Solo (Aka the Cretan Lover)(1980)

by Jack Higgins

  One evening, to his grandfather's astonishment, when one of them asked him to play, the boy agreed without hesitation, sitting at the piano and playing Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E flat, mirror-brilliant, ice-cold stuff, that reduced everyone present to astonished silence.

  Later, after the applause, after they had left, the professor had gone out to his grandson, standing on the balcony, listening to the roar of the early-morning traffic which never seemed to stop.

  'So, you've decided to join the living again? What now?'

  'Paris, I think,' John Mikali said. 'The Conservatoire.'

  'I see. The concert platform? Is this your intention?'

  'If you agree.'

  Dimitri Mikali embraced him gently. 'You are everything to me, you must know this now. What you want, I want. I'll tell Katina to pack.'

  He found an apartment near the Sorbonne in a narrow street not far from the river, one of those village areas so common to the French capital with its own shops, cafes and bars. The sort of neighbourhood where everyone knew everyone else.

  Mikali attended the Conservatoire, practised between eight and ten hours each day and dedicated himself solely to the piano to the exclusion of all else, even girls. Katina, as always, cooked and kept house and fussed over him.

  On 22 February 1960, two days before his eighteenth birthday he had an important examination at the Conservatoire, the chance of a gold medal. He had practised for most of the night and at six o'clock in the morning, Katina had gone out to get fresh rolls from the bakery, and milk.

  He had just emerged from the shower, was fastening the belt of his robe, when he heard the screech of brakes in the street outside, a dull thud. Mikali rushed to the window and looked down. Katina lay sprawled in the gutter, the bread rolls scattered across the pavement. The Citroen truck which had hit her reversed quickly. Mikali had a brief glimpse of the driver's face and then the truck was round the corner and away.

  She took several hours to die and he sat in the hospital beside her bed, holding her hand, never letting go, even when her fingers stiffened in death. The police were subdued and apologetic. Unfortunately, there had been no witnesses, which made matters difficult, but they would keep looking, of course.

  Not that it was necessary, for Mikali knew the driver of the Citroen truck well enough. Claude Galley, a coarse brute of a man who ran a small garage close to the river, with the aid of two mechanics.

  He could have given the police the information. He did not. This was personal. Something he had to handle for himself. His ancestors would have understood perfectly, for in Hydra, for centuries, the code of the vendetta had been absolute. The man who did not take vengeance for the wrong done to his own was himself cursed.

  And yet there was more to it than that. A strange, cold excitement that filled his entire being as he waited in the shadows opposite the garage at six o'clock that evening.

  At half past, the two mechanics left. He waited another five minutes, then crossed the road to the entrance. The double doors stood open to the night, the Citroen parked pointing towards the street and behind, a concrete ramp sloped steeply down to the basement.

  Galley was working at a bench against the wall. Mikali's right hand slipped into the pocket of his raincoat and tightened on the handle of the kitchen knife he carried there. Then he saw there was an easier way. One that carried with it a considerable measure of poetic justice.

  He leaned into the cab of the Citroen, pushed the gear lever into neutral with one gloved hand, then released the handbrake. The vehicle gathered momentum, started to roll faster. Galley, half-drunk as usual, only became aware of the movement at the last moment, and turned, screaming, as the three-ton truck squashed him against the wall.

  But there was no satisfaction in it at all, for Katina had gone, gone for good, just like the father he had never known, the mother who was only a vague memory, his grandmother.

  He walked for hours in the rain in a kind of daze and was finally accosted by a prostitute on the embankment, close to midnight.

  She was forty and looked older, which was why she didn't turn the light up too high when they reached her apartment. Not that it mattered for at that particular moment, John Makali was not sure what was real and what was not. In any case, he had never been with a woman in his life.

  A fact which his inexpert fumblings soon disclosed and with the amused tenderness such women often show in these circumstances, she initiated him into the mysteries as quickly as anyone could.

  He learned fast, riding her in a controlled fury, once, twice, making her come for the first time in years, groaning beneath him, begging for more. Afterwards, when she slept, he lay in the dark, marvelling at this power he possessed that could make a woman act as she had; do the things she had done. Strange, because it had little meaning for him, this thing that he had always understood was so important.

  Afterwards, walking the streets again towards dawn, he had never felt so alone in his life. When he finally came to the central market it was a bustle of activity as porters unloaded heavy wagons with produce from the country, and yet they seemed to move in slow motion as if under water. It was as if he existed on a separate plane.

  He ordered tea in an all-night cafe and sat by the window smoking a cigarette, then became aware of a face staring out at him from the cover of a magazine on the stand beside him. A slim, wiry figure in camouflaged uniform, sun-blackened face, expressionless eyes, a rifle crooked in one arm.

