Castle of the Lion

by Margaret Rome

  Castle of the Lion

  By

  Margaret Rome

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CASTLE OF THE LION

  Really Petra only had herself to blame that her spoilt young brother had landed himself in serious trouble in Cyprus and was calling for her to come and get him out of it. For the only man who could help her was the stern Stelios Heracles—and Petra was the only one who could pay his price…

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  First published 1983

  Australian copyright 1983

  Philippine copyright 1984

  This edition 1984

  © Margaret Rome 1983

  ISBN 0 263 74484 1

  CHAPTER ONE

  Petra heard the telephone ringing the moment she arrived outside the door of her flat. Hastily she dumped her briefcase, shopping bag and umbrella on the ground and began rummaging through her handbag for the key which, whenever it was needed in a hurry, seemed to adopt an annoying habit of playing hide and seek among folds of silken lining. An age seemed to elapse before her groping fingers pounced upon their prey, frantic, frowning seconds during which her mind offered, then rejected, various suggestions as to the possible identity of the caller. It could not be her brother Gavin, for less than eight hours previously she had driven him to the airport, then had waited until, with considerable relief, she had seen him board a plane bound for Cyprus and their grandfather's home where he had arranged to spend his vacation.

  Nor was the caller, whose prolonged summons seemed to be growing louder with each passing second, likely to be her boss. Imperious, demanding, exacting though he undoubtedly was, Sir Joseph Holland had promised her a full weekend off and, as befitted one of Britain's premier diplomats, he had proved himself often, during their long and happy association, to be a man of his word.

  She turned the key in the latch, scooped her belongings from the ground to dump them inside the tiny hallway, then kicked shut the door before racing to pluck the telephone receiver from its rest. 'Hello! Petra Morrison speaking, can I help you?' she questioned in a breathless rush.

  A premonition of trouble disturbed her senses when a thickly accented voice repeated her name and telephone number before demanding. 'Will you accept a reverse charge call from Larnaca, Cyprus?' Why a reverse charge call? she almost startled aloud, before reason took over, reminding her that the operator was merely carrying out normal procedure and was therefore unlikely to be qualified to supply answers to personal questions.

  'Yes… yes, of course,' she stammered, momentarily losing the cool that had earned her a reputation for poised equanimity among her colleagues in the Diplomatic Corps.

  'Go ahead, caller!'

  The operator's final words were eclipsed by a jerky voice Petra had difficulty identifying as that of her usually happy-go-lucky student brother.

  'Petra, where the dickens have you been all afternoon? I've been trying for the past couple of hours to get through to you and I've only just managed to persuade them to allow me one last attempt. They seem to have formed an impression that I'm fooling around—merely playing for time!'

  Petra frowned, completely puzzled. 'I worked later than usual at the office to clear my desk of odds and ends,' she explained briefly, 'then went shopping for enough food to last me over the weekend. What's wrong, Gavin, are you in some sort of trouble? And who on earth are they …?'

  'I'm sorry, Sis,' her brother mumbled, sounding completely dispirited, 'I'd like to soften the blow, but as I suspect from the scowls that are being directed my way that I'm likely to be cut off any minute I'd better cut out the frills and come straight to the point. I've been arrested! They are the police who detained me when I tried to pass through Customs. They've accused me of attempting to smuggle dope into the country, but I swear to you, Sis, that I have no idea how the reefer cigarette ends got into my anorak pocket! The only feasible explanation I can think of is that some witless baboon decided to play a hideous practical joke on me during last night's end-of-term party. Believe me, I've never touched anything of that nature—nor even felt tempted to do so. But judging from the reaction of the Greek police they apparently suspect me of masterminding some international drug ring at the very least!'

  'You're joking, of course!' Even at that moment of stunned incredulity a tiny portion of Petra's clinical mind marvelled at the miracle of trite, feeble words whispered inside a London flat becoming audible to a listener in far-off Cyprus.

  Proof that the miracle had actually happened was supplied by Gavin's anguished reply.

  'How I wish I were! At first I tried to kid myself that I was experiencing a nightmare that would vanish when I woke up, but these black-browed policemen are real, the bars around my cell are made of steel. I'm in one hell of a fix, Sis! You must do something to get me out of here!'

  Though her heart and pulses were threatening hysteria, Petra's ice cool mind began ticking over, telling her that recriminations would be useless at this stage, that Gavin's most urgent need was for action by someone in authority.

  'Have you managed to get in touch with Grandfather, he might be able to help?'

  She winced away from the phone when Gavin's voice exploded against her eardrum.

