Decision at Delphi (25 page)

“Please—” Cecilia said very softly, “we have come to see Petros.”

The man spoke quickly in Greek to the boy. “Why?” the boy asked.

“Steve Kladas told me Petros was his friend.”

“Stefanos Kladas,” Strang amended very quietly.

There was a flicker in the man’s eyes. He might not want to speak in English, but he could understand it. He stood aside, and pointed to the open door The boy darted ahead to stand at the threshold and bow Cecilia into the room. Strang followed, bending his head to pass under the low doorway. Any man over five feet six, he reflected, must enter humbly. He cast a
quick glance around the room, and relaxed. There were three customers at dinner, two women and a man, pleasant, ordinary people who looked most comfortable. We’ve made one friend, at least, Strang thought, as he chose a seat with a view of the room.

It was square-shaped, small, low-ceilinged, with one window high in the wall just over his head. There were exactly eight tables, three of them now occupied, and one of those, nearest the kitchen door, where four men sat together, was more for family than for customers. Strang studied the four men carefully, and wondered which was Petros. Two were fairly young, with the usual dark moustache. The third was definitely middle-aged, with a thickening body and a heavy face. The fourth was old but with powerful shoulders, white-haired, his strong-featured face tanned and wrinkled, a noble head. His dark eyes had been studying Strang quite openly from under white eyebrows, as thick and untamed as his heavy white moustache. There was a fifth chair waiting at that table for the man who had stopped Cecilia and Strang at the doorway. He joined the little group now, and all the men began talking in low voices. But none of them even looked across the room at the two strangers.

“We’ll have to order something,” Strang told Cecilia. The young waiter had been standing expectantly at their elbows, and he now began a brief recital: lamb, lamb, and lamb.

Cecilia broke off her quiet inspection of the room: lower walls newly painted in a blue glossy enamel ending, at her waist level, in not too exact a line under the upper stretch of white. Either someone had run out of blue enamel or had considered the painting of the upper wall as a sheer waste of money. The small tables were covered with white oilcloth, the chairs were of cane, the stone floor clean. There was one vase of wild
flowers, which the boy had whipped off a neighbouring table to place before her. And the only other decoration, a matched pair of fading enlargements of the King and Queen in full regalia, was carefully hung above the old man’s chair. Overhead, the unshaded light from a central bulb, its wire snaking openly across the ceiling, shone impartially on the five men crowded around the far table, on the three neighbouring customers finishing the last mouthfuls of their supper, on Ken trying to look completely unconcerned but watching her anxiously. She wondered which would be less impolite: to order food, as was expected, and leave it uneaten, or merely to order an after-dinner drink with some coffee. She said, uncertainly, “Brandy?”

Strang saw the slight shake of the boy’s head. Cecilia must have noticed it, too, for she glanced over at the old man, maintainer of all the unwritten laws. “All right,” she said, “coffee. And may I be allowed a glass of wine?”

The boy’s face brightened, and he nodded.

“It will be
resinato”
Strang warned her.

“But I love turpentine,” she told him, and admired the way he could smother a smile. I like a man, she thought, who can notice a small attempt at a joke even when he is tense with worry. She slipped her arms free of her coat sleeves as the boy hurried away with their order. “I like it here,” she told Strang. “And I’m glad you told me so much tonight. Does that cross off two of your lesser problems?” And, as he looked at her, she said, “Truthfully, how could I even begin to understand the Greeks I meet, if I don’t know something of what they’ve been through? Although at the moment,” and she glanced at the ceiling, through which disturbing noises were drifting down into the little room, “I can’t pretend to understand what’s going on up
there.” For there were restless footsteps on the wooden floor of the room overhead, women’s voices in muffled argument, then silence, then the bitter voices again, then silence.

“Someone seems to have been nursing her wrath to keep it warm,” Strang said, as the older woman’s voice, harsh and declamatory, broke out again. The other voice was young, pleading and indignant in turn. “A family discussion. Daughter wants to go out, mother wants her to stay home. Something like that.” Actually, though, the argument sounded the other way around: mother wanted the girl to go out, the girl wanted to stay. My Greek, decided Strang gloomily, must be in a worse condition than I thought. The words overhead were not altogether distinct, but the occasional phrase came clear as anger mounted and then merged into a low mumble as the volume of sound was abruptly lowered.

