Decision at Delphi

by Helen Macinnes

  “If Nikos Kladas is alive, as you told me, then Sideros is alive.”

  “Are you sure they can be identified as the same man?”

  “Steve has only one brother.”

  “Well—” said Christophorou, and drew a deep breath. “There is a very full record on Sideros,” he added softly.

  “Then tell your colleagues to start digging into the files and it might be surprising how easy the search for a man called Sideros should be. They’ll find his descriptions, habits, friends—right?”

  “Most possible.”

  “And then the conspiracy might start unravelling enough. Isn’t that why you are all trying to find Nikos Kladas? He is the loose thread.”

  “He is the only loose thread.” Then Christophorou shook his head in wonder. “But how did you ever learn the name of Sideros?” He set down his brandy glass untouched, and put out his cigarette.

  “I’ll begin with the first thing I learned—the visit of a very frightened young woman, called Katherini Roilos, to Perspective’s office.” And Strang began his story, omitting nothing—not even the documents in Steve’s small case—giving only the facts, wasting no time on his own inferences or deductions.

  When he ended, there was a long silence. Strang was still trying to remember if he had forgotten anything. “No,” he said at last, drawing the final line. “That just about covers everything.”

  Christophorou was watching him with a completely new expression on his usually guarded face. He was interested, astounded, but also amused. “Just about everything,” he agreed, a hint of a smile lingering around his lips.

  “Except, of course, where Steve’s documents are now hidden,” Strang said quite frankly.

  “I hope you have hidden them well.”

  Strang couldn’t restrain his own smile. “Sorry, Aleco. They don’t belong to me. I hand them over to Steve. They are still his property. Right?”

  Christophorou looked aghast. “Good heavens, do you think I want them?”

  “Yes.” Strang’s smile broadened into a grin.

  Christophorou was deadly serious. “I wouldn’t touch them,” he said emphatically. “Can you imagine how the authenticity of these documents could be torn to shreds, by any defence counsel in a court of law, if you were to give them to me without witnesses? Fabrications, invented evidence, collusion between two friends. My dear Kenneth, the only thing for you to do, meanwhile, is to keep these documents. Either Stefanos Kladas will collect them or—you can hand them over to me in the presence of one of your own State Department officials. There is an aide at your embassy, Pringle is his name, who is watching developments closely. After all, Nikos Kladas is technically an American.”

  “How long can we afford to wait for Steve?”

  “This is Monday—” Christophorou frowned. “Let’s say until Friday. No later than that.”

  “Can we hold off as long as that?” Strang was doubtful.

  “If you feel you can’t, just let me know,” Christophorou suggested. “I was only trying to follow your own inclinations, Kenneth.” He waited. And then, as Strang kept silent, he said crisply, “Let us review your story. This girl, Katherini Roilos—I think she could tell us a great deal. She must be desperate if she could think of no other way to let you know she would be in Athens than that pitiful little attempt to reach you through a passenger list.”

  “It seemed to me,” Strang said, “that her aunt’s name on that list was the important one, all the more so when the Duval woman wanted her visit to Athens to be kept so secret. Why?”

  Christophorou shrugged his shoulders.

  “Is Madame Duval a political exile? I mean—shouldn’t she be in Athens?”

  “I know of no reason why she shouldn’t be. She’s just one of those obnoxious rich women, too much money, too little sense. She lives in the kind of way that would almost turn me Communist. Senseless display.” Christophorou spoke with marked aversion. “Completely self-centred. Irresponsible.”

  “The yacht Medea worries me, frankly. Its timing was—”

  “I’ll pass on your information about that.”

  “And the little light-footed lock-fixer—”

  “I’ll see to him, too. In fact,” Christophorou frowned, “I’ll pass on all your information. You can forget about it, Kenneth.”

  “Good,” Strang said, glad to be rid of it all.

  “You think Ottway would really tell what he knows?”

  “Why not? He’s pro-Greek.”

  “Yes. But—his private life is his own.”

  Strang shot a quick glance at him.

