Greek Fire (25 page)

“It's no good,” said the constable, next morning. “ The sergeant's busy. Tell me what you have to say and I will tell him.”

“He is my cousin,” said the plumber sadly. “ It is a family affair.”

“Family affairs can wait until the sergeant is off duty. That he will be at six o'clock. You can see him then.”

“Certain family matters,” said the plumber, “demand immediate discussion.”

Flies hummed in the lazy sunbeams that fell through the shutters of the dusty police station. Nothing else stirred.

The plumber added: “I have come here specially to your station, neglecting my work, in the heat of the day. D'you suppose I would go to that trouble without cause?”

The policeman scratched his shirt sleeve. “ What is it all about? Your wife? Your daughter? His? Tell me, then I will judge.”

“I'm sorry, it is a private matter. But I will tell you it may be to do with the police also.”

The plumber had been skilful in the way he had worded his argument. Affinity and consanguinity meant much.

“At four,” the policeman said, but speculatively.

“Now,” said the plumber.

The flies buzzed drearily and the policeman irritably flicked one away.

“Someone is dead,” said the plumber, playing his last card. “ It is a matter I must discuss with the sergeant as man to man. Then it may be for someone higher up still.”

“Well, well,” said the policeman. “ Wait here. I will see.”

Major Kolono was just beginning his lunch when the call came through.

“What? What? Who is it? Speak up! What information? Who gave it you? Yes, of course, if it is of value. But is it of value? Very well, I'm listening!”

He listened. He said: “Where was it found? Number what? Flat 4. This plumber found it? What was he doing there? … I see. Wait a minute, the address is familiar. I will just make sure about that. Hold the line.”

He walked into his office and took up another phone. “Find out who lives at Flat 4, number 11, Baronou Street.” He waited until the information came through, then stumped back to the other telephone.

“You fool!” he said with considerable pleasure into the receiver. “Don't you know who lives at that address? It is Mlle Stonaris, M. Lascou's mistress. She was at this Anniversary Reception on Tuesday night at the
Aegis
offices and would naturally receive any gift which was being presented on such an occasion. What does it matter where the plumber found it? In any case her flat has already been searched. What? I say it has already been
searched
! Send your plumbers about his business and attend to your own!”

He slammed the receiver down and poured himself another half glass of wine, to which he added iced water. Then he sat down to his interrupted
pepóni
. But towards the end of the meal certain thoughts began to stir in his mind, like frogs in a pool after the ripples of the stone have settled.

It was by far the hottest day of the year so far in Athens. For the first time the sun was a presence to be reckoned with, an injection into the blood-stream of the city. Pulses beat faster, blood flowed hotter and thinner, shadows developed substantial architectures to be sought before they shrank at noon. So now it would go on each day, iron hot in the morning, punitive almost until dark, changeless through the summer until the parched city was swept with the storms of autumn.

But in Anya's flat, with the windows open and the jalousies down, it was only pleasantly warm. She went out early. He did not like her calling on Mme Lindos again, but there was no escape for it. To pass the time while she was gone he read the morning paper through to see if there was anything fresh relating to Lascou's death or to himself. There was nothing new, but on the back paper his eyes suddenly came on a paragraph headed ‘Spaniard's Death.' ‘Philip Tolosa, 39 year old Spanish dancer and harpist, was found gravely injured in the street outside his hotel window from which he had apparently jumped or fallen. He died on the way to hospital. Tolosa is the second of a troupe of Spanish dancers and entertainers to meet his death in an accident since the troupe arrived in Greece three weeks ago. His brother was knocked down and killed by a car, which failed to stop, in Galatea Street on the 12th. Mme Nicolou, proprietress of the boarding house, said that Tolosa had brooded a great deal over his brother's death and seemed to be unable to get it off his mind. An inquiry will be held tomorrow.”

Gene folded the paper. A contrived accident? It seemed unlikely. No one now had anything to gain by his death. For ten days Philip Tolosa had been working himself into a frame of mind from which there was no return.

And Maria? Safe by now. She was the only one of the three that mattered.

It was noon when Anya returned, bringing his new passport. It was not a bad copy. He did not think it would satisfy the Deuxième Bureau, but it would pass the casual examination of a frontier officer. The photograph was no worse than the original.

“And Sophia?”

“She has had word from Nafplion that it is all right as far as there.”

“So tomorrow morning I leave.”

“Yes. I'm afraid so.”

“I wish you could come with me.”

She said: “ When you are free let me know where you are, that you're alive and well. That is the first, all-important thing. When that is so, then—maybe— we can begin to plan.”

They had their mid-day meal near one of the shuttered windows. They ate and talked in a filtered, aquarium light, but more yellow, thicker, as if it was a world of sunfish. They ate a cold chicken which she had bought, and zucchinis and a mixed salad, and drank a white Tour la Reine.

They didn't talk much. There was still eighteen hours for planning. Just now it was a warm and friendly companionship that didn't need words. It was an astonishing advance in their relationship—of far greater import than the mere physical act of love would have been.

By the time they finshed, traffic in the street outside was drying up like a trickle of water in sand, pedestrians almost disappeared, more blinds came down, dogs and workmen curled up in the shade and slept.

They sat there exchanging a word or two, in their own quiet country, isolated now. They were protected not so much by indifferent walls and slanting jalousies and locked doors as by the sleeping town. For two hours nothing would stir. He came to sit beside her but made no move to touch her.

She said: “Do you want—now—to make love to me?”

“Only on your terms.”

