see him in the Zurich hotel
seemed to be Swiss.
He talked in a mutter, as if
he'd learned it all by heart. He explained the code of
the 'Mike' - phonecall James El had received, and
taught him how proper names were formed.
James El
was astonished at the ingenuity. All had to be
committed to memory, nothing must be on paper except
a certain phone number. They strolled along the
path by the lake for at least two hours.
The man
told him that he must wait at least an hour after
each phonecall he received: if a confirming call
had not come through within an hour he must get
out of Rome at once and call the number which the
man wrote down for him.
"If you call that number you'll be given another
number, only you have to say who you are."
"Who am I?"
"The keeper of the southern gate."
"What?" He jumped out of his skin at this
reference to one of the four 'gates' in the magic
he practised.
It was the one thing in his life no
one knew a thing about!
No onel
"Only in an emergency is that your name, I the
other man said.


"And who do I ask for?"
"Lord Michael."
"But that is the keeper of the southern gate!"
James El shouted.
It was the other man's turn to look astonished.
He was clearly doing no more than passing on instruct-
ions.
"He'll call himself Michael or Mike," the agent
went on. "But if he refers to himself as Lord
Michael it means you're in great danger, be very
careful about being observed."
Only back in Rome did James El remember the
sweet little Neapolitan girl asking about the gaudy
robe she found in his wardrobe, and his paternal
explanation of the 'magic circle'.
Damned fool!
From now on he'd got to be cleverer than that.
James El knew that the terrorist systems
operated largely without direct personal contact
between leaders and the actual work groups.
This
made it very difficult for the police to break them
open. Those terrorists the police did catch genuine-
ly knew nothing about their superiors or fellows.
Often they didn't know what group they were working
for until the newspapers told them after an operation,
and even then they couldn't be certain. Of course
there had to be contact men like Johnny, to handle
the recruits, but these slipped anchor fairly early
in the game So that nothing could be pinned on them.
As for where the money came from --East or West---
even the leaders didn't know that. Not even Lord
Michael himself.
There was a rumour that General della Volta was
back in his job as director of anti-terrorist operat-
ions.
He had resigned some years before when, under
communist pressure, the DC government had abolished
the criminal and political dossiers at the Questura.
These traced a man back for many years. The effect
was to rob the police of their only line to the
terrorist groups, and as a result terrorism had
escalated.
With the kidnapping and murder of Aldo
Moro, which represented the climax of this period,
even the communists took fright, and back came
General della Volta (some said with the dossiers
miraculously resuscitated).
Thus the chances of
being caught were now much greater than before.
Any politicians or policemen who had received large
sums of money for exposing to contact men the
security arrangements surrounding important ministers
were having considerably less sleep now.
James El knew what he was getting himself into
but he also knew that he'd never meet Laura again in
the way he wished unless he was on the same social
level and going to the same parties.
It blinded
him to the fact that he might be working for the
wrong side.
Ralph calmed him down about this:


