Colonel Sun

by Kingsley Amis

  Uncomfortably conscious that he was not in shadow, Bond leaned out and peered to his right, towards the shop-front. A flash came at once; a bullet hit the wall a couple of yards away and buzzed across his front. Instinctively he drew back – but it had been a parting shot. When he looked out again his man was fifty yards away and running hard. Bond did not waste a shot at such a target.

  The whole operation had taken less than half a minute, but the street was already coming alive: lights in windows, excited voices, barking dogs. And the party that would have been covering the back of the house must already be starting on its way in their direction. There could be no hanging about, then. But before they moved …

  Bond ran across to where Markos had fallen. The Greek lay on his face, his arms stretched forward as if he were diving. There was a large thick patch of blood on his cheap cotton jacket below the left shoulder-blade. When Bond turned him over, the limbs moved with the dummy-like lack of all resistance that no living body ever shows. Markos’s eyes were open. His face frozen in a look of mild astonishment, the exact equivalent of the cry he had given when hit. Bond closed the eyes. With a quick look at the house he ran back to the alley. There, methodically, he went straight to the other fallen figure, the gunman he had shot.

  This body was perhaps not a dead body yet. The man had collapsed in an awkward half-sitting position, his back against the wall of the alley. Bond spared no attention for the wound the Walther slug had torn in the chest. It was the face that interested him, a pale, hook-nosed face with unusually heavy eyelids, now half-closed so that the eyes were hooded, a face he had seen at Quarterdeck some thirty hours previously: that of the group leader. Here was clinching evidence, if any were needed.

  Enough. Bond got up and turned to his two companions. What he saw dismayed him. Gordienko was leaning against the other alley wall, breathing slowly and shallowly. He looked up at Bond and the thin mouth laboured with the effort to speak.

  ‘He was hit in the back, I think,’ murmured Ariadne. ‘The man in the doorway.’

  The Russian went on trying to speak a moment longer. Abandoning the attempt, he brought his right hand up slowly and pointed successively at Bond and Ariadne, Bond and Ariadne in a gesture as plain as any words could have been. Then blood suddenly welled over the lower lip, lots of blood, life-blood, something went out behind the eyes and Major Piotr Gregorievitch Gordienko of the Foreign Intelligence Committee of State Security, fell over sideways and lay in the gutter.

  Ariadne was crying. ‘We must do as Mr Gordienko told us to do.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bond shortly. He had enjoyed fifteen minutes’ alliance with the grey man. ‘Now we’ve got more running ahead of us, I’m afraid. Can you find us somewhere safe? Anywhere!’

  ‘That’s easy. I’ve a friend who’ll look after us.’

  Ariadne’s friend, whose name Bond never learnt, turned out to be a plump brunette in a grubby expensive nightdress who showed no surprise whatever at being got out of bed at past 3 a.m. to open the door to two highly suspect-looking people – Ariadne with a ripped seam and earth-stains down one side of her dress. Bond, after his second successive night on very active duty, obviously in the later stages of exhaustion. There was an exchange of Greek between the two girls. The friend smiled and nodded at Bond, said something gracious and incomprehensible, acknowledged his bow, and waddled back to her bedroom. A man’s voice sleepily asked a question and there was shrill reply and a duet of ribald laughter.

  ‘We’re lucky,’ said Ariadne, smiling at the sound. ‘The spare room’s vacant. There are drinks in the kitchen cupboard. You go fix yourself one while I put some sheets on the bed.’

  Bond kissed her on the forehead and went to do as ordered. The kitchen was small, almost airless, and smelt, not unpleasantly, of goat’s-milk cheese and overripe figs. In the cupboard, among tins of Italian soup and packets of biscuits showing signs of age, was a huddle of bottles: ouzo, cheap red wine, local brandy and – blessedly – Bell’s Scotch. He poured himself about a gill, cut it with a similar quantity of the excellent Nigrita mineral water, and swallowed the drink in two draughts. Already, as he prepared a weaker follow-up, he felt the familiar spreading, smouldering glow enfold his stomach and seem to blow away the mists of fatigue that had overhung his brain. An illusion, surely, that last part: the body must warm alcohol to blood heat before absorption can even begin. Yet, as always, illusion or not, it worked.

