The Keys of Hell Read Online Free

spite of her dark, heavy-rimmed library spectacles.
    She glanced up sharply and Chavasse smiled. “Surprise, surprise.”
    Jean Frazer removed her spectacles. “You look like hell. How was Albania?”
    “Tiresome,” Chavasse said. “Cold, wet, and with the benefits of universal brotherhood rather thinly spread on the ground.” He sat on the edge of the desk and helped himself to a cigarette from a teak box. “What brings you and the old man out here? The Albanian affair wasn’t all that important.”
    “We had a NATO intelligence meeting in Bonn. When we got word that you were safely out, the Chief decided to come to Rome to take your report on the spot.”
    “Not good enough,” Chavasse said. “The old bastard wouldn’t have another job lined up for me, would he? Because if he has, he can damn well think again.”
    “Why not ask him?” she said. “He’s waiting for you now.”
    She nodded toward a green baize door. Chavasse looked at it for a moment, sighed heavily and crushed his cigarette into the ashtray.
     
    T HE INNER ROOM WAS HALF IN SHADOW , the only light a shaded lamp on the desk. The man who stood at the window gazing out at the lights of Rome was of medium height, the face somehow ageless, a strange, brooding expression in the dark eyes.
    “Here we are again,” Chavasse said softly.
    The Chief turned, taking in everything about Chavasse in a single moment. He nodded. “Glad to see you back in one piece, Paul. I hear things were pretty rough over there.”
    “You could say that.”
    The older man moved to his chair and sat down. “Tell me about it.”
    “Albania?” Chavasse shrugged. “We’re not going to do much there. No one can pretend the people have gained anything since the Communists took over at the end of the war, but there’s no question of a counterrevolution even getting started. The sigurmi , the secret police, are everywhere. I’d say they must be the most extensive in Europe.”
    “You went in using that Italian Communist Party Friendship cover, didn’t you?”
    “It didn’t do me much good. The Italians in the party accepted me all right, but the trouble started when we reached Tirana. The sigurmi assigned an agent to each one of us and they were real pros. Shaking them was difficult enough and the moment I did, they smelt a rat and put out a general call for me.”
    “What about the Freedom Party? How extensive are they?”
    “You can start using the past tense as of last week. When I arrived, they were down to two cells. One in Tirana, the capital, the other in Scutari. Both were still in contact with our Bureau operation here in Rome.”
    “Did you manage to contact the leader, this man Luci?”
    “Only just. The night we were to meet to really discuss things, he was mopped up by the sigurmi. Apparently, they were all over his place, waiting for me to show my hand.”
    “And how did you manage to scrape out of that one?”
    “The Scutari cell got a radio signal from Luci as the police were breaking in. They relayed it to Bureau headquarters here in Rome. Luckily for me they had a quick thinker on duty—a girl called Francesca Minetti.”
    “One of our best people at this end,” the Chief said. “I’ll tell you about her one of these days.”
    “My back way out of Albania was a motor launch called Buona Esperanza run by a man called Guilio Orsini. He’s quite a boy. Was one of the original torpedo merchants with the Italian navy during the war. His best touch was when he sank a couple of our destroyers in Alexandria harbor back in ’41. Got out again in one piece, too. He’s a smuggler now. Runs across to Albania a lot. His grandmother came from there.”
    “As I recall the original plan, he was to wait three nights running in a cove near Durres. That’s about thirty miles by road from Tirana, isn’t it?”
    Chavasse nodded. “When Francesca Minetti got the message from Scutari, she took a chance and put it through to Orsini on his boat. The