  “I am talking about the past, Kenneth, and a very personal past it was—nothing to do with politics.” Christophorou paused. “Frankly, I was surprised to hear he had married.”

  Strang said nothing.

  “His wife seems charming.”

  “Yes.”

  It was Christophorou’s turn to glance sharply at Strang. “Why did she talk so much to you? Could it be possible that she was feeding you all that information?”

  “No. She was only trying to find out more. That’s all.”

  “Oh?”

  “About the past,” Strang said abruptly. He didn’t like this turn in the conversation.

  “She is jealous of it? With reason, I might say.” Christophorou thought for a moment. “And Ottway is jealous of you. They must be in love, after all.”

  “Jealous? No, Aleco. Wrong tree.”

  “Why did he risk coming out of his hotel room to keep that appointment with you? You told me he had been lying low for a week. If Ottway did that, he had a good reason. He is no fool. Yet you pulled him out—”

  “You flatter me. He isn’t the kind who gets jealous.”

  “Then he was worried about his friend Stefanos Kladas?”

  “Like all of us,” Strang said, trying to ignore the implication in Christophorou’s voice.

  “Like all of us,” Christophorou agreed, and rose. He looked at Strang as he shook hands. Again that odd expression— interest, astonishment, amusement—came over his face. This time, amusement won. “And I thought, in Taormina, that I was keeping you out of all this trouble.” He regained his seriousness with an effort. “Now, there is a truly comic situation. Isn’t it?”

  It was ironic, Strang thought, that Americans who could take perfectly good care of themselves at home seemed to have earned a general reputation of needing protection abroad. But it was fine to see Aleco Christophorou with a real smile again.

  “So,” Christophorou was saying with some of his old lightness, “a Greek can see a joke against himself.” With evident relief, he added, “And I also see that you can keep information to yourself. That is a very pleasant reassurance for me. My lapse of discretion tonight won’t give me any bad hours tomorrow.”

  There certainly had been no lapse of tact, thought Strang. What could have been a more gentle reminder that Aleco’s story must be considered as dead and buried as the two terrorists who had started it all? “You don’t have to waste any worry on me. I’ll—”

  The telephone rang.

  “Strang?” an American voice said.

  “Speaking.” He nodded good-bye across the room to Christophorou, who was just about to leave. “Pringle?” he echoed, giving all his attention to the voice on the telephone.

  “We met today. Your friend Beaumont introduced us. At Tommy’s table.”

  “Of course—a long conversation about Long Walls.”

  “That’s right.” Pringle seemed relieved. “Could I see you?”

  “That’s a good idea. Tomorrow for lunch?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Something wrong?” Strang asked quickly. He looked over at Christophorou, waiting at the doorway, alert, worried.

  “You could say that. Have you had dinner?”

  “Not yet.” Strang glanced at his watch. It was now almost ten o’clock. “I could see you around eleven fifteen or eleven thirty.” Christophorou had crossed quickly over to him.
Strang covered the mouthpiece. “There’s some trouble,” he said.

  Pringle was saying, “Why don’t you drop over to my apartment? It is just across the street and up the hill. Take Voucourestiou Street—that’s also called Jan Smuts. My apartment is—”

  “Just a moment. Voucourestiou?” Strang turned to Christophorou, who had touched his arm. Christophorou held out a slip of paper. “Find out what trouble,” Strang read. “Right,” he told Pringle, “I’ve got all that. But tell me—what’s the trouble?”

  “Time enough after you’ve eaten.”

  “My dinner is ruined, in any case. Can you tell me what’s wrong? Is it something about Steve?”

  “Yes. He has been found.”

  “Where?”

  “I am afraid it’s very bad news,” Pringle said heavily.

  Strang looked at Christophorou. “Steve is dead,” he said. Half prepared as he had been, the finality of his own words, three small words, caught him in shocked surprise. Christophorou took the phone from him.

  Christophorou was saying to Pringle, “Bob? Aleco, here. Sorry you couldn’t find me. There was a slight alteration in my engagements. But here I am now. I’m listening.”

