Mayhem in Greece

'What about the shots Cepicka fired at me? It's so still up here that the goat-herd must have heard them.'

Stephanie gave a mirthless laugh. 'Oh, Robbie, be your age. Is it likely that Vaclav will admit that they were fired by Cepicka? He'll say that it was you who fired them, and that it was terror of you that led Cepicka to dash round the corner of the cliff and try to get away from you by shinning up that gulley. The fact that you haven't got a gun will cut no ice, because you could have thrown it away.'

'I'm in the devil of a fix, then. But if the police once start hunting for me, they are certain to get me in the end; so I suppose the best thing I can do is to go to them with my side of the story and pray to God that the truth will prevail.'

T wish I thought it would, but I'm afraid that our having spent three weeks together, and the independent testimony of that goat-herd, are going to weigh the scales against you. And, once you give yourself up, you'll have no further opportunity of securing proof that you were justified in killing Cepicka.'

k 285

Robbie turned to stare at her. 'I don't get you. How could I possibly secure proof of that?'

'You might, if you continued your snooping. If you could get proof that Vaclav and the others are up to something contrary to the interests of Greece and you have been trying to find out what it was, that would provide a motive for their attempting to kill you. Your plea of self-defence would then be credible. What is more, you would have earned the gratitude of the Greek Government and have it on your side.'

'But . . . but what about that document you made me sign? I promised-'

'Forget it;' Stephanie shook her head impatiently. 'When you signed it my husband hadn't tried to murder me. Anyhow, you signed it at my request; so I can absolve you from it, and I do.'

Over the mountains to the west, the last rays of the sunset were fading, and it was now almost dark. As Robbie glanced at the lingering flush on the peaks, he suddenly spotted on the road below them the lights of an approaching vehicle. Jumping to his feet, he said: 'There's a car or lorry coming. We must get it to give us a lift.'

'Yes; we can't stay here all night,' Stephanie agreed, as she stood up beside him. 'But what are you going to do: give yourself up to the police when we get to Tripolis, or take a chance on eluding them, anyway for a time?'

'I don't know. I've not had time to think, but there's a lot in what you have just said. We'll talk about it later.'

'That won't be much good, unless you cover your tracks from the beginning,' she said hastily. 'You had better take a new identity right away. You speak German, don't you?'

'Yes.'

'So do I. We had better pass ourselves off as German hikers. We've lost our kit in an accident. Let me do the talking.'

By then, they could see that the approaching vehicle was a car. Robbie ran out into the middle of the road and held up his arms. The car slowed down to take the corner, but hooted angrily for him to get out of the way. He stood his ground and, with evident reluctance, the driver brought the car to a halt only a few yards from him.

It was a four-seater, and there were two men in it. As Stephanie stepped up to the window beside the driver she saw that they were well dressed and, from the clothes and horn-rimmed spectacles they were wearing, she judged them to be Americans. In halting English, she asked if either of them spoke German.

The driver replied that he spoke a little, upon which she launched out on a piece of fiction that recalled to Robbie, a trifle grimly, the story-telling ability she had displayed when he had given her lunch at Floca's.

She said that they had set out from Tropaia that morning with the intention of sleeping at Vitina that night and they had had a map showing the goatpaths over the mountains by which they meant to go. At midday they had selected a place to picnic, with a beautiful view. Oh, such a beautiful view. Then tragedy. It was above a sandy cliff that had a rabbit warren in it. There were hundreds of rabbit holes; yes, hundreds. Walking about up there must have disturbed the earth. Suddenly there came a landslide. They were carried down nearly forty feet and buried up to their waists. Their picnic basket, their rucksacks, everything had been lost and they were lucky to have escaped alive. Their map, of course, had been buried too; so for hours they had been lost in the mountains and only a qfuarter of an hour ago had sighted the main road. Would the well-born gentlemen please give them a lift?

Had it been full daylight, it might have occurred to the occupants of the car that the clothes and footwear of the two unfortunates did not at all tally with the story that they were hikers; but in the near darkness they passed unnoticed. Evidently relieved that they had not been forced to pull up by tramps or other undesirables, the Americans expressed their sympathy to Stephanie and willingly agreed to take her and her boy-friend on their way. Coats and bundles in the back of the car were re-stacked, they climbed in and within a few minutes had left behind the spot where they had so nearly lost their lives.

The Americans, with the friendly communicativeness usual in their countrymen, gave their names and said they were professors on their sabbatical vacation from a Mid-Western university. They had toured England, France, Italy and, the previous Thursday, had left their wives to amuse themselves in Athens while they made a five-day tour of the outstanding antiquities in Greece. They had done Delphi and Olympia and were on their way to Navplion from which they would do Tiryns, Mycenae and Epidauros, then do Corinth on their way back to the capital.

Robbie's natural instinct was to tell them of things they must not miss in the places to which they had not yet been; but Stephanie kicked him into silence, fearing that he might give too much away about his real self. She had already given her name as Greta Heine and Robbie's as Willi Muller, and she went on to say they were from Heidelberg University, that they had flown out with a party of students for ten days, at a special rate during the Easter vacation, but that they preferred hiking and seeing the country to being rushed from place to place in a coach.

Neither of the Americans spoke very good German; so, after a while, the conversation lapsed, and within a quarter of an hour they reached Vitina, with its little summer resort nearly four thousand feet up in the mountains. Their driver drew up to set them down there; but Stephanie quickly said that, as they had lost all their kit, they must now go on to a town at which they could buy more.

Soon after nine o'clock, they arrived at Tripolis, where the Americans said they planned to break their journey for dinner at the Arkadia Hotel. Robbie by now had a ravenous appetite and would have given a lot to be able to dine there, too. But he knew that to have a meal at an expensive hotel would not be in keeping with his new role; so he began to thank them for the lift, preparatory to saying good-bye.

