by Simon Raven
'As to that, you may be right and you may not. But suppose someone goes raking up the past? Suppose,' said Somerset Lloyd-James, 'that someone starts upsetting the mild and convenient historical version which we have at last persuaded the country to accept? Suppose someone gets up on television and demonstrates—demonstrates, Canteloupe—that from the start of the Cyprus business to the finish Great Britain was bullied and blackmailed and betrayed, and in the sum was cheated out of millions of money, hundreds of soldiers' lives, and a good slice of her rapidly dwindling prestige?'
'They can't cut my head off,' Canteloupe said.
'You'd look very foolish. And your Department would have a lot of explaining to do.'
'But why should anyone ... demonstrate all that?'
'Because it happens to be demonstrable—if someone should find the right clues. Now then, Tom Llewyllyn, who has an instinct for this sort of thing, has sent Fielding Gray, who is no fool and knows the background, out there to investigate. If Fielding picks up the clues, he'll follow them through to the bitter end, and Tom, who has been promised a free hand by the BBC, will broadcast the result on television. So what do we do?'
'We have a drink,' said Canteloupe, and went to the cabinet by the wall.
'Not for me,' said Somerset; 'it's only ten-thirty.'
'One needs to be flexible in this game.'
Canteloupe poured himself a generous quintuple and followed it with a derisory squirt of soda.
'It is I,' said Somerset, 'who have been flexible so far. I got on to the Director of Features at the Television Centre and persuaded him to give an authoritative hint to Tom that a little delay would be appreciated.'
'How did you persuade him to do that?'
'I promised him, in your name, that you'd let him do a documentary film of your place in Wiltshire. Private rooms and Rembrandts included. Free.'
'Damn your beady eyes. I could have got thousands.'
'It'll be excellent publicity,'
'I don't need publicity. My place in Wiltshire,' said Cantaloupe proudly, 'is at the top of the Stately Homes popularity poll.'
'You don't need the money either. You're richer than half the Dukes.'
'Half the Dukes are broke.'
'Anyway,' said Somerset patiently, 'it was worth it. The Director had a word with Tom, and Tom, under protest wired Fielding Gray in Athens and told him to hang on there for a possible change of instructions.'
'And what did Fielding Gray do?'
'They haven't yet, heard from him.'
Thousands of quid down the drain to get that telegram sent, and you don't even know he'll get it.'
'He'll get it. Copies have gone to every major hotel and also to the airport. So at the very latest he'll get it when he goes there to catch his plane to Cyprus.'
'All right,' said Canteloupe, impressed; 'but what then? All that anyone's agreed to is delay.' He sucked down his whisky and poured himself another without noticing. 'You say Tom Llewyllyn's been promised a free hand. When he thinks the delay's gone on long enough, he'll tell Gray to get going again, and what do we do then? Give the BBC my bloody house and ask for more delay? They'll probably want the park thrown in.'
'You know and I know,' said Somerset, 'that there are other people even more concerned than we are to stop Fielding writing this programme. By engineering this delay, we have given them time and opportunity to ... er ... make their point.'
'What a perfect swine you are,' said Canteloupe happily. 'But in that case, why not just leave it all to them? Why make the BBC send a million telegrams round the place, when all we need to do is let Gray go to Cyprus and get his come-uppance there?'
There was a knock on the door, through which floated a pudgy young man in a cloud of Chanel Eau de Cologne. Carton Weir.
'Get out,' said Canteloupe.
Carton Weir floated out again.
'I'd give that fat little pansy the push tomorrow,' said Canteloupe, 'but the PM insists on my keeping him. I can't think why.'
'He's particularly good at apologising to the people you insult. His forte is cleaning up messes. You may well need him—if there's a mess, for example, about Cyprus.'
'I'd far sooner have you.'
'I,' said Somerset, 'shall not be seen dead here if once there's a serious mess.'
