Mayhem in Greece

by Dennis Wheatley

  The fact that it was a leaf from Athene’s sacred tree blowing through the open window that had led to his coming by the list of places at which groups of Czechs were shortly to begin their operations seemed to him positive evidence that the goddess was keeping a watchful eye on him. Perhaps, indeed, it was she who had in some way influenced events so that he might remain free to carry on the quest with which she had charged him. If so, and he now abandoned it, he might well become the victim of her wrath. There was also the personal side of the matter. This was the one chance he had to prove himself as good as other men. If he rejected it, no other might come his way, and that would mean the acceptance for life of a shaming inferiority.

  Before he had been sitting there for fifteen minutes, he had decided that he would stay in Greece.

  The next question was how should he set about resuming his mission? Having ‘cooked his goose’ with the Czechs, it was clear that he could not hope to get anything more out of them by remaining in Athens. He must, then, go to some of the places where they were about to commence work, and endeavour to find out what they were up to.

  This idea immediately appealed to him because, although he had been in Greece for a year, he had had no opportunity to see anything of the country except in the vicinity of Athens. During the past summer, he had longed to visit some of the shrines such as Delphi and Olympia, made famous by his beloved gods. However, he had then still been too nervous of having to talk to the groups of strangers with whom he would have had to travel in the long-distance buses used for conducted tours. As he could not drive a car, he had been unable to make such trips on his own.

  This last objection still held, if he meant to visit a chain of places some of which were several hundred miles apart, and yet remain mobile. The railway system in Greece made transit by it from one coast town to another extremely difficult and tedious. It then occurred to him that he could quite well afford to hire a car and driver. To conceal from the driver the true purpose of his journey, he could say that he was collecting information for his book. Some further thought produced an improvement on this idea. It would be greatly preferable to have an educated companion with him as driver, instead of an ordinary mechanic. Why should he not secure a secretary who would also act as chauffeur? When they broke their journey for a day or two, he could give the man some typing to do, and that would materially strengthen his cover as an author writing a book on the gods and their temples.

  By the time he had walked back to the restaurant, he was so pleased with his plan that he treated himself to a half bottle of St. Helena—a white wine from Aechia that resembles a good quality hock and is one of the most expensive wines in Greece—to wash down the squids. Having rounded off his meal with a huge, sun-ripe orange, he sent for pencil and paper and set about drafting an advertisement.

  After much sucking of the pencil and several false starts, he produced the following:

  Young gentleman requires chauffeur who will also carry out light secretarial duties while driving him on tour of Peloponnesus. Good pay, all found. No interviews given. Write qualifications fully to Robert Grenn, British Embassy.

  He had inserted the phrase no interviews given as an afterthought as he feared that, if a number of applicants queued up in the hall of the Embassy to see him, his uncle might be annoyed.

  As there was no point in his getting back to Athens until the newspaper offices re-opened, he spent the next hour up on the headland again, thinking about his book; but soon after four, he was back in the capital, handing in his advertisement at the offices of Kathimerini, for insertion next day in the Personal Column.

  Before returning to the Embassy, he walked down Korai Street with a view to making a swift reconnaissance of the building site in which he had hidden the brief-case, for he was contemplating a return there after dark that night to retrieve it. As he strolled past, the low barrier of crossed poles over which he had jumped proved no obstruction, now that it was daylight, to his seeing the whole of the ground floor. It seemed much larger than when he had crouched there in the dark. There were at least twenty of the square, concrete pillars, and it might have been near any one of a dozen of them that he had hidden the brief-case. Yet worse, since Saturday, the workmen had completed the boarding over of the floor, so, even had he known near which pillar to look, it would have meant bringing implements to lever up the planks before he could retrieve his prize. To attempt to pull up half the floor was obviously out of the question.

  With a sigh, he reconciled himself to the permanent loss of the reports that had been near costing him so dear. As some consolation he recalled Luke’s opinion that, since they contained no clues to the identity of the agents who had written them, they would probably not have proved of any great value to N.A.T.O. Intelligence.

