Authors: Helen Nielsen
Avery closed his eyes. Brad feared he had lost consciousness again until, eyes still closed, he started talking.
“There’s a man in Athens—Brooks Martins.”
“I’ve met him,” Brad said.
Harry opened his eyes.
“Good. Makes it easier for both of us. Tell him I did the job. Harry Avery, boy wonder. Screws his friends and marries the wrong woman, but one thing I did right. Like Korea. I still hold a commission—did you know that? Lieutenant Colonel Harry Avery—”
The pain was getting worse. Beads of perspiration stood out, like blisters, on Avery’s forehead.
“Some things—hey, don’t go away. I’m not finished.”
Brad hadn’t moved.
“I’m listening,” he said. “What happened to your plane?”
“Albanian patrol. Commies. Tried to force us down. Georgie—my pilot—outmanoeuvred them, but cracked us up, coming out of a dive. Killed him.”
“I know. The wreckage was found yesterday.”
Avery didn’t seem to hear the interruption.
“Lucky me. The crash threw me out of the plane. Broke my arm—something inside. I blacked out. When I came to, there was Georgie sitting at the controls with his moustache on crooked, like somebody slapped him in the face with a lead shovel. I crawled back to the plane and got my gear—cameras, film.”
“Where are they now?” Brad asked.
“That’s what I’m telling you, baby. I didn’t know where I was—Greece or Albania. I took the gear and got away from the wreckage as soon as I could, in case that patrol plane came back. Stumbled around until dark and then found an old ruin—church, fortress, a goatshed maybe. One wall out. A piece of roof and the rest open sky. I slept there. All night, all day, maybe. Hell, I don’t know how long it was.”
“Take it slower,” Brad suggested.
“No time,” Avery said. “This is what I’ve got to tell you. The stuff’s all there. Martins’ stuff. Loose paving stones. I dug a hole with my hands and a piece of rock and buried it. It’s there—under the paving stones.”
“How far away?”
“Who knows? I found a spring in the mountains. Drank water, like it was ten parts gin and one part Vermouth. Hey, you don’t happen to have a Martini on you?”
“I can get you some fresh goat’s milk.”
“Forget it!”
“A cigarette?”
“Yes. You light it.”
Brad dug a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit one for Harry. He passed it to him and let him smoke in silence, until he was ready to go on.
“Not so far, I think,” he said, as if there had been no break in his story. “I started down the mountain one morning—yesterday, I think. Needed food. Help. Blacked out again and came to in this room, with a bunch of jabbering monks around me. Nobody understood anything I tried to say. But you understand. Tell Martins it’s all up there—everything he wanted. Mission completed.”
When the still smouldering cigarette fell from Avery’s fingers, Brad scooped it up from the blanket and crushed it out on the floor. Avery had started moaning.
“Brad!” he cried out. “Where’s my jacket?”
“In the next room.”
“Get it! Hurry!”
Brad stepped back into the kitchen and peeled the leather bush jacket off the wall peg. He ran back to Avery’s bed and saw the pain-filled eyes brighten with anticipation.
“Breast pocket,” Avery said.
Brad pulled a long wallet from one of the pockets.
“No! The other pocket!”
Brad dropped the wallet on the bed and found the other breast pocket. It bulged with the bulk of what might have been a leather cigar case. Brad pulled out the case and Avery nodded.
“Inside,” he said. “The needle. Give it to me, Brad. Christ, I feel so weak!”
Brad opened the case. Velvet lined, it contained a hypodermic, half-filled with a clear liquid, and the needle, wrapped in cotton.
“What are you waiting for?” Avery demanded.
“What is it?” Brad asked.
“New life. What the hell are you waiting for? You want money? Okay, write it out and I’ll sign. Forty per cent—fifty per cent of
The Bandits
. How much do you want? That queer, Draper, will pay.”
Brad unwrapped the needle and held the hypodermic up to the lantern light. “Shut up!” he ordered. “Where do you take this stuff?”
