Enemy and Brother (27 page)

“Professor, there is a singing of electric wires. Perhaps there is a light switch.”

I looked up. A line ran from the roadside pole to a pole near the cave and, now looking for it, I saw the floodlight over the entrance. “You are right. There will be a switch box.”

I got one of the tire tools from the trunk and walked to the cave, circling the area where the car might have parked. I could see what looked to be fresh tire tracks. The padlock hasp on the switch box was easily pried loose. I looked back to be sure Paul was not signalling and then threw one of the two switches. A light went on, perhaps a series of them—I could see only one—within the cave. I could see nothing except the passageway beyond the gate and that soon curved into an area beyond sight. I threw the other switch. The spotlight went on, flooding the entranceway with light as sharp as day. I at least had had the presence not to look into the face of the light when it came on. The dust of the parking area was loose, the tire marks ending in a skid. But to that point, they were quite clear, the tread sharply defined. A large-gauge tire. I could have photographed them: I had equipment for detail photography in the car but there seemed little point to it. After all, I had not seen the limousine sufficiently close to identify it. I traced the tracks to and from the road. There were older tracks also, but silted with dust. Only those of one large car were clear. And there were footmarks from where the car had stopped near the mouth of the cave. At the gate I could see a cluster of footprints where two or more men would have waited while another unlocked the gate. They had all gone inside and into the passageway, then back. What I did have in my pocket was a small magnifying glass. I carried it for the study of manuscripts. I got down on my knees and examined the shoeprints. One man had worn pointed toes, which to me suggested an Italian-made shoe: I did not permit my imagination to pursue its possible significance; many a Greek might wear an Italian shoe. One set of heels had borne a trademark: I was a moment figuring it out—the letters were backwards, of course—Goodyear, an American-made shoe, or at least heeled with an American product. An expert would have been able to tell more, the prints were so clear. There was not a boot among them, and all save the American make were new shoes, I thought, from the evenness of the heels. I took the shoestring from my own shoe and measured all the prints in the area by the gate. It came to only three pairs of shoes. Three men: Demetrios-Frontis? Braschi, the titled husband of Margaret Webb? One dared not make that leap, I thought, and yet…. And the other? A man with a preference for American moderate-priced gear. Odd, I did not sanction for a minute the possibility of the Colonel’s wearing Goodyear soles.

The sound of the car horn startled me. Paul was flashing the lights off and on. I ran to the fuse box and threw off both lights, shut the box, and ran back to the car.

“Turn back quickly,” he said, “and the same story if we are stopped.”

We had just managed to swing into the road and to pick up a little speed when we closed onto two sets of headlights. I brightened and dimmed mine. An army truck did the same, and then another, the soldiers in the back calling out, “
Yassos
!” They did not stop.

“The military?” Paul asked.

“Yes.”

“They will be part of the border guard,” he said.

“How far is it?”

“Twenty kilometers. Well? What did you find?”

I told him of the tire tracks and footprints and my own conjecture.

“Twenty kilometers from the Albanian border,” he murmured.

“We call them Northern Epirots,” I said, remembering the woman at Byron’s house.

“What?”

I told him what she had said when I mentioned Byron’s Albanians.

“We are onto something, Professor. I have felt it from the moment I rode into Ioannina.”

I lit a cigarette. It cut its way inside me. I said, “I’ve not had a bite of food since two o’clock. My belly is rubbing my backbone.”

I caught the flash of his teeth. “In Kalpaki there may be a
taverna
.”

“We’d better go back to Ioannina, Paul. In so small a place we could not help attracting attention.”

“When are we to see the priest about Maria?”

“I don’t know that we should see the priest unless we have to. The fewer people we need to question the better.”

“You are right. Priests are gossips and they are paid by the government.”

“Tomorrow we’ll find the convent. But first I want to know as much as I can about the nature of our enemy. If we do find the journal, then I know I shall be afraid.”

“I understand,” Paul said. “Very well I understand.”

I was remembering the deference shown me, an American, by the two policemen in Ioannina. “Paul, if it is as I conjectured and the third man was an American, who would it be?”