"You're protecting a lot of threatened people---it's
as simple as that.
I'm only repeating what I've heard.
of course."
He knew too that once you embarked on this sort
of life you could never discover who your enemies were-
how many and how strong. You could be run over
accidentally by a car, poisoned in a restaurant.
From the moment you entered the circle you never knew
who might be trailing you, and how essential your death
might be to them.
But these considerations only added to his
pleasure. He wasn't afraid to die: which gave him
twice the courage of the average man.
For years now
James El had studied and discussed death with himself.
He had collected a shelf-full of books about 'clinical
death'.
The literature wasn't all that extensive but
every few months a new book on the subject emerged,
even if it was just a rehash of data served up in
previous books.
He got enormous happiness from
reading account after account of the experience of
dying by those who had been revived: 'I felt myself
rise and so to speak emerge from my own body.
could look down on it, quite dispassionately, and hear
what the nurses were saying. My feeling was one of
unbelievable release and happiness, a floating sensation
so perfect that nothing in my life before or since
has matched it. It was a feeling too of peace and
I may say total self-fulfilment as if all my life had
been an endeavour to reach this point. I resented
bitterly being brought back to life. I wanted to
cry. For days, weeks I yearned for that experience
again.
I never forgot it. Gradually I have realised
I must wait for my due time to die.
Any fear of death
I might have had before is unknown to me now. I
look forward to that experience again with all my
heart."
Wherever he went James El took these accounts
with him.
When feeling apprehensive he simply
read one or two of them and they calmed him.
What
need he fear in life if death was no longer fearful?
'Thank God,' he often heard himself saying, 'thank
God we diel
Thank God life isn't all there is!'
His first assignment was a sophisticated trailing
job. He was first to observe, then by hook or by
crook get to know personally a minister by the name
of Lucchino Pietrafino. He was given this name by
Michael enclosed in a' series of apparently chatty
and harmless sentences which were in fact codes.
Within a month he must be on personal terms with the
minister, within two in a position of entire confidence,
so that he might be invited to the man's house without
fear. He was ordered to take an apartment on the
choice Aventine hill: he would sign the contract
the following day, paying six months rent in advance.
He would be receiving a special draft for this.
The apartment was waiting for him.
Here he must
give parties and become known as a desirable social
contact.
As for his sex life, this was entirely his
own affair, since he alone would be the sufferer


from any indiscretions.
James El sat deciphering
the coded sentences for days, as one phonecall
followed another with fresh instructions.
Each
call was followed by a confirming one an hour later,
as the Swiss agent had promised.
It wasn't a difficult assignment for a man of
his background.
He found himself back in the old
restaurants in Parioli and along the Via Veneto--
and less and less at the Trastevere trattoria where
he felt most at home.
Ralph joined him in his
new life, indeed he made him feel that his presence
was part of the bargain. Certainly James El felt safer
with him around: one never knew when one might want a
dirty trick or two to save oneself.
James El's apartment was vast, its tall, arched
reception room giving out on to the mellow walls of
S. Abbadia. He soon had a steady stream of visitors.
Access to the minister Pietrafino became easy.
James El was back in circulation---it went round-Rome,
among all those old enough to remember his 'wild'
days twenty years back, about which they now laughed.
With a middle-aged sptead, a cook from the Trento and
a lot of anecdotes to teli James El was excellent
company.
One evening, at a party composed largely
of DC people, he met Laura. It was difficult to
hide their astonishment from the others but they both
tried, perhaps because they knew what was going to
happen later: her husband and his friends were
there, and in Rome one had to be discreet even today.
They found each other more attractive than before,
they laughed a great deal, planned an evening alone
together.
Again he had the giddy sensation that the
twenty years in between had been swallowed up and
lost.
The two of them dined alone at his place the
following week and made love afterwards.
They were
awake all night.
At dawn they walked round the square
to the terrace and watched as the sun began to light
up the cupola of St Peter's in the valley, then trace
the Tiber and the Farnese roofs.
They were in love.
He didn't attempt to hide this from Ralph.
One
evening she joined them at Gino's.
James El dismissed
his suspicion that she and Ralph had had an affair
from his mind.
But a sense of discomfort remained.
At a later party he met Marco Petrucci, her
husband, a geniai quiet man with rather stunning
good looks, very masculine and steady.
"You're a fool for leaving him," James El teased
her.
"It was only a few months ago.
Something suddenly
snapped."


