Durell shrugged. "It will not matter, then."
Stephanes shook his head. "It would be difficult to go over the mountains. The frontier is well guarded. But by sea, it is possible. From Corfu, there are fishing boats that could easily cross to the Debrec coast. I have a cousin, a fisherman, in a small village on that island. He has a very good boat, a very tough crew. Most of them are old, like myself. Some of them are very young, children of men who are now dead. We fought the Italians, the Nazis, and when our resistance was seized by the Communists, who began a civil war in our poor land, we fought them, too, and watched our villages burn and our children made homeless. Yes, my cousin Alexander would help us."
"Could you arrange it for me?'*
"I will telephone. You would not need Shkoeder then."
"That's what I have in mind," Durell said.
"I will arrange it On one condition, however."
"Yes?"
"I must go, too. I have the feeling that I should visit Albania one more time, before the gods take me. It is a part of my life where the business has been left unfinished."
"Agreed," Durell said, and paused to shake the old man's hard, rough hand.
Captain Stephanes' house was set back a little from the dusty road, sheltered by a tall grove of Mediterranean cedars. There was a small garden, a terrace with a timbered roof that Durell recognized as a reconstruction of Cretan architecture. There were a rough table and chairs in the shadow of grape vines that grew over the terrace. A stone wall gave the property complete privacy from passers-by on the road.
Harris sat with his back to them in one of the chairs, staring off to the left, into the garden behind the house.
All at once it seemed to Durell as if the sunshine had left the hills.
He held out his hand to check Lisette. The old man had already halted.
"Harry?"
There was no sign that the NATO agent heard them. Harris wore a tourist shirt, open at the throat, and dark slacks and moccasins. From over the low stone wall surrounding the terrace came the chattering of a chipmunk. With a flick, the little creature was gone. Birds called in the orchard behind the tidy house. Captain Stephanes gave a long, heavy sigh.
"So this is the reason they tried to delay you in the valley, Mr. Durell. Is this your friend?"
"He was."
Lisette leaned heavily on Durell's arm. "What is it? What is the matter with him?"
"It's Harry Harris. I sent him here from Athens, to find Shkoeder. He heard at the Minoa that Shkoeder had been asking for Captain Stephanes. When Harris couldn't locate Stephanes in the hills last night, he came here to wait. He relaxed a little too much, I guess. He's been knifed—exactly like your husband, back in Venice. He's quite dead."
Chapter Thirteen
He could never accept it, however often repeated, without outrage and loss. Harris had died slowly. The wooden hilt of the knife showed some of the double-edged blade. In Venice, Zuccamella had shown him a knife of this type that had killed Pollini. It was the same death thrust, too.
Harris had been smart and tough and careful, but not smart or tough or careful enough. The look of shock on his face was evidence enough of treachery.
Captain Stephanes broke the silence.
"This is a familiar technique to me, you know."
"Where've you seen it before?" Durell asked harshly.
"Long ago in the mountains, when we were in guerilla bands fighting as resistance against Nazis, and then against Communists and civil war, there was a Red Army leader, a man who claimed to be a Russo-German from the Ukraine—"
"Helmuth Dinov?"
The old Greek shrugged. "I only knew his code name then, but he was a man who specialized in the knife, and taught others. The thrust is deadly. The victim knows it. The point of the knife lies just below the heart when it is driven home. An inevitable move, within moments, and he dies. But for enough time, the victim is conscious and aware of the enormity of his situation, facing his death, carrying it visibly in his belly—" Stephanes paused. "It drove some insane in those few seconds."
"It made them talk? Was that it?"
"They all talked."
"And this Ukrainian German—"
"He enjoyed his work. He relished death. He burned and looted villages and took reprisals and executed all who stood before him. We turned against him, but by then it was too late. The civil war had burned our land to cinders."
Durell said: "I am ordered to do business with this same man."
Stephanes' winged, bushy brows lifted. "And you think he killed your friend here?"
