Solo (Aka the Cretan Lover) (v5)

by Jack Higgins

  'Do you realize Milton was responsible for this tree?' she demanded.

  They were sitting under the mulberry tree in the Fellows' Garden of Christ's College, the tree the great poet was reputed to have planted himself.

  'I'm totally indifferent.' Mikali kissed her on the neck. 'Nothing matters on a day like this. Spring in Cambridge and you have to work.'

  'For the rest of the week, then I'm due a vacation.'

  'I don't know, Katherine. This work you do. Violence, killing, terrorism. That's a hell of a field for a woman. No - let me amend that. A hell of a field for anyone.'

  'Oh, come on,' she said. 'What about your time in the Legion in Algeria? I've read those magazine articles. I mean, what scene were you playing then?'

  He shrugged. 'I was just a kid. I joined up on impulse. It was an emotional thing. But you - you really seek them out. Someone told me last night that you're working on this German girl, the one with the Baader-Meinhof connections. I didn't know she was over here.'

  'Yes, she's at Tangmere. It's a special institution not far from here. Government sponsored.'

  'Oh, I see. You're handling her case officially?'

  She hesitated. 'Yes, that's the only way I could get in to see her, but I hope I've won her trust as well.'

  'Didn't she hide this guy the newspapers call the Cretan in her room at Frankfurt the night he shot that East German Minister?'

  'That's right.'

  'I was there myself,' he said. 'Giving a concert in the university.' They stood up and started to walk. 'I don't understand. Surely the police could have got some sort of description of him out of her. Enough to trace him. I've always understood the Germans were pretty thorough that way.'

  'He wore a balaclava helmet. You know the kind of thing? Holes for the eyes, nose and mouth. She couldn't describe him, even if she wanted to.'

  'What do you mean?'

  Katherine Riley smiled. 'Apparently, he filled in the time making love to her.'

  'Wearing the balaclava? Say, that's heavy stuff.'

  'I wouldn't know. I haven't tried it.'

  Later, in a punt on the river, he said, 'Katherine, I have a villa in Hydra. Do you know where that is?'

  'Yes.'

  'The house itself is way down the coast. You can only reach it by boat or over the mountains on foot or on a mule. Actually, there is a telephone line all the way across the mountains. In fact, if you ever get lost, look for the telephone poles and follow them.'

  'Lost?'

  'You said you were due a vacation this weekend. It occurred to me that you might like to come to Hydra. I've got three weeks going spare, then I'm due in Vienna. Would you consider it?'

  'I already have.'

  Later, on the telephone to Deville, he said. 'I've established contact as you suggested and I can assure you that there's no problem as concerns the little German package. None at all.'

  'Good, so that's taken care of. What do you do now?'

  'I'm leaving for Hydra for three weeks on Saturday. I'm taking Dr Riley with me.'

  Deville for once was astonished. 'Good heavens, why, John?'

  'Because I want to,' Mikali answered and replaced the receiver.

  6

  Katherine Riley was having lunch in her study at the desk by the window, salad sandwiches, cold milk and the over-written thesis of one of her weaker students.

  There was a knock at the door and Morgan entered. He wore a dark polo-neck sweater and grey jacket in Donegal tweed. The only thing military about him was the trenchcoat which hung loosely from his shoulders.

  'Yes?' she said, although she knew already who this must be.

  'Morgan,' he said. 'Asa Morgan. I believe Chief Superintendent Baker of Special Branch has been in touch with you.'

  She sat there, looking up at him, a sandwich in one hand, a pen in the other. 'Colonel Morgan, isn't it? Asa Morgan? Parachute Regiment?'

  'You say that as if it has some importance.'

  'I read that pamphlet you wrote for the Ministry of Defence after Korea. It does happen to be my field.'

  'Something in common.'

  'Oh, no,' she said. 'Not as far as I'm concerned. That little unpleasantness you got yourself into in Cyprus during the EOKA struggle. I looked you up, Colonel. At the time, the newspapers suggested you'd have fitted into the SS rather well.'

