Colonel Sun

by Robert Markham

  First things first. With a satisfied grin, George brought the head of the Altair round just far enough to take an extra steep sea squarely under the bow and so forestall any tendency to roll. He was learning fast; he always had. It was a matter of instinct, of being a natural sailor. His grandfather had often said … But forget that. Those people. They were up to something illegal, no doubt of it. The two Greeks, the man and the girl, had been smooth and plausible enough, but the other man, the hard-faced Englishman, was undoubtedly a desperate type. George Ionides had seen that immediately. It had been no surprise to him at all when, an hour previously, the men had taken aboard the Cynthia two objects wrapped in sacking that were clearly guns of some sort. George had politely turned his back, of course, and pretended to study the weather. It was not for nothing that he was a native of Cephalonia in the Ionian islands. That was the Cephalonian way of handling things: use your head, use your eyes, keep your mouth shut.

  So, except to agree to everything proposed to him, George had kept his mouth shut when this Athenian approached him at the harbour and suggested that, for a consideration of three thousand drachmas (half now, half later), he might be willing to exchange boats for thirty-six hours or so. He had merely nodded his head, as if such things happened every day, when the Athenian stipulated that the hand-over should take place, not here at the anchorage, but at a rendezvous to the south, and that he should let half an hour go by before making any move to set off. He had shown no surprise, let alone resistance, when the Athenian told him very forcefully that, as soon as the transfer was complete, he must head straight on south to Ios and stay there until the two parties rejoined contact tomorrow afternoon or evening. Cheerfully and readily, he had sailed south at a good eight knots until the Cynthia was below the horizon. Then he had simply turned and headed north-west.

  For George had never had any intention of going to Ios. Not today, anyway. By six o'clock that evening at the latest he would be moored in the port of Paros. Anything like an early start in the morning would give him a nice comfortable southward run, with the weather behind him, down to Ios in plenty of time to be sitting innocently drinking coffee outside one of the harbour tavérnas when the Cynthia arrived. He grinned to himself, then shouted to his cousin, a boy of fourteen who crewed the Cynthia for him and at the moment was idling in the sun on the Altair's cabin-top. When he came running up, George said a few words to him, pointed briefly, and strode for'ard to the saloon, leaving the boy at the wheel. The sea had moderated as they came into the shelter of Vrakonisi, and there were no shoals off this corner of the island.

  Obeying instructions to help himself to whatever he fancied he poured a glass of kitró and settled down on one of the benches. He sipped luxuriously at the delicious drink – native to Naxos and obtainable only there, on Ios and on Vrakonisi – and reflected that it was perhaps a little early, but he was on holiday. The deceptively weak-tasting liquor, bland and viscous, with the bitter tang of the lemon rind in it as well as the sugared-down sharpness of the flesh, relaxed him.

  Lighting a cigarette, he glanced idly out of the window. They were passing, at a distance of about a hundred yards, the islet at the south-western tip and, on it, the grand house where a very rich foreigner was known to be staying and amusing himself with the local boyhood. These people seemed to think they could do as they liked in the islands! George made a spitting grimace. Then he noticed somebody in a dark suit, perhaps the foreigner himself standing on the terrace of the house and apparently looking straight at him. As George watched, screwing up his eyes against the glare, the man hurried indoors, returning after a quarter of a minute with another. The new arrival examined the Altair for a longer period through binoculars which he then passed to his companion. More examination. A third man now came bustling out and joined the first two. All three seemed very interested in the passing boat. George could not imagine why. He got up, strolled out to the rail and gave a friendly wave.

  The effect, in a small way, was extraordinary. The three figures straightened abruptly, looked at one another and then back at the Altair with exactly the demeanour of a trio of priests taken off guard by some unseemly act. George waved again. This time there was a response, half-hearted at first, then suddenly enthusiastic – priests deciding to show they were men like anyone else. George laughed aloud and went back into the saloon. It was quite true, the old Greek saying that all foreigners were mad!

