Decision at Delphi

by Helen Macinnes

  “Not here!”

  “But—”

  “Not here! There’s trouble starting up—rumours that I’ve been interfering in Greek affairs.”

  “That’s nonsense!”

  “But dynamite. Christophorou was worried enough by it to come around this evening and tip me off.”

  “He would.”

  “What do you mean?” Pringle’s voice was very quiet. “That’s the third crack you have made this—”

  “It’s a scare job.”

  “The Colonel agrees with you. But the embassy won’t take it quite so calmly. There is a pretty unpleasant paragraph in a newspaper, tomorrow, that—”

  “Who planted it? And why? It’s a scare job, I tell you. You have every right to work on Steve’s case. He’s an American.”

  “You seem to forget he is dead.”

  “He isn’t. At least, he was alive last night. Katherini Roilos can tell you all about him. Also about Madame Duval and Nikos Kladas, who are in an apartment, right this moment, second floor, this building. Tenant’s name is Demetrius Drakon. Also, there is a house on Kriton Street, newly renovated, cream colour, brown shutters, white-walled garden. Rented by Evgenia Vasilika for Duval as her headquarters in Athens. Inside that house, you’ll find...”

  “Good God!” Pringle said. “Stay there! Do nothing! I’ll call you right back.” The line went completely blank.

  “Damn,” Strang said to the receiver, and replaced it. He looked over at the others ruefully. The girls were talking, close-cosseted. Tommy had picked up a magazine and was concentrating on it with studied politeness. Strang thought, I’ll give Pringle exactly three minutes to tell the Colonel all that, and then I’ll call back. And, this time, I’ll finish what I have to say. What did people do in emergencies before the telephone was invented? Bless Mr. Alexander Graham Bell for solving people’s problems so quickly. And then he wondered, what problems were being solved downstairs in the Drakon apartment, right now, by the speed of telephone? Whatever we can do, they can do, he reminded himself. Then he resisted this gloomy idea and forced himself to remember that, whatever was happening in that apartment downstairs, they were still off balance.

  Katherini had interrupted a long flow of words to Cecilia. She rose, looked at Strang. “Did you tell them about Maria?”

  “Not yet. I was cut off. They will call me back.” And then, as a look of distress passed over her pale face, he said, “Don’t worry, Katherini, I shan’t forget. And the other news is good. There is a colonel in Greek Intelligence right now with my friend Pringle. I think we’ll see some quick action.” He picked up the telephone again, but there was only that old depressing sound of a line already engaged. He replaced the receiver and tried to look cheerful, for Katherini was still watching him. “The Colonel is working on that, right now,” he told her. “This waiting will soon be over.”

  She said slowly, “And after they listen to me? What then?” She didn’t wait for his answer. She turned back to Cecilia, sat down beside her.

  Cecilia said gently, “Don’t worry, Katherini. We’ll see that...”

  “Don’t worry?” It was the first time that Katherini had snapped at Cecilia. “Everyone keeps saying don’t worry, don’t worry!” She bit her lip, regained control. “Let me talk some more. Then I forget to worry.”

  Cecilia said, “Are you sure you want to—”

  “Yes.” Katherini sat down, and began talking, almost in a whisper.

  Tommy came forward, the magazine open in his hands. “So we’re locked out, are we?” he asked, with a humorous glint in his eyes as he glanced briefly at the two girls on the sofa. “All right, let’s adjourn to the smoking-room.” He drew Strang over toward his arm-chair. “Pull in a chair and make yourself comfortable. If Pringle is ringing you here, it would be wiser simply to wait; his telephone may be needed, at any moment. You’ve probably stirred up quite a little hornet’s nest with that call of yours. Oh, yes, indeed, I was listening. But it’s always important to appear not to listen. A conspiracy, you said. How interesting—”

  Strang stopped looking at the telephone, and took a chair opposite Tommy.

  “Now this is very Greek,” Tommy said genially. “Men here; women there.” He waited. The word “conspiracy” was still in his eyes.

