Time was getting short. I searched amongst the rotting junk on the floor. My hands stirred up more silt and I came up with a rusted crucifix, a small bowl. I swept back and forth, but all I found was more religious paraphernalia. Then I grasped something which resisted when I tugged. I pulled again and it came away in disintegrating clouds of murk. I felt again and burrowed underneath what I thought must be some kind of material and found something hard and smooth with rounded contours. It was wrapped in canvas and blankets which yielded like wet tissue paper as I uncovered a long, pale shape lying prone. When I shone the torch along its length I saw that it was another statue. It was classical in style. A female form, naked except for a garment draped low around the hips. In contrast to the chaste, slightly sorrowful representation of the Panaghia, the smile and pose the sculptor of this statue had fashioned was suggestive, even playful. As I shone the light directly at her lifelike face I was struck by the notion that she stared back at me, amused, and I knew where I had seen this face before. Then silt drifted like soot and the image was clouded. I checked my watch and saw that I was out of time.
On land I would never have been able to lift the statue alone, but underwater I managed to manoeuvre it back to the engine room where I left it while I swam back up the side of the wreck for the line. When I returned and had it secured, I began my ascent. I had been down a long time, at a depth of sixty to seventy feet, so I had to make several stops to allow the nitrogen to leak out of my blood. I kept checking my gauge, hoping I had enough air, trying to relax while I counted off the minutes. I could see the hull of the Swallow above and to my left where the water was bright with sunlight.
Finally, I checked my gauge again and, though I was cutting it fine, I was out of air and I had no choice. I kicked for the surface.
I knew immediately that something was wrong. The Swallow appeared to be deserted. I looked around, but there was no other boat in sight. I called out, thinking maybe Hassel and Dimitri were in the wheelhouse, but there was no response.
I began to swim to the stern. The closer I got the more certain I was that something had happened. When I reached the boat I hauled myself onto the platform at the back. The silence was total. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Unbuckling my tank, I stood up cautiously. The deck was empty. There was no evidence of mayhem or violence. There was no evidence of anything at all. Increasingly puzzled, I climbed up and looked around. There was no sign of life anywhere. The boat was deserted and the bay was still and empty.
A few minutes later I had been through the Swallow from bow to stern. Dimitri’s things were still in his cabin. Three glasses smelling of whisky stood on the bench in the galley, but there was definitely nobody on board. I wondered briefly if Dimitri and Hassel had taken the dinghy to fetch Hassel’s yacht, but even before I found the dinghy still tied alongside, I knew they wouldn’t both have gone. The only possible explanation was that Kounidis had come, though I couldn’t understand why he had left without waiting for me.
When I went to the wheelhouse I found something puzzling. The wires which fed into the back of the radio had been cut, rendering it useless. The key to start the engine remained in position however, and I wondered why Kounidis had made sure I couldn’t use the radio and yet had left me the means to drive the boat. It occurred to me that the engine had been disabled, though again I wondered why, unless Kounidis was planning to return. I looked up quickly, half-expecting to see another boat bearing down on me, but there was nothing there save for some distant sails on the horizon.
I turned the key and to my surprise the engine turned over, but as it caught I heard something from below, like a dull thud. Almost simultaneously the smell of smoke and a blast of hot air came up from the cabin and, in an instant, I knew what had happened. Acting purely on instinct I bolted for the door. Even before I reached it I leapt for the side. At first I felt rather than heard the explosion. It was as if something had caught hold of my body as I left the deck and violently tossed me into the air.
I was aware of spinning in an impossibly high arc, my arms and legs cartwheeling. The sound of the blast and the heat enveloped me, and then I was falling to the water below. I hit the surface and sank, and as I went down I struggled to stay conscious. Looking up I saw fire, and debris rained down. Pieces of hissing wreckage shot like bullets through the water around me. Several chunks of metal hit me, though by that time their force had been dissipated and I felt little more than a sharp nudge.