  It was a pleasant little bedroom with gay hand-painted furniture and brocade curtains, but Bond had eyes only for the girl who sprang up off the bed when he appeared.

  ‘I only put an undersheet,’ said Ariadne. ‘I thought we wouldn’t need something over us.’

  ‘No. It’s very hot.’

  She hesitated. ‘We’ve many things to do and not much time. But I thought we couldn’t do any of them before we’d slept.’

  ‘No. And before we sleep …’

  The unfinished sentence hung in the warm air. Ariadne smiled, a calm, self-possessed, sensual smile. Then, her sherry-coloured eyes never leaving Bond’s face, she stripped naked, unhurriedly but without coquetry or exhibitionism, her movements and expression showing an absolute certainty that he would find her beautiful. She had a truly magnificent body, slender but rounded, longer in the leg than is common with Greek girls, the breasts deep yet youthfully taut, the belly slightly protuberant with a soft honey-blonde triangle at its base. She narrowed her gaze now and her lips parted.

  There was nothing leisurely about Bond’s undressing. Within seconds they stood flesh to flesh. She shuddered briefly and moaned; her arms tightened round his neck, her loins thrust against his and he felt the strength of her as well as the softness. As if they had become one creature with a single will, the two bodies sank to the bed. No preliminaries were needed. The man and the woman were joined immediately, with almost savage exultation. She leapt and strained in his grip, her movements as violent as his. The pace was too hot for their strivings to be prolonged. Their voices blended in the cry of joy that sounds so oddly akin to the inarticulate language of despair.

  The creature separated, became two bodies once more. Bond tried to think of tomorrow, but his mind, like an over-ridden horse, refused to budge. He fell asleep with his head against Ariadne’s bosom.

  They left the flat early and made their necessary preliminary moves: coffee and rolls and splendid thin Hymettus honey at the busy little kafenion round the corner, a lurching but speedy journey to Constitution Square in one of the big yellow six-wheeled trolley-buses, a whirlwind shopping expedition along Stadíou to equip Ariadne (her apartment in Loukianou would certainly be watched), and straight into the Grande Bretagne, keeping with the crowds all the way. The hotel too was no doubt being watched, but here they would be safe until nightfall at any rate, and long before then they would be gone.

  At the same brisk tempo they changed and showered. By the time Bond had finished shaving in the grey-marble bathroom, all traces of fatigue had dropped from him. He even felt guardedly optimistic – no longer the tethered goat at the tiger-shoot, but a hunter on equal terms with the opposition and accompanied by an associate of proven value.

  Finally, with Bond sitting on the bed and Ariadne on the blue-covered couch, the council of war went into session.

  ‘Let’s take the most obvious point first,’ said Bond, lighting Xanthis for the two of them. ‘Your position is horribly dangerous. You’re the only survivor of the three people Gordienko felt he could trust. You daren’t contact your organization – more than that, after what happened last night this traitor character will be actively interested in having you killed. You can disappear, of course, slide off to Salonika or somewhere and wait for the storm to blow itself out. But you’re not going to do that, are you?’

  Ariadne smiled. ‘No. On at least two counts.’

  ‘Right. Then all you can do is to throw in your lot with my people. I needn’t explain – you’ll just be my assistant. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’
Very much the earnest young discussion-group member again, she nodded sharply. ‘But I must do my utmost to let Moscow know what’s happened. You understand that?’

  ‘Yes, quite reasonable. I’ve been working out how you can set about it. I don’t suppose you’ll have had any dealings with anybody at the Russian embassy here? That means you’ll have to take your chance. Telephone them – on a public line – and just mention Gordienko. That’ll get you somewhere near the right quarter. You’ll know what to say. Of course, for all you know, you might get hold of the chap who sold out to the common enemy. But there’s no way of guarding against that. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Good. Now I must get hold of my man here and arrange a rendezvous.’

