‘Your friend Shimon is going to be fed up again - he’s going to see a great deal of me.’ He smiled benignly at the General and added: ‘Let’s hope he enjoys a good cigar.’
Chapter 4
His emergence was caused by a dog and even then it took three long years before he finally crept out into the light.
The dog was a mélange of breeds and it belonged to Androulla Papadopoulos, who was eight years old at the time and an obedient girl. She lived with her parents in a small farmhouse two miles from the village of Phini, high in the Troödos mountains of Cyprus. Her mother often sent her into Phini to do the shopping.
Almost half way to the village was another farmhouse, set back from the dirt road and surrounded by a low, stone wall. Androulla had been told never to go near that farmhouse for a strange foreigner lived in it. A foreigner who hardly ever went out and, on the rare occasion that he did, spoke to no one except the old woman who ran the little general store - and then only to order his supplies.
There had been much gossip about him when he first arrived, for the village was very introverted and would have been suspicious of even a Cypriot settling from another part of the island. But there was little they could find out. He had bought the half-ruined farmhouse and a few acres of land and spent his time repairing it and growing vegetables and keeping a few chickens. The old woman at the store reported that he spoke passable Greek and that the most regular item he purchased was vodka.
A hermit is always the centre of speculation and suspicion and the people of Phini resented his silent intrusion and decided he was a bad man. The village children were told to stay away from him and for over a year Androulla had obeyed her parents and kept well away. She had not even seen him on his rare trips to the village. When she passed his farmhouse she felt nervous and always quickened her step, glad to have the company of her dog. One day, however, a squirrel had run across the road and the dog had set off after it. The squirrel had sought refuge over the low wall surrounding the farmhouse and, in one bound, the dog had followed. As Androulla stood frightened on the road she heard the dog give a howl and then several more. There came a silence and she was about to run for her father when the foreigner’s head appeared above the wall.
‘Is this your dog?’ he called.
Fright had robbed her of speech but she nodded vigorously.
‘Well, you’d better come. He’s hurt himself.’
The head disappeared and she stood undecided for a while. But she loved her dog and so she had finally walked up the track to the open gate and peered in. The foreigner was near the wall bending over the dog. It lay still and in a sudden panic Androulla ran up.
‘Is he dead?’
The foreigner shook his head and then she saw that the dog’s eyes were open and his tail thumped gently as he saw her.
‘He cut his paw when he landed,’
The man pointed to the blades of a small rotavator lying beside the wall. He was binding a piece of cloth around the paw and Androulla was surprised that the dog lay so quiescent under his hands for it was a fierce dog and not friendly with strangers.
‘Is it bad?’
‘No, but he’ll be walking on three legs for a few days. Make sure he doesn’t tear this covering off.’
He finished and straightened, and the dog struggled up, holding the bound paw in the air. He reached forward with his head and licked the man’s hand and then looked quizzically at Androulla. There was a heavy silence before the man said:
‘You’d better be on your way.’
She looked up at him. His hair was long and he had a beard so she could not see much of his face. She noted that his eyes were very blue and his skin dark and weather-beaten. She was puzzled because he did not look like a bad man, and she knew her dog would never show affection for a bad man. All her fear had now dissipated and was replaced by curiosity. Being only eight years old her question when it came was straight to the point.
‘Why do people say you’re a bad man?’
She thought she saw a faint smile twitch under the beard but his voice was severe.
‘They’re probably right. Now off with you and don’t let him chase squirrels.’
He turned away to the house and she took the dog by the collar and led him hopping to the gate. The man was just about to go through the door when she called out ‘Thank you.’
He turned and nodded in acknowledgement and stood watching as she walked down the track to the road. He stood there for a long time, even after she had disappeared from view.
When Androulla got home and reported to her mother she received a scolding. She should never have gone in there, but come home immediately. He was a bad man.
Androulla was unconvinced and she was stubborn.
‘Why is he a bad man? What has he done?’
