Decision at Delphi

by Helen Macinnes

  “It may be dangerous,” Strang told him.

  “I will do it,” the man flashed back at him. “I am Petros.”

  The old man burst into a laugh. “I will do it, I will do it,” he parroted. “The American speaks of Stefanos, and help, and danger, and you promise your life before you know all the truth. Why was there so much trouble here in Greece? Because men did not know all the truth. In Crete, we did not have trouble with Communists like Ares. And how? We did not let them make trouble. We kept them in one corner of the island, and let them tell their lies to each other. And we made a line which we guarded, over which none crossed, or—” He drew a finger across his throat and smiled benignly. “So we had no trouble. We drove out the Germans. We did not waste time and blood on killing our neighbours. And how? Because we had thought out the. truth about the Communists. For whom were they so suddenly brave? Such patriots overnight? For what? For what they wanted.” His voice quietened. “That is what you must find out first. The truth about a man.” He looked at Strong. “What is the truth about you? Who sent you here?”

  “No one.”

  “And the girl—you did not follow her here?”

  Strang stared at the watchful faces. “What girl?” he asked. He glanced over at Cecilia, wondering if his Greek had gone completely haywire.

  “Not that one,” the old man said abruptly. But the shrewd dark eyes, deeply set in his strong-boned face, were less belligerent. He pointed to a chair opposite him. “Sit,” he said. “Let us hear this story about Stefanos Kladas.”

  “I shall speak in English, and the boy can translate. That would be quicker.”

  “Quicker, quicker. Americans want everything quicker. Speak in Greek. We have plenty of time.”

  “You are mistaken. We have very little time. This I know. And you do not.”

  Petros said in English, “I will translate.”

  Strang gave him a look of thanks. He was too exhausted by his struggles with a strange and difficult language to feel much astonishment at this belated revelation. All he felt now, as he sat down opposite the Cretan’s angry frown, was relief: at last, he could gather his thoughts in English and set them out, neatly, clearly; even the pauses for translation would give him a better chance to make everything exact, for the problem was not in telling the story but in the selection of what could be told as simply as possible. But most of all, there was comfort in the feeling that Petros had somehow shifted over to his side. Perhaps Petros had heard about Crete too often. Strang took a deep, steadying breath and began. The old man watched his face as if he could read truth or lie by the flicker of an eyelid or the tightening of a lip.

  Ordeal by listening, Cecilia thought as she watched Kenneth Strang. He never gave up, did he? Ten minutes ago, it had seemed as if there was nothing left to do but retreat back into Erinna Street, and walk away defeated. But now the grave faces around Kenneth Strang were no longer distrustful. They listened to him as if they could understand every word of English, and then listened just as intently to the translation. Carefully, she moved her cramped legs. At least she had solved her own small problem with the cats. They were asleep now, still near her feet, but no longer rubbing their long thin backs against her legs or brushing their bodies unexpectedly over her instep.

  Kenneth Strang was ending his story. There were new details, which he had spared her earlier this evening. Steve’s body had been identified by his clothes, papers, travellers’ cheques, passport. Nothing had been stolen. His face had been smashed by the rocks where the body had been found by a fisherman at dawn on Monday. Suicide or an accident: that was what the police believed. That was what everyone would believe.

  Petros finished his translation. There was a long moment of silence. Then the old man asserted his authority again. “You say that Stefanos Kladas is dead.”

  “Yes.” What else have I been, saying? Strang thought, with a quick surge of annoyance. Or perhaps he had misheard the Cretan’s words.

  “Then,” the old man said softly, with great enjoyment, “who is lying?”

  Petros said quickly, “The girl was lying to get our help.”

  “The American also wants our help.”

  “Not for himself. For the sake of Stefanos.”

  That scored a point. The old man weighed it, and nodded.

  Petros said, “She came here bargaining for help. ‘Hide me,’ she said, ‘and I will give you news about Stefanos Kladas.’ News? Now, we see she was lying.”

