“Yes. But what puzzles me is the fact that the documents were handed over to you. It would have been easier just to take them—” He halted, remembering that there had been one attempt to steal them.
“Easier in some ways. But more dangerous, too. The sudden death of another American would have caused serious complications. You did not give up those documents easily. You were very tenacious.” The Colonel paused. “Why? You were not in a trusting mood, last Monday. I think you had some doubts about Alexander Christophorou, even then. Am I right? Please do not look so embarrassed, so very unhappy. After all, in your work with ancient ruins you are something of a detective, too. Perhaps you like to make reconstructions of people as well as of temples? Tell me frankly, off the record as you say in America: do you think Drakon is only another name for Christophorou?”
The Colonel, thought Strang, had his own technique for the raw wound: first, the lanolin; then, the sudden jab of iodine. He said, “Does it matter what I think? My ideas won’t interest any court of law. I’ve no proof.”
“Thinking is the beginning of the search for proof,” the Colonel said coldly. “If we do not think, we do not find reasons for doubt. If we do not doubt, we do not start the search for proof. Oh, we’ll find the proof of either innocence or guilt, if we work hard enough and have enough time. But without thinking. doubting, we would not know even where to begin our work. You understand?”
“Katherini Roilos could give you the proof. Let her meet Christophorou. She can tell you whether he is Drakon or not.”
The Colonel looked at him searchingly. Then he sighed, and stretched out his arm to a bell on his table. He frowned, as he jabbed its button. He said sadly, “It is a little more complicated than that, Mr. Strang.” Yorghis opened the door at once. He had the copper coffee-pot in his hand. “Is it cold?” the Colonel wanted to know. “No? Good. Set up the screen. Get the photographs.” The orders were almost conversational.
Strang drank the hot, sweet coffee cautiously. You had to be careful to leave almost an inch of liquid at the bottom of the little cup if you didn’t want a last mouthful of delta mud. He watched the Colonel with equal care. Those two sheets of paper were still in his hand.
Casually, the Colonel held them up. “This is the report made to us, yesterday, by Alexander Christophorou. It is a statement of how he became interested in Stefanos Kladas, and discovered that certain documents, which might be of some importance to us, were in your hands.” The Colonel studied the two sheets of paper for a long moment. “Not one word of your story, Mr. Strang, coincides with his.”
The coffee silt touched Strang’s teeth. He put down the cup hastily, and found his handkerchief to clean his lips.
“You must not drink our coffee so trustingly, Mr. Strang.”
“Not one word?” Strang echoed.
“Oh, perhaps a few words—where he says he was visiting Taormina and renewed an old friendship. But after that—” The Colonel consulted the top sheet again. “You were extremely worried about the nonappearance of Stefanos Kladas. You asked Christophorou’s advice, and in return, over several drinks, you told him everything that Stefanos Kladas had confided in you. Including—” the Colonel raised his eyes, opened them wide, and smiled—“all that Stefanos Kladas knew about a conspiracy in which his brother, Nikos, was implicated.”
Strang said softly, “And that is how Christophorou came to know about the conspiracy?”
The Colonel nodded and sipped his coffee.
Strang could only stare at Christophorou’s report. My word against his, he thought grimly.
“Only,” the Colonel said, slapping the two sheets down on the table, “how could Stefanos Kladas, in New York, have known such vivid details about the murder of the Roilos father and son on the Megara road? He was not in contact with his brother, Nikos. That is obvious from the two letters from the sister, Myrrha Kladas, to Stefanos Kladas in New York that were among the documents he gave you. The first letter was written last November, after she had received a secret visit from Nikos. She was worried about Nikos then. In a letter written last February, she seemed to have become frightened about Nikos. She hoped Stefanos could persuade him to stay clear of his old friends, who always led him into trouble.”
“Yes,” Strang said bitterly, “he always was a good boy.”