'I might have known. Well, while you are here,' said Canteloupe, 'answer my last question. If there are all these people so anxious to settle the problem of Gray, why not leave them to it? Why do we have to get in on the act?'
'Because,' said Somerset, 'if anything happens to him in Cyprus, it will be enquired why he was there and what he was doing, and this could lead to just the kind of revelations we deprecate. If, on the other hand, we delay him, thus giving other interested parties time to ... deflect him ... before he gets there, the connection with Cyprus will be far less pointed. And now I must get back to Strix. Please take my advice and be polite to Carton Weir.'
When Fielding and Captain Detterling reached the Grande Bretagne Hotel in Athens, there was a telegram waiting for Fielding:
DESIRABLE YOU WAIT IN ATHENS UNTIL FURTHER NOTIFIED AMUSE TOI BIEN TOM.
'Somebody else getting the wind up,' Detterling said. 'Be a good boy and go home.'
'He doesn't say that. He says I'm to wait here and amuse myself.'
'The more fool him. Athens is about as amusing as Wolverhampton.'
They went out into Constitution Square and took a taxi up to the Acropolis. For some reason this was closed, so they walked down-hill through the pine-trees and along a broad, noisy road to the entrance of the Agora. At the far end of this was a long portico of brash white stone. 'The American School's reconstruction of the Stoa,' said Detterling. 'Personally. I prefer ruins to stay ruined.'
'Let's try walking in it... like philosophers of Athens.'
The April sun was hot enough to make the shade very grateful, and the marble pavement, they found, favoured a steady yet effortless walk, as of two officers pacing the yard of Buckingham Palace between the Old Guard and the New.
'I'm going to wire Tom,' said Fielding, 'and tell him I want to move on straight away.'
'Why not do as he says? He must have his reasons for asking.'
They turned about, both of them unconsciously using the standard parade-ground drill for the purpose, each in perfect time with the other, and marched slowly back along the portico.
'I suspect his reasons are too similar to yours in telling me to go home. I must move on quickly before they stop me altogether. If I get up enough momentum, they won't be able to. What was that?'
'What was what?'
'Something moved. Just behind us in that doorway.'
They checked and turned, again with military precision. The door to which Fielding now pointed was locked; just to one side of it was a statue of a boy with a flute, ears pricked, eyes leering along the pipes, legs crossed daintily half-way up the shin. Something about the full lips, as they curved over the flute, something about the firm but tenderly dented chin, made Fielding shiver all down his body.
'You're jumping at shadows,' Detterling said as they resumed their march.
'It was that boy's face. I... recognised it as we passed.'
'Of course you did. It's one of a thousand copies. Now then. If you're so set on going on with this business, I know a way you can get up momentum, as you put it, while obeying Llewellyn's instructions at the same time. You remember I told you I knew someone who might help?'
'Yes.'
'Well, just now he's on the island of Hydra. Two hours from the Piraeus by boat. You can go there for the day, tomorrow if you like, and be back for dinner. I may as well come too. Introduce you and all that'
'Who is it?'
'He's called Max de Freville.'
'The gambler?'
'Right He used to run a very big chummy game in London.'
'Then ran into trouble and came to live abroad with what he had left?'
'Which wasn't peanuts. Yes,' said Detterling,
'that's the chap. I think, though, he's now got some idea of starting a casino out here, if they'll let him. He's bored with doing nothing.'
'How can he help me?'
'He had a kind of hobby. He used to pay informants all over Europe to let him know what was going on behind the scenes. His own private intelligence service ... very expensive. In the end, it became such an obsession that it nearly beggared him ... only he had the sense to pack it all in and move out while there was still time.'
They turned about
'Some three years ago,' Detterling went on, 'just before he left London for good, Max had a kind of boasting fit and told me a lot of what he'd learnt over the years. He was being pretty wild that evening, but some of it was true all right, and some of it was in much the same area as this enquiry of yours. That could be true too.'
'Can you remember it?'
'Not in any detail. But I dare say Max can, and now he's had three years to calm down in, what he says should be worth listening to.'
