Elias had stopped, just as they had climbed out of the little glen and had come upon the Kladas place. In spite of the fast pace they had kept, they had not caught up with Myrrha Kladas. They were on the wrong side of the stream, too. They’d have to cross it, step out of the shelter of the trees, and risk that moonlit stretch of bare path before they could reach the black shadow of the house.
Elias cursed quietly as he looked across at the door, closely barred and bolted for the night. He had been so very sure that they would overtake Myrrha Kladas before she could reach it.
“Only one entrance?” Strang whispered.
Elias shrugged his shoulders. Perhaps he had not been allowed to see any other entrance on his visit yesterday. Uncommunicative, the Colonel had called Myrrha Kladas.
“How do you get across this stream?”
“Now?”
“Yes.” Strang’s eyes were searching the stream for some footbridge: no village let itself be cut off from its fields.
“There is Costas, too, to be considered,” Elias was saying, frowning with worry. He looked at his watch. “Soon he will start uphill from the valley. Those three may be patrolling the road. He must be told what to expect.”
“Perhaps they’ve gone back to where they came from.”
“To Tripolis? And then here again, in the morning? No.”
The frown deepened. The men had come from a town: their clothes were not those of peasants. Or were they staying in a village to the north? Elias sighed. He looked at his watch again. “Will she open that door?” he asked. His tone doubted that.
“Perhaps for me, if I’m alone,” Strang said. “You get back to the bridge and start down toward the valley.” Then, as Elias kept silent, he added, “If anything happens to that car, it’s a long walk back to Athens.”
Elias gave a fleeting smile. “You stay here,” he said.
“No. I go over there.” Strang pointed at the house.
“But those men may decide to come back. Did you not hear them arguing?”
“Then all the more reason I should be with Myrrha Kladas.”
Elias looked at him.
“It’s warm, over there,” Strang said. “I like my comforts.” He took a step away. “Where’s the nearest crossing? Or do I have to swim?”
“There is a small footbridge,” Elias said, pointing near them. He was converted.
“Good.” Strang couldn’t see the footbridge for the shadows of the trees at that part of the stream.
“Ask her—” Elias had a new set of worries.
“I’ll ask her plenty,” Strang said grimly. “Signal when you get back—”
But Elias was gone.
Strang waited for a few moments, admiring Elias’s technique: the man melted into the shadows, moving quickly, silently. It would take him about five minutes, at that rate, to travel back downhill to the bridge. Strang glanced at his own watch. Speed was certainly needed; Costas would soon be starting up from the valley. Arguments, arguments, Strang thought with annoyance; everyone wants to get his own way in this country—including me. He looked over at the silent house, glanced along the village street. All was quiet. He started toward the trees where the footbridge ought to be. It was there, all right, a couple of long planks balanced on some rocks, a simple but practical peasant’s reply to inevitable spring floods. Strang crossed, carefully, his eyes concentrating on the middle of the planks. On his right, the stream gathered speed through a scattering of small boulders and then—so his ears told him— plunged into its race through the glen.
He reached the other bank, and then, past an outcrop of rock and bushes, the path. There was a small stretch of thin wood here, slender-trunked, silver-barked trees rising out of the dark undergrowth. He halted. Sheep? Had one strayed down from the hillside? For now he could smell the unmistakable, strong, heavy odour of sheep, reminding him of that mutton-fat gravy tonight at Tripolis. But there was no rustle, no movement. The sheep was dead, perhaps, carried down by the stream. He started up the dark path, soft under his feet, between the ghostly white-limbed ladies.
