"I simply must know the truth, Lisette."
"You cannot know it from me. You have heard me beg you to believe me. I told you I am innocent. You heard me beg for help. But you still think I am a liar. Don't speak any more to me! Why don't you question your friend who came here last night? Maybe he is the one who shoots at you now!"
"Harris? Why should he—?"
"Why does any man or woman sell his soul for a cause?"
Without regard for the danger, she suddenly gathered herself up and started to run for the temple ruins on the crest of the hill above them. Old Stephanes, who had been listening to the angry exchange with interested eyes under his shaggy brows, bellowed in alarm and lurched up after her. Durell was faster. He reached Lisette as the shots began again, whining in triple, repeated pings! on rock and shale as he threw Lisette down behind the protection of a shattered Doric column. A few pieces of the architrave still in place over the temple's outer wall cast a shadow over them. Captain Stephanes threw himself, grunting, behind a column several feet away.
"I agree, they are not very good shots, Mr. Durell. Or else they are more than expert!"
"They'll get much better, if we try to leave this place, I think."
"Will they parley with us?"
"If they want something. But I think what they want is simply to keep us pinned here, while they do something else, somewhere else."
"I wish I had my gun," Stephanes said mournfully. "My old rifle has been on the wall of my cottage for too many years, it seems."
Durell felt Lisette heave and twist away from under his weight. He had kept her pinned with him in the shelter of the broad marble column, and now he gripped her arm with no trace of kindness. She winced with pain.
"Lisette, you wanted to come with me, and you're not running out on me now."
"Why do you always think the worst?" she blazed bitterly. "Do you think I am trying to get away from you so they can shoot at you without hitting me, perhaps?"
"Perhaps."
She laughed. "My life has no value to anyone. And you are a bitter, unhappy man. I feel truly sorry for you."
"Well, that's a switch," he said.
"I want no pity from you," she decided. "I regret so much what happened at the hotel room in Athens last night. I was weak and a fool and frightened—"
"Nothing happened," Durell said flatly.
Her green eyes met his, went wide and startled, and then grew cool and hard. Her voice went soft. "You are right," she said. "It was nothing of any meaning."
One way or another, he was not convinced about Lisette. He told himself that his habit of suspicion had become so ingrained that it was impossible to accept her for what she claimed to be. He felt a brief sense of loss because of this; then he turned his attention back to their immediate problem.
When he lifted his head carefully, and looked at Stephanes, he caught a look of wry amusement on the old guerilla fighter's bronzed face.
"My young friend, she is a woman ripe for any man. Why do you quarrel with her?"
"She might have put us here to be shot at, Captain." "But no one told me to dig for the cup today. If this is a trap, it was improvised at this moment only." The old man's face darkened. "The cup I found had been lying in the soil for two thousand years—perhaps longer. I took it back into the light of day, and those people out there, that man with the rifle, destroyed it deliberately. Such savages have no right to live. Such barbarism should be destroyed." Durell looked at him. "Will you help me, then?" "Perhaps. If we get away from here in safety." "You'll show me the way into Albania?" "Wherever you think it is necessary to go. May the gods curse and damn forever all our barbarian enemies." "Amen," Durell said.
He was aware of the angry chagrin in the old man because of the loss of his precious antique cup. Perhaps it was worth it, he thought, in order to gain Stephanes' friendship. Yet he, too, felt the loss of that glowing object of beauty, and he knew the world had been made poorer by these last few minutes.
He lifted his head and surveyed the situation. He still did not know where the shots had come from, and no more had been fired since they'd reached the comparative safety of the temple ruins. His impression was that the shots had been fired from the south, off to his left, from across the valley. The hills there looked bleak and open, with scraggly fields and rock fences for sheep grazing. No houses were there. But within a fold of the hills were shadows cast by stubbly trees that grew along the steep banks of a little stream. He watched those shadows carefully for a time, lifting his head until he could see over the edge of the dusty stone temple platform. At first there was nothing. The wind blew, smelling of the land and the sea, and now and then of that indefinable hint of flowers. It would be noontime, soon. The sun was hot and bright overhead. He felt the dryness of dust in his throat, and a touch of hunger. Of course, they could stay here until dusk, he thought, if no one happened up this way to help them escape. Certainly, with darkness, they could get out of the valley easily.
He told this to Stephanes, and the old man nodded. "We are beyond the sniper's reach in here. I agree, it will be safer and wiser to wait until dark."
"But that may be just what they want me to do," Durell said. "They might only want to isolate me here for the rest of the day."
Stephanes looked startled, then cursed, then gave him a flick of fingers in a salute. "You are right, of course. They pin you down here while they find that nasty little man, Gregori Shkoeder, and get what they want from him, eh? Maybe they need time to kill him and shut his mouth. Or to keep you out of the picture until it is safe for them to proceed with whatever you are trying to prevent."
"That could be the idea," Durell said.
"Then we will not stay here any longer," Stephanes decided.
"Do you know a way out?"
"No." The man grinned. "None at all."
