Decision at Delphi (43 page)

“Not this time.” In fact, it was pleasant to feel he could relax a little and leave it all to the experts. “He is one of the Colonel’s young men.”

“Are we as important as that?”

“I hope not.” Then he drew her around to face the Acropolis. “Let’s begin again. Forget everything else.” And forget that I just had the desire to smash the face of the man who once brought me here. Oh, forget all that, forget it! He took a deep breath. They began to climb a dusty path toward
a wire fence and an admission gate.

“Forget this part, too,” he told her, “and the tourists, and the guards, and the guides. Once we’re through here—”

He was right. Once they were through, still following the path, they reached the end of the new, the beginning of the old. In front of them lay a series of giant steps, climbing steeply in a double staircase, up to the massive colonnade of the ancient gateway. By its side, high on its own precipice, was the Temple of the Wingless Victory, the first to be seen, always to be remembered. It was the perfect size. Everyone who approached had to look up; everyone who climbed had to walk slowly; everyone waited for the moment of seeing what lay beyond.

The whole Acropolis opened up to their eyes, a high plateau of solid rock, a vast bare sweep of sloping grey stone, uneven yet worn smooth. Once, there had been many statues and altars and sanctuaries, a multitude of offerings and memorials, a forest of marble richly decorated in colour and with gold. Now, except for a few rejected fragments lying scattered around, a pathetic remembrance of things past, there were only the remains of three temples left standing—with their rows of fluted columns rising, heavy drum on heavy drum of marble, the gold and sculpture and treasures looted, the dark-red and blue painted decorations washed and faded into whiteness. The houses of the gods, the Greeks had called them.

They had been placed in no symmetrical design, but in a seemingly thoughtless imbalance. Thoughtless? It was powerfully effective, even now in this bare stretch of looted ground, spreading the temples apart, each to the edge of its own precipice, each to be studied by itself, each so different in size and arrangement, each with its own effect. The Parthenon,
the largest temple, had been raised not in the middle of the Acropolis, as a methodical mind would have placed it, but to one side, on the highest slope of rock-covered ground. The rows of enormous marble columns seemed straight perfection, yet again there was imbalance to help man’s eye, a careful calculation to add grace to solid strength.

Strang had become completely absorbed. Cecilia could watch him now without even risking the embarrassment of being noticed. At this moment, she thought, here is a completely happy man. Then she looked out over the precipices; down at the patchwork of houses, seamed by twisting streets, spreading over the little hills below her, scattering even around the larger hills farther away. To the southwest was the sea, shimmering in the afternoon sun around its dark islands. But this is an island, too. An island in the sky, she thought, looking back around the Acropolis, stripped of all its riches down to the essentials—the mysticism that had first built it, the vision of greatness.

She opened her bag and drew out her case of filters and her light meter. Plenty of everyday problems, though, before she could start her imaginings. These widely scattered temples, for instance. The only way to get them grouped together for the exact camera eye would be to climb that little hill opposite, to the south, a hill with green trees and a monument on the top. Here, on the Acropolis. I’ll have to work with each unit complete in itself. I’ll have to find the best angles for each building, the best time of day; try to give a feeling of height, of soaring. There’s plenty of drama, strong light and deep shade; plenty of texture, variation in colour from the cold grey rock to the blended whites and golden tones of the columns; plenty of wonderful, marvellous, magnificent lines.

The canopy of blue sky was enormous, intense in colour, smooth as silk. She would have to be careful of this clear air and bright sun, of the reflected light from the pillars. Very careful, too, of the human beings, moving so capriciously around, their heads tilted back, their eyes swung upward. Tourists, bless their poor tired feet, seldom looked natural. Or elegant. It was a pity they did not wear the same kind of clothes they wore back home in their own cities. “We are going travelling,” people said, and started thinking of vacations, pushing
lederhosen
and shorts and sandals and beach skirts into their suitcases, as if cities abroad were places for picnics or hikes or barbecues. The Greeks, on their home ground, dressed in everyday clothes, looked real, and strangely enough, more comfortable. If she had to have some figures in the foreground, let them be the quiet, brooding Greeks, sitting still, self-contained within their own individual islands.

