The Road to Ithaca

by Ben Pastor

  VALLEY ROAD, 2.35 P.M.

  How he reached the bottom safely, he couldn’t have said. Suddenly, there was no more downward slope. Bora stopped at the verge of a blinding white dirt road, barely in touch with his body. The roar of blood in his ears took a few endless moments to subside; it felt until then like keeping his head under water. The sky pulsed red; the mountain he’d come from, red and remote, safe, fluttered before his eyes with his heartbeat. He knelt down to regain his breath; feeling his body coalesce around him slowly, one sense at a time, without pain. Hell, if along with the supplies at the depot I’d got the cap of invisibility, I couldn’t have done better. The shard with the Minotaur eye brought me luck, or the ivory-white girl at mesa pharangi: I did well to avoid the singing girls in the high grass…

  That’s Kato Asites up there, not Krousonas. The place was south of Krousonas, he was sure, far inland, and the road ahead forked like a wishbone. Beyond the fork, a handful of one-storeyed ramshackle houses baked in the sun. Still lightheaded, Bora walked in that direction. No soldiers, no army equipment around, only signs in German script pointing in different directions. The left branch of the fork diverged toward the foot of the mountain, to Skala and Kavrochori (and Ampelokastro between them), no distances given. As for the main road, it led south to Agias Varvaras, 8km. To the north, lay Agios Mironas, 7km. Iraklion, too, 30km away.

  Bad news. Even in an area nominally under German control, those eighteen or so miles posed a major problem without transportation to be had. I’m still deep in the labyrinth, with twenty-four hours at most to find the exit by solving this case. Agios Mironas rings a bell, but I’ll be damned if I know why. Bora eyed a miserly fountain by the roadside, where he went to wash off sweat and dirt as best he could and rinse the dust out of the scrapes and cuts on his limbs. Piece by piece, he regained his identity: shoulder boards, identification disc, side cap. Curiously, he felt no pain in his muscles, as if his body were putting off discomfort and exhaustion until he could afford them. The raging haste that until now had made him function was on hold too.

  Villiger, Kostaridis, Preger and Sinclair seemed so unreachable from here, only a blessed numbness kept him from despair. The moment you see Ithaca like a cork bobbing over the ocean, she’s taken from you.

  The nameless handful of houses along the road received him with the usual complement of elders seated on low walls and girls sliding away, hiding their faces behind black or white kerchiefs. Announcing that he had money – Echo parades – would not conjure a vehicle or a horse out of thin air. Bora could only hope that a German patrol would pass through, but waiting here wouldn’t improve his chances of meeting one. Trailed by careless glances, he started north, and had covered nearly a mile before the grinding of a truck engine behind him caused him to look back.

  The truck was a Petropoulos Diamond T, black and red like a carnival Lucifer, and Bora found himself face-to-face with Rifat Bey Agrali.

  11

  That’s what it was – Agios Mironas is where the Turk keeps his trucks… Wasn’t I told he has trucks crossing the island from Iraklion to Ierapetra?

  The Turk was riding with a driver of his, not the same one Bora had conscripted, but one destined to be commandeered all the same. At a tilt of his employer’s head, the man turned off the engine, got down and started walking. Another tilt of the head invited Bora to take his place in the cab.

  “Come.”

  Bora slipped the rucksack off his shoulders and climbed in. No sooner had the engine started again than he felt the muzzle of the Subay against his ribs, and started to laugh.

  “Are you stupid, you stupid frangos?”

  “If you wanted to shoot me, you wouldn’t be giving me a lift.”

  “You think? I’ll kill you and throw you out of this truck.”

  The threat went beyond unsociability. Rifat Bey acted as though he’d learnt things in the meantime (from Kostaridis?) and was determined to square accounts now that there was a chance. For Bora it was like fingering the clue out of the labyrinth after dropping it in the dark, provided the clue was not a noose. He found himself thinking clearly, and yet suspended in that physical state between ache and stupor where excitement vies with fatigue, and prudence crumbles.

