Instantaneous recall is the psychologist’s term for it, just like the events of a lifetime flitting through a drowning man’s mind in a matter of seconds. It took something of an effort to bring me back to reality. To the present that was the sumptuous lounge of the Firebird. To Sara Hamilton and Aleko.
I turned to her and said, “All right, I’ll buy it. What’s it all about?”
“He’d like you to do a repeat performance. For money this time.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars, Captain Savage,” Aleko said calmly. “Paid into a Geneva account.”
It was beginning to take on all the qualities of a privileged nightmare. He produced the Jameson, one eyebrow raised, and I pushed my glass across.
“I think I’d better,” I said.
“May I start by asking what your attitude is towards the present regime in Greece, Captain Savage?”
It was captain all the way now. We had moved to a room next to the saloon that he obviously used for business judging by the Queen Anne desk and the filing cabinet and telephone.
“I don’t have one,” I said. “Politics don’t interest me. I’ve had a bellyful or hadn’t you noticed? So you’ve got a military junta running things and they don’t like the mini skirt. I’ve been in worse places than Greece, believe me.”
“Political prisoners by the thousand, the educational system used as a weapon to indoctrinate children, the Left almost stamped out of existence. Come now, Captain Savage, does this sound like the home of democracy?”
“Nothing is ever that simple,” I said. “I was here during the civil war, remember. The worst things I’ve seen anywhere in war I saw in Macedonia when I was with our military mission. I’ve seen whole villages wiped out by the Communists—women, children, even the bloody animals. People don’t forget that kind of thing.”
“So, you are a fascist by persuasion?”
Which was such a stupid remark that it was hardly worth answering, but I tried.
“I’m John Henry Savage—me, no one else,” I said. “I don’t take sides.”
And as always with him, he did the unexpected. He smiled, looking extremely satisfied. “Excellent, Captain Savage, a first-rate mercenary who knows what he’s about is worth ten idealists any day of the week.”
Sara sprawled in the big leather chair in the corner, legs outstretched, head back. She was smoking, eyes closed, as relaxed as a black cat and yet alert to everything that was said. Her eyes gleamed for a moment beneath the dark lashes, an unspoken communication. When I turned, Aleko was watching me, that strange, set look on his face.
“I don’t think I’ve met a revolutionary millionaire before,” I said. “Who are you working for? The D.D.?”
“The Democratic Defence are not having a great deal of success,” he said, “and the Patriotic Front aren’t doing too well either. No, I represent a rather more powerful organisation. Many are men like myself. Their names would surprise you. Industrialists, shipping magnates, politicians, artists. Men who are leaders in various walks of life. All brought together in the common cause. The fight for democracy in my unhappy country.”
Words, empty words mouthed by fanatics on both sides while the ordinary people in the middle got squeezed.
“An interesting list,” I said. “Greek military intelligence would give a lot to get hold of it, if it existed.”
He straightened in his chair, his face suddenly rather pale. “But it does, Captain Savage, which is the purpose of the exercise, as they say.”
And now it was getting interesting. There was a large map of the Eastern Mediterranean on the wall behind him. He stood up and turned to it.
“About four weeks ago there was a meeting of certain interested parties at a village near Pilos in the Peloponnese. As a result of that meeting, a list of over two hundred prominent men hostile to the present regime was compiled. A list which the headquarters of the organisation, which operates from Crete, needed badly if they were to be able to plan the overthrow of the present government with any certainty. The list was entrusted to a special courier, a man named Apostolidis, who carried it in a briefcase chained to his wrist. He was flown out by night from a private airstrip near Pilos. The plane was a Piper Aztec and the pilot a young man named Andreas Pavlo.”
“The briefcase doesn’t sound much of an idea to me,” I said. “I’d have thought they could have done better than that.”
“An explosive device in the lock ensured its destruction if the wrong person attempted to open it.”
“Along with Apostolidis?”
“He was what one would term a dedicated revolutionary.”
