Craig looked along the street. No one was hurrying to meet the man on the jetty, now standing there with his two suitcases at his feet, watching the boat reverse safely. The woman waved; the engine roared for the first minute and then settled into its steady beat. The boat headed right back to the yacht anchorage.
Craig glanced at Adam’s table. The conversation there was hilarious, but Adam had noticed, too, in between laughs. The man was picking up his suitcases, walking smartly to the head of the quay. He stopped to speak with a group of fishermen beside the small chapel there, but seemingly found no helpful answers. Next, he spoke to an old man, was directed on to another group. Someone gave him the information he was seeking. It was, apparently, a place to leave his two suitcases: a cart, standing by itself at the end of the quay with a few bundles already waiting for shipment out on the next boat. It was a slightly offhand baggage room, but the stranger accepted it after a little hesitation. Then, with his suitcases deposited neatly, the man headed for the front street. He was walking at a medium pace, obviously interested in everything he saw, someone who was putting in time before he caught the evening boat. No one was paying him the least attention. His actions explained themselves. He had arrived too early, which—in any Mykoniot’s opinion—was wiser than appearing at the last minute and expecting miracles. Such things happened constantly; foreigners neither understood boat schedules nor made allowances for weather.
The stranger had plenty of time. He stopped to look at the painted fishing boats drawn up on the beach, at the nets spread over the short stretch of sand and pebbles. An Englishman, Craig guessed. He was wearing a faded blue blazer, loosely cut dark grey flannels bagging a little from travel. He took out a pipe and pouch, began the ritual of filling and lighting as he crossed the street towards the first café. Now Craig could see a thin tanned face above a nonchalant collar and tightly knotted tie. Striped, of course. He was almost a professional Englishman, from well-brushed hair down to solid shoes. As he reached the front-row tables, he glanced at his watch, decided to have a drink. He entered casually, eyes searching for an agreeable spot.
Craig’s spine stiffened. He sat staring. My God, he thought, I didn’t find Bradley; he found me! For at the moment of sure recognition, Bradley’s eyes had swept along the back row of tables and seen Craig. He stopped, looked again, hesitated. Then, hand outstretched he came forward. “Craig, isn’t it? Why, this is a delightful surprise!”
“Bradley!” Craig’s voice was astounded enough to carry across several tables. “Sorry. I didn’t recognise you at first.” Which was true.
“I didn’t know you were here,” said Bradley, completely at ease again. “And how is your charming sister?”
“Sue and George are both fine. They’re in Washington now. Sit down, why not? Have a drink.”
“If there is anything drinkable.” Bradley smiled, hesitated again, then sat down. He looked around, adjusted the knot of his tie, pulled at his cuffs. “I feel rather overdressed. But I’m in transit. Returning to the big city tonight—catching the boat for Athens when it does come in. Thought I’d come over and have a look at Mykonos and something to eat before we sail. That’s around ten, isn’t it?”
“Give or take an hour. But I expect it will be fairly punctual tonight. The weather is good. You’re in luck. What will you have?”
“Nothing at present, thank you. I have to meet a friend for a last drink together. Remember Wilshot?”
Craig reflected a little. “Wasn’t he at the Meurice party, too? Yes, I remember him vaguely. We didn’t talk.”
“We came up from Rhodes, today. One of his friends offered us a lift—if that’s the right word. Nautical terms are out of my line. Anyway, it gave us a last chance to see some of the islands. Otherwise, I think it was a mistake. Wilshot was seasick from start to finish. He is looking for a room now, at a hotel. Says he is going to spend tonight on terra firma, and look up some old friends. Extraordinary chap. He seems to have friends everywhere.”
“Too bad you can’t stay longer, yourself.”
“Yes, it looks a quaint little place. Definitely informal.” He looked around again, studying the people at the tables. “And how’s your book coming along?”
“By fits and starts—the way most work gets done out here. I’ll be spending some time on Delos. And then I’ll push on.”
“You know, I was thinking of you last week. When I was in Troy.”