  “I’ll have to disappoint you, at the moment,” Strang said. “But I’ll promise one thing: as soon as I can, and when I can—” he paused.

  “You’ll tell me the whole story?” Tommy was not quite believing.

  “As much as I know of it. That’s possibly very little.”

  Tommy glanced at him in surprise, his disbelief now evident.

  “Look—” Strang said, “I’m only an architect who is interested in Greek temples.”

  Tommy looked. His sharp eyes studied the American. Then he smiled. “I’ve seen stranger incidents than this. During the German occupation, and in the Communist troubles afterwards—” He broke off, remembering. “Yes, most of us have strange stories to tell, many of them incomplete, fantastic, with at least five explanations. I sometimes think that normal, everyday life is only a delusion. We walk on a thin crust of earth which we call peace; and every now and again we can hear a rumble below our feet; and sometimes the crust splits and we see that, underneath, there is a glowing inferno ready to erupt. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, but it is always there.” He glanced over at Katherini, who was still talking intently to Cecilia. His tone changed. “At least she is calmer now. It’s a very difficult thing, you know, to be a refugee. At first, all you want to do is to escape. Once you have escaped, you start to think about the friends who didn’t escape. And you’re torn between staying and returning, and you don’t know what to do. There’s a very bad hour, indeed, when you ask yourself the question she asked tonight. You noticed it?”

  Strang nodded. What then? “And I couldn’t answer it.”

  “Just as well. No one can answer it for any refugee. It is a cruel question. You ask it when you realise that escape is not enough. You have exchanged one set of problems for another, that is all. Are you brave enough to start all over again? That’s the real question. And a refugee has to answer that for himself.” He shook his head, sadly.

  “I think,” Strang said, groping tactfully for the right words, “that it would be best for everyone if you didn’t mention the fact that we brought Katherini here tonight. Not even to a very close friend, like Aleco Christophorou.”

  “I shouldn’t dream of discussing this with anyone,” Tommy said stiltedly. He was hurt at the unnecessary suggestion.

  “I didn’t mean a discussion,” Strang said hastily. “What I had in mind was more of a—well, a neighbourly little chat in the front hall, one morning.”

  “I hardly ever see Aleco”

  “I thought he was a friend,”

  A shadow drifted over Tommy’s brow. “He was one of the brightest pupils I ever had.”

  “How long did he hold his professorship?”

  “Professorship?”

  “Professor of Law at Athens University, wasn’t he?”

  “Where on earth did you pick up that idea?” Tommy had recovered his equanimity as Strang looked completely dumbfounded. “No, he never was given any appointment at the University, although I think he would have liked one. It was a bit of a disappointment, I gather. But he would spread his talents around as if they were butter. I warned him repeatedly when he was a boy. He never would listen to anyone, though.” Tommy sighed “First he was going to be an archaeologist. Then he went to Oxford and read history. Then to the Sorbonne. Then to Geneva and political science. Then back to Athens— for law. We all thought he was settled in a career, at last. But he had that disappointment, and then he went off to fight in the war. He did very well in it, I hear. He’s extraordinarily brave, you know.”

  “And after that?”

  “Politics. He made some excellent speeches, stood for election to parliament, and lost. I rather think the voters couldn’t take an ex
istentialist quite seriously. Oh, yes, that had become his postwar enthusiasm.” Tommy shook his head. “Life to most Greeks may be either tragic or comic or a mixture of both; but one thing it never is—and that is, meaningless. They would never have survived if they had believed that.”

  “And since then?”

  “I’ve rather lost track of him. Travelled a good deal, I heard. Now, he is a freelance journalist, writes very superior articles on international politics. If he doesn’t watch out, he will end as a pundit.” Tommy laughed. “Careers are extraordinary things. So much wasted—then so much retrieved, unexpectedly.”

  So much wasted? Strang wondered about that. Or had everything contributed its share to the complete education of Aleco Christophorou? “What about his family?” Strang asked “How do they feel about all this?”