  'Patera Romios is well known and highly respected in his own small area, but he has no real clout,' he dismissed crudely. 'Besides that,' his voice dropped to a pitch of despondency, 'you know how fanatically he regards family honour— his fierce Greek pride would never allow him to forgive me if ever he were to find out…'

  When his voice trailed into miserable silence Petra's heart lurched, -concern for his safety prompting from her lips the reckless promise.

  'Don't worry, Gavin, leave everything to me. Somehow or other I'll find a way to secure your release!' His heartfelt sigh of relief caressed her ear as she rummaged through a drawer in search of a notepad and pencil. 'First of all, I'll need some details—the name of the officer in charge, for instance. I'll write to him. No, on second thoughts, it might be better if I were to take a few days'
leave and visit Cyprus to plead your cause in person,' she decided, waiting with pencil poised.

  'That would be an utter waste of time and you know it!' With a savage frustration that caused her to hold the earpiece a few inches distant, Gavin reminded her, 'I've lost count of the times I've heard you criticising the chauvinistic attitude of the average Greek male, the patronising manner he adopts towards his womenfolk; his refusal to listen to, much less take seriously, any argument attempted by a female. Even if you were to supply the authorities with proof of your academic brilliance or the status you've achieved in the Foreign Office they would refuse to be impressed! I hate asking you to plead on my behalf, Petra, but as your boss, Sir Joseph Holland, is the only man of our acquaintance possessing power enough to cut any ice with this crowd, I must beg you to approach him for help. Please, Petra—I know how you feel about the abuse of authority, your distaste of the notion of using position to extract privileges, but because my situation is so desperate I'm asking you, just this once, to set aside your principles and ask Sir Joseph to intercede on my behalf!'

  'No!' she gasped with revulsion, but her emphatic refusal coincided with a sharp click as the line when dead. 'Gavin! Gavin, are you still there!' she called out, reluctant to believe that she had been cut off in mid-sentence, leaving her brother pinning his hopes of release upon a false assumption that she would be prepared to sacrifice cherished precepts of honour, fair play, and very probably the respect of a boss whose values ran parallel with her own, in order to extricate him from the consequences of what was probably no more than a student prank gone badly wrong.

  Slowly she dropped the receiver on to its cradle, then wandered, still dazed, into the kitchen where mechanically she began storing away the groceries she had bought—packets of biscuits into an airtight tin; bacon, eggs and milk inside the fridge; a few tins of soup, peas, fruit, and a jar of instant coffee on to the shelves of a cupboard that was practically bare. The task acted as an anaesthetic, keeping her mind numb, putting off the moment of idleness that would force her to face facts, to decide upon a choice of direction between two roads—one signposted shame, the other humiliation.

  But by the time she had prepared prawns, tossed a salad, and begun laying the table for her evening meal, -the initial shock of Gavin's words had subsided and the art of calm, logical reasoning that had played such a major part in her spectacular rise through the ranks of the Diplomatic Corps had taken over control of her emotions.

  Gavin, she decided, buttering the crusty rolls she had bought at the bakers, was still an irresponsible boy at heart, prone to wild flights of imagination, spoiled from birth by their doting Greek mother whose death two years ago—and so soon after the accident that had deprived them of their father— had inflicted such pain and grief that instinctively she and Gavin had clung to each other, two distraught orphans, one determined to do everything necessary to protect and comfort her schoolboy brother, the other urgently in need of a surrogate mother.

  Unfortunately, Gavin had continued to cling and was clinging still. Even though he had inherited his fair share of their father's mental agility, a strong strain of Greek blood, together with his mother's earlier spoiling, had combined to form a character who accepted cynosure as a right, who demanded of his womenfolk an abundance of love that would admit no flaw.

  Petra sighed, lifting a shaking hand to sweep a heavy wing of hair back from her furrowed brow. As it sprang silken beneath her fingers memories swamped her, memories of the father whose Saxon fairness both she and her brother had inherited, but whose placid nature had been passed on to her alone. How often she had crept on to his knee in search of the sort of solace that can only be enjoyed in the company of a kindred spirit! How she had loved to tease him by tweaking his hair before bracing her childish frame for the punishing bearhug that had always preceded his fondly growled threat:

  'You must be taught a lesson, Honeybun, so that when you're grown up you'll remember that, however busy a bee might appear, however indifferent, he'll react with a sting to torment!'

  Her pensive expression brightened as the pet name used exclusively by him echoed down the years. Then just as suddenly her humorous half-smile faded as she recalled with a wince the mocking title bestowed by office juniors that never failed to hurt. Miss Grundy!