"Then don't try anything foolish," Durell said. "It occurs to me that I might have gotten you into a mess of trouble, too. If Shkoeder came here for you, and Harris asked about you, then you also have a value to our unknown enemies. A value if you are dead and silent, of course. So they might want to kill you sooner than they would kill me. Keep your head down, eh?"
The rains of centuries had eroded a small gully in the hillside below the temple. Durell considered the small copse of trees on the opposite side of the valley where the shots had come from. He thought he saw something stir over there, but he could not be sure. He had to risk exposure, sooner or later. It wouldn't do to play into the enemy's hands by staying here during the precious hours of this day.
"Stay behind the column," he told Lisette. "Captain Stephanes will see that you are safe."
She would not reply. Her face was closed to him. He shrugged it off and then got up with a quick, smooth movement and ran across the open platform of the temple of Apollo toward the front facade, dodging the tall Doric columns that thrust still-proud fingers toward the sky. For a moment, nothing happened as he darted ahead through the pattern of long shadows. There was a double row of columns on the front; he reached them and ran, gun in hand, across the open, sunlit area toward the broad flight of stone steps and down toward the rain gully. Then a shot cracked. The bullet whined overhead. He turned deliberately, doubling back, and flattened in the shadow of one of the outer row of marble columns.
"Lisette!"
"Yes?"
"Come this way!"
She moved slowly from the safety of her column. Her face was pale. Stephanes shouted to her to be quick, and she began to run, awkwardly, hips swaying, toward Durell. The moment she was exposed in the open sunlight, the rifle cracked again. The girl gave a little cry and spun halfway about and buckled to one knee. Then she picked herself up and, holding her left arm, went with her wobbly run toward Durell again. A second and third shot cracked spitefully, but both, by good fortune, were intercepted by the intervening ruined columns. Lisette dropped to her knees beside Durell, gasping and half sobbing, her dark red hair in thick strands across the side of her
dusty face. She clutched her left arm high up near the shoulder. Blood welled between her fingers.
"Let me see it," he said grimly. "It is nothing. Only a scratch."
He pried her fingers loose from the tanned flesh. It was true, the bullet had done little more than break the skin. He ripped a piece of cloth from his shirt and made a quick compress and bandage around it. She would not look at him. "You may have noticed, their aim was better when they shot at me," she said.
"I noticed. Do you think it's one of Dinov's men?" "It is possible. He will try to kill me, if he can. I see now that he never had any idea of letting me go, even after my job with Pollini was finished. Now I know too much about him and his operations, you see."
"But Dinov should want to get those rockets out of Albania as much as we do," Durell said drily. "Perhaps," she said. "You don't think so?"
"I only know that ordinary laws and motives for ordinary men do not apply to a monster like Helmuth Dinov."
He looked at her sharply and started to reply—and his words were cut off by a sudden burst of rifle fire from across the valley. He lifted his head and looked back, appalled. "Stephanes!"
There was no answer. He could not see the old Greek. Stephanes was gone. For several long moments of silence, he scanned the ruins, the fallen columns, the marble tiles, the fragments of sculpture that merged with the white stone dust of the temple site. The cheerful sunlight mocked him. It was noon, to judge by the light. Heat was building up in the valley that ran down narrowly toward the village and the Minoa Hotel where he had left the car. A wind came up briefly, smelling of the sea. It stirred the dust and moved the grass and weeds that struggled to grow in the cracks of the ancient stones. Lisette breathed lightly and quickly. Her terror was genuine.
"Stay here," he said.
"No, I want to go with you," she said at once. "I won't stay alone. Don't leave me!"
"I'll have to move fast. Is yotir arm all right?"
"It hurts, but I can keep up with you."
He nodded, then got up from behind the sheltering column and ran for the protection of the rain gully just below the temple. For the first few steps, nothing happened, just as before. They were only a few feet from the brushy ravine that slanted down the hill when the rifleman opened up again. But this time he was not shooting at them. The slugs went whining off at a target some distance away, down the slope—where Captain Stephanes had gone, Durell decided. He dragged Lisette into the cover with him and ran, with the girl stumbling and panting behind him, down the slope. At a turn in the ditch he paused and looked across the open hillside and glimpsed Stephanes running low across the floor of the valley, hiding as he went below a stone fence that zig-zagged across the fields. The old Greek had his steel pick with him, and he carried it as if it had no weight at all. The next moment he disappeared in the gorse beyond the stone wall.
"We're all right now," he told Lisette. "He's drawn their fire."
"But they will kill him! He can help us, don't you see, as much as Shkoeder or anyone. So they will kill him!"
"I don't think it will be easy to do that," Durell said.
He let her rest for another few moments, then went ahead again, picking his way down the hillside along the line of brush. No more shots were directed at them. Silence filled the valley. At the foot of the hill, with the temple of Apollo shining white above them against the cloudless blue sky, he found a goat path that followed the same stone fence that Stephanes had used; he employed it as protection to work his way across the valley floor toward the opposite slope, where the sniper was hiding. It took twenty minutes, since his progress was hampered by the girl. Dust scratched his throat, and the heat of the sun seemed to gather in magnified intensity on the valley floor. He had completely lost Stephanes now, but he had a fair idea of what the old man was doing.
