Greek Fire (3 page)

There was silence. “I'm very sorry.… There was no chance of its being an accident?”

She thrust the tears off her face. “ The police pretend to believe it was. But they are fools or liars.”

“What happened to the car?”

“It was—damaged at the front. It turned quickly round and went off the way it had come.”

“Did you see the driver?”

She shook her head. “Now what have you to say?”

He offered her a cigarette but she shook her head again, impatiently. He struck a match and lit his own cigarette. She watched him suspiciously. He looked like a man who lived on his nerves, but his hands were steady with the match.

He said: “I was coming to see your husband because I think he had something to sell.”

“I don't know what you are talking about.”

“Have the police searched his belongings?”

“No. I don't think so. I am not sure. You know. I have been so distracted since it happened. I came out, I had to come out, just to walk, to breathe, to think.”

The waiter came with the brandy and the coffee, clacking the glasses and saucers. Gene stirred his glass, but she put out one of her small fat pointed hands and pushed hers contemptuously away.

The coffee was thick and sweet. He frowned as he sipped it. “Two weeks ago you and your company were in Paris. Right?”

“Well?”

“At Katalan's. I live in Paris.”

“You saw us dance?”

“No. I have to tell you I don't go much for night-clubs as a normal thing. Maybe I've grown out of them—or through them—I don't know. But a friend of mine met Juan Tolosa. El Toro played a lot of poker, didn't he?”

“So?”

“They met in a poker game more than once. Your husband lost. Once he drank too much and got talkative. He dropped a hint of something he was going to do when he came to Athens. He mentioned a name. My friend knew I was interested in that name. When he saw me a week or so later he passed the information on. By then you'd left. I work in Paris, and it took me a couple of days to put my things in order. I got to Athens yesterday.”

She picked up her glass now, frowned at it, contorting her flat lips, then abruptly she drank the brandy at a gulp.

“Give me the name of the man who killed Juan. That's all I want to know.”

“I have no proof that would satisfy the police.”

She said: “Tell me the name and I will not go to the police.”

He studied her. “I believe you. But it wouldn't help. You'd only be putting your hand into the same snake's nest——”

He stopped. A pale shadow had fallen over the table. In the flood of Castilian that followed he could only pick out a word here and there. He got up.

“Join us. I was hoping you'd come.”

Philip Tolosa said in English: “I have no wish to talk with reporters. Maria, come.”

Gene said: “ You play the harp superbly.”

The Spaniard's sallow face was drawn and dirty, and there was cigarette ash and stains on his coat. He was a good lot taller than his brother, being about Gene's height. Maria got up and there was another sharp, explosion in their own tongue. He had been looking for her everywhere, he said, couldn't think why she had gone out; she was explaining about this man. Tolosa looked at Gene, eyes cagey and bloodshot. He couldn't keep his fingers steady.

Vanbrugh said: “Are you sure you're going to get out of the country? Are you sure they'll let you go?”

The girl pushed her chair aside, nearly upsetting it. “What is this you are threatening us with?”

“I'm threatening you with nothing. Perhaps your brother-in-law knows what I mean.”

“I know nothing except that we have no word to say to anyone. Come, Maria.”

“This man tells me——”

“Come, Maria.”

She shrugged and glanced again at Gene, hesitating between them.

“If you want me any time,” Gene said, “ I am at the Astoria. Ring me or call round.”

There was nothing more he could do now and he watched them go, Philip Tolosa holding the girl's arm. After a few paces she jerked her arm free. But she did not look back.

Gene sat down again to finish his coffee. Then he took out a couple of notes and put them beside the printed bill.

As a clock was striking five Vanbrugh crossed Kolonaki Square and made his way up one of the avenues running off it towards the slopes of Lycabettus. This was a good neighbourhood, the houses individual and distinguished, some set back from the road with wrought-iron gates and balconies.

It was raining now, a fine drizzle falling like nylon across the city; but towards the sea, towards Piraeus, the grey day was illuminated with broken blue. He walked with the collar of his jacket turned up, hands in pockets, easy slouch, as if the iron pavements were not his natural home at all. He looked like a hobo or a trapper, and had never been either.

At the house where he called the half-coloured maid was new to him and seemed doubtful whether Mme Lindos would see him. He gave his name and waited at the door.

When he went in he was shown in to a small morning-room where a handsome old woman sat before an open fire fingering a book of photographs. There are certain architectures of forehead and nose and cheek-bone which defy the erosions of age. She had them.

He kissed her hand and then her cheek, while her gentle sophisticated gaze went slowly over him, noting that he had lost weight and carried like a monogram his familiar air of strain.

“So. We cannot keep you away, Gene. Have you no home?”

He smiled. “No home. Are you, well?”

“When one is as old as I am one is modestly grateful for being alive at all. Let me see, have you ever met M. Vyro?”

Gene turned to the short elderly man with the grey imperial who had been standing by the window.

“
M.
Vyro is the proprietor of
Aegis
, one of our oldest morning papers——”

“And one of the most distinguished,” said Gene.

M. Vyro bowed. “That is too kind. You are English, sir, or American?”

“American.”

“Am I up to date with your occupation, Gene?” Mme Lindos asked. “ The last time you wrote you were——”

“Yes, still in publishing.”

“—M. Vanbrugh is European representative of Muirhead and Lewis, the New York publishers.”

“Then we should have much in common,” said M. Vyro. “You are here on business?”

“Partly, yes. We have two Greek authors on our list, Michaelis and Paleocastra——”

“Ah, Michaelis, the poet. Yes, yes. His is the true voice of Greece——”

“And partly I come to see old friends—among them Mme Lindos, who always knows so much about all the things I want to know.”

“If that was ever true, Gene, it is far less true now. Fewer people come to see me.”

“Except the most important ones,” said Gene.

