Night Journey by Winston Graham

Bonini next morning at eleven. The grim business of deception.
    He kept me waiting half an hour and then came in naval uniform. The smart severity of the uniform, took away from the fleshiness of his figure; I think he wore a body belt.
    We met in a small ante-room and he at once came to the point. “I have bees given limited permission to use you for as long as my own secretary is away. This will not be long. Please let me see your papers.”
    â€œI am extremely obliged to you, sir. You are very kind to have taken this trouble.”
    He waved an irritable hand—a hand strangely like Andrews’s at first glance, soft and plump and flexible, but lacking some implication of a dangerous softness.
    â€œMy family,” I said, “will look on this——”
    â€œSave your breath,” be said. “Understand if I engage you, you are here not to talk but to obey orders.”
    I was dutifully silent while he thumbed through the papers. “ That seems satisfactory,” he said at length, grudgingly.
    I picked them up from the marble-topped table on which he had dropped them as if they were dirty.
    â€œThere is nothing to-day,” he said, “ and to-morrow is Sunday when I shall be off duty. Call here at eight-thirty on Monday. On Monday afternoon, you will go to Milan, to the Hotel Colleoni, where you will find two rooms booked in my name. I will join you on Tuesday morning. I shall want you to attend a conference with me on Tuesday afternoon. This will last for two or three days.”
    â€œVery well, sir.”
    â€œDo you understand anything of Naval Ordnance?”
    â€œEr—no, six. But I did reach a good standard in mathematics and physics.”
    He grunted. “ I have some papers here for you to study. Make what you can of them. It is not necessary to understand them fully but only to grasp some of the terms. You may spend the morning in this room. When you have done put them in this drawer. Do not be late on Monday. Is that clear?”
    â€œYes, sir. And thank you.”
    He left me, clearly intent on doing his part with the minimum of politeness, In some degree perhaps this helped him to salve his uneasy conscience and his fear of being contaminated.
    The papers he had left me were the sort he must have pulled out of some odd cubby-hole to lead an air of reality to the charade. They dealt with subjects like armature windings, the permeability of high quality steel, theories of magnetic reluctance. They could well have had bearing on one or other of the subjects at the conference but were of an elementary nature. I carefully read through them, and could not resist adding a footnote to one paper where the writer was making deductions from an incomplete knowledge of his subject. That done, I walked back to the hotel for lunch.
    The weather was overcast again to-day and the lagoon had none of its familiar colour. Andrews had said it would be more discreet for me to stay in the general vicinity of the hotel; but the public rooms felt too public and my bedroom was far too private. Although all arrangements were going according to plan, my imagination would not let them alone. Pitfalls, it seemed to me, yawned everywhere. How had Bonini so easily secured clearance for me to attend a high-power scientific conference, an unknown relative engaged arbitrarily as his secretary? Were security arrangements sufficiently lax in Italy? Even if he thought he could get me in, I might well be turned back at the doors. Even if I were admitted, as a secretary I should not be invited to examine things as a scientist would, and I might miss the points most needed. If I tried to discover more I would only draw attention to myself. I was no practised spy. At school I had always been the one to be found out.
    So, against Andrews’s advice, I went for a long walk. I took a vaporetto to the Rialto Bridge and then wandered on north through the Strada Nuova among the Venetian shops and