The Dark Side Of The Island Page 6

  He limped heavily as he went down the steps and climbed into the car and Van Horn stayed on the porch. He raised his hand as the car moved away, scattering gravel, and then went back inside.

  As the door closed, Lomax turned to Katina. "Who was the German officer?"

  "Colonel Steiner. He is in command here."

  "They looked too bloody friendly for my liking," Boyd said.

  She shook her head. "Mr. Van Horn depends on Steiner's goodwill for all his medical supplies. That's why he plays chess with him every week." She got to her feet. "I think it would be better if we went round to the rear of the house."

  They followed another path round a corner and she paused in the bushes a few yards from a flight of shallow steps that led up to a covered terrace. A french window stood open to the night, curtains lifting in the wind, light spilling into the darkness.

  Someone was playing the piano rather well, an old, pre-war Rodgers and Hart number, nostalgic and wistful, a hint of a summer that had gone and memories only now.

  "Wait here!" Katina said.

  She crossed the lawn, mounted the steps and went in through the french window. Lomax leaned against a tree, the sub-machine gun crooked in his arm, and waited.

  The piano stopped. The silence which followed seemed to go on for ever and he could hear the waves breaking across the rocks on the beach below. Suddenly, the curtain was pulled back and Van Horn appeared.

  He moved across the terrace, leaned over the balustrade and called softly, "Captain Lomax?"

  Lomax stepped out of the bushes, Boyd at his heels, and crossed the lawn.

  "My dear fellow, delighted to see you," Van Horn said as calmly as if he were greeting an old friend arriving for dinner. "Let's go inside."

  The room was large and comfortably furnished, its low roof crossed by great beams. A grand piano stood against one wall and a fire of logs burned on a wide stone hearth.

  There was no sign of Katina, but at that moment the far door opened and she came in followed by an old woman with brown wrinkled face and sharp black eyes. She was drying her hands on the white apron she wore over her dress and looked at them curiously.

  Van Horn crossed the room, the three of them held a hurried conversation in Greek and then he returned.

  "I've asked Maria, my housekeeper, to fix you up with a room and a meal. We'll have a chat when I get back."

  "You're going into town?" Lomax said. Van Horn nodded. "I shouldn't be long. The Germans took my car away long ago, of course, but I managed to get a couple of bicycles out of them for emergency calls."

  "Is there anyone else here?"

  "Only Maria. She's dumb, by the way, but she can understand everything you tell her." He turned to Katina. "We'd better get moving, my dear."

  She was very pale and fatigue showed clearly on her face, but she looked up at Lomax and managed a wan smile. "I'll probably see you in the morning."

  "Only when you've had at least twelve hours sleep," he told her.

  "Don't worry, I'll see that she does." Van Horn slipped an arm about her shoulders and they left the room.

  Later, after Maria had taken them upstairs and left them in the comfortable room with the twin beds at the end of the corridor, Lomax stood at the window looking out to sea and tiredness flooded through him.

  Boyd had stripped to the waist and was washing his head and shoulders in cold water and Lomax followed suit. Afterwards, he felt better and they went downstairs and followed the aroma of coffee until they reached the kitchen where the old woman had prepared a meal of fried fish and eggs for them.

  Later, they took their coffee and went back into the living room and sprawled in front of the fire smoking cigarettes.

  "I think I can stand about as much of this as they've got to offer," Boyd said. "Another cigarette and it's me for bed. What about you?"

  "I'll wait for Van Horn to show up," Lomax told him. "He'll probably have a message from Alexias about tomorrow."

  Boyd got to his feet and moved across to the bookshelves that lined one side of the room. He examined one or two and chuckled. "All by the great man himself, bound in green leather and autographed in gold."

  "Bring one over for me," Lomax said.

  Boyd brought half a dozen and dropped them to the floor beside the chair. He was holding a slim pocket-book size volume in the same edition and there was an expression of real interest on his face.

  "This one's called The Survivor. Seems to be mostly poems about the war."

