When in Greece

by Emma Lathen

  Some unknown perversity stirred Walter Bowman. “John, hold it! What if neither of them is safe?”

  Thatcher looked up, a glint in his eyes. “That’s what I’m going to find out!”

  Miss Corsa reentered to the accompaniment of protests from Bowman.

  “I’m going to Greece,” said Thatcher martially. “There’s some method to all this madness! These are not mistakes! This is a deliberate attempt to discredit the Sloan, for some reason or other. And by God, it’s not going to succeed. I’m going to Athens as soon as possible. .”

  “No!” Bowman yelped. “John, for God’s sake! You can’t go! They may both of them be lying dead somewhere! We don’t know what’s happening . . .”

  “Miss Corsa,” Thatcher demanded, “you heard that? I’m. . . .”

  Unmoved, Miss Corsa admitted that she had heard. She did not add that most of the sixth floor had heard as well. Then: “I’ve already made your reservations for you, Mr. Thatcher. You’re leaving at six this evening.” So much for instant decision. Thatcher smiled to himself.

  “If I were a wiser man,” he said, “I’d send you, Miss Corsa!”

  Chapter 10

  The Spartan Boy

  The carload of men pursuing Ken Nicolls arrived at Jamison’s Red Cross station eight hours later than he had anticipated. Their inquiries throughout the earthquake zone had been hampered by bad roads, lack of cooperation, and an insouciance as to the exact number or affiliation of field station personnel which shocked the Greeks to the core.

  “But these Americans are impossible,” wailed a small rat-like man who labored under the name Archimedes. “They have no order, no method!”

  The thick-shouldered, bovine man at the wheel avoided a pot-hole before replying. “What is more, they do not seem to have this Nicolls. So now, we do the Canadians. And then, I suppose, Australians and South Africans and God knows who else! I spit on these Anglo-Saxons!” He lowered the window and did so.

  The quiet voice from the back seat remained unprovoked. “There are no Australians or South Africans on the list of relief stations. And the Canadians only have this one we are going to now. Nicolls may very well be there. He would have no trouble pretending to be Canadian. I understand that they are the same as Americans.”

  “Surely they would ask to see his papers,” said Archimedes. “His passport, his identity card.”

  “Did the Quakers ask for his papers?”

  “But Yanni,” the driver protested, “if these Canadians are the same, they won’t know whether he is there or not.”

  “All the better for us,” Yanni replied calmly. “If they do not notice one man extra, they will never notice one man missing.”

  Everybody in the car brightened.

  Once arrived at Jamison’s the three men almost failed due to the precision of their inquiries. Their description of the famous Swarthmore sweat shirt evoked no recollection. The sleepy men in the back of the truck at the Larissa hospital had seen only a dim hulk hurtling over the tailboard.

  “No,” they said politely, “we have no one of that description in the camp.”

  Yanni persisted.

  “He was a large, blond man. And he was in Larissa the night before last.”

  “Oh him!” they chorused disapprovingly. They remembered him very well. He was an eccentric hitchhiker who did not know his own mind. First he hopped on their truck, and then he hopped off without a word of explanation. They were well rid of him.

  “Where?” Yanni demanded eagerly. “Where did he leave you?” But at this point, Nicolls’ luck came into its own. The men in the truck had been tired, they had slept until awakened on arrival. He could have debarked at any point on the road north.

  The Greeks withdrew with apologies and thanks, leaving a chatter of speculation behind them. Only one man was silent. Jamison had arrived half way through the interrogation. He had many things to think about, but now he paused to think about this.

  “Did those men show any identification?” he asked at last.

  “No,” a helper replied. “But what the hell! This Nicolls is a kook!”

  Jamison remained thoughtful.

  “Something odd going on,” he decided. “Probably none of our business, but it won’t do any harm if the next driver into town gives a ring to the American Embassy.”

  In the car they were thoughtful too.

  “Why did they all have to sleep?” Archimedes complained. “Is that any way to run a relief station?”

