When we had finished our coffee, Kondylakes returned our passports and the Port Captain handed Bert the ship’s papers. They were free to sail when they wished. Back at the boat, I threw some clothes into my suitcase and by the time I was ready to leave, Kotiadis was waiting for me on the quay, his battered Renault backed up to the gangplank.
It was shortly after two when we drove out of Pylos, following the coast road that took a wide sweep round Navarino Bay, and then up into the hills, with Kotiadis talking all the time about his country’s ancient history. He was a compulsive, explosive talker, his English interspersed with French and Greek words, and his enthusiasm for Greek antiquities was genuine. All the way up through the Peloponnese he was talking and driving fast, using his horn on the bends.
We crossed to the mainland of Greece by the ferry that plies the narrows separating the two gulfs of Patras and Corinth. By then the sun had set and we stopped the night at the ancient port of Navpaktos. It was here, after our meal, that I faced the questions I had been expecting. We were sitting under the plane trees in the square and Kotiadis was talking about his early life on the island of Crete where he had been born.
His family had owned a small vineyard, growing grapes for the raisin trade, but when the Germans invaded in 1941, he had left to join the guerrillas in the mountains. The air in the square was soft, and below us lay the medieval harbour, a circle of still, dark water surrounded by massive stone walls that had been built at the same time as the castle piled on the hill above us. Beyond the black curve of the harbour wall, the Gulf of Corinth lay serene and pale under the moon. The serenity of the scene was almost unreal in contrast to the story of hatred, violence and sudden death revealed by Kotiadis in staccato English.
The tide of liberation had swept him across to Athens and the picture he drew of a young man flung into a political maelstrom made my own background seem humdrum by comparison. In Athens he had been involved in yet more killing, this time his own people. ‘The Communist organization ELAS,’ he said. ‘I hate Communists.’ We had been drinking coffee and ouzo and the tone of his voice was suddenly quite violent. ‘You are lucky. You do not experience civil war. To kill Germans because they invade your country—that is good, that is natural. But war between men of the same race, that is terrible.’ He sighed and tossed back the remains of his ouzo. ‘We are a very political peoples—very excitable. It is the climate, the chaleur. In summer we play with our beads, we try to soothe our nerves, and then we explode like the storm cloud. That is why politics are so dangerous in Greece.’ He leaned towards me. ‘Have you seen a father kill his own son, deliberately and in cold blood?’ He nodded, his eyes staring, bloodshot with cigarette smoke. ‘I have. The boy was a Communist. And when it was done the father threw himself down on the boy’s body, kissing his cheek and weeping. That is la guerre civile. I don’t like. That is why you are here with me now. For us a man like Dr Van der Voort can be dangerous. He is a Communist and if we do not find him—’
‘That’s not true,’ I protested. ‘He hasn’t been a Communist—’
‘Ah, so you admit he was a Communist?’
‘Yes. As a student. But not after 1940.’
‘Óhi, óhi.’ He made a negative movement with his fingers. ‘Après la guerre—long after, he is travelling in Russia, accepting money from the Soviet government, writing books for publication in Moscow and information for their scientific journals. Why does he do that if he is not a Communist?’
‘That was years ago,’ I said. ‘Since about 1959 he’s been working entirely on his own.’
‘How do you know? You tell Kondylakes you do not see him for eight years.’
I repeated what Gilmore had said, but it made no difference. ‘Once a man is a Communist, he does not change because of a little brutality in Hungary. Communism is the creed of the proletariat, and the proletariat represents man at his most brutal.’
‘He wouldn’t have seen it that way,’ I said. ‘For him Hungary would have come as a terrible shock. Anyway,’ I added, ‘I’m certain he isn’t a Communist now.’
‘That is not my information.’ He summoned the boy from the kaféneion across the road and ordered more ouzo, ‘Not only have the Russians financed his expeditions in the Soviet Union, but also in Turkey. You know we have been invaded by Turkey since six centuries. We do not like the Turks, and he was in Cyprus when the troubles begin.’ And after that he sat, silent and morose, until the boy came running with a tray loaded with bottles and glasses. He drank half a tumbler of water and then said, ‘Now, tell me about yourself. Particularly about your relations with Dr Van der Voort. I wish to understand please.’