When he heard this James El felt both a tinge
of regret that he'd hurt her in his magical concent-
rations to get rid of her man, and triumph that his
powers had been adequate to the task.
Just before the two months of his assignment
were up the minister he was trailing, Lucchino
Pietrafino, was shot dead in his car on his way
to the Quirinale.
There were press photos of him
hanging from the driver's seat.
James El had
provided detailed accounts of his daily movements
in a series of reports, consigned to a black plastic
sack in a rubbish dump among the tenement blocks of
Monte Mario.
James El, his face swollen with anger, rushed
to the phone and called Ralph.
They met in the
Piazza del Teatro Marcello, where in the old days
you got the best coffee in Rome.
Ralph almost
ran towards him, red in the face, frowning, and
grabbed his arm, pulling him towards the tiny bar.
"So the bastards got him after allt" he said.
"What bastards?" James El asked, marvelling
at his cunning.
"Well, the ones we were protecting him against
of courseli
"Protecting him?"
Ralph stopped and lowered his voice: "But did
you never realise, I'm in with one of the protection
groups? We tip people off when they're high in the
lists! We tipped him off!
Somebody was doing a
beautiful trailing job for us---knew every movement--
penetrated his home life---you see, people never will
learn not to do the same things every day!"
That evening they dined alone outside Rome.
When he got back to his apartment at two in the
morning James El couldn't for the life of him say for
certain that Ralph hadn't been spoofing.
What was
happening to his judgement?
A hot flush of guilt
suffused his face as he accused himself of Pietrafino's
murder (a particularly nice man...). Yet what Ralph
had said made a kind of sense. Since Ralph could
in this way protect him against unpleasant feelings,
he believed Ralph...
James El had a feeling that his apartment had
been visited.
He questioned the cook but drew a
blank.
One morning he was almost knocked down by
a fast car along the narrow Via Pellegrino: but then
the driver might have been a fugitive from some
theft (it was the right kind of street for that).
He looked into his account at the Banco di Roma
each month and found it replenished right on time.
He bought a car at a big discount from one of his
regular visitors, a car salesman from Turin, and
drove Laura out to Ostia Antica, Frascati, Palestrina,
and for weekends to Felice in Circeo, Sorrento, all


the old places.
It was like coming back to life
after a twenty-year anaesthesia.
He was deliriously
happy to find that Laura felt the same.
"Did you think of me at all in those years?" he asked.
"Only as part of a scene that couldn't be
repeated. Something that went wrong,and which I
didn't understand.
You see I fell in love with you
this time as if you were a new person."
"A completely new person?"
"Not really. Not quite new I suppose."
And with this she gave him to understand, in
a woman's way, that the past twenty years had been a
loss for her too.
They planned to get away. He knew a man back
in the States, in Florida to be exact, who needed
a partner. He told Laura about the difficulties
he'd got himself into in the States but. said' he hoped
the fuss had died down now.
"But why do you want to leave?" Laura asked him.
"I just don't feel good here like I used to."
She gave him a quiet look and he added, "Italy's
changed so much."
This time, he told himself, he'd be in the
States with a woman he felt it a privilege to be
with, and who only had to speak in order to command
his attention and thrill and excite him.
Just her
voice sent him wild with happiness. You couldn't
have said that for Betty, though he had nothing
against Betty. The thing with Laura was that his
old feelings for her didn't abate however much sex
they had.
Then came an unexpected phonecall from Michael.
It was a new assignment. James El knew better than
to answer back over the phone. The confirming
phonecall came precisely an hour later. It found
James El trembling violently.
For his next assignment
was Marco Petrucci, Laura's husband.
He spent the rest of the day decoding the message
again and again to see if he'd made an error over
the name.
But, apart from the fact that he'd made
no mistake, the identity-features he'd been given
fitted Marco and no one else in Rome.
He called
at Ralph's flat at one in the morning and they
strolled round and round the great Roman baths in
the Piazza Farnese, talking in whispers.
James
El broke the most sacred rule of his new job, namely
to reveal an assignment to living mortal.
could feel a tremor of white-hot terror go through
Ralph as he did so.
You could after all get killed
just for knowing something you shouldn't know.
In this world the matter of innocence counted for
little.
But James El quite deliberately burdened
him with it. It turned Ralph into a fellow-
conspirator with as much to lose as he had.


