‘What time is it?’ Robbie asked in a whisper.
‘It’s not yet quite twelve. I had to wait until they were well asleep before risking coming out to you. But I wanted to get as much leeway as I could before they are due to wake. If the engine doesn’t rouse them, we’ll have a good three hours’ start. That should give us lead enough if Barak does decide to come after us.’
The engine purred and she let it run for a moment then slipped in the clutch, turned the car and headed it through a gap in the wall, down a rough track. Robbie twisted round to stare anxiously out of the back window; but no lights came on in the upper part of the house, which was all that he could see over the two walls.
When they reached the highway, Stephanie put on speed and, as the road was an open one, they were soon doing seventy miles an hour in the direction of Pirgos.
‘Where do you intend to drop me?’ Robbie asked.
‘Athens,’ she replied laconically.
‘Athens!’ he repeated in surprise. ‘That means then that you don’t trust me to go there under my own steam?’
‘I don’t see why I should trust you in anything.’
‘No,’ he agreed, as a guilty memory of their last encounter rushed back to his mind. ‘I suppose not. But we can’t possibly make Athens in a night. We’ll have to stop off at various places, so I could easily give you the slip.’
‘I don’t advise you to try it. You would have cause to regret it if you did.’
‘Apart from having broken my pledge, I don’t see why. That is, unless you are toting a gun, with which you mean to shoot me if I run off into the bushes.’
‘Yes; I have got a gun with me; and I would have shot you if you had set on me after I released you. But you had better not try to get hold of it. Yesterday you took me completely by surprise; otherwise things would have gone very differently. I’ve told you that I’m against murder, but I wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet through your leg; so I advise you not to attempt any monkey tricks.’
By then they had reached Pirgos. There were still people sitting drinking in the cafés, but the streets were almost deserted, and, reducing her speed only to forty, Stephanie drove through the town. When they had come out on the road to Olympia, she continued:
‘I may as well tell you, though, that making sure that you don’t feel tempted to go back on your word is not the only reason that I am taking you to Athens. For one thing, although you succeeded in driving the car twenty-odd miles this afternoon you couldn’t have hoped to get very far with it in the dark without an accident; and if you had a smash, the odds are that Barak would have caught you. Having risked my own skin to get you out, I’d naturally have felt pretty sick if I found afterwards that I had done so to no purpose.’
‘Risked your skin!’ Robbie turned to stare at her. ‘Do you mean they would have killed you?’
‘Oh no; they wouldn’t do that. But Barak can be a real devil when he is angry. When he learned that I had enabled you to escape, he would have beaten hell out of me and might quite well have marked me for life.’
‘But he is bound to find out … That letter you left.’
‘Of course, and that’s why I left it. If I hadn’t, they would anyhow have assumed that it was I who freed you. Who else would have? You couldn’t possibly have got away without help. Barak would have believed that, having spent three weeks driving you round Greece, I had fallen for you. He would then have every reason to do his utmost to recapture you. And when he got back, with or without you, he would have put me through the hoop.’
She paused for a moment, then went on: ‘By leaving your pledge and my letter, I hope to show that, although I freed you, I am still doing the right thing by my own people. In the letter, I’ve said that I am taking you to Athens myself, to keep you, one way or the other, to your promise, and that on the 20th I intend to see you aboard a plane that will take you out of Greece. To put an end to your poking your nose into our business is the only thing that really matters and no one but Barak is going to be disappointed at being deprived of the pleasure of watching you drown.’
‘I see,’ said Robbie thoughtfully. ‘But won’t he try to take it out on you later on, when he sees you again?’
‘By then, I’ll be among friends at our Legation. Besides, he will have had time to calm down. That was one of my reasons for deciding that if I did mean to free you I had better accompany you to Athens. Of course, when I do come face to face with him, there will be a fine old dust-up. But that’s not your worry.’