"I don't know. He, or someone who learned from him." Durell made a decision. "I'll tell you everything, Stephanes, but first I must make a telephone call."
"I have a phone in the house," the Greek said.
"And get your rifle."
Durell looked around the quiet terrace, the small whitewashed house, the thick grove of cedars bending in the breeze. The sound of traffic in the narrow streets of the village seemed dim and remote. He smelled the familiar smell of stone dust and flowers. He looked at Harris' body. He felt besieged. He pushed Lisette quickly into the house. Her face was white. She did not look at Harris as she passed the body on the terrace. She moved like a sleepwalker, and he thought it best to give her something to do.
"Close all the wooden shutters on windows and doors, Lisette. Hurry. Make sure they are barred,"
"Very well," she whispered.
The telephone was in the sitting room of the tidy bachelor house. He put through a call to Athens, aware of Captain Stephanes' swift, efficient moves through the rooms. He had to wait several moments for the line through Nau-plion to clear, and then he reached Xanakias. The Athenian listened and promised to do what he could to keep things quiet. Durell said he would return to Athens as soon as possible and would be back at the Grande Bretagne that night.
"You have not found Shkoeder?" Xanakias asked.
"Not yet. He's somewhere around, though. Still alive, I think. But one by one, every man who can lead us into the Debrec region is being eliminated."
"Then you will please stay with Captain Stephanes. I know a lot about Panayotis Stephanes. A remarkable old man. Stay in his house, please—I know where it is—and don't expose yourself to danger."
"But I won't be bottled up here indefinitely—"
"It is not a time for pride, Mr. Durell." Xanakias sounded crisp, taut. "I leave Athens at once for Epidaurus. It should not take long—we will be there by three o'clock this afternoon. Wait for me there, please. I do not come alone."
"What does that mean?"
"A gentleman from your State Department arrived at Phaleron Airport this morning. An impressive name, Mr. Durell. He asks most urgently to see you with fresh orders for you. He will accompany me. Be patient. Be careful. At three o'clock—"
Before Durell could reply, there was a single, brief snapping sound on the wire. The electronic humming ended. The receiver at his ear was utterly dead.
He looked up swiftly as Stephanes came in from the bedroom. "Your phone wire has been cut."
"Are you sure? Sometimes our service is irregular—"
"We're cut off here," Durell said. "I'm glad to see you've taken your rifle down from the wall."
The grizzled old man smiled. His teeth were big and square, very white. "It weighs well in my hands. I had forgotten what it felt like, to tell the truth of the matter."
Durell regarded him steadily. "Do you regret that I looked you up? I've dragged you into something very serious. I think we're besieged here."
"I like a good fight," Stephanes said quietly.
"But it's only fair that you know what the stakes are.**
"If it is necessary, you will tell me."
"I think it's necessary now," Durell said.
While he checked the windows and doors of the neat, square house, even climbing up to the attic with its rough-hewn timbers and sounds of wasps in their high nests, he told Stephanes of the rockets reported
in Albania, of the theft of Soviet nuclear warheads for the missiles, of Shkoeder's activities in Venice, of Dinov's demand for an alliance to pull the dragon's teeth in the Debrec mountains. There was nothing to be seen outside through the slats in the window shutters. The terrace was empty. Harris' body still reposed in its chair, facing half to the doorway, resting against the wooden table. The small garden against the white of the back wall was a place of sunlight and peace, for flowers and birds and small lizards. A car went by on the road beyond the gate, and dust roiled up over the wall. The car kept going. Durell could not hear it stop within earshot. There were other vehicles while he spoke to Stephanes: a donkey cart, the wheels creaking; a bicycle with a jingling bell; a rattling truck. Another cart passed, and a slowly plodding flock of sheep, their protests lifting in the hot, bright afternoon air.
Stephanes' rear bedroom had a tall double-leafed door opening into the back garden, and on the white plaster walls were a number of photographs. Durell absorbed them quickly. There were wooded mountain scenes, the typical war-time shots where men looked bearded, unkempt and unreasonably cheerful, even in the midst of obvious disaster. There was an Athenian newspaper story featuring a photo of Captain Panayotis Stephanes, fifteen years younger. The captain wore his uniform and three rows of ribbons on his chest
"Vanity is foolishness," the old man murmured. "It all happened a long time ago."
