“So you do think he is important?” André insisted, and some of his pride surged back. He had caught Duclos. Of course there were others, too, who had helped. But he had started the chase, he had followed it through.
“I hear our heavy-footed friend returning,” Insarov answered, as the man came plodding back through the dark bushes. “Better tell him that silence can be of more importance than speed,” he said acidly. “Better still, send him back to Bulgaria. He won’t always find a place as desolate as this.” He turned away before the man started reporting that all was well, no one was on the road, there had been no traffic for the last three hours.
André caught up with Insarov at the door. Insarov was looking down towards the sea, a molten mass of metal under the night sky. His mood had changed again. “It should be an interesting week,” he said softly, his eyes still watching the Aegean. Then, as André swung the door open for him, he strode into the room, smiling and confident, and made for his corner. “Get him up!” He pointed to Duclos, tied to the fallen chair.
Demetrios had been sitting on the corner of the table. He reported, with his thin smile, “Never made one sound. He’s still out.”
“Then throw a bucket of water over him.”
André had secured the door. He looked puzzled, and crossed so quickly to the fallen chair that Insarov came forward too. “I didn’t hit him as hard as that,” André said. “He ought to be—”
Insarov pushed both men aside and knelt by the chair. “He’s dead,” he said very quietly. And stood up, looking at André.
“But I didn’t—” André protested. He turned on Demetrios. “What did you do to him?”
“Nothing. Nothing! You hit him once too often. I told you you’d kill him.”
Insarov walked to the door. “You know what to do about the body. Follow my instructions exactly. No deviations from my orders. Not this time.” He looked at André. “When you finish here, drive back to the Grande Bretagne, stay in your room, collect all mail and messages for Duclos. That’s important. On Thursday morning, pay the bill, take his luggage, and get on board the ship for Mykonos. You will get off before you reach Mykonos, at Syros, wearing your own clothes, leaving his luggage and passport in his cabin. Hire a fishing boat, make your way to Athens. Then to Paris. Report to Peter, there.”
Back to Paris? André stared in disbelief. He doesn’t trust me to go on with the job. He’s disciplining me. Even those detailed instructions are a proof of distrust, of censure.
“Have you got that?”
“Yes. I understand, Comrade Colonel.”
“Your trouble is,” Insarov said coldly, “that you have been seeing too many American movies. In future, use your brains; not your gun.” He left.
André avoided the Greek’s mocking smile. He looked down at the white face of Duclos, the fixed stare of the blue eyes. Even in death, losing their brightness, they seemed to be laughing at him.
“Too bad,” Demetrios said, and sheathed his knife regretfully. His smile broadened. “So our methods have changed? You think you can hit a man and as long as he doesn’t die, you are his kind friend? You treat this kind of vermin as if he were a naughty child. The Russian uses drugs and lies, you use your fists, and you both think you’re subtle.” Demetrios laughed openly and patted the knife inside his jacket with his long slender fingers. “Here is subtlety. Here is something that can ask questions all night long, and get the answers.” Demetrios pushed at the body with his foot. “He knew that. And you will know it, too, Frenchman, if ever you are tied to a chair.”
Duclos had known that? André stared at the Greek’s mocking eyes, bent down beside the body, looked at its lips, sniffed like a dog. Demetrios watched him, and went into a fit of laughter. Those simple-minded foreigners, thinking they knew everything... Instead of treating him like a servant, talking together where he couldn’t hear them, they ought to have tested the dead man’s mouth. In the first few minutes they might have smelled the truth. But now the slight, bitter scent was gone.
“There’s nothing there,” André said angrily, getting to his feet. All he had done was to make a fool of himself for the Greek.
“How could there be? It was you who insisted on searching him when we brought him here. You wouldn’t let anything slip past you. Of course not—”
“He was of no importance anyway,” André said, tightfaced.
“That’s what I thought all along,” Demetrios said softly. So why report his suspicion and take Comrade André off the hook? “What was at stake?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? A wasted week-end for nothing?”
