Decision at Delphi

by Helen Macinnes

  “Now—” Strang warned her, gently. She laughed, and kissed him, and watched the worry leave his face. She settled her head against his shoulder. She had never known anyone could feel so happy as this.

  Down near the road, the clusters of people had thickened. One search party had returned, several more children had arrived out of nowhere; there were two more cars strung along the edge of the meadow.

  Elias hurried across the grass to meet them in a bustle of energy and excitement. The Colonel had been here; he had stayed until he heard the three shots; then he had left for Arachova, where he was setting up headquarters; the house had been traced; it was a matter now of moving quickly, of throwing a cordon around it and pulling it tight.

  “What house?” Strang asked. He was amused, in a way, that their arrival on the meadow was causing so little excitement. The girl was safe; everyone was delighted, but there were other things to think about. The police officer was talking earnestly to some of the search party, no doubt about the reported appearance of two sheep-stealers, marauders, outlaws, what have you, on the hills. The peasants had grouped around a tall, powerful man with light-coloured hair. Who was that? Levadi? He was so washed and brushed that Myrrha Kladas would scarcely have recognised him.

  “The house near Delphi,” Elias explained. But that seemed to mean little to Strang, so he added quickly. “The house where the Roilos father and son hid when they got back from Yugoslavia.”

  “Oh—that house!”

  Elias glanced at him, and dropped the subject. “Your friends are waiting,” he said, and pointed to a car. “There is a comfortable hotel at Delphi where you can sleep tonight.”

  “Delphi? No, not tonight, Elias. We are getting back to Athens.”

  Elias looked at Cecilia, then at Strang. “Athens is at least three hours away. Delphi is thirty minutes, perhaps less.”

  “I’m taking Miss Hillard nowhere near that house on the Delphi road.”

  Elias said quietly, “There will be three Americans and three Greeks to make sure she is safe. Besides—” he shrugged—“in a few hours, we all stop worrying. Perhaps, even now, he is caught.”

  Christophorou... “He is in that house?”

  “We think so. A Renault car passed through the hill town of Arachova yesterday evening. It never reached Delphi. Early this morning another car was heard travelling through Arachova, but not through Delphi. Then the motorcycle—”

  “Yes,” said Strang, “it’s all part of a pattern.”

  “Exactly,” Elias said, most seriously.

  “We are still going to Athens.” But his voice was that of a completely exhausted man. Bad-tempered, pigheaded, he admitted to himself angrily. Now that they were almost at the cars, he could admit he had just about ten more paces left in his legs. A hot bath, food, sleep. “Is there a good doctor in Delphi?” he asked.

  “Miss Hillard’s feet will be all right tomorrow,” Elias promised.

  Like hell they will, thought Strang. But the sooner they were treated, the better.

  He recognised one of the men standing beside a car, who was starting forward to meet them. “Hallo!” he said to Henry Beaumont, and couldn’t conceal his surprise. “What are you doing here? Come to excavate some ruins?”

  “Just rallying around,” Beaumont said cheerfully. “Someone had to drive for old Pringle. He insisted on getting out of bed and coming here.” He looked at Cecilia and smiled. “I’m the man who almost came to dinner. Beaumont.” He thought of several things to add, and then didn’t. Instead, he turned back to his car and got the travel rug and his flask of brandy. “She’s fine,” he told Pringle. “Much better than we expected. Strang doesn’t know it, but he’s all in.”

  And so they drove, along the hill road to Delphi. “We’ll telephone Effie from the hotel,” Pringle said. “She can bring up some clothes for Cecilia tomorrow.”

  “And my camera,” Cecilia said.

  “What did I tell you?” Beaumont asked, with a wide grin. “Miss Hillard will be up, nursing you both, tomorrow.”

  “But this is the place to look through a viewfinder,” Cecilia said. She pointed to the vast semicircle of ruins, of broken monuments and columns, rising tier by tier from the roadside up their steep, wide hill. In the dusk, the golden-white pillars were pale ghosts, picked out by the dying rays of the sun, dominating the darkening valley until the last moment of light. “Oh, Ken!” She grasped his hand more tightly.