  He reached into his chest pocket for a photograph, which he held where the Turk could see it well. “This is – what do you call it, Zimbouli? – your place just outside Iraklion.”

  “I will kill you and throw you out of this truck.”

  “But you don’t know whether I made copies of it.”

  “You didn’t. You just have this one.”

  Yes, Kostaridis tattled about the film roll Savelli stole at Ampelokastro. Bora kept smiling. More and more, he felt a certain demented irrepressible merriment with the gun against his side. Danger gratified him nearly as much as the first taste of pain across his muscles. Slowly, with thumb and forefinger he lifted Signora Cordoval’s calling card out of the same pocket. “This, too.” He showed it. “I thought you were hiding guns, or objects you’d swiped from your dead neighbour, but you were – you are – hiding her.”

  Rifat Bey kept one eye on him, the other on the road. The Subay dragged up Bora’s side. When it met the hollow under his ear, Bora simply slipped photo and card back into his pocket and buttoned it. “What I don’t understand is when you picked her up from Savelli, and whether he knows, or suspects you did. Maybe not. I think he stole the film roll because Villiger had the bad habit of claiming other scholars’ digs and finds.”

  “I could have killed Savelli ten times over.”

  “Why didn’t you? One way or another, Signora’s card fell into Villiger’s hands. I’d kill Savelli, if I thought he might be a problem.”

  On the lonely road, Rifat Bey drove, glowering at his passenger while the truck swerved at will across the tarmac. “You’re a funny one.”

  “Is that a promotion from ‘bastard son of an infidel German whore’?”

  The pressure of the Subay changed at every lurch but never left Bora’s neck. “Stop smiling! It’s not a time for smiling.”

  Whether it was tension that was making him smile, or relief that he was beginning to feel some pain, Bora did not react when the Subay abruptly dropped down and dug once more into his ribs. At the side of the road, now that they were approaching Agios Mironas, there was a German presence. Armed paratroopers gathered under a shady tree stared at the advancing truck; they seemed on the point of stepping out to halt it, but changed their minds when Bora nodded a greeting from the passenger seat.

  “You are touched in the head,” the Turk grumbled. “Why didn’t you call out to them? Now you’ll have have to lie dead by the road.”

  He knows I’m armed, knows what sort of handgun I carry. Does he judge from my muddled appearance that I may not be quick to react? He’s right. Bora sighed. “Look, Agrali. I need to know who killed your neighbour. You had good reason for it, if Kostaridis went as far as telling you not only that Signora had been spotted in Iraklion, but also that the Swiss was asking about her. Small town, big gossip.”

  “Kostaridis is just a sbirro.”

  “But we know how things go between honourable men. If Kostaridis could prove anything against you – regarding the murder or anything else – he’d clap you in jail. He doesn’t, so I assume he has no proof. He owes you nothing, you’re not Greek.” During the headlong tumble, Bora’s hands had picked up thorns and splinters from the brushwood; he was only now starting to notice the sharp tingle drilling up his nerves from his fingertips. “Did Villiger demand money so he wouldn’t turn your girl in?” With his thumbnail, he began scraping a sliver of wood from under his skin. “In your boots, I’d have shot him dead before I gave him a penny.”

  “I’m not going to tell you anything about anything.” Agrali’s green eyes, narrow and bloodshot, showed a state of mind close to murder. “You’re wrong if you’re hoping I’ll put away my gun.”

  “I don’t care about that; you can leave it there if you can
keep to the road with one hand.”

  “I’ll tell you nothing, frangos.”

  An abandoned house was coming up, with a blooming roadside garden that overflowed the fence. Bora recognized a pink haze of lilacs. He closed his eyes as they rode by. Through the open window, scent bathed him for a moment so fleeting and superb that he was surprisingly tempted by a thought. It could be more merciful and much quicker than other deadly moments. All I need to do is make a rash move, and he’ll kill me.