  “But”—the clever old eyes were watching Strang’s bewilderment—“she was bargaining. One does not tell everything when one bargains.”

  “You were the first to disbelieve her. You said she had lived with lies for years; she had forgotten truth.”

  “If I had disbelieved her altogether, I would not have kept her here. I would not have hidden her from our guests. The girl is afraid. That is real. Not a lie.”

  “She did not tell us Stefanos Kladas was dead.”

  “No,” agreed the old man. “But why should she come here in the first place? Her family is no friend of ours.”

  “Friend?” Petros gave a bitter laugh.

  “There is much to think about here,” the Cretan said happily. He half closed his eyes.

  Strang rose, completely baffled. “Then you must think about it,” he said abruptly. “I’ll wait until you have talked together.” He crossed the room to his own table and Cecilia. “It’s an all-night session,” he told her. “My God, how did I ever get into all this?” He slumped down in his chair. His foot hit something soft and roused a muted protest. “What the—”He lifted the long flap of oilcloth and looked under the table at four placid bodies. “They’re still there?”

  “They are just sleeping it off. Let’s keep them that way. It’s much more peaceful.” She poured him a drink. He noticed that the two coffee cups were saucerless and the wine bottle half empty. “Sh!” she said quickly, “don’t spoil your advantage. You were wonderful, so serious and earnest. I’d hire you as my defence lawyer, any day.”

  “Not against the old man.” He shook his head admiringly, both for the Cretan and for Cecilia. He looked at the cats again. “It’s one hell of an evening for you.” Then he wished his language didn’t slip unconsciously out of his control when he was worried sick. “Sorry,” he said awkwardly, apologising for everything.

  “I shan’t forget this evening. What’s happening, do you think?”

  “We’ve run into some kind of snag. It’s beyond me. All I wanted was to get Petros to help.”

  “How?”

  “Steve spent how long here—eighteen months? How many nights of secret talk and reminiscence in eighteen months?”

  “Quite a number, I’d think.” She looked reflectively at the men’s table.

  “Petros was shown the photographs. Perhaps he will remember what Steve told him about them. It’s a chance, I know; and a small one. But—” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “If you got that Englishman to look at the photographs—” she began. “He would do that, wouldn’t he?”

  “Ottway? Yes, I think he would.”

  “Then with Ottway and Petros, you have a slightly better chance.”

  He did feel better, too. Less exhausted, less depressed. “You are a strange mixture,” he told her. “Whatever it is, it’s good for me.”

  She looked away, at the men across the room. “I think the curtain is about to go up again.” For the old man had raised his eyes, and now his voice, to the ceiling. Overhead, footsteps hurried. There was a clatter on a flimsy staircase, which must, by the sound of it, lead down into the kitchen next door. “I. can see,” Cecilia observed, “how the Greeks invented the five-act drama.”

  The woman entered first, elderly, small, thickset. Not so old, Strang reconsidered quickly, not much more than fifty, but with a face whose premature wrinkles and furrows were marked cruelly under the bright glare of light from the naked bulb overhead. Her long black hair, streaked with grey, was drawn back without mercy
into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her lips and cheeks were colourless. A plain woman and no nonsense, even to her ankle-length black skirt, her long-sleeved, high-collared blouse. There was a long black scarf over her shoulders, falling almost to her knees. Her dark eyes flashed briefly over Cecilia and Strang. “Who are they?” she asked the old man.

  “They are friends of Stefanos Kladas.”

  The woman’s face softened. “Then they are welcome,” she said with simple dignity.

  Strang thought, We have been named friends: that is something at least.

  “What more had the girl to say?” the old man asked.

  “Nothing. What did you expect?” The woman’s voice was harsh with irritation.

  “We heard a lot of talk.”