  Beaumont pointed to a dark high pinnacle of stone precipice, rising to one side of the remains of ancient Delphi. “They used to throw the blasphemers from that peak,” he said amiably.

  “That,” said Pringle, “is what I like about classicists. Full of beneficence and uplift.” He looked back at the precipice. “You know,” he added softly, “the Greeks might have had something there.” He was silent as the car curved around the road and climbed into a straight little village street of stone houses, wood balconies, and sloping roofs, perched along the edge of more cliffs. He turned to Strang, eased his leg with a quick grimace of pain, and asked, “You noticed his house, four miles back or so?”

  Strang nodded. At least, he was thinking, I saw the army cars drawn up on the road. I saw radio antennae, I saw a truck, some soldiers. And up on the hillside, I saw a house with closed shutters. A pleasant vacation house, it had looked, abandoned until June came along.

  “My bet is that he saw them coming up the road, and took to the hills,” Pringle said gloomily. “But he won’t get far. Zafiris has got troops lined out in a wide circle. They will draw closer and closer. It is just a matter of time.” He noticed Strang’s face. “Stop worrying, Ken. Christophorou has got other things on his mind now. The hunter hunted—” He liked that idea. “He doesn’t even know that you found Cecilia. Nice going, Ken. Very nice indeed.” Then his face changed. “We all weren’t so lucky,” he said softly.

  He remained silent as they drove through the village. At its far end, where the road ran free of houses, the hotel stood by itself, alone with its magnificent view. As he got out of the car, Pringle, balancing his weight on a heavy walking stick to favour his injured leg, said in a low voice to Strang, “Ottway caught it.”

  “What?”

  “Yes.” Pringle glanced back at the car, but Beaumont was talking to Cecilia; she couldn’t hear them. “In Cyprus. He was at a café table, watching. A tourist passed by, with a camera slung over his shoulder. Ottway recognised the case—there were even initials on it. C.O. As brazen as you like. Ottway reached for the man and got a knife in the belly. Died last night.” He paused. “They found an ingenious kind of grenade inside the camera. Enough to blow up ten resistance heroes making patriotic speeches.”

  Strang and Pringle looked at each other. “Yes,” Pringle said grimly, once again. “Exactly.” He limped away, slowly, painfully, towards the hotel doorway.

  Strang lifted Cecilia out of the car. Beaumont was saying, “Well, well! For once, I don’t have to worry about reservations. It looks as if we were expected.” Around them, five sets of bright smiles had materialised, five pairs of sympathetic eyes and helpful hands. And at the corner of the building, there were two spruce and observant Greeks waiting along with old friend Costas. They made a most comforting trio, against a background of lonely, darkening hillside and far, black mountains.

  Strang said, listening to the faint gentle sounds coming from the hillside, “What’s that? Bells?”

  “Sheep bells,” Cecilia told him. “I’m an authority on them now.” And she laughed. “Oh, Ken, it’s good to get back to our own life again!”

  He held one of her hands against his lips for a moment. “Tomorrow—” he began, and then stopped, and then thought: two hours ago, there was no tomorrow; two hours ago, I came blankly up against the minute where I was drawing breath; and everything beyond that was covered in thicker, colder mist than Mount Parnassos.

  “Tomorrow will be a heavenly day,” Cecilia said, looking at the last glowing embers of a dying sunset. The b
ells had drifted away. The falling hills, the valley far below, lay silent and still.

  Strang nodded. But some of us were not so lucky; and he thought of George Ottway.

  30

  Next morning Strang awoke from the best night of sleep he had had in a week. He went out on the little balcony of his room to say good morning to the valley. One sight of the view, and he stood paralysed. I suppose I saw scenery yesterday, he thought, but then I wasn’t particularly receptive: every prospect pleased and only man was vile. Now—he looked over the folding, rising, falling hills above the deep valley that led to the sea— now, I’m even juggling around quotations again. It had been a long time since a line of verse had bobbed up in his head. A good idea, after all, he decided, to come here and sleep and awaken in such peace.