“Nothing for you to worry about,” André said coldly.
Then I worry about nothing, thought Demetrios, and smiled again.
“Untie the body, get the Bulgarian in here to help you carry it to the fishing boat before daylight, drop it well out to sea near Syros—”
“And not before Thursday,” Demetrios cut in. “I know, I know.” He took out his knife, slashed the ropes lightly and deftly. “See how fast and easy it would have been,” he said, looking up at André for some small tribute to his dexterity. But the Frenchman had left. “Come on, come on,” he told the Bulgarian, who was hesitating at the door. “We haven’t much time.”
“They left in a hurry. Anything wrong?”
“Everything according to plan,” Demetrios assured him, and laughed contemptuously. He was beginning to feel very, very good, indeed. Quickly—and it was a pleasure to speak in Greek again—he rattled off the orders for the disposal of the body.
“But aren’t you coming?”
“You can manage it. The fishermen will help you. I’m no sailor.” No garbage remover, either.
“They’ve had their instructions?”
“And their money. Remember one thing—not before Thursday.”
The Bulgarian hoisted Duclos over his broad back. “I’ll remember,” he promised. “So their scythe struck a stone?” he asked with a grin as he shifted the body’s weight more evenly. “I wondered why they went off so quickly.”
Yes, thought Demetrios, leaving us to clean up here. Now if the Russian had been really comradely, he could have taken the body in his fast car back to Vouliagmeni, from where he could easily reach the yacht his driver had mentioned—there were several anchorages all along that coast. But no. Swift in, swift out, that was the Russian. Dropping a body from his yacht at sea would be too much of a danger for him. Too much for Comrade André, too. Couldn’t he have waited, at least, until Demetrios was ready to leave and give him a lift back to Athens? Oh no, no, no... “If you don’t move off quickly,” he told the Bulgarian, “you’ll have more problems than a body over your shoulder.”
“See you in Athens, comrade,” the Bulgarian said cheerfully and left.
It may be back to Sofia for both of us, Demetrios thought as he picked up the lamp to take with him. The rest of the mess could stay as it was. If the rich had so many houses that they didn’t need them except for a couple of months each summer, they deserved thieves to break in and leave a place filthy. He wasn’t going to risk staying here any longer than he had to. He looked around the desolate room, remembering the voices. A wasted effort.
He pinched out the candles. Blue eyes brought a curse, the old wives said. He spat solemnly on the threshold, and closed the door.
12
Thursday was going to be a pleasant day, early-morning sun and blue sky promising good sailing to Mykonos. It was also a pleasant end to a very pleasant week in Athens. John Craig had his last cup of coffee out on his small balcony, watching the white-skirted Evzones on guard at the Parliament sentry boxes across the square. He was packed, ready to leave. He felt healthy and rested. There had been enough exercise in the constant walking through the Plaka or over the Acropolis or up to the American School to keep him happy. His one dislike of most cities was the way they forced you to take a bus or a subway, feel heavy with food and soft with unused muscles. But here, over the low-storie
d houses, the sun could bathe a street and fill it with light and entice you to walk. He had developed his first tan of the season, even if he had worked each morning in the School’s library on the days he had actually spent in Athens. His own private conscience was at rest; no guilt about lazing around, or about the nights off with his friends from the School. As for his public conscience—play it loose, Partridge had said. There had been no alarms, no threats, no tensions. He had had a very pleasant week, indeed.
Time to go. If Paul and Pam Mortimer were coming to see him off—though he doubted it—they might be waiting downstairs even now. He had his last look at the streets surrounding the square—people, people, exploding everywhere. If we all keep crowding to the cities, he thought as he remembered the long stretches of lonely empty country, the village left to sleep away the twentieth century that he had seen in the Peloponnese, perhaps that will be the real time bomb we ought to be worried about. Everyone wants the bright lights and running water, hot and cold. Everyone wants the theatres and cafés and the girls in high heels, the museums and concerts, the newspapers fresh off the press. That is one thing that Athens shares with New York (and Moscow, Rome, Paris and London too); just name the big cities of the world and you see the same wenlike growth—the more and, if not the merrier, certainly the busier. It makes politicians’ eyes bulge in delight as they count heads and think of next election’s votes. It keeps a business-man beaming as he hears the music of ringing cash registers. Bigger and better... But what does a historian think of? Or, rather, what does he try not to think of? One of the main reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. People. Just people, bless their happy hearts and their congregating feet.