  The article inside, when he took the magazine down, discussed the role of the Foreign Legion in the war in Algiers, which was then at its height. Men who only a year or two before had been stoned by dock workers at Marseilles on their return from Indochina and the Viet prison camps were fighting France's battles again in a dirty and senseless war. Men with no hope, the writer called them. Men who had nowhere else to go. On the next page there was a photo of another legionnaire, half-raised on a stretcher, chest bandaged, blood soaking through. The head was shaven, the cheeks hollow, the face sunken beyond pain, and the eyes staring into an abyss of loneliness. To Mikali it was like staring at his own mirror image. He closed the magazine. He placed it carefully on the stand, then took a deep breath to stop his hands from shaking. Something clicked in his head. Sounds came up to the surface again. He was aware of the early morning bustle around him. The world had come back to life, though he was no longer a part of it, nor had he ever been.

  God, but he was cold. He stood up, went out and walked quickly through the streets, hands thrust deep into his pockets.

  It was six o'clock in the morning when he returned to the apartment. It seemed grey and empty, devoid of all life. The piano lid was open, music still on the stand as he had left it. He had missed the examination, not that it mattered now. He sat down and started to play slowly and with great feeling that haunting little piece 'Le Pasteur' by Grovlez that he had been playing on the day of his grandmother's funeral in New York when Dimitri Mikali had arrived.

  As the last notes died away, he closed the lid of the piano, stood up, crossed to a bureau and found his passports, both Greek and American, for he had dual nationality. He looked around the apartment for the last time, then let himself out.

  At seven o'clock, he was on the Metro on his way to Vincennes. Once there, he walked briskly through the streets to the Old Fort, the recruiting centre for the Foreign Legion.

  By noon, he had handed over his passports as proof of identity and age; passed a stringent medical and signed a contract binding him to serve for a period of five years in the most famous regiment of any army in the world.

  At three o'clock the following day, in company with three Spaniards, a Belgian and eight Germans, he was on his way by train to Marseilles, to Fort Saint Nicholas.

  Ten days later, together with a hundred and fifty recruits and a number of other French soldiers then serving in Algiers and Morocco, he left Marseilles on a troopship bound for Oran.

  And on 20 March, he arrived at his ultimate destination
. Sidi-bel-Abbes, still centre, as it had been for almost a century, of all Legion activity.

  The discipline was absolute, the training brutal in its efficiency and designed with only one aim. To produce the finest fighting men in the world. Mikali flung himself into it with a fierce energy that drew him to the attention of his superiors from the beginning.

  When he had been at Sidi-bel-Abbes for a few weeks, he was taken to the Deuxieme Bureau one day. In the presence of a captain, he was presented with a letter from his grandfather, who had been informed of his whereabouts, asking him to reconsider the decision he had taken.

  Mikali assured the captain that he was perfectly happy where he was and was requested to write a letter to his grandfather saying so, which he did in the captain's presence.

  During the six months that followed, he made twenty-four parachute jumps, was trained in the use of every form of modern weaponry, was drilled to a peak of physical fitness he would never have dreamed possible. He proved to be a remarkable shot with both rifle and handgun and his grading in unarmed combat was the highest in his class, a circumstance which caused him to be treated with considerable respect by his comrades.

  He drank little and visited the town brothel only occasionally, yet the women there vied for his attention, a circumstance which had long since ceased to intrigue him and still left him supremely indifferent.

  He was a junior corporal before he saw his first action in October, 1960 when the regiment moved into the Raki mountains to attack a large force of fellagha which had been controlling the area for some months.

  There were some eighty rebels on top of a hill that was virtually impregnable. The regiment made a frontal attack that was only apparently suicidal for at the crucial point in the battle, the 3rd Company, which included Mikali, were dropped in on top of the hill itself by helicopter.

  The fight which followed was a bloody, hand-to-hand affair and Mikali distinguished himself by knocking out a machine-gun post which had accounted for more than two dozen legionnaires and looked for a while as if it might ruin everything.

  Afterwards, as he was sitting on a rock tying a field service dressing to a flesh wound in his right arm, a Spaniard had stumbled past him laughing insanely, holding two heads in one hand by the hair.

  A shot rang out and the Spaniard went forward on to his face, crying out. Mikali was already turning, clutching his submachine-gun, firing with one hand at the two fellagha who had risen from a pile of corpses near by, knocking them both down.

  He stood there for a while on the hillside waiting, but no one else moved. After a while, he sat down, tightened the bandage on his arm with his teeth and lit a cigarette.

  Within the twelve months that followed, he fought in the alleys of Algiers itself, dropped three times by parachute by night into mountanous country to attack rebel forces by surprise and survived ambush on numerous occasions.

  He had a wound stripe and the Medaille Militaire, was a senior corporal by March, 1962. He was an ancien, which is to say the kind of legionnaire who could survive for a month on four hours' sleep a night and force-march thirty miles in a day in full kit if necessary. He had killed men, he had killed women, children even, so that the fact of death meant nothing to him.

  After the decoration, he was pulled out of active service for a while and sent to the guerrilla warfare school at Kefi where he learned everything there was to know about explosives. About dynamite and TNT and plastics and how to make an efficient booby trap in dozens of different ways.

  On 1 July, he returned to the regiment after finishing the course and hitched a lift in a supply truck. As they passed through the village of Kasfa, a hundred pounds of dynamite, detonated by some form of remote control, blew the truck in half. Mikali found himself on his hands and knees in the village square, miraculously still alive. He tried to get up, there was a rattle of a machine pistol and he was shot twice in the chest.