The interrogation seemed to last endlessly, with him probing and probing as though I were trying to conceal from him some obvious truth. But in the end he gave it up, or else he just became bored. It was already past eleven, and shortly afterwards we left the square and walked back to the hotel. It had been an exhausting two hours, and even when I was in bed, his belligerent, staccato English continued drumming in my head.
Next morning I was called at six-thirty and we left early, driving back the way we had come to rejoin the main road, which ran west to the swamps of Missolonghi. ‘Do you read your poet Byron in England now?’ Kotiadis asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Not at school?’ He shook his head at me sadly. ‘Here in Missolonghi he has his headquarters for the struggle to liberate Greece from the Turks. Here he dies. He never saw the liberation. But in Greece we remember Byron. Why do you not remember him?’
I had no answer to that, and Missolonghi looked a miserable place. The road swung north to Agrinion and then down to the shores of the great inland sea that I remembered from the chart—the Gulf of Amvrakikos. And all the time, slices of history mingled with questions, and the sun getting hotter. As we swung away from the gulf we came to a road junction signposted Preveza to the left, Arta and Jannina to the right. We turned right, climbing again, and there were peasants on the road and in the fields.
‘Beyond Jannina we shall be very near the frontier with Albánia.’ He said it with strong emphasis on the second ‘a’ as though he hated the place. ‘Albánia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria—all the north of our country is a border with Communist territory and it is from these Communist territories Dr Van der Voort comes with his expedition. You know the Red Army is holding manœuvres in Bulgaria, all the Warsaw Pact forces? And their fleet is in our waters, in the Aegean.’ He was staring at me, his cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘Don’t you think it strange that he should come into our country from Macedonia at this exact moment?’
‘I doubt whether he gave it a thought.’
‘You think he does not know there is trouble coming again between the Arabs and the Jews?’
‘Another Israeli-Egyptian war?’
‘You do not read the papers—listen to the radio?’
‘I don’t speak Greek,’ I reminded him.
‘But Dr Van der Voort does.’
‘He wouldn’t be interested.’
‘No?’
‘A mind like his,’ I said, ‘dedicated to the work that has been his whole life—’
‘Phui! He is trained by the Russians and he has been in Greece before.’
We were still climbing, the road snaking through bare hills with a great deal of rock. With every mile we were driving deeper and deeper into the heart of Greece, and further away from Preveza and the sea.
‘When is he in Greece before, do you know?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
He nodded. ‘Of course, you do not see him for eight years. So how can you know he was here last year. He arrived on 4th April, in Kérkira—what you call Corfu.’ He sounded his horn and thrust past a truck loaded with reeds, a blind bend just ahead. ‘Last year he is alone, and for three months he is wandering by himself in the Ionian islands, particularly Levkas, and he is on Meganisi, where he lives for some days at the village of Vatahori. He has a tent with him and a rucksack, and then f
or almost two weeks there is no trace of him. Next I find him at limáni Levkas—the port, you understand—and afterwards he walks from Preveza towards Jannina, along the way we are driving now, talking to people, climbing to the tops of the hills, wandering down dry river beds as though he is looking for gold, and all the time he is making notes and drawing little plans. Why, if he is not an agent?’
‘He’s a palæontologist,’ I said wearily. ‘He was looking for bones.’
‘Bones?’ He stared at me, his eyebrows lifted, and I found myself in the difficult position of trying to explain my father’s work. If I had said old Greek coins, or bronze statuettes, he would probably have understood, but searching for bones and worked flints, for traces of early man, was beyond his comprehension. ‘The only proper study in my country is the great civilization of Ancient Greece. Nothing else is important.’ And he went on to say that he had traced Dr Van der Voort to a village called Ayios Giorgios. ‘There we lose track of him again, nothing for a whole month.’
‘You seem to have followed his movements very closely.’
