The Rolls had shot across the corner of Constitution Square and entered the broad Vasilissis Sofias Boulevard, so it was now a straight run and only a quarter of a mile to go. But a lorry emerged from one of the turnings opposite the Royal Palace, forcing Tompkins to slow down. Holding his breath, Robbie continued to stare out of the back window. The driver of the car carrying the policemen was crouched over the wheel, getting every ounce out of his engine. It raced up to within a few yards of the Rolls. Robbie could clearly see the face of the girl beside the driver. It was white and wide-eyed with excitement. One of the policemen was leaning out of the left rear window, yelling at them to halt.
Tompkins swerved the Rolls and it passed the tail of the lorry, missing it by inches. As they cleared it, he put his foot hard down on the accelerator and the great silver car leapt forward again. Now that they had left the centre of the city behind, there was little traffic. In less than a minute, they covered the few hundred yards that brought them to within a stone’s throw of the Embassy.
‘Not the front entrance,’ called Robbie quickly. ‘Round to the garage. We can drive straight in there.’
‘Just as you wish, Mr. Robbie; though you’ve no need to worry. We’re well ahead of them now,’ Tompkins replied with a laugh.
The Rolls sped on, passed the little Byzantine church on the corner, turned into Ploutarchou Street and, turning again, ran smoothly up the slope leading to the garage. Robbie slipped out to open the gates. He was still pulling them wide when the two pursuing cars and the taxi drew up in the street. Their occupants all got out and formed a little cluster on the pavement. Scowling angrily, the two policemen demanded that Robbie go with them to the station. Cepicka, speaking atrocious Greek, joined in with threats and curses, while the people in the last car, who had joined the chase for fun, stood by, goggle-eyed, to witness the outcome of the matter.
Robbie only smiled and shook his head. He knew, and the police knew, that he was now technically on British soil. They dared not infringe diplomatic privilege by coming in and removing him forcibly.
Tompkins ran the car into the garage and Robbie helped him shut the gates. The little crowd outside was now getting back into its cars, but Robbie was no longer smiling. He had escaped by taking sanctuary in the Embassy but, if he put a foot outside it, he would again make himself liable to arrest. He dared not leave it. And how was he going to explain to his uncle his presence there?
9
Midnight Conference
When they had shut the garage gates, Tompkins said with a smile: ‘Seems you got yourself in a spot of trouble, Mr. Robbie.’
‘Yes,’ Robbie agreed; then he added after a brief pause: ‘They … I think they mistook me for a pick-pocket.’ Much as he hated having to lie to Tompkins, he could not possibly tell him the truth. A moment later, he remembered that he was wearing a dinner jacket which rendered most unlikely the explanation he had given, but Tompkins’ only comment was:
‘Well, we saw them off all right. Bit of luck for you, though, that I’d just dropped your uncle at the G.B.’
‘Just dropped him!’ Robbie echoed. ‘I thought you must have taken some guests back to the hotel after a dinner party. Surely it’s very late for him to have gone out?’
Tompkins looked at him in surprise. ‘No later than usual for a reception, Mr. Robbie. The invites are mostly for nine-forty-five, and H.E. likes to show up round ten o’clock.’
Robbie had believed it to be at least midnight. So much had happened to him since he had, with the rest of the staff, left the agency at eight o’clock. It seemed impossible that all the nerve-racking experiences he had been through had been crammed into less than two hours; yet he could not doubt that Tompkins was right.
However, what Tompkins had told him held one ray of comfort. As his uncle was out at a reception, he could enter the house without fear of running into him. Having thanked the chauffeur warmly for rescuing him, he walked the length of the garden and entered the Embassy by a side door that led to the servants’ quarters. In her sitting room he found the middle-aged lady of Anglo-Greek descent who acted as housekeeper.
A little hesitantly, he said: ‘Good evening, Mrs. Gonis. I … er, expect you’re a bit surprised to see me, but I didn’t have a chance to let you know that I was coming back tonight. Could you get someone to make up the bed in my old room?’