Avery held out his whole arm. It seemed pathetically thin in Brad’s grasp. So small in the bed—that was all he could think. Harry Avery looked so small in the bed. He found a vein and sank the needle into the flesh. He shot about half of the liquid before pulling it out again. It was risky doing anything to a man in Avery’s condition, but, if the injection deadened pain, it might keep him alive until the doctor arrived. Anyway, it was done now. Avery seemed relieved. He sighed and leaned back on the pillow.
“You must hate my guts,” he said.
“I burned out my hate in Vietnam,” Brad answered.
“The hell you did! No man worth his own excrement ever burns out his hatred. It’s the only fuel left, when the high octane’s gone.”
Carefully, Brad replaced the hypodermic in the case and snapped it shut. He picked up the bush jacket and began to reload the pockets, and then, suddenly, Avery lurched forward as if he had been shoved from behind and clawed the air with one frantic hand. His eyes were wild and accusing for that last sharp instant before they closed; then, in one shuddering convulsion, he fell back on the bed—unconscious. Brad dropped the jacket and leaned over the bed. The convulsions continued for a short time and then stopped.
The flame burned unevenly in the lantern. Brad took it down from the peg and examined Avery closely until there was no more doubt. Harry Avery was dead. He hung the lantern back on the hook and grabbed the jacket. The hypo—that’s all he could think of then. The hypo had killed Avery … But was that true? Wasn’t he dying already? The woman called “Petros” had warned that he might not live until she returned with the doctor, and Avery himself said he was a dead man. Who would know more about that than the dead man himself?
The flood of guilt passed. The sense of urgency remained. Brad looked at his watch. It was almost an hour since the woman had gone for Parker. She might not be able to find him at all. He listened: ears straining for the sound of the car. All he heard was a strange silence, where the chanting of the priests had been. Silence, where Avery’s laboured breathing had been. Silence and the faint whisper of flame in the lantern.
“There’s just one thing you must promise me. If you find him—dead or alive—you must call me, personally, and tell me about it before anyone else knows. And you must keep all of Harry’s things, his cameras and film, his watch, his glasses—every single item of personal property that you can find—and return them to me …”
Rhona’s words came crackling like military orders. The watch. He removed the expensive watch and strapped it to his own wrist. The jacket. From the pockets of the jacket he took the expected things: a wallet, a pair of sunglasses in a leather case, a gold pen, a leather cheque book, a key ring. Not an unusual item in the lot.
“Harry Avery, boy wonder, screws his friends and marries the wrong woman …”
Avery’s dead mouth was trying to tell him something. Bits, pieces, items that wouldn’t fit, because the kaleidoscope of time was moving too fast. Petros might not have gone for a doctor at all. Her almost professional eyes could have seen death coming and she could have used her escape from the confining perimeter of the rifle to fetch companions. There might be rifles to meet his rifle when he returned. The nerve centres were crying danger again. Brad dropped the jacket on the bed and scooped up Avery’s belongings, stuffing them into his own pockets. There was nothing more to be accomplished here, but there was still an order to be carried out. He was to find the place where Avery buried the cameras and film. Rhona wanted everything returned to her. On his way to the outer door, rifle in hand, he stopped to scoop up the knapsack from under the table.
Brad slipped quietly out into the darkness. Somewhere in the distance he heard the sound of motors. He wouldn’t wait to see if Petros had really brought the doctor. He would run, silently and close to the ground. And, running, he didn’t notice when the top packet of Deutschmarks accidentally slid out of the pack and fell to earth.
DURING THE TOURIST season the management of the small hotel overlooking Lake Orestes might have offered entertainment for the guests: peasant dances and songs accompanied by lively native instruments. During the tourist season there might have been interesting companionship in the lobby and the bar. But the tourist season was drawing to a close. Those who had left Athens to escape the summer heat were returning, and musicians and entertainers followed the market. Tonight there was nothing but the electric record player in the coffee lounge, where guests could be served coffee, American if desired, and brandy, to a background of early Elvis Presley. Brooks Martins chose to take his coffee and brandy in the dining room which was now occupied by one couple—late arrival honeymooners—himself, and the Russian, Popenko.