The Colonel, who probably had little time to read New York newspaper reports on juvenile delinquents and their doting mamas, looked momentarily perplexed. Then, “Yorghis—are we ready?”
Yorghis was ready. The screen was in place over the blackboard. The projector was pointing at it. He closed the window’s shutters completely. The small room was dark and warm, smelling of aromatic coffee, delicate cigarettes, starched shirts, and hair oil. “But first,” said the Colonel, now that the shutters were closed, “perhaps you should see the actual photographs, before our experts went to work on them.” He switched on the table lamp, scattered some small snapshots from an envelope into the little pool of light. Strang rose and examined them: the usual ageing snapshots, not too defined, not much variety in light and shade, not too clear. But, even then, Steve’s sense of composition had been good.
“Do they make any sense to you?” the Colonel asked.
“None.” Just people under trees, a group beside a burned out house. “What’s this fellow doing? Cleaning a rifle?”
“You’ll see.” The Colonel was delighted. He switched off the table light; they sat down; Yorghis took command.
On the screen was flashed a series of photographs, blown up to enormous proportions, coarsened in texture, but with outlines and shadows skilfully sharpened. Faces had become real, actions understandable. Yorghis, in the dispassionate voice of a research scholar, first analysed the backgrounds to suggest the possible localities (Steve had been clever at using the shape of a mountain, a ruined church, a high-perched village above a precipice, even eagles circling over cliffs, to identify the scenes), and then explained the groups of men in the foregrounds. The photographs seemed to deal with one small district of Greece: the slopes of Mount Parnassos and the area surrounding them. The men were andartes, the guerrilla fighters, bundled into bulky shapes by strange mixtures of clothing—captured uniforms, tattered civilian jackets, sheepskin tunics as wild as their hair and beards, wool caps, twists of knitted scarves, anything to keep out the savage cold of the mountains. Sometimes they were returning from a raid, sometimes jubilant around a few captured weapons. They were usually in small bands, five or six lonely men, straggling as they climbed a rough mountainside, or resting as they lay under a sheltering tree.
“These photographs were included,” Yorghis was saying, “presumably to identify the area of operations against the Nazis. Here is one, dealing with a less-heroic operation in this same area. The season is different, you will note from the trees and the hillside. There are other differences. The commander of this band of guerrillas is Ares. There he is, with his men. The bodies which are lying scattered on the sloping meadow are Greeks, too. Their commanding officer, Colonel Psarros, lies with them. The few survivors stand with hands held up in surrender.”
The photograph flashed on the screen. The dead were scattered; the survivors, in a pathetic small group; the victors, in considerable force. To get this scene, Steve had taken a distance shot. Only the gestures of the men were discernible. In clothes, they were the same. Faces couldn’t be distinguished.
“Here is one detail,” Yorghis said. And now four of the survivors were on view: three ghostlike, bewildered faces; the fourth head, with a battered old cap pulled down rakishly over his brow, was bent slightly as the man lit a cigarette. He wore, so it looked, an officer’s long coat.
“And now,” said Yorghis as he flashed another photograph on to the screen, “the survivors who refused to join Ares are executed. One changes his mind just before he is shot, and breaks away to join the victors. They find it amusing.” The man did not. He was weeping. He was a big man, powerful. His face was contorted with anguish and t
ears. “A shepherd in ordinary life, perhaps,” Yorghis’s calm voice went on. “So we have been told. Name unknown as yet, but identified by his light hair, height, and that sheepskin tunic which he always wore. And now, in the next picture, those who are willing to join Ares are marched away.”
“March” was scarcely the word. The new photograph showed a straggle of men, melting away from the meadow with its abandoned dead. It had focused on that rakishly tilted, tattered old cap again. (Steve must have taken a dislike to its owner.) And again the head had avoided a clear picture. “Until we saw these photographs,” Yorghis said, “we had thought no officer had surrendered. But this one did. Notice that the shepherd is following him faithfully. Notice, too, that one of Ares’s men has come over to talk to that officer. They walk together. Look carefully: the friendly man is Sideros.”