  Lomax nodded. "He was in the trenches during the last lot."

  "I think I'll take it to bed with me," Boyd said. "Find if he knows what he's talking about. I'll see you later."

  When he had gone, Lomax picked up a novel at random and leafed through it. It was one he had read before, but as always he was gripped by the narrative skill. It must have been an hour later when the curtains were pulled aside and Van Horn stepped through the trench window.

  He was carrying an old Gladstone bag, the leather scuffed and fraying, and he dropped it carelessly on the divan.

  "Ah, there you are. What happened to your sergeant?"

  "Gone to bed with a volume of your war poems. I hope you don't mind?"

  "Not as long as I get it back. You know, Lomax, for some strange reason, most people seem to think writers ought to distribute their books free." He sighed. "My God, but it's a pull up that hill out of town. I'm not as young as I was."

  His eyes were tired, the face lined with fatigue. He crossed to a cupboard in the corner, opened it and took down a bottle and two glasses. "The last of the gin."

  "Don't waste it on me," Lomax said. "I'm only passing through to the main bar at Shepheard's, so to speak."

  Van Horn grinned and slumped down into the opposite chair. "Nonsense, this is something of an occasion. Not often I get a little civilised company."

  "Doesn't Colonel Steiner count?" Lomax asked.

  Van Horn raised his eyebrows. "Good heavens no! That's strictly business. I let him beat me at chess once a week and then he feels morally bound to give me all the medical supplies I ask for."

  "We saw him getting into his car as we arrived," Lomax said. "He looked surprisingly young to me."

  "Twenty-seven," Van Horn said. "Badly wounded at Stalingrad and evacuated just before the Russians closed the circle. He's got the Knight's Cross besides all the usual things and they don't give that away, you know."

  "He sounds formidable," Lomax said. "Did you have any difficulty when you went into town?"

  Van Horn shook his head. "Alexias had only arrived at The Little Ship about twenty minutes before we did. They got him up to bed and I had a look at his leg."

  "Is it bad?"

  "Bad enough. I've set the bone, given him sulfa drugs. He should be all right if he rests for a week or two. He certainly won't be able to play an active part in your operation."

  "Is there any message?"

  "Only that he hopes to arrange a meeting with various people tomorrow afternoon. Katina will be up to let us know when."

  "So he's included you in?"

  "I'm afraid so." He poured himself another gin. "Katina was telling me you're here to do something about the radar station they've set up in the main tower at the monastery."

  "It isn't radar," Lomax told him. "It's a little gadget that selects a target electronically. All their planes or E-boats have to do is follow the beam and they can't go wrong. They've been doing a lot of damage to our shipping lately."

  "But is it all that important? I thought they were losing the war anyway, particularly since the landings in Normandy last month."

  "There's a faint chance of an invasion of Crete in the near future in which case this installation on Kyros could be a nuisance, but the Aegean is only a sideshow now, if that's what you mean. I don't think anything that happens here can affect the ultimate course of the war one iota." He grinned wryly and swallowed some of his gin. "On the other hand, they've got to keep us busy, haven't they?"

  "N
ow I find that rather an interesting observation," Van Horn said. "What were you doing before the war?"

  "University, a little journalism," Lomax shrugged. "Nothing very much."

  "And then the war came along with an easy answer to all your problems." He nodded at the medal ribbons on Lomax's tunic. "It would appear you've had an active time of it since."

  "I suppose you could say that."

  "Have you enjoyed it?"

  Lomax grinned reluctantly. "In my own twisted way."

  "The willingness to kill. Very important in a soldier." Van Horn sighed. "Funny how the same word can mean something different. For me, war was the trenches. Mud and filth, brutality and death on an incredible scale. A whole generation wiped out. At times I feel like an anachronism."

  "And for me?"

  "A landing under cover of darkness, action by night, a chase through the mountains." Van Horn shrugged. "A week from now you'll be sitting in the main bar at Shepheard's having a drink to celebrate another bar to your MC. I strongly suspect that the day the war finishes, you won't know what to do with yourself."