He urged Ralph to tell him what he knew of
Laura's husband. A wealthy and influential man,
close to high-ranking DC ministers---that he knew.
But he was also known to have left-wing sympathies,
and to have helped architect the famous compromesso
storico or 'historical compromise' between the
Christian Democrats and the communists which Aldo
Moro and Pope Paul crowned with respectability.
This was news.
"And whose side is he on now?" James El asked.
"His own. He's fighting for his survival like
the rest of us."
There also seemed a possibility that Marco was
involved, though at some distance, with forms of
espionage.
He made frequent unexplained visits to
Switzerland: some said he was involved in certain
financial operations which had a terrorist role.
"And all I can suggest, II Ralph said in a
frightened whisper, "is that once again you've been
roped in to protect someone."
"Well, I1 James El said quite loudly, "I hope he
-don't get protected like Lucchino Pietrafino was
protected."
Ralph simply shrugged.
James El wanted to tip Laura off in some way 9
above all share his predicament with her, explain why
he wouldn't be able to leave Italy just yet.
was jumpy, which she noticed at once. On his side
he thought he saw something apprehensive in her eyes,
especially when Ralph was with them.
He took the dangerous step of telling her to
warn Marco to change his daily routines, and to
continue varying them each day.
"Because nobody that busy should have a regular
timetable, II he said.
"Of course it's only an
opinion."
Next day he asked her casually, "Did you speak
to Marco like I said?"
"He'd never do it. He'd laugh." And she gave
him a sudden look: "He'd think I knew something. I
He switched the subject at once, taking the hint.
"Yes, you're probably right."
Alone in bed that night he asked himself why he
hadn't taken her lead and revealed the whole thing to
her---taken her to that little fish restaurant along
the coast near Civitavecchia and talked all the way
in the unbugged safety of his car. Feeling cold
while sweating profusely, he realised he was frightened
to do that because she might betray him.
What
had he sunk to?
He obeyed instructions,and his account at the
Banco di Roma continued to benefit.
In the old days,
when he'd entered the bank's domed foyer, with the
sunlight glittering from the tall windows on to the
brass grilles all round, he'd felt a strange elation.
Now he felt distraught.


Marco Petrucci began coming to his apartment
quite frequently.
Clearly he knew about James El's
affair with Laura and didn't seem to mind (he was
living with another woman himself). He liked James
El a lot. He invited him without Laura sometimes.
They went 'hunting' together in the Pisan hills,
though James El refused to fire at young wild boar
which were so domesticated that they almost came up
to you for a scratch.
When they were alone together
in one of the chalets, sipping Cointreau, in candle-
light, he tried to tip Marco off but it didn't work.
i A man in your position should vary his daily
routines."
"I'm not important enough for them, don't worry."
He gave James El a look that suggested he knew
what he was doing. So James El felt absolved of
responsibility from that time on.
After all, if
Marco was in some form of espionage he must take the
cookie whichever way it crumbled...
Marco was in the habit of flying to Palermo on
business in the company helicopter about once a month.
One evening he told James El over the phone that he
was going down there the following day.
James El
made sure not to include this piece of information in
his report that same night.
The helicopter crashed with Marco in it.
There
was no explosion.
The story going around was that
the pilot had heart failure. It seemed that neither
the police nor the medicos liked to invetigate a thing
like this too deeply.
Marco was killed instantaneously.
The moment he got the news James El rushed in a
panic to the phone to call Ralph.
But he stopped
and forced himself to wait.
At this point you didn't
make impulsive moves: things had got too dangerous.
Laura came to him with the news that Marco had left
her everything, his lawyers had just phoned her: the
family would contest it but as she was still Marco's
wife and they hadn't even legally separated the family
hadn't a chance.
The look in her eyes told James El that she knew
more than he thought.
That night, strolling up and
down a deserted lane outside Frascati, he told her
everything. She said she'd had a 'brief and unpleasant'
affair with Ralph some years back, and that indeed it
had been Ralph who had attacked him most viciously
behind his back when he was in trouble with the
Questura.
He'd invented all kinds of stories, such
as certain cynical remarks made by James El about
their love affair, which had corrupted her young
judgement. They resolved not to show signs of
having shared this information to Ralph.
ELI (L'Esercito della Liberazione Italiana, or
the Italian liberation army) claimed the murder, as
they had claimed that of Pietrafino.
James El wanted


