Decision at Delphi

by Helen Macinnes

  “I’m sure it is,” Strang said, but he was too busy driving. He never sat in a car’s back seat with any comfort, but so far, Costas had refused any help; he, too, seemingly, liked being at the wheel. “God in heaven!” said Strang, as the car made almost a right-angled twist, just grazing the black-and-white markers at the edge of a precipice, only two thousand feet high.

  Elias was pleased that the American was impressed by Greek road building. “Good? Ten years ago—no road like this. Just earth. No railing. No markers.” He reflected a moment. “You go to Olympia someday? Then you will see what I mean,” he said ominously.

  I’ll remember to travel by daylight, Strang told himself, as the car’s headlights picked out a smashed ten-foot stretch of low railing where a driver had guessed wrong and gone sailing right out into space.

  “Someone forgot to turn,” Costas said cheerfully, and he and Elias burst into a fit of laughter.

  Up and over the mountain, past a small guardhouse and curious soldiers, down again toward an enormous expanse of flatness stretching to farther mountains. The road was straight and easy, the moon was rising; so Costas switched off his headlights. “Saves the battery,” he explained. It was a better habit at least, thought Strang, than switching off the ignition to coast down a mountain road. But the Greeks had made a fine art of little tricks like that. He tried to relax, failed, kept looking out at the vast plain of Arcadia. In the moonlight, neither nymphs nor satyrs were in sight, nor was there any sound of Pan’s pipe. There was only a monotonous series of wells, wells, and rows of willow trees, and wells, and hard-worked fields. Once, he saw a gypsy encampment, silent and withdrawn. Occasionally, he heard the howl of a dog.

  The road curved around a sudden hill, incongruously rising from the plain, and they saw a bright cluster of lights, a glowing island in the darkness. “Tripolis,” Elias said, pointing. “Petrol and food. You are hungry?”

  “And a telephone call,” Strang said, eyeing the town. After the last thirty miles of nothing, it seemed almost a metropolis.

  “No time,” Elias said firmly, his brows frowning.

  “We’ll see,” said Strang. There was usually a little extra time in Greece, lying around to be picked up.

  He managed to find it, too. He had got through to Athens, and talked with Cecilia for almost three minutes before Elias tapped his shoulder.

  Strang joined the two men, silently, and got back into the car. Elias, still annoyed, glanced at him twice. Then, as they left the town by a white-walled street edged with mimosa trees, he twisted his head around to ask, anxiously, “She is good?”

  Strang smiled. “Yes, she’s safe and well.” He closed his eyes, if only to be left with his own thoughts, rested his head back against the seat, felt reassurance spread from his mind down through his body. For the first time, on this strange journey, he relaxed.

  Elias was reaching over, shaking his knee. Strang came out of his half-sleep and sat up quickly, looking around dazedly. The black plain had gone. Now they were on a black mountainside, following a rougher road which seemed to be running along a high pass.

  “Not yet, not yet,” Elias said. “But soon. A good journey, yes?”

  Strang nodded. It was, he saw from his watch, almost midnight.

  “About twenty-five kilometres to go,” Elias said.

  Roughly fifteen miles more, thought Strang. He stretched his back, put the pleasant dreams away, looked out at the wild mountainside. No lights at all. No villages. Just the rocks and night sky, and small rough fields where the stones had been cleared and piled into little thin columns that might have been markers or monuments but, in the fitful moonlight, looked more like some sad graveyard for a long retreat. “We should soon be there,” Strang said.

  Elias shrugged his shoulders. Then Strang saw what he meant. Costas had slackened speed to a crawl of twenty miles an hour, and even slowed below that as they approached a stretch of road weakened by a spring torrent or a fall of stones from the mountain’s side. They were starting down a long decline, carefully, still in gear, this time, but with only the parking lights turned on. “Remember two things,” Elias said, very seriously, “Myrrha Kladas believes that Stefanos is dead and that Nikos is still alive.” He paused, hesitated, and then asked, “Do you know much about Myrrha Kladas?”

  “Very little.”