  On a distant pasture a shepherd was surrounded by a gentle sway of small bells; on the rough road, leading to nowhere nameable, ambling as leisurely down the hillside as that donkey with its side-saddle load, was a long-skirted woman walking back toward the village; on the stone terrace beneath this small row of balconies, two men were sitting in the sunlight, talking quietly. Strang leaned over to make sure who they were: Costas and a friend. He relaxed as quickly as he had tensed up. Every prospect pleased, and not even man was vile.

  The windows on the next balcony had all their blinds tightly drawn down. Cecilia was asleep. She was well guarded. She was safe. He took a deep breath of thankfulness, and went back to dress and order breakfast.

  He slipped out of his room before the food arrived to check on the corridor of this small, low wing of the hotel. He found the second of Costas’s friends sitting on a chair beside Cecilia’s door, talking in a low murmur with one of the pink-cheeked, dark-eyed maids.

  “How is—” he began, and then hesitated to use Cecilia’s name. He had been too tired to remember, last night, what name had been used for Cecilia’s safety. Smith? Brown? Something like that...

  The maid opened Cecilia’s door cautiously, glanced in, gestured to him to see for himself. He entered quietly, stood for a moment in the darkened room. Yes, she was asleep. She was well guarded. She was safe. He could give the maid as broad a smile as she gave him, when he closed the door slowly behind him. “Poly kala!” he said softly to the man and the woman. Fine, va bene, okay. Indeed it was.

  Indeed, everything was. Even his appetite had come back. He ordered a second helping of scrambled eggs and two more pots of coffee. And now the sun was high enough to dull the cool edge of the mountain air; he sat over several last cups of coffee on the little balcony outside his room, enjoying the pleasures of waiting without worry. He was high on a sloping hillside with one of nature’s most startling views unrolled, mile on mile, before him: blue-shadowed mountains beyond red-flowered fields; a narrow wooded valley plunging deep between steep-sided hills toward a distant glimpse of sea. That, he remembered as he looked long at the far tongue of blue water, was how the ancient Greeks used to come to Delphi. They landed from ships, in the bay down there, and walked the miles up the valley toward Delphi, perched above them on its hillside. When Cecilia and I start work here, he thought, I’ll get down to that valley and catch the first glimpse of white columns as they rise, high above the olive groves, against their background of rock.

  We’re in business again, he told himself. It was a good, a good and wonderful feeling. Before yesterday, before those last four or five days, had he ever really known how lucky he was? He lit another cigarette, poured the last few drops of coffee into his cup, and surrendered his body to the gentle sun, his mind to the spell woven by shapes and colours. This was an hour of complete and absolute peace.

  It was almost half past ten—angrily, he glanced at his watch—when the drone of a truck, of several cars shattered the stillness around him. They were coming from the village, on the road that lay behind the hotel. He rose, waiting at the edge of the balcony, looking along the hillside until they’d come into sight, praying that they would continue on their way to vanish behind the far arm of the hill. It was a truck filled with soldiers, only one car following it. The others must have stopped at the hotel. And now—barely three hundred yards away—the truck and the car stopped, too. The soldiers spilled out, spreading into a long thin line, fencing in the hillside above them.

  He moved quickly through his room into the corridor. The man outside Cecilia’s room looked up in surprise at his sudden appearance. Strang opened her door. She was still asleep. Everything was all right. He nodded to the man as he closed the door and went to the next room. This was Pringle’s. Strang glanced at his watch again. Pringle must be awake by this time. He knocked.

  “Who is it?” Pringle asked sharply.

  “Strang.”

  The door was opened by Elias.

  “Good morning,” Strang said cheerfully, but his heart sank. Whenever he saw Elias, there was always some blow to be expected. That was the way things seemed to work out, with Elias. “You are looking much better,” he told Pringle, who was sitting on his bed, his wounded leg stretched out in front of him.

  “You look good yourself,” Pringle said. “How’s Cecilia?”

  “Asleep.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Yes.” Strang looked at him pointedly. “And what’s the news?”

  Pringle rubbed his knee thoughtfully. “Mixed,” he admitted frankly. Elias had walked over to the window and was looking at the balcony outside.

  “Christophorou is on the loose?”

  “I am assured,” said Pringle, a thin smile playing around his lips, “that he is just about to be caught.”