“You ask because you have an answer,” he said.

“I am wondering if it might not be a member of the CIA.”

“American Intelligence?” he said after a moment.

“Yes. Roughly comparable to the OSS during the war.”

“Is it true they foment revolutions?”

I answered indirectly. “They would not disapprove a change of government in Albania.”

“And they would have money?”

“Yes.” And then, not because I cherished the Albanian ideology—I have long since declared myself here to be non-political and that by necessity as well as choice—but because I saw the bloodshed and the maiming which once I had been wistful at not having seen, and I saw Demetrios the hero—I blurted out despairingly, “Yes! They would have money. It seems to be what we have most.”

We were both silent for some miles after that. Then Paul said, “How will you find out more about the nature of our enemy?”

“As you said before, we ought to know when Demetrios reverted into Colonel Frontis. I have told you about the people I met at Dr. Palandios’, particularly the woman, Elsa Storme.”

“Ah, yes, the one with the mummified husband.”

I had not put it that way, but it would do. I went on, “She arrives for the festival in the morning. She has a way of finding out things. And I would trust her.”

“And the husband?”

“He will not be here.”

“A most trustworthy man,” he said solemnly.

I glanced at him. His head back, he was grinning broadly. “What in hell has put you in such high spirits?”

“I am alive!” he cried. “I am a functioning, contributing human being. I have survived, and if I die tomorrow I will have started on the road to a good eternity.”

“Yes,” I said, “but I am going to try to keep us both on this side of it for some time longer.”

Paul could not repress his mood of exaltation. “If we are visiting the nuns tomorrow—I have never seen a convent. They are rare in Greece. Will they admit two stallions like us?”

“Perhaps we shall take Elsa with us.”

“Is she one of your strong women, Professor?”

“She is not an Amazon,” I said somewhat sourly.

Paul laughed and began to sing. It was the ballad of the Souli women which Vasso had sung the night he made his own way to the restaurant. He broke off the song and said, “Vasso will be proud of me, and I shall be master in our house.”

And lover? I wanted to know but would not ask. Had it been the other way round the question would have tripped off his tongue. I wanted most deeply for him to love her, probably because in my sense of fitness my own and lonely guilt would be assuaged.

I told him when the lights of Ioannina came into view. We arranged to meet at the lakefront at one o’clock the next day. He felt it was important for him to “see” the parade.

“Leave me now at Lord Byron Street,” he said. “It is a few doors from there, the place where I am staying. There will be singing tonight. Perhaps I shall listen.”

“It’s almost midnight,” I said, holding my watch to the dashboard.

“That, my brother, is the best hour for listening.”

T
HE TWIN ENGINE COMET
put down from Athens at eight-thirty in the morning. I was waiting. The moment Elsa saw me her pace quickened and she came toward me faster and faster until she was almost running. I held out both my hands to her. To see us one might have thought we had been lovers long before and cherished a lingering if quieter affinity. Yet I had met her but the once and had wondered while I waited if I would remember her face. It was a good face, rather too long but delicately molded and dominated by the frank grey eyes. The lines crinkled round them when she smiled.

“How splendid, John! You don’t mind my not calling you Professor?”

“I’m ten years younger for it,” I said, holding her hands until she drew them away.

“Too young, too young,” she said.

“Do you have baggage?”

“A sensible amount.”

“I’d counted on that. Let me have the ticket.”

In the car as we drove into town she said, “And has it been Lord Byron all the way?”

“Not all the way,” I said.

“I shouldn’t have thought so. The sky of Greece and all its lovely people—what a shame not to see them for turning stones and sifting bones.”

“I have a friend I want you to meet presently,” I said, for her words reminded me of Paul.

“Man or woman?”

I glanced at her: she was beautifully dressed, a grey silk suit, blue gloves and purse.

“I’m being gauche again,” she said, but smiling, at ease with me as I was with her.

“No. I was admiring you. You look lovely.”

She inclined her head to the compliment. “Then it’s a man.”

“Yes. Quite an extraordinary one.”

