After dinner that evening they followed the same routine of sharing a table in the ballroom with the lively, talkative, somewhat inquisitive Mr. Mahogany Brown. Robbie found it beyond his powers to hide the depression into which Luke’s letter had plunged him. It seemed that there was now no more that he could do, and that for him the outcome of the affair was almost certain to be disastrous. His gloom was such that the American kept on enquiring if he felt unwell, and Stephanie, having vainly tried to cheer him up, sent him off early to bed.
He went with reluctance and, having got up to his room, regretted that he had allowed himself to be got rid of. As he lay in bed, he began to be tortured by ideas that, by this time, Stephanie and Henry were out on one of the dimly lit terraces, or perhaps on the beach, and that she was letting him make love to her.
Suddenly he decided that, although he was not her husband in fact, he was in name, and that he would no longer put up with playing second fiddle to this American interloper. He would take him aside the following morning and tell him in no uncertain terms that he, Max Thévanaz, found Mr. Mahogany Brown’s attentions to Madame Thévanaz unwelcome. If Mr. Mahogany Brown wanted a lady to flirt with, he must seek one elsewhere, otherwise Monsieur Thévanaz would find himself under the regrettable necessity of pushing in Mr. Mahogany Brown’s face.
However, on the Saturday morning, the Fates decreed that Robbie should be deprived of any opportunity of playing the role of an exasperated husband. Soon after eleven o’clock, clad in his bathing robe, he was anxiously waiting in the main hall for the papers to come in. A taxi from the airport drove up and a couple got out. As they entered the hall, Robbie gave one look at them and his blood seemed to freeze. They were the English couple that he and Stephanie had met at Olympia, the Jacksons. At the same moment, they recognised him and Frank Jackson exclaimed:
‘Why, if it isn’t Mr. Grenn!’
25
A Trap is Set
‘Why, so it is!’ added Ursula Jackson, as she and her husband came up to Robbie. ‘For a moment, I didn’t recognise you with those dark glasses and your hair cut like an American student. Is that charming Miss Stephanopoulos still with you?’
‘Yes … Oh yes,’ Robbie managed to reply. ‘How … how nice to see you again.’ Meanwhile, he was in agony that the reception clerk behind the desk near which he was standing might have heard him addressed as Mr. Grenn.
‘We returned to Athens the day after you left Olympia,’ Frank Jackson went on. ‘Things looked so bad we had made up our minds to go home; but we could not get a seat in an aircraft for love nor money, and every sleeper on the trains had been booked for a week ahead. While we were still wondering what to do, the good news came through about both sides accepting the Indian offer to mediate. That was a sure sign that neither side really meant to fight so we decided not to curtail our holiday after all, and to put in a week here as we’d originally planned. At first sight, this place reminds me of the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido at Venice. Is it as good as it looks?’
‘It’s fine,’ Robbie assured him. ‘Lovely bathing, good food and the town—the old city—is fascinating.’ Swiftly, he stole a look behind him at the desk. The reception clerk had not been there, but was just coming out from the office behind it. Hastily he said to the Jacksons: ‘You’ll be wanting to register. Julie—Stephanie, I mean—is waiting for me to go out and bathe, so I must run now. I’ll be seeing you later.’
As soon as he was clear of the hall, he dashed upstairs. Stephanie had been manicuring her nails in their room, while waiting for him to bring up the morning papers. Breathlessly, he said to her: ‘We’re sunk! The Jacksons have just come in on the plane! They greeted me as “Mr. Grenn”, and asked after you as Miss Stephanopoulos.’
‘Oh dear!’ she exclaimed, her blue eyes widening. ‘What damnable luck. Still, if they did no more than that, they can’t know that you are wanted by the police.’
