Greek Fire (16 page)

He left the cellars before Maria and slipped into the cinema next door. When his watch told him it would be dark he came out and took a devious back-street route for Constitution Square. He blamed himself bitterly for not having been more active in saving the letters, but his self-critical faculties, always alert, hadn't even the satisfaction of being wise after the event.

The Square was crowded. People were taking advantage of the first pleasant evening to sit out of doors, drinking coffee and gossiping. The tobacco and newspaper kiosks were doing good trade. The moon, shining between the trees, was only another streeet light hung too high for the best effect. The Parthenon was flood-lit. The windows of the penthouse of Heracles House were in semi-darkness.

Gene turned in at the swing doors past the concierge, walking like a man with a purpose. The lift was in use and he had to wait until the
libre
sign flashed on in green at the side. He opened the door and stepped in, noting that the concierge had not turned. He chose the sixth floor. The lift wafted him up.

Three concerns shared the sixth floor, a lawyer, a ships' broker, a tobacco exporter. The business day was over and there was no one about. At the end of the passage was the door leading to the fire escape. He looked about as he came up to it but there was no one to see him push it open and step out on the steel platform. He wedged the door with a bit of cardboard so that it would not lock behind him.

Up here the moon had more say in things. Midgets moved irrationally about the chequered floor of the square, their lights hung at a uniform level a few feet above their heads. The gardens and the palaces beyond bloomed in the soft night air, and fashionable Athens twinkled discreetly as it climbed the slopes of Lycabettus.

Moving under the shadow of the platform above, he quietly climbed the fire-escape steps up to it. A smooth concrete ledge a foot or so wide ran a complete circuit of the building at this floor level. Gene didn't know whether there was any architectural reason for it or whether it merely existed to satisfy the architect's latent and otherwise carefully suppressed urge for decoration; but when one came level with it one found it had the disadvantage of a slight slope downwards and outwards so as not to provide a lodgment for rain.

He lowered himself on to the ledge and his rubber soles landed comfortingly on solid concrete. Though it was a secure foothold, no handholds were provided, and it meant edging one's way along, face and hands pressed to the wall and body thrusting against the building to counteract the slope of the ledge and the subtle gravitational or psychological pull of empty space and a seven-storey drop.

The building was a great rectangular block of ferroconcrete and the angle of the corner he must get round to reach the balconies and the french windows of the penthouse was an exact right angle. To do it there had to be some moments when a man was delicately balanced. He leaned his face against the concrete and carefully wiped his hands down – the sides of his trousers. Then he put one hand firmly on the wall he was leaving and stretched the other to lay it flat round the corner. Having gripped the angle so far as he could, he put out a foot and groped until he had a firm footing on the other side. Then he began to transfer his weight.

As he got his body half way round a button of his jacket caught on the edge of the corner. It seemed to upset his balance, and just for a few seconds the whole weight of the building appeared to lean forward upon the angle of concrete that bisected him. Then he withdrew an inch the way he had come and deflated his chest and curved it inward and the button got past. Soon he was round to the other side.

From here to the first balcony was about fifty feet, and this side he was less exposed to the lights from below. A sudden police whistle startled him once, but it was not blowing at him.

The balconies did not project but were recessed into the main structure, and the stone balustrade was within his reach, so he was able to pull himself up. This was one of the balconies attached to the large salon, and had a fountain in its courtyard. The windows were wide open. The room was lighted now, but in a subdued way. Two shaded lamps burned beside the fireplace, that was all. There was no one to be seen. He stepped in.

Considering its size, the room wasn't an easy one to hide in. There were places enough for a casual moment or two, behind a Louis XV settee or in the shadow of one of the statues, but nothing for a long wait.

Up here the sound of voices from the square was like the murmur of the sea. Four doors to the room. A light was burning under the door to the entrance lobby, but the others were in darkness. He chose the nearest, the one he had seen Lascou and Major Kolono come out of on Saturday night.

The door creaked noisily as it opened on a study. By the light coming in from the salon he could see a filing cabinet, beside it a cupboard, a telephone on a desk, a tape recorder. A black jacket was hanging over the back of a swivel chair. As he hesitated on the threshold, voices and footsteps came from the entrance lobby.

It happened so quickly that he had only seconds to make a choice. He stepped inside the study as the other door opened and more lights suddenly lit the big room.

Wisely he didn't try to shut the door behind him; there was no time; Lascou's voice and another, probably his secretary's. Gene slid behind the door, there was nowhere else; the bright lights from the salon showed a plain square room, oddly workmanlike after the decorations of the others; some bookshelves, a safe, a radio.

“… disposed of right away,” George was saying. “How long has Mandraki been here?”

“Over an hour, sir.”

“Well, I'll not keep him waiting any longer. Shut the windows, will you.”

The light clicked on in the study and George came in.

He had not even waited to take off his coat. If he shut the door after him Gene would be standing like a dummy. But he didn't shut the door. He dropped his brief case and a package on the desk and then moved out of sight. Presently there was the noise of the opening of a heavy metal door, and he came into view again with two clips of new banknotes in his hands. They were 1000-drachma notes. He opened a drawer and took out a long thick envelope and put the notes in. They crackled as they disappeared and he licked the flap and sealed the envelope.

All this was done with his back half turned to the other half of the room.

“Otho.”

“Sir?”

“Give this to him.”

“Yes, sir.”

The oiled head of his secretary came half into the room and a hand accepted the envelope. Lascou followed him out of the room as he withdrew, but then suddenly turned back and picked up the package he had put on the desk. He went out again but did not switch off the light.

“See that he leaves by the side entrance.”

“I take it you don't want to give him any further instructions?”

“I don't want to see him again. And Otho.”

“Sir?”

