by Peter Watson
Mordaunt stopped breathing for a moment. Now what? ‘Go on.’
‘The next … exchange will be the most important of all. We shall need certain assurances. And so, Sir Francis, I – we, the Apollo Brigade – need that assurance from where it really matters. The next time I call, it will be to Buckingham Palace, and I shall expect to speak with the Queen herself.’
‘He’s going back to his car. We’re going to have to split up.’ Riley swallowed what was left of his coffee and put some change on the table. They both rose and hurried out of the station. ‘Okay, I’ll stay with him,’ said Riley. ‘You check out the phone and then catch a taxi back to near the Greek’s house. He’s bound to return home at some stage.’
After only four hours’ sleep in the hotel, O’Day and Riley had returned to the Zakros house that morning and resumed their vigil. He had not stirred until mid-morning. When he had finally appeared, Zakros had driven from his house to a café in Basle where he had bought a paper and taken a late breakfast. He had then gone for a walk by the river. At least, they had thought he was going for a walk but in fact he had made a telephone call from a payphone at a jetty. It was a relatively short call, however, and they had decided to stick with him and return to the phone later to check out its number. They had then followed the Greek to the main railway station. There they had been able to enjoy a coffee themselves, at the station café, for Zakros had waited in front of a bank of payphones, occasionally glancing at his watch. By then it was nearly one o’clock.
Suddenly, O’Day had whistled softly. ‘Yes! Riley, we’ve been as thick as elephant shit.’ He had stared at the other man, his eyes aglow. ‘That call from the phone at the jetty. It could have been the early call to the Palace, to Mordaunt. He’s given him the location to go to and now he’s waiting to phone him again, from here. Zakros is the man at the sharp end. He guards the pictures and he does the talking.’ O’Day was really excited now, pleased he had been given Basle after all and not left at home. ‘You keep an eye on him. I’ll try to call Lockwood from one of the other phones.’
And so Riley had watched both O’Day and Zakros, only three booths apart. O’Day too kept a weather eye open for Zakros, in case he made a hurried exit. But in fact O’Day finished first and rejoined Riley. ‘Looks like it,’ he whispered. ‘I couldn’t get Lockwood but I spoke to Midwinter. He confirmed that Mordaunt had just spoken to the Greek and was on his way to receive the next phone call – at the Tate Gallery.’
That was when Zakros had broken off his conversation on the telephone. Riley followed him at a distance.
O’Day waited for both of them to get well clear of the station. In fact, he watched both cars leave before returning to the bank of phones. It was not impossible that the Greek was being shadowed by a colleague when he made these crucial calls. There was a newsagent next to the phones and O’Day browsed through the magazines until the booth the Greek had used was free. He strolled towards it, picked up the receiver and dialled a number at random. In case he was being observed, and feeling rather foolish, he pretended to speak into the receiver. As he did so he inspected the number near the dial. He memorized it and put down the receiver. Then, repeating the phone number to himself so that he wouldn’t forget it, he crossed the station forecourt to the lavatories. Inside a cubicle, where he couldn’t be observed, he took the list of numbers from his pocket, wrote down the number he had just memorized and checked it against the others. It didn’t take him long to establish that the number was not on the list.
‘Oh Christ, look at the coaches! There must be two thousand people here.’ Victoria focused her binoculars on the site. ‘It couldn’t be more different from Eleusis. It’s teeming with people.’
The ruins of ancient Olympia stretched out before them, a mass of white stonework in a saucer-shaped hollow rimmed with cypress and olive trees, a few oaks. They had overnighted in Corinth and arrived here in time for a late lunch, after finding a couple of hotel rooms. It was already past two o’clock.
‘Where do we start looking? And how?’ Edward held his hand up, to shield the sun from his eyes.
‘Easy enough to pose as tourists in among all the others.’
Edward and Victoria followed the road leading to the site. The heat was still intense but thankfully the road was lined with trees and there was no shortage of shade. They crossed a bridge and came to the site; there was a small queue at the entrance but once they were inside there was plenty of space. They found the path which led to the Heraion, and then walked up to a ridge where there was a map showing the whole layout of the ruins.