Strang sat on the top step of the western end of the Parthenon, and watched her moving slowly away, circling around, standing in reflection, moving on again. For one moment, he thought she was drifting too far out of sight, and rose. Then he noticed a man, farther down the slope, rise quietly from his seat on a broken fragment of pediment—Elias it was—and follow quietly, not at all obviously. So many people were moving slowly around at random that Elias’s little manoeuvre seemed absolutely natural. Strang relaxed, sat back on the step. At least, he thought, as he looked out once more over the Acropolis, I have had almost an hour of complete forgetfulness. And he was grateful. It was with a new decision, the bright sun pouring its warm energy over him generously, the cool spring breeze fanning away his exhaustion, that he reached in his pocket and took out the
letter signed “Katherini.” He rose as he saw Cecilia emerging from behind a corner of the Erechtheum portico. Quickly, he walked down the slope toward her, taking out a cigarette. Elias, he hoped, would not be far away, and this would be the closest Strang could get to him, this afternoon.

“Hallo,” he said to Cecilia, “how is it coming?”

“Only playing around, feeling my way, testing the film, mostly. The light is too yellow at this time of day, I think.”

“I need a match,” he said, and turned toward the man who had wandered into sight and was now standing quite still at the corner of the portico, admiring the procession of maidens, marble carved magically into girls’ strong bodies covered by a transparent flow of silk.

“May I borrow a match?” he asked Elias politely.

It didn’t take long. Within a minute, he was back with Cecilia, lighting a cigarette for her with his. “Let’s go and look at the olive tree,” he said. “Do you know its story?” He led her to the other side of the portico, to a stretch of sunken ground guarded by a broken wall.

“What did you give him?” she asked softly.

“Was it noticeable?”

“Not at all. But why else did you go up to him? Oh, don’t worry, Ken—no one else knew that your lighter was working, and that I had matches.”

He studied her face. He said, “I gave him Katherini’s letter.”

“Why?”

“It’s a fake.”

She looked at him, instantly on the alert.

“Let’s sit here and talk,” he suggested. It was a sunny, sheltered spot, both from the vagrant breeze and the
wandering tourists. The olive tree, even one that stood on the spot where an olive tree had grown long before the Parthenon was built, and had survived as a symbol of hope when everything else on the ancient Acropolis had been destroyed by the Persians, could not compete on home movies with the Portico of Maidens or the Parthenon itself. A visitor, now, looked over the wall curiously (tourists always hopefully believed that others might lead them to a good thing) and called disappointedly to his friends, “There’s only an old tree!” And then he was gone. A guard looked over, too, and seemed content that no damage was being done. Elias was walking slowly back toward the main gateway. They were alone, with the sweet smell of thin grass and dark-blue wild flowers around them, the gnarled olive tree outlined against Pentelic marble. Cecilia sat on a fragment of pedestal, Strang on a broken pillar.

“Give me the bad news first,” Cecilia said. Then, as he hesitated, she added, “That way, I know that there is nothing worse to come.”

“All right,” he said. “I gave that letter to Elias so that he could get it to Colonel Zafiris, right away. So the woman, or whoever is going to meet you this evening, can be arrested. It won’t be Katherini who is going to keep that appointment. She is dead.”

Cecilia said nothing. Her face had whitened, grown expressionless. She sat very still. She could have been carved out of marble, like the maidens high behind her.

He told her what the Colonel had described to him. “That is the bad news,” he said. His voice was bitter as he added, “If Drakon is only a name to cover Christophorou, then I am to blame. I told Christophorou—” He stopped speaking.

“What was the rest of the news?” she asked quickly. “What else had the Colonel to say?”

They were both silent for a little when he had ended. Then he came back to Katherini’s death again. “I wondered at the time why the Colonel told me so much. Now, of course, I begin to see. There was a reason behind everything he said, everything he showed me: the fact, for instance, that Katherini was being questioned when his men entered the Kriton Street house. That was his way of warning me that they might have got some information out of her about you and me. They did, obviously.” He paused. “If I had used my brains, I would have expected something like that letter.” He fell silent again, wondering what else he had missed in that morning’s interview.