  “That’s comforting.” Strang’s voice was tight. “Have you any cigarettes left, Bob?”

  “You take the news better than I did,” Pringle said. “Why doesn’t Christophorou admit that he has lost completely and blow his brains out? That would save everyone a lot of bother.”

  Strang raised an eyebrow, and lit one of Pringle’s cigarettes. Elias, tired and troubled, looked around and nodded his agreement to that.

  “All right, all right,” Pringle said—he was, if anything, a gentle-minded man—“but the bastard tried to have me killed. This damned leg keeps reminding me of that. And of Ottway—”

  “And of Cecilia,” Strang completed for him grimly. “And of Steve. And of Myrrha Kladas. And of Katherini Roilos.” Christophorou had chalked up quite a personal account. The total ran high. Much too high. “So,” Strang asked Elias, “he is running free, somewhere out on that hillside?”

  Elias was so exhausted, so weary, that his English had almost deserted him. “He is running hard. Very hard. Last night—” He looked at Pringle. Perhaps the situation had started to spin wild and there was no longer any pattern for Elias’s mind to put together. He raised his hands in complete frustration. “You tell him,” he said in Greek. So Pringle told the story.

  Yesterday evening, when Zafiris had reached the house on the road to Delphi, Christophorou had already left. There were signs of a hasty departure. A fire was still burning in one room; food was on the table. (“You break my heart,” Strang said.)

  From behind the house there were several trails leading to the hill. These had been followed. The shepherd Levadi had taken Elias and a search party to a climber’s hut, high on one of those trails. Again, Christophorou had been on his guard; he had slipped into the darkness as the squad of men approached. Later that night, the dogs from the meadows to the east had given tongue. Levadi had said that the dogs would keep Christophorou to the western side of the meadows. He wouldn’t risk crossing them when the shepherds and their dogs were on the alert. (“That,” said Strang, “isn’t hard to believe.”)

  By dawn, there were several search parties circling around the area. Christophorou had actually been seen once. More important, he had seen them. He could guess, now, the extent of the search. (“And give himself up?” asked Strang bitterly. “That’s a sweet hope. Nihilists expend everything and everyone except themselves. They are the indispensable men, with
out whom the world might try to live almost happily. Besides, think of their superior brains! They can outwit all of us, can’t they?”)

  Pringle looked at him. “You’re a deceptive kind of a guy, Ken. I believe you hate him even more than I do.”

  “I am not competing,” Strang said harshly. “All I want is some peace to live my own life again.” He remembered the troops deploying along the road behind the hotel. He said to Elias, “So he is somewhere near Delphi?”

  “Yes. He is waiting.”

  “For what? For darkness?”

  “For Colonel Zafiris to promise him a safe-conduct out of Greece.”

  “That’s rich, isn’t it?” Pringle asked. “And in exchange, Christophorou will have Miss Hillard released and returned safely to Colonel Zafiris. Isn’t that magnanimous?”

  Elias said in a surge of anger, “He lies. And he knows that he lies. He could not set Miss Hillard free once she was delivered to the outlaws. They take, they do not give back. They obey no God, no laws, no man. He knows that! He lies!” It was the first violent outburst from Elias that Strang had seen. Then the Greek took tight control over his emotions once more. “He sent the message two hours ago. He gave it to a boy who was herding goats on a hillside near the stadium of Delphi.”

  “The ancient stadium?” Strang was incredulous. “Just above the Greek theatre?”

  “As near as that,” Pringle said. “I think he rather enjoyed that touch. He must have looked down over the theatre, and the temple below it, and all the sanctuaries below that, right down the Sacred Way to the road, where he could see the patrol passing along. At least, he told the boy to take his note down to the soldiers.”

  Elias said, “So now he waits. Hidden. There are many hiding places above Delphi. He waits until noon for our answer.” His lips tightened at the impudence of such an ultimatum.

  “And how do we give that?” Strang asked.

  “We have brought in more troops. We have encircled this whole area. We shall go in after him.”

  Strang almost smiled. That was certainly one good answer. “I meant—what did Christophorou suggest?” After all, Christophorou thought he was calling the tune.