Gradually, the firestorm became a shower and then a trickle. With my lungs bursting, I struck out for the surface and when I broke through, I gulped in the acrid air.
The Swallow was already sinking, her hull and decks ablaze as a thick pall of black smoke stained the sky. Had I reacted half a second later and not already leapt for the side, I knew I would have been directly above the centre of the explosion. As it was, the force of the blast had added impetus to the trajectory I had already begun and, by a virtual miracle, it had propelled me away from the boat. I trod water, numbed by the shock of what had happened. The boat burned fiercely and then, in a frighteningly short space of time, began to go down at the stern. Her bow rose and within seconds she had vanished, and all that remained was a slick of oil to match the smoke which was already beginning to disperse above.
TWENTY-SIX
After the Swallow had sunk, I swam towards the headland at the entrance to the bay. I guessed that the explosion had been meant to kill me and neatly account for Dimitri’s disappearance. As far as anybody was aware, Alex had already left the island, and nobody even knew about Kurt Hassel. At some point in the future his family in Germany, and also Alex’s family, would report them missing and an investigation would ensue, but by then Kounidis would have made sure that they would never be found. I doubted that their disappearance would ever be connected to him, and whatever fate he had planned for them I knew time was short.
By the time I reached the shore and hauled myself onto the rocks, I was beginning to appreciate my immediate problem. I was miles from the closest habitation. To walk would have taken days, but without a boat I had no other choice. The bay was still and empty. All that remained of the Swallow was an oil slick which would eventually wash up on the rocks. Even the smoke from the blast had vanished except for a thin murky haze which was drifting eastward. I scanned the horizon, wondering if anybody would come to investigate. There were some yachts a long way out, but after I had watched them for a few minutes, I was fairly sure none of them was headed this way. It appeared that I couldn’t count on being picked up by any of them, but they did give me an idea.
The previous night, Kurt had anchored his yacht in the next bay around the headland. I knew Kounidis wouldn’t have overlooked it. No doubt it was already lying on the bottom of the sea in deep water, but I wondered if he had noticed that the dinghy was gone. There was a chance it might still be where Kurt had left it.
I made my way around to the next cove by scrambling over the rocks and occasionally swimming when the cliff face plunged directly into the sea. As I’d expected there was no yacht, but I eventually found an inflatable dinghy beached out of sight where the trees came almost to the water. There was a pair of oars in the bottom, but there was also a twenty-five horsepower motor attached to the back and when I checked the fuel tank I found it was almost full.
Within minutes I had it running and was heading out of the cove. About an hour had passed since the explosion, but it was still early. It would take an hour or so to reach Vathy, though I reasoned that by the time I found Theonas and managed to convince him that I wasn’t mad it would be another thirty or forty minutes on top before we reached Kioni. By then it might be too late. In fact, for all I knew I was already too late. I thought it would be much quicker if I went directly to the cove below Kounidis’s house, though there was no guarantee I would find anybody there and I wasn’t sure what I could do if there was.
I was still debating the options when fifty minutes later I reached the southern point
which marked the entrance to Molos Bay. My sense of urgency had grown. I knew that if I made the wrong decision it could cost three people their lives. If I kept going, the northern point of Molos was no more than ten minutes away and Kounidis’s house only another five minutes beyond there. At the last moment I steered a course straight ahead, praying that I wasn’t making a huge mistake.
When I reached the cove it was empty. I stayed close to the cliff edge and idled the dinghy into shore so that the sound of the motor wouldn’t alert anyone at the house. As soon as I felt the bottom scrape the beach I jumped ashore and ran for the steps. I had no plan except the vague idea that if I confronted Kounidis and told him that I had sent a message to Theonas via a passing fishing boat, he would realise that it was over and give in without getting any more blood on his hands. But as soon as I reached the top of the steps I saw with a crushing sense of despair that the house appeared to be deserted.