‘Of course. That is why I am at Methoni when you arrive. At Methoni he take a caique north along the coast. But it all happened a year ago, so it is difficult to follow him with exact dates. About the middle of August he take the caique—to Levkas again.’ He muttered something to himself in Greek. ‘Why does he go back to Levkas? And he is on that island more than a month. Why?’ he demanded excitedly.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Levkas, Kérkira, Cephalonia, all those Ionian islands—seven of them—are under a British Protectorate for fifty years. Turkey and France held them for a short time. For centuries before they are Venetian. Is that why he goes back to Levkas—because they are more vulnerable politically?’
‘He wasn’t interested in politics.’
‘No? Then why does he return to the islands? He is there all last September. What is his particular interest in Levkas?’ He was staring at me again, ignoring the road, so that we touched the verge.
‘I tell you, I don’t know.’
‘You know nothing about him.’ He hit the steering wheel angrily. ‘But all the time you say he is not any more a Communist.’
‘Yes.’
‘How can you be sure? He is like a stranger to you.’ By then his patience was wearing thin. ‘Why did he attack this Cartwright?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And to draw attention to himself by disappearing—he is either a very stupid man … What do you think?’ And when I didn’t say anything, he turned his head, staring at me angrily. ‘You are not being co-operative.’
‘I can only tell you what I know. I was never interested in his expeditions.’
‘But you come to Greece. Why? Why you come now?’
He had put this question to me before. He seemed to sense that this was the weak point, and it worried me. ‘I tell you, to find out what’s happened to him.’ I closed my eyes wearily. It was hot in the car, the smell of his Greek cigarettes strong and acrid.
The road swung away from Arta, and a few kilometres further on we came to a reservoir with the arched remains of an old aqueduct at the far end. He slowed the car where a dirt track turned off to the right. ‘That is the road to Ayios Giorgios—what you call St George. See the hole in the hill up there?’ He pointed to a natural bridge spanning a rock outcrop high on the hillside. Blue sky showed through the gap. ‘Here is one of many places in the Eastern Mediterranean where St George is supposed to slay the dragon; that is the hole his lance makes.’ And as we gathered speed again, he said, ‘Now, if last year he comes to Ayios Giorgios to examine the Roman ruins of that aqueduct I would understand, for it is a part of history. At the entrance to the Gulf of Amvrakikos, at Aktion, close by Preveza, is where Caesar Augustus defeated Anthony and Cleopatra. To celebrate his victory he built the city of Nikopolis and to provide water for Nikopolis he builds that aqueduct. It is a very long aqueduct, nearly fifty kilometres.’
We were into the valley now, a river flowing fast below us and high rocky slopes enclosing us in. The valley was cool and green, trees growing by the water, and the grass of the hills not yet seared by the sun’s heat. There was peace and a timeless quality, and for a moment I forgot about Kotiadis and the future.
‘Do you know when Dr Van der Voort first come to Greece?’
‘Last year you said.’
‘Óhi óhi.’ He shook his head violently. ‘When he first come is what I ask.’
I tried to remember whether Gilmore had said anything about previous visits, but my mind was a blank.
‘You do not know?’
‘No.’
He seemed resigned to my inability to help him, for he gave a little shrug. ‘My information is that he is here in 1965—you think that is possible?’
I remembered then that Holroyd had said something about a visit in 1965. ‘Since his new theories involved the Central Mediterranean it’s highly likely,’ I said. ‘But I was at sea then and we were out of touch.’
‘You never write letters to your father?’
‘No.’
He sighed and offered me one of his evil-smelling cigarettes. ‘Perhaps when you have talked with Cartwright …’ He flicked his lighter and after that he filled me in on what had happened after the old man had gone off in the Land-Rover, talking and driving with the cigarette in his mouth and his eyes half-closed against the smoke.
Cartwright had gone into Jannina the following morning on the village bus accompanied by Hans Winters, and in searching for a doctor, they had stumbled on the Land-Rover. As soon as he had had his wrist strapped up, Cartwright had airmailed a report to Holroyd, and they had then driven round the town, questioning bus drivers, garages, hotels and tavernas without success. The next day they had stayed in camp and it was not until the morning of March 17 that they had informed the police in Jannina. They were then very short of petrol and by the time London had cabled them additional funds, the security police had taken over. ‘That is when I go to Despotiko to interrogate them. Maybe it is true that they don’t know where Van der Voort is. But I don’t want any more archæologists disappearing, so I confine them to the area of their camp with a guard to see that they stay there.’