  Dismissing the matter from his mind, he spent a cheerful hour before dinner sorting out his things into those that could be got into two suitcases to go in the boot of a car, and the rest which he felt sure his uncle would allow him to leave at the Embassy until—as he would say—he could send for them.

  While he was so employed, Loadham arrived on the scene and enquired the reason for this disturbance of drawers and cupboards. When Robbie told him, the cadaverous valet shook his head sadly over his young master’s impending departure, but insisted that he should not pack for himself. He had only to put aside, for packing, the things he meant to take with him. Loadham would pack them when instructed to do so and, after Robbie’s departure, take care of everything else.

  This arrangement left Robbie nothing to do after dinner; so, his mind free of worry, he returned to his book, re-reading parts of it with a view to getting in the mood to start a new chapter next day. On looking through the chapter on Jason, he was far from satisfied with it; so on the Wednesday, instead of tackling a fresh subject, he re-wrote the chapter. And this is how it read when he finally laid down his pen that night:

  THE HEROES

  (NO. 3 JASON)

  I’m not sure that I ought not to have headed this chapter THE ARGONAUTS, or even THE GOLDEN FLEECE, because both would be more likely to ring a bell in my kind reader’s mind than just the name of Jason.

  Anyhow, as I have now managed to wedge these romantic words into the first paragraph readers will have a pretty good idea what this chapter is about.

  I have not yet told you about Chiron. He was an old, white-headed Centaur who lived in a cave up on Mount Pelion, which is not far from the coast in north-eastern Greece, and he was looked on by everyone as quite the top tutor of his day. He had the misfortune to die very painfully from having scratched himself with one of Hercules’s poisoned arrows, but before that lots of Kings used to send their sons to be educated by him. In fact his cave seems to have been a sort of Eton of those days.

  Of course they didn’t use books, or not much, anyway, but he taught them all the sort of things that really matter, like being kind to old people, reverence for the gods and sticking to one’s pals through thick and thin. Besides this he coached them in hunting, wrestling, dancing, mountain climbing and how to play the harp and sing, so he must have been quite an exceptional sort of Prof.

  Jason spent most of his youth as one of Chiron’s pupils, with a whole lot of other young Princes; although at the time he had no idea that he too came out of the top drawer. Actually his father, Aeson, should have been a King, but he had come unstuck through letting his kingdom be stolen from him by his wicked half-brother Pelias. This Pelias was a very unpleasant type as given half a chance he would have killed young Jason, so as to make certain he wouldn’t be around to claim the kingdom when he grew up. That is why Aeson hurried little Jason off to live with old Chiron on Mount Pelion.

  Jason soon grew as big as I am and he was very much quicker at doing things. He was a match for any of the others at throwing a spear or scaling a cliff, and he didn’t mind swimming in icy torrents in mid-winter a bit. What is more, he had taken in all old Chiron had told him about never telling people what a fine fellow he wa
s and showing a sort of polite indifference when dishes were put on the table that were his very favourite thing to eat. I hesitate to say so, but he seems to me to have been a bit of a prig.

  At length the day came when Chiron decided that he had turned out a star pupil with no further edges to be rounded off, so he gave Jason the lowdown about his birth and how his father had been done down by Pelias.

  Our Hero at once became as mad as a hatter. He would not delay a single day, but next morning set off down the mountain towards the coast where the kingdom lay that should have been his. After springing from rock to rock like a billy-goat for an hour or two, he got down to vineyards, orchards and fields of corn, but then he found himself facing a rushing river.

  On its bank was sitting an old woman dressed in filthy rags and moaning to herself: ‘Who will carry me across?’

  You and I, dear reader, would have known the answer to that one, but Jason very nearly missed the boat. He looked at her as though she were something the cat had brought in; but, luckily for him, on second thoughts he remembered what Chiron had told him about acting as a good guy to anyone in trouble. Hiding his annoyance as best he could, he said: ‘All right, mother, I’ll take you over.’