  Christophorou listened for four full minutes. “The documents are here,” he said at last. “Yes, Strang has them. No, I haven’t seen them. It would be better if we three got together right away. You can be our witness of transfer. Just a moment—” He looked across at Strang, sitting very still on the arm of a chair. “Anything you want to add, Kenneth? Pringle says eleven fifteen at his place would be all right.”

  Strang said, “Why not follow Steve’s idea? Tell Pringle I’ll meet him at the American Embassy. We’ll do it the way Steve wanted.”

  Christophorou hesitated. He shrugged, and talked to Pringle again. “Yes, yes,” he insisted. “I’ll get in touch with the right department at once. They’ll send two of their experts over to the embassy tonight. That’s what Strang wants. Let’s say half past eleven?”

  Strang stared down at Steve’s small case. They didn’t silence Steve, he thought. He turned away, opened the door on to his dark terrace and stepped out into the cool, crisp night. High above the quietening street, looking over the broken succession of flat roof tops opposite him, the neon signs, the scattering of lighted rooms, the glow from the main avenues, he forgot the city. He was remembering another dark night, the gale-swept causeway at Naples, the mounting wave and Steve yelling as they ran, defiant and triumphant.

  Strange that, of all the memories of Steve, the one that would always stay with him would be that moment.

  At his elbow, Christophorou said quietly, “Here is my telephone number. Memorise it. Don’t keep it.” He handed over a slip of paper. “Two Intelligence officers will take charge of the Kladas documents tonight. You can rely on them to take appropriate action. Don’t be surprised if you see me around, somewhere in the background. And don’t be surprised, either, if you see a man dressed in a dark suit and striped tie staying close to you at dinner—he is a friend.”

  Strang shook his head. Nothing would surprise him very much any more. “There’s no need for that,” he said.

  “Pringle is responsible for that idea. He’s a pleasant fellow, but he is inclined to double-lock the stable door once the horse is stolen. If only he had listened to me when I told him Stefanos Kladas was in grave danger!” Christophorou touched Strang’s arm for a moment. “I am sorry,” he said, and was gone.

  Strang came back into the room. He finished the brandy, memorised Christophorou’s telephone number, and burned the scrap of paper. Now, he thought as he looked at his watch, I’m supposed to get some food inside me. The idea was nauseating, but when had he last eaten? Nine, ten hours ago. Better make the effort. There was a long night ahead of him.

  The large dining-room was aglitter with light, well filled with sedate guests, astir with polite murmurs. He found a small table, impressed on a horrified captain the fact that he really wanted something light, something quick, swallowed some soup and choked down mouthfuls of omelette. He would long remember his first dinner in Athens. At a table near the door, a small dark man in a dark-blue suit and striped tie seemed to be adept at making one very small cup of coffee last, in the Athenian way. Was all this really necessary? Strang wondered with irritation.

  Yet, as he signed at the reception desk for the envelope containing Steve’s strange legacy, it was—oddly enough—most comforting to see the small dark man in his neat dark suit waiting in the lobby with an expertly detached and aimless air. Strang looked inside the envelope to make sure, and was sure: that worry could at least be crossed off his little list. The last problem was only to get to the embassy. Suddenly, he felt no longer annoyed by the grave-faced, dark-suited man so close on his heels, but only grateful. He took back his hard feelings about Pringle’s misplaced efficiency.

  This will all end in an anti-climax of complete ignorance, he told himself as he waited for the doorman to signal a taxi. I shall be conveyed carefully to the embassy, I’ll make my little explanation to Pringle, I’ll hand over this envelope; a couple of Greeks in dark-blue suits will bow gravely, take charge of it, and vanish; I’ll probably have to sit in a small office and talk some more to Pringle about Steve, Aleco may come in, and they’ll tell me how Steve died, or they may not; and that will be all I shall ever know, except what I read in the newspapers. That’s the way it will be. Anti-climax. Thank you, Strang; now good-bye, good-bye...

  And it was very much like that. Except that one of the Greeks wore khaki with four rows of close-packed ribbons on his solid chest.

