Solo (Aka the Cretan Lover)(1980)

by Jack Higgins

  There were women in plenty, but not one who could succeed in arousing the slightest personal desire in him. There was no question of any latent homosexuality but his relations with women were genuinely a matter of complete indifference to him. The effect he had on them was something else again and his reputation as a lover reached almost legendary proportions. As for his music, at the end of his final year he was awarded the Raildon gold medal.

  Which was not enough. Not for the man he had become. So, he went to Vienna to put himself under Hoffman for a year. The final polish. Then, in the summer of 1967, he was ready.

  There is an old joke in the music profession that to get on to a concert platform in the first place is even more difficult than to succeed once you are there.

  To a certain extent, Mikali could have bought his way in. Paid an agent to hire a hall in London or Paris, arrange a recital, but his pride would never stand for that. He had to seize the world by the throat. Make it listen. There was only one way to do that.

  After a short holiday in Greece, he returned to England, to Yorkshire as an entrant in the Leeds Musical Festival, one of the most important pianoforte competitions in the world. To win that was to ensure instant fame, a guarantee of a concert tour.

  He was placed third and received immediate offers from three major agencies. He turned them all down, practised fourteen hours a day for a month at the London flat, then went to Salzburg in the following January. He took first prize in the competition there, beating forty-eight other competitors from all over the world, playing Rachmaninov's Fourth Piano Concerto, a work he was to make peculiarly his own in the years to come.

  His grandfather was there during the seven days of the festival and afterwards, when everyone else had left, he took two glasses of champagne on to the balcony where Mikali stood looking out over the city.

  'The world is your oyster now. They'll all want you. How do you feel?'

  'Nothing,' John Mikali said. He sipped a little of the ice-cold champagne, and suddenly and for no accountable reason, saw the four fellagha walking round the burning truck and coming towards him laughing. 'I feel nothing.'

  In the two years that followed, the dark eyes stared out from the pale, handsome face on posters in London, Paris, Rome, New York and his fame grew. The newspapers and magazines had made much of his two years in the Legion, his decorations for gallantry. In Greece, he became something of a folk hero so that his concerts in Athens were always considerable events.

  And things had changed in Greece now that the Colonels were in charge after the military coup of April 1967, and King Constantine's exile to Rome.

  Dimitri Mikali was seventy-six and looked it. Although he still kept open house in the evenings, few people attended. His activities on behalf of the Democratic Front Party had made him increasingly unpopular with the Government and his newspaper had already been banned on several occasions.

  'Politics,' Mikali said to him on one of his visits. 'It's a nonsense. Why make trouble for yourself?'

  'Oh, I'm doing very well really.' His grandfather smiled. 'What you might call a privileged position, having a grandson who is an international celebrity.'

  'All right,' Mikali said. 'So you've got a military junta in power and they don't like the mini-skirt. So what? I've been in worse places than Greece as it is today, believe me.'

  'Political prisoners by the thousand, the educational system used to indoctrinate little children, the Left almost stamped out of existence. Does this sound like the home of democracy?'

  None of which had the slightest effect on Mikali. The following day he flew to Paris and gave a Chopin recital that same night, a charitable affair in aid of international cancer research.

  There was a letter waiting for him from his London agent, Bruno Fischer, about the intinerary for a tour of England, Wales and Scotland in the autumn. He was spending some time going over it in his dressing room after the recital when there was a knock on the door and the stage doorkeeper looked in.

  'A gentleman to see you, Monsieur Mikali.'

  He was pushed out of the way and a large, burly individual with thinning hair and a heavy black moustache appeared. He wore a shabby raincoat over a crumpled tweed suit.

  'Hey, Johnny. Good to see you. Claude Jarrot - staff sergeant, Third Company, Second REP. We did that night drop at El Kebir together.'

  'I remember,' Mikali said. 'You broke an ankle.'