'I don't suppose he could... protect me?'
'He can tell you who to stay away from. He might even know of possible allies. I gather he still does a bit of nosing about... as far as he can afford it.'
'And then,' mused Fielding, 'if he did give me a useful line, I could tell Tom I was really on to something and go right ahead—whether he liked it or not.'
'But would the BBC go on paying?'
The BBC is very generous. They paid handsome expenses cash down and also an advance of fifty per cent on my full fee.'
They might tell you to apply these resources in some other direction.'
They might but I shan't. They got me into this and the least they can do is to let me see it through. Hydra tomorrow then?'
'Hydra tomorrow. I'll wire Max to expect us.'
They marched away across the Agora. The boy with the flute piped silently on as the lock turned in the door beside him and a face almost as still as his own looked out after the two retreating Englishmen.
'Darling,' said Isobel Stern to Gregory over their breakfast, 'I was right.'
'You're sure?'
'Either that, or I'm very, very late, which I never have been before.'
Then our son will be born at Christmas.'
'Don't go getting ideas,' Isobel said.
Above the little harbour of Hydra the plain but handsome white houses, built by the pirate captains of old, rise by steep tiers into the hills. In one such house, about a quarter of a mile above the northern wing of the harbour. Max de Freville put down his binoculars and said:
'They're just setting off the boat'
'Let me look,' said Angela Tuck.
Angela was not Max's mistress but his comrade. For some years now they had spent much of their time together because they enjoyed taking care of each other. Although they often shared the same bed, they merely held hands in it, as innocent as the Babes in the Wood.
'I can recognise Detterling,' Angela said now, 'by the walk. As though he was wearing spurs. And there's a man with him dressed In the most ghastly suit and one of those homburgs. Are you sure that's Fielding Gray?'
'That's what the telegram said. I've never met him. How long since you did?'
'Seventeen years.'
'Well then, of course he's changed. And he's been badly disfigured, or so they tell me.'
'It's not that. He's got so fat, so coarse.'
'So have you,' said Max. 'Let's go down and meet them.'
They went through a little courtyard, out of a door and into an alleyway, along the alleyway and then down a flight of steps. At the bottom of the steps Detterling was consulting a surly islander, who was withholding information against the sight of money, while his companion in the homburg stood hunched against a wall. Max, pleased with this little piece of genre, screwed up the great furrows between his nostrils and the corners of his mouth in an expression which, intended for a smile, more nearly resembled the mask of tragedy.
'Welcome, old friend,' he boomed.
The islander slunk off, Detterling and his companion turned, saw Angela, removed their hats.
'Your hair,' cried Angela to Fielding; at least you've kept your hair.'
Fielding looked blankly at the large-limbed woman with the raddled, sexy face.
'It's been a long time.' said Angela, resigned to not being recognised but nevertheless sad. That summer in 1945. When me and Tuck had that house near yours in Brough' ton.'
Fielding shook his head, not in denial but in rejection. He knew this woman now; he remembered the summer of 1945 quite as clearly as she did; and most clearly of all he remembered that she had done him harm.
'I know, I know,' said Angela, reading his thought. She came down the steps and took his hand. 'We'll talk about that later,' she said. 'First of all, drinkies.'
Max and Detterling, who had been conferring together, started to loiter up the steps. Angela turned to follow them but Fielding took her arm and drew her back.
'It was all over long ago,' he said: 'no need to talk about it.'
'As you wish,' She put up her hand and quickly touched his hair, 'I was just sorry that you were brooding about it after all this time. I don't want it to spoil your visit.
Fielding shrugged.
'We're taking the afternoon boat back to Athens.' he said, and led off after the couple in front. Detterling now introduced him formally to Max, who looked him over sharply for a second or two, and then remarked:
'Angela was very excited when she heard you were coming. You mustn't disappoint her.'
Before Fielding could think of a suitable reply, Max had turned back to Detterling.
