In a way, she seemed to ignore him and gave all her attention to me. She poured coffee into a cup, added cream, then gave it to me, a deliberately personal gesture that carried its own intimacy. I was hard put to it to stop the cup from rattling in its saucer.
“Colonel Hakim sent a message,” she said. “In case, as he put it, we just happened to run across you in the islands. He said it was a magnificent gesture and he hoped you never had cause to regret making it.”
“He’d be an unusual man if he didn’t,” Aleko said. “Two hundred and thirty-seven thousand pounds. That’s real money. To anybody, that’s real money.”
I showed my surprise at the accuracy of his figure and he smiled in a slightly complacent way. “I hope you don’t mind, but I was interested enough to have a few enquiries made in Alex. The figure I quote excludes good will. You haven’t any left, I’m afraid. Not in the United Arab Republic, and I’d keep well clear of their waters if I were you. If they ever lay hands on you, they’ll hang you out to dry.”
“Then I’ll just have to see that they don’t,” I said.
Sara Hamilton sat drinking her coffee and smoking a cigarette, saying nothing, and there was a kind of hiatus. We all felt it, but Aleko most of all. He was extra ballast and didn’t like the feeling.
He smiled brightly. “This is quite a boat you’ve got here. I’m impressed.”
I responded because it seemed the thing to do. “The best around for her size. Built by Akerboon about six years ago. Steel hull, twin-screw.”
We kept it technical for a while. I showed him the engines and then we went up top to the wheelhouse and he had a look at the controls.
Sara followed us and sat on the stern rail looking out across the harbour. She had tied a scarf around her head and was wearing sunglasses of a style particularly in vogue that year. Very large, so that virtually half the face was covered. The whole combined to give her a strange remote air.
It was not that she had turned inwards on herself. No, it was more than that. It was as if she had stepped to one side quite deliberately, putting herself on the outside looking in. In some curious way she seemed to be waiting for something, though God knows what it could be and for some reason, I shivered in spite of the warmth.
Aleko offered her another cigarette, As she took it, I heard him ask her in a low voice if she was feeling all right. I couldn’t catch what she said in reply, but she definitely wasn’t pleased.
He turned with that great, fixed smile of his on his face. “I understand you’re making a living out of sponge diving at the moment?”
I wondered who he’d been asking, but let it go. “Of a sort. It isn’t what it was in the old days.”
“So I believe. I should have thought there would have been more lucrative openings for a man of your talents.”
I kept pace with him all the way. “Such as?”
He smiled, a different smile this time, the smile on the face of the tiger just before the kill, but didn’t attempt to give me an answer.
Instead, he said, “We’d be happy to have you dine with us tonight on board the Firebird, Mr. Savage. Seven-thirty, or would that be too early for you?”
I told him that would be fine by me and he said he’d send a boat for me. He put a hand under her elbow and brought her to her feet.
“Till tonight, then.”
She didn’t even nod and they went off along the jetty together. I watched her all the way to the end, the way her hips moved, the slant of her shoulders, the tilt of her head. Strange, but I could tell she was angry about something just by looking at her.
My guts ached and not from belly hunger. No, it was something else I needed—needed and wanted with a fierceness I had forgotten existed.
I went below, got a bottle from my private stock, found a glass and some ice and poured myself a large one. There was a fair view of the beach through the nearest porthole. Several children played tig in and out of the caicques which were drawn up out of the water and there was still plenty of net mending going on.
Aleko and Sara Hamilton came into view walking close together just above the water-line. He still had a hand under her elbow, but quite suddenly, she pulled free of him. They stood there talking for a second or two, or to be more accurate, arguing. Yes, they were very definitely having one hell of a row. She ended it by walking away from him. He didn’t attempt to stop her; simply turned and went off in the other direction.
I sat at the table, gazing morosely into the bottom of my glass. It was very, very quiet, the children’s voices remote and far away, an echo from another world.
“What do you see?” she said from the doorway. “Past, present or future?”
“The present,” I said. “That’s all there is.”
“No future?”
“Not in my line of country. I won’t make old bones as my granda used to say. What happened to Morg?”
“Dimitri gave him a couple of hundred drachmae. Told him to go and have a drink.”
“Enough to keep him full for a week. Very generous of your Mr. Aleko. What goes on between you two?’
“Do you mean how much time do we spend between the sheets? Is that it, Savage? Does it bother you?”
She was still standing there in the doorway, one hand on her hip, the other on the wall. She started to come in and I stood up fast.
“Nothing doing, angel, you stay right where you are. Once in here and anything goes, I’m warning you.”
I emptied my glass and made for the companionway and some fresh air. We came together in the entrance.
“I asked you if it bothered you?” she said. “Dimitri and me.”
She moved very slightly and I got the full treatment from breast to thigh. What with that damned perfume and the whiskey, I was beginning to feel more than a little light-headed and that ache was back down there in my guts again.
I took her by both arms just above the elbows and shook her. “All right, if it makes you feel any happier, it just about tears me apart. A humiliating confession for a man of my mature years, but I stand up on end the moment I clap eyes on you. Distance no object.”