  But these were certainly rich enough, he decided a minute later, catching sight of a big grey-painted motorboat lolling gently at the anchorage below the house. Rich. And mad. It crossed his mind uncomfortably that perhaps the cause of the recent excitement was that the Altair had been recognized as a stolen craft or as belonging to wanted criminals. Both these possibilities had already occurred to him. But then foreigners, tourists, took no account of such matters. He dismissed the idea.

  As, half an hour later, he and the boy were finishing their bread and cheese, olives and beer on the after-deck, George's thoughts returned to Paros. The point about Paros, as far as he was concerned, was that Maria lived there. He had been engaged to her for three years, and marriage was in sight at last, but it was no use pretending that everything was as it should be. Although her parents liked him and knew he was honest, they pretty clearly did not think he had come as far in the world as, at twenty-seven, he ought to have done. Tonight he was going to show them how wrong they were. First, he would invite them all on board – Maria, her father and mother and younger sister – and show them round, offer them drinks in the saloon, explain casually that one of his friends from Athens had put the little tub at his disposal for a couple of days so that he could thoroughly try her out and see what he thought of her. Then he would take them all out to a lobster dinner, and finally buy them each a good present at one of the expensive tourist shops that lined the alleys of the town.

  By way of immediate return for these efforts, George would be entitled to talk to Maria, to hold her hand and above all to look at her. He would not, of course, expect to spend much time with her alone. That had always been part of the system, the way life was arranged. George was tall and well built and dark-eyed, and working in the tourist trade brought him plenty of sexual opportunities. He took them. Nobody minded that, but a great many people would have minded a great deal if he had started trying to treat his affianced bride in public like a German or English office-girl on holiday. He knew that some of the younger people made a mock of the system, but it suited him well enough. (It had never occurred to George to wonder what Maria thought of the system.)

  However, at times when he was picturing Maria in his mind, as now, he would find himself trying to imagine in detail what lay beneath her spotless white dress, what that swelling bosom would be like to see and touch, what she would do when he … George pulled himself together. Such thoughts were useless as well as disturbing – if he had been backward and provincial, instead of modern and sophisticated, he would have called them sinful.

  They left his mind for good when he glanced astern. A shape rapidly overhauling them soon identified itself as the motor-boat he had seen moored at the islet. This was puzzling, and a little frightening. George Ionides examined his conscience and, as best he could, his legal standing. The paperwork position might be irregular, but he had done nothing against the law by temporarily swapping boats with a man whose good faith he had had no specific reason to doubt. George held to his course.

  The motor-boat came up, matched its speed to the Altair's and stayed parallel with it. The three men George had seen by the house watched him again. He waited, maintaining speed. Half a mile off, a fishing-boat chugged past in the opposite direction and, on the horizon, a streak of smoke showed where one of the big passenger steamers was making its way down to Sikinos.

  Presently a hail came in Greek.

  – What ship are you?

  – Altair, Piraeus. What ship are you? George added with a boldness he had not consciously intended.

  This was ignored
. – Who are you?

  – George Ionides, temporary captain.

  – Who is with you?

  – Only my cousin, this boy here.

  There was discussion in the motor-boat. Then:

  – We will come aboard you.

  – By what right? …

  – That … of the Royal Hellenic Coastguard Authority.

  George knew of no such body, but this time he had the sense to keep his mouth shut in the Cephalonian way. It was obvious now that he had landed himself in trouble of some magnitude, and there was no point in worsening matters by futile argument. Powerful people, such as these clearly were, whichever side of the law they might be on, were notoriously touchy. An ill-advised word might put paid to his chances of getting to Paros at all. He cut back the motor and said to his cousin,

  – This is a nuisance, little one, but nothing to worry about. I expect they're looking for some big criminal from Athens. They want to make sure we're not carrying him. It's what they call routine. Now, as soon as they've come aboard, you take the wheel so that I can talk to them.