'So I went to Rhodes first,' he said, 'but the authorities wouldn't hear of a casino there. Corfu, I knew, is just about to be fixed up anyway. So in the end I thought it might be worth taking a look round here.'
They all went through the courtyard, Angela several paces behind the three men.
'Surely,' Detterling was saying, 'if they do grant a concession here, they'll want a Greek to run it'
'I know one who can front for me. An old chum called Lykiadopoulos. But somehow I don't think Hydra is right. Crowded in the summer, they say, but mostly with the arty set. All they bring to a casino is trouble.'
They trooped through a large living-room and out on to a terrace which looked south over the harbour. The steamer which had brought Fielding and Detterling was now beating busily away to the south-west for Spetsai and the Argolid. As he looked across the wrinkled sea to the coast of the mainland, Fielding saw that clouds were beginning to rise, somewhere, it must be, in the direction of Nauplion. A line of Virgil came into his head: moriens dulces reminiscitur Argos; dying, he remembers his sweet Argos. Leonard Percival walked on to the terrace.
'Morning, all,' he said. And to Fielding: 'Nice to see you again.'
Max introduced Percival to Detterling: Angela moved efficiently about with drinks and then went inside, muttering about the kitchen. Max and Detterling had already resumed their conversation about concessions, while Percival had seated himself in a canvas chair at the far end of the terrace and began to polish his glasses. Fielding came and stood accusingly over him.
'What are you doing here?' he said.
'I'm an old friend,' said Percival lightly. 'De Freville and I enjoy exchanging gossip, you might say. So being in this part of the world, and knowing he was too ... I'm delighted you've decided to join us. You've come to the right place.'
'What's that to you?'
'I am your sincere well-wisher,' said Percival, 'as you should have realised by now. I've already taken the liberty of telling Max about your assignment. You'll find him very helpful ... if you're polite.'
'I've come here as Detterling's friend and on his suggestion. I didn't need you to interfere.'
'My pleasure ... I was sorry to bear you had such an unpleasant time in Yugoslavia. All right now, I trust?'
'No thanks to you if I am.'
'Come, come. I warned you, didn't I?'
&n
bsp; 'You should have warned me properly, told me to get off the train. You knew what was going to happen?'
'In broad terms. Rather an imaginative scheme, we thought when we found out about it, and very apt. You see, they wanted you out of the way for good, and the longer no one knew it was you, the better. So their idea was,' said Percival with loving appreciation, 'to dispose of you in a remote district of a barbarous country, in such a way that you would be quite unrecognisable, and to make sure that your passport was nowhere around to identify you.'
They don't seem to have been too clever about that. My passport was found soon enough.'
'Enthusiastic amateurs, that's their trouble. No attention to detail.'
'Who are ''they''? Cypriots, I suppose. And who are you for that matter?'
' "They'',' said Percival, 'are people who resent you sticking your nose in where it isn't wanted. We, on the other hand, are anxious that it should not be cut off, as we are hoping you will sniff out delicious truffles.'
'Then why did you bloody near let me get killed?'
'We wanted to make sure you were the right kind of man for our purpose. We had to know two things. One: were you a chap that would get cold feet at the first hint of danger? That was why I gave you a tip-off, told you to stay out of trouble and stick to your novels and so on—to see how you'd react. And true to your Dragoon upbringing, you didn't seize your luggage and run, you sat there on your arsehole and scowled. Good for you, chum. At the same time, you were cautious enough (quite rightly) to ask what could best be done, and this brings us to the second thing we had to find out. Granted you weren't the kind to scuttle away in a panic, were you competent to take care of yourself? Because if not, you were no use to us. So I was instructed to give you enough information to put you on the alert but not enough to let you know what was coming. All that palaver about restaurant-cars was to make sure you were awake and mobile about the time the trouble started. We owed you that, but the rest was up to you.'
'And have I passed your test?'
'You're still here, aren't you?'
'And if I'd failed?'