We ate. On my part it was a sullen affair. Warboys and the priest talked as if I wasn’t there. EOKA was the enemy: they had murdered British servicemen, policemen, civilians, women and children . . . and we were sitting down to scoff with them. The food was probably very good, but it tasted bitter in my mouth – like lemons. They talked about school, and mutual acquaintances. Families. Tony had a sister.
‘I was in love with her once,’ the priest laughed. He told me, ‘My parents were horrified.’
Warboys grinned at the recollection.
‘What about your sister? Half the boys in the town were crazy about her.’
‘And she was in love with you, but you never noticed.’
There was an odd moment of silence. Warboys looked away over the plain.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I never knew that.’
The priest looked at me. The expression on his face said he wanted to explain something.
‘We are all mixed up, you see, Mr Bassett. Those boys outside the gate, Tony, me . . . we went to school together. Lived in each other’s houses, seduced each other’s sisters – or tried to – shared meals. Cribbed each other’s exam papers. Loved each other . . . there is no other word for it. Now we are killing each other over a few conflicting ideas. It is quite mad. Have you read Dante?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Get a good translation of Inferno – Tony will get one for you – read about Hell, and recognize it as Cyprus.’
I perked up at that. I had been trying to work out how to get away on my own, and save my skin, but at least he was speaking of me in the future tense.
‘Just stop,’ I said. ‘Tell the politicians and the lawyers and the accountants to fuck off and leave you in peace. Stop fighting.’
‘Come off it, Charlie.’ That was Warboys. ‘You’ve seen this sort of thing before. You know it’s gone too far for that. The politicians had a chance to avoid bloodshed three or four years ago, and they fluffed it. I think they do it on purpose. They’re so mentally impoverished the only thing that gives a politician a stiffy is his own cute little war. It’s the only logical conclusion – politicians take us into wars so often because they want to. They need to be able to cause the deaths of a few hundred people, and get away with it . . . to legitimize themselves, I suppose. I hate the bastards.’
‘I hate the bastards too,’ Adonis said, and raised his glass, ‘even though I’m not supposed to swear, and I’m not English.’ I wondered if he was supposed to drink either.
‘And so do I,’ I told them, and held out my glass for a refill. The wine was thin and vinegary, and exceptionally refreshing. ‘Pour me another drink, one of you.’
The priest obliged. ‘Retsina – the sharp flavour is pine. From the mainland. Not all of their ideas are bad.’
I knew that they’d get round to telling me what I was there for eventually, but I decided to shorten the odds. I asked Warboys, ‘Why did you tell them my name?’
‘I didn’t. Adonis sent me a message asking me to bring a Mr Charles Bassett, RAF, retired, to see him. I was rather intrigued, and came through to ask your gaffer this morning. He OK’d it as long as I guaranteed to return you in one piece.’
‘Why didn’t you just ask me?’
‘Because you’re not stupid. You would have said no.’
Not a betrayal then. Something else. I sipped my wine and studied the priest. His move.
‘Well?’ I asked him.
‘I needed to see you face to face – again, as it turned out – to help me help some others to make a decision.’ It was one of those moments when you know you should keep your mouth shut. I was never any good at them.
‘Tell me about it.’
‘We have to decide whether it will be in my friends’ interests to have you killed, or kept alive.’
Bugger. Still not out of the woods then.
‘If you killed me I wouldn’t be able to read that book about Hell you recommended.’
‘You would find out personally. You wouldn’t need a book.’ Bloody priests and parsons. Have you noticed it? They have an answer for everything. ‘Please understand that your death will not be a tactical decision – it’s nothing to do with the civil war.’
I think he was the first person I heard use the words aloud. I put my glass on the table, and filled a pipe, reflecting that I wanted to stay alive at least long enough to smoke those precious six ounces of Sweet Chestnut. I said, ‘One of you will have to explain that to me.’