She gave him a motherly smile. ‘Oh, I’ve kept it made up, Mr. Robbie, hoping you’d be back any time. We were all of us quite worried about your going off like that on your own.’
‘That’s awfully nice of you.’ He smiled back. ‘Then I think I’ll go up there right away.’
‘Have you had your supper?’ she enquired.
‘No, as a matter of fact, I haven’t,’ he admitted. ‘But I don’t want to put you to a lot of trouble.’
‘It will be no trouble at all. There’s some of that moussaka you’re so fond of in the larder. One of the girls can soon heat it up in a glass dish, and there’s a big piece of the cassata in the fridge left over from dinner. I’ll send them up on a tray with a carafe of wine to the little writing room, and you can have them on the table there.’
Robbie’s worries had not impaired his appetite, and a quarter of an hour later he was tucking into the moussaka. It was his favourite Greek dish, a sort of shepherd’s pie, but made with slices of aubergine between the layers of mince and on top, instead of potato, a thick crust of eggs and toasted cheese.
While waiting for his supper, he had been conning over the decidedly alarming situation in which he found himself. Although he had escaped arrest, he feared that that was very unlikely to be the end of the matter. It seemed certain that the Czechs would press the police to take action against him and that, if not tonight, certainly tomorrow, a police chief would turn up to demand some form of satisfaction from Sir Finsterhorn. His uncle would undoubtedly be furious and, being a stickler for justice, might even order him out of the Embassy, so that justice could take its course.
If only he had been able to retain the brief-case with those papers in it, he felt that things would have been very different. At least, he would have had that valuable prize to hand over as a set-off against any awkwardness that his escapade might cause between the Greek Government and the British Embassy. Unorthodox as his actions had been, his uncle could hardly have thrown him to the lions after he had pulled off a coup of which any real Secret Service agent might be proud. But he had had to abandon the brief-case, and he very much feared that his uncle might think that he had invented the whole story about it, in the hope that it might get him out of his mess.
By the time he was digging into the vanilla ice with its inner layer of chocolate and core of frozen cream, rich with bits of marron glacé, angelica and glacé cherries, his spirits had gone down to zero. He felt convinced that his uncle would sacrifice him to the accepted concept of an Ambassador’s duty and insist on handing him over to the Greeks to stand his trial. Again awful visions of a bleak prison and its incredible discomforts harrowed his thoughts.
His immediate problem, he felt, was to decide on what he should say to his uncle next morning. Should he come clean and tell the whole, unvarnished truth, or should he seek refuge in another tissue of the lies that he was so unaccustomed to telling, protest his innocence and declare that he was the victim of a put-up job by the Czechs, designed to embarrass the British Ambassador?
The latter course seemed to offer a better chance of securing his uncle’s protection; but would he believe him? And, in any case, that could not save him from his uncle’s anger, because he could not have been made use of in that way had he not, against Sir Finsterhorn’s strenuous opposition, taken a job with the Czechs. He wished most desperately that he had someone to whom he could turn for advice. It was then that his slow mind clicked, and he thought of Luke Beecham.
He could not have rung up Luke from the agency, but had meant to do so after it closed that evening. His hectic experiences since had put the matter right out of hi
s mind, but there was no reason why he should not do so now. Leaving his cassata unfinished, he hurried across the hall to the secretary’s deserted office, and called Luke’s number.
As he feared might prove the case, Luke was not in, but his man answered. Mr. Beecham was out at a dinner party and, unless he went on anywhere, should be home before midnight. Robbie said that he wished to see Mr. Beecham on a matter of the utmost urgency. When he did get home, would he please come to the Embassy by way of the garage entrance, where Mr. Grenn would be waiting up for him till any hour. Realising that the man would go to bed if his master did not arrive home within the next hour or so, Robbie asked him to write out the message and pin it to Mr. Beecham’s pillow.
Returning to the little writing room at the back of the house, Robbie finished his cassata and drank up what remained of the carafe of Attika Demestika wine that Mrs. Gonis had sent up with his supper. By then, it was a little after eleven so, in case Luke might get home early, he went out into the garden.