  Tommy said, “Now there’s one situation that is completely meaningless.” He pushed himself out of his comfortable chair. “Let me give you another drink, Strang.” Then he looked at the magazine still lying open on his table. “Dear me! I meant to show you where I first heard about you.” He pointed to a column of print, took Strang’s glass, and walked across to his cupboard.

  The opened page seemed to deal with notes on art and music, each given a separate paragraph under its own headline. But at this hour of the morning, it was indeed all Greek to Strang.

  “Can you understand it, or shall I translate?” Tommy called over his shoulder.

  “Which paragraph is it?”

  “The one beginning ‘Famous Greek photographer commissioned by Perspective, renowned American magazine.’ Clumsy, but appropriately exuberant. You are mentioned, too, in the last line. But you aren’t a Greek.”

  “Neither is Steve Kladas, technically,” Strang said, trying to cover his sudden alarm. “Perspective’s publicity department seems to have been supplying us with a lot of advance billing. When was this published?”

  “January, I think.”

  January it was.

  “You look thoughtful,” Tommy said, handing him his drink.

  “I am,” Strang said grimly. So Steve’s arrival in Greece had been announced before he left New York. Christophorou could have heard about it even before he went visiting Steve’s sister in Sparta. Even before Christophorou got my letter, Strang thought, he probably knew all about the Perspective job. “Is this magazine read much?”

  “A great deal.”

  “And talked about?”

  “That’s why it is read! What would one do for conversation if one couldn’t repeat what one reads? I borrow it steadily from Christophorou—Aleco’s father, that is. I visit the family every week, you know. The father hasn’t been at all well for some years now; confined to his room, most depressing.”

  Strang put down the magazine. “Don’t you ever meet Aleco there?”

  Tommy’s face changed. A blank mask stared back at Strang. “Not since the war.” He sat down in his chair again. “He never visits his family. They never talk of him.”

  “They forward letters to him.”

  “You would scarcely expect them to burn them.”

  Strang looked startled.

  “I told you it was a strange situation. I never can discuss Aleco with his father, of course. But one of his sisters did try to explain things to me. Seemingly, at the start of the civil war in Athens, Aleco warned his father that hostages would be taken into the mountains if the Communists had to retreat. His father wouldn’t believe him. The family stayed in Athens. Then, at the end, they were seized as hostages and marched toward the mountains. But I told you about that, didn’t I?”

  How, wondered Strang, could such a warning be given? “Surely he can’t blame his father for staying in Athens. After all, that forced march was a surprise move.”

  “It was also an idiotic, cruel, and completely bankrupt piece of blackmail,” Tommy said angrily, too absorbed in his own thoughts to catch Strang’s reasoning. “Anyhow, there’s the situation in the Christophorou family. Aleco does blame his father, for he has never seen his father since.”

  “And his father?”

  “Quite silent.”

  Because he never could solve the problem of how his son had been able to give such a warning? Or had the old man solved it and, out of pride, kept silent? No, no, Strang told himself quickly, you are reading too much into that incident. All it proves is that Christophorou always did keep a close ear to the ground, a very close ear.

  “I seem to have depressed you,” Tommy said, wondering.

  Strang stared at the drink in his hand and finished it quickly. “What the hell is keeping Pringle?” he asked angrily, and went over to the telephone again.

  This time, the line was not engaged. There was a short wait, though. Then a woman’s voice answered. It was American, polite but impersonal, and smothered with sleep.

  “Mrs. Pringle? Is your husband there? This is Kenneth Strang.” But he could sense the answer before he heard it.

  “I’m sorry. He left. With Colonel Zafiris.”

  “Where can they be reached, do you know?”

  “Haven’t the faintest. Sorry.”

  “So am I. Sorry for waking you, too. Good night.” He put down the receiver quickly. “No luck,” he said to Tommy. “You are still stuck with us, I’m afraid. All we can do is wait.” He glanced over at the sofa. Katherini had finished her slow, quiet monologue. She looked at him. “It won’t take long now,” he reassured her, and felt relieved when she nodded calmly. He noticed Cecilia had been writing something down in that notebook she carried in her bag. What’s going on? he wondered, took a step toward her, and then was halted by Tommy’s voice.

