Greek Fire (20 page)

Not all had seen the news. But enough to take in the first part. Vyro himself stared at the paper and then held it for others to see. Mme Lindos saw, and it was her first glance at Gene that gave Vyro the hint of recognition.

But none could speak. They were puppets jerked by invisible wires of surprise; gestures, expressions, became larger than life, grotesque and slightly inhuman. Vyro dropped the newspaper back upon the others, but the Greek ambassador to Turkey picked up another, and then Leon de Trieste. They mouthed at each other. Someone tugged at Gene's arm. It was Lady Camwell. She gave a jerk of her head towards the door they'd come in by. Gene looked at Anya; she had gone grey in the face.

Gene moved back towards the door. A hand caught him. Paul Vyro shouted something in his face, making his meaning clear; Gene shoved him hard and he went back against a bale of paper.

At the door two others were moving towards him. Through the door and slam.

In the foundry room deafness was beset by indistinct ordinary noises trying to come in. No lock on the door. A man came towards him carrying a newly-cast cylinder for presses. He said something to Gene, can you get away from the door.

“Way out?” said Gene.

The man answered but Gene was still deaf; he leaned forward and the second time heard; “ Over there. The green door.”

Gene began to run down the foundry room. The others were out before he got to the green baize, but he was through it. A long dark passage dusty and cold ended in a small office with several time registers, but no one in charge. A door faced him in the semi-darkness; he fumbled for the handle, scraping fingers on the woodwork. Double back and push open the office door; voices and shouts down the passage.

Rough coats and heavy boots. Two doors. Wash-basins. If this was a dead end he was caught. But there was another door, a door with a push bar. He pushed.

Someone was coming through the office as the door opened and he fell down the two steps into a narrow alley. He ran along it, came to the end and an empty street. Down the street at full speed, the opposite direction from the main doors of the building; a wider street. But he'd gone wrong: it wasn't a street but a square for unloading lorries. It was ill-lit; two lorries were there backed against a wall, abandoned for the night.

No way out. Buildings cast rectangular moon-made shadows. He shinned up into the van of one of the lorries, but the ignition key was missing. Then through the rear window he saw that the lorries were backed against an alley which ran into the yard of a factory. As he slid round and down and disappeared behind the back wheels he heard footsteps running in the square.

The yard of the factory seemed just another cul-de-sac. Doors locked and bolted from the inside; empty packing ceases from which two cats stared their disapproval, broken bottles, corrugated iron, steps. He took the steps four at a time. At the top was a locked door but beside it a concrete path ran round the corner. He stopped a few seconds for breath. All pursuit was a delicate balance between coolness and speed. As bad to be too hasty as too slow. But not many yards away from him someone had opened one of the doors of the lorry.

He went round the corner hardly hoping, found that the raised path went along the side of the building, and beyond the wall were steps leading down into the street at the factory entrance. This street was not empty but he got down and wriggled unobtrusively over the small gate at the bottom of the steps. Then he began to walk briskly but not too briskly away from the scene.

Lucky about the taverna; from it you could just see the steps leading up to her flat. An old yellow house, bland and bleached; two great palms stood before it like Corinthian pillars gone to seed; he had been in the taverna half an hour and while there two o'clock had struck. A meal swallowed as an excuse for occupying a table—also he had not eaten for twelve hours, and who knew when next?

This feeling of being hunted, really hunted again, was like a reminiscent pain, forgotten until it returned; not since early '44. A sensation to be dreaded: the beating pulse, the catch of the breath, the loneliness. Yet it carried savours. One had the freedom of the atheist denying God; there was nothing more to lose but one's life.

As a young man his nerves had lain too near the surface he had fought them as well as the Germans, disciplined them so that a triumph over one became a triumph over the other. Contempt of his own nervous and physical stamina had often carried him past the breaking point; beyond it was a no-man's-land few knew and understood.

Tonight after leaving the newspaper offices he had spent half the Lindos-Camwell money on a change of clothing. Behind Pandrossou Street you can buy almost anything at almost any time. A second-hand suit of Greek cut, a pair of spectacles, a wide-brimmed hat, a bottle of dye, an old gladstone bag which now held his own clothes.

The murder of Lascou had been broadcast on the late news. The police, said the proprietor of the taverna, were seeking a noted foreign
agent provocateur
who had been seen committing the murder.

“What nationality?” Gene asked.

“They did not say—Bulgarian I would guess.” The proprietor rubbed greasy fingers down his blue striped apron. “They are the trouble makers. Hairy perverts.… Oh, well, a politician more or less—but there are those one could spare more easily than Lascou. Not that he's of my party, d'you understand; I could not vote for a man like Manos. And Spintharos—well, I can tell you sometime about him—poo! you wouldn't believe. But Lascou—he was not a bad figure of a fellow.”

She came in about half past two, and there was a man with her. Gene thought it was Manos but they were past too quickly to be sure. He dallied in the taverna drinking coffee, but the proprietor was waiting to close so he paid his bill and got up to go. As he did so Manos came down the steps and passed out of sight. Gene went to the door in time to see a pale blue saloon drive away.

Good night to the proprietor, and he pulled his hat over his eyes and stepped into the street. There wasn't anybody about and a light chill wind rustled a newspaper thrown in the gutter. Lights in her rooms now, but cagily he walked first to the end of the street and looked quickly back. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something stir beside the trunk of a palm tree just beyond the house. He waited patiently but there was no other movement except a gently waving frond. The lights in the taverna had gone out. He came back and walked up the steps.

When she saw who it was she tried to slam the door in his face but he got his foot in the door.

“Anya, I must see you.”