  “The same old thing. Ask her, and waste your breath. She will tell us nothing more until we help her. Help her? What has she ever done for us? Never in twenty years has she even looked at my shadow. She didn’t even know I was alive! And now—” She plunged into a full account of all that had been said upstairs, her hands at her waist, elbows stiffly out, feet planted solidly on. the ground, and ended with a declaration addressed to the ceiling. “So she is in danger, she says. She helped Stefanos Kladas because her father and brother were murdered, she says. And she comes running here, saying that they were of my blood, asking if that means nothing to me.” She threw up her hands to her head. “It meant death to my husband in the war, it meant I was a refugee in Athens with my children, it meant we left everything and lost everything. And I have to weep tears for her father, the man who controlled our village for three years of nightmare? I have to weep for the death of that man and his son? Killed by their own friends. The only honest work they ever did! And I must weep?” She whirled around toward the doorway, where the girl stood hesitating, her head bent, her dark hair dishevelled, half falling over her face. “They made me weep all my tears, years ago. I have none left, for them, for you. My village—” She burst into deep sobs, ripped her hair loose, pulled at the throat of her blouse. The two younger men and the boy ran to her, began talking quietly, tried to pull her hands down to her sides. The sobs deepened.

  Cecilia flinched. “I can’t bear this,” she said almost to herself, and half rose, and then sank back in her chair again.

  Very quietly, he said to her, “You were the one who reminded me of Greek tragedy.” He put his hand over hers.

  “It isn’t real?” She belied her own question, for her eyes filled with tears, and she bit her lip.

  “Very real,” he said gently. If calling up emotion from great depths was not real, then what was? Grief was not complaint or self-pitying tears. Grief was mourning for all of us, he thought.

  The woman was being led to a chair. She sat down, covering her head with the long black scarf, drawing it over her mouth. She didn’t even look up as the old Cretan turned his head sharply toward the kitchen doorway. “Well?” he asked the girl.

  Strang had almost forgotten her. He looked now, with interest, but with no recognition. Not at first. Then, as she looked around the room, at the old man and his sons, at the two Americans, at the woman sitting with her head covered and bowed, something quickened in Strang’s memory. The white, drawn face, the pale lips, the fall of unkempt hair, the shapeless black coat, too large for her thin body, all belonged to a stranger. But the profile was unmistakable. It was Katherini Roilos. His grip tightened on Cecilia’s hand. “The girl who tried to help Steve,” he said quickly. He rose. And then he hesitated.

  The girl was saying, “I did not know these things. I was four years old when the village was burned. I—” She looked at the woman’s bowed head. “I shall leave.” And then, defiantly, “I would never have come here if Stefanos Kladas did not need help.”

  “How does a dead man need help?” Petros asked. “Charon has taken him beyond all help.”

  “Dead?” She looked at them in horror. “When? Where?”

  The old Cretan gestured to Strang.

  Strang said, “The Italian police found his body. They believe it was suicide.”

  The girl stared at him, but the look of terrified dismay left her face. She said slowly, “That is what everyone is supposed to believe. But it was not suicide. It was murder.” She took a deep breath. “Murder of another man, Mr. Strang. Your friend Stefanos Kladas is alive.”

  13

  In the small square room, there was a silence so intense that Cecilia could hear the purring sleep of a cat near her feet. Then there was a growl of triumph from the old Cretan, an exclamation of disbelief from Petros, a quick exchange of glances among the men, a lifting of the black-shawled woman’s head, a look of mixed emotions on Strang’s face—amazement, uncertainty, relief, doubt, hope. He gripped Katherini’s shoulder. “Steve’s alive?” he asked in English.

  “Yes.” She looked at the old man, and began speaking in Greek. “He was alive, yesterday, on the yacht Medea, when it arrived in the Bay of Argos.” She broke into English again for Strang’s benefit. “He was a prisoner. They took him away in the darkness, in a small boat. They were rowing toward the coast of Sparta.” She looked again at the old man, who was frowning with impatience.

  “Speak in Greek,” Strang said quietly. “If I don’t understand, I’ll signal.”

  Katherini said, “They took him ashore when darkness fell. I watched them, praying that the moon would rise so that someone in Nauplion, on the other side of the bay, might see what was happening. But they had planned everything carefully. Even I, standing on the yacht, could not see the little boat after the first few minutes.”

