By this time, one of the lorries had been loaded and the others were more than half-full. Robbie was faced with the question—should he wait until all the packing cases had been loaded and follow the lorries, or follow the bus? Deciding for the working party, he told his driver to keep fifty yards behind the bus then pass it when it halted.
The bus did not go far. It pulled up outside a small hotel called the Ionia, the major part of the ground floor of which consisted of a narrow café with a long bar. When Robbie’s taxi had carried him some way beyond it, he asked the driver to pull up and paid him off. He was just in time to see the tail end of Stoll’s party disappearing into the Ionia, so had no doubt that it was to be their quarters for the night.
It was now close on seven o’clock, and he made up his mind to pay a visit to the Ionia later that evening. If he returned to the Cecil in his old clothes and Stephanie saw him in them, that would call for an explanation which was going to be difficult to think up and, for his foray later, he would need to put them on again. In consequence, he decided to leave her to dine on her own, and have something himself at some little taverna.
While walking back towards George I Square, it occurred to him that, if he did succeed in getting a look at the contents of the crates when they were unpacked, the odds were that they would consist of machinery which would mean nothing to him. The obvious answer was to try to photograph it, then send the picture to Luke. But he had no camera and had never owned one.
After traversing several arcades, he found a shop that sold cameras. When he went in to buy one, he was amazed to learn how costly the most expensive kinds can be. He had half a mind to leave his purchase till the next day, when he could draw more money from the local branch of the Bank of Greece; but the man who was serving him very honestly told him that, if he had never used a camera before, he would do better to buy a medium-priced one. So he bought an ordinary Kodak, which the salesman showed him how to operate, and three rolls of film.
At a small restaurant nearby, he dined off keftedes—balls of rice crisply fried outside and with a centre of minced meat—followed by a large slab of cake which seemed mainly to consist of assorted preserved fruits and Turkish delight. As it was still early, he followed it with two brews of thick, Turkish coffee, and fortified himself for his coming venture with three goes of a local liqueur made from tangerines.
At nine o’clock he walked back to the Ionia. He thought it almost certain that, even if the Czech workmen had not been forbidden to leave their hotel, they would not have enough money to go out on the town. And he proved right. All eight of them were sitting at two marble-topped tables, obviously eking out two carafes of cheap wine between them.
Only one table was occupied: at it, two Greeks were sitting with two girls. Two more girls were at the bar but, evidently having already discovered that the Czechs could not afford to pay for their attentions, were carrying on an earnest argument together. When Robbie came in, they broke it off and eyed him hopefully; but he was too unused to that sort of thing to smile at them and shake his head. Quickly he looked away, ordered a drink and remained standing at the bar, straining his ears to overhear what the Czechs were saying to one another.
Those at the table nearest to him were arguing quietly about, as far as he could make out, the football results of their favourite teams during the past winter. But at the other table a young fellow with a mop of ginger curls was declaiming loudly against the ‘bosses’. It emerged that he hotly resented having been ordered to come on this expedition, because he had had to leave his girl. Another supported him, but said he would not so much mind having been separated from his wife if they were to have the good time in Greece that they had been led to expect; but here they were, the very first evening, left without money, and no arrangement made to take them round the town.
At that, Robbie pricked up his ears. He had ample money on him and was only too willing to do the honours of Patras for this little party if he could manage to scrape acquaintance with it. Nerving himself for the effort, he picked up his glass and walked with it over to the table at which the red-haired young man was sitting.
As he approached, the Czechs fell silent and looked up at him a shade suspiciously; but he managed a smile, greeted them in Czech and added: ‘I could not help hearing the language you were speaking, and one doesn’t often meet Czechs in Patras.’
The eldest of the party, a man with a scar on his forehead and grizzled hair, said: ‘You are not a Czech, though, are you?’
‘No, oh no,’ Robbie hastily admitted. ‘But my mother was. She taught me Czech and told me a lot about her country, so I always enjoy talking to people who know it.’ There followed an awkward pause, then he said hesitantly: ‘Will you allow me to stand you another carafe of wine?’
His offer met with an instantaneous response from the grizzled man. ‘Why yes, Comrade. That is handsome of you. Come and sit down and tell us all about yourself.’
The football fans at the next table had been listening, so they promptly moved their table round to make it one large party. Robbie ordered two carafes of wine and a chair was produced for him. The barman drew the wine from a cask and brought it over. Glasses were filled and Robbie’s health ceremoniously drunk. Like all the cheapest wines in Greece, resin had been put into it—the theory being that this prevents the peasants from becoming drunk when, owing to the intense heat, they drink great quantities of it while working in the fields—but although harsh, it was not unpleasant.
For a while, Robbie had to cope with a barrage of questions: ‘Did he live in Patras?’ ‘How did he earn his living?’ ‘What was life like in Greece?’ ‘Was it true that the Capitalist Imperialist Industrialists lived in great luxury, while the bulk of the people slaved for them on starvation wages?’