‘EOKA is like any other nationalist army,’ Adonis said. ‘It’s poor. Most of the time we’re broke. Athens gives Grivas just enough to keep him on their leash.’ I’d heard of this Colonel Grivas. He ran EOKA like an old-fashioned warlord.
‘So?’
‘We need money. We always need money.’
‘To buy arms to kill innocent civilians with?’
‘Innocent civilians? Sometimes. And not so innocent soldiers, and policemen. You are occupying my island, Charles. I want you to go home.’
‘And your Turkish Cypriot neighbours?’
After a pause he said, ‘Yes, they will have to go home too.’
‘This is their home,’ Tony told him. ‘They belong here as much as you do.’
The priest shook his head, and looked at the ruins of lunch on the table as if they had some meaning for him. He sounded genuinely sad when he said, ‘Not any more.’
I realized then that I had just been given a better explanation of the Cyprus Crisis in three minutes, than any politician or academic could have managed in a fortnight.
‘I still don’t understand what this has got to do with me,’ I said.
‘Simple. Someone has offered EOKA money to kill you,’ the priest said. ‘An English person.’
‘You can say it now,’ Warboys told me.
So I said, ‘Fuck it.’ For once my brain worked fast enough, and the logic chains ran in the right direction. I dispensed with who and why, and even where and when: they could wait until later. I asked the priest, ‘How much?’
It was Tony who said, ‘What?’
‘How much? How much have you been offered?’ I wasn’t short of a quid or two myself.
The priest wrinkled his brow. He probably couldn’t see why it should matter. He said, ‘Two and a half thousand pounds sterling, as I understand it . . . but if I know the brave colonel he will stick out for more. It seems to be a seller’s market.’
‘I’ll give you four not to kill me, but kill the person who made the offer instead.’
A long long pause, then Tony said it again. He took a sip of his retsina, and asked, ‘What?’
‘You heard me. I’ll outbid whoever asked them, and turn the tables . . . but on one condition.’
‘And that is?’ the priest asked.
‘That mine is a once-and-for-all offer. You don’t go back to the originator, and bid him up again.’
‘How could you guarantee that?’ Warboys demanded.
‘By placing a side bet on the priest. You’re not the only one with friends in low places. If I get it, he gets it . . . and a relation . . . say, his mother you’re both so fond of. Easy to arrange.’
There was a moment of absolute silence. I could hear the birds of prey keening out on the plain below us. For the first time the priest looked startled. He went as deathly pale as his namesake was supposed to have been. That lovely boy.
He stared, and asked, ‘You would do that?’
‘Yes, of course. Why not?’
‘And you can do that?’
‘Of course. Do you think you’re the only person who can command a killing? Ask Tony.’
The priest glanced at Warboys, who sat back in his chair, stroked his chin as if caressing a long-lost beard, nodded and said almost absently, ‘I’m afraid Charlie does have a certain reputation.’
The priest stood. There were crumbs of bread on his clothes. As he began to walk away he told me, ‘I have to consult with our people. They will make the decision, not me.’
Tony and I stood up as well. I wasn’t prepared to let the priest go without another word.
‘Make sure I’m informed, won’t you?’
He paused, and spat back, ‘You will know of the decision when the bullet comes for you.’
‘No, Adonis. You will tell me of your decision, and if necessary you will give me a chance to run.’
‘Or?’
‘If anything happens to me, your mother will die. It is easily within my reach, and I promise it . . . and maybe your sister as well.’
He had been moving away from us. Now he stopped, turned and put the eye bite on Warboys. Tony said, hastily I thought, ‘Adonis’s sister is dead. She died while I was in England.’
The priest suddenly looked very tall. Ascetic. Distanced.
‘She hanged herself,’ he said, then turned and stalked away.
Although the sun was shining from a cloudless sky I was suddenly cold.
Warboys said, ‘I didn’t know that.’
I didn’t know if he was talking to me or Adonis.
