The Greek Key tac-6

by Colin Forbes

  'Where is everyone?' Newman asked. 'We haven't seen a soul.'

  'Indoors. Resting.' Nick replied. 'Even for Siros today is very hot. It helps. If we see someone out we must wonder why. Who they are. Did you see that old Sikorsky with the blurred markings which flew over the ferry?'

  'What about it?' Newman asked, glancing at Marler, who looked damnably cool and relaxed as he lolled in his seat.

  'A woman passenger wearing dark glasses and a scarf over her hair was checking the ferry through binoculars. I think she was trying to find someone. Maybe us?'

  'Cross that bridge when we come to it,' Marler responded.

  'This is a good place to stop,' Nick went on. 'Then I can get the guns from under the car…'

  He had reached a tortuous turn and pulled up half-way round so they had a view both down and up the street which was still deserted. Sliding under the car, he was less than a minute before he handed Marler his sniperscope rifle, followed by Newman's weapon. Scrambling out from under the car, he glanced round as he dumped a hip holster with his revolver on the front passenger seat.

  'It's all right.' Newman assured him, 'we watched both up and down the street while you were under the car.'

  Nick strapped on the holster while Marler raised his rifle and peered through the sniperscope at a fisherman walking slowly along a jetty far below. Nick slipped on a lightweight linen jacket he kept slung from a hook behind the driving seat. He left it open and grinned at Newman.

  'It will be hot wearing this – but it conceals what I carry. You hide your rifles under that travelling rug rolled up on the floor in the back.'

  'And now?' Newman asked.

  'We meet Spyros who is waiting at the top. He will take us to Mount Ida – to the place where the Greek was murdered during the war. ..'

  They have disappeared,' said Dimitrios. 'One moment the Mercedes is driving up towards us, then it vanishes. What kind of a trick is this?'

  'They're probably parked at the corner of the road down there. Where it turns a sharp bend. That church dome hides it from us,' concluded Christina.

  She sounded thoroughly rebellious. She shook her dark mane, exasperated with her cousins' slave-like obedience to Petros.

  Constantine shrugged his shoulders, irked by her attitude. This was not women's work. Like Dimitrios he was thin and bony and he sported a moustache which curved round the ends of his slit of a mouth. He looked after his moustache proudly: it had made him a big hit with the girls, really rolled them over. On their backs.

  They were perched on the roughcast terrace of a house overlooking the port of Siros. Through his binoculars Dimitrios had observed Newman, Marler and Nick coming ashore from the ferry. It was Christina who had earlier confirmed they were aboard when Constantine had overflown the ferry.

  The house belonged to Petros and was empty. Today was Wednesday. On each Monday a local woman came to clean up the place. Parked in front of the house was a battered Cadillac, paint peeling from its bodywork. Petros had bought it for a song from a man in need of money. The weapons transported aboard the helicopter were stowed inside the Cadillac. Shrubs sprouting blood-red flowers decorated the terrace in large Ali Baba pots. Christina put on her dark glasses, lit a cigarette.

  'You won't need to use the guns,' she told them.

  'We use them if they go near Mount Ida,' Constantine snapped at her. 'You remember what Petros ordered?'

  'Ordered! You are like a couple of puppets he dangles at the end of a string. Harm the Englishmen and everything goes wrong. The police will hunt you down. Sarris himself might come. He only waits for his chance to put you all inside for ever. Then what happens to me? If necessary I will handle Marler, lead him and the others away from where it happened…'

  Constantine grinned unpleasantly, made an obscene gesture. 'Ah! You and Marler. Petros was right. You will do as we tell you to do.. .'

  His left hand gripped her arm. He froze. Her free hand had whipped out the knife from the sheath attached to her belt. He felt its point tickle his throat. Her black eyes blazed with fury.

  'Let me go or I'll rip your throat open. God knows how many women you have had, you fornicator…'

  He released her, stepped back carefully. The fear was written large on his face as she followed him and his back pressed into the terrace wall. It was only as high as his hips and there was a long drop to the paved street below. She rested the point of the knife against his breast bone. He breathed heavily. She was strong; if she pushed the knife a couple of inches more…

  'You will never use that filthy gesture in front of me again,' she told him. 'You will not use the guns. We will find some other way of diverting them. You understand?'

