The Two Faces of January (19 page)

“Any people in Athens he spoke of? Anyone he knows?”

Chester shook his head. “I don't remember anybody. I don't think he ever mentioned anybody. But I'm sure he knows several people here, people who would hide him.”

The plain-clothes man spoke into the telephone again, and then hung up. He turned to Chester. “We are not going to put into the newspapers that we have identified your wife. We do not want Keener to run farther, you see? We do not want him to think that we have spoken to you and that you have told your story against him. You see?”

Chester saw. But he wondered if Rydal would see through it? “Until you catch him—” Chester began, and abandoned it. “I'm very nervous—with him after me. I'd like to leave for Paris right away. If necessary, of course, I'd be glad to come back to talk to you when you've found him.”

“Well, as a matter of fact that would
not
be advisable, because we intend to keep watch on
you.
To guard you and maybe in that way we find Keener. Keener may be unwise enough to try to kill you before you talk to the police—he thinks. Or he may be so impulsive—what ees the word? Wanting revenge that he will try to kill you anyway, thinking you have talked to the police by now. You see?” The man's smile, his easy gesture with one hand was curiously bland. And his eyes were amused.

“You mean I'm to be a sort of decoy,” Chester said.

The man thought about this, then nodded vaguely. “I doubt very much really if he will try to find you and kill you. He must know it ees too late. Logically, he would try to sneak out of the country, maybe change his passport.” The man was buttoning his overcoat. He beckoned to the officer, and they walked to the door.

Chester wanted to ask them to keep in touch with him, to telephone him tonight and tell him if anything had happened. But he said nothing.

“We shall keep a man downstairs in the lobby. If you go out, the man will follow you,” said the plain-clothes man. “Don't let eet disturb you. Eet's for your protection.” He smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Cham-ber-lain.”

“
Thank
you,
”
Chester said. “Thank you very much.” He closed the door after them.

Then he took a deep breath and lay down at full length on the bed, on his back. With luck, Rydal Keener's body would be found on some dark pavement tonight, or early tomorrow morning. He shouldn't have paid that guy first, however. Chester knew that, just as a matter of business principle. But on the other hand, how could he have paid him off after he did the job, if a police guard were shadowing him? And not getting his money, Andreou might have decided to mug him, police guard or no. Yes, things were best the way they were.

When Rydal Keener was dead, that would be the end of the story, the police guard would be removed, and he would leave for France on his new passport. William Chamberlain would vanish from the earth. Off would come his beard and moustache, and he would be Mr.—something yet unknown in France and in the States.

But if Andreou didn't succeed in killing Rydal—if he was a ­double-crosser, a friend of Niko, and of Rydal, possibly, too—then a little maneuver involving precise co-ordination would be necessary. It hinged on whether the police found Rydal. If they found Rydal, and he told them his story, Chester would have to have his new passport in hand, give the police guard the slip, even if it meant leaving the hotel with all his luggage in his room, and vanish in the direction of Paris. Chester really didn't think it would come to that. He had a high regard for Rydal's cleverness, and Rydal didn't want to get caught. Rydal might want to hit back at him, but not through the police. In a way, Chester thought, their motives were very much alike—and if anything, Chester considered himself the less vindictive of the two. It was going to come down to a private duel.

Chester was full of hope and confidence. It was something that sang in his veins, an old, familiar sensation to him. Optimism had always won the day for him. A man was no good without optimism, no good at all. Dreamily, Chester put out his right arm on the bed, unconsciously expecting to find Colette beside him. It was a double bed. The bed was empty, flat.

16

Rydal had
taken a nap in mid-afternoon, after Niko had returned from his 1 o'clock meeting with Chester and reported what Chester wanted from him—a passport and an assassin. Rydal knew Andreou slightly. He had come to Niko's apartment one evening in December. Andreou was a florist. He had greenhouses at his home on the western fringe of the city, and he brought in fresh flowers every morning to his shop on Leoharos Street. His wife tended the shop. Rydal was glad that Andreou and his wife, honest and hardworking people, were going to get Chester's five thousand dollars. So after Niko had come and gone a little after
2, Rydal had slept on the three-quarter-sized couch near the simmering iron pot. He had slept for about an hour, and awakened, wonderfully refreshed, to find Anna seated across the room stringing green beans into a pot on her lap, a band of sunlight stretching from the narrow horizontal window behind her and striking her shoulders and her neck. She was like a Vermeer.

