Solo (Aka the Cretan Lover)(1980)

by Jack Higgins

  'And you believe him?'

  'Who could he run to? Like a scared rabbit, he came to the only safe burrow he knew.'

  'To tell you?'

  'He was afraid that you intended to kill him. Quite terrified. He told me everything about you. Algeria, the Legion. Kasfa, for example. That little affair made a deep impression on him. He gave me the reason for the whole thing as well. The fact that Vassilikos had tortured and murdered your grandfather.'

  'So?' Mikali waited patiently.

  'I could have written a letter detailing all these acts before leaving my apartment tonight. Posted it with a covering note to my secretary asking for it to be passed on to the right people at SDECE.'

  'But you didn't.'

  'No.'

  'Why not?'

  Deville walked over to the window and opened it. Rain poured down relentlessly. There was the sound of traffic in the night.

  'Tell me something - do you usually speak Greek with a Cretan accent like you did in the park?'

  'No.'

  'I thought not. A brilliant stroke that, coupled with your reference to Vassilikos and his men as fascists, to the chauffeur. Of course it does mean that all over Greece tonight, they'll be hauling in every Communist, every agitator, every member of the Democratic Front they can lay their hands on.'

  'That's their hard luck,' Mikali said. 'Politics bore me, so could you kindly get to the point.'

  'It's really quite simple, Mr. Mikali. Chaos - chaos is my business. I have a vested interest, as do my masters, in creating as much of it as possible in the Western world. Chaos and disorder and fear and uncertainty, like you have created, because what's happening in Athens tonight is also happening in Paris. There isn't a left-wing agitator in the city who won't be either under cover or in police hands by morning. Not only Communists, but Socialists. The Socialist Party won't like that and very soon, the workers won't like it either, which makes things rather difficult for the government with an election coming up.'

  Mikali said softly, 'Who are you?'

  'Like you, not what I seem.'

  'From way back east? As far as Moscow perhaps?'

  'Does that matter?'

  'Like I said, politics bore me.'

  'An excellent basis for the sort of relationship I'm seeking.'

  'So what do you want?'

  'You, my friend, to repeat your performance in the Bois de Meudon when I require it. Very special occasions only. A unique and totally private arrangement between the two of us.'

  Mikali said softly, 'Blackmail, is that it?'

  'Don't be stupid. You could kill me now - and Jarrot. Walk away from here with an excellent chance of no one ever being the wiser. Who on earth would ever suspect you? Good God, you even played for the Queen of England at a special reception at Buckingham Palace last year, isn't it so? When you're in London, passing through Heathrow, what happens to you?'

  'They take me to the VIP lounge.'

  'Exactly. Can you remember when Customs anywhere in the world last checked your baggage?'

  Which was true. Mikali put the Colt on the window ledge and took out a cigarette. Deville gave him a light. 'Let me make one thing clear. Like you, politics mean nothing to me.'

  'Then why do what you do?'

  Deville shrugged. 'It's the only game I've got. I'm lucky. Most people don't have any game at all.'

  'But I do?' Mikali said.

  Deville turned. There was a strange disturbing intimacy between them now, standing together at the window, the smell of the rain on the night air.

  'Your music? I don't think so. I've often felt sorry for creative artists. Musicians, painters, writers. It's over, particularly in the performing arts, so soon; the briefest of high points. Afterwards, down you go. Like sex. Ovid really put it very well over two thousand years ago and nothing has changed since then. After coitus, everyone is depressed.'

  His voice was soft, and eminently reasonable. Patient, civilized in tone. For a moment, Mikali might have been back at the villa in Hydra, sitting in front of the pine-log fire, listening to his grandfather.

  'But this evening - that was different. You enjoyed it. Every dangerous moment. I'll make you a prophecy. Tomorrow, the music critics will say that tonight you gave one of your greatest performances.'

  'Yes,' Mikali said simply. 'I was good. The house manager said they won't have an empty seat in the place on Friday.'