  Elias brooded. Then he spoke in Greek. “She was fifteen when the war started, and for two years she saw more murder and hate and bitterness than an American would see in all his life. When her father was killed, she left Thalos. She went to join her brothers. These facts we do know. We also know she came back to the village in 1945. We do not know why she came back. It might have been a revulsion against the cruelties of Ares—he destroyed the political faith of many of his followers. If that were the reason, good: you can trust her. But if she came back because Odysseus had abandoned her for the woman who called herself Elektra—then, that is not good: you cannot trust her.” Elias turned to look at the American. “You understand what I am saying?”

  Strang wondered if he had. “I think so,” he said slowly.

  Elias repeated his information in English, which had become halting and difficult as he struggled with his own embarrassment. It was unpleasant to talk of such things, but necessary.

  Strang was silent. Then, at last, he said, “Steve did not know about that.”

  “A pity. Or he would have killed Odysseus. That would have saved us all much trouble.”

  “Elektra—” Strang began. It was none of his business. Elias said, “She left him, on orders, when she met the rich Frenchman after the war.”

  “On orders?” Now, I’ve got that wrong, thought Strang.

  “On orders,” Elias repeated calmly. “The Frenchman’s fortune was too useful to let slip out of the party’s grasp. She lived with the old fool for two years, and then—when she threatened to leave him—he married her.” Elias looked at Strang. “Americans know everything about love, I have heard. Do they?”

  Strang shook his head. “That was harsh discipline,” he said slowly. How had Christophorou brought himself to accept it? How could a man... He checked his thoughts. How or why were no longer of importance. What mattered now was the extent and depth of Christophorou’s bitterness and hate.

  “Each tree bears its own fruit.” Elias shrugged his shoulders. “And each grows according to the ground where it sinks its roots.”

  Except, Strang thought, a man is not a tree; a man has the choice where he will sink his roots.

  Costas spoke suddenly. “How much of that fortune is left?”

  Elias gave a contemptuous laugh: “Keep your eyes on the road.”

  “There must be something left,” Costas insisted.

  “Yes, safe in Swiss banks in numbered accounts,” Elias said. “But one thing is certain, Madame Duval’s signature is no longer needed.” He sat erect, his eyes scanning the side of the road. “Slow, slow! The village is near. Is there enough moon? Then cut those lights!”

  Strang looked out. They were slipping gently downhill, a rise of woods and sparse olive trees on their left, a falling slope of small patches of ploughed earth and olive groves on their right. There was a broad valley, far below, a black snaking river in its centre, orchards and large fields in the flat rich bottomland, and, beyond them, a wall of mountains. “Is that snow up there?” he asked, or was it a trick of the night and the moon?

  “Even in June, the snow lies there.” Elias smiled. “You would like to cross these mountains? Another time.” He stretched his arm toward a distant point in the valley far below. “Sparta!” he said. “And here—” he touched Costas’s arm, and the car eased its way to a gentle halt beside a narrow rough earth road, leading up to the left between the olive trees—“here is Thalos.”

  Strang said quickly, “She’s waiting at the bridge, a kilometre ahead.”

  Elias nodded. He looked at his watch, and nodded again, this time approvingly. To Costas, he said, “Twenty minutes after we lea
ve, drive slowly toward the bridge with full headlights. Pass over the bridge. Keep on until you reach the plain. Wait there for half an hour. Then come back; keep your lights low. When you reach the shadow of that bank—” he pointed across the road, about sixty feet ahead of them—“draw in close. Turn off your lights. That’s where we’ll meet you.”

  Silently, the two Greeks compared their watches. Elias gave further directions: if there was no sign of the American and himself by two o’clock, Costas must drive to the police station down in the valley and telephone Sparta from there. He turned to Strang. “Are you armed?” he asked crisply.

  “With a penknife,” Strang said with a grin.

  “Inadequate,” Elias said coldly. This was no time, seemingly, for any jokes. But he didn’t offer anything less inadequate. Probably, Strang thought, he doesn’t think that I can be trusted with a gun, or that I’d hit anything except some harmless peasant or even Elias himself. He pulled off his coat. “You’ll need that,” Elias told him.