“I see. So he didn’t make it?”
“Unfortunately the Aztec had engine trouble in a heavy rainstorm somewhere off the coast of Crete. It seems that Apostolidis was either killed or knocked unconscious in the crash. In any event the plane sank almost immediately and he was still inside the cabin. Pavlo only just managed to get out himself.”
“Then what happened?”
“He drifted round in a dinghy for a couple of days which didn’t help his general condition. He was finally picked up by a fishing boat which took him into the nearest island at once. He was delirious and apparently dying.”
“Which brought the police into it?”
“Unfortunately for Pavlo there isn’t a police station in Greece which doesn’t have a poster on him. They’ve been snapping at his heels for a year or more now.”
“And down came the bright boys from Athens in a hurry? Where is he now?”
“They took him to the political prison on Sinos. There is a small hospital there.”
“And do they know what he was up to? About Apostolidis down there in the Aztec off Crete somewhere with that briefcase chained to his wrist?”
“Not yet.” He shook his head. “That will come later when they start to squeeze him. I understand it was touch and go for a while. He almost died on them. A broken arm, smashed ribs, a punctured lung.”
I nodded slowly, thinking about it all very carefully. “One thing I really don’t understand. How did you manage to find out in such detail what happened when the plane went down?”
He smiled gently. “The mate of the fishing boat that picked him up after his two days in that dinghy. Pavlo had said a great deal in his delirium in the man’s hearing—things which he had kept to himself.”
“Why?”
“Partly out of fear, I suppose. Like most ordinary people he just didn’t want to be involved in this kind of thing.”
“And you persuaded him to change his mind?”
“For a consideration.”
“And now you want me to get Pavlo out?”
He nodded eagerly. “I have certain contacts on Sinos. Naturally, I can’t disclose who they are even to you, but it means that I can furnish any necessary information. I have maps, plans. I can show you exactly where Pavlo is, who is guarding him.”
He opened a door in his desk and started to take out a rolled-up map. I said, “Don’t bother, I don’t want to see it.”
There was genuine shock on his face as if he realised at once that I really meant it and his American accent slipped a little, the Greek peasant poking through.
“But compared to the Pelos affair this would be a picnic.”
“You’re a businessman, Aleko,” I said. “And unless I miss my guess, you got where you are today by following one golden rule. Buy cheap, sell dear. If you’re willing to offer me twenty-five thousand to go in after Pavlo, then it’s worth a lot more than that and if it is, then it’s too damned hot for me.”
He leaned across, hands flat on his desk, frowning at me. “All right. I’ll make it thirty thousand.”
“Apparently you didn’t get the message,” I said. “I’m just not interested. I’ve got my health and the boat. That’s a whole lot better than being dead.”
He gave a sudden, sharp laugh as if making a discovery. “By God, I see it now, Savage. You’ve lost your nerve.”
“Th
at’s it exactly,” I said cheerfully. “Frightened to death.”
Sara stood up and yawned. “You know there are times when you’re four different kinds of a fool, Dimitri. Now can we eat, please?”
“Not me,” I said. “I’ve suddenly lost my appetite for the finer things.”
“All right,” she said. “Give me five minutes to change and I’ll meet you on deck. You can show me the sights.”
She went out quickly and Aleko stood glaring at me, his face whiter than ever, a muscle working in his right cheek. I wondered for a moment whether he intended taking a swing at me, an unhealthy prospect when you considered the sheer size of the man. I turned and started into the saloon. He called my name and appeared in the doorway behind me when I was half-way across the floor.
“You’re wasting your time, Savage. She isn’t for you.”
I turned to face him. “Your opinion, not hers.”
I started to turn away again. He said, “She’s dying on her feet, Savage. A little bit more each day.”
“Aren’t we all?”
I tried to sound flippant, but the coldness was there in my belly and my heart began to pound and it was going to happen, whether I liked it or not, whatever it was he was going to tell me, the thing that would explain so much that had bothered me about her.