‘No; it was obvious that they didn’t. It’s very unlikely that any mention of our business would get into the English papers until I’m actually charged with murder. But my name would be sure to ring a bell with some of the Greek management here, and there’s that damned American who is always shooting questions at us. He speaks Greek and I expect he’ll have read about us in the paper. You can bet that he will be hanging on to us all day, as usual, and we can’t possibly avoid the Jacksons. Naturally, they will go on calling me “Grenn” and, before the day is out, that is certain to be noticed by a waiter or someone. The management will telephone the police and they’ll be coming here to collect me.’
‘Then we must leave—leave at once.’
‘Yes, but how can we—leave the island, I mean? The daily plane for Athens left over an hour ago.’
‘We could move to some place in the town—get lodgings there.’
‘That’s no good. Rhodes is much too small for us to stand any chance of going to earth. The police would trace us within a matter of hours. And once they are on to me, if they don’t pick us up tonight, they’ll have men at the airport to stop us getting away tomorrow.’
For a few minutes they stood facing one another in dismayed silence, then Robbie snapped his fingers. ‘I’ve got it! Today is Saturday. It’s the one day in the week that there’s a flight from here to Crete, and I remember when I looked at the time-table wondering why it didn’t leave till afternoon. If only we can get seats on it.’
As Robbie spoke, he stepped over to the bedside telephone, snatched up the receiver and asked to be put through to the office of Olympic Airways. In agonised suspense he waited until the booking clerk replied to his enquiry. Now they had good reason to bless the war scare. It had so thinned out tourist traffic that the aircraft was almost empty. He was told that he could pick up the tickets at the office at two o’clock. The flight left at ten past three.
They started to pack at once, so as to get out of the hotel as soon as possible. Robbie had some anxious moments while paying the bill downstairs, but neither Mahogany Brown nor the Jacksons appeared in the hall. By half-past-twelve they were on their way to the town in a taxi and, after lunching there in a back-street café, caught the airport bus. Soon after three, they were on their way to Crete.
On this flight the only land they saw was the northern tip of Karpathos, and Robbie’s mind was much too occupied with his own problems for it to drift to the gods and Heroes. His elation at getting away from Rhodes, too, was marred by one unavoidable circumstance. When telephoning for their air tickets, he had realised that the call would be booked to him as Monsieur Thévanaz and, as the hotel telephone operator could hear what he said, he had not liked to risk arousing unwelcome interest in their abrupt departure from the des Roses by giving a different name. In consequence, the booking had left a clear trail behind them and they had no option but to land in Crete as Monsieur and Madame Thévanaz.
He made up his mind that, somehow, he must get the labels off their suitcases when they arrived at the Crete airport so that, when they registered at an hotel in Heraklion, they could do so under yet another identity; but in this he was defeated by the informal procedure at the little airport. There was no bus there; only two taxis, into one of which the four passengers from the plane were crammed, while all their luggage was loaded into the other. When they arrived at the Town Terminal and Robbie had pointed out their bags, a porter asked him at which hotel they intended to stay. He had thought that they would stand a better chance of escaping any enquiry from Rhodes if they went on to a small place, but he had had no chance to get the name of one.
On his replying that he had not yet booked anywhere, the porter pointed to the des Roses labels which had been stuck on the bags, gave a toothless grin and said: ‘Hotel Astir for you. New and very good. Just across the road. You follow me.’
Then he picked up their suitcases, and five minutes later Robbie was at the hotel desk, forced to continue the fiction that he and Stephanie were Monsieur and Madame Thévanaz.
The Astir was not very large
, but was bright and pleasant, and they were given a good room on the first floor, with a private bath. However, when they had had a wash and came downstairs, they were greatly surprised to learn that it had no restaurant; neither, as the hall porter told them, had any other hotel in Heraklion. The custom was for him to give guests a ‘chit’ on which they could eat out, and the amount they spent was then charged on their hotel bill.
As it was by then nearly eight o’clock and they had had only a light lunch, they decided to go out straight away. The porter recommended a restaurant that rejoiced in the curious name of the Glass House, and gave them the number of a bus that stopped on the corner opposite the hotel. He said the bus would take them to the restaurant in ten minutes.
