Greek Fire

by Winston Graham

  The moon was full. They had stopped in a side road. A low wall bordered it, with pine trees on one side and on the other the sea. Low jagged rocks hemmed in the narrow mouth of the bay. Every now and then in the distance a lighthouse winked. A flock of dark sea-birds was winging silently across the sky.

  In the lane a few yards ahead of them an old Buick was parked. Two people were standing beside it. Gene recognised them at once as Jon Manos and Anya.

  Getting to her he almost forgot the pain in his side. She did not come to meet him. Kolono followed close behind, and in a minute the four were grouped together out of earshot of the soldier standing beside the ambulance. No one seemed to want to be the first to speak.

  Then Kolono said: “Well, here he is.”

  Manos said: “ Do you agree that our part of the bargain is now fulfilled?”

  Anya said: “It will be when he reaches Paris.”

  “Anya,” Gene said.

  “Is your—wound bad?”

  “No, nothing. Why are you here? What is this arrangement?”

  Anya’s voice sounded tired and hoarse. The colours and of their last two days together had quite gone from it.

  She said: “I want five minutes with him alone.”

  Manos said: “Be hanged to that. Get him on the boat.”

  She said; “I want five minutes with him alone.”

  “No!” said Kolono. “Anything you say must be said in front of us.”

  After a minute Anya said: “ I have made a bargain with these gentlemen, Gene. For a certain consideration they are prepared to see you out of the country. That is all. It is as simple as that.”

  “I don’t understand you,” Gene said.

  “You did not finish reading the letters from Anton Avra to George Lascou?”

  “No, I thought you’d burned them.”

  “In the haste that first evening I put them between the music inside the piano. After you left I couldn’t remember at first—then I found them. In the last two letters there were other names mentioned besides his own. Six names in all. Two are here with us tonight.…”

  “And?”

  “I realised the letters were still not quite useless. I took them to the Bank of Greece. They are now in its vaults with instructions that in the event of my death—or yours—they are to be delivered personally to the editor of Aegis.”

  Gene leaned against the wall. In the reaction and in his weakness the importance of what she said kept escaping him. He would grasp it and then it would slip away from him.

  “Anya—”

  “Come, we’ve wasted long enough,” said Manos coldly. “The boat is waiting.”

  Gene did not move. Some machinery of warmth had begun to work, but surrounding it was a block of ice in which all his ordinary feelings were still congealed. He tried to shake himself free of it.

  “And what happens to the letters when I reach Paris?”

  “They stay where they are,” said Anya.

  “And you?”

  “I too stay where I am.”

  The birds were winging overhead again, wheeling round as if disturbed in their privacy.

  “So that’s it,” Gene said. “Then I’m not going.”

  For the first time Anya moved and be saw her expression there had been hard bargaining and a hard fight and it had left its mark; in the moonlight her face looked drained of blood but not of feeling.

  She said: “ It is a fair arrangement, Gene. Otherwise they will not play their part.”

  “What difference would it make?”

  “They do not trust you, my dear. I will stay as their security.”

  “Come if you are coming,” said Manos impatiently. “We are not on a deserted island.”

  Gene said: “ Is there more behind the bargain than this?” He looked at Manos.

  Anya took his arm. “ There is nothing more. I promise you. Can you not believe that?”

  “Normally. But in this this case I …”

  Manos turned on him. “Listen, man; you’re lucky to have had this woman to fight for you! Well, now we have fought it out, round a table for five hours, while you were lying in your bed in Nafplion. You were not consulted in this and you are not being consulted now!”

  “That’s what you may think——” Gene stopped because Anya was pulling at his arm.

  Manos said: “ For a certain consideration we are prepared to pay. We are prepared to pay by misrepresenting the evidence in this case to make it appear that George Lascou was murdered by Philip Tolosa, who committed suicide on the following day. In doing this we are taking a considerable risk. In particular Major Kolono is risking his whole career. If this goes through you will be free, completely free. But we do not trust you. Once this case is closed we shall have no further hold on you. Well, you have your hostage, these letters. We shall have our hostage, this woman, who has worked in our midst all these years.”

  “And d’you think I’m willing to get out on those terms?”

  “You’ve no choice.”

  “If Anya joins me in Paris——”

  “If she were to join you in Paris, what guarantee would we have that you would not at once give an interview to the reporters? Your word? It’s not worth a spit. But if Anya stays here, then if you have any care for her safety, as she says you have, you dare not talk because of what we would do to her. The bargain has been struck. Now get out and never come back.”

  Quietly but insistently Anya began to move him towards a break in the wall where a path led down to the beach. Kolono turned to speak to the soldier, and Manos momentarily turned with him.

  She said: “Gene, it’s the only way.…”

  “But it’s impossible——”

  “I tell you it’s the only way! Later——”

  “What other conditions are there? You—Manos?”