Her mother told her not to ask questions. She was too young to know about such things. She was not to go there again, not to talk to him again, and not to ask questions.
When she continued to argue her father intervened, sending her to her room and threatening to beat her if she disobeyed her mother.
So she went to bed and the dog jumped up beside her and licked her face in commiseration and then gnawed at the cloth on his paw. She slapped him on the backside, venting some of her frustration. He did not complain. He seemed to understand.
The weeks and months passed and Androulla obeyed her mother and never saw the foreigner. The dog, however, was under no restriction and whenever they passed the farmhouse it would break away and go through the gate. She would walk on and the dog would catch up a few minutes later, his tail wagging.
It might have gone on like that for years had it not been for the invasion of Cyprus by the Turkish Army in February 1973 and the subsequent occupation of the north-east part of the island.
Part of the invasion plans involved the firebombing of the forests of the Troödos mountains as a diversion to keep the Cypriot army occupied.
So one night scores of bombers swept in from the North and within hours the mountains were covered in flames. The area around the village of Phini escaped lightly, for most of the bombing was on the Northern slopes. However, one bomber, perhaps due to poor navigation, strayed from its path and unloaded its incendiaries in a line less than a hundred metres from the Papadopoulos farmhouse. Androulla and her parents had to fight the fire alone for the villagers were guarding their own homes against the expected Turkish hordes. They were fortunate, for the wind was from the north, driving the fire down the slopes and away from the homestead. The only danger lay in a row of four pine trees close to the house. If they caught fire the house would be threatened. So while Androulla helped her mother to carry buckets of water and douse the surrounding scrub, her father took an axe and set to chopping down the pines. He was half way through the last one when the accident happened. Maybe it was exhaustion, but he missed the open wedge, the axe head glanced off the trunk and bit deep into his calf, laying it open to the bone. Aridroulla’s mother was a stoical woman but her heart almost stopped when she saw the wound.
‘The village!’ she screamed to Androulla. ‘Go to the village - get help!’
So Androulla ran off into the dark with the dog bounding beside her. But she did not go to the village.
Her mother managed to drag him into the house and had the sense to twist a cloth around his thigh as a tourniquet. She calculated it would be an hour before help arrived and so, twenty minutes later, she looked up in surprise as the door opened and a man stood there clutching a khaki satchel in his hand.
It was the foreigner. He had run on ahead of the girl.
At first the woman had been uncertain, in a way protecting her man from the unknown. Her peasant instincts made her crouch over him like a lioness defending her young.
The foreigner took in the situation at a glance. When he spoke his voice was quiet and gentle.
‘Let me look. I won’t hurt him.’
He laid the satchel onto the stone floor and opened the
straps. She could see bottles and metal cases and, on the side, the faded white lettering ‘U.S.A.M.C.’ She could not understand the words and foreigner edged forward, dragging the satchel behind. First he checked the tourniquet and gave her a nod of approval. Then he examined the wound as Androulla came panting through the door.
Looking back on that night Androulla’s mother was to remember how completely he had imposed his authority and how he convinced her of what must be done.
First he had assured her that the wound was not as bad as it looked. Although there was a lot of blood, no arteries had been severed. However; it needed extensive stitching. She had an alternative. Either he could bind it up and they would try to get him to the nearest doctor who was in Platres, ten miles away over the mountain roads, or he would do it himself. He was not a doctor but he had experience in such things. There were other considerations.
The roads might be blocked. Turkish troops could be about and even if they got to Platres the doctors there could be busy for days with more serious cases. He told her that according to his radio there was a full-scale war being fought to the North. She had looked at her husband’s face, eyes narrowed and teeth clenched in pain, and then at the foreigner - into his blue, steady eyes.
‘Do it,’ she told him.’ Please!’