As they had assumed him to be a Greek, Robbie did not have to go further into his nationality. He said that he was only on a visit to Patras, and was a professional writer seeking local colour. As far as the Greek people were concerned, he told his hearers that they had only to walk through the streets to see that the great majority was well clothed and well fed, and the amount of goods in the shops was ample evidence that, at all events in the towns, only a small minority could not afford to buy everything in reason that they needed.
A small, wizened man, with a face like a dried apple, insisted that, even if this were true, the workers were still not receiving their proper share from the resources of the State, otherwise there would not be millionaires like the oil king Onassis.
Robbie was about to reply that Mr. Onassis made his money not out of producing oil, but by transporting it in his great fleet of tankers from place to place. Before he had a chance to do so, the young, red-headed man gave a guffaw and declared:
‘He does not know what is coming to him. Within a few months we will have many more oil-wells than he has in Greece. We will flood the market, undersell him and put him on the rocks.’
To this statement, Robbie made no reply. Putting aside the men’s obvious ignorance of Mr. Onassis’s principal activities, it presented a new conundrum. Had the Czechs really discovered, by some new scientific device, that there were great oil resources in Greece, and were about to exploit them? Or was that only the belief of these technicians—a cover plan that they had been sold by their bosses, only a small inner ring of whom were as yet aware of their Government’s true intentions?
Robbie was still pondering this when two of his companions suddenly looked towards the street entrance. Three men were standing there. Barak, Stoll and a third man—the man who had been at the wheel of the big six-seater that afternoon. With a horrid, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Robbie recognised him. It was Cepicka.
All three men were staring at him. Cepicka said something in a low voice to Barak. The tall, lean Czech drew a finger along one side of his black, toothbrush moustache. Then, followed by the others, he suddenly strode towards the table.
Robbie’s companions had fallen silent. With a se
nse of rising panic, he half came to his feet. By then, Barak was within three feet of him. The barman, the Greek sailors and the girls had also fallen silent. The movement and voices of the crowd out on the water-front came only as a murmur. In the café one could have heard the plop of a lump of sugar dropped into a glass of ouzo.
When Barak spoke, it was neither in Czech nor Greek, but in English. His black eyes boring down into Robbie’s, he said:
‘Englishman, we know why you are here. You are a spy. You haf before poke your nose in our business. You poke your nose again, ha! If there is next time I gif you no warning.’ He swept a hand round to include the ten Czechs now grouped round Robbie. ‘These men obey me, no question asked. They beat you so you spend three months in hospital, perhaps more. You get out now. Yes, you also get out of Patras tomorrow first thing. Or I order beating for you that leave no bone unbroken in your body.’
14
Of Hades and a Double Bed
Robbie took a pace back. Coming to his full height he gave a swift glance round. The eyes of every one of the eighteen people in the narrow café were fixed on him. As Barak had spoken in English, it seemed unlikely that any of them, with the possible exception of Stoll and Cepicka, had understood what he had said. Even if they had, there was no reason to suppose, should a fight develop, that the Greek sailors or the barman would come to the assistance of a man who had just been denounced as a spy.
To deny Barak’s accusation would have been futile, because Cepicka must obviously have told him about the theft of the briefcase in Athens ten days before. As Cepicka stood there, with his little pig-eyes, pink cheeks and thick lips screwed up into a leer, he looked more than ever like an ex-Gestapo man. The enormously broad-shouldered, barrelchested Stoll was also grinning at Robbie’s evident discomfiture. In addition to these two hefty thugs, Barak had only to say a word in Czech to the eight men from the Bratislava and, Robbie had no doubt at all, he would be playing the part of a ball in a football scrum. It was a terribly disappointing end to a situation that had seemed full of promise, but it had to be accepted.
With a shrug, he muttered: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ and moved towards the door.
‘Hi!’ called out one of the Czechs he had been treating. ‘What about paying for the wine?’
‘So he was standing you drinks, eh?’ said Cepicka. ‘In that case, as we know him to be an English capitalist-imperialist he may as well provide you with enough wine to last you the evening.’
The barman came over. He had already sized up the situation, and demanded double the proper price for another halfdozen bottles of retsina. As the only alternative to trouble, Robbie had to pay up and, when he walked out, the mocking laughter of the Czechs followed him on to the waterfront.
The humiliation he felt at having had to submit to this blackmail, on top of having been found out, was so great that he could think of nothing else while making his way back to the Cecil. He even forgot about the clothes he was wearing; so, instead of slipping into the side entrance of the hotel, he strode into the front hall.
To one side of it, the wide glass doors of the lounge stood open. Just inside them, Stephanie was sitting at a low table, reading his manuscript. Catching sight of him as he walked towards the lift, she called his name.
Startled, he shuffled to a halt, then turned and reluctantly went in to her. He was still holding his cheap, floppy cap with the shiny peak. Her glance fell on it, then ran disapprovingly over his worn tweed jacket and grey sweater.
‘Where have you been?’ she demanded. ‘And why are you wearing those awful old clothes?’
Their relationship had already reached a point at which he could not possibly have brought himself to reply: ‘I do not have to account to my secretary for my actions’, or ‘what I have been up to is no business of yours’. He went red in the face and, after a moment, blurted out: ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been down at the docks, er … slumming.’