‘Look,’ Victoria said, pointing to the map. ‘There’s a section here in red, meaning that it’s closed to the public. Is that where they’re digging, do you think?’
Edward looked over Victoria’s shoulder. He could smell her hair. Then he grabbed her wrist and led her into the sunshine. ‘Let’s see for ourselves.’
They tried to follow the patches of shade as they wound their way through the site. The white stones and columns of the different temples and the Heraion were laid out like the bleached bones of a strange, enormous dead animal. Eventually, they came to an area which had been chained off. A sign, white on red metal, said ‘Private’. Beyond the chain there was a short path leading to two wooden huts and a low area where the excavations were presumably taking place. However, as these were actually below the level of the ground, it was impossible for Victoria or Edward to see anything.
‘Let’s not be seen to stare,’ said Victoria quietly. She looked over her shoulder. ‘Follow me.’ She led the way up a short incline to where more white columns reached further than most into the sky and offered shade. They stood behind the columns. ‘We can keep watch from here.’
‘Keep watch for whom?’ said Edward. ‘We don’t know what Kolettis looks like.’
‘We watch for anyone coming or going, anyone on the dig. Then we follow them, contrive to meet them … and then we ask after Professor Kolettis.’
‘Just like that? What do we say … and why do we say it?’
‘We’ll think about that tonight, over dinner. There’s no point in hanging on now. They won’t dig in the afternoon, not in this heat. We’ll have to come back at opening time tomorrow.’ She led the way down the slope towards the exit.
Back in the town, Victoria went for a walk by herself while Edward returned to the hotel to take a cool shower. He was wearing just a towel when she returned – their rooms opened on to the same balcony. As she joined him there, she held up a newspaper, a Greek one.
‘Anything in it? Anything interesting?’
‘You could say so. The government has announced that the Duveen Galleries will close at the weekend.’
‘Imagine a newspaper ad for this job,’ said Riley gloomily. ‘No meals, no sleep, virtually no pay. We could be at the Cocotte now, in Copenhagen, scrambled eggs with quails and caviare, duck with–’
‘You’re spoiled,’ growled O’Day. ‘And you wouldn’t change it. You love it really.’ O’Day had rejoined Riley on the vigil, taking a taxi to near Zakros’s house. He had walked the rest of the way.
‘I’d love a piece of that turbot they do in sweet peppers at the Buerehiesel in Strasburg, or a plate of courgettes with truffles that you can get at the Chantecler in Nice, or –’
‘There he is!’
They both sat up. It had been dark for a while and their eyes were attuned to the gloom. The light in the hall of Zakros’s house had flashed on, then off again almost immediately. Now the front door opened and they saw him getting into his car.
‘Nine-thirty,’ whispered Riley, inspecting his watch in the light attached to his key-ring. ‘Bit late for dinner in Switzerland.’
‘Give him a good start,’ said O’Day. ‘We don’t want him cottoning on now.’
Riley let the Greek get out of sight before he started the car. The road where Zakros lived was just two blocks from a main thoroughfare; they knew they could catch up with him there and the road
would be so busy he would never notice them. Zakros drove through the centre of the town and for a moment O’Day thought he was heading for the phone booth by the river. The Irishman had checked it out after inspecting the booth in the station; but it was not on the list of numbers they had either. Now Zakros was driving out the other side of Basle. He pulled up in a square with a cinema complex at one corner.
‘Don’t say he’s going to the movies,’ said O’Day. ‘That would be a real treat.’
Stopping their car on the opposite side of the square, they watched Zakros cross the tramlines and walk back towards the cinemas. He did not go in, however, but hovered at the edge of the arc of light given off from the complex.
‘Maybe he’s meeting someone who’s already watching the show?’ Riley tried to keep the Greek in view in the driving mirror.
‘That’s worrying,’ said O’Day. ‘If they have another person in Basle, they might have spotted us.’
