Decision at Delphi (44 page)

Cecilia glanced back, up at the portico. “You do choose your moments,” she said softly.

“Not that moment. It chose me.” And that was the unexplainable truth. He had been going to wait, had he, until this trouble was over and their job for
Perspective
finished? Yes, that was the way it seemed best last night.

“I may have rushed things a bit,” he admitted, “but I suddenly realised I had wasted enough time in my life.” He glanced at her, to see if a shadow had crossed her face. He could be jealous of even the ghost of a memory. And that was a startling new feeling, too.

But there was no shadow, no ghost. She was looking at him, as if she had guessed his emotion. “At least,” she said slowly, carefully, “we did meet before we wasted any more years.” Then she looked at him with horror, “Oh, Ken, we might never have met!”

And Elias, waiting impatiently in the doorway of the small office beside the admission gate, shook his head. The two guards beside the gate had been following the Americans’ slow progress with sympathetic interest, but Elias, brisk from the quick telephone call he had made, could only think of all the unnecessary delay, the complications, the added danger. How strange were American reactions to a threatening note! Romantic love was one Western
invention that Greece could leave well alone.

Strang halted as he saw Elias. “Back to earth we are,” he said quietly. “Have a look at the post cards, Cecilia. See what competition you have got.” As she went forward to the display of photographs, he picked up an illustrated guidebook from the counter at the ticket window.

Elias said, “Six o’clock in Miss Hillard’s room. Six o’clock.”

“In Miss Hillard’s room?” That puzzled Strang.

“It is easier.” Elias turned away as if to say, “Now stop asking idiotic questions and get back to the hotel as I told you.”

Strang put down the price of the guidebook, and joined Cecilia. “Found anything?”

“Not yet.”

“Another time, then. Come on.” He took her arm and led her through the gate.

She saw something had nettled him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. We are just being sent back to your room, that’s all.” He glanced at his watch and his lips tightened. “They don’t give us much time, these boys.” Not much time alone, either, he thought angrily.

“But why in my room?”

“I asked that question and got very little answer.” Easier for whom?

“They’re probably trying to help us,” Cecilia said.

“Probably,” he agreed, to please her. But he was still annoyed. He never had enjoyed the feeling that his life was being arranged for him.

Then two small boys, near one of the ash-tray-and-bogus-vase booths, saw them coming and ran to wake up a taxi driver sleeping peacefully in his cab. The man stretched and yawned
happily. “It was good I waited?” their driver asked. “Is very beautiful the Parthenon.” And all the energy, gathered in his two-hour sleep, poured into a long discussion of the Acropolis: the foreigners all admired it; but rich and powerful as foreigners were, had they ever been able to produce anything like that? No, agreed Strang, and tactfully didn’t suggest that no one in Greece in the last two thousand years had ever equalled it, either. Instead, he put forward the idea that now he had better translate all these interesting observations for the benefit of the lady. That seemed a reasonable request and was politely granted. So Strang returned to Cecilia for the remaining six minutes of the ride.

“When are we getting married?” he asked.

She looked startled. “But we’ve just got engaged.” She began to laugh. “Right on top of the Acropolis...”

And we’d have been married there, too, if it could have been managed, he thought. “You didn’t answer the question.”

“Well—there’s the
Perspective
job to finish. Isn’t there?”

“Yes. But it won’t get finished if you don’t marry me.”

“But wouldn’t that be—”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“But, darling—”

“It’s quite simple,” he told her. “I can do this job in two ways. Either without you or with you. There’s no half-and-half business possible. First, you’re too beautiful. Second, you’re too pretty. Third, you’re too distractingly lovely. So that’s the choice, and there is none, because I’m not doing this job without you.”

“And to think,” she said, “I imagined you proposed to me because of the brilliance of my intellect.” She smiled, one of her warmest and truest smiles. She reached toward his cheek and kissed it gently.

* * *

The hotel lobby was more than usually crowded. “There is a reception in the ballroom,” the porter told them with lowered voice. The flowered hats were out in full bloom, the green-khaki uniforms showed their medals, young diplomats concealed light thoughts under dark suits, older men stooped under their load of boredom.