Cecilia broke her long silence. She pushed back her hair, away from her face, then shook it free from her fingers. “No,” she said, as if she had decided something, “they didn’t learn much from Katherini. She wouldn’t tell—”

“Look, Cecilia, they were
questioning
her,” he said, his voice harshening. “Do I have to go into details?”

“She wouldn’t break. Not so soon, not so quickly. She had strength, that girl.”

“I know that. But even the bravest—” He didn’t finish.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “I’ve heard about such things.” She frowned, fighting back her emotion. “But Katherini—she wouldn’t tell them anything that would hurt us. I’m sure of that, somehow. She—” Cecilia bent her head to hide her tears. She stirred a fragment of marble with her foot. “We can still bluff them,” she said determinedly. “They still don’t know, exactly.

If they believed we really had learned so much—” She looked around her, then, thinking that perhaps she never would have seen the Acropolis at all. But Ken is the one who may really be in danger. Why do they want to get hold of me?

“I told you too much,” he said suddenly. “I wish to God you knew nothing—nothing at all.”

She began removing the filter from her camera lens, and placed it in the neat little leather pocket in her case. “I’m thankful you did,” she said calmly. “Ignorance is too dangerous. If the Colonel hadn’t told you about Katherine, we would really have been in trouble.” She shut the case into her handbag, closed her camera carefully.

“Thank God,” he said, watching her, “you don’t panic easily.”

You’re a better actress than you thought, she told herself. He helped her to rise. Nearly everyone else had left. In the far distance were only some stray students, a few solitary Greeks.

They began walking slowly toward the gateway. A vast bare silence lay around them, the deep-blue canopy stretched overhead. The western sun was stretching the shadows of the ancient gateway toward their feet. Strang paused and looked back at the Parthenon. The warm rays set it glowing gently, high on its grey slope of rock, as if a fire had been kindled inside it. Cecilia had turned to watch it, too. Her lips were parted a little, in the beginning of a surprised look of complete delight; her eyes were as blue as the sky, as radiant as the sun.“There’s something I want to tell you,” Strang said.

She looked around at him. Then her eyes widened anxiously. She had never seen him look so worried, so tense.

“I’m in love with you.” He caught her hands. “Will you marry me?”

For a moment, she stood very still. She could say nothing. She tried to speak. She shook her head.

“Cecilia,” he said, desperately now, “you can’t say no. It has got to be yes. It has got to be.”

“Yes,” she said slowly.

His arms went around her, bringing her close. He kissed her.

At last, he let her go. And now, as he looked at her, he could say nothing at all. He picked up the handbag and camera, which had dropped at her feet, and then they started toward the gateway. They passed through its chill shadows and came to meet the sun again at the top of the giant steps.

“Why did you say no?” he asked. That had been a bad moment, a moment of loss, complete loss: everything thrown away on a wild impulse.

“I didn’t say no.”

“You shook your head.”

“That was sheer wonder. ‘This can’t be me,’ I was saying, ‘this can’t be me.’” And it isn’t, she thought: I’m the girl who was going to run farther away than Sparta.

“It is you, and it is me, and that is all there is to it.”

“But it’s madness.” She was smiling, though. “Ken—we are
both
mad.”

“Then this is the kind of madness that keeps men sane.”

“But you don’t
know
me. We don’t—”

“Don’t we?” He kissed her again. She didn’t argue any more about that.

They started down the high steps, Strang leading, her hand on his wrist to steady her. “Back to earth,” he was saying, descending carefully. He wasn’t too steady himself. He could blame it on the dazzling light, on the steep pitch of the staircase,
except neither glare nor height had ever made him feel like this before. “Take it easy,” he told her, and tried to follow his own advice. He caught her by the waist at the last step and lifted her down on to the path. The two guards up at the high gateway had come forward to the edge of the portico, and were looking down with quiet interest. “We’ll disappoint them, this time,” he told her, and they began walking to the small office at the admission gate in the high wire fence.