At the end of the goat path there was an abandoned peasant's hut, and he pushed Lisette inside the square doorway.
"You must stay here for a little while," he told her. "I can't take you any further with me."
"Will you come back for me?" she whispered.
"Of course."
"Please—don't let them kill you."
His grin was mocking. "I thought you no longer cared what happened to me."
"But I have no other friends," she said simply. "It is true, you are cruel, but if you do not come back, I don't know what I should do or where I should go."
"I'll be back," he promised.
He left her there, holding her wounded arm, and started climbing toward the copse of trees where the marksman had been hiding. Now there was not the slightest sign that anyone was still there. He moved carefully, searching for Captain Stephanes. He exposed himself to view twice, hoping to draw fire, but nothing happened.
He was less than fifty yards from the spot when he finally saw the Greek. There was just a flash of movement, a glint of steel from the upraised pickax, and a scream of pure terror that shook the hillside. The old man's face was stamped with utter fury. A shot crashed from the rifle, splitting the calm, sunlit air. Durell yelled and ran forward. The bushes swayed, thrashed, and were abruptly still.
"Stephanes!" he called.
A bird cried plaintively in the air overhead. He looked back for a moment. The little temple of Apollo shone with white clarity in the sunlight across the valley. In the ravine below, he could see Lisette, standing up now in front of the hut, her figure immobile, the wind blowing her skirt around her long legs. It was as if she sensed what had happened here in the woods.
"Stephanes!" he called again.
The harsh voice of the old man replied at last.
"I am here."
He arose from the brush with his pickax in his hand. There was blood and mattery stuff on one end of it. There was a defensive look in the man's thick shoulders and chest for a moment, a small twitch at the corner of his hard mouth. Durell walked toward him. Metal glinted in the brush, and he saw it came from sunlight reflecting off a rifle barrel. The man who sprawled beside the rifle lay on his back, a look of shock and dismay stamped on his anonymous face for all eternity.
Durell looked at him and did not know him. He could have been anyone, wearing a rather shabby blue suit, dusty black shoes, an often-laundered white shirt and somewhat flamboyant necktie. His face looked Slavic.
"You took a big chance, Captain Stephanes, rushing him like that."
"A man who deliberately destroys the relics of the ancients has no right to live. A man who smashes the cup of Apollo is not a man, but a barbarian," Captain Stephanes said quietly. He put down his pick. "I have no regrets for taking his life. He would have killed me, if he could. I only regret the broken cup."
"Do you know him?"
"No."
"Was he alone here?"
"Quite alone."
Durell searched the body rapidly. There was no identification. He said: "You didn't see Shkoeder?"
"This man is not an Albanian. I know Albanians. I fought the Italians when they tried to come down into my country, and I fought the Germans when they succeeded, and I threw grenades against the occupation troops through the war. Afterward, when I could no longer agree with the politics of the Resistance, I left the mountains and the villages and fought those men of my country who would have sold our liberty to the East. But I knew them well enough, and their leaders, too. This man spoke Russian, this one I've just killed. He cried out something in Russian when he first saw me in his surprise."
"I see." Durell frowned. It was possible that the dead man worked for Dinov. But that meant that Dinov was definitely not seeking alliance, but was after him and Shkoeder and anyone else who might know the way to Debrec. The girl was right to be afraid, he thought. But he couldn't be sure. He looked up as Stephanes spoke again.
"Will you call the police, Mr. Durell?"
"Only a man called Xanakias, in Athens. He'll take care of this."
Stephanes smiled. "Good. Then you and the lady will come to my home. We will have some bread and che
ese and wine, and talk about your problem, and perhaps we shall discover where I may be of some help."
"Then you've definitely changed your mind?"
"The moment the Apollo cup went to dust in my hands," the old Greek said grimly. "I knew I had to help you."
They walked with Lisette down out of the valley to Stephanes* small, whitewashed house a little distance from the village. The streets of the little town were crowded with tourist buses for the Epidaurus Festival, with spectators draped with cameras, and with private cars that competed with the local carts and trucks. A number of yachting parties from Nauplion were also evident. The local facilities seemed strained to the extreme. On the way, Durell searched for a familiar face, a dangerous form—but there was nothing. The girl beside him was pale and silent. As they passed the Minoa Hotel and walked through a narrow lane where tourists evidently rarely went, Durell asked Captain Stephanes if he had heard any rumors of unusual construction efforts in the Debrec region of Albania. The grizzled old man shook his head.
"The frontier is closed. I am not a smuggler any more, nor do I offer my services as a guerilla fighter these days. My years are past seventy, Mr. Durell. I thought I would have a little time to amuse myself with the antiquities. But life has a habit of making today seem more important than the days gone by. It is a false view, but one that must be considered. I know nothing of the construction work you speak of, sir. I am grateful for your confidence, however. There are many Chinese in Albania now, true—more than ever before, since the strain began between Moscow and Peiping. But I've had no word from my Albanian friends in Debrec for over a year."
"Could you reach them over the frontier now?"
The old man's eyes were wise, sad. "How much time do you have, Mr. Durell?"
"Two days, perhaps. If we are lucky."
"And then?"
Assignment The Girl in the Gondola Page 12