Robbie fell silent and remained so for some while. Then he remarked: ‘Your room at the Spap was still unoccupied when I left, so—’
‘So what!’ she cut him short. ‘Surely you don’t suppose that I mean to spend the night at Olympia? I hope to get to Argos.’
At the thought of the road by which they had come to Olympia, Robbie exclaimed: ‘What! You mean to drive through those awful mountains in the dark?’
‘Why not?’ she shrugged. ‘Plenty of lorries and other cars make the trip by night. If I find it too much for me, we’ll have to stop at Tripolis; but in case Barak does come after us, I want to keep as big a lead as I can. Argos is well over half-way to Athens—the worst half, too—but with luck we’ll reach there in about six or seven hours. We’ll sleep through the morning, and do the remaining hundred and twenty kilometres to Athens in the afternoon.’
The idea of skirting those terrifying precipices for hour after hour with only their headlights to keep them on the road did not seem to intimidate Stephanie and, although it appalled Robbie, he realised he was in her hands. Since she had the courage to face it, he must too, and without showing his fears. After a minute, he said:
‘Well, you’re doing the driving. All I ask is that, when you do feel tired, you won’t press on at the risk of breaking both our necks. We could always pull off the road at some level spot and you could sleep for an hour in the car. I give you my solemn promise that I won’t try to sneak off while you were sleeping. Anyhow, you’ll get a first quarter of an hour’s easy at the Spap while I pay my bill and throw my clothes into my suitcases.’
Stephanie gave an unpleasant little laugh. ‘I always thought you were a little off the beam; now I know that you’re right round the bend. You have just had a very narrow escape from death, yet you suggest risking your life again for the sake of collecting a few clothes.’
‘If they did hear us drive off, Barak would have caught up with us by now; if they didn’t, he won’t even be getting dressed for another two and a half hours,’ Robbie argued, ‘so what do fifteen minutes matter?’
‘They matter because I mean to keep every minute of lead I’ve got.’
Robbie made a face. ‘All right, then. But I was hoping to get a drink at the hotel. It’s over twelve hours since I had one, and I’m absolutely parched.’
‘Put a hand over the back of the seat,’ she told him. ‘If you feel round, you’ll find a basket with some biscuits and a Thermos that has milk in it. I’d have liked to have made some coffee to warm us up when we are in the mountains, but I didn’t dare. One of them might have come down and found me in the kitchen with my suitcase beside me, and that would not have been at all easy to explain.’
After Robbie had found the Thermos and gratefully drunk some of the milk, he said: ‘You had two suitcases and, from what you say, it sounds as if getting away with one was as much as you could manage. I hope you put my manuscript in it.’
‘No,’ she replied promptly. ‘I didn’t.’
‘What … what have you done with it?’ he asked, striving to keep out of his voice the acute anxiety he felt.
‘It will serve a most useful purpose.’ She paused for a moment, then went on with malicious amusement: ‘In that little house there were fourteen of us, and they were running short of toilet paper; so I left it in the lavatory.’
‘Oh God! You didn’t!’ The cry came from Robbie’s heart.
For a good two minutes she let him remain a prey to utter miser
y, then she said quietly: ‘No; as a matter of fact, I didn’t, though it would have served you right if I had. The truth is that I took it in to Pirgos this evening and sent it poste restante to the G.P.O., Athens. Knowing how much you value your book, I did that as a much sounder precaution than carrying a gun against your being tempted to double-cross me. If you behave like a good little boy, I’ll arrange for it to be handed back to you at the airport on your way out of Greece.’
He gave a great sigh of relief, and was just about to thank her for her promise to return it to him, when she exclaimed: ‘What on earth’s the matter with the car? What have you been doing to it?’
‘I—nothing,’ he protested. ‘I took it out for about two hours this morning, to practise along flattish roads on my own; then, after lunch, I drove it out to the factory. It went perfectly and I had no trouble at all.’