  'Yes, Christina. For God's sake…'

  She sheathed the knife suddenly, turned away. Her expression was contemptuous. As she had always suspected Constantine was a coward. Dimitrios, careful not to interfere – he had previous experience of Christina's temper -stood staring through his binoculars. He lowered them quickly.

  'You were right,' he told her. 'They had hidden behind that corner. Why? Could they have spotted us? Impossible. They are driving this way. We must leave in the Cadillac quickly before they arrive, drive up towards Ida and see what they do next…'

  Nick turned yet another sharp-angled bend in the zigzag road which went up and up. Newman glanced out of the window on his side. Nick was a superb driver: he had missed scraping the wall of a house by inches. They were very high up now and Newman caught glimpses of the sea which was an incredible mixture of brilliant colours -sapphire, turquoise, lapis lazuli. No picture postcard had ever captured this. The car slowed and stopped.

  'Spyros,' said Nick.

  An old hunchback, clad in peasant clothes and with a face like a wrinkled walnut under his wide-brimmed straw hat, sat perched outside a house. He was whittling a piece of wood with a knife. He stood up, adjusted the angle of his hat, opened the rear door of the car and joined Marler.

  Nick drove on as he made introductions. 'Spyros. Sitting next to you is Marler. My other friend is Bob Newman.'

  'I am pleased to meet both of you,' Spyros replied in English and with quaint old-world courtesy. 'You take the next fork to the right when we leave Siros port and climb the mountain.'

  He opened the cloth he had used to wrap the piece of wood and the knife and continued whittling, careful to keep the pieces carved off on the cloth. Marler stared at the wood. It was beginning to take the shape of a madonna. Spyros kept glancing up as he worked, checking their position.

  They emerged from the labyrinth of the port of Siros suddenly. Ahead the road was no longer paved. A track of white dust, it snaked up the mountain which rose sheer above them. Before long they were driving along a ledge just wide enough to take the Mercedes. On Nick's side rose a sheer wall of limestone. Newman peered out on his side and the mountain fell away into a deep precipice. Far below a grove of olive trees spread their stunted branches. Beyond the grove the sea spread into the distance, ink blue.

  'You're sure the Merc can get all the way?' Newman enquired in what he hoped was a casual tone.

  'Spyros would not have let us come if it was not possible.'

  'Good for Spyros…'

  Newman glanced down again and began to feel the symptoms of vertigo. He averted his gaze, forced himself to concentrate on the track ahead spiralling up and round the mountain. At several points there were tracks leading off through gulches in the mountain. Newman would have given anything to tell Nick to turn into one of the gulches – away from the hideous precipice which was growing deeper and deeper. Had the old Greek sensed his fear? Still whittling at the wood, he said suddenly, 'We are very close now. The country will open out. We shall leave the abyss.'

  'And then?' Newman prodded.

  'We shall be at the place where Andreas Gavalas died over forty years ago.'

  The Cadillac, driven by Dimitrios, had taken the other route on the far side of the mountain. Hidden inside a copse of olive trees, they had seen
Nick heading up the seaward road.

  They are going where they shouldn't,' Dimitrios said. 'So, we get there first and wait for them…'

  He had driven like a madman up the curving road with Constantine beside him, a rifle and shotgun resting in his lap. In the back of the car Christina sat tense and silent.

  To her left the ground sloped away steeply but not precipitously. In the distance she could see the white-walled houses of Siros port – looking like a child's model.

  'We turn here,' Dimitrios said and swung off the road inside a deep-walled gulch which snaked between lofty heights of limestone. The wheels bumped over rocks, shaking the vehicle.

  'Why?' demanded Christina.

  'We are now ahead of them,' Dimitrios condescended to explain. 'We will check to see they are going all the way. Then, if they are, we turn round here and go on up the mountain. There is a place where we can look down on them, see what they do.'

  He had stopped at a point where the track widened and turned the Cadillac so it faced the way they had come. He had concealed the car out of sight of the gap at the end of the gulch. Daylight showed and way beyond it the intense blue of the sea.