It was a warm, cloudless night, with a myriad of stars shining brightly overhead. The sight of them made him think of the Immortals, after whom so many of the stars were named. Fervently, he prayed to his patroness, Athene, that Luke might not go on from his dinner party to the Coronet, the Flamingo, the Mocambo or one of the other Athenian night-clubs, as that would mean waiting for him until two or three in the morning.
Normally Robbie was not a heavy smoker, but as he paced up and down the parched lawn, keeping a watchful eye on the gate beside the garage, he lit cigarette after cigarette. At a quarter to twelve, he noticed the lights of the garage go on, and soon afterward heard the purr of the Rolls as Tompkins drove it off to bring home his master. Another ten minutes went by then, to his heartfelt relief, he saw beyond the iron grille of the side gate a dark figure, that caught the eye more readily owing to the starlight glinting on its white shirt front.
As he let in his visitor, Luke said: ‘So you’ve returned to the fold, Robbie. Your having taken a job with the Czechs is the talk of Athens. I must say I give you full marks for having pulled it off; but a little bird told me that your uncle was so angry that he threw you out.’
‘He didn’t quite do that,’ Robbie replied, leading the way over to the summer house. ‘To get the job, I had to pretend I was pro-Communist, and my staying on here wouldn’t have fitted in. I meant to move out for a while, anyway, but when I told H.E. what was on, he got terribly shirty and told me that he wouldn’t have me back.’
‘One can hardly wonder. You have caused him a shocking loss of face. But, as you are back, I assume you’ve managed to patch things up with him.’
‘No.’ Robbie gave a heavy sigh as they sat down. ‘I’m only here now because this evening I was chased by the police.’
‘Good Lord! D’you mean you took sanctuary here, and your uncle doesn’t know about it?’
‘That’s it. If I hadn’t, I’d be spending the night in a prison cell.’
‘My hat, Robbie! You have got yourself into a mess.’
‘I know. I desperately need your advice. That’s why I asked you to come over.’
Luke took out a cigar and said: ‘All right. Tell me all.’ Then he lit the cigar and sat back to listen.
It took Robbie a good ten minutes to give an account of all that had happened to him since last they had met, and he ended up: ‘So you see, I’ve either got to come clean with my uncle and risk his handing me over to stand my trial, or swear I’m innocent and risk the Czechs and the police proving me to be a liar.’
For a moment Luke pulled thoughtfully on his cigar, then said: ‘While you were being chased the first time, when you had the brief-case, do you think you were seen by anyone who knows you, and would talk about having seen you chased?’
‘Not as far as I know. It’s hardly likely. The chase could not have lasted more than a couple of minutes while I ran less than half the length of Stadium Street. But why do you ask?’
‘Because, if that is so, the Czechs are going to find it devilish difficult to prove that you ever stole the brief-case.’
‘The first policeman whose attention they attracted may have seen me holding it.’
‘This happened after dark. In the uncertain light, he might have been mistaken. The fact that you had not got it when you emerged from the building site would throw doubt on his evidence.’
Robbie was hanging on Luke’s words. ‘Do you … do you really think, then, there’s a chance that the Czechs may not bring a charge? There is the one they meant to trump up about my stealing money, too.’
‘About that they haven’t got a shred of evidence, so you can count it out. And I think the odds are against their bringing one about the brief-case unless they feel confident they can prove it. You see, it is already assumed in diplomatic circles that you’ve been ass enough to let them make propaganda out of you. If they do bring a case, it is certain to be thought that, having got you into their toils, this is a plot they have hatched to bring discredit on the British.’
‘Then you think my fears about a police chief turning up here in the morning are groundless?’
‘One can’t say for certain; but there are times when one may save one’s bacon by adopting a masterly policy of inactivity, and I’m inclined to think that this is one of them.’
Closing his eyes, Robbie gave a sigh of relief. ‘What a marvellous chap you are, Luke. It would never have occurred to me that if I didn’t tell my uncle, he might never know anything about it.’