Indeed time to go. A balcony does funny things to a man. Either he wants to make speeches, have every face upturned, shouts from every throat to prove how right, how gloriously right, he is; or he looks down over the black dots of heads carried along on the two little matchstick legs, and he thinks where do all the people come from? Where are they going? How many more can crowd on to a city pavement before the imbalance sets off the population bomb?
I’ve been too deep in history for this last week, he thought with a smile at himself as he telephoned the desk to get his bill ready. (Yes, he was checking out. On his way, right now.) I’ve been seeing too many remains of past glories; I can’t even look at a row of overpowering columns in a ruined temple without thinking of the men who built them and walked there. And of their great-great and not so great grandsons who let them be destroyed. Let them be destroyed? What else, when you counted the years of acquiescence and drift before the actual destruction began? Yes, you looked at the temples, at the nobility of man’s taste, and you remembered the art and the law and the philosophy and the knowledge that had gone with them; and then you thought, unhappily, angrily, why did those men let all that pass out of their hands into alien control? They had something worth keeping and they let it slip away. At what point could they have saved it? The point just before they started to be afraid of dying? Better barbarians than death—had that been their comfort? And the beginning of their end?
Not such pleasing thoughts on a pleasant morning... But as he stepped out of the elevator into the enormous lobby with its bustle of people intent on enjoying themselves, he slipped into a cheerier mood. He couldn’t see any sign of the Mortimers, but the international circus was in full swing in ten different languages with ten different ways of dressing, from tight trousers to flowing robes. There were loose groups of straying Americans (pity their poor guides), tight families of French, pairs of English, solitary Arabs, explorers from Africa, Hindu saris in flocks, quiet clusters of thin diplomats, a solidity of foreign generals with high-peaked caps over brown faces and pigeon chests weighed down by medals (could one man’s lifetime win so many victories?); and of course the ordinary men like Craig, in tweed jackets bulging with passports and tickets, who were wondering whether they’d make that boat or plane if the three lines at the accountants’ desk didn’t move along more quickly.
The Frenchman in front of Craig finished checking his bill, item by item, paid in hard cash, and waited impatiently for his change. His hands were outstretched on the counter, squarely keeping his place. His fingers tapped, as if each second of waiting was added annoyance. He wore a very handsome signet ring of gold with a strange design. Craig noticed that first. Then he noticed the man’s black hair. And his height was about five feet eight, his weight not far from one hundred and sixty-five pounds. Duclos.
So he has been staying here, thought Craig, and is now checking out. Strange that I haven’t seen him around, in the restaurant or lobby or bar. Still, the Grande Bretagne in its recently expanded state was a lot of space, and people had to search for each other at the crowded hours. Duclos was counting his change—he must have a rigorous expense account, to be so exact—as he turned away from the desk. The first move comes from him, Craig reminded himself, tactfully avoided looking at Duclos, and stepped forward to say to the hotel clerk, “John Craig Room 308. To logariasmo, parakalo.” That always raised a smile on both sides: the clerk’s, because he liked the compliment of a foreigner trying to speak his language; Craig’s because he enjoyed having to ask for logarithm—it would have to be the Greeks who’d call your bill just that. Anyway, he had spoken his name clearly enough, and if Duclos ignored this chance meeting then Craig could stop worrying about what might have been going on during this last week of sheer enjoyment. In the early mornings after the late nights on the town, Craig had even begun to wonder, as he went to bed, if all the tensions and hidden dangers of his week in Paris hadn’t been—well, not exactly unreal; Sussman was dead, wasn’t he?—perhaps, just a little exaggerated. Yet Partridge was not exactly an exaggerating type. He wasn’t the kind of man who scratched his hand and yelled that his arm was wounded. He didn’t ham things up. Neither did Rosie. Offhand jokers, that was what they seemed in retrospect. Craig waited now for Duclos to drop some money on the floor so that he could help pick it up, pass the time of day as a kind of introduction to a further meeting on the boat to Mykonos. It certainly looked as if Duclos must be taking the same little inter-island ship that Craig was booked for.