to kill Ralph but Laura calmed him down.
"You have to protect yourself, 11 she said.
"Forget Ralph. He'll always find a way of hurting
you if you try to hurt him."
She told him that Ralph had reappeared in her
life after she'd married Marco.
This had aroused
her suspicions at the time.
They planned to leave Italy secretly.
It would
take some time.
There was the question of money.
It would be quite impossible for her to take her
fortune out of Italy, because of the blocked-currency
regulations.
But they could both take as much cash
as they could handle and slip across the Austrian
border north of Udine.
From Salzburg they would
fly to Munich, then on to the States.
But for the
next few weeks they must go on with their own lives
as if nothing had happened.
They must behave normally
with Ralph: and James El was even to take on another
assignment if given one.
Indeed, that would make
a getaway easier.
He was worried by Ralph's silence and one morning
decided to call on him. The apartment was closed up
and the porter downstairs said that Ralph had gone
away suddenly.
The phone had been disconnected.
No new instructions came from Michael.
James
El became increasingly nervous.
One day he went
to the Banco di Roma and to his horror saw that
his account had not been credited as usual.
This
meant either that the police had got nearer to the
organisation than was safe, or that he was now
regarded as having fulfilled his role and thus
expendable.
He decided to let two more months go by. During
this time he and Laura made several experimental
trips to Udine for ski-ing, so that their getaway
trip wouldn't look unusual.
He worked hard at his
secret concentration ceremonies, now as always before.
He 'isolated' himself and Laura from danger.
In one
of his divinatory sessions he found out that Ralph was
back in Malta, or at least somewhere south of Italy.
He had been ordered to go there. But he would
certainly come back. They were watching James El
closely.
They trailed him everywhere. He warned
Laura to the utmost caution.
They talked only
trivialities together unless they were in the car
and walking in a deserted place outside Rome.
Finally it was time to make the getaway attempt.
They planned to leave for Udine the following day.
The only suspicious thing they had done was to draw
large sums of cash out of their accounts the previous
week but then something had to be risked.


4. That night Ralph phoned.
James El's heart
sank into his bowels.
"Think I'd deserted you?
What about dinner
tonight?"
They met without Laura at Gino's and to his
immense relief he found Ralph as distraught and
clearly on the run as he himself was. They drank a
lot of frascati.
Ralph said he'd got himself into
a bit of a fix and didn't know how to get out of it.
"I tried a bunk to Malta but it didn't work. 11
When they were sipping their coffee Ralph said
quietly, "They think you'll try a bunk too---tomorrow--
is that true?"
James El simply shrugged, feeling a tremor of fear
but only on Laura's account.
"You've got to get away tonight,' "Ralph added.
"And take me with you."
"Take you?"
"I've got it all worked out.
There's no danger."
"Isn't it unwise talking here?"
"Shit man, I know every bugging device in the
city---this is the only safe place within fifty
miles! Why, did you think you were safe in a lonely
lane outside Frascati?"
James El showed such astonishment that Ralph
burst out laughing.
"They've got you by the short and curlies,' 11
Ralph went on. "Don't look so worried---they only
trailed you there, they didn't pick up the conversat-
ion. All they needed for that was a bit of imagination."
Leaning forward Ralph told him what to do: 'Go
to that little church by the Santa Lucia market.
Today's Santa Lucia, did you: know that?
So there'll
be candles alight all over the church and lots of
people.
Go there straight from here.
Go to the
little chapel of the madonna at the side of the high
altar, and kneel and start praying. Stay like that
until I get there.
I've got to organise the car.
It'll be waiting outside with me and Laura in it.
This is the number on the licence plate." He passed
James El - a scrap of paper.
"If I haven't turned up
by ten o'clock go without me, just you and Laura.
She'll be sitting in the car alone, outside the
church. You'll never hear from me again."
"I hope that doesn't happen," James El said in
a moment of sentimentality.
"You hope?" He went on, "Get hold of Laura now.
Tell her to go straight to your apartment and wait
there. Can she get in?"
You'll have to give her the keys before
you go to church."
"All right."
"And tell her to bring all her money.
What she
drew out.
You and I are going to need that."