  'And you stayed with me when the fellagha broke through the line.' Jarrot stuck out a hand. 'I've read about you in the papers and when I saw you were giving this concert tonight, I thought I'd come along. Not for the music. It doesn't mean a damn thing to me.' He grinned. 'I couldn't pass up the chance of greeting another old Sidi-bel-Abbes hand.'

  It could be he was after a touch, he was certainly shabby enough, but his presence brought back the old days. For some reason, Mikali warmed to him.

  'I'm glad you did. I was just leaving. What about a drink? There must be a bar near here.'

  'Actually I have a garage only a block away,' Jarrot said. 'I've got a small apartment above it. I've got some good stuff in at the moment. Real Napoleon.'

  'Lead on,' Mikali said. 'Why not?'

  *

  The walls of the living-room were crowded with photos cataloguing Jarrot's career in the Legion and there were mementoes everywhere including his white kepi and dress epaulets on the sideboard.

  The Napoleon brandy was real enough and he got drunk fairly rapidly.

  'I thought they kicked you out in the Putsch?' Mikali said. 'Weren't you up to your neck in the OAS?'

  'Sure I was,' Jarrot said belligerently. 'All those years in Indo-China. I was at Dien Bien Phu, you know that? Those little yellow bastards had me for six months in a prison camp. Treated like pigs we were. Then the Algeria fiasco when the old man went and did the dirty on us. Every self-respecting Frenchman should have been OAS, not just mugs like me.'

  'Not much future in it now, surely?' Mikali said. 'The old boy showed he meant business when he had Bastien Thiry shot. How many attempts to knock him off and not one of them succeeded?'

  You're right,' Jarrot said, drinking. 'Oh, I played my part. Here, take a look.'

  He removed a rug from a wooden chest in the corner, fumbled for a key and unlocked it with difficulty. Inside there was a considerable assortment of weapons. Several machine pistols, an assortment of handguns and grenades.

  'I've had this stuff here four years,' he said. 'Four years, but the network's busted. We've had it. A man has to make out other ways these days.'

  'The garage?'

  Jarrot placed a finger against his nose. 'Come on, I'll show you. This damn bottle's empty anyway.'

  He unlocked a door at the rear of the garage and disclosed a room piled with cartons and packing cases of every description. He opened one and extracted another bottle of Napoleon brandy.

  'Told you there was more.' He waved an arm. 'More of everything here. Any kind of booze you want. Cigarettes, canned food. Be cleared out by the end of the week.'

  'Where does it all come from?' Mikali asked.

  'You might say off the back of a passing truck.' Jarrot laughed drunkenly. 'No questions, no pack drill as we used to say in the Legion. Just remember this, mon ami. Anything you ever need - anything. Just come to old Claude. I've got connections. I can get you anything, and that's a promise. Not only because you're an old bel-Abbes hand. If it hadn't been for you, the fellagha would probably have cut my balls off, amongst other things, that time.'

  He was very drunk by now and Mikali humoured him, slapping him on the shoulder. 'I'll remember that.'

  Jarrot pulled the cork with his teeth. 'To the Legion,' he said. 'The most exclusive club in the world.'

  He drank from the bottle and passed it across.

  He was on tour in Japan when he received news of his grandfather's death. The old man, increasingly infirm with advancing years and arthritic in one hip, had needed sticks to walk for some time. He had lost his balance o
n the tiled floor of the balcony of the apartment and fallen to the street below.

  Mikali cancelled what concerts he could and flew home, but it was a week before he got to Athens. In his absence, the coroner had ordered the funeral to take place, cremation according to Dimitri Mikali's wishes as conveyed in a letter of instructions to his lawyer.

  Mikali fled to Hydra as he had done before, to the villa on the peninsula beyond Molos. He crossed from Athens to Hydra port on the hydrofoil and found Constantine waiting to pick him up in the launch. When he went on board, the old man handed him an envelope without a word, started the engines and took the boat out of harbour.

  Mikali recognized his grandfather's writing at once. His fingers shook slightly as he opened the envelope. The contents were brief.