  'A place where you can look down on them?' Christina queried. 'You are taking your guns with you? Why?' Her hand clawed at Dimitrios' shirt collar as he was alighting. 'What are you planning to do?'

  'You heard what Petros ordered. To shoot them if necessary. Now let go, you treacherous cat. At the end is the other road. We shall see their car pass if they have come this far.'

  As Spyros had predicted, they had left the abyss behind. Ahead, below the sheer wall of the mountain, an area of flat scrubland stretched before them. Nick stopped the car, Newman stepped out, stretched and took another swig from the plastic bottle of mineral water. They had six unopened bottles: dehydration, as Nick was never tired of warning, was the greatest danger. Newman grimaced after drinking, replaced the cap. The liquid was tepid, tasteless.

  The plateau of arid scrubland projected out from the mountain wall, then sloped steeply downwards. A wide deep parched gully led its winding way towards the distant sea. Its surface was cluttered with limestone boulders and pebbles. In winter, Newman guessed, it would be a gushing torrent. Now it was bone dry.

  'Where?' asked Marler in his direct way.

  Spyros pointed to the gully with his knife. The rocky gulch lay about two hundred yards away. Shielding his eyes, Marler gazed up at the towering mountain above them.

  'What in Hades is that?'

  Newman stared up. At the summit of Mount Ida, clinging to the edge of the rock, was perched a huddle of ancient buildings. Built of solid stone, one shallow-roofed building was hanging above another, perched at different levels and all joined in one complex.

  'The monastery of Mount Ida,' Spyros told them. 'From there you see all over the island. During the war the German general, Hugo Geiger, established a lookout unit. He respected the monks. He said someone should live in peace in this frightful war.'

  'Where?' Marler repeated again. 'Where exactly did this Andreas Gavalas die?'

  'Inside the gully.' Spyros pointed the knife. 'I will show you the place…'

  'Not yet.' Marler placed a hand on the old man's shoulder as he began to walk out into the open. 'Everyone back inside the car,' Marler continued, reaching inside for his rifle. He pocketed the sniperscope sight, picked up several spare magazines. 'Go on, get in quick,' he ordered. 'The lot of you.'

  'May I ask why?' Newman enquired.

  'You may. A mile or so back coming up the mountain I glanced down one of those side tracks leading into a gulch. I saw movement, a man watching. He dodged back out of sight. Before you venture into the open I'm going up there.'

  He looked up the mountain which was fractured with deep fissures, some wide enough to allow passage for one man. Newman sucked in his breath at the prospect, thinking of the vertigo.

  'You stay in the back. Bob,' Marler instructed. 'On this side of the car. Keep an eye on me. When I wave my rifle you can go into the open. Only then.'

  He looped the rifle over his shoulder, wriggled his feet in his rubber-soled calf-skinned shoes to test their ankle support. 'If I'd known I'd have brought climbing boots. Can't be helped. I'll cope.'

  'Watch it – for God's sake,' Newman warned.

  'And I never knew you cared…'

  Typical of Marler to mock just before he was attempting a climb fraught with risk, Newman thought. They settled in the car and Newman peered up. Marler was already a good twenty feet up a narrow fissure, finding a foothold on one side, then on the other.

  17

  'We climb up here. It looks straight down on the place,' said Dimitrios as he switched off the engine.

  He had turned off the mountain road, backing the Cadillac into a cul-de-sac. Christina peered through the rear window. At the end of the cul-de-sac a wide defile led upwards between rocky walls. A primitive staircase carved out of the rock led out of sight.

  'What is this? Where does it lead to?' she demanded.

  'The monks made it ages ago.' Dimitrios grinned as he gripped his rifle, opened the door and slipped out. Constantine joined him with his shotgun. Dimitrios thrust his head in through the rear window. 'Christina, you wait here. We're going up to a high point which overlooks the place. You hear shots, we will be back soon after. Then we drive back.'