Androulla had boiled some water and her mother helped the foreigner. First he injected novocaine around the gash, then swabbed it out with disinfectant. He quietly explained everything that he did: the first row of stitches, closing the inner flesh - the sutures would dissolve in a matter of days. Then antibiotic powder and finally closing the outer flesh with more neat stitches. Then more powder, a gauze covering and a precisely bound bandage. By the time he had finished the woman was at ease. Everything he had done and said had carried the stamp of confidence and experience. He had helped her carry her husband to bed and left some pills to ease the pain and then, brushing aside her thanks, he had left, refusing even the offer of a cup of coffee. His confidence and composure had seemed to leave him once the activity of his work ended. As he reached the door she had called out to him:
‘At least tell us your name.’
He had mumbled something and left. The woman looked at her daughter and asked’ What did he say?’
The girl shrugged. ‘He said it doesn’t matter.’
They left word at the village and two days later an army doctor drove up and examined the wound and pronounced the stitching to be highly professional. He gave the farmer an anti-tetanus shot and promised to return a week later to take out the stitches.
The brief and bloody war ended when the Turkish army had occupied that portion of the island marked out for partition. All Greek Cypriots were uprooted and, with only what they could carry, expelled to the Greek sector. Apart from the firebombing of the forests, the villages in the Troödos mountains were relatively untouched and life quickly returned to normal. However, Vassos and Helena Papadopoulos and their daughter Androulla faced a continuous problem.
The foreigner had rendered them a service and in their simple and straightforward view of life they owed a debt and wanted to repay it. As soon as Vassos could walk again he visited the foreigner to offer his thanks and an invitation to dinner. The thanks were accepted with a shrug and the invitation turned down. He preferred to keep to himself. A few days later Vassos was sitting outside the village taverna, drinking with his friends, when the foreigner passed by on his way to the store. Vassos called out and invited him to join them, but again he was rebuffed.
Vassos was prepared to withdraw his antennae of friendship but Helena was determined and, being a farmer’s wife and a sensible woman, finally came up with the crowbar to lever open the foreigner’s shell.
One day she baked a kleftiko, a Cypriot speciality comprising baby lamb, vegetables and an intriguing mixture of herbs. She was justly famous for her kleftiko and on this one she lavished special care. All day it simmered slowly in the oven then, just before sunset, she ladled it steaming into an earthenware pot and despatched it with Androulla down the road. ‘If he refuses that,’ she said to Vassos, ‘then he’s no man!’ Androulla approached the farmhouse with some trepidation. Gingerly she laid the pot on the doorstep and tapped hesitantly on the door. Her dog stood watching with interest. The door opened and she looked up at his face and saw the impatience m his eyes. ‘Yes?’
‘My mother sent this.’ She pointed at the pot. ‘What is it?’
‘Kleftiko.'
‘Take it back. Thank your mother but I don’t want it. I want just to be left alone.’
‘If I take it back she’ll beat me'
His voice took on an edge of exasperation. ‘Of course she won’t.’ Androulla was at her wits end, for she had sensed that this was the last chance. Then she had an idea. She reached down and lifted the lid off the pot. The steam and the aroma spilled out and up. The dog edged closer, its nose twitching. Androulla looked up; later she swore to her mother that the foreigner’s nose was also twitching. She saw the struggle on his face. Then he said gruffly: ‘Well, all right. I wouldn’t want you to get a beating.’ Before he could change his mind Androulla slipped away, calling over her shoulder that she would collect the pot in the morning.
It was the watershed. A few days later Vassos was again outside the taverna when the foreigner passed. This time he accepted the offer of a drink and talked about farming and a little of the invasion and what an exceptional cook Helena was. After that it became a routine. Every week he would go into the village for supplies and afterwards have a drink with Vassos and his friends. They discovered that he knew much about the world and although he was never loquacious, he became a sort of oracle and arbiter of opinion. One step followed another. He accepted an invitation to dinner on Androulla’s birthday and bought her a blue cardigan as a present. Later, during the feast day of the village, he joined in the celebrations, even dancing with the men to the Bouzouki music and surprising the villagers by his expertise. He had to explain that he had been in Cyprus before, during the earlier troubles; but he never explained what he had been doing then or why he lived there now, almost as a hermit. The villagers did not probe. They now respected his reticence and observed with satisfaction the way he slowly emerged from his shell and became part of the community. It was a slow, almost painful, process, like a man with paralysis gradually regaining the use of his limbs. It took three years before he raised his eyes beyond the confines of the village and decided to spend a weekend in Platres and eat different food and maybe talk a little in his own language.