There was a quick movement behind him, a stronger smell of sheep. An arm was round his throat, a hand was pinning his right arm to his side, and, for a moment, he was paralysed, pulled tightly against a filthy sheepskin tunic. He let himself go limp, as if he were beaten; and as he felt the arm slacken a little, sure of him, he jerked his head violently back and smashed against a face. There was a grunt of pain, the arm loosened, and Strang could turn on the man. But as his left fist shot out, a second man grappled from behind, catching his elbows in a strong savage grip; and a third dark figure, a woman, raised a heavy stick and struck at his head. He stumbled forward, the man’s weight now on his back. There was another blow at his head, a crashing pain followed by a wave of blackness. He tried to rise, failed, and felt the first retreat from consciousness. Complete blackness swept over, and smothered him.
The woman stood looking down at Strang. “Is he dead?” she asked, tonelessly, almost listlessly.
One of the men knelt. “You did not hit hard enough,” he said angrily. Women were like that, always flinching at the last moment, always leaving a job half done.
“Which one is it?” she asked.
“The tall one, as you saw.”
“There were two who were tall,” she said sharply. She bent down and touched the man lying at her feet, and then drew back quickly. His jacket was of soft tweed. “His clothes are different.”
“He has taken off his coat. That is all. Levadi—” he looked up at the big man with the sheepskin over his shoulders, who was wiping the blood from his nose with his wrist—“shove him in the stream!”
The woman said, “More than taking off his coat. The jacket is different. Of wool, fine wool.” She knelt and touched Strang’s hair. She tried to see his face through the shadows. “A stranger,” she said. “A foreigner. Fetch Petros!”
Strang’s eyes opened. He didn’t move. His head throbbed, his throat was painful. He was lying on hard boards, in half-darkness; but he was warm, at least, with a rough blanket around him. There was the smell of a wood fire, a soft flickering light on the low ceiling. Cautiously, he turned his head. The pain stopped him. He began to remember. He lay still, trying to think, failing. From the corner of his eye, he saw a table, and two people. A woman and a man, sitting silently by the light of the fire, waiting. Then he realised his hands and feet were free, unbound; someone had put a pillow under his head; someone had wrapped him carefully in this blanket. “Hallo, there!” he said slowly, and tried to sit up. The dim room swung round him, but he got his feet on the floor and kept them there. Now if he could just manage to sit this way for a couple of minutes, no sudden movements, no efforts, he might be able to raise his head, too, and look normal.
The woman exclaimed, moved to light a candle. The man came over to the bed and looked at Strang, who slowly raised his head. “How do you feel?” he asked in English.
Like the way one of those wobbly-headed, three-month-old infants must feel, thought Strang. “Fine,” he said. He looked up carefully. It was Petros, grinning broadly. “Was it you who hit me?”
“Myrrha did that. Fortunately.”
“Fortunately?”
Petros said, “I would have cracked your skull properly.” He gave an encouraging pat to Strang’s shoulder, a good-natured thump which echoed right up through the roof of his head. Then Petros sat down beside him, on the wooden platform of a bed. “In fact, you nearly ended in that stream.”
“Spectacular exit,” Strang said, seeing himself being hurtled in the fast-moving waters under the road and out on to the valley’s slopes. He laughed. And stopped. And held his head.
Myrrha Kladas exclaimed again, this time in sympathy. She offered him a glass of water.
Petros started explaining, “She thought you were one of them. And you chose the darkest shadows. She saw a man moving, but she couldn’t see the man clearly. What were you doing out there?”
“Wat
ching the bridge.” The water was sweet and clean and cold.
“More?” she asked, politely, anxiously.
He said, “Please.” He looked at her as she poured the water, and he wondered if this could really be Myrrha Kladas. She ought to be a woman a little younger than himself. But only her eyes, dark and glowing, were young. The skin, tanned into wrinkled leather by sun and wind, the lines at the sad mouth, the gaunt cheeks, the coarsened hair, the veined hands, all these belonged to age. She was of medium height, but she looked small: her body was so thin, stripped of all fat right down to its fine bone and muscle, that the cotton dress hung from her slight shoulders as a shapeless piece of cloth. And he thought of her father, of her two brothers, of Christophorou, who had all abandoned her in their own fashion: some women had not much to thank men for. “This water is very good,” he said, and pleased her.