I crouched out of sight for a few seconds to make sure. There was no sign of movement and the shutters over the windows were all fastened. I crossed the lawn and tried a door, but it was locked. I looked around for something to use to break in, knowing that all I could do now was phone the police for help. There was no time for subtlety, and I grabbed a chair from the terrace and swung it towards the shutters over a nearby window. It connected with a resounding crash and splinter of wood. The impact jarred my hands, but I barely noticed the brief flash of pain which shot up my arms. Instead, I grabbed the mangled shutters and wrenched them free. The glass beyond was cracked and, without pausing, I seized a broken piece of wood to smash it from the frame and then I climbed inside.
At first I saw just an ordinary room, though it was much more simply furnished than the rest of the house. Splintered glass crunched beneath my feet. A wooden cabinet against the wall contained a few framed photographs and an armchair faced the window, beside it a small table on top of which stood an old-fashioned record player. It was only then that I realised this was the locked room I’d come across during the weekend I’d been to the house with Alex. I looked for a phone, but there wasn’t one so I went to the door and made my way towards the front of the house. I found one in the entrance hall, but when I picked up the receiver, the line was dead.
For a moment I didn’t know what to do and then, as I put the receiver down, I heard a sound from somewhere in the house. I listened for it again. I thought I must have imagined it until a door a few feet away, which I knew led to the kitchen, began to open and Kounidis’s driver emerged. He was holding a pistol and was heading for the passage across the hall from which I had emerged less than a minute earlier. As he took a step forward, he glimpsed me in his peripheral vision and, startled, he began to turn, but my reaction was faster. I still held the length of wood which I’d used to smash the window, and I swung it at his head. I saw the barrel of the pistol rise in competition with the arc of my arm and then the jagged edge of the wood connected with the bridge of his nose and bounced off again with a sharp crack. Blood and cartilage bloomed in a fine mist and splattered against my wetsuit and, without a sound, he crumpled. His skull hit the floor with a sickening thud.
It had happened so fast there was no time to think about what I was doing. I had acted instinctively, but now I stared in fascinated horror as dark red blood began to fill the cracks between the tiles, flowing like small canals which began to interconnect and spill over to merge with one another in a rapidly spreading slick. I thought he was still breathing, but when I bent down to him I wasn’t sure. As I retrieved the gun and stood up again another figure appeared in the doorway from which he had emerged. It was Eleni. She froze. Her shock turned to a hostile stare as she met my eye.
‘Where’s Kounidis?’ I demanded.
She shook her head and said something rapidly in Greek, pantomiming that she didn’t understand. I thought about how long it had been since I’d left Pigania Bay.
‘Where is he?’ I repeated, and this time I pointed the pistol at her. Her eyes widened fractionally. A second passed and I thought she was wondering if I would really shoot her. Her gaze dropped to the prone figure whose blood was even then reaching out for her feet.
‘Kathara,’ she said.
For a moment I didn’t understand, and then it made sense. ‘The monastery?’
She nodded. I knew then why Kohl had taken a taxi there on the day he was murdered, and why nobody had seen another vehicle apart from the tourist bus. When I had been there with Dimitri the priest had even shown us the doors to the underground tunnels and chambers which Kounidis must have used to come and go unobserved. I recalled the diary written by the soldier who centuries ago had hidden for two years from the Turks. Three people locked in a chamber deep underground might never be found. Certainly not until long after Kounidis had ended his natural life. There had been something else in the monastery museum. The list which Hauptmann Hassel had left, and I understood why my father had wanted to see it again. It was a receipt. Not the result of a fastidious looter, but a mark of regret from a good man who had no choice but to carry out his orders.
I grabbed Eleni by the arm and roughly shoved her toward the passage. In the room I had broken into, I made her stand against the wall where I could see her while I went to the record player. When I turned it on and moved the arm across the record, a scratchy hiss emanated from the speakers followed by the opening notes of the same haunting melody which I had heard before. Once when I was there with Alex, the second time with Dimitri.