  As he lay there, he could see the driver of the truck twitching feebly on the other side of the burning wreck. Four men came forward carrying assorted weapons. They stood over the driver, laughing. Mikali couldn't see what they were doing, but the man started to scream. After a while there was a shot.

  They turned towards Mikali, who had dragged himself into a sitting position against the village well, his hand inside his camouflage jacket where the blood oozed through.

  'Not too good, eh?' the leader of the little group said in French. Mikali saw that the knife in the man's left hand was wet with blood.

  Mikali smiled for the first time since Katina's death. 'Oh, it could be worse.'

  His hand came out of the blouse clutching a Smith and Wesson Magnum, a weapon he had procured on the black market in Algiers months before. His first shot fragmented the top of the man's skull, his second took the one behind him between the eyes. The third man was still trying to get his rifle up when Mikali shot him twice in the belly. The fourth dropped his weapon in horror and turned to run. Mikali's final two shots shattered his spine, driving him headlong into the burning wreckage of the truck.

  Beyond, through the smoke, villagers moved fearfully from their houses. Mikali emptied the Smith and Wesson, took a handful of rounds from his pocket with difficulty and reloaded very deliberately. The man he hit in the stomach groaned and tried to get up. Mikali shot him in the head.

  He took off his beret, held it against his wounds to stem the flow of blood and sat there against the well, the revolver ready, daring the villagers to come near him.

  He was still there, conscious, surrounded only by the dead, when a Legion patrol found him an hour later.

  Which was all rather ironic for the following day, 2 July, was Independence Day and seven years of fighting was over. Mikali was flown to France to the military hospital in Paris for specialist chest surgery. On 27 July, he was awarded the Croix de la Valeur Militaire. The following day, his grandfather arrived.

  He was seventy now, but still looked fit and well. He sat by the bed looking at the medal for quite a while then said gently, 'I've had a word with the Legion Headquarters. As you're still not twenty-one, it appears that, with the right pressure, I could obtain your discharge.'

  'Yes, I know.'

  And his grandfather, using the phrase he had used on that summer evening in Athens nearly three years before, said, 'You've decided to join the living again, it would seem?'

  'Why not?' John Mikali answered. 'It beats dying every time, and I should know.'

  He received an impressive certificate of good conduct which stated that Senior Corporal John Mikali had served for two years with honneur et fidelite and was discharged before his time for medical reasons.

  There was more than a little truth in that. The two bullets in the chest had severely damaged the left lung and he entered the London Clinic for chest surgery. Afterwards, he returned to Greece, not to Athens, but to Hydra. To the villa beyond Molos on the promontory above the sea with only the mountains behind, the pine forests. Wild, savage country, accessible only on foot or by mule on land.

  To look after him, he kept an old peasant couple who lived in a cottage by the jetty in the bay below. Old Constantine ran the boat, bringing supplies from Hydra town when necessary, saw to the upkeep of the grounds, the water supply, the generator. His wife acted as housekeeper and cook.

  Mostly he was alone except when his grandfather came over to stay. They would sit in the evenings with pine logs blazing on the hearth and talk for hours on everything under the sun. Art, literature, music, even politics, in spite of the fact that this was a subject to which Mikali was totally indifferent.

  One thing they never discussed was Algeria. The old man didn't ask and Mikali never spoke of it. It was as if it had never happened. He had not touched the piano once during those two years, but now, he started to play again, more and more during the nine months it took him to regain his health.

  One calm summer evening in July 1963 during one of his grandfather's visits, he played, after dinner, the Bach Prelude and Fu
gue in E flat that he had played that evening he had decided to go to Paris.

  It was very quiet. Through the open windows to the terrace the sky was orange and flame as the sun set behind the island of Dokos a mile out to sea.

  His grandfather sighed. 'So, you are ready again, I think?'

  'Yes,' John Mikali said and flexed his fingers. 'Time to find out, once and for all.'

  He chose London, the Royal College of Music. He leased a flat in Upper Grosvenor Street off Park Lane which was convenient for Hyde Park where he ran seven miles every morning, wet or fine, always pushing Until it hurt. Old habits died hard. Three times a week, he worked out at a well-known city gym.

  The Legion had branded him clear to the bone, could never be shaken off entirely. He realized that just before twelve one rainy night when he was mugged by two youths as he turned into a side street coming out of Grosvenor Square.

  One took him from behind, an arm around his neck and the other appeared from the entrance beside some railings to the basement area of a house.

  Mikali's right foot flicked expertly into the crotch, raising his knee into the face as the youth screamed and keeled over. The second assailant was so shocked that he slackened his grip. Mikali broke free, swinging his right elbow back in a short arc. There was a distinct crack as the jaw bone fractured. The boy cried out and fell to his knees, Mikali simply stepped over his friend and walked quickly away through the heavy rain.

  At the college his reputation grew over three hard years. He was good - better than that. They knew it; so did he. He formed no close friendships. It was not that people disliked him. On the contrary, they found him immensely attractive, but there was a remoteness to him. A barrier that no one seemed to be able to penetrate.