‘You got nothing out of Cartwright?’
‘No. Nothing that interested me.’ And after that he drove in silence as we passed through Jannina, still heading north. And now that we were nearing the end of our journey, I wondered whether I would do any better, whether Cartwright would give me some sort of explanation.
About twenty minutes later we turned right on to a dirt road that was signposted Despotiko. The village was on the shoulder of a hill, a huddle of nondescript buildings round a central square with the tiled roofs of older houses sloping into the valley below. We stopped beside an army truck parked outside the taverna and Kotiadis got out to have a word with two young soldiers sitting on a bench in the sun drinking Coca-Cola.
‘Cartwright and Winters have gone up to the cave,’ he said as he got back into the driving seat. ‘It is about one kilometre beyond the camp.’ And he added, ‘His sister has arrived here.’
‘Whose sister?’ I asked, but I could guess the answer.
‘The Dutch boy’s,’ he said and started the engine.
We took a cobbled alleyway that ran out into bare rock as the houses thinned, the Renault in low gear and lurching on the steep slope, scattering hens from its path. The track led down to a stream and finished at a communal wash-house where women were busy slapping and kneading clothes on flat rocks at the water’s edge. Two donkeys stood with dripping wooden water casks strapped to their backs, while a boy filled the last cask from a natural fountain gushing from a rock. There was a Land-Rover parked where the track narrowed to a path, and as we drew up beside it, two pigs, long and russet-coloured like wild boars, eyed us from the edge of the stream where they lay wallowing in the sun.
The chatter of the women died as we got out of the car. Kotiadis said someth
ing to them in Greek and the music of their laughter mingled with the tinkling noise of water running over stones. ‘Now we walk.’ And he led the way along the path, which followed the stream. Old olive trees twined gnarled branches over our heads, their trunks dark against the green of close-cropped grass, the white of cyclamens. In the distance, goat bells tinkled, and in a clearing ahead, a glint of orange marked the camp.
There were three small sleeping tents, all orange, and one blue mess tent. Some clothes hung on a line and smoke drifted up from a stone fireplace with a blackened iron pot on it. It was such a beautiful, peaceful place, with the sun dappling the grass through the grey leaves of the olives and the cool sound of the water, that it was difficult to imagine two men coming to blows here. I thought I saw a movement in the mess tent, a figure standing in the shadows. But Kotiadis went straight past the camp and I followed him, wondering why she was here, what her brother would have told her.
The olive trees ceased and we could see the valley then with the hills on either side running back to a blue vista of distant peaks. We were walking on a carpet of thyme, oleanders by the water and the slope above us patched with a bright pattern of early spring flowers. The air was full of an unbelievable scent.
Kotiadis pointed to a gaping brown wound in the hillside ahead. ‘That is where they dig.’ He halted suddenly. I thought it was to get his breath, but then he said, ‘Why does a man attack his assistant when they are already together almost one whole month? Have you thought of that? Why not the day before, or the week before?’ He was staring up at the brown gash. ‘I tell you why.’ He turned and faced me. ‘Because that night Cartwright is telephoning to Athens from the taverna.’
‘What about?’
He shrugged. ‘That is for you to discover. Some friend of his, an archæologist. That is what he says. Myself, I think it is then he discovered that Dr Van der Voort is a Communist.’
If his long face hadn’t looked so serious I would have thought he was joking. ‘You’ve got Communism on the brain,’ I said angrily. I was thinking of all he had told me, how the old man had walked this area of Greece alone, going out to the island of Levkas again and again. And before that in the Sicilian islands, in Pantelleria and North Africa. For four years since 1965, he had been searching, desperately searching, using up every penny he possessed, and all Kotiadis could think of was Communism. ‘If he were a Communist, why the hell do you think he’d want to bury himself up here in this lonely valley?’
Levkas Man Page 8