Greece is a man’s country and this is especially true of the islands and old-fashioned codes of behaviour still apply. A man does not take his wife to the taverna. He goes there to drink with his friends in what is essentially a man’s world and any woman—which usually means tourist—who invades that world, must expect to be looked upon as fair game.
On the other hand, the plain fact was that most women of the type who were there that night, rich, bored, eager for excitement, knew the rules of the game to a nicety and if their present aim in life was to find themselves flat on their backs in the sand under some muscular specimen off a sponge boat, then that was all right by me.
Loukas, the police sergeant, was seated on a wooden stool at the very end of the long bar talking to Alexias Papas, the manager. They were drinking ouzo and helping themselves from a plate of mezes which had been placed between them. Scraps of fetta cheese, whitebait, chopped octopus and similar delicacies. Definitely, an acquired taste and certainly not mine.
Papas noticed me at once and waved. “Ah, Mr. Savage, I was hoping you would come in. Mr. Kytros is back. He would like a word with you.”
“Here I am,” I said.
“Good.” He put a bottle of Fix on the bar which is a very passable beer they produce in Athens. “I will tell him you are here.”
The beer was ice-cold which is the way they always serve it in Greece, even in the winter. Very refreshing, but I needed something stronger. I swallowed it down and Sergeant Loukas filled a spare glass with ouzo and pushed it across.
“You will join me, Mr. Savage?”
I didn’t care for the stuff, but to refuse would be like insulting the Greek national flag. He was a small, insignificant-looking man in a shabby, sun-bleached khaki uniform. He badly needed a shave and there was an expression of settled melancholy on the narrow face. Nothing about him impressed, not even the automatic in its black leather holster on his belt.
And yet there had to be more to him than this, for according to Yanni he had been an area commander with the old E.O.K.A. in Crete during the German occupation. A man with an awesome reputation who had stayed one step ahead of the Gestapo for the entire war.
He smiled gently, this quiet little man, this simple island policeman who must have cut an untold number of throats in his day.
“How are things, Mr. Savage? For you, not so good, I think.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’m surviving.”
“I am happy to hear it.” He swallowed another of the tiny glasses of ouzo and stood up, making no attempt to straighten his uniform.
“Making your rounds?”
He nodded. “Perhaps I will look in later. We have another drink together, eh?”
“I wouldn’t bother,” I said as laughter roared out at the other end of the bar and a glass broke. “They’ll have burned the place down by then.”
He smiled politely as if not understanding and then the smile widened. “But of course, you are joking. The British are always joking. I remember this from the war.”
“Irish,” I said.
“The same thing, is it not so?”
He saluted and moved off which was as well. One hell of an exit line and there were places I knew where they’d have had the arms and legs off him for making a remark like that.
I helped myself to another ouzo. Funny, but it was beginning to taste better already, then Papas appeared and lifted the flap for me to go through to the rear.
Yanni Kytros met me at the door of his office and embraced me like some long lost brother. “Good to see you, Jack. Good to see you.”
Which meant that he wanted something. “It’s going to cost you, whatever it is,” I told him.
There was a small bar in one corner. He went behind it, produced a fresh bottle of Jameson and almost filled a shot glass.
“There you are, Jack, a drop of the Paddy, isn’t that what you call it?”
“Now I know you want something.”
He smiled, that beautifully self-deprecating smile of his, and lit one of his Turkish cigarettes. “I only arrived this afternoon, but from what I hear, you aren’t doing too well. On the other hand, what can you expect. Who needs real sponges these days? A dying trade.”
“What have you got to offer that’s any better?”
“Rum,” he said. “They are paying a lot for rum on the black market in Turkey these days.”
“They’ve also got a very old-fashioned attitude towards people who break the law,” I said. “They not only put them away for rather lengthy periods. They throw in hard labour as a bonus.”
“I’m not asking you to land, Jack. You rendezvous with a Turkish fishing boat five miles out on the other side of Nisiros. They’ll transfer your cargo and off you go. Nothing could be simpler.”
“How much?”
“A thousand dollars plus expenses.”
Which was more than I could make in a month and he knew it. “All right, when do I go?”
“Tomorrow night,” he said. “I’ll give you details later.” He grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. “Nothing to it, Jack. Just like falling off a log.”
“Then why don’t you go and save yourself some money?”
He laughed heartily and pushed the bottle of Jameson across. “You’ll be the death of me, Jack. Here, take this. Go and enjoy yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll talk some more then.”
It was noisier than ever when I went back in. Three bouzoukis were going full blast and half a dozen couples were dancing in the cleared area in the centre of the floor. I got a glass from the bar on the way through and found myself a table. I wasn’t ready to leave yet. Time for that when I was too drunk to think straight, or think at all.
Ciasim came in through the entrance like a strong wind, paused, his eyes scanning the room, and saw me. He came through the crowd in a straight line, shrugging people to one side carelessly, a grin on his face.
He produced an envelope and waved it in my face as he sat down. “My licence, Jack. My licence to work the wreck. It’s come through. Loukas saw me when I got in.”
