Decision at Delphi (64 page)

There was no joy, anywhere, in this undertaking, thought Strang. “Where is the shepherd Levadi?” he asked. “He could climb that gorge, get close to Christophorou without any shooting—”

Elias looked most unhappy. “He disappeared. This morning—just at dawn. We cannot find him.”

Pringle said, “I don’t blame him. One sniff of his own mountain air, and I bet he is high-tailing it up to the Levadi pastures to join his friends among their sheep.”

“It’s too early in the year for shepherds to be there,” Elias said. “It is a summer pasture.”

Strang said, “Find the best peak near here from which he can watch the dawn rise, and you’ll find him.”

“We haven’t time—” began Elias, the literal man.

“We haven’t much time for anything.” Strang looked at his watch, and rose. “Does Levadi know that Miss Hillard is in this hotel?”

“No. We have told everyone she returned to Athens, last night. We also say that she was one of a small party of mountain climbers; and we have explained the troops on the hillsides by saying they are on spring manœuvres. We thought it safer for all of you if people did not talk or wonder.”

“Would Levadi join with Christophorou again? He once followed Odysseus, even when his mind rebelled against it.” Strang thought of the photographs he had seen in Zafiris’s office three days ago.

“His
mind?”
Pringle asked, startled. “Do you know he wouldn’t believe there had been an amnesty after the civil war, until he actually stood and listened to the peasants, yesterday, by the roadside? Until that moment, he still believed he had to live hidden away in Sparta, not even using his own name, to stay free and alive.”

“Then he had much to think about as he sat and watched the dawn rise over Parnassos,” Strang said. “A pity, though, he couldn’t tell Christophorou that Cecilia had been carried safely down to the road, yesterday. That might have shaken Christophorou a little. More than a little. He might even have made a rash move.” For the great problem with Christophorou was the man’s confidence, the brain that was so sure of everything, working calmly, contemptuously. Danger? Christophorou never objected to that. He enjoyed it. But to be made ridiculous, with his message to Zafiris? “He can bear hate, but not ridicule,” Strang said slowly.

“Let them hate, provided that they fear,” Pringle said. “Yes, that’s his motto. He would make a very efficient tyrant.”

Strang stood, hesitating, making his decision. He said, “Why don’t we tell him that Cecilia is free? That he hasn’t
any bargaining power? That he has trapped himself by his own mind?”

“And how do we tell him?” Pringle asked, unimpressed.

Strang said to Elias, “You are sure that no one in the village knows that Miss Hillard is here?”

“No one. And even here, the servants do not know who she is. We have tried to keep everything—”

“Good. Bob, will you sit out on your balcony for the next hour or two? Have you a gun?”

“A most undiplomatic question.” Pringle’s voice was light, but his eyes were uneasy.

“Elias, tell Costas and his friend to keep on the alert. Also the man guarding Miss Hillard’s door. I have a plan. But first, I’ve got to be sure that Miss Hillard is safe here.”

“Look, Ken—” Pringle began, as Elias nodded and left the room.

Thank God, thought Strang, that Elias does not need long explanations. But Elias understood all about
philotimo.
“Have you a gun?” he asked again.

“Yes.”

“Use it, if necessary. And don’t let your eyes leave the hillside. Right?”

“Ken—”

“Don’t worry. I’m no hero. Didn’t you hear me make sure Christophorou hadn’t a rifle?”

“What’s the idea?” Pringle asked sharply.

“I climb up—not Zafiris—to the Temple of Apollo. I look happy, unconcerned, all the time in the world on my hands. Would I look like that, would I even be there if Cecilia had not been found? He will get the message.”

Pringle stared at him. He nodded. “And then what?” he asked worriedly.

Strang considered for a moment. He grinned. “I’ll ask the Oracle,” he said. “She spoke from the Temple of Apollo, didn’t she?”

Elias opened the door. “We leave now?”

“That’s right.” Strang looked back at Pringle. “Get out on that balcony, for God’s sake.”

Pringle pulled himself from his bed. “Damn this leg,” he said. “I’d like to be there.” He opened a drawer and found his revolver. He checked it. “When will you be back?”

“When you see me. If Cecilia wakens—”

“Yes. I’ll give her your love. I’ll also tell her to stay inside her room. No deep-breathing exercises on the balcony.”