“Your head?” she asked politely, in turn.
“As thick as ever.”
She didn’t quite understand.
“As good as this bed.” He rapped on the solid piece of wood, then rapped on his head, and said, “Ow!”
She laughed, her eyes inviting Petros to join in the joke. For a moment, he saw a young woman. Then her hand went quickly up to her mouth to cover it politely, shyly.
“So,” Petros said, “you were watching the bridge. And who was the man who left you to go back to the bridge?” He gestured to Myrrha. “Sure, we can talk in English. She understands, although she won’t speak it.” He looked at Strang, his eyes narrowing. “Was he a policeman?”
“No. Counter-intelligence.”
“And what does that mean?”
Strang allowed himself a good Greek shrug of the shoulders. “He has gone to find our driver and car.”
“They will come back here?”
“Yes.”
“Do you trust them?”
“Yes.”
“Hm,” said Petros. “What do they want?”
“They want Steve to stay alive.”
There was silence.
Myrrha Kladas said, “Are you sure of that?”
“That’s one thing I am sure of.”
“They do not pretend?”
“I am sure of that, too?”
Myrrha Kladas and Petros exchanged a long thoughtful look. Then she said, “I believe the American.”
Petros said, “We don’t want any policemen around here.” He pointed across the room, and Strang saw a rifle propped at the side of the door. “My friend John has a gun, too. We keep them private, hidden, you understand. For any—well—any trouble. But the police don’t like guns. They will take them away.”
“Is John the man with the sheepskin?”
Petros laughed. “No. That’s Levadi. That’s her friend.” He pointed at Myrrha. “Why don’t you tell Levadi he is no longer a shepherd?” he asked her teasingly. “Or why don’t you wash his coat? Or him?”
“He does no one any harm,” she flashed out. “He stayed my friend when others forgot me.”
“Ah!” said Petros, his eyes narrowing. “And why did they forget you? Just look at a few burned-out houses around here, will you?”
Strang asked quickly, “Where are John and Levadi?”
“Outside. On guard.” Petros was still looking bitterly at Myrrha Kladas. “We expect a little trouble.”
“Then you’d better tell them that my two friends are coming back here. I don’t want to have them floating down any stream.”
Petros stopped looking at Myrrha Kladas. He rose, yawned, and stretched. “What do they look like?”
Strang described Elias and Costas.
“And they are not policemen?”
“No!”
“Okay, okay,” Petros clumped heavily toward the door.
“Sh!” said Myrrha Kladas.
“Okay!” Petros said in a softened growl, picked up his rifle, and left.
“Myrrha,” Strang said very gently, “where is Steve?”
She was at the door, barring it. She turned and looked at him.
“Do you know that he is alive?”
She nodded. “Petros told me everything you told him.”
But Petros would not have been sitting here if he hadn’t found Steve. That was certain. Besides, there was no air of mourning in this house, no gloom. Petros would not have jeered at her, lost his temper, if Steve had been dead. And Myrrha Kladas would not be facing Strang so calmly, either, at this moment: village women took mourning seriously and were not easily comforted. “Why—why—” he began. He was having trouble with his Greek verbs. An aching head was no help at all. “Why did you telephone?” he asked with painful slowness. He put a hand over his forehead and held it there.
She looked at him anxiously. Then she said, “I speak English, if Petros is not here to laugh at my mistake. I lived in America once.” As she spoke, she went to a wooden chest, found a piece of white cloth, soaked it with cold water, and came over to wrap it across his brow. “Lie back,” she told him. “You do not have to pretend for me.”
He lay back on the bed. He watched her lift a chair and bring it beside him. She sat down. “Now,” she said softly, “we talk.”
“Why did you telephone?”
“I had no choice.”
“But it was a trap. I might have ended in that stream after all,” he reminded her.
“No, no! When the car stopped, I was to scream.”
