Decision at Delphi (38 page)

Strang looked sharply at Colonel Zafiris beside him. The Colonel who had grunted his approval of the earlier guerrilla photographs, had lapsed into complete silence since the massacre of Colonel Psarros and his men. Now, he only gestured back to the screen, as Yorghis said, “Notice this small group sitting apart from the others.” Strang took the Colonel’s
hint, stopped mentally, congratulating George Ottway on his amazingly quick response to Tommy’s message, and looked at the screen obediently. At the side of the glade, there was the wall of a house, and in its shallow shadow sat three people. One was a man with a handsome face, laughing. Another was the officer with the battered old cap, tilted more than ever over his eyes to shield them from the glare of late summer while he cleaned a rifle. And the third was small, slight, with a large head of wild dark hair around a smooth face.

“A woman?” Strang asked, incredulously.

“A woman,” said the Colonel. “A courier. A very special courier.” He lapsed into silence again, glowered at the screen, where a detail of the group by the house wall was now being shown.

Yorghis said, “Reading from left to right: Ares, the god of war; Odysseus; Elektra. Ares, we all know. Odysseus and Elektra were identified by the British officer who had seen Odysseus—but never at close hand—and met the famous Elektra, who was so close an intimate of Ares at one time.”

Strang studied the detail. Coarse-textured as it was by excessive enlargement, it still held a recognisable quality. The woman’s excellent profile could be noted, a long slender neck above her opened shirt collar, a noble brow. She made him think of Katherini Roilos. “Strong family resemblance.”

“Especially then,” said the Colonel, “when her hair was dark brown. And Odysseus—can you recognise him?”

“I can’t see beyond that beard, or that tilted cap. A careful customer.”

“Unfortunately, for us.”

“Never seen at close hand,” Strang repeated, thoughtfully.

“He kept his distance from the Englishman. Why? Is it possible that he felt he might meet the Englishman after the war? Could they have friends in common in the civilian world? He was well-named Odysseus.” The Colonel was watching Strang now. “Look at his left hand holding the rifle. Do you see that heavy ring on his little finger?”

“Vaguely.” And, vaguely, something stirred at the back of Strang’s memory.

“Thank you, Yorghis.” The Colonel switched on the table lamp. “Here,” he said to Strang, “is the face design of that ring, as near as we can manage to reconstruct it. It is actually a coin, thick, uneven edge, not a circle, with a design of a man’s profile and two horns. Perhaps an ancient drachma? Fourth century? The head of Alexander the Great?”

“It could be,” Strang said as he studied the neat drawing of the ring’s design. Its irregular edge, clipped carefully away from its original circle by some acquisitive Greek who didn’t think the merest sliver of silver too small for the taking, was typical of most ancient coins. The two short horns protruding from the scalp, or from a tight skullcap covering the scalp, were a favourite device of Alexander the Great to show he was the son of Zeus.

“Alexander, the conqueror of Greece, the invader from the north,” Zafiris said softly. He filed the drawing of the ring into the proper folder. “Christophorou wears no ring now. Did he wear one when you met him fifteen years ago? Such a ring is memorable to someone like you, with your interest in ancient things. You said you met him in the Grande Bretagne when it was under siege.”

“He didn’t wear a ring in the Grande Bretagne. Of course, the lights weren’t too good then.” Just candles, batteries, oil
lamps. Still, there had been light enough to notice a ring like that. “Not in the Grande Bretagne,” he repeated. The vague stirring in Strang’s memory began again.

“Then where?”

“That night, after Christophorou and I had gone up to the Acropolis, we got back to the Piraeus road to join my friends waiting for me. I said we had had the devil’s own luck so far, and hoped it would last. He said it would: his lucky ring had never let him down yet. I only saw a glimpse of it. It was scarcely the time to stop and look. We were too busy dodging patrols and armed bands and snipers.”

“How much of a glimpse did you have?”

“I only saw a ring.”

“On his left hand?”

Strang tried to remember. “He lifted his hand as he spoke about his luck... No, I can’t remember which hand.”

“Was he carrying a revolver?”

“Of course.”

“In his right hand?”

“Yes.”

“Was that the one he held up?”

“No.”

“So—” the Colonel said, and glanced quickly at Yorghis. “Now, Mr. Strang, are you sure you didn’t notice the ring was different from an ordinary signet ring?”

“All I know,” Strang said doggedly, “is that he mentioned a lucky ring. And held up his left hand for a second as he spoke. Then we moved on. That’s all.”