I released her and she stayed exactly where she was for a moment. When she removed her sunglasses, she looked rather complacent.
“Good,” she said. “Can I have that drink now, please?”
“You come in here and I’ll have the pants off you.”
She raised an eyebrow and inclined her head. “Now that does sound interesting.”
There was only one thing left to do. I slid my hand down across the flat belly and cupped it between her thighs.
She didn’t even flinch. “What a technique,” she said calmly. “Now that really must be straight off the waterfront. It has such an air of finesse about it.”
It had roughly the same effect as a stiff right hook from Henry Cooper in his prime. She patted my face and kissed me on the mouth.
“But I like it, Savage. Yes, I definitely like it. A good year, nineteen forty-three.”
She went up the companionway and was away before I knew what was happening. By the time I reached the deck she was already half-way along the jetty. She paused at the end to wave. I waved back, and then she was gone.
I took a shower and shaved and then had a look at my wardrobe. There wasn’t much to go at, which was hardly surprising considering our hurried departure out of Egypt. I managed a clean white shirt and a rather exotic little Turkish silk scarf in place of a tie. Navy linen slacks and an old double-breasted blazer with Royal Marine buttons that had once cost me fifty pounds in a wild moment and still looked as if it had, completed the picture.
In the mirror, I looked about as good as I was ever likely to do. It was all downhill from now on, anyway, I told myself sourly and I went up on deck to wait for my transport.
There was no sign of Morgan which was hardly surprising. On two hundred drachmae the wine would be coming out of his ears. And why not? What else was there for him? Definitely my evening for philosophy.
Hard, tough-looking men. Mountain Greeks from the south by the look of them, with sallow faces and crisp, blue-black hair and alike enough to be brothers. They had the confident air of the professional and looked as if they could handle most situations—but professional what? As we neared the Firebird, the one with the boathook leaned across in front of me and his jersey lifted disclosing a Smith and Wesson with a two-inch barrel in a spring holster at the small of his back.
Which was interesting enough. On the other hand, Aleko was a very rich man and needed looking after. And then there was the political situation. In Greece at that time, anything could happen and very often did.
We came in to the ladder and I found the captain waiting to greet me, resplendent in a uniform that wouldn’t have disgraced the bridge of a Cunarder.
He saluted and said, in fair English, “Mr. Savage, my name is Melos. Would you come this way please?”
Everything was perfection, decks scrubbed, rails gleaming, and the steps down the main companionway were carpeted wall-to-wall as were the corridors below. We went into a largish saloon with a bar at one end. There was no one behind it. Melos asked me to wait a moment, saluted and went out.
I lit a cigarette and had a look round. The paintings on the walls were all reproductions, I was expert enough for that, but there were one or two nice bronze pieces that looked authentic to me. One of them was particularly good. A face mask, blank eye-holes gazing into eternity.
“You like it?” Aleko spoke from the doorway.
He wore a white tuxedo and looked extraordinarily handsome. I nodded. “First century Rhodian or I miss my guess.”
He showed his surprise. “You know what you are talking about.”
I had genuinely caught him off balance. “Not really,” I said. “I tried my hand at archaeological diving for a while a few years back. I’ve seen stuff like this come out of plenty of Roman and Greek wrecks, off the Turkish coast particularly.”
We had a reasonably interesting conversation for a while, talking around the whole subject, about which he certainly knew a great deal, but then he was rich enough to be able to afford that kind of interest.
I suppose I’d been expecting Sara Hamilton to make some sort of spectacular entrance for my benefit, which shows, on reflection, how much I still had to learn about her, for when I turned as the conversation with Aleko started to flag, I found her sitting on one of the high stools at the bar.
She was wearing another of those simple little dresses of hers. Black silk this time, cut in the style of a Greek tunic of the classical period, no sleeves and straight across at the neck. The pleated skirt was fashionably short and sheer black stockings and gold sandals finished things off.
With that pale golden hair hanging straight to the shoulders, she looked marvellous and knew it. The one touch of real ostentation was the pendant she wore on a silver chain, a sapphire so large that I could only conclude that somewhere in the depths of India, some temple god or other was missing an eye.
“Is someone going to give me a drink?” she demanded in that strange harsh voice of hers.
Aleko raised her hand to his lips. “As always, you look magnificent,” he said in Greek, and went behind the bar.
She took out a cigarette and I gave her a light. She held my hand to steady it, only it wasn’t shaking. For a moment, there was real physical contact—real contact. Not something superficial at all. She knew it and so did I. She pushed her hair from her eyes and glanced up at me and there was something else I hadn’t expected—a touch of sadness.
I could have taken her in my arms there and then. She needed me, but Aleko was watching us in the mirror behind the bar, his face pale and tense. He knew then, I realised that afterwards, but carried on fighting.
He smiled as our eyes met, passed Sara a tall glass and produced a bottle of Jameson from under the bar. “I believe you prefer this brand, Mr. Savage?”