The waiter threaded his way through the crowded tables, placed the huge salver in front of the guest and, with a brief pause to heighten the effect, slowly lifted off the cover. Walter looked down with satisfaction and anticipation. Other guests at nearby tables craned their necks for a better view of what had become a morning ritual. Carefully Walter checked that everything was there as ordered: four fried eggs with the yolks lightly basted; three tomatoes halved, sprinkled with cheese and grilled; four lamb chops garnished with mushrooms; six slices of sautéed liver and a side order of hashed brown potatoes. Another waiter approached and placed on the table a rack of toast, a tub of ice-cold unsalted butter, a jar of Cooper’s marmalade and a jug of chilled, freshly-squeezed orange juice. Walter completed his inventory and beamed up at the two waiters.
‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘And the coffee to follow in precisely twenty minutes.’
They moved away, shaking their heads in awe and Walter settled down to what he liked to call his ‘international’ breakfast;
He was sitting on the terrace of the Forest Park Hotel in Platres and it was, he decided, one of the most perfect places in the world to enjoy a good breakfast. Leafy trees shaded the tables from the morning sun. The vista spread out down the pine-covered hills to the plain and the coast far below. Out of sight he could just hear the piping voices of children as they splashed about in the swimming pool. It was early summer and up there, high in the Troödos mountains, it was delic
iously cool after the heat and dust of Limassol. With the mountains, Walter decided, Cyprus was just bearable in summer. True, his villa in Limassol was air conditioned, as was his office and his Mercedes 600, but it was nice to breathe fresh air and have the aroma of pine cones in his nostrils. He had been based in Cyprus for two years and was a regular visitor to Platres. He had .considered buying a mountain villa but he liked the Hotel with its old-world architecture and charm. In the beginning he had found the kitchen to be barely adequate but his office had arranged that certain delicacies always preceded him up the winding road, and a chef had been brought over from Paris to impart a month’s training. Things had definitely improved.
Another reason for his visits was that Ruth and Duff Paget had a home nearby on the road to Spilia and since that auction nearly seven years ago a friendship had grown up between them and Walter. Duff had been transferred to the Middle East theatre in 1972 and was now one of the most respected photographers in the business. As Walter carved into a thick lamb chop he chuckled to himself about Duff Paget.
He had always retained a slight suspicion about him and, three years before, that edge of doubt had suddenly been resoundingly justified. One of Walter’s agents had rented an apartment in West Beirut in a block close to the PLO headquarters. His mission was to keep surveillance on the comings and goings of the PLO hierarchy and their visitors. By the merest coincidence the apartment below had been rented by a Canadian who worked as manager for a freight forwarding company. Naturally, Walter’s agent checked out all his neighbours and Mossad headquarters reported that this Canadian was suspected of having links with the CIA. Consequently Walter’s agent photographed his visitors as well as those of the PLO. Walter was intrigued to discover that Duff Paget was a frequent visitor, often staying overnight, although he had a permanent suite at the Commodore Hotel. So Walter mounted an operation and, by using a fire in the lift well of the building as a diversion, his people managed to plant a bug in the Canadian’s flat. So it was that Mossad finally learned of the existence of the CIA ‘Equine’ network and Duffs membership of it. Thereafter, whenever he was in Cyprus, Walter always visited the Pagets and his own villa in Limassol was always open to them. It was not just a matter of snooping: he genuinely liked the young couple and much appreciated Ruth’s talent at cooking Jewish food.
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