“How was it?” Craig asked with real interest.
Bradley plunged into a quick account, mostly on the peculiarities of getting there, of travelling through the naval and military zones that fringed both sides of the Dardanelles. “Then I drove on down to Smyrna. Fantastic journey on incredible roads, camels around every corner. Don’t miss Bursa, by the way, when you go to Troy. It’s the old Turkish capital—before they took Constantinople. The Greek mosque there is quite remarkable. Well—” he looked around again—“it seems as if I’ll have to search elsewhere for Wilshot. Say, why don’t we all have dinner later tonight?”
“I’d like that. But I’m waiting for a girl.”
Bradley looked at the three coffee cups and two ouzo glasses. “You’ve had quite a wait, I see.”
“No one is very punctual around here. And it’s just possible that I’m at the wrong café. I haven’t really got accustomed to Mykonos yet—only arrived here last night.” He glanced at his watch. “After seven,” he said in amazement.
Bradley rose. “If you see Wilshot, tell him I’m around, will you? I’ll have a quick look at the town and then find a likely place to eat along here somewhere.” He looked vaguely at the waterfront. He smiled and added, “I was told that the best way to catch the boat is to sit at a café until you see it approach.”
“That saves a lot of fussing and fuming,” Craig agreed. “Well—I won’t say goodbye. We’ll probably keep bumping into each other for the rest of the evening. Everyone does in Mykonos.” Adam had already risen, along with two of his friends (Greek, they were), and was leading the way out into the street, talking over his shoulder to them about Kazantzakis. The third (a Frenchman, Craig decided) still sat at their littered table, looking at the English girls across the café with a lazy interest which might win him a very successful evening indeed.
“If your girl doesn’t appear, join us for dinner,” Bradley said. He nodded pleasantly and walked off.
Magnificent sunset, thought Craig, and studied it for the next two minutes. Anything to keep him from his impulse to look after Bradley. Or after the two Greeks who were tagging along at a respectable distance. Adam had left in the other direction. Do I wait for Bannerman, wondered Craig, or do I follow my own impulses and leave this damned table and go looking for Maritta? For the truth is that we’ll never know who Alex is until we see him with her. Bradley or Wilshot?... He had thought Partridge and all his boys a little slow at deciding. And yet, he found he couldn’t make up his mind, either. You couldn’t pin treason lightly on any man. And this double play, carefully calculated, was as baffling as Alex had intended it. Friendly innocent or confidence trickster, which was Bradley? No, Craig thought, the only sure way of knowing will be when Maritta makes contact with Alex.
Bannerman arrived to find Craig paying the bill. “Going some place?” he asked with a grin.
“You know damned well where I’m going.”
Bannerman looked around, checked on the nearest tables, seemed reassured, sat down beside Craig, and dropped his voice to a low murmur. “Take it easy. Maritta only left the house on the hill five minutes ago. She is walking in. That means we have at least fifteen minutes more before she reaches town. What did you make of Bradley?”
Craig shook his head. “He says Wilshot is in town.”
“I know. He’s at the Triton now, trying to get a room.”
At the Triton. “Right next door to Herr Gerhard Ludwig?” The odds were increasing on Wilshot.
“He says he was advised to go there.”
“Advised or instruc
ted?”
“You really are getting the hang of this,” Bannerman said in great good humour.
“I’m getting holes in the seat of my pants from so much damned sitting.”
“And what had you in mind? Take a stroll and walk right up to Erica and her dear Alex?”
“Erica?”
“Her play name.”
“I’ll stick with Maritta.” He still couldn’t get accustomed to Insarov, still called him Berg as often as not. And the man was Berg. Maritta was Maritta. The rest was smoke screen.
“Safer for you,” Bannerman agreed. Names had a habit of slipping out sometimes, as he had just proven to himself. “If you insist on talking with her. But why? And have you a real excuse? You’ll need it, or you’ll be blown sky-high. And perhaps us along with you.”