  The driver was more reasonable. “They could do nothing in the truck. It was right that they should recover their strength before returning to work. In fact, it would have been wrong of them not to seize the opportunity to rest.”

  Yanni broke in on this interesting discussion.

  “Never mind that now. What I want to know is what Nicolls is up to. If he is trying to get to Athens, why did he join the truck in the first place? If he wants to hide in a relief station, why did he leave the truck? There is no reason for his behavior.”

  There was a depressed silence which was broken by the driver. “You don’t think that the others can have communicated with him?” he suggested hesitantly.

  Archimedes almost bounced in his excitement. “That’s it! They have arranged a contact with this Nicolls. He is going to meet them!”

  The others were not so swift to adopt disastrous conclusions. “Let us hope not,” said Yanni grimly. “But if this is the case, we must find them quickly. Both of them. Neither must reach Athens.”

  But it is not easy to hurry when you do not know where you are going. As they sped southward they debated probabilities. If Nicolls were being directed by Greeks, then he would have been instructed to leave the truck at some small, unfrequented place and proceed cautiously overland to his rendezvous. If he were acting independently, then he would probably head for a large town where he could change his appearance and pick up public transport, but this independence was becoming less and less predictable.

  “He is a deep one,” the driver said judiciously. “Far more cunning than they told us.”

  Yanni bit back a sympathetic retort. The others must continue to have faith in their leaders—a faith he himself was rapidly losing. The leaders had told him to go forth and pluck this Nicolls from the countryside. He would be waiting helplessly and harmlessly as incongruous as a millionaire’s yacht in the midst of a village fishing fleet. And what, instead, did they find? A man who skimmed over the landscape, ducking in and out of relief stations, diving into cities, heading first south, then north; a man who was one minute a respectable banker, the next minute a college boy. He was certainly not helpless. Of more immediate concern, he might not be harmless either. There were several hours unaccounted for in Larissa. Nicolls could be a walking arsenal by now.

  The trip south did nothing to restore Yanni’s confidence. In the small villages, their tale of a lanky American in a sweat shirt was met with blank incomprehension or, more disturbingly, concealed amusement. This could mean anything, from the immemorial contempt of the villager for the city rube to a gigantic conspiracy. At this point, Yanni was discounting neither possibility.

  In Verroia things were better. Busy townsfolk met brusque questions with brusque answers and went about their business. If the citizens of Verroia were to be believed, their town was a cosmopolitan center drawing visitors from all over the world. Lanky Americans were a dime a dozen, relief workers littered every corner. The sweat shirt? No, they did not remember the garment described. But it was warm at midday, many of the young foreigners strolled about in shirt sleeves, carrying sweaters.

  “We will leave you here Archimedes,” Yanni announced. “It is a waste of time for all three of us to scour this town. Pavlos and I will continue. When you are through, take the bus and join us at Elasson.”

  And so through scores of little villages, they made their way to Elasson. When they pulled up in the main square, they headed straight for their first objective, the bus station and the central tel
ephone office. They were tired, thirsty, and exasperated. But they were professionals. As they asked their questions, their eyes roved over the crowds, alert for the first sign of a tall blond American.

  It was therefore not surprising that they failed to notice a short, buxom woman with raven black hair. She strode out of a telephone booth and walked directly in front of them as they questioned the girl at the switchboard. Head averted, shifting the string bag with protruding leeks from one hand to the other, she marched out of the building at the same steady pace, marched across the square, down a street, and into an alleyway. Not until she was within the second-hand clothes shop did she throw discretion to the winds, flying behind the counter to rush up the stairs, fling open the door of the living quarters and cry out:

  “They are here! They have come for you!”

  Greek shopkeepers can be all smiling charm so long as a cash sale is in sight. But they lack any talent for being amused by tales of lost wallets and temporary lack of funds. When Nicolls explained his plight, the woman who five minutes earlier had gracefully bowed out a customer, turned instantly into a raging virago. “It is because I am a widow you think to rob me? It is because you are an American! Oh, shame, that a rich man should stoop to steal from a poor woman!”