“Big guns,” Strang said to Cecilia, as he recognised two faces from newspaper photographs. “No place for light artillery.” He hurried her into the elevator, glancing at his watch. It was quarter to six. He took her to her room door. “I’ll be back here in eight minutes,” he told her, and kissed her a temporary goodbye. Love in snatches, he thought wryly, as he hurried upstairs to his room. As he washed at lightning speed, changed his shoes and shirt and tie, he remembered the long lonely hours he had had to himself in Taormina. But that was only to be expected: the minute you got your girl, everything started conspiring to separate you.

He was startled to see, in the bathroom mirror, what a cheerful face he was wearing. Love, he decided, made all men look like idiots. His grin widened. All right, he told himself, it feels wonderful, but sober up, for God’s sake, or you’ll blast off into orbit and stay there. He prepared to leave, checking his wallet, fresh handkerchief, keys, giving a last look at his sketchbook abandoned on his desk. “Just wait,” he told it, “I’ll add drawings to your collection that you won’t be ashamed of. I’ll do the best work I’ve ever done.” Then, just as he opened his door, with thirty seconds to get down to the second floor, the telephone rang. “Damn!” he said, started to
close the door, hesitated, opened it again. He went back and picked up the receiver. The call was from Sparta.

“Waiting,” he said, ready for Petros’s voice. There was a good deal of crackling and fizzing, and at last a woman’s voice asking “Mr. Strang?”

“Waiting,” he said again.

“Myrrha Kladas,” the voice said, and came in a little more clearly. “I am Myrrha Kladas. The sister of Steve.”

Strang strained to catch the distant, hesitant voice. “More slowly, please,” he told her. Greek was difficult enough without a long-distance call to add to his troubles.

“Steve’s sister,” she repeated. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Please come. At once.”

“At once?”

“It is urgent.” The voice had strengthened.

“But where?”

“I must see you.”

“Where?”

“Near Thalos there is a bridge, a path that leads to my house, one kilometre past the village. I shall wait there.”

“Tomorrow? About noon?” If he left at six in the morning, that ought to let him reach Thalos by that time.

“Tonight,” she said.

“But it is almost six o’clock now.”

“I shall wait.”

“I cannot leave until seven.” Seven at the very earliest, he thought, and even that would be difficult.

“I shall wait,” Myrrha Kladas said, her sad voice fading again, and, this time, into silence.

Strang took only thirty seconds to get down, by staircase, to Cecilia’s door. She opened it, a little subdued. “I’m late, you should keep this door locked, sorry darling, there was a telephone call,” he said all in one quickly gathered breath as he put his arms around her and kissed her. Then he saw that there were others there. Damnation, he thought, and closed the door and turned to face them all. Pringle, in subdued and diplomatic grey, seemed a little startled. Elias, an eyebrow raised, looked at his watch. Colonel Zafiris, resplendent in full decorations, appeared to notice nothing at all. He shook Strang’s hand politely, offered Cecilia a chair with a gracious wave of his hand, selected the pink velvet sofa for himself, and lit a cigarette.

“I have ten minutes,” the Colonel said. He allowed himself a slight gleam of a smile. “Unless, of course, Mr. Strang receives other telephone calls.”

It might have been a neat reminder that Strang hadn’t yet apologised to anyone except Cecilia; or it could have been subtle curiosity. I’ll take it as curiosity, thought Strang. “It was a call from Sparta,” he said bluntly. He was too worried to be polite. “From Steve’s sister, Myrrha Kladas.” That got everyone’s attention. Elias even stopped looking at his watch.

“Sparta—” the Colonel said softly. “By that, do you mean the town of Sparta itself?”

“I assumed it was from Thalos.”

“There is no telephone in Thalos.” The Colonel looked at Elias, who burst into a rush of suggestions. Elias seemingly knew the situation at Thalos. And it was his feeling that the call, for the sake of privacy, would be made from the town of Sparta itself.

“If it was a very private call,” the Colonel agreed with him. And then to Strang, “Was it?”

“Yes. She said it was urgent. Wants me to leave at once. She said she would be waiting at a bridge, one kilometre past the village.” He frowned. “One odd thing, though. She was talking in Greek, but she identified herself as the ‘sister of Steve.’ Not of
Stefanos.
Would she use
Steve?”
That was still puzzling him.