  No sooner had he spoken than she leapt upon his back and flung her skinny arms round his neck. Far from happy, he waded into the river, slipping and stumbling and cutting his feet on hidden rocks. She clung to him like a limpet and seemed to weigh a ton, so he came near to drowning and had one hell of a time before he managed to stagger with her up the opposite bank.

  As you will have guessed she then leapt lightly to the ground and dazzled the poor chap by turning into a female sheathed in silk and surrounded by a sort of full-length halo of incandescent light. It transpired that she was Hera, Zeus’s official wife, and what follows is one of the few things I shall have to record to that horrid woman’s credit. She told him that as he had proved himself to be a charitable type, he could call on her for help whenever he needed it. And in this case she was as good as her word—or at least now and then.

  Feeling distinctly pleased with himself, Jason slogged on towards the city, the towers of which he could now see in the distance. However, his progress was slowed up quite a bit because while fording the river one of his sandals had been gripped by the mud which sucked it off his foot. But he was much too tough to let a little thing like that get him down, and in due course he reached the capital.

  Now although Jason did not know it, some years before King Pelias had consulted an Oracle. It had told him that he would lose his kingdom to a stranger who came to him with one bare foot. So it will be readily understood that when Jason presented himself at Court and the King saw that he was wearing only one sandal he nearly threw a fit.

  Pulling himself together, Pelias asked Jason who he was, whence he came and all that. Jason, who was either lacking in imagination or a V.C. type that does not count the odds, promptly replied: ‘I am the son of Aeson, come to claim my rights. Get off that throne or it will be the worse for you.’

  Why Pelias did not call out his Guard and have Jason done in there and then, history does not tell us. Perhaps the prophecy had scared him down to his button boots, so that his mind was not ticking over properly, or he may have had a thing against taking human life. Anyhow, instead of having Jason’s throat cut, he invited him to dinner.

  While they were all having a wash and brush up, the King seems to have got his wits back. He had several lovely daughters so he sent for them and said: ‘Listen, girls. This fellow Jason whom I’ve asked to dine is a heel. If we’re not darned careful he’ll have us all out of here on our ears, and you will find yourselves earning a living on the streets. Fortunately he seems a brainless lout, and you are his cousins, so you’ve got to cozen him, understand? Don’t spare the petting, and leave the rest to me,’ or words to that effect.

  After that you can imagine what happened during dinner. The girls clustered round ‘Cousin Jason’ as though they were bees and he was the honey pot. They flickered their eyelashes and opened their eyes to the widest extent exclaiming ‘Oh!’ when they in turn felt his biceps. And they took jolly good care that his glass was never empty. When they felt that they had softened him up enough they gave the wink to their papa, and he brought on the star turn from the local cabaret.

  This character’s act was a monologue accompanied by occasional twangs on a harp. He told the story of how a Prince and Princess named Phrixus and Helle were terribly persecuted by their cruel stepmother Queen Ino, until the gods took pity on them and sent them a Golden Ram, that was a kind of animal aircraft, in which to get away from her. They mounted on its back and it must have done pretty well a vertical take-off. Anyway the pace was too hot for poor Helle. When they were crossing the Dardanelles she got giddy, fell off and was drowned; hence the ancients’ name for the place, the Hellespont.

  The story went on to the effect that Phrixus managed to cling on until the beast had carried him right up the coast of the Euxine Sea and made a safe landing in a country called Colchis, which was probably a part of what we now know as Rumania. Far from being grateful to the Ram, Phrixus proceeded to sacrifice it to Zeus then skinned it and hung its Fleece up in a sacred grove near what was probably a mouth of the Danube.

  Phrixus settled down quite happily among the Colchians, married Chalciope, the eldest daughter of their King, whose name was Aeetes, and died in the land of his adoption. But the story did not end there. Why the Kings of those days had to be always consulting Oracles, goodness knows, for they never seem to have done them any good. Anyway, King Aeetes consulted one and it told him that as long as he held on to the Golden Fleece he would be all right, but if once he let it be taken off him he would be a deader.