McKeough was too restless to sit out the coffee and brandy interlude. He had departed fifteen minutes earlier to check on any late developments at police headquarters. Popenko, still outwardly unaware of the men he was watching, called for the waiter, as McKeough left, and ordered another vodka. When the waiter departed, Popenko walked out into the lobby and disappeared from view long enough to contact whatever agent would be following McKeough. Popenko rarely worked alone. He was the strategist and the executioner, but one or two lesser agents were always at his disposal. Their identities didn’t trouble Martins. Popenko knew what Martins knew: that life was seldom easy but that it could be deeply satisfying, if a man knew who he was and where he belonged.
Brooks Martins knew that he was black. He had become aware of this difference between himself and most of his countrymen, at an early age, and accepted it with good grace. His father, now dead, had been a Baptist minister of a small church. His mother, better educated, strong-willed and self-assured, had been a teacher, prior to her marriage, and tutored her son beyond the normal standards. She still lived in the family home in Baltimore, now in happy expectancy of living to see her grandchildren; as pleased, no doubt, as Martins himself, that they, too, would be black. This was nonsense, he knew. Racism was an evil and miscegenation might be the only answer, but that was a problem for the next generation, which would be better able to cope with it. Face it, Martins told himself. You are a racist. You like black to be black and white to be white. You like simplicity. You like a Russian to be a Russian, and an American to be an American. That, too, was nonsense, but, when the battle lines are drawn, you like to know which man is apt to kill you and why. An old soldier himself, Martins wondered how it felt to fight the kind of war Brad Smith had fought. He had an excellent record; he seemed straightforward. Instinct was a powerful force, and instinct told him that Brad Smith was reliable. And then Martins realized that he was mentally matching sides: Popenko and his agents against the Americans. McKeough was only thirty-two, still on the wild side: playing the field for women and restless for action. But he was dependable. Martins felt the pressure of the .357 Magnum under his coat and relaxed. McKeough was sufficient. There was no need to call Athens for reinforcements.
The honeymooners left the dining room, as Martins poured himself a second brandy. They wouldn’t be lingering in the lounge for coffee and Elvis, certainly. He smiled to himself, thinking of his son and the lovely bride, and then he remembered Pattison Blair, who hadn’t come down for dinner, and realized his surprise at seeing her in Kastoria. He might have expected Rhona Avery—but that was his middle-class, Puritan mind at work again. Pattison Blair was Harry Avery’s woman now. Back in the safe in his house in Athens, Martins had two sealed envelopes Avery had left with him, to be delivered in the event of his death. One was for Peter Lange; the other for Pattison Blair. It was a dramatic gesture from a romantic man, who probably never imagined that he could die. Like McKeough, Avery lived for excitement. A dangerous mission into Albania, under the cover of photographing locales, was the kind of stimulus he loved. But now the hours since the plane crash were accumulating, and the presence of the Russians in Kastoria meant that Avery hadn’t been taken by the Albanians—Popenko would be the first to know—and no attempt at ransom had been made from any quarter. The evidence was pointing to what Pattison Blair seemed to sense. Avery was probably dead.
Brooks Martins watched Popenko light a fat cigar—a Havana, no doubt. Dead or alive, Avery had to be found before Popenko got to him, because Avery had taken the film from the wreckage. Cigar smoke lifted lazily to the high ceiling and the big Russian leaned back in his chair and stared at the black lake beyond the windows. A waiter came into the dining room and approached Martins.
“You are wanted on the telephone in the lobby, sir,” he said.
Martins scrawled his room number on the bill and followed the waiter back to the lobby. The call was at the desk. It was McKeough.
“Brooks,” he said excitedly, “get down here as fast as you can. All hell’s breaking loose. A man just walked in to report that he’s found Harry Avery’s body.”