  “Was he injured?” Strang asked.

  “Drugged.”

  “Why did they keep him alive?”

  “Yes,” said Petros, grimly, “that is a good question.”

  “Because of the photographs he took during the war. They will keep him alive until they can find out where he has sent them. They are afraid of these photographs, I think. Very afraid.”

  Petros glanced at Strang, “Do you believe her?” he asked bluntly.

  “She tried to help him in New York,” Strang said slowly. “And if that is known, then she is in danger.” He thought for a moment. “How did she recognise me? How did she find out my name?”

  “They have their own photographs, too,” she said with a bitter smile. “I saw one of you, taken when you were walking on Madison Avenue. Nikos said you were the man who was coming to Greece with Stefanos. Oh, they knew all about you, about the magazine—”

  “All about me?” Strang asked, unbelieving.

  “Enough, at least,” she answered, “to decide whether you were only a business friend of Stefanos or a very close friend— like Petros—who might know much of his life. But they decided you were harmless. So no accident happened to you.”

  He looked around at the listening faces. None seemed to find her last remark ridiculous. “And where,” he asked, “would that accident have happened?”

  “In the middle of the Atlantic,” she said calmly.

  “You seem to know a lot about. them,” he said, watching her.

  “For years, I paid no attention. But since I found out that my father and brother were killed by Nikos Kladas I—I have paid attention. I listened. I watched. And I began to learn. And I did not know what to do with what I learned. I did try to warn Stefanos Kladas. I did try to tell you that we were coming-to Athens. But that was all I could do. So little. It is horrible to know something and not be able to do anything.”

  “You could have gone to the police.”

  “Police?” She was shocked. “But they would have said my aunt was guilty. And she is not. She is being used. That is all.”

  “She doesn’t know what is going on, even on board her own yacht?” Strang asked sharply.

  “But they explain it to her in such a way that she believes they are right,” the girl said. She wasn’t altogether happy about her own explanation, Strang thought.

  “I owe her everything I had, “the girl went on,
with sudden passion.” She took me out of a miserable village; she educated me and fed me and clothed me—”

  “Half a dozen fur coats put your aunt beyond suspicion?” Strang asked. “Is that it?”

  “Why doesn’t your aunt help you now?” asked Petros. “Why do you need help from us?” His distrust was still evident.

  Katherini Roilos looked at him contemptuously. “I don’t ask your help, any more. All I do now is to give you the message from Stefanos. After that, I leave.”

  “They let you talk to Stefanos?” Petros asked. “This is a fine story, a very fine story.”

  “They did not let me talk,” she said with annoyance over his stupidity. “But I talked with him. Yesterday, at dawn, my aunt went ashore. Later, the others went, too, to sightsee. It was an excuse, to make the officials in Nauplion think that everything was normal. Many yachts come to Nauplion with people who want to visit Mycenae, Epidaurus. So they went, but I said I was ill and I stayed on board. I talked with Stefanos for five or six minutes. He had been drugged, but he was beginning to be conscious: I gave him a knife. I warned him that his food would be drugged again, that he would be taken off the ship that night. He promised he would not eat anything, or drink. That he would pretend. And go with them. And once he reached the shore, he would try to escape. If he managed, he said he would hide. I was to get this news to Petros, who lived on Erinna Street. That is how I knew to come here.”

  “Where would Stefanos hide?”

  “He said he would try to reach the old place.”

  “Where is that?” asked the Cretan.

  “He did not tell me. Just—the old place.” She looked anxiously at the watching faces.

  Was this, wondered Strang, another devious trick, one to trap Petros this time? He, too, knew something about those damn photographs. The same idea had entered the old Cretan’s eyes. He said nothing, only tossed his head back twice, abruptly, which was the Greek way of making a silent but emphatic “no!”

  Strangely enough, it was Petros and the woman, sitting so still at the side of the room, who believed the girl now. They looked at each other. Petros said, “He may be there.”