Craig shook his head. “Let’s leave here, and I’ll tell you what I have in mind. It could work.” Dusk was just about to cast its first thin veil over the sky. Soon the grey hour would come, the café lights would go on. He rose and made his way out. Bannerman had to rise and follow. Craig turned to his left, avoiding the front street, talking casually about Fellini and De Sica, as if Italian films had been their discussion. Bannerman noted all that and approved. They took the first whitewashed lane away from the waterfront, then cut along to their left again on the next narrow street, circling around to reach its other end. The crisscrossing streets had their evening quota of women standing at their doorways, of old men here and there watching with interest. Everyone else had left for a stroll along the waterfront.
Craig had begun speaking very quietly from the minute they had branched up into the alley, walking closely in between its tight walls. “I won’t press my luck. I’ll disengage if I see it’s near breaking point. Contact has to be made between Maritta and Alex if there is any exchange of information between them at all. Right? This isn’t the kind of place where you can drop something for another agent to pick up casually—too many people, too many kids around who could pick it up first. How much chance would one of those trick pencil stubs have, for instance, if a small boy saw it? Mykoniots don’t waste one inch of string. Right?”
Bannerman nodded.
“So it has to be direct contact for safety. From one hand to another, or at least within sight of each other. Could be?” Bannerman nodded. It was an odd feeling to hear Craig arguing everything out for himself, reaching conclusions that had been made days ago in Athens.
“So you need someone to get as close to them as possible. And that’s me.”
“Is it?”
“Have you got anyone who could walk right up to them and join them? With a perfectly good excuse? If Alex is Wilshot, I’ll tell him that Bradley has been looking for him all over the place. If Alex is Bradley, I’ll take him up on his dinner invitation. How’s that?”
“Tempting.”
“You’ll have your men all around, anyway. If I get the deep-freeze treatment and have to bow out, nothing is lost. What d’you think?”
“I like it. Especially the bit where you make them break their rules. They’ll learn each other’s real names from you.” He laughed softly.
“They don’t know—” began Craig in astonishment.
“Neither name nor occupation. Safeguard.” Bannerman laughed again. “These are real conspirators, you know. Not counter-espionage agents. There’s a difference; in purpose and methods. They are the masters of the double image.” Then Bannerman shook his head regretfully as he came back to Craig’s idea. “I like it, but I’m not going to let you do it. You’ve forgotten two things: yourself, and what could come afterwards.”
“But I’m leaving that to you,” Craig said with a smile. “You’ve got your alternative plans all made for dealing with Alex, haven’t you? How many?” he asked jokingly. “A, B, C and D?”
Bannerman looked at him impassively.
“But how are you going to deal with Maritta? If you have Elias pick her up, take her out of circulation—well, that could cause a five-alarm fire. And yet, you’d like to keep her from handing that information from Alex over to—well, who’s your guess?”
Bannerman’s eyebrows lifted. “Is this what I get for leaving you alone with a sunset?”
“Inspiring,” Craig admitted with a grin. “Come on, you old bouzoukia expert, what’s there to lose if I play it very, very cool?”
“And where do you propose to start this operation? You can’t be in two places at once—and there are two men.”
“I’ll compromise. I’ll stay near Maritta. And leave the hard work to all you boys.”
“There aren’t so many of us now,” Bannerman said very quietly indeed. “Elias is putting every man available, once darkness sets in, up on the hills as lookouts around the nearest bays and coves. We figure the Stefanie will drop off her cargo in a quiet spot and cruise peacefully at sea until morning. Then she makes a nice innocent approach to Mykonos.”
“So that leaves—”
“Adam and myself. Bill has gone with the Greeks into the hills—liaison between them and us.” Bannerman barely paused as he gave a passing thought to two other Americans, cosily installed this morning with complete transmitting and receiving facilities. He wondered briefly if any further news had come in from Smyrna, or—just as important now—if the wave length for local communication between here and the hills was working out all right. “Then there is an Englishman, but he is over on Delos, tonight.” Craig looked swiftly at Bannerman, who didn’t elaborate but went on smoothly, “And there’s Mimi, at Delos; which leaves one Frenchman here. He’s a good man. But the French are so damned eager to get Maritta that they may act if they think she is slipping away from them. From their point of view they are within their rights. But from ours—well, all we’d get out of it would be Alex.”