“Good for you.” I shoved the bottle across. “Help yourself.”
He reached for someone’s glass from the next table, emptied its contents on the floor and filled it with whiskey. Down it went. He closed his eyes in bliss and smiled as he opened them again.
“Maybe you change your mind now, Jack?”
I shook my head. “Not a chance. You don’t need me. I’d be no good to you.”
His face was grave. There was sympathy there—real sympathy. “So, you meant what you said. It is that bad, eh?”
“I’m afraid so.” I filled my glass again and shoved the bottle back to him. “To you, Ciasim. Good luck and no foul-ups.”
The glass went to my lips and stayed there. Aleko was standing in the entrance, wearing, for some obscure reason, his bosun’s outfit again. Everyone was looking at him, astonished at the sheer brute size of the man, and the clothes rounded things off nicely, so that he looked capable of clearing the place out on his own if the need arose.
Sara Hamilton moved in to join him. She stood there full of the arrogant assurance of her kind as if totally unaware that everyone in the place was looking at her. Her eyes found me, moved on with never a sign and Aleko took her by the elbow and led her to a table at the edge of the dance floor. Papas himself hurried to serve them.
“In the name of heaven, who is she?” Ciasim demanded.
“I would have thought that was obvious,” I said. “The most beautiful woman in the world.”
The drink talking? No—no, the truth for once. The great admission. She was into every part of me, every fibre of my being and the final irony was that I had lost her.
Ciasim, as if realising the situation, or at least the essence of it, handled me like a master.
“My luck is turning, Jack,” he said. “Now we eat. Good food, good wine, all on me.”
And eat we did. Bourtheto, a speciality from Corfu, his fav
orite Greek dish, which was fish cooked with lots of onions and all the red pepper in the world. To wash it down, a couple of bottles of Demestica and Ciasim finished it off with baclavas, a sweet made from sheets of pastry stuffed with nuts and soaked with honey.
I had never seen him drunk although he was half-way there that night. “Now I feel like a man again,” he told me at one point. “All I need is a woman. That one for preference.”
He pointed across the floor to a buxom German lady of forty or so with short blonde hair and good breasts. She was sitting with two other women and didn’t seem particularly put out by Ciasim’s obvious interest.
“Now that’s my kind of woman, Jack. What a body and the backside—magnificent. Something for a man to get hold of there.”
“You’ll need to be good,” I said. “From the look of her she’s just getting her second wind.”
He laughed uproariously so that people turned to look and slapped the table. “Jack, I love you. Like a brother I love you. Now I go and dance with her. I rub her belly a little and see what happens.”
He got to his feet, the most magnificent rogue I’ve ever known and looking it, every inch of him, swayed there for a moment, then plunged across the floor. The German woman was fast in his arms before she knew what was happening.
By now I was in no pain. The Jameson had nearly all gone which was quite extraordinary, even when you took Ciasim’s bottomless thirst into account. I emptied the bottle deliberately into my glass and glanced across the room. Sara was watching me, a serious expression on her face. No, it was more than that. She looked genuinely concerned. But then the mother in most women floats to the top at the drop of a hat.
I toasted her gravely, then emptied my glass, spilling no more than half of its contents down my shirt front. She looked away, Aleko frowned and said something to her. She nodded, they got up and started to dance.
By then I was feeling good and sorry for myself. Aleko danced surprisingly well for such a big man and she moved like an angel, gazing through people like glass, the mouth hooked up at one side into that expression of perpetual scorn. I closed my eyes, inhaling that perfume of hers, or the memory of it. When I opened them again, there was trouble.
nine
FUGUE IN TIME
The man who had pushed his way through the crowd was not Aleko’s size, but he was big enough. He was also good and drunk as were the group of half a dozen or so that he had left at the bar. His name was Andrew something-or-other. Big Andrew, they called him. He was captain of a congoa and had served a term of imprisonment on the mainland for stabbing a man in a fight.
It seemed he fancied his chances with Sara, but Aleko simply shrugged him off and continued dancing. Andrew tried again, grabbed him by the shoulder this time so violently that Aleko’s shirt ripped. I waited along with everyone else in the silence which followed, for Aleko to break his jaw. Instead, he and the girl walked back to their table.
Andrew gave him a kick up the backside and Aleko went staggering forward to sprawl across the table. Everything was grinding to a halt now, the music dying in anticipation of the slaughter to come. What happened then was one of the most surprising things I have ever seen in my life.
Andrew went in on the run as Aleko started to turn, deciding, I suppose, that his only hope was to get in first, or perhaps he had some inkling of what was to follow. In any event, as he got close, Aleko put his hands up defensively and cried out in fear.
A lot of things made sense to me then as the big man cowered back in his chair. The outfit he was wearing that made him look like a hard-line bosun or some bucko mate off a sailing ship, were all a front, a defensive mechanism to hide the true state of affairs which was quite simply that in spite of his enormous size and strength, physical violence or its prospect, frightened him to death.
