Greek Fire (30 page)

“I suppose he could, well strapped up. It's chiefly weakness now from loss of blood. But the obvious thing is an ambulance if you intend to take him tomorrow.”

“He's got to go tomorrow,” said Kolono, fingering his moustache. “We want him for interrogation.”

“I shouldn't advise interrogation for a day or two. It might cause a relapse.”

“We want him for interrogation,” said Kolono. “It makes very little difference to us whether he has a relapse or not.”

“That's just as you say,” said the doctor, looking annoyed. “It's my duty to point out these things.”

He left the room, but Major Kolono went to the window staring out with his hands clasped behind his back. The nurse gave Gene a milk drink in which some drug was rather unsuccessfully disguised. Then she asked him if he could eat anything and he said he could. When the nurse left the room to get him food Kolono came and stood by the bed. He watched Gene for a while in silence.

“So you are still alive, eh?”

Gene didn't answer. His strength needed conserving.

“The bullet missed all vital parts,” said Kolono. “Pity. It might have saved us the trouble of taking you back for trial.”

Gene said: “ I thought—you would enjoy that.”

Kolono took out a cigar and fitted it into a short yellow holder. “It is my duty to tell you that the woman calling herself Maria Tolosa has been arrested in Thessaloniki.”

“What? …” He was too weak even to pretend. “What are you talking about?”

“She was taken on Saturday as she was trying to board a ship. We have been on the look-out for her, you know. She was seen leaving Heracles House on the night of the murder.”

There seemed to be grit in Gene's teeth. He tried to speak but could not. Kolono's words carried conviction, and they carried defeat too, ultimate defeat, turning to mockery all his efforts of the last five days. After this nothing was left, not even credit, not even a justifiable memory.

Kolono said: “Of course it will make no difference. Whatever her testimony may be, we shall make specially sure of convicting you. Whichever of you actually used the knife does not matter. You will be charged jointly. Our taking her won't have helped your case at all.”

Through the day that followed Gene gained strength, but it was slow, and in a way it was like the recovery of a very old man: one climbed laboriously back to life only to find that life had nothing left. He had never felt so down. There was a gap in his usually purposive mind, like a rift caused by an earth tremor, across which as yet the usual communications did not reach.

The nurse, who was under orders not to talk to him, told him only that it was Monday, that he was still in Nafption, in the prison on the hill, and that so far as she knew he would be leaving that evening for Athens. At noon he was able to sit up and eat the meal that she brought him, and from then, almost in spite of himself, his strength came back quickly. During the afternoon he slept a little and dreamed of Lascou's death and the gallows at Bourtzi and of Anya calling to him from far off.

The doctor came in at four and inspected the two wounds in his side. He prodded them a good deal too much and then injected Gene in the thigh. From the feel of things it wasn't the first injection he'd had there. Another official came in and they talked in low tones in a corner of the room while the nurse re-dressed his side.

The slanting sun was falling in through the window, and the bars were shadowed like a prophecy across the floor. The nurse's sunken eyes followed the movement of her hands, which were gnarled and whitened with work, as if they had spent long years over a scrubbing board. She was not good at her job and fumbled and let the bandage slip.

The official was signing something. Signature, gaol delivery, passing of custody, of responsibility from one official to the next; the death penalty still existed in Greece, but life imprisonment was probably as likely; strange if he came back here to serve it; he'd already seen the inside of the gaols of Athens; the Germans had crowded them with offenders; so had the revolutionaries, so had the counterrevolutionaries; it was Mr. Wet—Mrs. Fine during the years after the war. Would they allow him to choose his own defence lawyer? Anya must keep out of this. Contact with him now would ruin her. He must get her word, through Mme Lindos perhaps, warn her she could not help now and must not try.

Major Kolono came into the room and the conference continued in the corner. Presently the two other men left and Kolono waited until the nurse had done. When she too had gone he stayed by the window for a while, hands behind his back in his favourite attitude, the sun glinting on the bristles of his moustache.

Gene waited. Several minutes passed in complete silence. Kolono turned, his face half-lit now, the other half shadowed. He said: “You will leave at seven this evening for Athens.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Can you walk?”

“I haven't tried.”

“I will drive with you personally. Then there will be no chance of escape.”

“I couldn't get far at present.”

Gene watched the man's regular false teeth gripping the cigar holder. He badly wanted to smoke.

He said: “I don't know if it's any good appealing to your sense of chivalry, Major Kolono.”

“What d'you mean?”

“Well, why don't you drop this charge against Maria Tolosa and let her go? She's not much more than a girl and it's me you want really, isn't it.”

“It is you we want really,” Kolono agreed.

“She saw her own husband killed. She was half crazy with grief. She didn't know what she was doing. Why can't you be lenient with her and concentrate on me? I came to Greece to get Lascou and I got him. Isn't that enough for you?”

“What is enough for me, Vanbrugh, is beside the point. The law of the land must now take its course.”

“But you're not without influence. The prosecution might even refuse to believe her story, turn her off without bothering about her. I'm quite willing to make a full confession.”

“That you did it?”

“That I did it.”

Kolono's eyes were like dark olives freshly moistened. “I wish I could make use of that.”

“Can't you?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

The spiral of smoke was going straight up. Kolono did not seem to be drawing on the cigar.

Gene said: “Put it to your superiors. It would save time, trouble, publicity. On the one hand you'd have two people in the box fighting all the way; you'd have us both making accusations—it wouldn't help. On the other you have one man with a full confession, trial over in a day, and the Spanish woman shipped off without being allowed to become a nuisance. Don't you think that's worth considering?”

Silence fell.

Kolono said: “Unfortunately I may not consider it. I have another proposition altogether to put to you.”

“What is that?”

“What would you say if we offered you your freedom?”