  If you read this it means I am dead. Sooner - later, it comes to us all. So, no sad songs. No more of my stupid politics to bore you with either because, in the end, the end is perhaps always the same. I know only one thing with total certainty. You have lightened the last years of my life with pride and with joy, but most of all with your love. I leave you mine and my blessing with it.

  Mikali's eyes burned, he experienced difficulty in breathing. When they reached the villa, he changed into climbing boots and rough clothes and took to the mountains, walking for hours, reducing himself to a state of total exhaustion.

  He spent the night in a deserted farmhouse and could not sleep. The following day, he continued to climb, spending another night like the first.

  On the third day, he staggered back to the villa where he was put to bed by Constantine and his wife. The old woman gave him some herbal potion. He slept for twenty hours and awakened calm and in control of himself again. It was enough. He phoned through to Fischer in London, and told him he wanted to get back to work.

  At the flat in Upper Grosvenor Street there was a mountain of mail waiting. He skimmed through quickly and paused. There was one with a Greek postage stamp marked Personal. It had been sent to his agent and re-addressed. He put the other letters down and opened it. The message was typed on a plain sheet of paper. No address. No name.

  Dimitri Mikali's death was not an accident - it was murder. The circumstances are as follows. For some time, he has been under pressure from certain sections of the government because of his activities for the Democratic Front. Various freedom-loving Greeks had together compiled a dossier for presenting to the United Nations including details of political prisoners held without trial, atrocities of every description, torture and murder. It was believed that Dimitri Mikali knew the whereabouts of this dossier. On the evening of the 16 June, he was visited at his apartment by Colonel George Vassilikos who bears special responsibility for the work of the political branch of Military Intelligence, together with his bodyguards Sergeant Andreas Aleko and Sergeant Nikos Petrakis. In an effort to make Mikali disclose the whereabouts of the dossier he was beaten severely and burned about the face and the private parts of his body with cigarette lighters. When he finally died because of this treatment, Vassilikos ordered his body to be thrown from the balcony to make the death look like an accident. The coroner was under orders to produce the report he did and never actually saw the body which was cremated so that the signs of ill-treatment and torture would be erased. Both Sergeants Aleko and Petrakis have boasted of these facts while drunk, in the hearing of several people friendly to our cause.

  The rage in Mikali was a living thing. The physical pain which gripped his body was like nothing he had ever known in his life before. He doubled over in spasm, fell to his knees, then curled up in a foetal position.

  How long he stayed there, he had no means of knowing, but certainly towards evening, he found himself wandering through one street after another as darkness fell, with no idea where he was. Finally, he went into a small, cheap cafe, ordered a coffee and sat down at one of the stained tables. It was like the echo of an old tune, the cafe in Paris by the market all over again for someone had left a copy of the London Times. He picked it up, his eyes roaming over the news items mechanically. Then he stiffened as he saw a small headline half-way down the second page.

  Greek Army Delegation visits Paris for Nato consultations.

  In his heart, he knew whose name he was going to find even before he read the rest of the news item.

  After that, the whole thing fell into place with total certainty, as if it were a sign from God himself, when the phone rang. It was Bruno Fischer.

  'John? I was hoping you'd arrived. I can get you two immediate concerts, Wednesday and Friday, if you want them. Hoffer was due to play the Schumann A minor with the London Symphony. Unfortunately he's broken his wrist.'

  'Wednesday?' Mikali said automatically. 'That only gives me three days.'

  'Come on, you've recorded the damn thing twice. One rehearsal should be enough. You could be a sensation.'

  'Where?' Mikali asked. 'The Festival Hall?'

  'Good God, no. Paris, Johnny. I know it means climbing right back into another aeroplane, but do you mind?'

  'No,' John Mikali said calmly. 'Paris will be fine.'

  The military coup which seized power in Greece in the early hours of 27 April 1967 had been expertly planned by only a handful of colonels in total secrecy which to a great extent explained its success. Newspaper coverage in the days which followed had been extensive. Mikali spent the afternoon before his evening flight to Paris at the British Museum, checking through every available newspaper magazine published in the period following the coup.