  Ever since childhood, and especially on the verge of adolescence, in the fullness of energy or happiness he’d had those momentary death wishes, aware in a small way that things would never be so perfect again. As if he didn’t have his destiny as a soldier before him! Bora was deeply ashamed for indulging in such thoughts.

  “Listen, Agrali. I think you met Signora Cordoval in Rhodes years ago, when you trafficked with the Italian Tobacco Manufacture there. I think it was on your account, not the family brooch’s, that Savelli raged at her to the extent that the police intervened, both in Rhodes and in Crete four years ago. I think you brought her here somehow, before or after your Greek wife died, and – until we landed – felt pretty safe about it. Kostaridis knew the arrangement and kept his mouth shut. Of late, she probably visited you in the country off and on; the story of being reclusive because you were in mourning isn’t credible in the least.” When the prod of steel against his ribs increased, Bora was provoked but would not show it. “Your ‘missing’ dog was taken to Zimbouli to guard her, wasn’t it? It was never lost. Is it still there, and do you go and feed it yourself, from time to time? You probably sneaked Signora to your hilltop home just in time, before German troops had a chance to look for billets in Iraklion and find Jewish women instead. I do believe you’d have shot Kostaridis and me, too, had we tried to enter that day.”

  “You talk too much.”

  Every curve brought the truck closer to Iraklion. Bora began to recognize ridges, the shape and lie of hills, the profiles of Mount Voskerò, Mount Pirgos… Were they still looking for him, up there, or had they given him up? Had Frances read his message, raking the rebel curl off her forehead? It was as if part of him was still running for his life in the mountains and always would, as if that existence had a separate path of its own and this was another self, with a different fate. In that life they catch me, I die. In this one… Bora studiously dug out a thorn from the palm of his hand.

  “Villiger could have taken that photo on an impulse, during one of his monthly forays into town, merely because she’s a blonde and he judged her – imagine – an Aryan beauty. It was enquiring about her that did not go unnoticed. Did Savelli supply the calling card? It’s irrelevant now. The Italian was trying to retrieve something when Kostaridis and I walked in on him at Ampelokastro. The details on the card were written in Italian. But the language is still widely spoken in Crete; I have no time to investigate who wrote them, or why. They could be street directions as much as a tip that there’d be money to be extorted from the Cordoval family. For your information, the card was in Villiger’s safe-deposit box, so – whether or not he had time to match the blonde in the photo with her racial profile – he clearly put some value on it.”

  “You talk too much. I think now I have to kill you.”

  The cab was roomy, but not enough for two tall men. Of the entire experience, Bora found that he resented the threat less than the discomfort of sitting here, cramped by the rucksack at his feet. “I heard you the first time.” The fragment in the palm of his left hand lay under a resilient veil of skin, and he used his teeth to dislodge it. “But I’m right, am I not? Not because he likes you, but because he doesn’t like us, Kostaridis dropped the hint that your neighbour in German employ was curious about Signora Cordoval, so you tried to frighten Villiger into leaving the island. He didn’t leave, or didn’t do it quickly enough for you. Whatever Kostaridis believes, I want to know whether you had Villiger murdered, and all those with him.”

  “So you can turn me in to your army? I should be as stupid as you are, frangos.”

  Bora spat the thorn out of the window. This morning I was at Agias Irinis, and the rain was yet to come. Now we’re past the storm. Everything is dry at the sides of the road, so it’s possible the downpour only lashed the heights. Past Krousonas, past the gibbet tree. Has Frances Allen found the message? Unhurriedly, he undid the button of his chest pocket. “Actually, there’s someone else it would be more useful for me to blame for the deaths.” He amiably handed the snapshot and card to the Turk. “Take ’em both, I don’t need them. She doesn’t interest me in the least. Keep her away from Iraklion, though, and away from terraces where she can be photographed.”

  The Subay nosed up and wavered as Rifat Bey snatched the papers without letting go of the grip. “I don’t understand any of it.”

  “No? I don’t understand some of it. Were you really in town during the shooting at Ampelokastro?”

  “No.”

  “At least we made that clear.”