‘Of course, there’s no guaranteeing that it won’t somehow come out later,’ Luke felt compelled to warn him.
Robbie nodded. ‘That’s true; and it makes it all the more rotten luck that I had to abandon the brief-case. If I still had it, I could have afforded to come clean and put myself in the clear once and for all. Being able to hand to my uncle that wad of secret papers would have justified what I’ve done.’ Suddenly struck by an idea, he added: ‘I say, though! If you think the police are not likely to grab me, I could go round to that building site tomorrow and collect the brief-case from the place where I hid it.’
Luke shook his head. ‘No, Robbie, you mustn’t do that. You would be crazy to leave the precincts of the Embassy during the next forty-eight hours. By then, if the Czechs have laid a charge, the police will have had to take some action, and you’ll know about it in no uncertain manner from your uncle. But you must give them a chance to come and ask him to hand you over. If they have not shown up by Tuesday, I think you will be able to count yourself in the clear. But if you go out before that, you might land right in the soup.’
‘I see. In that case, I’ll have to wait till later to collect the brief-case.’
Luke did not speak for a moment, then he said gently: ‘If you do manage to retrieve it, Robbie, I don’t think it would be a good idea to hand it over to H.E.’
‘Why ever not? It would show that, for once, I’ve done something really worthwhile, and make him take quite a different view of me.’
‘I know how you must feel about it, old chap. But I’m afraid you don’t understand how careful people in your uncle’s position have to be. It is an accepted thing that no diplomat should undertake any form of espionage while he is en poste abroad. That applies even to Naval, Military and Air Attachés. Of course, there is nothing against their reporting any developments they may be wily enough to worm out of their opposite numbers or obtain by other normal means, but snooping is definitely against the rules. After all, their job is to get on the best possible terms they can with the Government to which they are accredited, and they wouldn’t get very far in that if they were constantly under suspicion of spying. Anyhow, that’s the way it is, and as you are a member of the Ambassador’s household, all that I’ve said applies, at least technically, to you.’
‘But I haven’t been spying on the Greeks,’ Robbie protested, ‘only on the Czechs. And that’s quite different.’
‘It’s not, as far as this matter of principle is concerned. Any d
iplomat who was caught out using criminal means to secure the secrets of another would be automatically disgraced. So you see how terribly embarrassing it would be for H.E. if you made him privy to the fact that you stole some documents belonging to a foreign Government.’
Robbie’s face fell. ‘If that’s the case, I’m glad you warned me. But if I can get hold of those papers again, it seems an awful waste to do nothing about them.’
After a moment, Luke said: ‘As there is nothing to identify the agents that sent them in, I think you may be overestimating their value, although, of course, our “I” people would certainly like to have the names of the crew members that are mentioned as being pro-Communist.’ Raising the hand that held the cigar to emphasise his next words, he went on:
‘Now this you must keep under your hat. And I mean that. As it happens I know a chap to whom I could pass them on with no questions asked about how I came by them. So if you do escape exposure during these next few days, and later manage to retrieve them, bring them along to me.’
‘Oh, I say! That’s wonderful!’ Robbie’s spirits soared again. ‘Even if they’re only of small value, I’ll feel then that I haven’t been through all this awful business for nothing.’
‘Good. Now what do you intend to say to H.E. tomorrow? I mean, about returning here without his permission.’
‘I hadn’t thought. Of course, I shall tell him that I’ve lost my job with the Czechs, and I suppose I could throw myself on his mercy.’
‘You can if you’ve had enough of playing these Gregory Sallust games; but otherwise it wouldn’t be fair to him to ask to be allowed to take up your quarters here again permanently.’
Robbie thought hard for a few moments, then he said: ‘I’ll have to think about that. I may decide to chuck in my hand, but I don’t want to. There’s a special reason why I feel that I must go on until I’ve got to the bottom of this tobacco-oil thing. And, although I had to leave behind the list I made of the places where groups of Czechs are going to start prospecting, I can remember most of them; so I’ve got something to go on.’
Mayhem in Greece Page 14
