Decision at Delphi (48 page)

“They want Steve to stay alive.”

There was silence.

Myrrha Kladas said, “Are you sure of that?”

“That’s one thing I am sure of.”

“They do not pretend?”

“I am sure of that, too?”

Myrrha Kladas and Petros exchanged a long thoughtful look. Then she said, “I believe the American.”

Petros said, “We don’t want any policemen around here.” He pointed across the room, and Strang saw a rifle propped at the side of the door. “My friend John has a gun, too. We keep them private, hidden, you understand. For any—well—any trouble. But the police don’t like guns. They will take them away.”

“Is John the man with the sheepskin?”

Petros laughed. “No. That’s Levadi. That’s
her
friend.” He pointed at Myrrha. “Why don’t you tell Levadi he is no longer a shepherd?” he asked her teasingly. “Or why don’t you wash his coat? Or him?”

“He does no one any harm,” she flashed out. “He stayed my friend when others forgot me.”

“Ah!” said Petros, his eyes narrowing. “And why did they forget you? Just look at a few burned-out houses around here, will you?”

Strang asked quickly, “Where are John and Levadi?”

“Outside. On guard.” Petros was still looking bitterly at Myrrha Kladas. “We expect a little trouble.”

“Then you’d better tell them that my two friends are coming back here. I don’t want to have them floating down any stream.”

Petros stopped looking at Myrrha Kladas. He rose, yawned, and stretched. “What do they look like?”

Strang described Elias and Costas.

“And they are not policemen?”

“No!”

“Okay, okay,” Petros clumped heavily toward the door.

“Sh!” said Myrrha Kladas.

“Okay!” Petros said in a softened growl, picked up his rifle, and left.

“Myrrha,” Strang said very gently, “where is Steve?”

She was at the door, barring it. She turned and looked at him.

“Do you know that he is alive?”

She nodded. “Petros told me everything you told him.”

But Petros would not have been sitting here if he hadn’t found Steve. That was certain. Besides, there was no air of mourning in this house, no gloom. Petros would not have jeered at her, lost his temper, if Steve had been dead. And Myrrha Kladas would not be facing Strang so calmly, either, at this moment: village women took mourning seriously and were not easily comforted. “Why—why—” he began. He was having trouble
with his Greek verbs. An aching head was no help at all. “Why did you telephone?” he asked with painful slowness. He put a hand over his forehead and held it there.

She looked at him anxiously. Then she said, “I speak English, if Petros is not here to laugh at my mistake. I lived in America once.” As she spoke, she went to a wooden chest, found a piece of white cloth, soaked it with cold water, and came over to wrap it across his brow. “Lie back,” she told him. “You do not have to pretend for me.”

He lay back on the bed. He watched her lift a chair and bring it beside him. She sat down. “Now,” she said softly, “we talk.”

“Why did you telephone?”

“I had no choice.”

“But it was a trap. I might have ended in that stream after all,” he reminded her.

“No, no! When the car stopped, I was to scream.”

“Then they would have hurt you.”

“John and Levadi were near.”

He was startled. “Where?”

“Very near. John had his rifle ready.” She frowned at her hands, neatly folded in her lap. “It was the best we could do.”

Then, slowly, she told him what had happened. That noon, when she came back from working in the field, she found two strangers searching this house. Levadi was still in the field. She had tried to run out, to call, but one of the men had stopped her. They came as friends, they said. Her brother Stefanos was not dead; he was alive and in hiding because there were enemies, men who had once been his comrades, who remembered that he had been a deserter. Stefanos, so they said, had sent them to find her, and to prove that, they had showed her a little
diary with her brother’s writing in it. Stefanos wanted to see his American friend, Kenneth Strang. Stefanos would come to Thalos tonight, and meet his friend in this house.

“You see?” she asked anxiously. “They told me I must telephone you. Because you would believe me when I said it was urgent; but you had never heard of them, and you might not listen to them. So I was to go with them into Sparta, and telephone you. At once! But I said I could not go into the big town with mud on my boots, and in my old dress from the fields. So they said they would wait for me at the road by the bridge, where their car and their driver were. You see?”

Yes, he was beginning to see.