  They were entering Agios Mironas. There, a requisitioned British truck had broken down and partially blocked the way, forcing Rifat Bey into a series of manoeuvres, changing gears and steering hard. The Subay came to rest on the seat, within easy reach of either man. Bora glanced at it, and away from it. After this village, he remembered from studying the map, there’s a place called Voutes, and the turn-off for Kato Kalesia, where Cowell and Sinclair queued as prisoners of war. Beyond there’s Týlissos. I don’t see it from here, but the Sphinx monument is somewhere up there also, like a frozen beacon.

  At last, they negotiated the hurdle. Past the garage marked Eipikeirese Rifat Agrali, the Turk drove with his eyes on the road, gloomily biting the blond whiskers on his upper lip.

  “Well, I’m going to kill you, so it makes no difference what I tell you. I did not have that German-speaking swine shot. I did not frighten him into leaving Crete. If I wanted him dead, I’d strangle him with my own hands without scaring him first, and without asking my boys to do the job for me. Had I heard he was after Signora, or had he come to me asking for money, I’d have cut his throat and fed him to my dogs. The peasants working for him – I spit on them. I was never bothered by witnesses; why should I dirty my hands with field hands and a house servant? If you were less stupid than you are, you’d know that in Crete witnesses keep their mouths shut regardless.”

  “So, I’m wrong nearly all along the line. Good. Since you were at Sphingokephalo, then, suppose you tell me what you heard, or saw, that day.”

  Saturday 7 June, 4.04 p.m. Written in pencil to avoid ink blotches on this bumpy road, en route to Iraklion in Rifat Bey’s truck. With the excuse that no place is quite right, the Turk keeps delaying the moment of my execution. It’s a game he plays, and besides he can’t be sure I’d go down gently – I have fourteen shots in my gun. He calls me stupid, and at the moment I can’t in good faith disagree with him. I’m not saying I could have wrapped this up on my second day in Crete; still, the clue to get in and out of the labyrinth was dangling in front of me, and I didn’t go for it. I can only console myself with thinking that only now do I have all the elements. Well, all except for a motive that would stick in a courtroom. At any rate, Preger’s men are off the hook, which is what this investigation – for all its high-minded name – was expected to prove.

  Although he still hates our German guts, this ogre of a Turk tells a credible tale, summarized below.

  Saturday 31 May, late morning: Rifat Bey Agrali is at home at Sphingokephalo. His dogs are nervous because of sporadic cannon- and gunfire. On and off they bark, but when they start to howl, which they do when strangers approach the neighbourhood, he makes the most of his hilltop perch to look through his field glasses in all directions.

  To the west, he sees in the distance what he’ll later identify as German paratroopers, apparently heading on foot toward the Iraklion–Skala–Kato Asites road (that is, the N–S road both Sphingokephalo and Ampelokastro overlook). What provokes hi
s mastiffs, however, is somewhat closer in: a dog, which three men in British uniforms, wandering from the north along the same road, have with them.

  To my question, “Were the Britons heavily armed, and did any of them hold a rank?” he premises that vegetation and curves in the road limited his observation, but two of them carried Sten guns. Not sure about their respective ranks. Anticipating there will be an ambush or a shoot-out between paratroopers and Britons, Rifat Bey decides to lock himself indoors with weapons at the ready. As he is making fast the glass door of his terrace, two pistol shots heard in quick succession from the direction of the Brits accelerate his decision.

  He hears nothing else for a while, “maybe twenty minutes”, then “one or two machine guns” open fire below. Shortly, curiosity gets the better of him, and he sneaks out to the terrace with his field glasses. The first thing that strikes him is that the paratroopers are already quite far southbound on the road to Skala. Who did the shooting, then? The Turk lets “less than fifteen more minutes” elapse before he arms himself and leaves the house. Once he reaches the bottom of the hill and crosses the brook between the two properties, he sees no dead Germans or Brits on the road. All he notices is a lone Briton staggering away from Ampelokastro, towards Iraklion.