Stephanie’s question had been caused by a cloud of steam which had suddenly issued from the bonnet. Looking quickly down at the dashboard, she saw that only a few inches of the chain working the radiator blind was hanging from its V. Turning on to Robbie, she stormed: ‘You imbecile! You’ve been running her with the radiator blind nearly full up. Now she’s blown a core plug and if I keep her running the engine will seize up.’
She drove the car into the side of the road. They both got out and, having confirmed the cause of the trouble, she said angrily: ‘I don’t suppose Nisio will be able to make us another core plug under four or five hours at the least.’
‘Who is Nisio?’ Robbie enquired.
‘He is the mechanic at the Spap; and, thank goodness, it can’t be much more than a mile away. It was Nisio who drove me into Pirgos yesterday. I bribed him, too, to telephone me if you either took out the car or hired one. That’s how it was that Barak was all ready to receive you this afternoon. Nisio also telephoned about your taking out the car this morning, but we felt sure that you wouldn’t try anything until the siesta hour.’
‘Well,’ Robbie shrugged, ‘since we are stuck for the night, at least we are lucky to have broken down so near the Spap. As it can’t yet be half past twelve, I expect it will still be open; although your friend Nisio is pretty certain to be in bed.’
‘Then we must get him out,’ Stephanie declared. ‘If Barak does come after us later in the night and notice the Zephyr abandoned by the roadside, he’ll guess at once that we are at the Spap and lie in wait for you when we leave tomorrow morning.’
Robbie got Stephanie’s case out of the boot and, leaving the car lights on, they set out for the hotel. When they reached it, there were still lights on in a few of the windows. Up in the lounge, a yawning waiter was watching four guests playing a final rubber of bridge. Nisio was roused and appeared with an overcoat over his pyjamas. He agreed to go out and tow in the Ford, but jibbed at Stephanie’s suggestion that he should work on it during the night.
When Nisio had gone off to get it and the tired waiter had produced brandies and ginger ales, Robbie said to her: ‘I know you want to get me to Athens and out of the country as quickly as you can; but, if we don’t leave here until after lunch tomorrow, we’ll stand much less risk of running into Barak at Tripolis or somewhere further along the road where, if he has chased us, he may have pulled up.’
She nodded wearily. ‘Perhaps you are right. If he does bypass us, the longer lead he has the better. In fact, in the long run, our breakdown may have turned out all to the good.’ Then, finishing their drinks, they went to bed.
In the morning, Robbie was woken by a sharp knocking on the door of his room. Tumbling out of bed, he pulled on his dressing gown and opened the door, to find Stephanie standing outside. She was fully dressed, but had no make-up on and her hair had not been done.
‘I got up early,’ she said, ‘to find out about the car. Nisio says that, with servicing the cars of the other guests, there’s not a hope of getting ours done till three o’clock, and it may even be four or five before he’s through.’
Robbie blinked at her sleepily. ‘Except that we’ll have to do the last part of the mountain road to Argos after dark, I don’t see that that matters much. If Barak did give chase, he’s missed us, although he can’t know that. He must be in Tripolis or even further off by this time.’ As he spoke he was gingerly feeling his chin, where Barak had hit him, for on his waking it had begun to throb painfully.
‘You are probably right,’ she agreed thoughtfully. ‘But Barak is no fool. As soon as it became daylight, he would start enquiring at the villages through which they passed for someone who had seen the Zephyr go through. When he has drawn several blanks, he’ll guess that we are not ahead of him after all. Then he’ll think one of two things: either that we took the other road, in which case he will drive on to Athens; or that we deliberately put up here for the night, hoping to fox him. If he does think that he’s by-passed us, he won’t need to stop somewhere to sleep, because it is certain that he will have Cepicka with him, and they’ll be driving turn and turn about. They’ll turn round and come back, hoping to meet us on the road this morning. They won’t, of course, but, when they get as far as this without meeting us, they are sure to stop here to make enquiries.’
‘Well, what if they do learn we’re here? They daren’t come busting into this place as though it were a saloon in a Western, and shoot me dead. Even if they got away with it for the moment, there would be a hue and cry after them in no time. All the odds are that they would be caught, and there would be lots of people to identify them as my killers.’