  In the circumstances he did some pretty serious thinking. This resulted in his managing to get hold of—but don’t ask me how—a huge fire-breathing serpent that never slept, as guardian of the tree to which the Golden Fleece had been nailed.

  The harp-strummer then ended on a note of lament. For some reason undisclosed—since Phrixus had been perfectly happy in Colchis and never made any attempt to return with the Fleece to Greece—his ghost would never lie quiet until the Fleece was brought back to the country of his birth.

  By this time Jason must have had a cuddlesome cousin on each of his knees and a third breathing hard down the back of his neck. He was, too, as tight as a tick, otherwise he would never have done what he did.

  Staggering to his feet he cried: ‘Poo’ ole Phrixus! Poo’ ole Phrixus! Can’t let ‘is ghost lie restless in t’grave. I go an’ get Fleece. Jus’ leave everythin’ t’me!’

  I’ve never tried to write like a drunk speaks before, so I can only hope the above will give my readers the right impression.

  Seeing that this great big softie had fallen into his trap, the King led the cheering and the girls all patted Jason on the back. Then I suppose his newly found relations carried him up to bed.

  Next morning he had the whale of a hangover and realised what an ass he had made of himself. He was very tempted to back out, and I can appreciate his feelings because I’ve recently had a somewhat similar experience, except that I wasn’t tiddly when I let myself in for it. But old Chiron had taught him that if a chap pledges himself to do something he is in honour bound to go through with it. So Jason wrapped his head in a wet towel and set about making a plan.

  Living in those parts at the time there was a really wizard shipwright named Argus. Jason got hold of him and had him build a ship out of pine trees cut from Mount Pelion. It was a fifty-oared galley, strong enough to resist any storm yet light enough to be carried overland by its crew. That shows you what a clever old buffer Argus must have been, and it’s not surprising that they called the ship after him, the Argo.

  As a matter of fact not quite all the credit for the light but unsinkable vessel can go to Argus. In the meantime Jason had paid a visit to Hera’s Oracle at Dodona. There was a sacred grove there with a great oak tree in it thro
ugh which she spoke to people. The goddess told him to lop a limb off her oak and have it carved into a figurehead for his ship, then if he got into difficulties he was to consult it and it would tell him what to do. She also asked Athene to inspire Argus with her wisdom while he was building the vessel, so you see he had the benefit of the goddess’s know-how.

  Next Jason ran a recruiting campaign, to persuade a lot of other hard-boiled types to come with him. The other Heroes didn’t need much persuading because by that time getting the Fleece back had become a thing that had to be done for the honour of Greece. Hercules, Theseus, Orpheus, Castor and Pollux, Admetus, Peleus and lots of others rolled up, fifty in all, including old Argus, who insisted on taking an oar. In addition they took Lynceus as their pilot and Tiphys as their steersman. They would have liked to have Hercules for their captain, but as Jason had started all this Hercules insisted that he should have the job.

  When all was set, cunning King Pelias and his girls waved them good-bye. How Jason’s pretty cousins felt about him by this time we are not informed. If he was keen about petting parties they were probably a bit misty-eyed, but their papa must have been chuckling in his beard at the happy thought that he would never set eyes on his troublesome nephew again.

  Putting out from the coast of Thessaly, the Argo crossed the Aegean and anchored off the island of Lemnos. Some little time before, the women of this island had got bored with their husbands and boy friends, so they had killed them all. Thinking it over later, they came to the conclusion that this had been a big mistake. My lady readers will therefore easily imagine how pleased they were when Jason put in with his crew of fifty-odd likely lads. These stalwarts were pretty quick to realise that the gods had given them a lucky break, so from the very first night a good time was had by all. Not having even seen a man for goodness knows how long, the Lemnos girls fairly let themselves rip and spared no pains at all to get the Argonauts thinking that Lemnos was just the place to settle down in for good. Even Jason seems to have liked the idea.