“And not enough,” the Colonel said, angry with disappointment. Then he recovered himself. “Yorghis,” he said in lightning Greek, “we shall have to try some of Christophorou’s old friends. The Englishman, Thomson, for instance. Or his family. They may know about a ring like that.”

“Shall we send Elias?” Yorghis looked at the little man who was standing so quietly in the background that Strang was startled to see him.

“I need Elias,” the Colonel said.

“Costas, then?”

“It will take all his diplomacy. Brief him carefully.”

Yorghis nodded, locked the photographs into the box he carried. “At least, we
do
known that Christophorou wore a ring on his left hand,” he said, suddenly cheerful, as he prepared to leave the room with Elias. He halted at the door for a moment. “Odysseus,” he said with a sardonic smile, “Odysseus... Why not Alcibiades?”

The Colonel gave an abrupt laugh. “Why not?” he asked as the door closed. “But men always choose the more flattering names.” Then he looked at Strang, and said, serious again, “A slow business. Step by step. Small details, such as that ring, become important. Big discoveries become of little value. Constant
bouleversement.
Yet, step by step, the climb is made. And at last, the full view. What shall we see?”

That’s one view I won’t enjoy, Strang thought heavily.

“It would not be such a slow business,” the Colonel said, “if we had Katherini Roilos to help us.”

Strang stopped thinking about Alexander Christophorou and looked up quickly as he heard the stilted voice.

“But,” the Colonel said, “she is dead.”

Strang sat very still for a long moment. “How?” he asked at last. “Where?”

“In the Kriton Street house. She arrived by taxi, and was observed by two of our agents, whom I had sent there, just after your telephone call to Pringle, to keep watch until reinforcements arrived. Two agents, you understand, were not enough to force their way into a house of that size and make arrests. They thought she was another of the conspirators, that they would arrest her, inside, along with the others. None of us knew, you realise, that your little witness had left Mr. Thomson’s flat. When the squad of men arrived, twenty minutes later, the house was surrounded. An entry was forced through the garden door, which the girl had used. There were several people inside, mostly in their night clothes, as if they had been roused from their beds. There was a man at a telephone—much confusion—a woman’s voice screaming ‘Traitor!’ Three of our agents heard that scream as they burst into the room. The girl was dead before they could reach her, stabbed to the heart. She had been tied to a chair and—I am afraid—cruelly questioned.” The Colonel’s lips tightened. He stared down at his desk. “There was a woman standing over her, still screaming in anger, her hand on the hilt of the knife.”

Strang stared at him unbelievingly.

“A woman called Maria,” the Colonel said.

“Maria?”

The Colonel nodded.

“But Maria helped her escape. Maria—”

“—was only obeying orders throughout. The girl had come under suspicion. Her escape to Erinna Street was permitted so that she could be followed, so that her associates could be traced. The trouble about conspirators is that they must always look for counter-plots; they find it hard to believe that one girl, alone, might rebel and act. A brave girl. Not brave enough to
give testimony in public against her aunt—that was the real reason she ran away, of course. But, still, very brave.”

I was so sure, Strang thought, I was so sure she would get away safely. He said, “She was worried about Maria. She went back to that house to help Maria.”

“That could be the reason she gave herself, and a good reason it was. But behind the reason we give, there often stands the reason we do not acknowledge.” The Colonel’s eyes dropped down to the two sheets of paper he was inserting into the proper folder. He was impatient to proceed with something other than Kriton Street. Now—” he began, and stopped as he looked up at the American. “Mr. Strang,” he said sharply, “the girl would have died in that chair in any case. Perhaps it was a mercy to her that we arrived so soon after she entered that house.”

Strang nodded. But he couldn’t get rid of his feeling of guilt. Get rid of it? It was growing with each second.

“I think you ought to know that the raid was successful,” the Colonel said quickly. “Five people were arrested, including the man who stole the Kladas documents from my office.—Oh, no, not
this
office, Mr. Strang!—He is a Bulgarian, answers your description of Boris very nicely. Oh, such innocence! Such delightful ignorance of everything. But then, he does not know that we watched him hand over the stolen envelope last night just after the theft. In a coffee-house.” The Colonel enjoyed that picture. Then he went on, “This morning, such innocent tradesmen delivered the household supplies! A most successful raid.” He looked at Strang and seemed puzzled. “Her death is not meaningless. Already, it is partly avenged.”

“She would never have been under suspicion if I had not told Christophorou about her,” Strang said angrily. “I’m to
blame. I told him. Damn him to hell. I told him about the girl in
Perspective’s
office, on the ship—” His eyes met the Colonel’s.

“Who else knew? Your editor in New York. Stefanos Kladas. Who else?”

“I told Miss Hillard.”