‘That’s true. But if they do find out that we are here, they might hang round outside on the chance of getting a shot at you. For example, if they spotted you having another look round the ruins, and there was no one about. That’s what I came to say to you. I’ve told them at the office that you’ve got a tummy upset, so will be staying in bed most of the day. Your meals will be brought along to you but, of course, only something light.’
‘Oh dear!’ Robbie exclaimed ruefully, ‘and after yesterday I am as hungry as a hunter.’
‘You are very lucky to be alive,’ she said sharply, ‘and, if you want to make sure of remaining alive, you had better do as you are told. After lunch, pack your things and be ready to leave at three o’clock. As soon as the car is ready, I’ll come up for you.’
Robbie turned in again, but he spent a miserable morning. The previous night, after the twelve hours of acute strain he had passed through, he had been too exhausted to think much about his defeat; but now the knowledge that he had failed so lamentably greatly depressed him.
He was, too, most unhappy about his new relationship with Stephanie. By a miracle, as it seemed to him, after he had accepted that she had passed out of his life for good, she had returned to it. But she was not the Stephanie he had known. She was as lovely as ever in his eyes; but no longer his gay, sweet-tempered companion. He was well aware that he owed his life to her, yet could not believe that she had lifted a finger from any personal feeling for him. He felt sure that her action had been inspired by a reluctance to have it on her conscience that a man who had fallen into a trap she had laid had been murdered, and that she would have taken nearly as much risk to save a dog. Moreover, the fact remained that it was through her lies and treachery that the only undertaking he had ever ventured upon of his own accord, and one that was to make him in his own eyes and the eyes of others a man who could hold his head high in any company, had come to an ignominious end.
After he had eaten a disappointingly meagre lunch, brought to him on a tray, he got up, packed and dressed; then he sat down to wait for Stephanie. Three o’clock came; then four and half past, the time dragging by wearily. At last, at about ten to five, a bang on his door brought him quickly to it, to find her there with a luggage porter behind her. With a frown she said:
‘These country mechanics are hopeless. Nisio ought to have been able to make a new core plug in five hours; but of course he wouldn’t forgo his siesta, and it’s taken nearly ten.’ Thrusting a paper into Robbie’
s hand, she went on: ‘I had your bill made up and looked through it. As far as I can judge it’s correct; so pay it on your way out, and we’ll get off as quickly as we can.’
Without argument he did as she had told him, and five minutes later they were in the Ford, running down on to the main road. When they reached it, she said: ‘You know, last night I would have bet any money that Barak would come after us as soon as he found out that you’d escaped. But I think now I was scaring myself unnecessarily. Either that, or he thought it more likely that we had taken the road via Patras round the Gulf. I had an early lunch and spent the whole afternoon watching the main road. If the Mercedes had come back along it, I couldn’t have failed to see her; and, if they had pulled up where the road is hidden by the trees and one of them had walked the last half mile here to make enquiries, I should have been bound to see him, the hotel being perched up on a cliff as it is.’
Robbie nodded: ‘If they did go as far as Tripolis, then turned back hoping to meet us, they would have passed here hours ago. Anyhow, knowing nothing of our breakdown, they wouldn’t expect us to spend the day at Olympia. Whether they ever left Pirgos or stayed put, they must be assuming that, by this time, we can’t be far from Athens.’
For the first three-quarters of an hour the road ran through comparatively flat country, although rising all the time. Then it gradually became steeper and its curves more frequent until, by six o’clock, they were up to two thousand feet and still mounting by a long succession of hairpin bends. At times they could see the road ahead, snaking away higher and higher, a thin, yellow line etched in the precipitous sides of the mountain chain; at others the view ahead closed rapidly from a quarter of a mile to a matter of twenty feet as they approached some tall cliff of solid rock that formed a sharp corner, completely cutting off all sight of what lay beyond it.
Mayhem in Greece Page 39