‘No. If that were true, they wouldn’t meet. They would just shake us off, or let London know, and the whole thing would blow. He’s moving again!’ Riley had lost the Greek in the mirror.
‘Not far!’ whispered O’Day. ‘Hell, we should have noticed. He’s got a phone call.’
Riley sat up in his seat and turned his head. In the centre of the square was a short row of three or four phones. Zakros was already talking, indicating that he had been called, rather than that he was doing the calling. ‘This must be how they keep contact. They must figure it’s too dangerous to phone his house, or to have him phone them from home.’ They watched as best they could as Zakros alternately spoke animatedly into the receiver, then stood still as he listened to the other end. As he listened, people started to leave the cinema; the performance was ending.
‘Maybe he’s meeting someone too,’ whispered Riley. ‘Keep looking.’
But almost as Riley said this, Zakros hung up and hurried back across the tramlines to his car, alone. ‘Right,’ said Riley. ‘Same as before? I’ll trail him, back home probably. You can look at the phone. Then take a taxi back to the Greek’s, as you did earlier.’
‘Fine,’ said O’Day. ‘But drop me a couple of blocks from here and I’ll walk back, just in case the phone is being watched.’
Riley nodded and started the car. At a distance, he followed the Greek out of the square. He had to wait while a tram went by but Zakros’s car was still in view. He caught up with him and then, after a couple of streets, stopped to let O’Day get out.
O’Day strolled back to the square, pausing to look in shop windows every now and then. He didn’t want to arrive back near the cinemas too quickly. Even when he got there he spent a little while examining the posters advertising the movies. While doing this he fished from his pocket a piece of paper with some writing on it. Then, just in case he was being observed, he scrutinized the paper as if he was searching for a phone number. In this way he approached the booth that Zakros had used a few minutes before. As he reached the open doorway, it struck him that Zakros had taken the call at precisely ten o’clock. Interesting. Could it be that the Greek had an arrangement, that whoever called him did so, on a different public phone, each time but always at the same hour? Clever. But it now gave O’Day and Riley a tactical advantage. He put coins in the aperture and dialled Riley’s number. As it rang out he memorized the number of the phone he was using. He let the phone ring for a while, then put back the receiver and strolled casually away. A little while later, he picked up a taxi. Inside the cab he wrote down the number in the paperback book where Riley had copied out all the other numbers they had found in the Greek’s car. This time he saw immediately that the number of the phone near the cinema complex was on the list.
‘I take it that Her Majesty will have no objection to talking with … the Greek?’ The midnight committee was in session and Lockwood was in his usual position, in front of the fireplace at the top of Number Ten. ‘Now that the negotiations are on again, we can’t risk losing them a second time.’
‘She is not happy about it.’ Mordaunt felt uncomfortable at these meetings. He was outnumbered and he looked tired. ‘But of course she will play her part.’
The Prime Minister nodded. He prided himself that his edginess was controlled. His grandson was still in intensive care, but conscious now. ‘It sounds to me, from the wording the Greek used, that they are about to make some fresh demand. Is that fair?’
Mordaunt nodded. ‘Zakros said that the next exchange – and I quote – “is the most important of all”.’
‘Anyone have any bright guesses as to what that might mean?’
No one spoke.
Lockwood stared at the equerry. ‘We’ll just have to sit tight and wait. Meanwhile, in case anyone hasn’t heard, the entire Board of Trustees at the British Museum resigned this morning, in protest.’
Mordaunt nodded.
‘Coming on top of these “Enemies of Elgin” … it takes some of the shine off the fact that the blackmailers have been back in touch. We’re getting in deeper. On the other hand, the fact that all the Trustees resigned gives me a free hand. That was a tactical mistake of theirs – but then most of them aren’t politicians.’ He looked at Leith. ‘What other news today? Anything good?’
‘Nothing from Greece, sir. Tatton and Andover made a tour of Olympia but don’t expect any progress before tomorrow. O’Day and Riley observed Zakros receive a phone call at a public booth in Basle. The number of the phone in the booth turned out to be on the list they found in the Greek’s car, so it could be that he is contacted regularly on a different phone. That’s good security from their point of view, and if we could find out where these booths are located we could bug one in advance and listen in to the conversation. Unfortunately, we have no idea at the moment where the other phone booths are located.