Indeed it was. Sideros had not had much success with a beard. The face of Nikos Kladas, turning towards, the camera in surprise, was not too difficult to recognise.
“And last of all, a picture taken at a rest camp some months later, judging by the clothes. Locality undiscovered. But this is not a usual camp. The men seen here are known to have been closely associated with Ares. Most of them died with him, in 1945.”
The men had left off their bulky clothing, except for the shepherd, who still wore his sheepskin tunic. Most of them were smiling as they sat around a glade, except for the shepherd again, a desolate crag of a man, who stood in the background. One had even stripped, and was lying asleep, face down in full sunlight. “Sideros, the sun-worshipper,” Yorghis said bitingly. “Notice that mark below his right shoulder blade. Definitely identified by a British liaison officer who knew Sideros before he joined Ares’s special unit.”
Strang looked sharply at Colonel Zafiris beside him. The Colonel who had grunted his approval of the earlier guerrilla photographs, had lapsed into complete silence since the massacre of Colonel Psarros and his men. Now, he only gestured back to the screen, as Yorghis said, “Notice this small group sitting apart from the others.” Strang took the Colonel’s hint, stopped mentally, congratulating George Ottway on his amazingly quick response to Tommy’s message, and looked at the screen obediently. At the side of the glade, there was the wall of a house, and in its shallow shadow sat three people. One was a man with a handsome face, laughing. Another was the officer with the battered old cap, tilted more than ever over his eyes to shield them from the glare of late summer while he cleaned a rifle. And the third was small, slight, with a large head of wild dark hair around a smooth face.
“A woman?” Strang asked, incredulously.
“A woman,” said the Colonel. “A courier. A very special courier.” He lapsed into silence again, glowered at the screen, where a detail of the group by the house wall was now being shown.
Yorghis said, “Reading from left to right: Ares, the god of war; Odysseus; Elektra. Ares, we all know. Odysseus and Elektra were identified by the British officer who had seen Odysseus—but never at close hand—and met the famous Elektra, who was so close an intimate of Ares at one time.”
Strang studied the detail. Coarse-textured as it was by excessive enlargement, it still held a recognisable quality. The woman’s excellent profile could be noted, a long slender neck above her opened shirt collar, a noble brow. She made him think of Katherini Roilos. “Strong family resemblance.”
“Especially then,” said the Colonel, “when her hair was dark brown. And Odysseus—can you recognise him?”
“I can’t see beyond that beard, or that tilted cap. A careful customer.”
“Unfortunately, for us.”
“Never seen at close hand,” Strang repeated, thoughtfully.
“He kept his distance from the Englishman. Why? Is it possible that he felt he might meet the Englishman after the war? Could they have friends in common in the civilian world? He was well-named Odysseus.” The Colonel was watching Strang now. “Look at his left hand holding the rifle. Do you see that heavy ring on his little finger?”
“Vaguely.” And, vaguely, something stirred at the back of Strang’s memory.
“Thank you, Yorghis.” The Colonel switched on the table lamp. “Here,” he said to Strang, “is the face design of that ring, as near as we can manage to reconstruct it. It is actually a coin, thick, uneven edge, not a circle, with a design of a man’s profile and two horns. Perhaps an ancient drachma? Fourth century? The head of Alexander the Great?”
“It could be,” Strang said as he studied the neat drawing of the ring’s design. Its irregular edge, clipped carefully away from its original circle by some acquisitive Greek who didn’t think the merest sliver of silver too small for the taking, was typical of most ancient coins. The two short horns protruding from the scalp, or from a tight skullcap covering the scalp, were a favourite device of Alexander the Great to show he was the son of Zeus.
“Alexander, the conqueror of Greece, the invader from the north,” Zafiris said softly. He filed the drawing of the ring into the proper folder. “Christophorou wears no ring now. Did he wear one when you met him fifteen years ago? Such a ring is memorable to someone like you, with your interest in ancient things. You said you met him in the Grande Bretagne when it was under siege.”