“You sleep well? That is good for you,” Anna said.

She had turned off the radio, he noticed, no doubt out of courtesy to him. She fixed him a cup of tea. He lay drowsily on the couch, sipping it, slowly coming awake. He thought of Andreou and his meeting Chester at 5 o'clock. Niko said he had told Andreou to look very tough and to say the minimum. Andreou had worked for a while in the Greek Merchant Marine, and had picked up some English in his travels. Rydal thought Andreou would do all right. And besides, Chester had not much choice. It was this that reassured Rydal, that Chester's field of possibilities was so circumscribed. Who else but Niko could he ask for an assassin? Chester would know very well that he was either staying with Niko or that Niko knew where he was. But Chester would not tell the police to question Niko, or to follow him to see where he lived. Chester would not even mention Niko, because Chester didn't really want him, Rydal, to be spoken to by the police. Rydal felt quite safe at Niko and Anna Kalfros's. But he did not think it safe to go outdoors, so when Anna said she had to go out for butter at 4 o'clock, Rydal did not offer to get it for her, and he told her why. Anna understood. She approved greatly of Andreou collecting money for a crime he would not commit. It appealed both to her sense of justice and her sense of humor.

Niko came in just before 7. He said that he had spoken to Andreou around 3, and that he had agreed to meet Chester at 5 p.m. in a restaurant near his florist shop. “Andreou said he would come by tonight to say hello to you,” Niko said, smiling.

“Oh? Around what time?” Rydal was wondering if Andreou would be followed, if Chester had been spoken to by the police—say, at some time that afternoon—and if Chester had been followed to the restaurant.

“After work,” said Niko vaguely. He was dropping his strings of sponges carefully and methodically on to the floor in a corner of the room. “He work till about eight tonight.”

“You talked to him after he saw Chester?” Rydal asked.

“Naw. Don't talk to him since three o'clock.” Niko kept on practicing his English—it was a small way of showing off in front of his wife, who didn't understand much or any of it—though Rydal was speaking to him in Greek, mainly because he wanted to be sure that Niko understood what he was saying.

“I hope the police weren't following Chester,” Rydal said.

“The police?”

“If they were following Chester, they'll question Andreou. He might not be able to explain why he had an appointment with Chester.” Rydal picked up the newspaper Niko had brought in. The Knossos story was on the second page now, a three-inch-long item: the police were still pursuing clues to the identity of “the young woman with red hair”, but they had made no progress to date. The police were looking for Rydal Keener, the young man with dark hair described by Perikles Goulandris, the ticket-seller. Keener was believed to be hiding in Athens.

And if they had his name, Rydal thought, they had the Chamberlains', because they came from the same place, a hotel register, and whom did they think they were fooling? The public, perhaps, but not him. Rydal put the paper down.

“Um-m. I read it, too,” said Niko. He was pouring three glasses of retsina.

“I don't believe that,” Rydal said, half to himself.

“What?” asked Niko.

“That they haven't identified Colette. Anna, what's the best station for Greek news?”

Anna happily went over to her radio and tuned in on an Athens station.

The news came in almost at once. It was 7. Midway in the newscast was a short sentence: “The police of Iraklion are continuing their efforts to determine the identity of the young woman found dead in the Palace of Knossos, but thus far without success.”

“They are withholding it,” Rydal said.

“Why?” from Anna.

Rydal explained. He said that the police were bound to know by now that the woman found dead was Mrs. William Chamberlain. It was very simple for the police to look for a William Chamberlain registered at one of the hotels in Athens. Chester would not mind being found and questioned by the police, because it would give him a chance to tell them that Rydal Keener killed his wife. “The police are probably keeping it out of the papers,” Rydal said, “because they—if they believe Chester—they'll think I might make an attempt to kill Chester before he talks to the police.” It seemed quite simple to him, and the likeliest thing also.