‘I’m told by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that there are still demonstrators outside our embassy in Athens. The emissary sent by the Greek government has given up trying to see you, I understand, and is now petitioning the Foreign Secretary.’
‘I’m surprised the Greeks haven’t tried harder.’ Midwinter held his glass for Lockwood to fill it.
‘Why should they?’ asked Slocombe. ‘We’re in enough trouble as it is. If they did anything else they might rock the boat.’
‘We might be in more trouble than we know.’ Hatfield spoke quietly and the others looked at him. ‘It might be a tricky Cabinet tomorrow.’ Hatfield clenched his fingers. ‘George Keld is planning to raise the whole business of the Marbles.’
Lockwood grunted. ‘How do you know?’
‘One of the deputy chief whips saw him in the main lobby with Henry Misco, one of the BM Trustees who resigned this morning.’
‘That doesn’t mean he’s going to raise it in Cabinet.’ Cabinet meetings were traditionally held on Thursdays. This week’s had been held over for a day because that morning Lockwood had rushed to the hospital to see his grandson the minute he knew he had regained consciousness.
‘Not by itself. But he’s given notice to Evelyn Allen that he wants to raise a “delicate matter” under AOB. What else could it be?’
‘Yes, you’re right. Damn. How much does he know, I wonder. And how the hell did he find out?’ The Prime Minister turned to Slocombe. ‘Hear that, Eric? He’s got to be stopped.’
‘Do we have anything on Keld?’ Slocombe looked from Lockwood to Hatfield to Midwinter. ‘Anything we could trade off against this?’
Lockwood said nothing. Midwinter shook his head. Hatfield looked uncomfortable. ‘There’s one thing … I don’t know how useful it is.’
They all looked at him.
‘He has an illegitimate daughter.’
‘What!’ said Midwinter.
‘Perfect,’ whispered Slocombe.
Lockwood remained silent.
‘It happened a long time ago,’ said Hatfield. ‘Keld is fifty-seven now and the girl – woman – is already twenty. He’s paid the mother all these years, enough for ma
intenance, education and a little bit more – enough to keep her quiet. But the important thing, from our point of view, is that he was already married when she was born.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Lockwood had at last found his voice. He hated what he was hearing but he had been in politics a long time and, distasteful as it was, he was not the type to look a gift horse in the mouth.
‘My election agent’s son was once the lover of Keld’s illegitimate daughter. The daughter told her lover, lover told his father, my agent told me. Years ago, I might say. I’d forgotten it until a few moments ago. It had never mattered until now.’
‘And now it might matter very much,’ muttered Slocombe.
‘But illegitimacy is no longer the stigma it was,’ said Midwinter. ‘Half the country’s illegitimate, from what I read.’
‘Half the country isn’t trying to be Prime Minister,’ growled Slocombe. ‘Keld won’t risk it being made public. He’ll settle out of court, as it were. Out of Cabinet.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ Lockwood spoke quietly.
‘I’d bet money on it. My own money,’ said Slocombe with a sly grin. ‘Come on, Bill, cheer up. Don’t look so pious. We’ve been in deeper than this before. Are you losing your appetite for the game?’
Lockwood shrugged. ‘Maybe I am. If he stands against me for leader … even if he doesn’t win, it will show the strength of the opposition. That could be damaging.’ He moved across the room and put the whisky bottle in the cupboard where it was stored. Speaking with his back to them, he said: ‘You’re probably right, Eric. Keld will be warned off once he finds we know about his illegitimate child. On the other hand, he may just explode and blow us all out of the water.’
Giles Wittington briefly shone his pencil torchlight on to the filing cabinet. The card on the door read: ‘Jaffe–Newman’. He pulled open the drawer as silently as he could. He was a careful, tidy, quiet man by nature, and because his job demanded it. And he was not nervous either, which was just as well tonight.