  When he left Pringle, the first threat of dawn was streaking the placid sky grey-green. The white and yellow houses were softly luminous ghosts behind still trees. “Put this all behind you,” Pringle had said sympathetically. “You have your own job to do, you know.” That was the voice of good sense and quiet reason. But when had emotions listened to logic?

  The bar at the Grande Bretagne was open, but the large room was empty, the lights reduced to one faint chandelier, the long counter without anyone at all. That certainly solved one problem: there was no place to go but bed, with bitter thoughts for company.

  10

  Next morning, apart from sleeping until the lazy hour of ten, Strang found everything almost back to routine. He shaved, showered, and dressed briskly, had breakfast in his room after a bleak attempt to sit on the terrace in the thin, wind-cooled sunlight of early spring, read the English-language papers which had arrived along with bacon and eggs, and made a determined if gloom-filled effort to follow Pringle’s advice.

  He became increasingly restless. He looked at his portfolio, and closed it again. He picked up his notes on the Acropolis, and put them down. A pleasant little waiter, brisk and friendly, came to wheel away the breakfast table. The elderly, sensible-looking maid peered in, and retreated, but not too far from his room. He was glad to take her cue. He needed fresh air, some exercise, anything to end this restlessness. He laid aside the book he was trying to read, didn’t even look for his sketch pad or pencils, and left. He passed quickly through the crowded lobby, out into the noisy street. It was half past eleven. Athenians were already homeward bound towards their midday meal.

  He began walking along Venizelou, a broad and busy thoroughfare with a mixture of shops and cafés on one side and public buildings, more or less, on the other. Smaller side streets fed it so that it bulged with traffic of all kinds—speed seemed to be the only common denominator—and resounded with all varieties of honks and screeches, as if wild geese and night owls were competing overhead. Overfilled trolley buses, bristling with dark moustaches (high fashion, evidently, for the grey-suited young men) and the hatless heads of serious-eyed women, asserted their lawful rights among the quick flowing traffic. A certain independence of spirit was very evident, adding to the gaiety of the battle against the pedestrian whose wits had to be as quick as his feet. Strang, at least, achieved one purpose of this excursion: he wasn’t gi
ven much time to think about anything else than having his tail lopped off by a speeding taxi or being sideswiped by an impatient bus.

  He had explored what might be called the main-street section of Athens—for Athens, he had decided, was a collection of towns, from city towns to country towns, self-contained and yet interwoven like the patches of a New England quilt—and now he was back on the smarter end of Venizelos Street, only two or three blocks from his hotel. Here the sidewalk was broad and paved and the bigger cafés had rows of tables and chairs under their awnings for the usual collection of hop-skip-and-jump tourists (four-day visit, with Delphi and Sunium thrown in); Greek dowagers in flowered hats and smooth gloves; stay-and-see visitors (two weeks’ residence, at least); and some young men, with short haircuts, rebelling against the coffeehouse ritual of their elders by enjoying ice-cream sodas. And just as Strang was debating whether he would cut down the next side street to a coffeehouse where he could sit indoors in a large bare room with a dusty floor and close-packed tables jammed tight with men sitting over a thimbleful of fine ground coffee, or whether he’d flop here and enjoy a beer and have some more breaths of exhilarating carbon monoxide, he saw Caroline Ottway. She had seen him, too. She gave a wave of her hand beckoning him toward the table where she sat. With her other hand, she said good-bye to a man in grey, small, dark-haired, black-moustached, who bowed over it with great politeness. He turned to bow to Strang, too, before he left, saying in his sibilant English, “I hope Mr. Strang is enjoying himself? Such a fine spring day!”

  “Who’s that?” Strang asked, watching the man’s retreating shoulders. “Oh, yes, he’s the fellow who didn’t meet me at the airport.”

  “Yorghis,” said Caroline Ottway.

  “That’s the character.” Strang shook her hand and sat down.

  “He is teaching me Greek.”

  “Good heavens—does the Spyridon Makres Agency run classes, too?”

  “Oh, this is only some extra work that Yorghis does on the side. I got his name through a friend of a friend. You know... He’s really very good, I think. And not expensive.”