  “We’re walking, aren’t we?” And probably crawling around on our bellies if Elias has his way, Strang thought. It was a fairly obvious remark, but Elias looked surprised, as if he hadn’t quite expected a foreigner either to make such a deduction or to leave the comfort of a good coat behind him. He stepped out of the car, and slipped down out of sight by an olive tree at the side of the road. That’s the wrong direction for Thalos, thought Strang, but he opened the right-hand door and followed Elias.

  “Come!” Elias told him in a whisper, and, crouching low, started back along the sloping hill, following the road, keeping well under the shadow of its shoulder. When he had retraced almost fifty yards of highway, he stopped, again by an olive tree, straightened his back, looked down the road Strang looked, too. The car was out of sight, hidden by a curving outcrop of rock. And here, too, the opposite bank was high, throwing its shadow almost as far across as their olive tree. Elias went first, slipping over the road like a ghost in the night. He signalled, and Strang followed. Then they climbed the high bank and started forward again, using the olive trees for cover, heading once more in the direction of Thalos.

  Neat, thought Strang, but was it necessary? Certainly anyone who had been watching the car must have lost sight of them; but had anyone been watching? Perhaps Elias enjoyed this kind of thing. He was in a better humour, definitely; the annoyance, almost antagonism, he had shown at the Acropolis had vanished. Perhaps, again, he might think this job worth doing, interesting at least, more in keeping with his dignity than playing nursemaid to two bewildered Americans. What was his rank? Strang wondered: lieutenant, or even captain?

  Elias raised a hand for caution as they reached the rough narrow road that would lead up the hillside to Thalos. Again they chose a shadowed patch before they crossed it, one by one. This may not be necessary, Strang decided, but it certainly is a good way to keep a man warm. And alert. For in spite of his secret amusement, his senses had come alive. His eyes were accustomed to the shadows now; he could hear the quiet ripple of water over stones long before he reached the stream; he could smell the upturned earth where a patch of field had been ploughed between the olive trees, the sweetness of grass and wild flowers around an outcrop of boulders.

  Elias’s plan, obviously, was to approach the bridge from the rear. He halted as they saw the stream and a path, edging it, which must lead from the bridge on the road up this sloping hill to the Kladas house. The village must lie up in that direction, too. But from where they had stopped, Strang could see nothing beyond the dark, shadowed glen which cradled the rushing stream, except a massive black curtain of hill and mountain held up against the night sky. Then Elias was hurrying on, through the sparse olive grove where each tree seemed to be fighting for its life, westward, following the course of the stream to the bridge. They stopped once more, in the shade of a tree. Elias gestured sharply with his hand, and knelt. Strang lowered himself gently on to a low boulder. Downhill, in the shadows in front of them, there were two olive trees, a sudden deepening of the stream’s bed, a tangle of bushes, a cluster of rocks, and—some thirty yards away from where Strang sat— the stone bridge. There was no one there.

  Strang’s eyes searched for Myrrha Kladas along the opposite bank of the stream. He could see the path, some bright patches of moonlight, some black shadows, boulders and trees, but nothing else. There was a slight rustle of leaves in the night wind, the gurgling rush of water as the stream surged under the bridge towards the other side of the road to plunge on its way down the hillside. But there was nothing else. He looked at Elias, but Elias was looking carefully at the luminous dial of his watch. It had been nice timing, thought Strang. He could hear Costas bringing the car leisurely down the road towards the bridge. As the first faint beam from its distant headlights rested on the surface of the bridge, a tree’s shadow, down there, came to life. A woman, heavily bundled in dark clothes, stepped forward towards the light. Elias froze, like an alert retriever. And just as Strang was about to say “So she did wait!” two men came out of the shadows behind the woman. One gripped her arms and pulled her back behind the tree, the other chose another tree nearer the bridge. And now a third man moved from the boulder beside which he had sat so motionless and took his position behind a clump of bushes at a corner of the bridge.