‘Wherever you’ve been, you look as if you need a drink.’
‘Good idea,’ he agreed, sinking into a chair beside her. Then, beckoning the lounge waiter who was standing just outside in the hall, he ordered himself a double Metexas and ginger ale.
Stephanie gave him time to recover from his evident embarrassment at having been caught unawares, then she asked: ‘Does “showing the flag”, as you put it, for this oil company you represent entail “slumming”, or was this a private venture?’
By then he had decided that, unless he was to be constantly straining his imagination for plausible lies with which to fob her off, he must disclose at least the fact that some of his activities were likely to be unorthodox; so he replied:
‘This was business, but not quite the ordinary kind. There is a new foreign company that is trying to muscle in on my company’s territory. Exactly what their plans are we don’t yet know, but I’ve been given the job of finding out as much as I can.’
Stephanie’s blue eyes widened. ‘Does that mean you are really a sort of secret agent?’
‘No! Oh no!’ He took a quick drink of the brandy and ginger ale that the waiter had just brought him. ‘This is commercial rivalry, that’s all.’
‘Yet you have to dress up for it, and go snooping down at the docks.’
‘I had to find out about a ship that arrived here today, and I thought I’d be more likely to get the wharf hands talking if I went down in these old things than in a smart suit.’
‘And did you get the information you were after?’
‘Well, yes.’ He paused for a moment. Then, realising that he had yet to break it to her that they would be leaving first thing in the morning, he decided to go on. ‘But afterwards I had rather a nasty break.’
‘I thought you looked rather queer when you came in. What happened?’
‘I was standing drinks in a café to a group of Czechs who had landed off the ship, when their boss came in. With him there was a thug that they employ—’
‘A thug?’
‘Yes; they aren’t a very nice lot. I’d had some trouble with this chap in Athens. He recognised me, of course, and denounced me to them as a snooper from U.K.P. There were nearly a dozen of them there altogether, and the long and short of it was that they threatened to beat me up unless I left Patras tomorrow morning.’
‘Do you mean to go or stay?’ Stephanie enquired bluntly.
‘Well.’ Robbie gave an uncomfortable wriggle. ‘There are a lot of them, and only one of me. I’ll be safe enough as long as I stick around the hotel, no doubt, and in the centre of the city; but I wouldn’t care to risk going into the dock area again, so there’s not much point in my staying here any longer.’
‘I see. Does that mean you won’t be doing any more of this snooping business?’
‘I don’t quite know,’ Robbie replied non-committally. ‘Perhaps I will later.’
‘If you do, and you’d like to tell me about it, I might be able to help you.’
‘That’s awfully sporting of you’—he gave her a grateful smile—‘but I couldn’t let you get mixed up in this. If any harm came to you, I’d never forgive myself.’
‘They say two heads are better than one, so we might talk things over, anyway. That is, unless you are one of those people who think women’s minds are not up to weighing the pros and cons on serious matters.’
‘Oh no!’ he protested. ‘As a matter of fact, I should think your brain is a good bit quicker than mine. You may have noticed that at times I’m a bit slow in the uptake. It’s not that I’m a fool—at least I hope not. When I was six, I was in an air crash. Both my parents were killed and I got a knock on the head that set me back all through my childhood.’
‘Really! How awful for you.’ Stephanie’s voice was warm with sympathy, so he told her about his never having been to school, and of his unusual upbringing.
When he had done, she said that she would never have guessed that he had not had a proper education, although she found him quite different from any of
the other young men she knew and liked him the better for it. As he finished his drink, she asked:
‘What time do you want to leave tomorrow?’
‘I’d like to get off about nine, if that’s all right with you?’ She nodded. ‘And where shall we be going?’
‘I haven’t had time to think yet. Let’s settle that in the morning,’ he replied; and shortly afterwards they went up to their rooms.
As Robbie undressed, he was still feeling very sore at the humiliation he had suffered in the café and, although he had temporised with Stephanie, he had never had any intention of abandoning his mission. On the contrary, Barak’s threats and Cepicka’s sneers had only stimulated in him the determination to find out what they were up to. In them, too, he now felt that he had two tangible enemies, which would make his further endeavours much more exciting than setting such wits as he had against a nebulous organisation.
For the next move he felt he had the advantage, for they would probably think they had scared him off altogether. In any case, he knew all the places at which groups were to be stationed, and they could not possibly guess which group he might decide to spy on. Corinth and Pirgos were the two nearest places. For the former, it was a safe bet that a second group would be landed at Patras, and sent with their machinery either by road or by motor-caique up the gulf. The Bratislava would then move down to Pirgos and land a third group there before proceeding to drop others at Kalamai and the islands. The machinery for the Corinth party would be cleared at Patras, but that for Pirgos would have to go through the Customs there. From this Robbie reasoned that Barak, who appeared to be in charge of the whole operation, and probably Cepicka, would go down to Pirgos; so he would stand less risk of running into them again if he went to Corinth.
Mayhem in Greece Page 24