Dressed in the now frayed and stained suit he had bought in the Plaka, Gene was helped to the door of the ambulance and got in. He was glad enough to lie on one of the bunks after the effort of getting there; but on the whole his strength was not bad. Major Kolono climbed in and sat on the opposite bunk, and the ambulance drove out of the gates of the prison. It was not quite dark yet but the sun had set.

Gene said for the fourth time: “ What's the catch in all this?”

Kolono lit another cigar. “ In a few minutes from now this ambulance will stop with engine trouble. While we are stopped you will leave the ambulance and go.”

“D'you like it better that I should be shot again while trying to hobble away?”

“It would give me great pleasure to be able to do that personally.”

“And that's the arrangement?”

“I am here to tell you the arrangement. Where we stop will be at an inlet on the coast between—well, no matter—at an inlet. A boat is waiting there to take you to Brindisi. Once you reach Italy it will be your personal concern to return to Paris.”

“I don't understand.”

“Maria Tolosa has not yet been publicly interrogated. But she was privately interrogated by me this morning. She is prepared, under pressure from us, to swear that the man who was seen leaving Heracles House with her on Tuesday night was her brother-in-law, Philip Tolosa.”

“Philip To … But he's …” Gene stopped.

“He is dead.”

There was a pause. Gene said: “Do you mean you intend …”

“I can promise you nothing absolutely—except your freedom tonight. And that on conditions.”

Gene said: “ The boy——”

“I am not Chief of Police. I am not the Public Prosecutor. I cannot influence them. But I am in charge of this case, and I will do what I can. On conditions, we are prepared to prove that Philip Tolosa, not you, killed Lascou. It can be done. You are alike in build, figure, colouring. Manos, who was in the flat within three minutes of the murder, and M. Lascou's secretary, are prepared to identify Philip Tolosa as the man who committed the crime. It is a case of mistaken identity by a boy of eight. From there on you will be free.”

After a time Gene said: “That may be; it may be possible, what you propose; but I don't begin to understand why you're proposing it. Who is behind this?”

“There are two conditions, as I have said. One is absolute secrecy. You return to Paris and keep your mouth shut. No reporters. No interviews. No idle talk with friends. In no circumstances do you say anything about your visit to Greece.”

“And the second?”

“The second is that in no circumstances do you ever return here.”

“That's more difficult.”

“Murderers can't be choosers.”

They jogged along for some way in silence. Gene felt glad for a moment that the conversation had stopped; it gave him time to relate it to common sense, to breathe.

“And Maria Tolosa?” he said.

“That is for the law to decide. If this proposition is carried through, she will appear rather as a witness than as a collaborator. That is not because we care what happens to her but because it is necessary to our case. She might get off; she might at worst go to prison for a few months. Again I cannot promise anything.”

“And if I refuse to go?”

“It will be very much worse for Maria Tolosa if you stay, since the need for us to use her mainly as a witness will have disappeared. Just as I have pointed out to her that it will be much worse for you if she insists on telling the truth.”

The ambulance lurched and rattled over the rough road.

“Why am I so dangerous to keep?”

“Perhaps you will learn that before you leave.”

“From you?”

“Not from me.”

“We are meeting someone?”

“It maybe.”

“Who?”

“You will see now,” said Kolono, stubbing out his cigar and putting away the end in his case.

The ambulance came to a stop. The driver got down and opened the doors. It was clear that he was a party to the arrangement. Gene pushed himself into a sitting position and allowed himself to be helped out. Kolono followed.

The moon was full. They had stopped in a side road. A low wall bordered it, with pine trees on one side and on the other the sea. Low jagged rocks hemmed in the narrow mouth of the bay. Every now and then in the distance a lighthouse winked. A flock of dark sea-birds was winging silently across the sky.

In the lane a few yards ahead of them an old Buick was parked. Two people were standing beside it. Gene recognised them at once as Jon Manos and Anya.

Getting to her he almost forgot the pain in his side. She did not come to meet him. Kolono followed close behind, and in a minute the four were grouped together out of earshot of the soldier standing beside the ambulance. No one seemed to want to be the first to speak.

Then Kolono said: “Well, here he is.”

Manos said: “ Do you agree that our part of the bargain is now fulfilled?”

Anya said: “It will be when he reaches Paris.”

“Anya,” Gene said.

“Is your—wound bad?”

“No, nothing. Why are you here? What is this arrangement?”

Anya's voice sounded tired and hoarse. The colours and of their last two days together had quite gone from it.

She said: “I want five minutes with him alone.”

Manos said: “Be hanged to that. Get him on the boat.”

She said; “I want five minutes with him alone.”

“
No
!” said Kolono. “Anything you say must be said in front of us.”

After a minute Anya said: “ I have made a bargain with these gentlemen, Gene. For a certain consideration they are prepared to see you out of the country. That is all. It is as simple as that.”

“I don't understand you,” Gene said.

“You did not finish reading the letters from Anton Avra to George Lascou?”

“No, I thought you'd burned them.”

“In the haste that first evening I put them between the music inside the piano. After you left I couldn't remember at first—then I found them. In the last two letters there were other names mentioned besides his own. Six names in all. Two are here with us tonight.…”

“And?”

“I realised the letters were still not quite useless. I took them to the Bank of Greece. They are now in its vaults with instructions that in the event of my death—or yours—they are to be delivered personally to the editor of
Aegis
.”

Gene leaned against the wall. In the reaction and in his weakness the importance of what she said kept escaping him. He would grasp it and then it would slip away from him.

“Anya—”

“Come, we've wasted long enough,” said Manos coldly. “The boat is waiting.”

Gene did not move. Some machinery of warmth had begun to work, but surrounding it was a block of ice in which all his ordinary feelings were still congealed. He tried to shake himself free of it.