“And another man dead,” said Craig, thinking of the Stefanie’s prisoner. And Heinrich Berg free. “Then you need me, whether you like it or not. So let’s get moving.” He halted at the next corner. “This street takes me back to the waterfront. I know, because this is the way I arrived yesterday evening.” The dusk was thickening now. The white houses were luminous ghosts. Soon the lights, here too, would be switched on. “I think I even know her favourite café—I saw her there, last night, just around this time.” He started down towards the front street.
Bannerman came with him. “Why not?” Bannerman said to Craig’s unasked question. “We were seen constantly in Athens together.” And then, as they were almost at the waterfront, he asked, “What makes you think she’ll meet Alex at a café? Why not in one of those quiet streets we’ve just been passing?” He had his own answer but he was curious to find out if Craig did have a reason. That was important—no adequate reply, or a wrong one, and he’d stop Craig even now.
“He’s a complete stranger to Mykonos. So was I last night, and I couldn’t have been sure of meeting anyone in the dusk, at the right time, on the right street. The waterfront was the only place I could have reached with any certainty.”
“Good enough,” Bannerman said quietly, and walked on.
“What’s more, this isn’t the place of big hotels and public lobbies. Strangers are noticed here if they are in places where they don’t belong. And any walk up to a lonely mill, or on to the hillside, could be noted, too: this is the time of day when women have stopped work to look out of their doorways. So the safest place is the most normal place—the waterfront, where all visitors congregate. That raises no speculations. Right? Or wrong?”
It was right as far as Mykonos went. Bannerman nodded, glanced at his watch, increased his pace. “Let’s cross the front street, walk on the beach, look at a fishing boat or two. Adam is waiting at the square; he will follow her in once she passes through it. If you are right, she should be swinging along in a few—” He did not even have to finish his sentence. He grasped Craig’s arm, pulled him behind a stone staircase as Maritta Maas strolled along the waterfront barely thirty feet away.
“Quick reflexes,” Craig sa
id, looking with respect at Bannerman.
“And damned poor timing.” Bannerman drew a deep breath, and gestured to Craig to resume walking. “We could have run smack into her. She must be pretty confident to come so quickly into town. All the better,” he added with a broad smile. “She’ll really be set back a mile when she sees you. Now, look, I agree to your plan, with one addition. Me.”
“We’re going in together?” I might have guessed that was why he listened, Craig thought wryly. He’s using me to get close to Alex. “I introduce you all around?”
“That’s the idea. I’ll stick with Alex. You hold on to Maritta. Spend the evening with her if necessary. Keep her from delivering that information anywhere, until Adam and his French friend think up a way of getting it from her. Of course, there is another way. He looked at Craig, reflectively.
“No, thanks,” Craig said sharply. “I don’t tangle with any girl unless I like her. Just keep my love life out of this, will you?”
“Only a mild suggestion.” They had reached the front street. Bannerman grasped Craig’s arm again. “Gently does it.” Adam was walking past the entrance of their lane. He noticed them, all right, but didn’t stop. Something more interesting seemed to lie ahead of him. “Give him a minute,” Bannerman said, and paused to light a cigarette. “Let them all get into place. Then we walk in.”
“I don’t think it will be as easy as that.”
“Nothing ever is. But I’m counting on you to startle Maritta. Set her off balance. That’s when mistakes are made.”
“Alex will keep his head—”
“Let him. We’ve got him, whatever happens. False passport, the use of, however temporary. Elias will hold him on that.”
They turned the corner carefully. Maritta had halted in front of her usual café. She was standing, her back turned to them looking out to sea. The small launch she had hired for her party was returning from Delos, easing its way around the breakwater to come into the shelter of the harbour.