“Ah, only my oldest friends. I have known M. Vyro for nearly fifty years. What brings you at this particular time, Gene?”

“Your elections interest me. I wanted to ask you who is going to win this one?”

“There is an astrologer round the corner. My maid will give you an introduction to him.”

Gene's face changed when he smiled—the narrowness, thinness, tightness eased and broke up. Lines crinkled across it in a peculiar and original way. “ Maybe M. Vyro will hazard a guess. I imagined
Aegis
will support the Government?”

“Yes—but tending to move right of the Government. It is not a tendency I approve, but two years ago I handed over direction of the paper to my eldest son. He must go his own way.”

“What of this grouping of all the opposition parties against Karamanlis?” Gene said. “And this new party of the centre, EMO, led by George Lascou?”

“I see you are up to date in some things,” Mme Lindos said dryly.

“What sort of a man is Lascou?”

The question was addressed generally, but for a minute neither answered. The question appeared to have been dropped into an empty room. Then Vyro said:

“Intelligent, cultured. His money makes him influential. But I doubt personally if he's dynamic enough for a popular leader. There's something of the dilettante about him.”

“You'll stay to tea, Angelos?” Mme Lindos said.

“No, thank you, I must go. You will be here some time, M. Vanbrugh?”

“A week or so. I haven't decided.”

“Next week—a week today—is the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of my paper. I am proud to have begun it in a back street of the town when I was twenty-three. Next week we are celebrating the anniversary by setting in motion two new printing presses. I came to see Mme Lindos today about the reception which she is holding here first. It would be very fitting—and a pleasure to us—if you could come, having regard to your profession.”

“I shall be glad to. Thank you.”

“My very oldest surviving friend,” said Mme Lindos when Vyro had left. “ My husband's friend too. A man of such integrity. His sons are poor copies.”

“Talk Greek to me, will you, Sophia?” Gene said. “One gets out of practice.”

“Are you likely to need practice?”

“Sometimes it's convenient.”

Mme Lindos got up. Arthritis made her moving ungainly, but once up she was as erect as he was. “You must come into the drawing-room for tea, and then I want to know what you are here for.”

“I believe you don't trust me.”

“Not very far.”

The maid came in and opened double doors into a very large airy drawing-room. The old crimson wallpaper had faded rectangles on it of varying shapes and sizes. One handsome mirror still hung over the Louis Seize fireplace. Tea was set on a small table, a fine tea-pot in a silver cradle, cups as thin as egg-shells, spoons with the Lindos crest.

She said: “And do you really love your publishing now?”

“It enables me to live in Paris.”

“It's the longest you have ever stayed anywhere, isn't it? Always before you have been wandering, restless—homeless, perhaps? It's the faculty of your type. You moved too much, saw too much when you were young.”

“I still get around, but on my job—to Germany, England, Italy …”

“And sometimes to Greece. Does anybody here know you have come?”

“Who is there to know or care? Tell me, Sophia, what do you know about a woman called Anya Stonaris?”

“George Lascou's mistress?”

Gene stirred his tea. “ Is that what she is?”

“You have met her?”

“What's her history?”

“I know very little. She is still very young but they have been together a long time. She gets photographed often because she is beautiful and smart. A hard brilliant person, and a thoroughly bad influence on him, I'm told. He of course has a wife and two children, and he poses to the electorate as a family man. But most people in Athens know of the connection.”

Gene said: “I've heard of Lascou for a good many years, but until he entered politics I wasn't interested in him.”

“And now?”

Their voices, though not raised, had been echoing in the sparsely furnished room. The maid came in with hot buttered toast, and the conversation lapsed till she left them.

Gene said: “One gets different opinions. Some say he'll soon be the most powerful figure in Greece.”

While they talked the clouds had broken, and the room brightened and darkened as the sun intermittently came through. The Venetian blinds had not been lowered, and Mme Lindos looked at her visitor whose face was lit with a reflection from the mirror on the wall. She thought again how young he looked in spite of his hollow cheeks: his was the youth which sometimes comes to people with singleness of mind. She remembered her first meeting with him twelve years ago, in the middle of the civil war; he had appeared on her doorstep in rags speaking Greek then with an accent she had thought Anatolian, had warned her to go into the cellar and stay there: the fighting was coming up this street. Sten gun under arm he had said this apologetically, like someone calling about the gas, and then, as it seemed summing her up in a glance, had asked her if she could care for a woman who was dying and needed attention and water. After that she had not seen him for nearly two weeks, when, during the worst famines and the worst massacres, he had come suddenly again with a few tins of food he had stolen from somewhere and left them in her hall.

Gene said: “Things are still bad here?”

“You do not need to listen to the politicians to discover the problems of Greece, Gene. Under the surface prosperity we have a food shortage, except for the rich, and the old, old bogy of inflation—and unemployment, or underemployment, everywhere. Many of our people—perhaps two million, perhaps more than a quarter of us all—have to live on less than two thousand drachmae a year. What is that in your currency? Seventy dollars? That is what we have to face and have to cure.”

Silence fell for a while. “How do you plan to spend your time here?” she asked.

“I have to see Michael Michaelis. And I shall wander round meeting some old friends.”

“Go carefully. Don't get into trouble like last time.”

“I was of use.”

Her grey worldly-wise eyes flickered up to him for a moment. “I
know
you were of use. I know that, Gene. But you made enemies in high places as well as friends.”

“It's an occupational risk.”

“That's just what it's not. If you are here on publishing business I'm sure no one will interfere with you. But if you start dabbling in our politics again … Besides, it is perhaps not altogether a pretty scene but it could be worse.”

“Do you have friends who know Anya Stonaris?”

She made a gesture disavowing responsibility. “… I have some.”

“I want to meet her. Could it be arranged in some casual way?”