“Look after her, Bob,” said Strang, and left the room. It was eleven twenty by his watch. “Just a moment,” he told Elias. There were two men, now, outside Cecilia’s door. The chair was gone. He nodded to them, opened the door, and stood in the darkly shaded room. Cecilia had scarcely changed her position since he had last looked in. Her head lay sideways on the pillow, one hand upstretched, the other resting on her shoulder. He stood for a moment, looking at her. Then he went out, pulling the door gently closed.

Ancient Delphi was only a mile, perhaps less, away from the village. “Is that car of ours still outside?” he asked Elias.

Zafiris looked at Strang, then at his watch. They were sitting in Zafiris’s car, drawn up under the shade of an enormous plane tree on the road below ancient Delphi. Strang felt the calm
appraisal, but he kept his own eyes fixed on the amphitheatre of ancient ruins which rose, layer on layer, up the side of the hill above them. Very near to them on this road was the stream rushing down the gorge between the precipices on the eastern side of the amphitheatre. Ahead of them was the entrance, the first flight of stairs in the Sacred Way, climbing between the sanctuaries, the half-fallen columns of small temples, the pedestals of statues, the monuments, until high up, in the centre of the vast arena, it reached the ruined Temple of Apollo. Above the temple, at the topmost rim of the amphitheatre, was the theatre. Beyond that, stretched along the sky line, hidden by trees and bushes, was the ancient stadium where the athletes had competed. And then—hills, the slopes of Parnassos, wild country, savage and beautiful. As if, Strang thought, the men who had built Delphi had felt that civilisation was only one side of a hill carved out from the wilderness.

Zafiris said, his eyes scanning the curve of rocks and bushes around the top rim of the amphitheatre, “He knows how to take cover. There are small caves up there on the precipices, clefts— You have noticed how many colours there are in the stone around here?”

“Could he escape to the north?”

“No. Nor to the west, nor to the east. We have men all around there. And two helicopters. The search is thorough, and therefore slow.” His heavy face, its muscles sagging with exhaustion, its lines deepened with worry, turned to the road where the first tourist bus had drawn up. “Added complications,” he said. “This is not the place I would choose to hunt any man.”

“That is why he chose it, perhaps.”

The Colonel nodded. He spoke, almost to himself. “He lies up there, quite still, watching, calculating. He expects we will agree to his terms. But if I do not walk up there, he will simply wait until darkness falls. He will be rested, by then. He needs that rest. He is no longer a young man; last night was a greater effort than he had expected. He has lived in cities, in comfort, for fifteen years. At this moment, he is exhausted. He has overestimated his physical powers. All men do. Men’s legs give out before their brains. Yes, he will wait for darkness, I think.”

“And then the odds would be mostly in his favour,” Strang said. Christophorou would be rested; he would be confident, laughing at us all, thinking he had turned us into something inhuman, something as calculating as he was, something willing to abandon Cecilia in order to get him.

“Yes, darkness would favour him. I would need a long, closely drawn line of men, each of them sure of his way on a mountainside at night. There are not enough old guerrilla fighters in the villages to form that line. The troops are young, good men, doing their military service; but this terrain is strange to them, and it is exceptionally difficult country indeed.”

“Civilians, like me,” Strang agreed tactfully. “I couldn’t guarantee to see anything on a dark mountainside until the split second that might be too late. That is all Christophorou would need: that moment of surprise, of indecision. He knows those hills, that mountainside. All he needs is some rest, and his confidence.”

“Yes.”

“Then let me jolt that confidence. It may be the only grenade we can throw at him.”

“A grenade? It may be an outsize bomb.” The Colonel’s eyes glanced at his watch again. “We have little time to make a good decision.”

Strang said, “You have decided. Why don’t you give me the go-ahead signal?”

“Your plan worries me.”

“What else can we do? Close off Delphi, send away all the tourists, make a frontal attack right up those cliffs, flush him out of cover? I still think we can goad him into moving. He has already wasted enough time. And for what? For a last laugh at us all.” Christophorou was going into exile, picking up the remnants of his organisation, planning anew, drawing confidence from that last laugh. It would keep him going for years. “Some men thrive on that kind of victory.”

The Colonel nodded.

“So that is why I’m walking up to the Temple of Apollo,” Strang said quietly. “I am going to wipe that last laugh right off his mouth.”

Zafiris said slowly, “You have thought a lot about this man.”

“Too much.” Strang opened the door of the car. “We have more to do, all of us, than keep worrying about him,” he added as he stepped on to the road.

“You are determined?”

“Is there a quicker way to let him know that he has failed?”

“And that we laugh at him?” The Colonel considered for a moment. “Ridicule is a good weapon,” he admitted. “But then what?”