She said: “I know it is strange for me, a woman like me, still to have qualms.… It is pretentious perhaps a little.” She smiled at him, considering her words. “ It is very difficult. I am not just an animal desiring to be desired by you, but neither am I just a detached brain existing in a—a vacuum. My reason says to me: the fact that this has come in George's flat at a time when George has hardly gone from you, where everything, everything is reminiscent—and I grieve—you may not believe it but I grieve—for a friend.… All that is ill-tasting only because of a coincidence of time and place. My reason says, how can that really affect what is so separate from it in thought and feeling that it might be happening to someone else? If you refuse this now it will prove nothing except that you are turning away from what is good, what is true, because you cannot rid your memory of what it tries to forget.”

“Your reason has a lot of reason on its side.”

“But there is another thing. We are in the very centre of danger. What we feel for each other should not be flawed by fear, by the heart jumping for the wrong causes, by a chance telephone call, by the ring at the door, by the siren down the street. It should not be flawed by being snatched at in haste and in dread.”

He was a little while replying. In the centre of his mind was a truth that he now fully recognised but was afraid to grasp at and discipline too soon. It might even escape him in speech, in the effort to be completely honest both with her and with himself.

“Anya, I don't know what is true or not true about tomorrow. I can only be sure of today.”

“And today?”

“Today I have absolute certainty. I don't need to say it or to think it any more.”

“And you would begin this—now?”

“… You must decide.”

“Lift off the telephone,” she said. “That way we can be sure it will not ring.”

Major Kolono woke about ten past four. Sometimes baby octopus gave him acute indigestion and he was nervous about his stomach. He knew he should see a doctor but he was terrified of being told that there was something gravely wrong.

He got off his couch and went into the next room for the bismuth tablets, and while he was doing so that other discomfort, of the mind, returned. Memories of Saturday came to trouble him—he had seen the wanted man talking to Anya Stonaris—and
why
had her flat been searched? There'd been some report, that.… He swallowed the tablets and blew out his chest to let them go down; he persuaded himself he felt better. Then he sat in his chair and pressed the bell, and when it was not immediately answered he kept his finger on it until it was.

His second in command came bustling into the room fastening the top button of his tunic. “Sir?”

“Have you done anything more to check that plumber's report on Flat 4, Number 11, Baronou Street?”

“No, sir. I thought you were satisfied. You gave no instructions.”

Kolono stared his subordinate down. “Everything in this department I have to do myself, it seems. No one has the initiative to stir a finger; I wonder how you live in your own houses; are you spoon-fed, dressed and washed? … Telephone to the offices of
Aegis
and ask if the penknives which were presented to guests on Tuesday night were given to everyone, especially if it is remembered whether Mlle Stonaris received one. And I want to see that plumber. Also get me Mr. Manos on the other line.”

“Very good, sir.”

The man went out, and Kolono rubbed his little black moustache and belched. A routine inquiry; but Manos would be able to tell him whether Mlle Stonaris still retained any power, whether it would be permissible to worry her a second time. It was a good policy while on the subject of Vanbrugh to ring the various branch stations for news. An inquiry would keep them up to scratch.

He had finished with two stations and was lecturing a third when his assistant came into the room. Kolono slapped the phone down and said: “Well?”

“Sir, penknives were given only to the gentlemen at the Anniversary Reception. The ladies received fountain pens.”

Major Kolono felt a knot twist in his stomach, and it was not dyspepsia. “So.”

His second in command waited patiently.

“Mr. Manos?”

“He is out of town, sir. He is expected back this evening.”

Kolono said: “ How did it come about that Mlle Stonaris's flat was searched in the first place? An anonymous report, wasn't it?”

“A phone call, sir. Late on Tuesday night.”

“Nothing was found?”

“No, sir.”

“Who was the lieutenant who searched the flat?”

“Andros, sir.”

“Send for him at once.”

Mme Lindos was a woman of resource. She had seen more wars through than she cared to remember, more civil upheavals and revolutions than she could count. She had suffered the loss of a husband and a son, weathered the storms, it seemed to her sometimes, of more than one lifetime. She could not have survived without great courage and resource and the constant exercise of them.

When her cousin's son-in-law, who happened to be Kolono's second-in-command, called her on the telephone just as she was about to sit down to tea and gave her an urgent but guarded message, she didn't get flustered or panic. She told Louisa to take the teapot back to the kitchen and to keep it warm, then she picked up the telephone. There was a certain risk attached to the use of the telephone, since the line might be tapped, but it was a risk that did not disturb her. She still had a few friends in exalted quarters.

She also had one or two friends in Athens in a lowlier sphere, people whom she could trust, and she decided that now was a time when she must make use of them. She first telephoned the proprietor of a small garage whom she had helped to start in business ten years ago. Having talked with him she rang Anya. The line was engaged.

This was the first point at which she showed some emotion. She lit a cigarette and got up from the telephone and limped across the room. Then she came back and tried again. Still the engaged note.

It was now a matter of timing and carefully calculated risks. It might be that the line was being deliberately cut; or it might be that in five minutes she would still get through. Either event must be prepared for. She pulled across a pen and a piece of paper and tore off the address. Then she scribbled a few lines and put it in an envelope. She rang the bell.

“I want you to take this round to Baronou Street. Deliver it only to Mlle Stonaris, who you remember came here on Tuesday night. And Louisa.…”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“Take a basket with some flowers in. Take these flowers from the vases. Just put them in the basket as if you were delivering them. It is a matter of appearing you are going on ordinary business, not delivering a message, d'you understand.”

Anya said: “ Darling, I am so afraid.”

“What, now?”

“Now more than ever. I have so much more to lose.”

“Yes.… I felt that this morning.”

“Did you? I didn't know.”

“Happiness is a maker of cowards. Who cares what you lose if you've nothing to lose? But maybe it also makes fighters who fight longer in the end.”

“I feel over-burdened, frightened of the danger around us—now, at this moment.”

“It's not likely to have changed in two hours.”