“Where?” Martins demanded.
“Don’t know yet. He just walked in—like now. Coming?”
“Of course,” Martins said and put down the telephone.
Avery’s body. Strange how little his emotions reacted to that thought. On the job training did that for an agent. The human being, Avery, was no longer important. The information he had picked up in Albania was. It was as simple and cold as that. Martins asked the desk clerk to get him a cab immediately. It might take some time, he was told. Some of the guests had gone out to visit native taverns and there were few taxis available.
“Get one anyway!” Martins ordered.
From across the lobby he could hear the sound of voices at the bar. English voices: American voices. He crossed the lobby to the doorway of the bar and peered inside. Some of the faces at the bar were recognizable: reporters from the Athens-based news bureaux. A reporter was the last thing he wanted to encounter now—even in the chance of picking up a car. He turned away quickly before he could be recognized and, turning, saw Pattison Blair staring at him from across the room. She had a knowing look about her, as if she had overheard his call. She stood near the place where he had taken it: it was possible that she watched his face as he absorbed McKeough’s message and reached the right conclusion. In any event, there was no way to avoid an explanation.
He went to her quickly. “Miss Blair,” he said, taking her arm and drawing her away from the desk, “you’re just the person I want to see. You drove up from Athens in a private car, didn’t you?”
“Peter Lange did the driving,” she said, “but it’s my car.”
“May I borrow it—please? It seems there are no taxis available just now.”
“Why do you need it? What’s happened?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve had a report that someone found Harry Avery’s body.”
She took it straight. No tears; just the tightening of the muscles in her jaw. “I knew it,” she whispered.
“The report may be false,” he added hastily, “but I must check it out.”
“Of course.”
“Then, may I—?”
She opened her handbag and withdrew the car keys. Now she hesitated and drew back her hand.
“I want to go with you,” she said.
“Really, Miss Blair, this may be very unpleasant.”
“I didn’t drive all the way to Kastoria expecting to have a pleasant time,” she said. “If Harry’s dead, I have a right to see him. I have a right to know who killed him.”
“If he is dead, I assume it was the plane crash that killed him,” Martins said.
“Planes can be sabotaged.”
“I don’t think this one was, but if it was, it’s the wreckage you want to see. If you could just wait upstairs for a little while, I promise to telephone.”
She raised her voice deliberately. “Do you want me to walk into that bar and tell everybody what you just told me, Mr. Martins? Do you want a press escort to wherever
we
are going?”
Martins shrugged. “You win,” he said. “Will you drive or will I?”
“I’ll drive. I have cat’s eyes in the dark.”
They left the hotel together. The Ferrari was parked a few steps away from the entrance. As Martins folded his long body into the bucket seat, alongside Pattison Blair, he glanced back through the rear window and saw a dusty Volvo pulling up to the hotel, just in time to receive the exit-ing Popenko.
“This is a fast car,” Martins said. “If you’re as good a driver as I think you are, you’ll have no trouble losing that Volvo behind us.”
It had been fifteen minutes earlier, when Leslie Parker got out of the old Volkswagen driven by “Petros”, and walked the short block to the Kastoria Police Station. Understandably, his chauffeuse had no desire to approach an area of police authority, particularly when she knew that Captain Koumaris was in the city. Precisely what it was that this handsome, highly educated woman did for refugees from the Junta government, was a thing Parker had no desire to learn. He had come to Greece four years earlier to avoid entanglements of every kind, and an intelligent and sensitive man avoided trouble best when he saw and heard the least. He had told no one in Kastoria about his past. It was by accident the locals had learned he had medical skill, and he admitted to no one that he had been a successful young surgeon in Harley Street before he left London in search of obscurity. Four years could be a century. A door had been forceably closed, and he had no intention of allowing it to reopen. But when this woman, whom some called “Petros”—which, it was said, was the code name used by her husband, an ex-army colonel, when he fought the E.A.M. in 1945—came to his house and demanded that he go with her to help save a dying man, he could not refuse. One reason—the most powerful reason—was the force of the woman herself. She did not ask; she commanded. The eye-patch suited her, somehow. One could see her in full battle array, a gaunt Valkyrie, urging heroes to battle. She was becoming a legend. It was said that the Junta had cashiered her husband and then had him murdered, in what passed for a car accident in the Pindus mountains. It was said that she had lost her eye fighting in the underground, during the German occupation, and, by others, that she had lost it under Nazi torture, without revealing any information that would hurt her husband and his fighters. Many things were said, but none of them prepared the listener for the impact of the woman herself, appearing silently at the doorway, as he was having a late supper with Elena, the Greek woman who now lived with him and helped keep the door to the past tightly closed.