  'The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize,' Morgan told her. 'Lenin said that. Back in nineteen twenty-one, Michael Collins lived by that creed. He said it was the only way a small country could defeat a nation. Urban guerrillas are your speciality, Doctor, so you know as well as I do how they work. Indiscriminate bombing campaigns, motiveless terror, the deliberate slaughter of the innocent. Women, kids. My brief in Cyprus was to stop it and I did.'

  'By the use of interrogation methods that were reminiscent of the Gestapo more than anything else.'

  'No,' he said. 'Quite wrong. Anything worthwhile I had to offer came by courtesy of the Chinese. They gave me personal instruction at a camp called Ti-pai in Manchuria.'

  She sat there, staring up at him, aware that she should be angry, and wasn't, which was strange because this man represented everything she despised most. Uniformed authority, the military machine that was once more chewing up the youth of her own country and spitting them out in Vietnam.

  'Harry Baker told me it was coppers you didn't like,' he said. 'He was wrong. Obviously it's uniforms.'

  'Perhaps.'

  He lit a cigarette. 'That's better. You almost smiled and the corners of your mouth started turning up instead of down.'

  'Damm you,' she said.

  He sat on the edge of the desk. 'Do I get to see the Hoffmann girl?'

  'From what Baker tells me, this is to do with the Maxwell Cohen shooting. Special Branch think it was the Cretan again.'

  'That's right.'

  'And you think you might get a lead on him from Lieselott?' She shook her head. 'She wouldn't tell you, even if she could.'

  'Because he made love to her?'

  She shook her head. 'I don't think you understand. To someone like her, he's almost a god. A symbol of what they believe in.'

  'Don't tell me, let me guess. The purity of violence.'

  She opened a drawer and took out a yellow pamphlet. 'Someone sent me this from the Sorbonne the other day. This was printed by one of the student bodies. They're supposed to be at university getting an education and what an education.' She opened the pamphlet. 'Listen to this advice for demonstrators. When punching policemen, leather gloves should be worn. Newspapers wrapped around the body reduce the effectiveness of rifle butts. One anti-flu pill taken half an hour before the riot begins, another when the grenades start coming over, reduces the sickness you're supposed to get from inhaling the gas.'

  'I hadn't come across that one before,' Morgan commented. 'I must remember. When do I get to see her?'

  'All right, waste your time if you want to. Have you got a car?'

  'Yes.'

  I've made an appointment for three. It will take twenty minutes to get there. You can pick me up at two-thirty. Now, if you wouldn't mind.'

  He picked up his briefcase and raincoat. 'Do you always wear your hair held back like that?'

  'What in the hell has it got to do with you?'

  'Let it hang loose if I were you, girl,' he said. 'On a good day, it might even make you look like a real woman.'

  The door closed softly behind him. She sat there, her mouth open in astonishment.

  *

  The interview room at Tangmere Special Remand Centre was surprisingly pleasant. Patterned wallpaper, fitted carpet, a table, modern chairs. The barred windows seemed almost incongruous.

  'Rather pleasant, really,' Morgan said with some irony, peering into the garden.

  'This is not a normal prison nor is it supposed to be,' Katherine Riley told him. 'It is a psychiatric institution ...'

  'Aimed at rehabilitation, recovery and let us all rejoice for God is good.'

  Befor
e she could reply, the door was unlocked and Lieselott Hoffmann was ushered in. The woman prison officer withdrew, locking the door again.

  She was a small, plain-faced girl with short blonde hair and wore jeans and a denim shirt. She ignored Morgan and said in excellent English, 'Who's your friend?'

  'Colonel Morgan. He'd like to ask you a few questions.' Katherine Riley produced cigarettes, gave her one and a light.

  'About the Cretan,' Morgan said.

  The girl turned sharply, her face blank and then she turned back to Katherine Riley. 'What's happened?'

  'There's been a shooting in London. A prominent Zionist. Black September claim credit, but the police think it was the Cretan.'

  Lieselott Hoffmann turned on Morgan and raised a clenched fist. 'Power to the people.'