But either Craig’s idea about how to make a subtle contact in a big hotel lobby was too corny or Duclos had no need to speak to him. For the Frenchman moved away from the line at the accountants’ desk, not even glancing in Craig’s direction. Everything must be normal, Craig thought as he paid his logarithm; no alarms or special messages, no advice or counsel to be heeded. So relax, Craig, and laugh at yourself a little. You’d have thought you were a prize retriever, the way your instincts pointed at that ring the minute you saw it.
As he turned away from the desk, he saw Duclos’ trim figure walking briskly towards the entrance. He followed leisurely, saying goodbye with the right tips for the pecking order in their brass-buttoned jackets, and left the indirect lighting of the lobby for the brilliant, cutting light of Athens’ skies. He stood on the steps, waiting, getting his eyesight back into focus after the sun’s bright glare. His suitcases were in charge of a bell-hop, one of several with many suitcases. Adonis, the porter-in-charge, was gesturing up taxis as firmly as any New York cop directing traffic. But there was a small crowd of travellers down there on the pavement, so he might as well enjoy the scene until his turn came. Duclos was less patient, which surprised him—the Frenchman was even trying to thwart Adonis and take the nearest cab as his. And now, too, he could see Duclos’ face. It was about twenty feet away, as against ten feet in the Saint-Honoré bar, but it added to his surprise. Hair and colouring were the same; but surely the jaw line had retreated. Or was he seeing it from another perspective, looking down the slope of pavement instead of from across a level room? He lit a cigarette as Duclos, politely but definitely put in place, cabless, paced up and down, drifting nearer.
Craig glanced casually back at the man. It was either the same grey tweed jacket that Duclos had worn that Monday evening or something very close to i
ts colour and cut. But the profile wasn’t quite the same. Near enough, but not exact. Damn it all, thought Craig, if there’s one small pride I enjoy, it’s my memory for faces; I remember them better than I do names. At that moment, Duclos, halting by the steps, looked in his direction, and he could see the man’s eyes. They were blue, certainly; but even under the bright sky that intensified all blue eyes, they hadn’t the remarkably clear colour that Craig recalled. Duclos turned at the steps and paced downhill towards the diminishing queue.
Craig drew a deep slow breath, his first in the last ten seconds. His cigarette was out. He threw it away. And what do we do now? He looked quickly at the people standing near him outside the entrance to the hotel, and wondered if they had noted his brief confusion. He thought not. He felt a mask settle over his face automatically, a kind of instinctive self-protection. Then a vintage Chrysler came moving slowly up the street and, as it approached him, an arm waved wildly and he heard Pam Mortimer’s voice calling. Paul was driving. And was that Clothilde and Bannerman in the back seat? So these crazy characters actually have come to see me off, he thought, and ran down the steps towards them.
“Hi!” Pam said, talking across her husband, “where’s your luggage, we’ve come to take you to the pier, didn’t you expect us?”
“Any promise given at one in the morning in a bouzoukia joint is not meant to be held against you,” Craig said, but he was delighted.
“Tim roused us out of bed. Said you ought to have someone to wave at!”
“Let me get my luggage away from Adonis, and I’ll be with you.”
“And in a hurry,” said Paul. “I’ll have to keep the car running.” He was holding it expertly with the clutch on the incline of the street. “The traffic cops around here would have New Yorkers screaming.”