“Chronic leukaemia,” he said and there was a vindictiveness in his voice as if he must hurt, had to cut through at all costs. “Does that satisfy you?”
I struck out like a child does in anger and frustration at the nearest thing. My fist grazed his right cheek, he staggered back against the bar and stayed there, staring at me wildly, making no attempt to return the blow. I turned and walked out.
It was out of this world down there on the beach as darkness fell, a full moon lighting the sky, more stars scattered across it than I had ever seen before. A night when it was good to be alive.
The very thought was a knife in the heart and I glanced at her briefly. She had changed into a linen skirt and white sweater and had tied her hair back with a ribbon. It was the first time I’d seen her really look her age and suddenly, the whole thing, the sheer blind pity of it, swelled up inside, threatening to choke me.
I lit a cigarette hurriedly, offered her one as an afterthought. She refused and we moved on past the boats, leaving the harbour behind, following the white strip of sand leading towards the cliffs.
“You still haven’t told me your interest in all that back there,” I said, “or are you simply trying to be a latter-day Lord Byron?”
She shook her head. “Dimitri took me into his confidence, that’s all. I’ve known what he was up to for some time now. All this political nonsense of his. He wanted my opinion about you—about how I thought you’d react to his offer.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Pretty accurately.” She laughed. “I didn’t think you’d be hungry enough and I was right.”
“So you don’t think I’m just too scared?”
“You’d be a fool if you weren’t. Like you said, you’ve got your health and the boat and that’s a whole lot better than being dead.”
“He’ll hang himself,” I said. “You know that, don’t you? Sooner or later they’ll catch up with him.”
“I know and I sometimes think he does. God knows why he’s doing it. Something that happened in his youth, I think. He lived in a village in the Peloponnese in the mountains. His mother and father and two sisters died in the fighting when the soldiers came. He won’t talk about it, but he has this thing about the military.”
She was surprisingly cheerful and took off her sandals to walk in the shallows. “But you—you surprise me, Jack Savage. Whoever heard of an Irishman who wasn’t interested in politics.”
“They killed my father,” I said. “He lived and breathed for Ireland. When he was sixteen he was out in the Easter Rising. Three years later he was carrying a gun for Michael Collins. By the time he was twenty-one he’d lost count of the men he’d killed and all for the Cause. Always the Cause.”
“How did he die?”
“He was a Republican to the last. Fought for the I.R.A. in the Civil War after your lot were kicked out. Refused to surrender even when De Valera called it a day. He spent his whole life on the run one way or another. They caught him at my mother’s place. She had this farm near Sligo that her uncle left her. The officers in charge of the soldiers were all men who’d fought alongside him over the years.”
“And they killed him?”
“He wouldn’t stay inside because of my mother and the children. I was a babe in arms at the time. Anyway out he went a gun in each hand, shouting “‘Up the Republic.’” They wanted to take him alive. There were young men there to whom he’d been a name over the years, a legend, but he was too good with a gun thanks to Mick Collins. Shot two of them stone dead so they emptied a Lewis gun into him.”
“And that put you off politics?”
“At a very early age. Oh, I was raised on the hero bit. We had his photo on the mantel with a rosary hanging from the frame and a candle always on the go. My mother never let that candle out. She loved him till the day she died. Poor lass, she had a hard time finding it in her heart to forgive me for joining the bloody British Army.”
“But she did?”
“In the end.” I hesitated, aware of something that had to be said. “It isn’t that I hate him or the memory of him and the things he did. A man has to do what is right for him, I know that. It’s just that I think we needed him a damned sight more than that God-almighty Cause of his.”
She reached up to touch my face. “Poor Savage, you love him like hell, always have done and it hurts to admit it.”
And that was the plain truth of it. “Something like that,” I said.
“No more sad songs now. It’s too beautiful. Far too beautiful.”
We were almost at the cliffs now, the boats far behind us. The night was warm, the slight breeze perfumed. She paused, her hip touching me, and I put an arm about her waist. She looked up and I kissed her gently.