  “Pringle has left his apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, he will telephone you whenever he reaches wherever he is going. It must have been urgent.”

  “Yes.” Urgent enough to push Pringle farther into the Greek political maze. Poor old Pringle, trying to keep a balance between helping and interfering. It was a slender line to walk.

  “Waiting is always so difficult,” Tommy tried tactfully. “Let us comfort ourselves that we also serve. Please don’t be alarmed if I fall asleep around three o’clock. I always do.”

  “We’ll be out of here long before then,” Strang said determinedly. Still thinking of Pringle and his problems, he asked, “You know George Ottway, don’t you? Would you pass on a warning to him?” He looked around sharply, as Katherini rose and walked into the little hall. The bathroom door opened and closed. Cecilia was studying the book on her lap. “Anything wrong?” he asked. She looked up and shook her head reassuringly.

  “A warning for Ottway?” Tommy was startled enough to drop all comfortable drowsiness. He sat bolt upright, his amiable face contorted between a banished yawn and growing surprise.

  “He could be facing some very nasty trouble. I’ve got a feeling that anyone who seems dangerous to this conspiracy is being eliminated. Neutralised, as it were. There’s an attempt to get Pringle moved out of Greece, for instance. The same thing could happen to Ottway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he could identify a man called Nikos Kladas whom he knew as Sideros during the war.”

  “Ottway’s a fairly hard-bitten type, quite capable of taking care of himself.”

  “But he’s vulnerable.” Strang thought of Caroline Ottway.

  “How?”

  “He had a fairly close friendship with Nikos, back in the mountains.”

  “Back in the mountains,” Tommy said a little stiffly, “close friendships were common. There is such a thing as comradeship—”

  “I know, I know. Nikos was nineteen, perhaps less. A hero-worshipper, probably. The closer-than-glue type. Difficult to shake off. Until he transferred his admiration to Ares, and became one of his select little group. You have heard of Ares?”

  Tommy had. He recovered himself. “But Ottway avoided Ares and his group of sadists like the plague. He admires soldiers, but he has nothing but contempt for kille
rs. I have heard him on the subject of Ares. He certainly wouldn’t even exchange two sentences with this Nikos, once he became attached to Ares.”

  “I’m sure that’s all true, too. But his past friendship could be twisted.”

  “How?” Tommy was short, both in manner and voice. But his eyes showed he clearly understood.

  “I heard the first innuendos, yesterday.”

  “Preposterous!”

  “Will you warn Ottway?”

  “You’ve been talking to the wrong kind of people, Strang.”

  “That’s very possible,” Strang agreed wryly.

  “Who invented such a piece of nonsense?” Tommy demanded indignantly.

  It took something of an effort to refrain from saying that Christophorou had at least passed on that particular piece of nonsense, even if he hadn’t invented it. “The rumour may be spread, that’s our worry,” Strang said patiently. “If Ottway has to leave Athens because of rumours he can’t pretend to ignore—”

  “Sh!” said Tommy, glancing nervously at Cecilia, who had risen and was coming over toward them.

  “Will you warn Ottway?” Strang insisted. “Put him on his guard, at least? For instance, his wife seems to trust a man called Yorghis, who has been giving her Greek lessons pretty openly. Yorghis will soon be visiting the Ottways’ new apartment.”

  “Really—what have you against Yorghis?”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  “That is hardly sufficient reason—” Tommy began, but this time Cecilia did contradict him.

  “Ken is right, you know,” she said gently. “I’ve just been hearing all about Yorghis. Evgenia Vasilika hired him to drive to Nauplion yesterday morning. Somewhere near there, he picked up Madame Duval and drove her back to Athens. How did she get off her yacht without being noticed? Quite simple. The yacht arrived before dawn; Madame Duval was taken ashore in the darkness to a lonely inlet.”