As he rushed over to Laura's place James El
went through several divinatory procedures, trying
as best he could to concentrate while driving the
car.
He received the word 'ecstasy' many times,
and thought this referred to the experience he and
Laura would have once they were across the border.
He didn't trust Ralph of course.
But when he put
questions about Ralph's reliability the answers were
enigmatic:
Ralph was a 'viper', which he knew,
but he 'blocked the path'. What did that mean?
Was he blocking the path of the organisation, stopping
them from trailing them to the border? Anyway
there was no way of avoiding Ralph's help at this
point. He couldn't dare drive with Laura to Udine
right now, without Ralph, though it occurred to
him to risk it.
Ralph knew far too much.
Even
now he was being trailed, he was sure.
The chances
were that Ralph had enclosed his plan inside some
cover which was acceptable to the organisation:
so Ralph meant safety. He became surer and surer of
this as he drove along.
He told Laura what to do and gave her his
keys. She begged him not to trust Ralph.
There
was a long tearful scene and at one point he agreed
that it had to be one more of Ralph's dirty deals.
11 But he's our only chance," he said.
"They
know far more about you and me than I thought possible.
The one thing on our side is that he wants to get
away himself. And that's why I told him all about
my Marco assignment in the first place, in case a
situation like this arose.
I reckon he has to
help us."
The crowded church was brilliant with lighted
candles, hundreds of them on all sides, and as James El
stepped inside a feeling of extraordinary happiness
came over him. As he took the holy water on the
tips of his fingers and made the sign of the cross
a sentence came into his mind with some clarity:
'And now you meet the keeper of the southern gate.'
What did it mean? He took it as a good omen and
walked down the side-aisle to the little chapel.
He knelt close to the madonna and found himself
genuinely praying, his eyes closed.
He stayed like
this for at least five minutes. He heard a soft
step behind him, much like those mysterious steps
he had heard in his mind during his first days in
Rome, and he guessed it to be Ralph. He remained
where he was for a moment.
He felt a pricking
sensation at the elbow and was just about to turn
to find out what had happened when he felt a great
weakness and slowly fell sideways.
Not until the following day was he found,
already dead for several hours.
According to the
priest who found him he had a quite unbelievable look
of joy on his face.
It hadn't entered James El's mind, when that


sentence came to him on his entering the church,
that Michael, keeper of the southern gate, was also
the Lord of Death.
5. Laura waited in James El's apartment at the
appointed time.
There were two letters from him
on the table, both marked 'To be opened later'.
The car was waiting downstairs with Ralph at
the wheel.
"We'll have to be quick about this," he said
and drove off at once.
After a time she realised they were driving
towards the coast.
"What about James El?" she asked him.
"Something went wrong.
Hopefully he's meeting
us at the airport. ."
"What went wrong?" She was shivering.
"I'II tell you on the plane."
"Where are we going?"
"London. If the worst comes to the worst he'll
meet us there.
We worked out a whole lot of fall-back
plans."
Ralph had air tickets ready.
He was trembling,
she noticed, which made her feel safer because it
meant that he was genuinely on the run, as James El
had said.
Only after take-off did he relax. He turned to
her with a smile and said enigmatically, "Well, I
wasn't worried for you but I was for mei"
At London airport two security men came forward
at the passport desk and asked them to follow them.
They went to a room behind the customs area.
Ralph
was placed under arrest and Laura advised to find a
London hotel for several days as she would be needed
for questioning.
As they walked together in front of the security
men Ralph told her in a normal voice, not at all
shaken, "I knew somebody was trailing us---thank God
it was the policel" He added, "I'll get five years
and by that time ELI and all its brothers and sisters
won't exist.
I hope."
Laura was interrogated at her hotel several times
during the next few days.
In the second interview,
before either she or the police had mentioned James El,
they showed her a photograph of him and asked if she
knew him. When she said yes they told her he'd been
found dead.
And where.
She opened the two letters from James El. One
contained the cash he'd drawn from his account, the
other was a copy of his will leaving her his inheritance
which he'd never been able to touch.
It comprised in
great part areas of land in Florida.
The following
week she flew there.


Perhaps he hadn't forgotten after all, as he
walked into the church of Santa Lucia, that Michael
keeper of the southern gate was also Lord of Death.
Length: 80,000 words.