“But then,” she said, “as I went down through the little wood, I found Petros. And he told me a different story. He was unshaven, there was mud on his clothes, and he looked as if he had been without sleep, searching—as he told me—for Stefanos. And so I believed him. For I knew him. We talked. And he made a plan. He wanted me to telephone you. How else could he bring you here quickly? But we have no money for telephones to Athens, so—you see?”

“Yes,” Strang said. “You let the strangers pay for the call, and you got me out here as Petros wanted.”

“But you understood my warning,” she said. “And you brought friends.”

He looked at her.

“When I called Stefanos ‘Steve,’ you understood that I had learned about the name you gave him.”

He couldn’t disappoint her by admitting he had not fully understood. But Colonel Zafiris had understood, perhaps not fully, either, but enough to send Elias and Costas along.

“And,” Myrrha said triumphantly, “how could I learn such a name if I had not been speaking to Stefanos or Petros? That was all the warning I could give. One of the men stood beside me as I telephoned.” She laughed. “What money they spent! I telephoned at three o’clock, four o’clock, five o’clock, six—and there you were, at last.”

“Who paid for all that?”

Her laughter died away. She sat very still. “Since I talked with Stefanos, I think I know. Odysseus—a man I met many years ago, when we took strange names and hid behind them. There was reason then. But now—he still hides behind Odysseus.”

“Did he come to see you, some weeks ago?”

She stared at Strang. “Yes. About Stefanos. He wanted to warn Stefanos not to come to Greece.”

“That old excuse about Steve deserting?”

“You believe he did?”

“No.”

Her face softened. “No,” she agreed. “But I believed Odysseus about the danger. Some people might want to have revenge. They hear one side of the story. They do not ask about the other side.” She bit her lip. “I know,” she said. “Once, I heard only one side...”

“And so you told Odysseus where he could find Steve to warn him.”

“Yes. I told him Steve would be in Sicily before he came to Greece.”

He sat up slowly and swung his legs on to the floor. “Can I go upstairs and see Steve now?” He handed her the cloth from his head. It hadn’t helped much, but he thanked her.

“He is asleep. I gave him a drink of herbs to make him sleep.” She looked at him curiously. “How did you know he was here?”

“Why else are you all guarding this house so carefully?”

She smiled then. “Petros brought him here when I went with these men into Sparta.”

“It would have been safer, perhaps, to leave him where Petros found him.”

“No. He needs shelter. Care. Petros found him—”

“At the old place?”

She nodded. “Up on the hill, below the mountain ridge. There is an old castle there. In ruins. The Franks built it, many years ago.”

Six hundred years ago, most probably, Strang thought, if the French knights had built it.

“And the Albanian soldiers of the Turks destroyed it,” she was saying. “Every man was killed. The women were—were destroyed. The children taken as slaves. Nothing left—a few walls. A little church, without a roof.” She sighed. “But not enough shelter for a man who was sick.”

“How sick?” he asked quickly.

“A bullet was in his shoulder. Something here”—she put a hand over her right ribs—“is not good. He walked and climbed over these mountains, for two nights and a day. His feet—” She shook her head. “But he is alive. And talks too much. So I made him sleep.”

Strang got on to his feet. “I’ll have a look. No, don’t worry—I shan’t waken him.” He stood very still. “What was that?”

She was on her feet, her hand deep in the pocket of her skirt. “It could be the morning wind. It rises before dawn.”

They stood listening. There was only silence now.

“Do you expect these men from Tripolis to come back?”

“They will come back. You are very important to Odysseus, Mr. Strang.”

If so, thought Strang, he is a little late; the time to get me out of Athens was yesterday, before I could talk with Colonel Zafiris.

“I hear nothing,” Myrrha said, and took her hand out of her pocket. “What made you think these men come from Tripolis?”

“Their clothes, mostly. And they travelled north. Tripolis is the nearest town in that direction.”

“They have been living in Tripolis,” she said. “But they do not come from there.”

It was a nice Greek distinction. But he was thinking now of the timing of the telephone calls. Three o’clock was the first one. If Cecilia and he had separated after lunch—most people did, falling into the Mediterranean custom of the long rest after the midday meal—he would have been in his room for that first call, he would have been on his way to Sparta before Cecilia even came downstairs and had picked up that note signed “Katherini.” And Cecilia would have kept that appointment.