She pulled away and turned in a circle, arms outstretched. “Oh, but I feel good. I feel alive. A hundred percent alive.”
She stood there, hands on hips, smiling at me. “You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to celebrate being alive. We’re going for a swim and then I’m going to let you make long and very slow love to me.”
Her hands were already at the zip on the side of her skirt. As she stepped out of it, I said quickly, “I don’t think you should, Sara. It’s damned cold out there when the heat of the day has gone. It wouldn’t be good for you.”
She went very, very still, standing there in the moonlight, the skirt in her left hand.
“You know,” she whispered. “You know. But how?”
“Aleko,” I said.
The language that erupted in one vicious deadly stream was as bad as I’d ever heard in any barrack room or water-front saloon. She stepped into the skirt and zipped it up quickly.
“Listen to me, Sara.” I reached for her. “Just a minute.”
She sent me back with a stiff right arm. “Not pity, Savage. Do you really want to know what I was after? You, all the way, and you wanting me. To be possessed, to feel you inside me, one instead of two, something warm against the darkness. And you didn’t even need to love me. I could have taken that as long as the part of me you did want, you wanted honestly and truly. But not now—now, it’s all spoiled. Now, I could never be sure it wasn’t out of pity and I’ve too much pride for that.”
She turned, then, running through the moonlight, and disappeared into the shadows. I didn’t go after her.
If Aleko had been there or anywhere within striking distance, I think I’d have taken a knife to him, so great was the anger I experienced after she had gone. Anger at the world, at life and the sheer, senseless cruelty of it, but most of all, anger at Aleko. It was as if he was somehow responsible, which was absurd for it was better to know, whatever Sara thought. Better for h
er—better for me.
But now more than anything, I needed a drink and I walked back along the beach towards the harbour. Someone had lit a fire of driftwood beside the boats. They were cooking lobster from the smell of things. There was laughter, a young girl of sixteen or seventeen ran past me, a boy of around the same age hot in pursuit.
They didn’t notice me in the darkness, and I stood there for a moment watching the group at the fire, feeling completely apart and outside of things and lonely.
And then I thought of her and realised, quite suddenly, that this was how Sara must have felt. With people, yet apart from them, branded clean to the bone with no possibility of escape. Alone—really alone.
I hadn’t cried since I was a boy in short pants. My grandfather’s funeral. Rooks lifting out of the trees like black rag bundles, calling to each other through the heavy rain. Father Fallon’s clear gentle voice, the rattle of the soil that we threw in one after the other.
A long time ago. Strange, but the same lump the size of my fist threatened to choke me now and my eyes were stinging. There was the Celt in me if you like and I turned and stumbled away through the darkness.
I could hear the bouzoukis, plaintive in the night as I turned on to the waterfront and approached Yanni’s. The door was wide, light flooded out across the tables on the front terrace and most of them were occupied.
Inside, it was at first sight a typical waterfront taverna with stone floor, whitewashed walls, beamed ceiling and the food being cooked on the spot in copper pans over charcoal in a kitchen area on the left. The resemblance ended there as the prices indicated.
It was about half-full for it was early in the season for tourists, but there were a couple of dozen in there, mainly German from the sound of them and most of them were women of the well-preserved variety or perhaps mature would be a kinder word. Typical products of a class to be found in most countries. The ones who have everything and who find, in the final analysis, that they have nothing.
If they were looking for excitement, they’d come to the right place. There was an atmosphere about things in there that night. I could sense it in the laughter from the rougher element who kept to the tables on the other side of the small dance floor. Fishermen, and sponge divers in the main, they were wholly Greek for the Turks had still not returned in substantial numbers. The few who did work these waters stayed clear of Yanni’s to avoid trouble, except for Ciasim Divalni, who was very much a law unto himself, feared nothing on top of earth and didn’t think much of anything Greek at the best of times.
Jack Higgins Page 10