Warboys went back to sit at the table. I joined him. We picked over the food and finished the wine. He seemed pensive. After the noise of both vehicles departing down the mountain road had died he asked me, ‘Do you have as much money as you said?’
‘Yes. I had a very good war eventually.’
‘Uh huh . . . and would you? Would you call down a killing on an old lady, just to prove a point?’
‘I don’t know. If it was the only way to stay alive myself. Let’s hope we never have to find out.’
‘You know that if you did that, I’d have to come after you myself, old son?’ The old silky voice of the assassin had come back.
‘I can always put you on the list as well, Tony. I wouldn’t want to, but would if I had to. Anything happens to me, happens to you – maybe to somebody close to you as well. You’d do very well to keep me in one piece – just like you promised the wing commander.’
He suddenly began to laugh. It was a very odd, hollow sound in that empty castle bailey.
‘What?’ I demanded.
‘I was thinking about old CB. He said that you were a thoroughly nasty piece of work wrapped in blarney.’
‘So?’
‘Next time I’ll listen more closely. You OK by yourself for a couple of hours?’
‘I expect so. Why?’
‘I want to take some measurements, and make a few drawings.’
Some of it had been true after all. But after that I wasn’t going to turn my back on him in a hurry.
I dragged a chair into the shade, out of the breezes, and opened Moby-Dick again. Soon my mind was filled by a sailor’s church, and a pulpit shaped like a whaler . . . and a man scared by the sea and his own shadow. From time to time Warboys would come into sight on a tower, or in a window, with a notebook and a surveyor’s tape measure in his hand. If he looked my way he would wave. When he came down to me his forehead was glowing with the sun it had been exposed to, and his shirt was sweat stained.
‘Can you imagine labouring to build this damned place? First they had to get the stone up here to build it – none of it was local – and then they had to assemble it.’
‘If they’d had trades unions then they would never have got it built.’
‘That, Charlie, is an interesting observation . . . I’m not sure I like the implications.’
‘Want a beer?’
‘Yes, please. Then we can kick off for Kyrenia, and be there before nightfall.’
‘Who have you got lined up for me there?’
‘No one. After this lunchtime it’s exactly what I said – castles and sketchpads.’
I fetched a couple of bottles of Watney’s from the back of the truck. They were warm, but some British beers are better like that. We clinked bottles and toasted each other.
‘About your pal Adonis—?’
Warboys shook his head.
‘Shall we leave it for an hour or two, Charlie? It will give us both time to mull it over. Talk after supper. That OK?’
I nodded.
‘Where are we going to stay?’
‘Surprise.’
I don’t like surprises. I’ve probably told you that before.
He took it easier down the narrow road from the castle. We passed no one going in the other direction.
I asked him, ‘What happened to all the hairies that were around?’
‘Gone home for their teas. They were just the insurance policies.’
‘Come again?’
‘The lorryload behind us was there to make sure nothing happened to you and me. The ones up at the castle were there to make sure we didn’t grab Adonis. If anything untoward had happened today there would have been a bloodbath, but neither side wanted that.’
‘The priest is an EOKA man then?’
‘Good Lord, no! That would be against his principles. He doesn’t take many vows, your Greek, but those he does, he keeps. Adonis is a liaison officer – a go-between and a fixer. A peacemaker when he gets the opportunity. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was like that at school – I had to stop the other boys bullying him.’
‘He’s a fixer and liaison officer like you?’
He paused before replying. I could sense him weighing up how much to tell me. We had just reached the place where we joined the road over the Kyrenia range. As we pulled away he said, ‘That’s only one of the things I do. You know sometimes I play a more practical part.’
‘Would you be offended if I showed no curiosity about that at all?’
He laughed before he said anything. Short and puffy sounds.
‘No, Charlie. I might be rather chuffed. Fancy a fish supper tonight? There’s a safe café down at the harbour.’ I might have been wrong, but I’d say his voice was tinged with relief.
‘Fish and chips?’
‘Not quite.’