She spoke briefly in excellent English. A doctor was needed at once. A man was dying. He might already be dead. He was the man being sought by everyone—the American, Harry Avery. That she couldn’t go to the authorities herself was obvious. The legends, true or untrue, had exiled her. The Junta had banished hundreds of Greece’s former heroes. The excuse was always the same—to protect Greece from Communists. The experienced ear recognized the howl of the power hungry, in the no-holds-barred scramble for the Musical Chairs of authority and privilege. It was a game as old as Cain and Abel, and they won only to lose.
But the man who now called himself Leslie Parker, who had played his own game once, and lost, was still a doctor. He was also a man with a man’s curiosity, and he had heard of nothing but Harry Avery on the wireless for four days. And so he left the lovely and uncomplicated Elena to sup alone, and accompanied the one-eyed woman in the rattling old van to a monastery that was almost hidden at the foot of the mountains. There, in the rude hut behind the church, by the dimming light of a lantern, he found the man for whom so many still searched. He found him only a few minutes after Brad’s hurried exit: dead and not yet cold. Rigor mortis had not yet set in. The fingers of the hands spread out on the rough monk’s blanket were greying, but not yet stiff.
Petros held the lantern higher.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“Yes. He’s been dead for several minutes.”
“I don’t mean this one. I mean the other American—the one who sent me to fetch you.”
Parker looked up from the body with bewildered eyes.
“The other American?”
“The one with a rifle. I found him here before I went for you. He said Harry Avery was his friend, but he’s gone. I see he’s taken Avery’s watch.”
“Watch?” Parker echoed.
“The watch on Avery’s wrist. A chronometer—Swiss movement. I wonder if he took the jacket, too.”
She showed no reaction to the dead man. Death was too familiar to unnerve her any more. She hung the lantern back on its hook and went into the adjoining room. The jacket was a small matter. What concerned her was the knapsack and the money—something expected, it was no longer under the table. She returned to the bedroom holding the leather garment.
“The jacket’s still here,” she reported, “but he’s emptied the pockets. A strange friend, that one.”
Rising from the bed, his head still filled with thoughts of the dead man, Parker said: “I’ll have to report this death.”
“Of course. You take the jacket with you. Avery’s name is on the label. I’ll drive you back to Kastoria, but I’ll have to let you out before we reach the police station. Personal reasons, you understand.”
“I think I do.”
“Good. Pull the blanket over Avery’s head. If the monks come in, they will understand that he’s dead and leave him alone. They’re very superstitious. Let’s get started.”
Parker did what had to be done and followed the woman back to the van. She was speaking earnestly in Greek, to a black-frocked man, when he crawled into the van. Moments later, she climbed in behind the wheel and started up the motor. On the way back to town, she told him more about her meeting with the American, who claimed to represent Mrs. Avery. Within a block of the police station she parked the van.
“I want nothing more to do with this,” she said, “but if you see or hear of a young man from Athens, Stephanos Brisos, you might get word to me. Your woman will know how. Brisos was taken by the state police, an hour or so ago.”
“Here—in Kastoria?”
“The octopus has long arms. Keep your ears open,
doctor.”