boats in Bastia on State's payroll as one more "observer" of Soviet Legurian Sea operations. The brief visit south to Porto Vecchio had been in connection with the feasibility of covertly financing resort projects in the Tyrrhenian; he never knew what happened.
While in Porto Vecchio he had rented a car and driven up into the hills.
He had seen the ruins of Villa Matarese in the broiling afternoon sun and had stopped for a glass of beer at a roadside taverna, but the excursion had faded quickly from his mind. It never occurred to him that he would ever return. The legend of the Matarese was no more alive than the ruins of the villa. Not then.
He reached the road and pulled the cap down, the cloth covering the bruise on his upper forehead where he had collided with an iron post in a stairwell.
Taleniekov. Had he reached Corsica? Was he somewhere in the hills of Porto Vecchio? It would not take long to find out. A stranger asking questions about a legend would be easily tracked down. On the other hand, the Russian would be cautious; if it had occurred to them to go back to the source of the legend, it might well occur to others to do the same.
Bray looked at his watch; it was nearly eleven-thirty. He took out a map estimating his position as two and a half miles south of Sainte Lucie; the most direct line to the hills-to the Matarese hills, he reflected-was due west But there was something to find before he entered those hills.
A base of operations. A place where he could conceal his things with the reasonable expectation that they would be there when he came back. That ruled out any normal stop a traveler might make. He could not master the Oltramontan dialect in a few hours; he'd be marked as a stranger and strangers were marks. He would have to make camp in the woods, near water if possible, and preferably within walking distance of a store or inn where he could get food.
He had to assume he would be in Porto Vecchio for several days. No other assumption was feasible; anything could happen once he found Taleniekov-if he found him -but for the moment the necessities had to be considered before any plan was formulated. All the little things.
There was a path-too narrow for any car to travel, a shepherd's route perhaps-that veered off the road into a gently rising series of fields; it headed west. He shifted the canvas duffle bag to his left hand and entered the path, pushing aside low-hanging branches until he was in the tall grass.
By 1:45 he had walked no more than five or six Miles inland, but he had purposely traveled in a zig zag pattern that afforded him the widest views of the area. He found what he was looking for, a section of forest that rose abruptly above a stream, thick branches of Corsican pine sweeping down to the ground on the banks. A man and his belongings would be safe behind those walls of green. A mile or so to the southwest there was a road that led further up into the hills. From what he could remember he was fairly certain this was the road he had taken to the ruins of Villa Matarese; there had been only one. Again, if memory served, he recalled driving past a number of isolated farmhouses on the way to the ruins on the hill and the inn where he had stopped for native beer during that hot afternoon. Only the inn came first, near that road on the hill, where a narrower road swung off it. To the right on the way up, on the left returning to Porto Vecchio. Bray checked his map again; it showed the hill road, and the branch to the right. He knew where he was.
He waded across the stream, and climbed the opposite bank to the cascading pines, He crawled underneath, opened his duffle bag and took out a small shovel, amused that two packets of toilet paper fell out with the instrument. The little things, he thought, as he started to dig into the soft earth.
It was nearly four o'clock. He had set up his camp beneath the screen of green branches, his duffle bag buried, the bandage on his neck changed, his face and hands washed in the stream. Too, he had rested, staring up at the filtered sunlight strained through the