“He didn’t wear a ring in the Grande Bretagne. Of course, the lights weren’t too good then.” Just candles, batteries, oil lamps. Still, there had been light enough to notice a ring like that. “Not in the Grande Bretagne,” he repeated. The vague stirring in Strang’s memory began again.
“Then where?”
“That night, after Christophorou and I had gone up to the Acropolis, we got back to the Piraeus road to join my friends waiting for me. I said we had had the devil’s own luck so far, and hoped it would last. He said it would: his lucky ring had never let him down yet. I only saw a glimpse of it. It was scarcely the time to stop and look. We were too busy dodging patrols and armed bands and snipers.”
“How much of a glimpse did you have?”
“I only saw a ring.”
“On his left hand?”
Strang tried to remember. “He lifted his hand as he spoke about his luck... No, I can’t remember which hand.”
“Was he carrying a revolver?”
“Of course.”
“In his right hand?”
“Yes.”
“Was that the one he held up?”
“No.”
“So—” the Colonel said, and glanced quickly at Yorghis. “Now, Mr. Strang, are you sure you didn’t notice the ring was different from an ordinary signet ring?”
“All I know,” Strang said doggedly, “is that he mentioned a lucky ring. And held up his left hand for a second as he spoke. Then we moved on. That’s all.”
“And not enough,” the Colonel said, angry with disappointment. Then he recovered himself. “Yorghis,” he said in lightning Greek, “we shall have to try some of Christophorou’s old friends. The Englishman, Thomson, for instance. Or his family. They may know about a ring like that.”
“Shall we send Elias?” Yorghis looked at the little man who was standing so quietly in the background that Strang was startled to see him.
“I need Elias,” the Colonel said.
“Costas, then?”
“It will take all his diplomacy. Brief him carefully.”
Yorghis nodded, locked the photographs into the box he carried. “At least, we do known that Christophorou wore a ring on his left hand,” he said, suddenly cheerful, as he prepared to leave the room with Elias. He halted at the door for a moment. “Odysseus,” he said with a sardonic smile, “Odysseus... Why not Alcibiades?”
The Colonel gave an abrupt laugh. “Why not?” he asked as the door closed. “But men always choose the more flattering names.” Then he looked at Strang, and said, serious again, “A slow business. Step by step. Small details, such as that ring, become important. Big discoveries become of little value. Constant bouleversement. Yet, step by step, the climb is made. And at last, the full view. What sh
all we see?”
That’s one view I won’t enjoy, Strang thought heavily.
“It would not be such a slow business,” the Colonel said, “if we had Katherini Roilos to help us.”
Strang stopped thinking about Alexander Christophorou and looked up quickly as he heard the stilted voice.
“But,” the Colonel said, “she is dead.”
Strang sat very still for a long moment. “How?” he asked at last. “Where?”
“In the Kriton Street house. She arrived by taxi, and was observed by two of our agents, whom I had sent there, just after your telephone call to Pringle, to keep watch until reinforcements arrived. Two agents, you understand, were not enough to force their way into a house of that size and make arrests. They thought she was another of the conspirators, that they would arrest her, inside, along with the others. None of us knew, you realise, that your little witness had left Mr. Thomson’s flat. When the squad of men arrived, twenty minutes later, the house was surrounded. An entry was forced through the garden door, which the girl had used. There were several people inside, mostly in their night clothes, as if they had been roused from their beds. There was a man at a telephone—much confusion—a woman’s voice screaming ‘Traitor!’ Three of our agents heard that scream as they burst into the room. The girl was dead before they could reach her, stabbed to the heart. She had been tied to a chair and—I am afraid—cruelly questioned.” The Colonel’s lips tightened. He stared down at his desk. “There was a woman standing over her, still screaming in anger, her hand on the hilt of the knife.”