  'Back in Algeria you killed everyone, isn't that so? Whole villages - women, children - it was that kind of war. This afternoon, you killed pigs.'

  Mikali stared out of the window into the night and saw the fellagha turning from the burning truck at Kasfa, drifting towards him in slow motion as he waited, stubbornly refusing to die, the red beret crushed against his wounds.

  He had beaten Death then at his own game four times over. He felt again the same breathless excitement. The affair at the Bois de Meudon had been the same, he knew that now. A debt for his grandfather, yes, but afterwards...

  He raised his hands. 'Give me a piano score, any concerto you care to name and with these, I can give you perfection.'

  'And more,' Deville said softly. 'Much more. I think you know this, my friend.'

  The breath went out of Mikali in a long sigh. 'And who exactly would you have in mind in the future?'

  'Does that matter?'

  Mikali smiled slightly. 'Not really.'

  'Good - but to start, I'll give you what my Jewish friends would call a mitzvah. A good deed for which I except nothing in return. Something for you. Your touring schedule. Is it likely to take you to Berlin during the first week of November?'

  'I can name my own dates in Berlin. I have an open invitation there always.'

  'Good. General Stephanakis will be visiting the city on the first of November for three days. He was, if you're interested, Vassilikos's direct superior. I would have thought you might have more than a passing interest in him. But for the moment, I think we'd better do something about friend Jarrot here.'

  'What would you suggest?'

  'A little more of this Napoleon down him for a start. A pity to waste good cognac, but there it is.' He pulled the unconscious Jarrot's head back by the hair and forced neck of the bottle between his teeth. He glanced over his shoulder. 'I do hope you can manage me a ticket for Friday's performance. I'd hate to miss it.'

  *

  At five-thirty the following morning it was still raining heavily at first light when the night patrolman for the area stopped by the slipway which ran into the Seine opposite Rue de Gagny.

  His cape was soaked and he was thoroughly miserable as he paused under a chestnut tree to light a cigarette. As the mist lifted a little from the river, he saw something down there in the water at the end of the slipway.

  As he approached, he saw that it was the back of a Citroen truck, the front end of which was under the surface. He waded down into the freezing water, took a deep breath, reached for the door handle and pulled it open. He surfaced with Claude Jarrot in his arms.

  At the inquest which took place a week later, the medical evidence indicated a level of alcohol in the blood three times in excess of that permitted for vehicle drivers. The coroner's verdict was simple. Death by accident.

  The concert on Friday was everything that could be hoped and the Minister for the Interior himself was present at the reception with the Greek Ambassador, closeted together in a corner. As the press of well-wishers slackened around Mikali, Deville approached.

  'Glad you could come,' Mikali said as they shook hands.

  'My dear chap, I wouldn't have missed it. You were brilliant - quite brilliant.'

  Mikali looked around the crowded room, filled in the main by some of the most fashionable and important people in Paris.

  'Strange how much apart I suddenly feel from all this.'

  'Alone in the crowd?'

  'I suppose so.'

  'I've felt like that for something like twenty-five years. The great game. Walking the knife edge of dang
er. Never certain just how long you can get away with it. Waiting for the final day. The knock on the door.' Deville smiled. 'It has its own excitement.'

  'Like being on a constant high?' Mikali said. 'You think it will come, this final day of yours?'

  'Probably when I least expect it and for the most stupid and trivial of reasons.'

  Mikali said, 'Don't go away. I must have a word with the Minister of the Interior. I'll see you later.'

  'Of course.'

  The Minister was saying to the Greek Ambassador, 'Naturally, we are doing everything in our power to wipe out this - this blot on French honour, but to be frank with you, Ambassador, this Cretan of yours seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. But only for the moment. We'll get him, sooner or later, I promise you.'

  Mikali heard all of this as he approached. He smiled. 'Your Excellencies, I'm honoured you could both attend tonight.'

  'A privilege, Monsieur Mikali.' The Minister snapped his fingers and a waiter hurried forward with champagne on a tray. They all took a glass. 'An astonishing performance.'

