Decision at Delphi (11 page)

He took the slip of paper and unfolded it. The message was simple: “Weather disappointing. Delayed. Kladas.”

Yes, that’s Steve, he thought wearily: one cloud missing and he can’t get the composition he wanted for the sky. “Thanks,” he said to the porter, and made his way through the dimly lit cloisters. From the distant hotel bar came the strange effect of a samba tune played by a sweet mass of Strauss violins. But tonight, completely wasted, didn’t put him in any humour even for the incongruous. He wasn’t worried and depressed any longer; he just felt foolish and a little baffled.

He decided to have a drink in his room, and read a magazine article on “Night Life in Paris.” And so to bed.

Bright sunshine and blue sky, for a late breakfast on a terrace high above a sparkling sea, were a good remedy for last night’s gloom. As Strang drank his third cup of coffee and looked at a small orange tree displaying its golden fruit against the distant background of Etna’s snow-covered peak, he decided he would mix a little business with a good deal of pleasure. He would spend the morning at the beach.

He took his swimming trunks, a magazine, and a taxi, for the constant twists and turns of the snakelike road around gardens and villas trebled the journey down to the blue sea. Straight distances, here, would be measured not as the crow flew but as the stone dropped.

The beach was a small crescent of sand, guarded by immense black rocks jutting out of the clear waters. Today, most people were of the bob-and-splash school, so it was easy to count not only heads, but torsos and hips. There was no one of the size
and shape of Miss Katherini. “Every morning down on the shore,” Caroline Ottway had said But there was no one of the size and shape of Caroline, either.

He swam out to the rocks and found no sea nymphs there, only two small, thin, brown boys in a small, thin, brown boat, who shouted to him hoarsely. He hoped it was encouragement and not a warning against octopus.

By one o’clock, he admitted defeat, dressed, lunched at the small restaurant, beside the bay, and caught a bus back to Taormina. The streets were empty now, bleached white by the early afternoon sun. It was the time for the Mediterranean sleep behind cool shutters. He went back to his hotel, found no message from Steve, exchanged swim trunks for his sketchbook, and wandered out again. By this time, his irritation with Steve was returning. He wouldn’t get another two-day break like this for a long time, and instead of being able to enjoy it, he was restless, unsettled. All he wanted was one small note from Steve giving time of arrival; better still, one small message saying: “Here I am. Where are you? See you in the piazza.”

He went along there, anyway. He was early for the appointment with Caroline Ottway. (If she meant to keep it, that was. Perhaps she had decided not to take tea today, just as she had decided not to go swimming. Steve’s full name might be all she had wanted. Or needed.) He chose a seat under a wide awning of a café, well to the back of the broad sidewalk, where he could have a clear view across the rows of little tables to its neighbour. That was where she had said he could find her. At four o’clock. Ten minutes to go. The tables were still mostly empty. The piazza looked stripped. He would wait, here and see if she did come. Time enough, then, to go forward. Today, he had some questions of his own to ask.

It was almost as if a faucet had been gently turned on, and people, instead of water, came slowly streaming out. Now the piazza was flowing with them. They were seeping into their favourite cafés. The tables were no longer bare blobs surrounded by empty chairs. The quiet lazy silence was wrenched from its sleep by footsteps and voices and laughter. It was almost four o’clock.

He pretended to read a travel folder which had been bequeathed to his table. (Taormina, he was delighted to hear, had “a wonderful air saturated with energy-restoring oxygen.” But he kept a watchful eye on the street by which she would arrive. Two minutes to go. And, walking briskly into the piazza, never slackening his pace as he approached the English Café, making his way to the back row of tables with a quick but no doubt comprehensive look around him, came George Ottway. He chose a table as far from anyone as possible, consulted his watch, and opened a newspaper. Dressed as he was, in a dark-blue shirt, no jacket, no tie, he became just another tourist who liked to wear sunglasses.

For a moment, Strang was startled enough. Then, in quick succession, curious and amused. Caroline Ottway wasn’t so adept at keeping secrets from her husband, after all. Perhaps that was the reason she so enjoyed surprising other people’s secrets out of them: we all needed our little triumphs to balance our defeats. The best thing to do, Strang decided, was to produce a little surprise of his own. He left money beside the check on his saucer, and walked over to the neighbouring café, approaching it from the side, so that George Ottway, his eyes watching the front rows of tables behind his newspaper, didn’t even notice him until he said, “Sorry to have kept you waiting.” He was delighted to see that Ottway looked startled enough for a moment, too. We begin even, he thought.