  A little later, the three men completed their fruitless search of the Altair and confronted George on the afterdeck. Two of the party were foreigners, disagreeable-looking fellows with tight mouths; the third was fat and soft and looked like the worst sort of Greek, perhaps a Salonikan. One of the foreigners spoke in a language that sounded to George like a form of Bulgarian. The fat man translated.

  – Where is the man Bond?

  – I know nobody of that name.

  – You are lying. He was on this ship a few hours ago.

  George shrugged. The fat man went on translating.

  – There was an Englishman on board this morning, wasn't there?

  – Yes. He didn't tell me his name. We had no dealings with each other.

  – Where is he now?

  – I have no idea. He did not confide in me.

  – You are lying, you lump of excrement. Where did you last see this man? And this time you speak the truth.

  – About fifteen miles away. At sea, south of Vrakonisi. He and his friends took over my boat and I theirs.

  – Where were they bound for?

  – I have already answered that. I don't know.

  Before the fat man had had time to translate this, one of the foreigners shoved himself forward, caught George by the front of his shirt and shook him to and fro. At the same time he shouted his horrible language into George's face.

  This was a mistake. Coming on top of the abuse, the false accusations of lying made in what was for the time being his own territory, and accompanied as they were by an odour of rotting potatoes, these ravings had the effect of making George forget that he was a Cephalonian and reminding him that he was a Greek. For the moment, it seemed to him that he could pick up these three tricksters one by one and drop them over the side. He brought his muscular forearm down hard on the foreigner's wrists and gave him a push that sent him staggering against the mast. With all the dignity he could muster, George said,

  – Unless you produce your documents immediately I must order you to leave my ship.

  This was a much more serious mistake. The words were hardly out of his mouth before, slammed in the belly and pistol-whipped behind the ear, George was grovelling half-conscious on the deck. He heard his cousin cry out in protest, then in pain. The fat man spoke.

  – Where is Bond?

  – I don't know. I'd tell you if I did. I don't know.

  There was a pause. Somebody gave an order. More pause.

  George, in the act of trying to get up on his hands and knees, was flung on to his back. His ankles were grasped and held wide apart. Then there exploded at his right knee a pain such as he would never have believed possible, a pain that instantly flooded up his thigh and into the whole right-hand side of his pelvis and through his guts. A pain compared with which all other pain was a mere discomfort, an itch, a tickle. George had been struck with the heel of a shoe on the medial condyle of the femur, the boss of bone at the inside of the knee. This is the most immediately devastating assault that can be inflicted on the human frame. It triggers off vomiting in the strongest and bravest of subjects. George vomited.

  – Now. Where is Bond?

  – … I don't know. He didn't tell me. I think they turned east. I didn't notice.

  Some discussion.

  – Very well. Give the name of your boat and describe it fully.

  George did as he was told; this was not a situation in which you kept your mouth shut. He gave a very full description of the Cynthia. He was still adding details when there was another explosion, inside his head this time, and the sun went out.

  17

  In the Drink

  George Ionides had been right in his impression that Bond and his companions had moved off east after parting company with him, but his questioners would not have found it helpful to follow this up. As pre-arranged, no sooner had the Altair disappeared to the south than Litsas had made a U-turn and headed straight back to Vrakonisi. By three o'clock the Cynthia was anchored in a small bay on the southern coast of the island and almost at its eastern tip, a full eight miles by sea from the islet. A dozen small craft lay near by and there were groups of figures on the shore.

  The place was more a jagged hole bitten into the coastline than a bay in any full sense. In one corner a granite shelf just above the water-line, narrow but level, made landing comparatively easy. Next to this, a dozen yards of sloping shingle constituted as much of a beach as nine-tenths of all island bays provide. A succession of weird rock-formations ran along the other arm of the inlet, weird in their very regularity – cave-mouths and arches square-set enough to have formed part of a ruined Homeric palace, rectangular tower-shaped structures, tall isolated stacks like the piles of a vanished bridge, all coloured in delicate gradations between tan and olive-green. The land above was less precipitous than elsewhere in Vrakonisi, with vine-terraces and clumps of evergreens: myrtle, arbutus and oleander.