  'Which people, you silly little bitch?'

  She lowered her hand, a strange uncertainty on her face and he opened his briefcase and took out a sheaf of photos.

  'I thought you might care to be put in touch with reality for a change. See what your Cretan's been up to over the years.'

  She approached the table and Katherine Riley followed.

  'That's a Colonel Vassilikos in the back of his car in Paris. As you can see, his skull has fragmented. The man kneeling beside him is one of his bodyguards. Those are his brains showing through.'

  The expression on her face didn't alter in the slightest as he threw down one photo after another of the Cretan's victims. The last was of Megan, taken in the Paddington tunnel, lying in the gutter where she had been found.

  'Who was she?'

  'My daughter,' Morgan said. 'She was fourteen. He ran her down in a car he stole to make his escape after shooting Cohen.'

  She put it down and turned to Katherine Riley, an expression of total indifference on her face. 'Can I go now?'

  And Katherine Riley, in a gesture totally alien to her nature, struck her across the face.

  Morgan was between them, his hands on her arms, his voice soft, insistent. 'Easy, girl. Let it go.'

  Behind them, Lieselott Hoffmann walked to the door and pressed the bell. After a while it opened and she passed through without a word.

  Beyond his shoulder, Katherine Riley could see the photo of Megan clearly, the bloody mask of the face, and was physically sick.

  'I'm sorry,' she whispered.

  'Ah, Kate,' he said. 'Rule number one. Never apologize, never explain. Now, let's get out of here and find ourselves a drink.'

  'Asa?' she said. 'That's a strange name.'

  'From the Bible,' he told her and, for a moment, he became very Welsh indeed. 'A religious woman, my Mam. Chapel twice every Sunday when I was a boy.'

  'And where was that?'

  'A village in the Rhondda Valley in Wales. Coal mines, slag-heaps. A place to get out of. My father was killed in a roof fall when I was eight. The company gave my mother ten shillings a week pension. I went down. the pit myself at fourteen, came up for the last time four years later to join the army.'

  'And never looked back?'

  'I loved it,' he said. 'Soldiering. I'd never felt so right. And the army was good to me. I was a sergeant at Arnhem, then I got a commission in the field as second lieutenant. After the war, they kept me on. Sent me to Sandhurst.'

  'And your background? Didn't that ever give you problems in a place like that?'

  'Oh, any fool can learn how to handle a knife and fork and being Welsh, you see, I always knew I was better than any bloody Englishman who walked the earth, even if he'd been to Eton.' He smiled, mocking her now. 'Very intellectual people, we are. I surprised them there. I didn't only read Clausewitz on war. I knew my Wu Ch'i as well. Heavy stuff, you see.'

  'I bet you were the original bastard.'

  'I had to be, girl. I had to be better, see? Languages, for instance. Not that they were any problem. Learn to speak Welsh fluently, anything else seems easy.'

  They were sitting at a small table, one of a number outside a pub on the banks of the River Cam. It was very pleasant in the early evening sun.

  'What about your wife? How has she taken all this?'

  'With her usual firmness, as far as I could judge.' He shrugged. 'That finished quite some time ago. She never took kindly to military life, or my version of it. She's a painter by profession and a very good one. We met in the National Gallery one Sunday morning. One of those monumental errors people make in life so frequently. I think it was the uniform that did it, and the red beret.'

  'She liked that?'

  'Not for long.'

  'What went wrong?'

  'She visited me in Cyprus during the EOKA campaign. We were driving through Nicosia one day behind a doctor from one of the cavalry regiments who'd been spending his spare time giving free medical aid to peasants in the villages of the Troodos mountains. He stopped at some traffic lights and a couple of EOKA terrorists ran forward and blew his brains out through the window.'

  'And you took them on?'

  'I was armed, naturally.'

  'And you killed them both?'

  'Yes. Unfortunately, one of them turned out to be only fifteen.'

  'And she found that hard to take?'

  'All those Westerns. People expect you to shoot them in the arm or the shoulder or something neat like that, only when it's real, you've only time to do one thing. Shoot to kill. And always twice, to make sure, otherwise he gets one off at you as he goes down.'