  “No. I am quite free so long as I stay here——”

  Just before the others caught up with them he felt her slip a small package into his pocket. They went on. The moon was still low and the moonlight only caught one edge of the bay like a bar sinister on a crusader’s shield. A fishing boat moved quietly at a jetty even smaller than the one on Bourtzi. A man swung along the deck, strap-hanging by various ropes attached to the mast. The sea was quiet.

  Anya’s hand was on his arm. He held it to him, his mind tingling from the impact of her last action—groping, trying to see its way.

  To gain time he said: “And how long has this—bargain to last?”

  “Five years, ten years,” said Manos venomously. “ What does it matter?”

  “It matters everything——”

  “Listen, Gene,” said Anya, squeezing his arm warningly. “We have fought this out and fought this out. You must see their position. Talk from you in Paris would still damage even with no proof. Accusations from me would be much worse. After all I was George Lascou’s mistress. Until the election’s over they must keep us quiet. After that, each month that passes will slightly reduce the harm we can do by talking. As George is—is forgotten, so anything connected with him will have less news value. The letters will always remain just as dangerous for them, but our unsupported word will carry less and less weight. In time—”

  “But how much time?”

  “We cannot decide that now. But perhaps—though I don’t want it—some interval is the right answer for us. In that way we can prove something to ourselves.” She stopped. “ But that is for the future. I believe, if it is everybody’s wish, a settlement can be arranged. They cannot feel safe with the Avra letters still in existence. I might die accidentally and then exposure and ruin would come for them. Sooner or later we can make some arrangement for the exchange of the letters. And part of that arrangement could be that we can come together again—if you are still of the same mind.”

  “I haven’t any other. Believe that.”

  She said: “It will be for you to choose.…”

  “If you are going,” said Manos, “ get on that boat. Otherwise the barga
in ends here and now.”

  Anya said: “Jon, our bargain stands. But he must reach Paris in safety. These men will look after him?”

  “Of course they’ll look after him——”

  “I promise you,” she said, “ if this man dies, you and your friends will go before a military court on charges of treason within a week.”

  “Here!” called Manos angrily to the boat. “Here’s your passenger.”

  One of the two figures on the boat stepped on to the jetty and came down to meet them.

  Anya said: “Gene, write.…”

  “Writing won’t be enough.”

  “But it will help—for a time. And remember—I have done what I can. It is now for you to choose as you think best.”

  She had said it twice. He had to answer. Picking every word with care, for every word must carry its message to her and not to them, Gene said: “ You must realise that if it comes to me to choose, I am not interested in these men and what their past histories were. They are small fry. George Lascou was the only real threat to Greece, and that threat is gone.”

  She said; “Yet I have tried to—what is the expression you would use?—to put the ball back at your feet. That is how it should be. Never forget that you have freedom to change your mind.”

  “Never forget,” he answered, “that I shall never change it. There will be no conflict over that. I am not interested in these men.”

  Manos was listening suspiciously. The sailor took Gene’s arm. Gene made a pretence of trying to free himself. But his next words were not spoken in pretence. “ To leave you here like this with such men——”

  “I have been in the company of such men all my life.”

  “I know. But there must be some other way——”

  Anya said: “If you refuse to go you will be taken on board. This far I am quite prepared to—arrange your life.”

  The sailor’s grip tightened. So did Anya’s for a moment and her cold soft lips brushed his cheek. Then her fingers sharply relaxed as if quick now to have done with the moment of parting. He let her fingers fall one by one. Then she was a foot away. Then she was standing between the two men, the moon shining on her face. Then she was one of three figures in the distance.

  Gene sat crouched over the gunnel in the stern of the boat. He fingered the Avra letters she had given him but did not take them out. The strong smell of petrol came up to him as the old four-cylinder motor began to chug its way out to sea. A sail flapped above him but as yet caught no wind. They’d gone, the two men, but she still stood there. He raised a hand, hardly capable of the gesture because, whatever the promise for the future, however much through her great courage it might now lie again in his hands, this was for the present a gesture of good-bye. He did not expect her to see it, but she saw it and waved back. Then after a few minutes he could no longer see her figure but only a mark on the beach which would have moved had she moved. He persuaded himself of this long after his eyes could see nothing against the dark land.

  They reached the entrance of the bay. The opening was only thirty feet. They slipped through like some slow-moving aquatic animal avoiding the claws of a crab. The sail flapped above his head and the boat listed gently, quivering with a different and more sensitive life. On the port beam a lighthouse winked. A few lights showed here and there round the ancient coast, but ahead it was quite dark.

  A hand touched his shoulder.

  “Come below, sir,” said the sailor. “ We’ve orders to see you come to no ill.”

  Copyright

  First published in 1957 by Hodder & Stoughton

  This edition published 2013 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-5529-1 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-5528-4 POD

  Copyright © Winston Graham, 1992

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