I imagined Kounidis sitting in the chair and my eye fell to the cabinet it faced where half a dozen framed pictures stood on the shelves. The quality was poor and they were in black-and-white. They were all of the same girl. They had been taken when she was very young, perhaps between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, but as I stared at these images of Julia Zannas I might have been looking at a young Alex.
Beside them was a slim volume with a leather cover. I opened it to the first page and saw my father’s handwriting. I made Eleni lie face-down on the floor while I read what he had written.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The journal was not a record of a series of dives like the others. Instead it was the story which Eric Schmidt, alias Johann Kohl, had told my father after they had met in Argostoli. He had written it down as he remembered it. As I read his words they conjured the events played out like an old film. I could see the faces of the characters, discern what they thought and felt. I had heard enough about them that they sprang to life before my eyes, like the real people they had once been.
The day that Hauptmann Hassel returned to Vathy having escaped the ambush Metkas had planned, his driver roared along the waterfront at full speed. The soldiers in the back kept their weapons trained at the ready, fully expecting an attack at any moment. Between them, the owner of the taverna sat white-faced, rigid with fear. In the front sat Julia Zannas. She was pale and stared straight ahead, never looking directly at any of the people they passed who stopped to stare.
As soon as they reached the waterfront mansion which served as the German garrison headquarters, Hassel climbed from the vehicle and, with his pistol drawn, began issuing orders. The taverna owner was taken away to be locked up, while soldiers snatched up their weapons and ran to man defensive positions. In a few short minutes, what had been a tranquil scene was transformed into a hurricane of activity. As word of what had transpired spread among the soldiers they felt a universal sense of betrayal and anger. Mixed with fear, their reaction became one of hostility. The people of the town suddenly found themselves staring down the barrels of guns. They were roughly pushed aside and told to leave the streets or be shot. An immediate curfew was put in place and within the hour the town of Vathy had fallen eerily quiet in the middle of the day. The soldiers waited nervously for the sound of gunfire, the roar of explosions.
When it was clear to Hauptmann Hassel that the attack he expected would not take place, he contemplated his options. As a soldier, his duty was to follow standing orders and report the con
spiracy to Standartenführer Bergen in Kephalonia. However, he was afraid of the consequences for the island if he followed such a course. What nobody but he was aware of was that Bergen was due to arrive on the gunship Antounnetta to evacuate all German forces from Ithaca. Hassel had already been ordered to assemble his men at Frikes in preparation for this event. His instructions included the directive that he was to go to the monastery at Kathara en route and remove all icons, statues and religious paraphernalia which might be of value and transport them to Frikes.
In a room in the mansion which served as Hassel’s office, he stood at the window looking onto the yard outside. He was deeply troubled. Julia Zannas sat quietly in a chair watching him. She was beautiful, he thought. More beautiful than ever, though her eyes were filled with the pain of the slowly-dawning comprehension of what she had done. He had gone to her home that morning to say goodbye. He had wanted to tell her that he was leaving soon, but once he was there he could not bring himself to do so. Sometimes he dreamed about coming back for her when the war was over. But he already had a wife and a baby child in Germany. He felt a powerful sense of guilt for having fallen in love with Julia. He had not wished it to happen. He had always known it was folly, but he had not been able to help himself.
He went to Julia and knelt on the floor. He took her hand in his own and held it against his cheek. She regarded him uncomprehendingly, her eyes brimming with uncertainty.
‘I owe you my life,’ he said. He did not attempt to speak Greek, since the things he wished to say were far beyond his comprehension of the language. ‘Do you know what it is you have done today?’
She did not understand, he knew that. Nevertheless, he needed to talk to her.
‘What can I do?’ he asked. ‘If I report what has happened, Standartenführer Bergen will undoubtedly order reprisals.’
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