  "One slight point you've omitted to mention," Lomax said. "All Special Service officers are automatically shot when captured. That's a direct order from the German High Command and it's been in force for two years now. It adds a certain element of risk."

  "And so it should," Van Horn said. "Life is action and passion: therefore it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his times at peril of being judged not to have lived." He grinned suddenly and sat back in his chair. "There I go getting emotional again. It's the writer in me taking control. In any case, Oliver Wendell Holmes said it first."

  "I was hoping to be a writer myself one day," Lomax told him, "That's why I was so keen to meet you."

  "Of arms and the man I sing, eh?" Van Horn got to his feet. "You should get something out of the war then, if only a book. Let's have a last cigarette on the north terrace. I think you'll approve."

  He led the way through the hall and along a cool whitewashed corridor. The room they entered was in darkness, but Lomax could see that it was circular with glass walls. Van Horn opened a sliding door and they stepped outside.

  Lomax sucked in his breath sharply. The terrace was cantilevered and the immediate sensation was that they were floating in space. The darkness was perfumed with the scent of flowers and the great bowl of the night dipped to meet the sea, stars glittering into infinity.

  Two hundred feet below, waves slopped lazily over the rocks in a white cream at the base of the cliffs. "I've never seen anything like it," Lomax breathed. "In a setting like this how could a man help but write?"

  "That's what I used to think," Van Horn said. "And then came the war. Later, old Doctor Douplos passed on and I remembered that in a moment of youthful abberation, I'd actually trained as a doctor. Since then I don't seem to have had the time."

  "Perhaps when the war's over."

  "Who knows?" Van Horn shook his head. "When I stand here and think of the stupidity of man I wonder whether I'll ever want to write about him again. At times like that I have to go and take a look at my collection to reassure myself that life is still worth living."

  "Your collection?" Lomax said.

  Van Horn nodded. "I'll show you if you like." He led the way back inside, closed the sliding door and crossed the room.

  Lomax heard the click of a switch, but was totally unprepared for what followed. On every side, a row of glass showcases, each with its own illumination, sprang into view to float in darkness.

  But it was their contents which drew an involuntary gasp of admiration from him. They contained the most superb collection of Grecian pottery he had ever seen.

  Van Horn moved beside him, face disembodied in the light of the nearest showcase. "There's more than a hundred thousand pounds' worth here—just by commercial standards. In actual fact, some of this stuff is priceless." His voice had taken on an added warmth and Lomax moved from case to case, examining the contents with interest. He finally halted before a superb Grecian wine amphora at least three feet high, the red and black colours in the design still vivid after two thousand years. "That can't be genuine and still in one piece."

  "It came from a tomb under the Temple of Apollo on Rhodes. The Greek government were excavating there just before the war." Van Horn grinned. "By rights it should be in Athens, but I came to an arrangement with the rather underpaid young government official who found it."

  "It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen," Lomax said.

  "The handiwork of man, that's what still gives me hope, though what to make of some of the stuff they were churning out during the twenties and thirties and calling art, I'll never know."

  "On the other hand, some of these are hardly representational." Lomax indicated a case containing several early Cretan figurines, mostly crude images of the Earth Mother.

  Van Horn chuckled. "You've got a point there." He put out the light and they went back along the corridor to the hall. As they went upstairs, he said, "I know we haven't got much time, but with luck we should be able to have a long talk in the morning. I expect you could use some sleep now."

  He said good-night and Lomax went along to his own room and lay on the bed, listening to Boyd's easy breathing, and went over the night's events.

  He kept thinking about Katina Pavlo, remembering how pale and tired she'd looked when he had last seen her. His last conscious thought was of her face glowing in the darkness and the strange thing was that she was smiling at him.

  8

  "The Little Ship"

  It was just after noon on the following day when Katina turned the cart into the main square of Kyros and the Nazi flag hung like a limp rag in the great heat.