  With a gesture of finality, Litsas let down the tattered side-awning, screening the three of them from view as well as from the sun.

  ‘We'll be safe here,’ he said. ‘Parties come all the time to bathe, God help them, and there's a piece of a temple up on the hill. It's mostly pavement, but the island has nothing else like this, and you don't know how small it is until you get there. Anyhow, nobody will notice a small boat of this type. I'm worried about our fuel, though. We've enough left for only about thirty miles. Shall we call quickly at the port after it's dark?’

  ‘No.’ Bond's voice was decisive. ‘If, as we assumed, they do have a man at the harbour, they'll have two on tonight. We'd be risking blowing our cover. And tomorrow … we can get all the gas we want.’

  The unspoken ‘if’ behind this statement silenced all three for an instant. Then Litsas sprang up and lifted the rust-pocked lid of the cooler.

  ‘I'm going to have a beer,’ he grunted. ‘Let's finish that too. Anybody else?’

  Ariadne, sitting on the deck with her knees drawn up and her gaze lowered, shook her head. Bond also declined. He had had enough of the thin soapy local brew.

  Litsas leant the neck of the bottle against the cooler lid and banged the cap off with the end of his fist. He seemed to pour the beer straight down without swallowing.

  ‘Now,’ he said, wiping his mouth, ‘again the battleplan, James, if you please. We can't have it too many times.’

  ‘I agree.’ Bond spread open on the deck the sketch-plan he had roughed out on the back of a chart. ‘We leave here at eight p.m. and go round by the north coast. Taking it easy, we should get to that little beach about ten …’

  More thoughtfully than before, Ariadne shook her head. ‘I still say it's too early. Everybody will be awake and watching.’

  ‘They'll be that all night tonight. They won't be expecting us then. We don't know what their time-table is, so we daren't leave it until late, and at ten o'clock there'll be plenty of other boats aroun
d, so there'll be nothing special about us.’

  ‘That's logical,’ said Ariadne in her brisk student's tone. ‘Go on, James.’

  ‘Good. We drive the Cynthia's bows up on to the beach and moor her. Now, are you sure that's possible, Niko?’

  ‘It must be, mustn't it? We can't fool about with anchor-chains then. Anyhow, leave it to me. No problem.’

  ‘Then we climb the cliff. Not nearly as difficult as it sounds. But we'll need a sling for the tommy-gun – must have both hands free.’

  Litsas nodded. ‘My department. Easy.’

  ‘Now here’ – Bond put his finger on the sketch-map – ‘there's this shelf of rock where Niko shot the Russian. Then the troublesome part I told you about; just troublesome; not difficult or dangerous. After that …’

  Bond took over ten minutes to describe minutely the route to the enemy's house and the surrounding terrain. ‘We halt here,’ he said finally, pointing to the last bend in the rocky gully that led down to the house. ‘Niko and I move uphill and round until we're in position to make a run for the rear terrace. That move'll be easy going, comparatively. Should take us about fifteen minutes to get to our assault station. As soon as we're there, we go in together. By that time, Ariadne you'll have moved down the gully to the cover of that slab of stone I mentioned. You'll hear us make contact all right. From then on, this is what you do. As soon as the shooting starts you begin counting slowly. If you see anybody, shoot him and go straight in at the side door. Go to the foot of the stairs and cover the rooms opening off the passage. We'll join you there. Blaze away at any stranger you see – they won't be letting my chief run about the house, you can be sure.

  ‘Alternatively, if you don't see anybody early on, count on to thirty. Then you go in by the side door. But not unless there's shooting still going on inside the house. No shooting will mean that our assault has failed. In that event, go back the way you came, and get away in the Cynthia – Niko will make it easy for you to cast off and he'll show you how to start the motor. Then disappear. Steer well clear of the islet. It won't be a healthy place to be if these people have anything to do with it. The rest of it will be up to you. I'll give you a letter which I'd like you take to the British Embassy in Athens.