“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 madman left his crewman in charge, landed, stole a car in Durres and drove straight to Tirana. He caught me at my hotel as I was leaving for the meeting with Luci.”

“Getting back to the coast must have been quite a trick.”

“We did run into a little trouble. Had to do the last ten miles on foot through coastal salt marshes. Not good with the hounds on your heels, but Orsini knew what he was doing. Once we were on board the Buona Esperanza it was easy. The Albanians don’t have much of a navy. Half a dozen minesweepers and a couple of sub-chasers. The Buona Esperanza has ten knots on any one of them.”

“It would seem that Orsini is due for a bonus on this one.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

The Chief nodded, opened the official file that contained Chavasse’s report and leafed through it. “So we’re wasting our time in Albania?”

Chavasse nodded. “I’m afraid so. You know the way things have been since the twentieth Party Congress in 1956, and now the Chinese are in there with both feet.”

“Anything to worry about?”

Chavasse shook his head. “The most backward European country I’ve visited and the Chinese are too far from home to be able to do much about it.”

“What about this naval base the Russians were using at Valona before they pulled out? The word was that they’d built it into a sort of Red Gibraltar on the Adriatic.”