  The Greek Ambassador raised his glass. 'To you, my dear Mikali and to your genius. Greece is proud of you.'

  As Mikali raised his own glass in return, Jean Paul Deville toasted him in the mirror.

  General George Stephanakis booked into the Hilton hotel in West Berlin on the afternoon of 2 November. The management gave him a suite on the fourth floor, with adjoining rooms for his aides. They also made sure, as a courtesy, that the room service waiter was a Greek and also the chambermaid.

  Her name was Zia Boudakis, age nineteen, a small girl with dark hair and an olive skin. In a few years, she would have a weight problem, but not yet and that evening, as she let herself into the suite with her pass key, she looked undeniably attractive in the dark stockings and short, black uniform dress.

  The General would be back at eight, they'd told her that, so she busied herself quickly in turning down the beds, and generally tidying the suite. She folded the coverlets then turned to put them away in the wardrobe, pulling across the sliding door.

  The man standing inside was dressed in black pants and sweater, his head covered with a balaclava helmet through which only his eyes and nose and lips showed. There was a rope around his waist, she noticed that, and that the hand which grabbed her throat, choking off her scream, was gloved. And then she was inside in the dark with him, the door closed, leaving only a chink through which the room could be seen.

  He released his grip and in her terror, she spoke instinctively in Greek. 'Don't kill me!'

  'Heh, a Greek girl,' he said, to her total astonishment, in her own language. She recognized the accent at once.

  'Oh, my God, you're the Cretan.'

  'That's right, my love.' He swung her round, a hand lightly around her throat. 'I won't harm you if you're a good girl. But if you're not, if you try to warn him in any way, I'll kill you.'

  'Yes,' she moaned.

  'Good. What time does he get in?'

  'Eight o'clock.'

  He glanced at his wrist. 'We've got twenty minutes to wait. We'll just have to make ourselves comfortable, won't we?'

  He leaned against the wall, holding her against him. She was no longer afraid, at least not as she had been at first, but excited in a strange way, aware of him hard against her, one hand around her waist. She started to move against him, only a little at first and then more as he laughed and kissed her on the neck.

  She was more excited than she had ever been, there in the darkness, turned to meet him as he pushed her against the wall, easing the dark dress up above her thighs.

  Afterwards, he tied her wrists very gently behind her her and breathed in her ear, 'There, you've had what you wanted, so be a good girl and keep quiet.'

  He tied a handkerchief around her mouth to gag her, again with surprising gentleness, and waited. There was the sound of the key in the lock, the door opened and General Stephanakis was ushered in by two of his aides.

  They were all in uniform. He turned and said, 'I'm going to have a shower and change. Come back in forty-five minutes. We'll eat here.'

  They saluted and left and he closed the door. Stephanakis dropped his cap on the bed and started to un-button his tunic. Behind him, the door of the wardrobe rolled back and Mikali stepped out. He held a pistol with a silencer in his right hand. Stephanakis gazed at him in stupefaction and Mikali pulled up the balaclava.

  'Oh, my God,' the General said. 'You - you are the Cretan.'

  'Welcome to Berlin,' Mikali said and shot him.

  He turned off all the lights, pulled on his balaclava again, then opened the window and uncoiled the rope about his waist. A few moments later, he was abseiling down to the flat roof of the garage in the darkness four floors below. It was no great trick. In training at Gasfa on the Moroccan coast in the old days, a Legion paratrooper had been expected to abseil down a three-hundred-foot cliff or fail his course.

  Safely on the roof, he pulled down the rope, coiled it quickly about his waist, then dropped over the edge of the garage to the ground.

  He paused by some dustbins in the alley and took off his balaclava helmet which he folded neatly and slipped into one pocket. Then he pulled an ordinary paper carrier bag from behind the dustbins and took out a cheap, dark raincoat which he pulled on.

  A few moments later, he was walking away briskly through the crowded evening streets, back to his hotel. At nine-thirty, he was at the University of Berlin, giving a recital of the works of Bach and Beethoven, to a packed hall.