“You’ve been checking up on me,” I said lightly. “Why?”
“John Henry Savage,” he said. “Born on a farm near Sligo in 1927. Irish citizen. Joined the British Marine Commandos in 1943 giving a false age. Commissioned in the field. Retired with the rank of captain in 1958. Lack of promotion due to Irish citizenship. A fair summary?”
He waited, the bottle in one hand, my glass in the other. “I could have saved you some time and told you that myself,” I said.
“I’m sure you could. It is, of course, as false a picture as could have been presented and one you put about to suit your own purpose. Say when,” he added pleasantly.
I raised a finger when the glass was half-full, aware that Sara Hamilton was watching gravely. I suddenly realised that whatever was coming, she knew about it.
“All right, I’ll buy it.”
Aleko was enjoying himself. He put the bottle away. “Would you like to know what it says on the confidential file of Captain John Henry Savage? What it really says?”
“Now that can’t have come cheap,” I said. “Admiralty clerks are a notoriously old-fashioned lot and a breach of security of that magnitude comes under the Official Secrets Act as I remember.”
“You crossed the Rhine in 1945 about a week before anyone else. Underwater, of course. You were a sergeant then and that little exploit earned you the Distinguished Conduct Medal and promotion in the field to full lieutenant.”
“Those were the days.” I toasted him and took half the whiskey down in one go. I had an idea I was going to need it.
“Palestine, 1947. The Jews had a very efficient underwater sabotage unit.”
“You don’t need to rub it in. Some of them served with me during the war.”
“You got a mention in dispatches for removing a couple of limpet mines from the keel of a destroyer in Jaffa harbour in the nick of time, as they say.”
Had I done that? How old had I been? Twenty-one? No, that had been another Jack Savage entirely. An eager youngster with Irish mud still clinging to his boots, mad keen to astonish the wide world. And his information was incomplete, thank God. He’d missed the big one.
“More good work in Korea, the odd spell of security duty in Trucial Oman.”
“The tribesmen were restless that year.”
Sara choked on her drink and even Aleko smiled as if he meant it.
“Finally Cyprus. The D.S.O. in 1957. More underwater only this time the saboteurs were the E.O.K.A. variety.” He produced the Jameson and topped up my glass. “And in 1958, you retired and went into the salvage game.”
I turned to Sara. “So now you know. The mail got through. I was a hero.”
“I never doubted it.”
“A most promising officer with exceptional leadership qualities,” Aleko put in. “That is a direct quote. Now why would anyone as highly thought of as that retire?”
I was suddenly tired of playing the game his way and showed it. “Why ask when you bloody well know?”
He put up a hand defensively. “All right, Mr. Savage, so you told a certain British general at a cocktail party in Nicosia who hails, I understand, from that part of Ireland which those who think like yourself still regard as disputed territory, that he was a blue-arsed baboon and not fit to be described as an Irishman. I believe you also added that you more than sympathised with the E.O.K.A. movement. Would that be a reasonably accurate description of what happened?”
“You’ve missed out the bit where I belted his aide on the jaw.” I turned to Sara. “You should have been there. Saturday night at Cohan’s Select Bar with the tables going one way and the glasses
the other.”
“Was it worth it?” she asked gravely.
“I thought so at the time. They didn’t want a stink, of course. I was invited to resign quietly. Did you hear about poor Jack Savage? Been to the well too often, poor devil. Cracked up.” I shrugged. “I got my gratuity anyway. Funny people you English. Always have to do the decent thing.”
“Bred in the bone. It makes us feel superior.”
I started to get up. “All right if I go now. It’s been fun although I’m not sure who for.”
“But we haven’t mentioned your services to Greece, Mr. Savage.”
So he knew after all and for that kind of information he would have needed to go right to the top.
“There’s nothing about any service in Greece during the war on my records,” I said carefully. “I know that for certain.”
“I am speaking about after the war. May 1946 to be precise, during the Greek Civil War. A Communist force was in possession of the old Turkish fort on the island of Pelos in the Gulf of Thermai. In other circumstances the Greek Navy would have blasted them out of the sea. In this case there was an added complication. A general named Tharakos who provided a more than adequate hostage. They threatened to hang him from the battlements if any move was made against them. All very mediaeval.”
“It was a hell of a war,” I said, remembering. “Things could be like that in those days.”
“But Tharakos had the highest possible connections in the government and in any case, it would have been bad for morale if the Communists had been allowed to get away with it. And nobody wanted that, not even the British government.” He smiled gently. “People knew which side they were on in those days.”
“All right,” I said. “So the Greek government asked for specialist help and got me and four Royal Marine Commandos. We landed on Pelos and got Tharakos out.”
“A remarkable operation. Worth a Victoria Cross according to my information if it hadn’t happened in someone else’s war. Plus the fact that it had to remain top secret. I don’t suppose the Russians would have been pleased.”
“True enough,” I said. “But don’t let’s exaggerate. It was the kind of small-scale, cutting-out operation the commandos handled all the time during the war. Nothing very special.”
Jack Higgins Page 7