"There is no reason to forget, and every reason to remember," Durell said. "The barbarians still wait in their caves for a chance to burn and destroy us."
"How much time do we have?" Stephanes asked.
"According to Shkoeder, less than forty-eight hours now, before missiles go up against both East and West."
"It is madness."
"A madness and passion for death," Durell said,
Stephanes met his eyes. "One of Dinov's traits?"
"I think so."
"But he is supposed to prevent it, with you."
"I doubt if he means to," Durell said grimly. "But I haven't seen the true face of our enemy yet, Captain Stephanes. And I have no proof."
"But you have a plan," the old man said quietly. "A man like you must have a plan by this time."
"I do. But it needs you."
"I am here," Stephanes said simply.
Durell sat down in the shadowed room behind the shuttered windows. Stephanes went into the kitchen for bread and cheese and several bottles of resinated wine. Lisette poured the wine for them. She was very pale. She had listened to DureH's explanations to Stephanes in quiet despair.
As Durell talked, the old man nodded and listened intently, his eyes intelligent, watching Durell's face. As Durell talked, he checked the windows and toured the house and watched the hot, dusty view outside. There were no attacks, no sudden shots. Regularly, he checked the phone. It was still dead.
"What you propose," Stephanes said quietly, "can be done. My cousin in Corfu can take me there in his boat. I can fly to Corfu in two hours from Athens. Tonight, I could be in Debrec, with perhaps a dozen men and the dynamite I need. The caves in Debrec are many. I know them well— better than Shkoeder, perhaps, since as a guerilla I lived in them many, many months. It should be possible to follow certain of the cave tunnels under their guard lines, under the barbed wire and the dogs and the trip wires and the floodlights and sentry towers, eh? We will simply walk through the mountain to the missile sites and blow the top off the mountain. It can be done. During the fighting long ago, I thought of it and planned it all out."
"But if you are caught—"
"What difference, if the missiles are fired?"
"None," Durell admitted. "Then we're all doomed, but—"
"You feel it is your job to go to Albania. But you have chosen a more dangerous course, my young friend. You are the prime target now, since you have spoken to me. And if you also meet Shkoeder, then they must eliminate you. Yet you must stay in the open and lead them away from me while I do the job, right? These are the tactics. You must be the target and hope they will not line you up in their sights long enough to pull the trigger, so to speak. While I become a mole with dynamite."
"That's the basic idea," Durell said. "I may have to go to Corfu, too, of course."
Stephanes nodded. "I will give you the address of my cousin's house there. But I should go ahead at once."
"After Xanakias gets here."
"Yes, it can be arranged that way."
Durell felt a little easier now. He looked at his watch. It was only a few minutes after one in the afternoon. Even if Xanakias had started immediately with "the gentleman from the U.S. State Department", they could hardly have reached the Corinth Canal bridge by now. He felt he could not risk leaving this house before Xanakias arrived from Athens. He would be doing just what the enemy wanted, leaving Stephanes to be murdered, or exposing himself to death. Somewhere in Epidaurus, too, was Gregori Shkoeder. He could not abandon the Albanian defector, either. If Stephanes failed, then the greedy Albanian would remain his only hope. But he had no idea where Shkoeder might be hiding. Mingling fearfully with the tourists at the theater, perhaps, waiting for the drama festival to begin, wondering every moment how to find Durell? He did not envy Shkoeder, either.
Lisette brought him a glass of the pale red wine. "You haven't eaten anything." Her enormous green eyes searched his face with anxiety. "What will you do with me? Can you tell me what you have decided?"
"There are no charges against you in Greece," he said. "I'll send you back to Athens, with Xanakias. You could even go back to Venice when this is all over—you're Pollini's widow, after all, and he was a rich man. Whether you want his money or not, it's yours."