She waited but I was not ready yet to tell her about Paul. She said then, “I dined again with the Palandioses last night. They send their love. He wagered you would be here. And I have a bit of information which may or may not interest you. Remember I said I was writing a friend at the British Museum, a genealogist, about Count Braschi—you know of whom I’m speaking?”

I nodded.

“He is a descendent of Scanderbeg, the fifteenth-century Albanian nationalist.
Are
you interested?”

“Yes.”

“I assumed you were,” she said. “And it’s not simply curiosity about the former Mrs. Webb, is it?”

“No, Elsa. It’s something quite more.” I looked at her and smiled. I had no wish to alarm her or to involve her before it was necessary. “It’s not all that ominous. And I’ll tell you… in time.”

“I expect you to,” she said, forthright as ever. “What more about Braschi? Steel and shipping today. The social lot, of course. He’s forty-seven, not previously married, which is curious. Scanderbeg, I should guess, is as close as the Albanians come to a national hero. Unless there’s someone up there now whom we don’t know about. Perhaps someday we shall discover Mao Tse-tung to have been a secret Albanian.”

“Of that I’m doubtful.”

“Have you seen the countess yet?”

“No.”

“There will be a grand affair tonight. I trust you’ve been invited?”

“By messenger this morning—at Mr. Helmi’s suggestion. Elsa, I need your help.”

She looked at me in that frank way of hers that had at first disconcerted me. “I have felt that you would say that too,” she said. “And hoped so.”

“There is a Colonel Frontis about whose career I should like to know… what can be discreetly found out.” I told her of his prominence in the army purge of leftists and his presence at the Braschi wedding.

She said at once, “And Braschi and the Albanians. Is that it?”

“Part of it… and therefore terribly delicate, particularly for me.”

She thought for a moment. “Is delicate another word for dangerous?”

“Yes.”

She asked no more. “I should suppose the easiest way might be through Elena—and Helmi. He seems to know everything,” she said after a moment.

“Yes, but it’s better for the time being that I not be the one to ask.”

“Right,” she said, and then as we turned past the main intersection: “My God, look at this place!”

The main square was thronging with people. Every shop was festooned with bunting.

“There’s a parade at ten this morning in honor of the Princess Royal.”

“But I wanted to see the town, to talk… you know?”

I glanced down at her shoes. “Let’s do it now, then. You’re wearing sensible shoes.”

“Everything about me is so bloody sensible, except what I write. That’s utter nonsense.”

“I shall decide that someday for myself,” I said, parking and locking the car.

We toured the old town as I had the morning before. The crowd was much greater and the streets were made narrower by the barricades set out for the parade. Our talk was light, only gently probing now and then to sound one another’s depths. Her first mention of her husband was while we were looking in the window of one of the silver shops. I had not even inquired about him.

“It’s a sad admission,” she said, “but I don’t think I’ve ever bought Shepherd a gift he’s actually liked. I don’t seem able to be practical and aesthetic at once.”

“I have an idea,” I said, “if you will permit me?”

We went into the shop and I asked the proprietor if he had a magnifying glass. Having one in my own pocket reminded me of it. I spoke in Greek and realized that Elsa was looking at me. The man opened the cabinet behind him and drew out a tray. He showed us a small glass beautifully done round in delicate silver filigree, and with a small ivory stem. It folded into a leather case.

“Poh-so eh-kee?
How much is it?” Elsa said, straight out of the book.

I laughed. “One upmanship.”

She bought the glass and we went on. “Are you always so ingenious?”

I looked at her. “I was feeling rather corrupt, you know….”

She put her hand lightly through my arm. “The marriage of true minds. So was I.”

Which brought my thoughts back to Paul from whom they rarely strayed for long these days. I maneuvered us toward the marketplace. Elsa would want to see it in any case. I did not propose to speak to him. I merely wanted to see him, to know where he was. The market was crowded. But so it had been the day before and I had spotted him almost at once. Now I saw him nowhere. The melon vendor’s cart was in the same place, the man himself hawking the fruit. I asked him where the blind man was. He had not seen him. He remembered him: good for business, a blind peddler, but he had not seen him since yesterday.