“Well,” Cecilia said, “if everyone else pretends they don’t exist, why shouldn’t we?” The five men were talking together, grouped into their own private world. The three customers had their own world, too: the man was counting out payment for their small check with complete absorption in his arithmetic, while the women waited in anxious silence. They’re just like me, Cecilia thought, worrying in case they have cost too much. See, poor dears, how relieved they look now as they are leaving and their husband and brother isn’t bankrupt after all. Her feelings for them seemed to attract their attention: at the door, as their escort exchanged a friendly word with the men, the women turned to give a quick, shy bow to Cecilia and a gentle good night. Then they were gone, and four cats came out from under their table, all fallen crumbs having been devoured, to prowl around Cecilia and Strang until the boy arrived with a
tray. They were lean cats, striped, and still hungry.

“Pavlov’s cats,” Cecilia said. “You clatter a tray and the saliva starts.” She looked in dismay at the bottle of wine, brandy, minuscule coffee cups, and two small tumblers of water, which the boy was now setting carefully before Strang and herself. “And not a crumb possible. Will they start on my ankles, do you think?” They were already under the table, waiting.

“I’ll get them out—” Strang began. “Don’t you like cats?”

“Yes, except when I start wondering what would happen to us all if they were the size of horses. Oh, let them be. Who says I can’t be as Spartan as any Athenian?”

The boy had poured her a glass of amber-coloured wine, and waited. The voices upstairs had begun again.

“Petros—” Cecilia said, no longer disguising her worry. The bitterness in the recriminations upstairs was upsetting her. Involuntarily, she glanced up at the ceiling. “Is he really here, do you think?”

Strang said, “We’ve told them why we came here. That’s all we can do. The next move is theirs. They’ve been discussing us forward and backward.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to come over and ask us questions?”

“Perhaps we have to be dominated, first of all,” Strang said with a grin. “Your young friend is waiting to see you enjoy the wine he has poured.”

Cecilia took a sip.

“Good,” the boy told her. “Good?” He looked anxious.

“A very interesting little wine,” she observed, “with a personality all of its own.”

“The lady speaks very good English,” the boy said.

“Thank you,” Cecilia said. “Where did you learn to speak it so well?”

“At school.”

“And you work here, at night?”

“I live here. That is my father.” He looked at the old man proudly. “He is from Crete.”

“And are those men your brothers?”

“One is my uncle. The others are my—” He wrinkled his brow.

“Cousins?”

“No. No. Almost they are my brothers.”

“Half-brothers? And your mother is upstairs?”

He nodded. “Is the gentleman your husband? How many children do you have?”

Strang said, watching her retreat with amusement, “I was wondering how long you’d get away with all your questions. Better have another sip of wine. The eyes of the room are upon us.”

It was true. The discussion at the men’s table was over. Five pairs of eyes were watching, calmly, objectively.

“You will explain,” she told him, “that ladies, where I come from, are not supposed to have more than two sips of wine.” She took the second sip without flinching. “My quota,” she warned him, and drank her coffee quickly.

“It’s an acquired taste,” he told her sympathetically.

“I know. But the trouble about an acquired taste is the acquiring of it.” And, she thought, as the cats under the table lost some of their patience and began to prowl restlessly, brushing their thin bodies lightly over her insteps, against her legs, at this moment I’m thoroughly dominated and I don’t care who knows it. She gave a start as the women’s voices above her
head burst out anew. Someone had thrown herself down on a bed, for the springs had clanged. Someone was being pulled off the bed. Even the men gave a brief glance at the ceiling. The old man suddenly crashed his fist on the table and shouted. There was silence overhead, immediate, complete.