  What will Miss Grundy say?… What will Miss Grundy think?…

  Daily, although never intentionally within her hearing, the catch-phrases were tossed around the outer office by typists and clerks no younger than herself, but lacking the qualifications, the status, the responsibility and strain of mothering a younger brother, that made her appear aloof, prim and straightlaced to their insensitive eyes. If only they knew, she reflected sadly, how urgently and often she felt the need to kick over the traces, how she envied them their ability to dance, to date, to feel completely carefree…

  Mechanically, she slid open a drawer in search of table mats. Immediately Gavin's frantic warning returned to haunt her when her fingers made contact with gay, attractive mats woven in the small mountain village that had been her mother's home, where every woman had a loom in her house and wove all her own furnishing needs as well as yards and yards of material used to supply husbands and sons with vraka, the traditional baggy pants favoured by the tough, hardworking men of the mountains.

  Forgotten snatches of conversation exchanged between herself and her grandfather which she had found amusing at the time echoed sinisterly, casting doubt upon her ability to argue her brother's cause with men arrogant enough to have become enraged by their government's attempt to change marital laws that rendered wives mere chattels.

  'But, Patera,' she had dared to remonstrate, 'your country's present laws are unfair and deeply humiliating to women. Why should Greek wives be debarred from legally carrying out any financial transaction? Or from spending a night away from home without their husband's permission? As the law now stands, wives are not allowed even to enrol their children in a school, and husbands have the right of access to all their letters! Do you realise, I wonder, that Greece is the only Western country where adultery is still punishable by imprisonment?'

  'And so it should remain!' Her grandfather's fist had thumped down hard upon the arm of his chair. Angrily, moustache bristling with the force of his emotions, he had dismissed her emancipated argument with a gesture of deep contempt. 'What is the world coming to if a man is to be deprived of his right—after finding his wife in bed with another man—to march the two of them, still undressed, to the nearest police station in order to secure his evidence? And as for the suggestion of allowing civil marriages,' he had snorted, 'the Church would refuse to countenance, much less bless, such unholy alliances!'

  He had stumped out of his small, sparsely furnished house to rendezvous with elderly cronies who were always to be found in animated conversation seated around a tiny metal table placed outside the taverna in the village square.

  Petra pushed in the drawer, deprived of all appetite for food by churning fear—fear for Gavin's safety, fear of men whose national characteristics were intolerance of weakness, specifically masculine weakness, and a dedicated belief that such a crime against their macho image could only be expunged by the sort of toughening-up process which Petra felt certain would be freely available inside primitive Greek jails.

  She rushed almost without volition towards the telephone in the hall, fumbled out a number on the dial, then waited tense with anxiety for a response from the other end. Immediately she heard her boss's gruff tone, she blurted:

  'Sir Joseph, this is Petra Morrison speaking. I'd like your opinion on a matter of great importance, if you can spare me half an hour of your time?'

  'Now, d'you mean?' She could picture piercing grey eyes scanning a watch. 'My dear Petra, your conscientious application to work sets a worthy example to everyone in the department, but as it's almost eight-thirty and my wife is waiting to be taken out to dinner. I do think that whatever problem is on your mind can't become more aggravated by be
ing left until Monday morning!'

  'Oh, but it could, and almost certainly will!' she cried out in her alarm, imagining him preparing to lower the receiver. 'And the matter I want to discuss has nothing to do with the department, it's… it's a personal problem,' she faltered lamely.

  The pause that followed seemed indicative of surprise. Sir Joseph was seldom lost for words, but his response, though hesitant, was kind and very firm.

  'Then by all means come round to my flat immediately. My wife won't mind a short delay— in fact, I'm certain she will insist upon your joining us for dinner once she's made aware of your visit.'

  'Oh, no, I couldn't possibly,' she jerked, then pulled up short, appalled by the ungraciously phrased refusal. 'I'm sorry,' she gulped, unnerved to the point of tears, 'I didn't mean to sound so impolite. It's just that… I'm far too worried to be able to do justice to a meal.'

  'In that case, my dear,' Sir Joseph instructed briskly, 'let's waste no further time talking over the phone. As you're obviously too upset to drive I'll order a taxi. Be prepared for its arrival in about ten minutes' time.'

  Less than half an hour later Petra was being ushered into the flat grown familiar to her during the many occasions when she had helped Lady Holland to prepare for and entertain visiting foreign diplomats at quiet, informal dinner parties.

  'Fate appears to be on your side, my dear,' Sir Joseph smiled as he took her coat. 'My wife and I usually leave for our country home on Friday afternoon, but as no guests have been invited to stay the weekend and my wife had some last-minute business to attend to, we decided to spend tonight here at the flat and make our leisurely way home in the morning.'