“Four o’clock exactly,” Ottway said, recovering himself quickly. “Do sit down, Strang. “As he spoke, he rose and offered his chair, taking another which would let him sit with his back turned to the other tables and to the piazza. “I believe you like Cinzano,” he said, and called a waiter.

So he got everything out of her, Strang thought. He said, “I’ll have a beer, thanks, today.” I’ve been promoted, too: Strang, not Mr. Strang. And I’ve been honoured: he has dropped the work that has kept him glued to his room for a week in order to come out here and meet me. Why?

“My wife had a headache,” Ottway explained, removing his sunglasses.

“That’s too bad.” Strang was quite aware that he was being carefully studied. I suppose if I had a pretty young wife, he thought, I’d be sizing up any man she had produced out of nowhere. Except that Caroline hadn’t even tried to hide that; she could have walked with Strang in twenty different directions instead of right under her husband’s window. But it was none of his business, thank God, to delve into Caroline’s motives. That was a job for her husband. And if Ottway had dragged himself away from the reports on his desk just to have a closer look at Strang and freeze him off— No, he discarded that idea. There was something more to this meeting than that. For Ottway was waiting, and watching Strang as he waited, as if he were deciding something. The drinks came. The waiter left.

“Now,” Ottway said, his waiting over, “I think we needn’t argue that I did know your friend as Yannis?”

Strang nodded. There wasn’t any doubt left in his mind about that.

“And is he working with you on your new book?”

“On a series of articles, first. Eventually a book, we hope.”

“Then it is true that he is here and will be going on to Greece?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Would he cancel it?”

“No.”

“Why not? If I were to ask you to persuade him that he is running into serious danger, wouldn’t he listen to you?”

Strang stared at the quiet face opposite him. In spite of the controlled voice, Ottway could not hide the anxiety that had invaded his normally calm, pale-blue eyes. “I’ve already passed on one warning to him,” Strang said. “It made no impression.”

“Then he knows?”

“Frankly, I couldn’t say.” Knows what? Strang wondered.

“If he knows,” Ottway said thoughtfully, “he will be on his guard. And if he is on his guard, he probably can take care of himself. He always could.” Ottway’s anxiety had lessened. He lit a cigarette. “Yannis “he went on, and then broke off. “Let’s bury the name of Yannis, for his safety, shall we? You call him Steve, I believe.”

“Your wife will be able to tell you his full name when she unpacks your art books in Athens,” Strang reminded him.

Ottway didn’t find that funny. He frowned. “Yes. Caroline would do better not to meddle. None of us should.” He looked very directly at Strang. “It was made quite clear to me in Naples that your friend wanted the name of Yannis, and everything that was connected with Yannis, to be completely forgotten.” He paused. With bitterness he did not even disguise, he added, “I find it rather difficult to make my wife understand this.”

“I suppose any wife is curious about any mysteries in her husband’s past,” Strang suggested. He had meant that as a simple generalisation, but Ottway’s eyes focused, tight and hard, on his face. There was an awkward pause. Strang said, “I am grateful to your wife, actually. She filled in a lot of gaps for me yesterday.”

“Such as?” The words were quick and sharp.

“The brother, for one. What was his name?”

“I only knew him as Sideros.”

“That means—?”

“Steel. Appropriate? Only in his affection for the use of cold steel.”

“What was he like?”

“Didn’t Steve tell you?” Ottway was still tense.

“He never mentioned him,” Strang said. “Nor did he ever mention you. In fact, he mentioned no one at all, except Ares. Where is that peculiar monster, by the way?”

Ottway relaxed. His voice became as easy as Strang had kept his. “He caught it, thank God. He was killed by Greek regular army troops who had chased him back to the mountains. That was a few months after his attack in Athens failed. A long time ago, now—1945, to be exact.”

“Are you sure he is dead?”

Ottway looked down at his fine hands. “I am not certain,” he said at last. He thought for a long moment. When he spoke, it was to change the subject back to Steve. “As I was saying— your friend Steve wants Yannis forgotten. I know of only three people who could identify Steve with his past experiences: you, my wife, myself.”