“This may be a tactical error,” Strang said, “but we have waited long enough.” He rose to his feet, and went toward the men’s table. The man with the scar rose, too, and came forward. But it wasn’t a case of being met halfway: it was a neat manoeuvre to block, politely, any approach to the table. Strang said, in the Greek sentences he had been rehearsing, silently and painfully, for those last ten minutes, “I came to see Petros. Is he here? I want to talk with him about Stefanos Kladas, who was his friend and mine. This is serious, important business.”

The men looked at each other. The man with the scar spoke.

Strang said to Cecilia, “He is asking why I brought a woman here if I wanted to talk to Petros about serious things.” He shook his head. “Apparently, they’ve decided we are doubtful characters.”

Indeed, thought Cecilia, and studied the old brigand chief across the room. What was going on here that made them so distrustful? Greeks, were hospitable people. “Do you think some credentials would help?” she asked. She searched in her handbag for Steve’s page in her small notebook, and handed it over to Strang.

Strang said to the man with the scar, “This is Miss Hillard. My name is Strang. We both knew Stefanos Kladas. He told her to come here, to ask for Petros. See—here is his writing.” He handed over the page, which was then carefully studied and passed around among the men. It had some effect. The old
man’s white eyebrows, which had bristled into a straight line of doubt, looked less awesome. We’re half a league onward, anyway, thought Strang with relief, watching the man with the scar. Either he had had more time to get accustomed to Cecilia and Strang or he was more sympathetic. Strang said, “I need help.” He paused and added grimly, “I want to find Nikos Kladas and his friends.”

The faces, watching him, went rigid.

“Why?” asked the man with the scar very softly.

“Because Stefanos Kladas is dead.”

“Dead?” The echo went around the room. “Dead?”

“When was this?” the man with the scar demanded. “When?”

“Three days ago. Perhaps four. It will be published in the newspapers tomorrow. The Italian police found his body. They say it was suicide. Or perhaps an accident.”

“Suicide!” The word was contemptuously spat out.

“I agree,” Strang said.” And if it was an accident, then it was a very clever accident.”

The quick mind behind the quick brown eyes caught his meaning. “You think he was killed?”

“Yes.”

“That is why you search for Nikos,” the man said, through tight lips.

“I see you know Nikos,” Strang said slowly.

“He killed Stefanos?”

“We shall know that when Nikos is caught. And his friends.”

The old man, watching Strang through half-closed eyes, silenced the surge of angry voices at the table with a gesture, and said, “Nikos Kladas is a man to whom all evil is possible. But first—let us hear this story. Tell it!”

He was a hard man to convince, Strang thought. “First,” he said, equally firmly, “where is Petros?”

There was a deep silence.

“All right,” Strang said. “We leave. I shall come back tomorrow when Petros is here. Or the next day. Or the day after that. But I must talk to Petros. He is the only one who can help.”

The man with the scar said, “How can Petros help?”

“When Stefanos hid here, for many months, he must have told Petros many things. For Petros was his friend.”

The man nodded.

“Did he tell Petros about his life as an
andarte,
about the battles in the mountains, about the leader called Ares?”

The old man’s eyes opened wide in anger, his lips drew back to spit out the name of Ares with a mouthful of curses.

Strang waited. The man with the scar nodded again. “Did Stefanos tell about the photographs he took? Were they of Ares”—there was a rumble of thunder from the old man— “and of Nikos, and of their special friends?”

“He took many photographs.” The man’s interest was drifting: photographs were pieces of paper, not battles and courage and treachery and death.

“Did he leave any photographs here?”

“He took them to America,” the man said impatiently. These questions were unimportant.

“Did Petros know the people in those photographs? Could he identify any of them?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Petros did not fight under Ares against the Germans. He fought under Zervas, in the west.”

“Zito
Zervas!” one of the younger men said. There was
more qualified approval from the old man, who was obviously a royalist. Zervas had been a republican, a guerrilla leader who had been a bitter enemy of Ares, but one with enough distrust and. cunning. At least, Strang thought, Zervas and his army had not been massacred wholesale like so many other guerrilla bands. They had been able, most of them, to retreat from the trap Ares had set for them.

“How,” he added, puzzled, “could Petros be a friend of Stefanos?”

The man with the scar looked at him, distrust returning to his eyes. “You ask many questions.”