  Elias may have expected something odd, but he was obviously as puzzled by all this as Strang was. He drew out a revolver, thoughtfully, and watched the bridge with narrowed eyes. The two men, who had taken cover near the road, crouched down as the full beam from the headlights struck the bridge. There was no movement from the tree’s shadow that hid Myrrha Kladas and the third man. The car travelled smoothly over the slight rise of the bridge and was gone.

  Now, thought Strang, what the hell does that mean? There had been no attempt to stop the car. Not one movement. Elias was slipping the revolver back into his pocket, as thoughtfully as he had produced it. So he, too, had expected an attack on the car.

  And then the storm broke. The man crouching behind the corner of the bridge leaped up on to the road and looked after the car. The other, at the tree by the bridge, yelled back toward the shadows, “He has gone! He did not stop! He did not stop!”

  “Shut up. He’ll come back!”

  “He’s gone,” the first man reported. “He isn’t coming back. He’s going down.” He stood well over to the edge of the road, his hands on his hips, a broad-backed figure in a heavy coat, staring into the valley.

  There was a sudden stirring, and the others came out from cover. The three men clustered together on the road, the woman waited beside the tree.

  A man turned toward her, speaking angrily. The woman answered sharply.

  The man jumped back off the road and came toward her. She retreated up the path, just across the stream from the olive tree under whose shadows Strang and Elias lay. “You were beside me when I telephoned. You heard,” she was saying contemptuously. “I gave the right directions.” She halted and faced him.

  The man spoke angrily. “That is right,” she said scornfully, “blame me! Waste your time blaming me! He is an American. He doesn’t know this road. Perhaps he did not see the signpost to Thalos. Perhaps he cannot read the Greek letters. How slow you are to think of the real reason!”

  The man was silenced.

  “Why did you not let me step on to the bridge?” the woman demanded. “He would have known where to stop, then.”

  “Yes. And you could have warned him—”

  The woman laughed. “Why should I die for an American?”

  The others left the bridge and came up the path. The three men stood together, looking at the woman.

  “Stupid!” she taunted them. “An American will not spend the night searching for a little road. He will sleep in Sparta, and come back here in daylight. That is the practical thing. Americans are practical. They do not waste time looking for a road they cannot find in the dark.” She turned and left them, walking up the path by the stream, slowly, with dignity.

/>   The angry man took a step after her. But another caught his arm. After a little more argument, the three went back to the road, angry, baffled, straggling, as if they still had not made up their minds what to do. But when they reached it, they started down its slope.

  Well, thought Strang, moving a numbed leg, if our Costas is too eager and doesn’t wait a full half-hour in the valley, we have another problem. He glanced at Elias. He, too, was worried. Strang pulled up his jacket collar. The cold was sharp, striking into his bones like a knife. Let’s move, he thought irritably, and half rose. Elias caught his arm and pulled him back.

  They heard a car, which must have been parked not too far down the road, start up with a hacking cough. At last, the motor turned over smoothly. Headlights swept over the bridge, pointing northward up the long hill. The car passed. Its motor pulled heavily, droning into a faint hum, lessening gradually into nothing.

  “Now!” Elias said, rising. He started at a quick pace up the glen, in the direction of the Kladas house.

  22

  It was a small house, standing alone, low in spite of its two stories, nestling against the hillside as if the winter winds were still blowing from the north. Its front was in shadow, with only deeper shadows to suggest windows. They were few, and all tightly shuttered. In contrast to the dark front, the rippling tiles of the gently sloping roof seemed almost white in this moonlight. There were wide eaves, a square blackened hole which might have been a chimney. It was a peaceful house, a sleeping, house, completely innocent. To one side, there was a stretch of ploughed field, enclosed by a stone wall, rising steeply, ending in rough harsh boulders. And past the front door went the path, widening now, still following the stream, curving round to run straight into an earth road bordered with several dwellings.

  It was something of a surprise to Strang to find the village so close. The road from the main highway and the path from the bridge were not parallel, as he had supposed: they converged into this broad stretch of bare earth, edged by a row of buildings on one side, by the stream and a scattering of trees on the other. Everything here slept deeply. Even the stream, flowing along the broad ledge of land on which the houses had grown, silenced its busy chatter to a soft murmur.