  Bond picked up the telephone and asked for the number of the small foreign-language bookshop Stuart Thomas managed as his cover. In less than a minute the hotel operator rang back to say that the number was unobtainable: ‘No sir, not engaged, not no reply – unobtainable.’ Alarm flickered in Bond. He checked the number, asked the girl to try it again, got the same result, put Ariadne on the job of chasing up Service Inquiries. The engineer on duty was sympathetic but not helpful. He could find no record of anything that concerned the number in question. He would attend to the matter, of course, as soon as he had the opportunity. Perhaps the lady would care to telephone him again later. Meanwhile has she thought that her friend might have overlooked the payment of his bill?

  Without exchanging a word, Bond and Ariadne hurried out.

  The situation turned out to be quite simple, and quite final. The firemen had done their work and left; the police were in possession. In charge of them was a stocky young lieutenant in smart light-grey uniform, courteous, probably efficient, and anxious to show off his English to Bond, who represented himself as an old customer of Thomas’s drawn by curiosity and concern. There was plenty to arouse that: great blackened fragments of glass on the pavement, jumbled heaps of charred and saturated paperbacks, atlases, dictionaries, guidebooks, capsized cases and stands, a strong smell of burnt cardboard and glue. Some of the stock had escaped damage, and the fire in the shop itself had not spread to the adjoining furrier’s and travel agency. The inner apartments had suffered worse, being more or less gutted in parts. One corner was open to the sky, and the rooms at the back of the travel agency were in almost as bad a state. It had been a remarkably fierce blaze.

  The police lieutenant accepted a cigarette. ‘The firemen have not done badly. They were notified quickly. We’re still not certain what has caused the outbreak, but it’s being suspected that this was no accident. The heat has been greater than we expect in an ordinary fire. Our expert’s working here for the last hour. Some bomb, perhaps. Do you know by any chance, sir, if Mr Thomas is having some enemies? Business rivals, men of that sort?’

  This was dangerous ground. Being roped in to help a police investigation would be a fatal setback. Bond said firmly, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know him on that basis, only as a customer. You’d better ask Mr Thomas himself.’

  ‘Unfortunately this is not possible at the moment. Mr Thomas is not present. He wasn’t present when the firemen came. I was understanding from the neighbours here that this seems unusual. Normally he’s spending the night in his quarters at the back of the shop. A most lucky escape. No doubt the news will reach him soon and bring him. You’re wanting to see him particularly, sir?’

  ‘No,’ said Bond. ‘Not particularly. I’ll contact him later. I just thought I’d like to ask him if I could do anything. Thank you.’

  ‘Please, sir. Miss.’

  The lieutenant bowed slightly, glanced at Ariadne with admiration, at Bond with cheerful envy, and turned away to meet a middle-aged man in plain clothes who, brushing ash off his jacket, was approaching from the back of the shop – no doubt the fire expert. Bond also turned away. He couldn’t get at the information about to be delivered, and in any case it made no difference which particular technique had been used to cripple the British intelligence network in Athens, any more than it mattered – from his point of view – whether Stuart Thomas was alive in enemy hands or lying in the ooze off the Piraeus waterfront. Bond had had his most powerful weapon snatched away before he could grasp it.

  As he put it to Ariadne back at the Grande Bretagne, ‘It wasn’t only him they were after – they wanted to prevent me from getting hold of his records, his lists of contacts, pick-up points and times, locations of letterboxes and the rest of it, so as to cut me off from our people. All that stuff would have been in the back part of the shop, of course. That was the centre of the fire.’

  Ariadne frowned. ‘Why not just remove everything? Less to be seen. They could use what they took, certainly.’

  ‘Less safe, too. They couldn’t be sure there wasn’t some material in places they couldn’t find without pulling the building to pieces and which I might know about. No doubt they took away what they could find easily. There wouldn’t have been much of that if I know Thomas.’

  ‘His assistant?’