  It was not as difficult as it might have been, mainly because it was photos only that he was after. He found two. One was in Time magazine and showed Colonel George Vassilikos, a tall, handsome man of forty-five with a heavy, black moustache, standing beside Colonel Papadopoulos, the man who was, to all intents and purposes dictator of Greece.

  The second photo was in a periodical published by Greek exiles in London. It showed Vassilikos flanked by his two sergeants. The caption underneath read: The butcher and his henchmen. Mikali removed the page carefully and left.

  He called at the Greek Embassy when he reached Paris the following morning, and was received with delight by the cultural attache, Doctor Melos.

  'My dear Mikali, what a pleasure. I'd no idea you were due in Paris.'

  Mikali explained the circumstances. 'Naturally they'll get a few quick adverts out in the Paris papers to let the fans know it's me and not Hoffer who'll be playing, but I thought I'd like to make sure you knew here at the Embassy.'

  'I can't thank you enough. The Ambassador would have been furious if he'd missed it. Let me get you a drink.'

  'I'll be happy to arrange tickets,' Mikali told him. 'For the Ambassador and anyone else he cares to bring. Didn't I read somewhere that you have some brass staying here from Athens?'

  Melos made a face as he brought him a glass of sherry. 'Not exactly culture-orientated. Colonel Vassilikos, Intelligence, which is a polite way of saying...'

  'I can imagine,' Mikali said.

  Melos glanced at his watch. 'I'll show you.'

  He moved to the window. A black Mercedes stood in the courtyard, a chauffeur beside it. A moment later, Colonel Vassilikos came down the steps from the main entrance, flanked by Sergeants Aleko and Petrakis. Aleko got in front with the chauffeur, Petrakis and the Colonel in the rear. As the Mercedes moved away, Mikali memorized the number although the car was recognizable enough because of the Greek pennant on the front.

  Ten o'clock on the dot,' Melos said. 'Exactly the same when he was here the other month. If his bowels are as regular, he must be a healthy man. Out to the military academy at St Cyr for the day's work, through the Bois de Meudon and Versailles. He likes the scenery that way, so the chauffeur tells me.'

  'No time for play?' Mikali said. 'He sounds a dull dog.'

  'I'm told he likes boys, but that could be hearsay. One thing is certain. Music figures very low on his list of priorities.'

  Mikali smiled. 'Well, you can't win them all. But you a
nd the Ambassador, perhaps?'

  Melos went down to the front entrance with him. 'I was desolated to hear of your grandfather's unfortunate death. It must have come as a terrible shock. To have returned to the concert platform so soon after... I can only say, your courage fills me with admiration.'

  'It's quite simple,' Mikali said. 'He was the most remarkable man I ever knew.'

  'And immensely proud of you?'

  'Of course. Not to continue now, if only for his sake, would be the greatest betrayal imaginable. You could say this Paris trip is my way of lighting a candle to his memory.'

  He turned and went down the steps to his hire car.

  *

  He had a rehearsal with the London Symphony that afternoon. The conductor was on top form and he and Mikali clicked into place with each other immediately. However, he did ask for a further rehearsal the following afternoon between two and four as the concert was at seven-thirty in the evening. Mikali agreed.

  At five-thirty that evening, he waited in an old Citroen in a lay-by on the Versailles road not far from the palace itself. Jarrot was at the wheel.

  'If you'd only tell me what this is all about?' he grumbled.

  'Later.' Mikali offered him a cigarette. 'You said if I ever wanted anything to come to you, didn't you?'

  'Yes, but...'

  At that moment the black Mercedes with the Greek pennant cruised by and Mikali said urgently, 'Get after that car. No need to rush. He's not doing more than forty.'

  'That doesn't make sense,' Jarrot said as he drove off. 'Not in a heap like that.'

  'It's simple really,' Mikali said. 'The Colonel likes the scenery.'

  'The Colonel?'

  'Just shut up and keep driving.'