Andrew stood there looking at him, hands on hips. Then he started to laugh, turned and made an obscene remark to his friends. He followed this with what, in the circumstances, was the supreme insult. He patted Aleko on the cheek as if he were a child and told him not to worry. That he wasn’t going to hurt him. Sara Hamilton tossed the contents of her glass right into his face.
Island Greeks are very like Sicilians in one major respect. Humiliation in public by a woman is unthinkable. The most deadly insult imaginable. So he did what was to him, the obvious thing. He slapped her in the face, so hard that she lost her balance and fell back against the table.
All the frustration, the pent-up rage at the whole lousy world, burst through to the surface. I crossed the dance floor in two quick strides and delivered a thoroughly dirty punch to his kidneys with everything I had.
He gave a cry of pain they must have heard on the other side of the island, his body jerking and turning in time to get my right fist in the mouth. I followed it with my knee delivered well below the belt and he went down like a tree falling.
A woman screamed in the silence that followed. I was aware of Aleko’s face frozen like marble and then Sara was very close, brushing the hair from her brow, so fierce.
“What are you trying to do?” she demanded. “Commit suicide?”
“I love you,” I said. “I just wanted you to know that. Anyway the package comes, you’re the girl for me. Now, this minute, tonight. Tomorrow can go to hell its own way.”
She turned pale as if in shock and then she smiled, all the way down to her toes. And as quickly, that smile faded as she glanced beyond her shoulder.
When I turned, there were five of them moving in a semicircle. All good friends of Big Andrew and distressed to see him on the floor like that. Hard, rough men as sailors of any kind tend to be and with drink taken. It didn’t look too good, particularly when one of them picked up a bottle and smashed it across the edge of the bar.
There was a stampede to the door by a proportion of the customers and if I’d had any sense I’d have been there with them, but I was too drunk for that kind of logic. Whatever happened, I couldn’t run. Not in front of her.
I grabbed Aleko by the shoulder and pulled him up. “Go on, get her out of here.”
He seemed confused and dazed, unable to think straight. She pushed him out of the way and said fiercely, “Not without you, Savage.”
But by then I had no choice for the entrance was jammed with people. “Too late to run, angel,” I told her and turned to meet the enemy. “Come on, you bastards, let’s be having you.”
The whiskey coursed through my bloodstream, inflating my head like a balloon. I was ten feet tall, I could take on the whole damned world. The man with the bottle came in first. When he was close enough, I kicked a chair at him and gave him the other foot in the face as he fell.
A moment later and the other four swarmed over me. A fist grazed my cheek, another landed hard under my ribs. I started to go down in a flurry of punches, then quite suddenly the man immediately in front of me was plucked out of the way and catapulted into the crowd.
Ciasim Divalni was roaring with laughter. He poleaxed another of the fishermen with a hammer blow delivered with his clenched fist and lashed out with his foot, sending a third staggering across the bar.
Which was when it turned nasty for Ciasim was a Turk and this was Greece and no Greek worth his salt was going to stand by and see a Turk walk all over his fellow countrymen. There were angry cries and at least half a dozen men moved out of the crowd shouting threats.
“This doesn’t look too good,” I said to Ciasim as we backed towards the kitchen area.
He didn’t seem to be able to stop laughing. “What a night, Jack, I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in years. As for my hausfrau.” He kissed his fingers. “Her belly scalded me through her dress. I shall make love to her all night. All night, I tell you. Who needs sleep?”
He picked up a chair, smashed it across a table and wielded one leg like a club. “Come on, Greek pigs,” he cried.
Which was not the wisest thing he could have said. There was a roar like an angry sea and half the crowd decided to join in,
but so did Yanni Kytros. I’d been wondering what had happened to him.
There was one hell of a bang and lead shot spattered the ceiling. Everybody froze and Yanni came round the end of the bar clutching a Winchester automatic shotgun. He looked as genial as usual except around the eyes. The crowd didn’t need telling twice. People started to fade rapidly, some returning to their tables, others leaving altogether.
Yanni tucked the shotgun under his arm and turned to me with a sigh. “The art of enjoying oneself, my dear Jack, lies partly in knowing when to stop. Please remember that in future.”
Trust him to have the last word.
There was no sign of Sara Hamilton or Aleko by the time I’d finished with Yanni Kytros, but Ciasim’s hausfrau, as he rather unkindly called her, was hovering near the door. He went off with her, an arm about that ample waist. Suddenly, I was alone.
The waiters and kitchen staff had already cleared the debris, the bouzoukis were playing and strangely enough, no one seemed to be even looking at me. I was the one on the outside looking in again.
I left and walked along the waterfront to the jetty and as the effects of the whiskey started to wear off, I began to ache all over and there was blood on my face from a cut beneath my right eye. Still, a fine time was had by all. A fine, lovely time. But you might have waited, Sara Hamilton. You might have waited.
I dropped to the deck of the Gentle Jane and went below. No sign of Morgan. Probably sleeping it off in one corner of some taverna or other. Would I ever end up like that? A distinct possibility on tonight’s showing.
Jack Higgins Page 11