"I could not accept it." She shuddered. "And please don't send me back to Athens now. Dinov would surely find me. I'd rather stay with you."
"That won't be possible," he said shortly. He did not know how to remove her terror. He could not accept the burden of responsibility for her. Last night had been a time of desperation for her, not love. They both knew this. She was a beautiful woman, and the flaw in his temperament so deplored by K Section had led him to sympathize too much with her. Perhaps that flaw was being used by Dinov and those in command on the other side, too. He felt impatient with himself, recalling how he had felt about Ursula Montagne back in Venice—and, yes, there was another question still to be answered, he reminded himself. The need to be suspicious had set him far apart from the normal streams of life. How much farther could he go, and still survive as a man?
"Why do you stare at me?" he asked Lisette.
"When Xanakias comes with that man from Washington, you will be in grave trouble for not obeying orders, am I right?"
"For ignoring them, perhaps." He smiled
"And what will you do?"
"Finish the job as I see it."
"You are either very foolish or noble."
"Neither," he said. "Just stubborn."
"And icy," she said. "How can you ignore the death of your friend this way? You show no emotion, yet Harris' body sits out there beyond this barred door—"
"Because the door is barred," he said. "If we go out to move him, we'll join him." He drew a deep breath and took her by the shoulders. "Harris knew the risks, Lisette. We all know them. We're taught and warned, but no man thinks death will come to him now. He rejects the thought, and then he grows careless."
"And always," Lisette added, "the someone with the knife gets close enough, smiling with friendship—"
"Yes, I've thought of that."
The telephone rang.
It had been silent since his call to Xanakias, with the wires cut somewhere, beyond the whitewashed stone wall around Captain Stephanes' house. Now it rang loudly, shrilly, in the shadows of the shuttered room.
The old Greek took a step toward it, then paused, his bushy white brows lifted in inquiry. He held his rifle easily in the crook of his elbow. Durell signalled him away and took the telephone. "Yes?"
"Mr. Durell? Is it you?"
"Ye
s."
"This is Gregori Shkoeder."
"I recognize your voice. Where are you?"
"It is urgent that we meet. I made the mistake coming here, I think. I am frightened. Your associate is dead, is he not?"
Durell said: "Who did it, Shkoeder?"
"I will tell you what I think when we meet. You must protect me, and I will help you. But I must wait until dark, when it may be safer."
"Where?" Durell asked impatiently. "You must be quick. You know there is not much time."
'There is time enough. At the old theater—"
"When?"
"Tonight, when the performance is over for the tourists. Be there. I will find you."
"But that means we must wait until midnight," Durell objected. "Time is too important to waste it like that—"
"The old theater. Yes, midnight is good."
The telephone clicked. It was dead again.
Chapter Fourteen
Xanakias arrived before three in the afternoon. The wine bottles were empty, the bread and cheese were eaten. Nothing more had happened at the house of Captain Stephanes. Durell had begun to wonder if he were being too careful, if his sense of being in a trap here hadn't been bred by too much caution. When Xanakias finally arrived, in a big blue Chrysler dusty from the roads to Athens, Durell went past him with only a nod for the tall, horse-faced man with him, and stepped to the garden wall to scour the scraggly ground beyond. Captain Stephanes, with a quick nod, circled the house the other way. Xanakias asked no questions, but his eyes were knowing and interested, and he joined Durell and the old man when they met on the terrace again.
"There were three of them," Stephanes announced, "Ah, they were patient! They did not make many prints in the dust."
"I counted four," Durell said.
"It could be four," Stephanes nodded. "You were wise to close the shutters."
Xanakias cleared his throat and looked at the tall American newcomer he had brought, and then went to the phone and called Epidaurus first, next the military police station at Nauplion. His Greek was urgent and rapid-fire. A last call to the post at the bridge over the Corinth Canal, and then he turned back for introductions.
"Mr. Angus Cunningham, Mr. Durell... .'*
Assignment The Girl in the Gondola Page 13