“I don't want to be disturbed for a quarter of an hour.”

“Dinner is ordered for nine, sir.”

“Then let it wait.”

Gene did not hear the secretary go out, but after a while he concluded he had gone. For some minutes he waited for Lascou's return to the study. But it didn't come. Then he heard the clink of a glass.

The French clock in the salon began to strike nine.

When it had finished Gene moved. As he did so he touched the door and it gave a loud creak. That finished it. He stepped into the salon.

George Lascou was rising from a chair to face him. In the empty fireplace ashes smouldered, and on a small occasional table were some faded letters a waterproof wallet and a glass of marc: Lascou had one hand in his pocket. When he saw Gene he withdrew it holding the smallest gun Gene had ever seen. It was about the size of a cigarette case.

Gene said: “ I guess your doors need oiling.”

Lascou's surprise drew at the corners of his mouth and eyes: the years of comfort and good-living had slipped away, he looked hungry and alert.

Gene said: “ I came about those letters.”

“How did you get in?”

“Through the window.”

Another clock was striking nine. The little crow's feet on Lascou's face softened and smoothed themselves out as the normal secretions began to work again, the reassurances of thought and position; he sat back in his chair.

“What are you doing here?”

“I told you. I came about those letters.”

“What letters?”

“The ones you wrote years ago to Anton Avra.”

“These?” said George, pointing with his revolver to the faded papers on the table. “I was just reading them as I destroyed them. I didn't write badly in those days.”

“They've caused a lot of trouble.”

“Yes, I suppose they have. None that I looked for, I assure you, Vanbrugh.”

“You should teach your subordinates not to keep such dangerous evidence.”

“He wasn't my subordinate,” Lascou said. “He was my brother.”

Gene came slowly forward. “That's something I didn't know.”

“Even the omniscient find gaps in their knowledge.”

“I'm not omniscient and I'm not armed. D'you mind if I sit down?”

“I was going to suggest it.”

Gene took a corner of a seat about ten feet from the Greek. The table was between them. They stared at each other, men from different worlds. Although violence was implicit in their meeting, the moment they confronted each other it was as if combat had to be on a rational plane.

“Which was the right name, yours or his?”

“Avra means nothing. Many Communists have pseudonyms.… Anton was fifteen years older, was trained and indoctrinated in Russia. Mine was a local culture.”

“Which differs from the party line?”

“A little.”

“Was that why Avra kept the letters?”

“For him they became the big stick which would keep me faithful. Seriously, how did you get in here?”

“Through the windows. I've told you.”

Lascou shrugged. “ You can read these letters when you want, but of course I shall burn them in a few minutes.”

“Well, you might as well put your gun away. You wouldn't use it in here.”

“I wouldn't
wish
to.”

“Mind if I smoke?”

“Get one from the table, not out of your pocket.”

Gene did as he was told. He offered one to Lascou but the Greek shook his head. They were still studying each other.

Lascou said: “ I wish you'd be honest with me. What do you want out of all this? Is it just money?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Gene said: “You pretend to hope for some sort of a majority at this election, but you know the only way it could happen would be if you came to power with the help of the ten or more splinter parties you're at present tied up with. That would be like driving a car with ten men holding the wheel. So either way, win or lose at the election, you need General Telechos and the army.”

“Telechos is right wing, Vanbrugh. If you knew the slightest thing about him——”

“I know that he owes the Bank of Greece a million drachmae and that you're guaranteeing the loan. Not that Telechos, even to save his wife and family, would co-operate with a Communist. But I think it will persuade him to play along with a man he doesn't trust.”

Gene lit his cigarette. He knew that time was on Lascou's side, but he was taking the chance.

“Telechos,” he said, “is one of the last of the old guard. They're thrown up, his type, all over the world from time to time: the senior officer who has always been above politics, the man the army can trust, and the nation too. He's immensely popular just now with the army—you'd call him the last of the Papagos line.”

“And in what way do you suppose he is going to cooperate with me?”

“A
coup d'état
after the elections. There hasn't been one since the war and it's time Greece was true to her traditions. You haven't the power to do it on your own, and if Telechos did it on his own he'd split NATO and lose the American loans. But you can give just the right democratic flavour to it all. You have the tongue, the easy diplomatic explanation, a parliamentary party which will have more seats by then if not a majority; you'll make the reassuring pronouncements, you'll go and see the ambassadors and the sentimental Grecophiles and explain apologetically how it is.
Then
, when you and Telechos are firmly settled in there'll be a gradual shifting of power. Once you get your fingers on things, Telechos will be squeezed out with the other officers who've helped him, and the right centre will edge further and further left.”

Gene stopped. During his last words he thought he had caught a glimpse of something moving, reflected in the polished wood of a table halfway down the room. He carefully hadn't turned his head; but now he shifted his position to put a leg over the arm of his chair and allowed his eyes to wander idly. There was nothing.

Lascou had not spoken. He had only moved once, to sip his glass of marc.

Gene said: “Were you ever a true Communist? I don't reconcile it. It seems to me that you covet power for its own sake.”

“I covet power for the use I can make of it, as any honest man does. The fact that I want to build something on more ideal lines doesn't make it a worse undertaking.”

“Can you ever build something good on murder and bloodshed and lies? Can you found an ideal state by seizing it and ruling it against the wishes of the majority?”

George's pince-nez suddenly caught the light: contact was cut off by a series of glints and refractions.

He said: “The majority often doesn't know what it wants—certainly it hasn't an idea in the world what is good for it;—and I mean
truly
good for it, economically, socially, culturally. Violence as an instrument of policy I dislike: it should always be the
last
and not the
first
resort. But when it has to be used, then I agree with Thrasymachus, that it can help to win all the power and the glory of the world.”