“No others? If the brother is alive—”

“If,” Ottway emphasised. He paused. “Ares’s friends were killed with him, except for two or three who escaped to Bulgaria. I imagine they would be safer to stay there; their records are too well-remembered. Unless, of course, they have changed. A man can change...”

It was Strang’s turn to study the table in front of him. Was Ottway only judging from his personal experience? So many did. Because they could regret mistakes made in their past, they thought all men could. But some would never admit a mistake; and nothing admitted meant nothing regretted. “No others?” Strang repeated.

Ottway said, “Steve and I were very close friends. Yet he never told me his real name, never talked about his family or village, or town or wherever he came from. He spoke English with an American accent, but he could have learned that from a Greek-American teacher. I have known Indians who speak English with a Welsh accent, and Poles who have a Scots accent: it all depends on who taught them English. Steve gave nothing away to anyone. Perhaps he didn’t want Sideros, his brother, identified with his real name. Greek pride runs deep.”

“All right. There is just you and your wife and myself who could harm Steve by identifying him as Yannis, the man who was supposed to have deserted. As far as I’m concerned, Yannis is only a name in a story that someone once told me about the war. And as for you—”

“Steve is an American photographer whose work I much admire.”

“And I think you can persuade your wife to concentrate on that, too,” Strang said with a smile.

“She must,” Ottway said grimly. “None of us talk, none of us even think about Yannis. And if ever I do meet your friend Steve in Athens, it will be as a complete stranger. Tell him I understand that, won’t you?”

“I’ll tell him.”

“But never that my wife discussed him, at all, with you?”

“Of course not.” What was troubling Ottway so much? “Isn’t it clear to Yanffis’s old comrades that he wasn’t a deserter or a traitor?”

Ottway said slowly, “I think most people know now who the real traitors were.”

“Then it is just the two or three survivors of the Ares band that are worrying you?” There was no answer from Ottway. “Particularly Sideros—Steve’s brother—if he is one of them?”

Ottway picked up the check and studied the price of two drinks. “Naturally,” he said. “If he is alive, and out from the safety of the Iron Curtain, he would not want himself identified. I imagine—if he has not changed, that he would not particularly enjoy having any attention drawn to the name of Sideros.”

“Could Sideros recognise you?”

“Possibly.” There was a slight flicker of an eyelid. “I never went in for heavy disguises. When my beard itched, I shaved it off. Several times.” And then, before Strang could ask one more question, he dropped some lire beside his half-finished drink, and rose, saying, “Keep an eye on Steve, won’t you?”

“I’ll do my best,” Strang rose, too. “Look, I’m going to the Greek theatre. We can walk together as far as your hotel.”

“No,” Ottway said sharply. “I would rather we were not seen together.” Then he looked puzzled. “Aren’t you rejoining Steve? Didn’t he come here with you?”

“No. He is still in Syracuse.”

“Oh—I thought, perhaps, that he had seen me here and refused to come over with you. Well, that makes it all the better; he doesn’t have to know we had this little talk. He never did like interference. Good-bye, Strang. Don’t follow me too closely. That makes me nervous.” He nodded, put on his dark glasses, picked up his newspaper, and left.

Strang lit a cigarette and sauntered slowly across the crowded piazza to its open side, where he could pretend to look down at the view of steep falling hillside. When he decided that he had given Ottway time enough, he set out himself, at his usual walking pace. But Ottway must have really hurried. He was, in the far distance, already entering his hotel by the time that Strang was starting up the long straight street that led to the theatre.

Taormina is a town of views. Strang thought he had become accustomed to them, but the one from the Greek theatre seized him by the throat. For a long moment, he couldn’t breathe or think. He stood on the grass-covered stone of the topmost tier of broad steps, which once had been seats, and looked far down over their wide half-circle to the open stage. The shape and graceful proportions of the stage were still visible, marked by slender marble pillars, some broken, some fallen, some standing with a delicate arch miraculously preserved. And beyond all this lay nature’s incomparable backdrop: Etna sloping down to a rippling sea shimmering like beaten gold under the late-afternoon sun. Sharp left was more dark-blue sea; behind him, sea again with precipices to his right rose behind the town itself. To his left was more dark-blue sea; behind him, sea again with
the Calabrian mountains of Italy shadowy in the white mist of the far horizon. Above him was a vast stretch of bright clear sky; around him, the sweet smell of wild flowers and herbs warmed by the sun, the gentle constant hum of bees.