“I—don't want …” There, was a sharp angry struggle and then the door gave. He was in a hall with double doors leading into a large sala, but she had gone from the door and was inside lifting off the telephone. He stopped in the doorway, short of breath.

“Go on,” he said. “Ring the police if you want to.”

“Why shouldn't I?”

“Go ahead. There'll be time to talk to you before they come.”

She had changed into a green jersey and narrow black velvet trousers. They stared at each other. He said: “D'you really think I killed him?”

“Didn't you?”

“D'you suppose I'd stab him in the back? Is that what you think?”

She put the telephone down. The hard certainties had gone from her eyes. He came into the room.

“You have a maid?”

“She goes home, at night.”

“So we're alone?”

She didn't answer but put up her hands to her face. “God, I think I'm going to faint.”

He went to a corner cupboard and clattered among the glasses and bottles there, came back with half a glass of brandy. “ Sit down. Drink this.”

She said: “Michael said you were there.”

“Michael?”

“George's son.”

“How did he know who I was?”

“He'd seen you on Saturday. He always peeps in at his father's guests.”

“I was there. But I didn't do it.”

She burst into tears. “I loved him.”

He got her to sit down. She tried hard to keep her hands steady to hold the drink, but they were shaking like someone with ague.

She said: “I have b-been holding on tight, tight. One can't go on for ever.…”

“Don't try.… Finish this.”

She took the glass in her own hand again but could not steady it, and he took it back, holding it while she sipped.

He said quietly: “Anya, I had to come and see you. It was the only thing to do. The one absolutely necessary thing in my life now is to get this straight with you.”

“I thought—you see what I thought.”

“You wouldn't have, if you'd had time.”

“But you were
there
.…”

“I was there.”

After a few minutes she began to steady herself. It was with an anger directed against herself. She blew her nose, tucked the handkerchief into the waistband of her trousers, took the glass a second time, trying to claim self possession, like someone denying illness because it was shameful to be weak.

He said. “I also came to you for another reason. Because I'd promised George.”

“You promised
him
?”

“When he was dying he said two things: ‘Burn the letters' and ‘Tell Anya'. I've come to do what he said.”

“I don't understand. What letters?”

“The letters that came from Madrid.”

“Some did? Today? …”

“That's what I have to tell.”

When he'd finished she stared at the pile of letters he'd put on the table before her.

“So what you said, what you implied in the mountains—that was true.”

“Yes.…”

She took up one of the letters, read a few lines, let it fall.

She said: “As men go I do not think George was a bad man.”

She said it half challengingly, as if she expected him to disagree. But he said nothing and got up to re-fill her glass.

She said: “ George made his money perhaps to begin with in shady ways, and he increased it tenfold by speculation during the inflation. But the money, once got, he used often in good ways. He was, within limits, kind and generous to his wife,
devoted
to his children, he gave money and time to the arts. He loved his country. He was a
thinker
. I thought, I always believed, that he was working for the future of Greece.”

“So he was.”

“These letters prove he was a Communist?”

“Communists are not necessarily bad men. They are only working for what we conceive to be a bad thing.”

“With my background it is hard to see the difference.”

“Yet you say that you loved him.”

“When did I?”

“Just now.”

She got up, went to the mantelpiece, subtly recovering herself every moment. “ D'you suppose that I can take his death without feeling it? He did everything for me. He made me, kept me. I owe everything to him.”

“Did you give him nothing in return?”

She made an impatient gesture. “He said so. But when someone who has been very close to you dies, you
feel
that loss here—you don't first weigh everything in a balance and think should I be sorry, should I grieve, should I be upset!'

“No. I know, my dear. I'm sorry.”

“And where is this woman that you say did it? Where is she now?”

“Soon out of Greece, I hope. I had to give her the chance to escape.”

“
Why?
If she did it, she is responsible, not you! Are you too making a mistake in your feelings?”

“She's nothing to me except that I have to take some of the responsibility.”

“Why?”

“Without my help Juan Tolosa's widow would have gone back to Spain. Her brother-in-law would have given up the letters as the price of his freedom and they would never have been heard of again.”

“And George would have been free to go on with his plans for a
coup
. Is that what you wanted?”

“
No
,” he said, coming up against it hard like a wall. “
No
.”

“Well, you've stopped him.”

“I've stopped him and I'm glad—even if it meant his death—even if it means mine. But too many other people have got involved for me to have satisfaction out of it. I didn't expect it to lead to a woman committing murder and a child crying for his father and … you being hurt——”

“And you are wanted for that murder.” She turned on him. “D'you realise what you've done? It's not just a question of getting out of Greece. Wherever you go you'll still be wanted—and when you're caught you'll be extradited wherever you are—and you'll have to stand your trial here in Athens! And who's to believe your story—except those who know and—and perhaps understand?”

He shrugged. “I'll worry when the time comes.”

“You have taken such a risk in visiting me. Every minute counts now against you.”

“I had to see you.”

She would not look at him. “ What am I to do with the letters?”

“What you please. He asked me to burn them.”

“But you haven't.”

“Not yet. I had to bring them to you in case you doubted what I told you.”

“I can't now.”

Gene said: “In a way, even doing this, I haven't played quite fair with him. ‘Burn the letters. Tell Anya.' He didn't mean it this way.”

“Does that worry you? You have such strange scruples.”

“Well burn them now—now you've seen them. They've caused enough trouble.”

And what are
you
going to do?'

“Go,” he said. “I can get out all right.”

She considered for a second. “I don't believe that.”

“Why?”

“It's—a hunch. When you came into Mme Lindos's …”

He held up his hand. “What's that?”

“What?”