  The following morning, Jean Paul Deville received a cable from Berlin. It simply said, Your mitzvah much appreciated. Perhaps I can do the same for you some time.

  There was no signature.

  2

  The British Secret Intelligence Service, known more correctly as DI5, does not officially exist, is not even established by law although it does in fact occupy a large white and red brick building in the West End of London not far from the Hilton hotel.

  Those whom it employs are faceless, anonymous men who spend their time in a ceaseless battle of wits aimed at controlling the activities of the agents of foreign powers in Great Britain and increasingly, what has become an even more serious problem, the forces of European terrorism.

  But DI5 can only carry out an investigation. It has no powers of arrest. Any effectiveness it has depends in the final analysis on the cooperation of the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard. It is they who make the arrests so that those anonymous men of DI5 never have to appear in court.

  Which explained why, on the night of the shooting of Maxwell Cohen, it had been Chief Detective-Superintendent Harry Baker who got out of the police Jaguar outside the mortuary in Cromwell Road just after nine o'clock and hurried up the steps.

  Baker was a Yorkshireman by birth from Halifax in the West Riding. He'd been a policeman for twenty-five years. A long time to be disliked by the general public and work a three-shift system that only gave you one weekend in seven at home with the family. A fact his wife no longer commented on for the simple reason that she'd packed her bags and moved out five years previously.

  Baker had grey hair and a badly broken nose, a relic of his rugby-playing days, giving him the air of an amiable prize fighter. Which was deceptive for it concealed one of the sharpest minds in Special Branch.

  His assistant, Detective-Inspector George Stewart, waited in the foyer, smoking a cigarette. He dropped it to the floor, put a foot on it and came forward.

  Baker said, 'All right - tell me.'

  'Girl of fourteen - Megan Helen Morgan.' He had his notebook open now. 'Mother, Mrs Helen Wood. Married to the Reverend Francis Wood, rector of Steeple Durham in Essex. I spoke to him on the phone half an hour ago. They're on their way now.'

  'Now wait a minute,' Baker said. 'I'm beginning to get a bit confused.'

  'The girl's landlady is in here, sir. A Mrs Carter.'

  He opened a door marked Waiting Room and Baker moved in.
The woman who sat by the window was stout and middle-aged and wore a brown raincoat. Her face was blotched, swollen by weeping.

  'This is Chief Superintendent Baker. He's in charge of the case, Mrs Carter,' Stewart said. 'Would you tell him what you told me?'

  She said in a low voice, 'Megan lodges with me. Her mother lives in Essex, you see.'

  'Yes, we know that.'

  'She was at the Italia Conte school. You know? Singing, dancing, acting, things like that. She wanted to go on the stage. That's why she was here, lodging with me,' she explained again, patiently.

  'And tonight?'

  'They were rehearsing all afternoon for a musical they're doing. I told her to be careful.' She turned to gaze vacantly out of the window. 'I never did like her being out after dark on that bike.'

  There was a silence. Baker put a hand on her shoulder, then nodded to Stewart and they went out.

  'Is Doctor Evans here yet?'

  'On his way, sir. Would you like to see the body?'

  'No, I'll keep that unpleasantness for later. I've got two girls of my own, remember. In any case, Evans can't start cutting until the mother's made formal identification.'

  'Any news on Mr Cohen, sir?'

  'Still alive, that's all you can say, with a bullet in his brain. They're operating now.'

  'Are you going to wait here for Mrs Wood?'

  'Yes, I think so. The office know where I am. See if you can find us some tea.'

  Stewart went off and Baker lit a cigarette and turned and looked out through the glass doors. He was uneasy in a way he hadn't been for years. Amongst its other duties, the Special Branch was always given the task of acting as bodyguard to visiting heads of state and similar VIPs. The Department was justly proud of the fact that they'd never failed yet in that particular task.

  But this business tonight with Max Cohen - this was something else again. International terrorism of the most vicious kind, here in London.