  Lomax sat beside her, his back against the load of firewood they carried, one foot on a shaft, the other swinging idly.

  In the old reefer jacket, broken boots and shabby tweed cap she had brought him, he looked like a typical peasant from one of the mountain farms.

  Katina had a scarf round her head peasant-fashion and wore a faded print dress with no sleeves that made her arms look very thin. She'd hardly spoken since leaving Van Horn's villa, but her eyes were clear and there was a freshness to her face that indicated that she had slept well.

  She reined in the mare as a squad of soldiers in field grey cut across their path and Lomax eyed them with professional interest.

  "Old men and boys," he said as they started forward again. "They've been draining Greece and the islands of their best troops for months now. At least it proves who's winning the war."

  As they turned on to the waterfront, he leaned forward to get a view of the harbour. The brightly painted caicques were all drawn up on the strip of beach and fishermen sat in the shade of the stone wall and mended their nets.

  An E-boat moved out to sea, churning the water at its stern into a white froth, sending waves rippling across the surface of the harbour.

  Several more were moored to the pier, their crews busy on deck, stripped to the waist in the hot sun, cleaning and polishing.

  "Are there always as many E-boats in the harbour?" Lomax said.

  She nodded. "There are as many as you see here out on patrol."

  She turned the mare into a narrow side street on the corner of which stood The Little Ship and Lomax dropped to the ground and went and opened the double gates that gave access to the yard at the rear of the building.

  He pulled a small military pack from under the firewood and they went inside and moved along the white-washed corridor. He could hear the murmur of voices, a glass clinked and someone started to play a gay tune on a bouzouki. There was a bead curtain at the end of the corridor beside a flight of stairs and Katina motioned him to stay and went through.

  He peered through the curtain into the bar. It was a cool, pleasant room with whitewashed walls and a vaulted roof like a wine cellar. It was crowded with fishermen. There didn't seem to be a single German soldier in the pla
ce.

  The curtain parted and Katina stepped through followed by a round-faced, kindly looking woman in her late thirties with bright blue eyes.

  "This is Aunt Sarah," she said. "The others are already here and waiting in my uncle's room, Mr. Van Horn arrived ten minutes ago."

  Mrs. Pavlo smiled and led the way upstairs.

  "She seems to be taking all this with remarkable calm," Lomax whispered.

  Katina smiled. "She has been married to my uncle for twenty years. She says anything can happen and usually does. She loves him very much."

  Mrs. Pavlo opened a door at the head of the stairs and led the way in. The room was hazy with tobacco smoke. Alexias was propped up in a great bed, his pipe in his mouth. There were several other people in the room, but the only one Lomax knew was Van Horn who sat beside the bed, smoking a cigarette in a silver holder.

  "Ah, Lomax, my good friend. We've been waiting for you." Alexias grinned. "Here he is, everybody. The Nightcomer in the flesh."

  There was a sudden silence as they all turned to look at Lomax curiously and he moved quickly from person to person as Alexias introduced them.

  The parish priest, Father John Mikali, was first by convention. A dignified old man with a white beard and sombre in his dark robes, he showed no emotion at all and Lomax sensed a coldness in his manner.

  A tall, bearded man named John Paros came next. He looked like the captain of a fishing boat and turned out to be the local electrician. Sitting beside him in the corner was Alexias's brother-in-law, Nikoli Aleko. Small and wiry with blazing blue eyes, he helped his sister run The Little Ship.

  George Samos and Yanni Demos came forward last of all. Both in their early twenties with crisply curling hair and tanned faces, they might have been brothers. They shook hands, undisguised admiration on their faces.

  "Have you brought what I asked for?" Alexias demanded.

  Lomax dropped the small military pack on the end of the bed. "It's all there."

  "Good, then we can get down to business."

  "A moment, Alexias," Father John interrupted. "There is a question I should like to put to Captain Lomax before we go any further."