‘OK.’
‘I was in France just after it fell in early ’45,’ I told him. ‘My driver was an old hand, and had been around the block a few times. Although I was travelling with a major, and by then they’d made me an officer, this private soldier was actually in charge to all practical purposes – he was the only one of us three who knew how to keep us all alive.’
‘I’ve met men like that. Is he still around?’
‘Yes, Les is one of my best friends.’
We were sitting at the rear of a small diner with our backs against the wall. There were tables outside under the stars, but Tony had chosen cover.
‘I sense this conversation is going somewhere . . .’ he said.
‘We ate at cafés and restaurants as we moved through France and Belgium. Things were just getting going again. The point is that although the places were meant to be safe, they weren’t – all sorts of gangsters were settling scores with each other – and Les always made us sit just like this. At the back, with our backs to the wall. He watched everyone who came in.’
‘That’s why you’re still here?’
‘I think so. I once asked him who’d taught him that, and he replied William Butler Hickok. The only time he sat with his back to the door someone put a bullet in it.’
‘I know that story as well. Wild Bill’s killer was a gambler named Jack McCall, I think – wonderful the things you remember. What was your point?’
‘Only that you seem to know what you’re doing – and I’m rather pleased about that.’
‘Charming compliment. Thanks, old son.’ We raised glasses, and toasted each other in a rather curious thin red wine. ‘Now what was it you wanted to ask me?’
‘Your pal Adonis claimed that EOKA was asked to bury me. Is he likely to be correct?’
‘Yes. He’s usually well-informed.’
‘It would still be useful to know who asked them.’
‘Mm . . .’ He raised the wine glass to the light, and squinted at it. ‘Anyone wanted to kill you before?’
‘Hundreds of Jerries in ’44, I suppose, but that was different . . . I was dropping bom
bs on them then.’
‘And since?’
‘More than my fair share. I had a run-in with some Israelis in 1953, and I annoyed a couple of Americans some months ago. A woman shot me in Turkey a few years ago. Your man CB warned me that the Yanks could come after me. He convinced me that I would be far safer in Cyprus for a few months than anywhere else in Europe.’
‘He’s a tremendous liar, you know, so I wouldn’t take that as gospel . . . These people you offended – are they the kind to harbour grudges?’
‘They all worked for their respective governments, I think, so they’re probably bad types.’
He swilled the wine around moodily, and then swallowed it in a oner. I signalled the owner behind his bar for another bottle.
‘Governments do bear grudges,’ he said, ‘so I see what you’re getting at. It would be handy to know who’s got it in for you. Do you want me to see what I can do?’
‘I’d be obliged.’
‘And in return you’d make sure your pals, whoever they are, lay off Adonis and his mother? Just between you and me, of course – no reason for Adonis to know.’
That seemed like an agreeable compromise to me. So I said, ‘Thank you.’ Then, ‘I should also thank you for bringing me here in the first place, shouldn’t I? You could always have said no, and let them knife me in the dark.’
He grinned like a boy.
‘I wondered when you’d work that out. As it happens I didn’t want the apple cart being upset at the minute – not until we find out what happened to that army pilot – so preserving you suits me. Good job all round.’
A waitress with a nice figure, spoiled by a light moustache and a cast in one eye, propped a great bowl of fish pieces on the table between us: it was like a spicy fish stew. There was a side plate of sliced potatoes fried in olive oil, and I was suddenly hungry.
Halfway through the meal I asked him, ‘Where are we going to sleep?’
‘Out there, unless you buy Konstantin’s girl for the night. She’s not all that expensive.’ He was talking about the waitress, but pointed out into the harbour with his spoon. ‘Pater’s boat – an old Greek caique with a bloody great Mercedes engine. You’ll love her.’ I was sure that I wouldn’t, but it wasn’t the right occasion to indicate just how quickly I became seasick. Steve had called me sailor the first time we woke up together; maybe she was a clairvoyant.
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