“Ah, how horrible,” Anna said with a sigh. “That they would think you would kill a man, Rydal.”

Rydal smiled. “After all, that's what Chester's trying to do to me. Why, if I had any red blood in my veins, certainly I'd try to kill Chester.” He flexed his arms. He felt nervous, not like himself at all, as if he were playing some part on a stage that he was not at all comfortable in.

But Niko laughed appreciatively, like someone watching a play that he was enjoying.

“But—” Rydal went on, sipping his retsina now, “I'm not even interested in knowing what hotel Chester's staying at. I'll wager it's either the Acropole or the El Greco. He'll stay until he gets his passport day after tomorrow. That's when he'll get it, isn't that right, Niko?”

“Is correct. I gave Frank the photo this afternoon.”

“And then he'll try to get out of the country,” Rydal said.

Anna and Niko looked at him quietly for a moment. Then Anna pushed closer towards Rydal the plate of radishes and little onions and chunks of white cheese that they were nibbling with their retsina.

“And then what will you do, Rydal?” she asked. “I hope let him go. He is an evil man.”

Rydal knew she was right. That he should let him go. His common sense told him that, too. But Rydal did not think it would work out that way. He smiled at Anna. “I'll know his new name on his new passport. If he escapes the police, Anna? Gets to another country?” Rydal frowned. “He may well, you know, with a new passport. An evil man shouldn't be allowed to go free, do you think?”

On her face came a slow but unstruggling comprehension. To possess a false passport, she had heard so much about them, was no great misdemeanour. It was as if she had never realized that a false passport invariably concealed a crook of some kind. “You mean, you'll tell the police his new name,” she said.

That was not in Rydal's mind at all, but he nodded. “I'll think about it. I may.”

Niko's laugh bubbled up in his throat, and he rubbed his hands. “Good! Then he'll send to me for another passport. More business for Frank and me.”

Anna looked at him sideways. “Hm-m. No. Let someone else do it. If this man is caught, he'll tell the police where he got the false passports from, eh? What about that?” She pushed her husband affectionately in the shoulder as she got up to stir the pot.

Andreou arrived as they were finishing their Greek style
pot-au-feu.
Andreou was quietly, cautiously radiant. One look at his repressed smile and his glowing black eyes, and they knew his transaction with Chester had been successful. He said that he had got the five thousand dollars. He reached in his pocket.

“My wife is alone in the shop. There might be a hold-up,” he said jokingly. “I didn't want to leave the money with her, so I brought it along.”

And he brought it along also to show it, Rydal thought. Rydal looked at the new five-hundred-dollar bills on the wooden table beside the soiled soup plates. For a few seconds they all stared at the money, Niko and Andreou grinning, Anna and Rydal smiling. And each of them, looking at the same thing, had quite different thoughts in his head. For Niko and Anna, such a sum might be a house in the country. For Andreou, perhaps a trip to America with his wife. His own thoughts were, there lies my life, my death, my life and death combined, in a handful of green-colored paper.

Then Andreou laughed aloud.

“What're you going to do with it, Andreou?” asked Rydal.

“Oh, I think Helen and I will go to America in the summer.” He pointed a finger at Rydal gaily. “Maybe we'll see you there!”

Rydal had a funny sense of
déjà vu,
or perhaps it was a feeling of foreknowledge. It depressed him.

Niko was touching the money lovingly, vaguely stroking it, as one might stroke a small animal. He had washed his hands at the sink, but his nails were still dirty.

Anna poured coffee for Andreou. He said he was going to eat later with Helen.

“You're sure you were not followed, Andreou?” Rydal said.

“Sure,” Andreou said seriously. “I looked.”

“In the restaurant you didn't see anyone watching you?”

“No. I was just on time. Mr. Chamberlain was already there.”

Rydal asked how long they were there, who left first, whether Chester had appeared very nervous. Andreou thought not.