“Well let nature take its course.” Strang closed the car door.

That, thought the Colonel, is what worries me. He looked at Strang. “Good luck,” he said.

He watched the American walk toward the open approach to Delphi. No gates. No railings to shut off the excavations from this road. Four more buses were pulling in, under the shade of the trees. The Saturday crowds were beginning to flow in straggling groups toward the entrance. Problems, plenty of problems. Colonel Zafiris turned abruptly from thinking about them to taking action. He got out of the car, and gave Yorghis quick instructions. All bus drivers were to make a careful check of their returning passengers; all agents, except Elias, to watch every group of visitors coming back from their tour of Delphi; one squad of men to be stationed at the foot of the gorge, another on the opposite side of the amphitheatre near the path to the museum; a platoon must be spread, even thinly, along the road itself; Elias and two men were to follow the American. Everything must be done quietly, circumspectly; no obvious fuss or trouble. It would not do to alarm the visitors; or—he looked up at the cliffs and then let his eyes sweep round the rim of hillside, still and silent in the warm noonday sun—the wily Odysseus. He could almost smile at the ill-chosen name, except that a well-founded depression accompanied his amusement: every Christophorou was a very great hero to himself. His last gesture would be a self-assertion. It would be as destructive and as meaningless as he had made his life, the ultimate victory of the Absurd.

Zafiris’s eyes were now scanning the whole amphitheatre of mounting terraces and ruined walls, of marble steps and broken monuments. A few people were wandering around by themselves or in pairs: students and scholars. The other tourists kept near their own groups. There was one collection of them from the first bus-load, high up, near the theatre. They had begun at the very top, with the stadium, and were working their way down. The
late bus-loads were still clustering around the treasure houses on the lower terraces. He saw Strang, climbing up the oblique slope of the Sacred Way; he was out in the open clearly visible, a man strolling between ruined foundations, stopping to look at a fallen pillar here, a broken pedestal there. The American halted, and turned to look back at the view. He seemed to be a man with nothing on his mind except the beauty of Delphi. At this moment, he had addressed some remark to the guide who usually stood up on that slope, waiting to conduct any visitor to the temple above it. Then the American turned away with an easy wave of his hand, a polite refusal perhaps, and climbed on.

Zafiris said to Yorghis, “You’re in command here.”

“Sir?”

“You know what to do.” The Colonel crossed the road, choosing a small path that led toward the gorge at the side of the amphitheatre.

“Alone, sir?” Yorghis said, running after him.

“You stay here. Take charge.” He began walking briskly. He would not go up into the gorge; he would only use this path to get quietly into the amphitheatre. He would make his way cautiously between the eastern excavations, circling up around their perimeter. This was neither a natural nor an easy approach, but it let him climb possibly unnoticed until he chose to be noticed. We’ll give Christophorou a choice, he thought with some pleasure: a little division of attention, a conflict of impulses, might turn the last gesture into nothing.

Strang felt the warm sun beat into his spine as he walked slowly up the last incline and reached the base of the temple’s eastern
steps. The Temple of Apollo, he thought, looking up at the massive pillars on their high platform of stone, and he forgot the eyes that might be watching him from the towering cliffs or from the hilltop. He climbed up to the level of the temple floor. What a site, he thought, what a perfect site for a temple to the god of the Sun. He felt that old, wonderful quickening of astonishment and delight. There was amazement, too: so much had been destroyed, by pillagers and plunderers, by malice and greed, by violent earth tremors which had torn open wide fissures; and yet, the vision had survived. The greatness of man’s imagination still held fast.

Quite automatically, he began to study the proportions of the temple. And then he came back to the eastern portico. He leaned against a column at least six feet in diameter; a small insignificant man, he thought, as he looked at the view, down over the Sacred Way. Yet, small and insignificant men had conceived and built this place. He began to reconstruct the magnificent scope of their ideas, the fantastic total of beauty and strength, all carefully planned within this half-circle of hills and precipices which was flung around Delphi like a protecting arm. Only to the south, to the sun, the cupped arm lay open. There, the ground sloped steeply down, down past all the man-made terraces where the man-made monuments and treasure houses had stood, down beyond the little road, into the deep, narrow valley. And across the valley was a noble rise of hills to lead man’s eyes back to the sky, to the sun. The builders of Delphi had put their heart into their work, from the choosing of the site to the last careful fluting of a column. What lies in man’s creative work comes from his heart, he thought. The mind, by itself, is not enough.