  'I told you, Dimitrios…'

  They were gone, climbing the rough-hewn steps rapidly, Dimitrios in the lead. They disappeared round a corner. She climbed out of the car, left the door open, ran back on to the mountain road. From the view ahead she knew roughly where she was. She began running, jogging at a steady trot up the road.

  She wore a lightweight jump suit and trainer shoes. As she ran she hauled her dark glasses out of her pocket, perched them on her nose. The stupid cold-blooded bastards. They liked their work: Petros had trained them well. They were true grandsons of the sadistic old ruffian.

  Ten minutes later she was still running uphill, pacing herself. She was close to where the mountain ended, where the ground became flat, spreading out towards the sea on the other side of Ida. Pray God she got there in time…

  Dimitrios crouched down, settled himself in the nest between massive boulders. He perched his rifle in the cleft of a rock, looked along the sight. Three men were alighting from the Mercedes parked at the edge of the plateau. Beside him Constantine aimed his shotgun.

  They were positioned seventy feet above the three men. Both of the Greeks were excellent shots. The place Dimitrios had chosen was a meditation point used by the monks. High above them reared the overhanging monastery. Dimitrios glanced up once, then down again. He was satisfied no one looking down from the summit of Mount Ida would ever see them. An overhang of rock almost completely obscured the view from that height. The overhang was two hundred feet above where they waited.

  'Let them get well out into the open,' Dimitrios warned his brother. 'Then there is nowhere to hide. We can pick them off one by one.'

  'Which shall I aim for?' Constantine asked.

  'You don't. Leave it to me. If one dashes back for the car, he's your dead meat for today. Any minute now…'

  'Andreas was found lying dead somewhere near the top of that gully,' Spyros explained.

  Newman led the way, avoiding the numerous sharp rocks which littered the ground, often almost hidden by scrub grass. The heat beat down on the back of his neck. He tied a handkerchief round it as he walked. It was very still and silent at this height. No screech of gulls. A stillness which was uncanny – and unsettling. He was the first one to hear the sound of running feet approaching.

  Breathing heavily, Christina appeared round the side of the mountain, saw them, increased her pace until she reached them. Holding his rifle loosely in his right hand, Newman stopped and waited, suspicious. What the hell was such an attractive girl doing up here in the wilderness? He didn't like questions to which he had no answer. Nick stepped forward.

  This is Christina Ga
valas,' he informed Newman.

  'Introduce me. Who is he? Quickly!' Christina demanded.

  She was panting from her exertions, her breasts heaving under the jump suit. Newman was careful to keep his eyes on hers. They glowed with life, And she was the enemy,

  'Robert Newman,' Nick replied. 'The foreign correspondent…'

  'And where is Marler?' Christina asked anxiously.

  'Oh, he's gone to deal with a call of nature,' Newman told her easily. 'What are you doing up…'

  'You are in great danger. There are men up the mountain with guns …'

  She broke off as a man appeared from the direction she had come. At least six feet tall, he was clothed in a black robe and wore a black cylindrical hat. A priest. Member of the Greek Orthodox Church, Newman realized. His face was lined with age but he was erect, his movements brisk. He spoke in English.

  'Welcome to Mount Ida. You wish to see the monastery? I fear the lady cannot enter.'

  Newman took a quick decision. The priest, he estimated, was in his late seventies. Had probably spent all his life in this part of the world. Including the period of German wartime occupation.

  'We are looking for the place where – over forty years ago – a Greek citizen called Andreas Gavalas died.'

  'Was murdered,' the priest corrected him gravely, stroking his black beard. 'I was here when it happened.'

  'You mean you saw what actually took place?' Newman concealed his excitement. 'You know who killed Andreas?'

  'Damn that priest. He will have to take his chance.' Dimitrios carefully aimed his rifle at Newman's chest. 'Bull's-eye.' he gloated.

  Constantine knocked the rifle barrel upwards. By some miracle Dimitrios avoided pulling the trigger. He glared furiously at his brother. 'Cretin! Why did you do that? Do it again and I will break your arm…'

  'There is a priest down there,' Constantine protested.

  'So? Since when did you go religious? Petros is an atheist – he brought us up to regard the whole Church as a swindle on the people. What does one less priest matter?'