  'And she was different after that?'

  'Not so much the boy. I think it was seeing me do it. Told me she couldn't forget the look on my face. As it happened, she was pregnant anyway, but she never slept with me again after that.'

  'I'm sorry.'

  'Why should you be? She believes in life, you see. She saw me as some kind of public executioner. She's married to a country parson now. The sort of man who believes in anything and everything, so they do rather well together.'

  She said, 'I'm sorry about your daughter.'

  'I should have known better,' he said. 'A stupid idea to think I could shock that girl into some kind of response.'

  'For the ones like her, it's like a religion,' she said. 'They believe all that cant dished out by people like Sartre. The mystical view of violence as being ennobling. Terrorists are fond of the romantic viewpoint. They claim to be heroes of the revolution, yet disdain the rules of war. They claim to speak for the people and usually speak only for themselves.'

  'And the Cretan,' he said. 'What kind of man is he?'

  'What do you think?'

  He told her of the discussion he and Baker had had on the subject and their eventual conclusion.

  She nodded. 'Yes - I can go along with that. The business of a military background is the one point I'd disagree with you on.'

  'Why?'

  'The Cubans have been offering excellent military training to terrorists from all over the world for many years now and then there are the Russians. These days, they take students from most foreign countries into Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. The KGB are always on the lookout for promising material.'

  'I know,' he said, 'but I think there's more to the Cretan than that. A soldier's instinct for another soldier if you like. What makes a man like him tick, that's what I'd like to know. Not ideology - there's no pattern to his killings that would indicate that.'

  'You want the psychologist's viewpoint?'

  'Why not?'

  'Okay - here goes. Some time ago I got involved in a study of Grand Prix drivers. What came out was that the greater the stress, the better they function. Most of them are only truly alive, truly operating to their full potential, in conditions of maximum danger. The most successful Grand Prix driver is the one who's prepared simply to push any car which gets in his way off the track. His image is one of ultimate masculinity, but he loves engines, cars, the machinery of his trade more than he could love any woman. The race is the perfect challenge, with death as the only alternative. It's a game which always excites, never ceases to satisfy.'

/>   'The constant challenge. One man against...' Morgan frowned. 'Against what?'

  'Himself, perhaps. A psychopathic personality, certainly, otherwise he could never take the guilt associated with his killings.'

  'And seeking death, is that what you're saying? That he has a death-wish?'

  'I shouldn't imagine it would bother him in the slightest. We have tapes of test pilots on the point of death in crashing aeroplanes who, instead of screaming in fear, are still trying to work out aloud what it is that went wrong. He's that kind of man.' She hesitated. 'A man, I should imagine, very like you.'

  'Good,' Morgan said. 'That gives me a chance at him then.' He glanced at his watch. 'I must get going. I've an appointment in London this evening.'

  As they walked back to the Porsche, she said, 'What will you do now? Isn't this about as far as you can go?'

  'No,' he said. 'The gun that was used to shoot Cohen. If I could trace where it came from.'

  'Do you think you can?'

  'There's a man I know in Belfast who might be able to help. I'll have to see.' She got into the Porsche. He closed the door, went round and got behind the wheel. 'Can I see you again when I get back?'

  To her own surprise, she found herself replying without the slightest hesitation. 'If you'd like to.'

  'Wouldn't have asked if I hadn't, would I?'

  Security Factors Ltd was in a small cul-de-sac off Great Portland Street. It was just after seven when Morgan went up the stairs and tried the door marked Office. It was locked but there was a light on inside. He pressed the bell and waited. There was a shadow behind the glass, the door opened.

  Jock Kelso was fifty-five and looked forty, in spite of his close-cropped grey hair. He was over six feet tall, tanned and fit-looking, a man to avoid in one situation or to lean on in another. He had served in the Scots Guards and then the Parachute Regiment for twenty-five years, five of them as Regimental Sergeant-Major to Morgan.

  'Hello, Jock.' Morgan moved inside. 'How's the security business?'