  Here she seized on his coat sleeve like a limpet. “But you shall not succeed! I will call for the police, I will scream for the neighbors! Everyone shall know that you are a thief. You shall not steal my clothes!”

  Ken, appalled at the hornets’ nest he had roused, tried vainly to explain. He had no intention of stealing her clothes, he repeated over and over again. Timidly he plucked at her fingers. If she would only release him, he would remove and return her clothes.

  Appeasement got him nowhere. Then he started to bellow. Darnit, his own clothes, now lying on the counter, were worth just as much as this shoddy suit of hers! She could have either set she wanted.

  The shopkeeper was not diverted. What she wanted was the profit she would have made on the sale. Nothing less would satisfy her. It was a matter for the police, she declaimed.

  By the grace of God no other customer had entered yet. Ken, who wanted to slip through Elasson like a shadow, now seemed destined to march through its streets pursued by this screaming fury, with all the publicity of several accompanying brass bands. Stung by the injustice of it all, infuriated by her accusations and frightened of the future, Ken resorted to the truth.

  “Then call the police, you old harridan!” he threatened. “They’re already looking for me, and they’ll want to know what you’re doing with public enemy number one.”

  He had half-hoped that his threat would have some effect. Not many Greeks these days wished to involve themselves in the political troubles of the new regime. But he had scarcely expected immediate paralysis to grip the woman.

  Unmoving, she stared at him, her fingers still clutching his arm. Slowly her eyes moved to the counter taking in the sweat shirt and chinos. Then she let out her breath in a long sigh.

  “A friend of Georgi’s,” she said bitterly. “I might have known.”

  To Ken, it seemed as if he had suddenly put out a thousand antennae, each one testing the currents very cautiously. He did not trust himself to say a word.

  “It is always the same,” the shopkeeper continued, heavily ironical. “A mother is no use until trouble comes. Will Georgi listen to me, will he do his duty and stay here to help me? No, he has to go off to the University, be a great thinker, an important radical. But now?”

  “Now you students are in trouble. And who does Georgi turn to? He turns to his mother!”

  Transcendent satisfaction illuminated her face. It was obvious that this twist in events accorded with some ancient pattern deeply pleasing to her. Audacity, Ken told himself, then more audacity.

  “I have to hide until I can find a way to go to Athens.”

  Seer-like, the shopkeeper nodded. “Naturally.”

  “But they’re after me.”

  The woman seemed to understand more than he did. She unbent indulgently. “I will take care of you. But you students are all little boys. Playing at being dangerous men. And when somebody takes you seriously you become frightened.”

  She clucked maternally. Then with a switch to practicality, she hustled Ken back of the counter. “Quickly. We must get you out of sight. You were wise not to tell me anything until my customer left.”

  Her tone indicated that wisdom, of the most elementary nature, would always come as a surprise from one of Georgi’s friends.

  Incredibly that was all there was to it. His hostess was busy in the shop all day while Ken lurked in her living quarters upstairs. That night he had to fend off questions about Georgi, which he did by saying that their contacts had been limited because of political necessity. During his hours of leisure he had worried about the complexion of Georgi’s political views.

  Was he a communist, an anarchist, a socialist? Presumably, whatever he was, Ken’s safety lay in being his political twin. Years ago, when he was lying in the paddy wagon, he had hoped to avoid a firing squad by pretending to be a bloated capitalist. Now salvation might lie in the opposite corner.

  Which part of the corner did not really matter. It developed that his hostess was a monarchist of the old school. Georgi, affectionately described as a dangerous leftist, might aim at nothing more alarming than a constitutional monarchy. And Mrs. Andreades, God bless her, was a born conspirator. She entered freely into plans for Ken’s escape, agreeing to house him until these could be effected. One thing puzzled her.