“Then they would have hurt you.”
“John and Levadi were near.”
He was startled. “Where?”
“Very near. John had his rifle ready.” She frowned at her hands, neatly folded in her lap. “It was the best we could do.”
Then, slowly, she told him what had happened. That noon, when she came back from working in the field, she found two strangers searching this house. Levadi was still in the field. She had tried to run out, to call, but one of the men had stopped her. They came as friends, they said. Her brother Stefanos was not dead; he was alive and in hiding because there were enemies, men who had once been his comrades, who remembered that he had been a deserter. Stefanos, so they said, had sent them to find her, and to prove that, they had showed her a little diary with her brother’s writing in it. Stefanos wanted to see his American friend, Kenneth Strang. Stefanos would come to Thalos tonight, and meet his friend in this house.
“You see?” she asked anxiously. “They told me I must telephone you. Because you would believe me when I said it was urgent; but you had never heard of them, and you might not listen to them. So I was to go with them into Sparta, and telephone you. At once! But I said I could not go into the big town with mud on my boots, and in my old dress from the fields. So they said they would wait for me at the road by the bridge, where their car and their driver were. You see?”
Yes, he was beginning to see.
“But then,” she said, “as I went down through the little wood, I found Petros. And he told me a different story. He was unshaven, there was mud on his clothes, and he looked as if he had been without sleep, searching—as he told me—for Stefanos. And so I believed him. For I knew him. We talked. And he made a plan. He wanted me to telephone you. How else could he bring you here quickly? But we have no money for telephones to Athens, so—you see?”
“Yes,” Strang said. “You let the strangers pay for the call, and you got me out here as Petros wanted.”
“But you understood my warning,” she said. “And you brought friends.”
He looked at her.
“When I called Stefanos ‘Steve,’ you understood that I had learned about the name you gave him.”
He couldn’t disappoint her by admitting he had not fully understood. But Colonel Zafiris had understood, perhaps not fully, either, but enough to send Elias and Costas along.
“And,” Myrrha said triumphantly, “how could I learn such a name if I had not been speaking to Stefanos or Petros? That was all the warning I could give. One of the men stood beside me as I telephoned.” She laughed. “What m
oney they spent! I telephoned at three o’clock, four o’clock, five o’clock, six—and there you were, at last.”
“Who paid for all that?”
Her laughter died away. She sat very still. “Since I talked with Stefanos, I think I know. Odysseus—a man I met many years ago, when we took strange names and hid behind them. There was reason then. But now—he still hides behind Odysseus.”
“Did he come to see you, some weeks ago?”
She stared at Strang. “Yes. About Stefanos. He wanted to warn Stefanos not to come to Greece.”
“That old excuse about Steve deserting?”
“You believe he did?”
“No.”
Her face softened. “No,” she agreed. “But I believed Odysseus about the danger. Some people might want to have revenge. They hear one side of the story. They do not ask about the other side.” She bit her lip. “I know,” she said. “Once, I heard only one side...”
“And so you told Odysseus where he could find Steve to warn him.”
“Yes. I told him Steve would be in Sicily before he came to Greece.”
He sat up slowly and swung his legs on to the floor. “Can I go upstairs and see Steve now?” He handed her the cloth from his head. It hadn’t helped much, but he thanked her.
“He is asleep. I gave him a drink of herbs to make him sleep.” She looked at him curiously. “How did you know he was here?”
“Why else are you all guarding this house so carefully?”
She smiled then. “Petros brought him here when I went with these men into Sparta.”
“It would have been safer, perhaps, to leave him where Petros found him.”
“No. He needs shelter. Care. Petros found him—”
“At the old place?”
She nodded. “Up on the hill, below the mountain ridge. There is an old castle there. In ruins. The Franks built it, many years ago.”
Six hundred years ago, most probably, Strang thought, if the French knights had built it.
Decision at Delphi Page 38