The bus ride confirmed the impression they had formed when coming into the city from the airport that, unlike Rhodes, Heraklion had neither beauty nor glamour. There were ugly gaps between half-ruined buildings, even the main street was full of potholes and, as the bus turned from it along the waterfront, it was still light enough for them to see that for a quarter of a mile the inland side of the road consisted almost entirely of great heaps of rubble. As they soon learned, Heraklion had suffered terribly in the war. First the Germans had bombed it, then, for many months, the British and Americans. Hundreds of buildings, in fact one-third of the city, had been destroyed and, although twenty years had elapsed, the Greeks had been unable, through lack of financial resources, to rebuild more than a small percentage of their properties.
The Glass House proved to be the only building on the seaward side of the road. It occupied a promontory at the end of the water-front and justified its name for, except for that part of the building in which the kitchens were housed, its walls consisted entirely of small, rather dirty panes of glass. It was a big place with perhaps eighty tables in it and a three-man band. Not more than a dozen of the tables were occupied; so they chose one well away from other people and, over a meal of fresh fried mullet, settled down to discuss their situation.
They felt that, had they remained at the des Roses, the discovery that Max Thévanaz was Robbie Grenn would have proved inevitable; but, now that they had left it, there was no great reason to fear that fact would emerge. It was certain that Mahogany Brown would ask at the office what had happened to his friends the Thévanaz, and the Jacksons might enquire there for Mr. Grenn. However, with the large managerial staff at the des Roses, those enquiries might not be made of the same person and, even if they were, might not be linked up. Yet if these enquiries did start anything, the search would be for a married couple who had flown to Crete using the name of Thévanaz. For this reason, Stephanie said she thought they ought both to abandon that name and separate as soon as possible.
Robbie gloomily agreed with her, then began to speculate on their chances, if they could locate the Czech group in Crete, of penetrating the secret that lay behind the group’s activities. But he had little hope in that direction as it seemed almost certain that a view of the site where they were working would disclose no more than had those at Pirgos and Monolithos. It was then that Stephanie remarked:
‘You had your chance to get right to the bottom of things when we were in Corinth. It’s a thousand pities you didn’t take it.’
He gave her a puzzled look. ‘I’m afraid I don’t get you.’
‘I mean when you had Václav at your mercy in that cul-de-sac. You could have screwed it out of him then, by just keeping on gently making more and more of a mess of his face until he had told you all you wanted to know.’
‘But that would have been using torture on him,’ Robbie said in a shocked voice.
Stephanie shrugged and finished the glass of Malvoisie wine she was drinking. ‘Considering that you kept on hitting him until you spoiled his looks, isn’t it rather straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel to imply that it would have been a bad thing to get something out of him while you were at it? Given the same circumstances, he would certainly have tortured you without hesitation. And, you know, seeing how much may hang on this thing, it might even be argued that if he would use torture, and you wouldn’t, he’s the better man as far as serving his country is concerned.’
‘I suppose there is something in that,’ Robbie agreed reluctantly. ‘But what’s the good of talking about what I might have done over three weeks ago?’
‘Because I wanted to see how you felt about it. If you are too squeamish, an idea I’ve had would be of no use.’
He refilled her glass. ‘Well, anyway, let’s hear it.’
‘It is that I should try to get Václav to come to Crete. The fact that he came after us from Pirgos shows how obsessed he is with the desire to pay you out for what you did to him. By offering to betray you to him, I believe I could lure him here. In spite of the fact that he did his best to kill me, I’m not thirsting for revenge. It is simply that I would rather that he had his ears torn off than that you should be convicted of having murdered Cepicka.’
Robbie gave her a wry smile and said: ‘Horrible as this idea sounds, I give you full marks for being realistic. I certainly count my life of more value than your husband’s ears, and if I felt faint-hearted when I came to tackle the job, as you’ve pointed out, I could gin myself up with the patriotic motive. But how would you set about it?’