“He wanted to give me only half,” Andreou said, smiling, “but I asked for the whole thing.”

“So you have no more meetings with him? No date?” Rydal asked.

“No.”

“Good.” Rydal sat back in his chair, relieved. But a bumping sound just then in the cement corridor made him start.

“The kids,” Anna said, gesturing. “They kick the door sometimes.”

Rydal had been touching the roll of bills in his left-hand trousers pocket. He pulled them out impulsively, smiling at Andreou, and said, “I'll trade you.”

“What's that?”

“Five thousand dollars.”

“Five thousand?” Andreou's eyes widened.

Niko and Anna had fairly gasped also, and were leaning forward to look at it.

“
Same as yours. Count it.
I'll trade you,” Rydal said, handing his money to Andreou.

Patiently, smiling with pleasure at what he was doing, Andreou counted Rydal's bills one by one, laying them down on the table. “Ten!” he announced. He looked from one stack to the other, two or three times, as if he were trying to find a difference between them, then said to Rydal, “Why do you want to trade?”

“Because I don't like this money. I'd rather have the money that was paid for my death.”

“Where you get that?” Niko asked in English.

“From the same place. For keeping my mouth shut. Mr. Chamberlain insisted.”

“Okay, we trade,” said Andreou, and put Rydal's money into his pocket.

Rydal picked up Andreou's money. He put it into the same pocket the other money had been in. Niko was watching him with fascination. “Mr. Chamberlain insisted,” Rydal repeated.

Andreou looked at him fondly, his eyes glazed with his dreams.

“Andreou, I have another request,” Rydal said. “For a favor for which I'll pay—say, a thousand.”

“Dollars?” asked Andreou.

“Yes. I have to cross the border. Into Yugoslavia. I thought you might know someone who is going by truck.”

“What is this? Why Yugoslavia?” Niko asked.

And Rydal suddenly knew he was going to be defeated on it, that his idea was dangerous, uncomfortable, slow, and carried several strikes against its success. “I want to follow Mr. Chamberlain,” Rydal said.

Andreou and Niko looked at him blankly for a moment.

“You need a passport,” said Niko.

“Passports are your panacea!” said Rydal, but he laughed.

“Mr. Chamberlain will fly on his passport, no?” asked Niko.

“Probably,” Rydal said.

Niko exchanged a slow look with Andreou. “I'll speak to Frank about a passport. What kind do you want?”

Rydal sat down in the straight chair he had been sitting on before. “Italian, perhaps. I can't afford an American.”

“I will speak to Frank tonight.” Niko looked seriously at his wristwatch, an enormous thing of false gold. “By eleven I will try to call him. You have a photograph? I will see that he gets it tonight.”

Rydal had a photograph.

When Andreou left, Rydal went with him to the front door at the end of the corridor. Rydal felt a compulsion to see for himself if there were anyone loitering on the street, waiting for Andreou, watching the house. He saw a young man walking away on the opposite pavement, but no one loitering. He said good-bye to Andreou with a firm handshake. A real, bona-fide handshake, Rydal felt.

“My regard to your wife,” Rydal said to him.

Andreou laughed. “Thank you. And eternal blessings to you!”

Niko asked Rydal some more questions about the five thousand dollars that he had received from Chester. Was it just for keeping his mouth shut? Had Rydal had to threaten Chester in order to get it? Rydal tried to explain that Chester was the sort of man who felt more comfortable after binding people, or trying to, with money.

“At one point, I threw it back at him,” Rydal said. “The money fell on the floor. His wife picked it up and handed it back to me.” Rydal shrugged. He had the feeling Niko didn't believe this story, either, that he thought it merely an added dramatic touch. Rydal smiled. Niko's absolute bluntness in discussing money was rather refreshing. Rydal could see the wheels turning in Niko's brain. Perhaps he was wondering, for instance, if he could keep the five thousand for Chester's new passport without giving him the passport, and without involving Frank? But it was rather late now. Niko had given the photograph to Frank, he said. “Oh, if you continue to know Chester, he'll probably need a little service here and there from you,” Rydal said.