The Colonel exchanged a brief glance with Elias, and then studied the half-inch of firm white ash on the end of his cigarette. He shrugged his shoulders for an answer. Then he said, “Are you going to Thalos?”

“Yes,” Strang said. He looked over at Cecilia reassuringly. “It won’t take long,” he told her. Cecilia tried to smile, but the worry in her eyes kept growing.

The Colonel nodded. “It would be a pity,” he said, “to miss this opportunity of finding out the reason why she telephoned
you. She was not very communicative yesterday morning when Elias visited her with the news we had just received of her brother’s death.”

Cecilia drew a deep breath. It was all very well for the Colonel to take such a cold, objective interest; he wasn’t going to keep any midnight appointment on a lonely mountain road. There was open fear in her eyes. “Ken,” she said softly, “may I go with you? As you had planned?” If I’m with him, she thought, he will take fewer chances. But she knew from his face what he had decided for her: it was that plane for Rome, with Pringle seeing her safely on board.

The Colonel, even if he had seemed to pay her little attention since the first moment of politeness, said, “Quite impossible, Miss Hillard. But don’t worry. Mr. Strang will not be travelling alone.” He signed to Elias. “Tell Spyridon Makres that Mr. Strang needs that car right away. Seven o’clock punctually at the hotel entrance. Make sure they send you a Cadillac or a Chrysler—” He noticed the amused flicker on Strang’s face. “It is not a matter of snobbery,” he told Strang; “it is a matter of horsepower and of weight. Our mountain roads are more easily managed in a car that will hold the curves. It is about—” he considered for a moment—“one hundred and sixty miles to Sparta from here. With a powerful car, and a driver who knows each turn on the road, you will not keep Myrrha Kladas waiting much past midnight.” He nodded to Elias. “Miss Hillard may possibly not object to having your instructions telephoned from her bedroom. You would permit him, Miss Hillard? Thank you. Make all arrangements, Elias.”

Elias moved into the next room and closed its door quietly but firmly behind him.

“Now,” the Colonel said, shaking off the full inch of ash from his cigarette, rising, “there seems little time left to discuss what I came here to arrange. But after Mr. Strang’s news, I’m afraid no discussion is possible. We shall just have to accept Mr. Pringle’s idea of how to keep Miss Hillard safe.”

Strang said quietly, “I hope it coincides with mine. When is the first plane to Rome? Bob, will you see Cecilia safely—”

“Ken,” Cecilia said, “you know that will only double your own danger to send me out of Greece. I told you before, I just won’t—” She halted, and turned away.

The Colonel looked surprised, and then relieved. “Miss Hillard is right,” he said, and put out his half-finished cigarette. “One must never admit to the enemy that one is vulnerable. Or he will strike where he thinks he really has found a weakness.”

Strang said, “He knows where I’m vulnerable.”

“Are you sure? That note to Miss Hillard could have been a test, a probing action, to find out whether she did know the name of Katherini.”

Strang looked angrily at Colonel Zafiris. Then he knew that the Colonel had thought of several other things, too. The mass kidnapping of children, the taking of hostages, these were a part of history that the Colonel wasn’t likely to forget. But one must never admit one’s worst fears, either: was that it?

“We shall keep Miss Hillard safe,” the Colonel promised him. He turned to say good-bye to Cecilia. “Just one more day,” he told her gently. “It isn’t too much to ask of you? One day of patience, of great caution. And by tomorrow night, so much will be explained to our enemy in three little newspaper paragraphs that I think he will have no other alternative but
to eliminate himself.” He took her hand and bowed over it. “Entirely,” he added very softly.

He gave Strang a very firm handshake. “Your driver will be Costas. Elias will be your interpreter.” And then, as he foresaw an objection to that, “No, no! I cannot let you go alone. Not while I still have two questions unanswered: who made that telephone call; and if it was Myrrha Kladas, then who paid for it? She has so little money, so little of anything—” He clapped Strang’s arm twice, strode to the door saying over his shoulder, “I’ll see you downstairs, Pringle. We must not disappoint Mr. Christophorou, must we?” He gave a quick glance into the corridor. All must have been well. The door closed behind him.

“Did you hear that?” Pringle asked worriedly.

“He’s going to the reception.”

“Because Christophorou will be there,” Pringle said, shaking his head.