  ‘I can’t see how I dare approach him after this,’ said Bond, staring at the wall. ‘If he’s not dead or kidnapped he’ll be watched, and I can’t hang on here in the hope that somebody’ll come to me. Pretty useless, anyway. The tags Thomas put on me last night have vanished. God knows how many other people have. How did Gordienko put it? Extreme ruthlessness. You and I seem to be in the same situation.’

  ‘Yes, and so we must deal with it together.’ Ariadne came over and sat beside Bond on the couch. She spoke with great determination and force. ‘I too have been thinking. We must move immediately. We’ve a long way to travel and it’s only … sixty hours exactly until the event Mr Gordienko mentioned. Probably less than that, because –’

  ‘What is this event?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when we’re on our way.’

  ‘So that I won’t get the chance to tell London beforehand,’ said Bond dispassionately. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Darling, I know you must tell London if you can, don’t I? Be reasonable … Good. Now, we have a sea-trip ahead of us. About two hundred kilometres – a hundred and twenty miles. At least, it’s that in a straight line. So we must have a boat and someone to sail it for us. I know who.’

  9

  THE ALTAIR

  ‘Litsas was in General Papagos’s army which fought the Italians when they invaded Greece in 1940. You remember how the Greeks threw them way back into Albania? Well, Litsas was with the infantry that took Koritsa. His platoon had used up their ammunition and he killed twelve Italians with his bayonet. They made him a sergeant for that. He was eighteen then.’

  Ariadne paused in her recital as she and Bond entered the little high-ceilinged café. The proprietor, chunky and grizzled, with the standard tobacco-stained moustache, came bustling forward.

  ‘Kal’ iméra sas,’ said Ariadne courteously. ‘Boreite na mou peite, sos parakaló – pou einai o Kyrios Litsas?’

  The man took them to the doorway and pointed diagonally across the road towards the quays. There followed one of the animated discussions that, in Greece, accompany even the most elementary piece of business. Finally, with that ripple of the shoulders that does duty for a shrug hereabouts, the café-owner left them, seeming to imply that he took no responsibility for what use might be made of his information. They moved off in the direction he had pointed.

  ‘When the Germans came,’ Ariadne went on, ‘they cut Papagos’s supply lines and he had to surrender. The soldiers weren’t made prisoners, they were disarmed and sent home. Litsas walked a couple of hundred miles across Greece to Euboea, where his home is. He joined some guerrillas and went on killing Italians. Germans too when they started trying to crush the resistance movement.’

  Bond took her arm as they crossed the street. ‘You certainly seem to have studied his career.’

  ‘My father was his officer in 1941 and they met again in the resistance. They were very brave, both of them, I have to admit that.’

&
nbsp; Ariadne’s face had clouded. Bond said, ‘Admit it?’

  ‘I know it sounds odd, but … You see, I believe that in our civil war the wrong side won. You’d say the democratic side. It would have been so right for the country if the Communists had been allowed to take over. They were the real Greek patriots. They’d mostly done the fighting during the occupation …’

  ‘A large part of which was against rival organizations on the same side,’ said Bond dryly. ‘But what do you care about the civil war? You can’t have been more than six when it ended.’

  ‘Seven. I’ve studied it.’ Ariadne looked sheepish.

  ‘No doubt. Anyway, what about your father and Litsas? They were on the wrong side in it, I gather.’

  ‘Please, James, it was no joke to me. Father became very reactionary. He joined what was known as the National Army. Most of them were Fascists, terrorists, no-good people. Litsas joined it too. He was a liaison officer with the British for a time, but he transferred because he wanted to be in the fighting.’

  ‘And kill Communists. You know, Ariadne –’

  ‘There he is. There.’

  They had been moving along the walk that follows the curve of Pasalimani, the larger of Piraeus’s two yacht basins. On the far side, the motionless water held scores of assorted craft, from fishing-boats and twelve-foot sailing dinghies to yachts as opulent as any in the Mediterranean. Immediately below, on the narrow stretch of yard, boats in various stages of repair and conversion were being worked on. Bond immediately picked out a tall white-shirted figure evidently giving vigorous instruction to a couple of cowed-looking employees. As Ariadne and he turned towards the steps leading down to the yard, Bond went on with his train of thought.