‘I could write and offer to make a bargain with him.’
‘Say he accepted and came here, what could we do then? It is not enough to lure him to Heraklion. You would have to persuade him to come to some place where I could beat the daylights out of him, without anyone hearing his shouts for help. How could you possibly manage to do that?’
Stephanie lit a cigarette and pulled hard at it. ‘I think the answer lies in these new arrangements we have to make. Instead of your moving to a small hotel, it should be possible for you to rent a little house or, better still, a cottage just outside the city. Then, if I could bring him there, you would be able to tackle him without anyone being the wiser.’
Robbie considered that for a good minute, then he said: ‘If you write to him you’ll have to tell him how he can contact you. Isn’t there a big risk that, instead of coming here himself, he’ll simply put the police on to you, knowing that you will lead them to me and so he’ll get his revenge that way, without lifting a finger?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I know Václav and the way his mind works. He thinks that justice in the capitalistic countries is just as corrupt as it is behind the Iron Curtain. By charging you with Cepicka’s murder, he knows that he will be putting you in a nasty spot; but I would bet any money that he doesn’t believe that, if you are caught, that will be the end of you. Given the same set-up at home the bosses would get you off, and I haven’t a doubt that Václav thinks that here your uncle and the N.A.T.O. people have quite enough influence to secure your acquittal. That is why I feel pretty certain that he would come to Crete if I offered him the chance of quietly putting a bullet into you.’
Again Robbie gave a wry grin. ‘Well, I suppose he might, unless we handle this jolly carefully.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed soberly. ‘Václav is no fool and if he does come it will be with the intention of killing you. That is a very nasty risk. The question is, are you prepared to take it, for the chance of being able to blow sky-high the whole of this secret Communist operation?’
Robbie nodded. ‘As far as I am concerned it’s the last card in the pack, so let’s play it.’
When they got back to the Astir, Stephanie sat down in the lounge to write to her husband and, after two rough drafts, she produced the following:
By now the failure of the police to find my dead body will probably have led you to guess that I am still alive. That is no fault of yours, but luckily for me my elbow caught in the fork of a tough root protruding from the steep slope just above the precipice. Grenn found me there and, at the risk of his own life pulled me up on to the road.
I do not propose to go into my past or present relations with Grenn. It is sufficient to say tha
t, whereas you deliberately pushed me over the precipice, he saved my life. For that, any woman would be grateful. So, when I realised that you would try to pin Cepicka’s death on him, I gave him all the help I could to evade arrest.
However, now that a week has elapsed, I have had time to consider my own position. For a long time, you and I have remained together only because it has suited our individual interests. Your attempt last Saturday to murder me is proof enough that the time was very much overdue for us to part company and, even if you were prepared to take me back, I would not agree to return to you. But I must take such steps as I can to secure my future.
You will, no doubt, have reported to Janos that I betrayed the Party by enabling Grenn to escape from Pirgos, and by later endeavouring to protect him when you intercepted us on the road. That means that, once it is known that I am still alive, I shall be expelled from the Party and, perhaps, black-listed for ‘special treatment.’ Even should certain people not catch up with me, it would mean spending the rest of my life as an outcast. As you well know, I am a Communist born and bred. I could never reconcile myself to living among our enemies. I am prepared to make any sacrifice in order to be accepted again by our own people—even, if need be, to make a confession and submit to being disciplined. But only you are in a position to arrange this.
Knowing your feelings towards Grenn, I offer him to you as the price of my rehabilitation. We are here in Crete and, although we are not living together, I am in touch with him. He has gone into hiding in a place where it would be difficult for the police to find him and, from the time you receive this letter, I shall not go near him; so it would be futile for you to suggest to the police that they should try to trace him through me. But, if you will come over, I can take you to his hide-out, where you could surprise him on his own and do what you like with him.
Mayhem in Greece Page 47