  “You Americans! Don’t you have enough troubles at home? I suppose it’s this Papandreou.” She shook her head. “At least I can be grateful that, if Georgi has to go to a university, it was Athens. California must be a terrible place.”

  Ken resisted the temptation to come to the defense of California. Instead he urged the necessity of a phone call to Bill Riemer. To his home, not to the Embassy! There should be no danger of arousing suspicion, if the call were placed by a native Greek with a son in Athens.

  “There is nothing to worry about. The girl at the exchange knows me. I call Athens many times. Not just Georgi, I have business with the tourist shops there.”

  Ken was therefore awaiting Mrs. Andreades’ return the next day impatiently. If she succeeded in getting through to Riemer, many of his troubles would be over. But when she burst in with her alarming tidings, all thoughts of the call vanished.

  “Blessed Virgin! How merciful that I saw them. They will be here in a matter of hours.”

  “You actually saw them? What are they like?”

  “Two of them. Evil men. But there is no time for that. We must prepare for their coming.”

  Ken was slower than his hostess. “But what makes you think they’ll come here?”

  Mrs. Andreades raised fine dark eyes to heaven. “All this education! What does it teach you?” she asked, paraphrasing a question Ken had heard often enough from his own parents. “You walked through the center of town yesterday morning asking directions did you not? The man at the kiosk told you about my shop, did he not? Then the man at the grocery told you how to find the alley. Do you think your pursuers will not find this out? It is only a matter of time.”

  She was right, of course. Nervously Ken surveyed his surroundings. Should he just lie low and rely on Mrs. Andreades to mislead the opposition?

  No said Mrs. Andreades firmly. Already he had lurked aloft for a full day. It would be a miracle if the neighbors had not already noticed. He must be in plain sight, obviously innocuous, a normal part of the background of any Greek store.

  So, when a car finally nosed its way into the alley that was almost too small for it, Ken had a front-row seat. He was dressed in the faded gray suit. A beret covered hair which was now mud-colored and shabby stubble once more adorned his jaw. He was unloading a cart in a side yard, carrying boxes to a shed in the back. Mrs. Andreades actually did employ a handy man, now out on his collection rounds. Any neighbor,
asked about the shabby man in the yard, would testify that he had been part of the landscape for years.

  Ken was happy to see that Mrs. Andreades’ psychology had been sound. The two men who emerged from the sedan spared not a glance for the scene by the cart. They were intent on their errand. Even the length of time they remained in the shop did not disturb him. Mrs. Andreades would not let such an opportunity pass without making the most of it. They had agreed she should tell the men that Ken had bought clothing, describing some feasible but misleading attire. She would then add that he had left in a hurry, saying he had to catch the bus north. With luck this should send the pursuit streaming up to Verroia. Being Mrs. Andreades, however, she was no doubt telling them how he had trembled, looking furtively to the right and to the left. Even if they did not believe her, it would do no harm. The instinct to dramatize is well known in Greece.

  It was a full 45 minutes before the car drew off and another five before Mrs. Andreades circumspectly joined him.

  “I was magnificent!” she announced.

  Ken believed her.

  “Not for a moment do they doubt me. Even when I tell them that you are now limping, as if from some bad fall. Have no fear. They will go to the north, looking for a man in a black jacket with a bad limp.”

  “Did you tell them I was going to Verroia?” Ken asked anxiously.

  She looked at him with Olympian scorn. “Is it for me to make their task easy? I said that you were going toward Verroia. Let them look in every little hamlet on the way.”

  Ken relaxed. For the first time since Mrs. Andreades’ tumultuous return from the post office that morning he felt safe. The immediate future seemed free of pitfalls. Idly he watched the handy man returning from his rounds and bringing in the day’s latest collection of merchandise.

  “It’s a pity Riemer wasn’t home when you called,” he said reflectively. “Did the maid understand your message?”

  “I made her repeat it. And she said that she would call Mr. Riemer at the office right away. The word embassy was never used. But this Mr. Riemer, can you trust him to take action?”