Myrrha was looking at him. “There is something wrong?” she asked, sensing his tenseness. She listened. “No,” she decided. “Nothing.” She sat down at the table, and watched him curiously. The last flicker of the dying fire threw faint, glancing shadows over his face. But there were deeper shadows there, too, she thought. “You wonder how I knew Odysseus sent these men?”

He sat down opposite her.

She said, “I remembered one of them. He did not know me. But men do not change so much as women. I knew him. He
did many things for Odysseus.” She shivered. Then she said, “Levadi remembered him, too. Once, before the war; they both lived near Parnassos. That is to the north. On the mainland,” she explained politely.

“And during the war?”

“They both followed Odysseus. Levadi knew my brothers, too.”

“Levadi—that is a strange name.”

“That is not his real name. It is the place he came from.”

“Why doesn’t he go back there?”

“After the war, some men could not go back.”

He looked at her. “You trust him?”

“He has been here for almost thirteen years. Without him, I could not have worked my farm... In the village, I had no friends. Not then. People forget slowly. But—” she paused— “they do forget. A little. There is peace here. Work and peace and food. That is all Levadi wants.”

“But how did he know where to find you?”

“Oh, people find people,” she said vaguely. Then she brushed aside the American’s doubts. “In Greece, many people were made refugees, many left their villages, many went looking for friends, many found new places. Levadi is not so difficult to understand.”

“Isn’t he? You said he followed Odysseus once.”

“But he rebelled,” she said softly. “Like my brother Stefanos he rebelled. Yet they are so different. Stefanos, he thinks much. He rebelled—” she touched her forehead—“here. Levadi does not think. He never questions. He feels.” She touched her heart. “He rebelled, there.” She closed her eyes, as if her words had struck a savage memory. She drew a deep breath.

“When Odysseus came here a few weeks ago, did he see Levadi? Did he talk to him?”

She looked puzzled. “Yes. At first, Levadi wouldn’t listen. He ran up the hill, behind this house. But Odysseus followed him.”

“And he patched up their quarrel, whatever it was?”

“I did not ask any questions,” she said coldly. “I do not think you should ask them. It was a personal matter, between them. Not politics. Levadi was jealous, once, of Odysseus. Oh, not because of me. Someone quite different, someone else—” She halted, listening. The strange sound, breaking through the lonely night, died away. “Did you hear?”

Strang was on his feet, too. The sharp rasping call of a night bird was repeated. “A screech owl, perhaps,” he said.

“Or Petros. That is his signal.”

“Good or bad?”

“It is a warning. The men are coming back.”

Strang said, “Look—they don’t know that Steve is here, do they?”

“No.”

“Then they are coming for me.” They must have seen Elias and Costas returning in the car from the valley, and they had assumed it was the American still searching for Thalos. Strang pointed to her pocket. “Do you know how to use that revolver?”

Myrrha drew it out. “Petros gave it to me.”

“Can you use it?” he repeated.

“I have not forgotten.”

“Then bar this door solidly. Stay here. Don’t open a window. If the men come here, don’t let them in. Tell them you didn’t let me in, either. You never let anyone inside at night. That’s your story.”

She watched him lift the door’s bar out of its heavy sockets. “No—no!”

“Yes!” he said. “If they catch me, they won’t take me far. Petros is out there. And Elias, I hope.”

He edged the door open, first ajar, then a few more inches. The end of the village street and the beginning of the path lay before him. Thank God, the room had been dark; his eyes didn’t have to get accustomed, all over again, to the night’s shadows. He could hear no rustle, see no movements. They weren’t near the house then. Not yet. He opened the door and slipped through. Behind him, the door was closed quietly. He kept close to the wall of the house, to the heavy black line of darkness under the eaves. At the corner, he stepped into the path, walking lightly through its shadows. Now, he was out of them, into the open, and he slowed his pace, as if he had no reason to hurry. He halted by the curve of the stream and lit a cigarette, as if he were wondering what he should do next. Then, he began, slowly, to walk down the path toward the woods. If there was anyone watching from the distance, they would see him clearly. If they wanted him, they would know where to find him. And if I’ve guessed wrong, he thought, as he approached the first tree, if Petros isn’t anywhere near here, then— There was a sharp crack, splitting the night. A spurt of earth and stones shot up ahead of him, to the side of the path. He raced for the wood, dived into the undergrowth as a second shot cut the ground behind him. And somewhere dogs began barking.