The Colonel raised an eyebrow. “Do you know her so well?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you only met her yesterday,” the Colonel suggested politely.

“You didn’t ask how long I had known her.”

“Ah!” There was a slight pause, a humorous pursing of the lips. “I don’t think Miss Hillard can be blamed. Who else was told?”

“No one.”

“Which leaves—” The Colonel’s hands dropped to the desk.

“Yes,” said Strang slowly.

“So, at last, you do not find my doubts about Alexander Christophorou exaggerated.” The Colonel shook his head unbelievingly. There, just when he had given up all hope of getting the American to admit his doubts openly, it had happened. Suddenly. By the death of a girl... Strange keys turned the lock in a man’s subconscious mind.

Strang said with painful honesty, slowly, still unwillingly, “I have had my doubts. But no positive proof. And—well, it’s hard to believe.”

“Because a gallant stranger took you to see the Acropolis under shellfire? The romantic gesture—yes, that is always appealing.”

Strang flushed. “I’ve sweated that nonsense out of my system in the last twenty-four hours. No. What, I can’t believe is—” He
paused. “How could a man who saw his family forced into a death march ever join the people who seized them as hostages? That just doesn’t make sense.”

“He was already allied with them. You saw the photographs.”

“But—” Strang fell silent.

The Colonel watched him curiously. Americans, he thought, live in a simple world of good and bad, every man considered good until he was caught, actually caught,
flagrante delicto
if possible. In a moment, he envied that world, so comfortable, so pleasant. And then he didn’t envy it: too vulnerable, too easy for any dedicated enemy to smash it to pieces. Perhaps Americans did not believe in the dedicated enemy, either. Yet they admired Shakespeare, some of them at least: did
Othello
leave no sense of disquiet, was Iago simply an odd phenomenon, an unpleasant quirk of a dramatist’s imagination? Some admired Aeschylus, too, he had heard: did the intellectuals who applauded the
Agamemnon
think that Aegisthus was only quaint fiction? Or Atreus himself—was his evil simply a part of barbarous prehistory? Progress made evil antiquated. Was that the assumption?

The Colonel, sighed. “Must Alcibiades be understood in order to be believed? He did exist, my friend, understood or not understood. And, as you Americans say, he couldn’t have cared less.”

“But didn’t Christophorou feel revulsion?”

“Revulsion from everything, perhaps. From the stupid democrats, who were so incompetent, or lazy, or quarrelsome, that they couldn’t see danger until it swallowed them up. From the stupid fascists, who bullied and murdered. From the stupid Communists, with their obsessive hates, their blind obedience. Revulsion from all of them. Many men have felt it. Complete disillusion, bitterness, contempt. Life is absurd, meaningless.” The Colonel’s broad, capable hands gathered the folders on his desk into neat order, boxed them into an exact square. “But few men have followed existentialism to its logical conclusion. Which is—” The Colonel looked up and caught Strang’s eye. “Ah,” he said, “I see you are not ignorant of nihilism.” His heavy, oval face, with its drooping eyelids, its full lips drawn into a severe line under the thick black moustache, its strong eyebrows no longer arched but knitted straight by the deep crease between them, stared impassively at the American. “I think we have one of those few, right here in Athens,” he ended, his voice harshening. He scraped his chair back from the table and rose.

Strang rose, too. “There are two legs now,” he said.

“The Duval woman and Nikos Kladas?” The Colonel’s hand brushed that idea aside. “Stalinists, both of them, with a taste for terrorism. They formed a Committee of Three with Drakon, to organise this conspiracy. It is an old pattern, that Committee of Three, with the two Communists taking over as soon as the third man’s usefulness is ended. It happened throughout our civil war. But Drakon knew how they worked: he was a Communist himself then. Last night, he acted first. The sole power is now his. Why did he choose last night? Because tomorrow is the day that the first blow is struck.” The Colonel turned and pointed to the map of Greece on the wall behind him. “There!” he said. “Just across that northern boundary, in Yugoslavia, the trouble will start. An assassination, and the seizing of power by the Stalinists. Then false charges, with specially prepared proof, that Greece is responsible. Border incidents will develop. And then—” the Colonel’s hand swept south into Greece—“attacks. Trouble will come from the Bulgarian border, too. From Albania. The Greek Communists are there, ready. And they will have considerable assistance, this time. In 1944, the Russians had no tanks or guns to spare.” He stared at the map. “Is this why the Duval woman joined Drakon? Was this the gamble?” With his finger, he drew one last line over the map, from the Baltic and East Germany down through the heart of Europe to the Adriatic, sweeping around Greece to end at the Dardanelles.