Stephanie, however, had other plans. She was most averse to Robbie's spending the night in Tripolis, in case Barak had already put the police there on to him; so she cut in to say that, if the well-born gentlemen would be so good as to take them on to Argos, it would be a great kindness, as they would then be able to see Mycenae from there next day. The professors agreed and dropped them in the arcaded square of the town, with the understanding that they would pick them up from the same corner at ten o'clock sharp.

On the corner where they had been set down, there was a small caf^-restaurant. As they were about to go into it, Stephanie said in a low voice: 'During the war and occupation, nearly all the Greeks in the towns picked up a little German or English; so not a word of Greek. Remember we are Germans. If need be, we'll use a few words of English to help out.'

Inside the place was fairly full, but they got a table to themselves and, with the help of an elderly waiter who had worked for some years in the United States, they ordered a meal. When they had given their order, Stephanie told the man in broken English that they had sent their suitcases on ahead by train from Argos, then cadged a lift from a lorry; but on going to the station, they found that their luggage had not arrived. As the shops were now shut, this had put them in a nasty fix. She then asked if there was any way he could suggest by which they could buy two bags or knapsacks and things for the night.

The waiter could and would. Like all Greeks of his class, he was both obliging and ready to go to some trouble to earn a small commission. He had a friend who had a friend, etc. Two small children were despatched on missions. A quarter of an hour later, several men and women with bronzed faces and gleaming white teeth arrived. One had some inexpensive fibre suitcases to sell; another cotton pyjamas, nightdresses and dressing gowns; a third sponges, scent, soaps and certain rubber goods that, turning his back to Stephanie, he displayed to Robbie with a whispered recommendation as to their reliability.

Robbie waved him away but, at Stephanie's urging, made as swift a selection as possible from the other items, so as to get rid of a crowd that was quickly collecting and which might have aroused the interest of a policeman. In the half hour that remained to them, Robbie managed to dispose of two taskebaps on skewers, a splinantero of fried intestines, a dish of French fried, which are good anywhere in Greece, and a hunk of white F6ta cheese. Stephanie contented herself with a so-called omelette that had chunks of highly-spiced sausage in it, and a compote of prunes and figs. After washing down these items with two large carafes of the local retsina, they both felt considerably better for their meal.

With their purchases packed inside their small, cheap suitcases, they were picked up by the Americans promptly at ten o'clock and were driven off into the darkness.

On their way to Tripolis, Robbie's mind had been so fully occupied by the harrowing events in which he had recently been involved, and in anxious -speculation about the future, that he had remained oblivious of the road they were travelling. But now, soon after they left the chief market town of Arkadia, he again became highly conscious of the perils of the road.

They met no coaches or private cars; but it seemed that, owing perhaps to some commercial arrangement, a whole fleet of lorries was taking this road into the interior by night. Sometimes they could see the approaching lights snaking along the curves of the mountain-side a mile or more ahead; at others they came upon them round a blind corner, with only the briefest warning, and it seemed that they now came head-on to one about every five minutes.

Knowing that, when passing any other vehicle, the outer wheels of the car were usually no more than three feet from the edge of a precipice, such encounters caused Robbie to shut his eyes and hold his breath. To add to his fears, the Americans were none too happy about it, either, for the lorries never used their horns when coming round a corner. The driver's only warning of their approach was the beam that their headlamps cast on the road ahead. Moreover, when they did come rushing forward, like huge, fiery-eyed monsters, it was their custom to keep their dazzling lights still on until within fifty feet of the vehicle they were about to pass, then black them out completely. To get by in total darkness, without a scraping of the sides which might have proved fatal, or giving too wide a berth, which would have proved equally so, called for good nerves and fine judgment.

Fortunately, their driver displayed both, and at last the long, long road, with its innumerable bends, from the mountains down to the west side of the gulf of Navplia, had been safely negotiated. Less than a quarter of an hour later, the kindly Americans set them down in the irregular central square in Argos and wished them luck.

There were cafds there, with lights still burning and people in them; so, carrying their fibre suitcases, they made enquiries at one of them for rooms. A waiter gave one glance at their dirty and dishevelled state, then directed them further down the street to a cafe that was also an hotel. It was a shoddy-looking place, and Robbie demurred about going into it; but Stephanie told him that it was just the sort of cheap rooming house in which no one would look for anyone like himself. Still posing as German students, they went in, and were met by a scruffy-looking landlord in an open-necked shirt. He spoke a few words of German and took them up to two sparsely furnished rooms with thin mattresses on iron beds.

Robbie then told Stephanie that he was very anxious to have a talk with her, and asked if she was too tired to go downstairs for a drink before they turned in. She replied that she was not feeling too bad, as she had managed to sleep for an hour in the car on the way from Tripolis. At that he marvelled, as he had thought the only reason they had all kept silent for most of that perilous drive was from fear of distracting the driver.

In a dimly lit room downstairs, with a small bar at one end of it, they sat down at a bare wooden table. Several of the others were still littered with dirty glasses, but the people who had used them had gone home. Robbie asked the landlord for ouzo and he brought a bottle, two thick glasses and a carafe of water. He then dumped on the table the usual saucers of black olives, gherkins and some kind of stringy vegetable soaked in oil, and left them.

When the landlord had gone and Robbie had poured the drinks, he said:

'Just before the Americans came along and gave us a lift, you were suggesting that I should continue trying to find out what Barak and Co. are doing, and you released me from my promise not to do so. Having thought things over, it seems to me that my case will be little worse if the police pick me up in a week or two than if I give myself up tomorrow morning. I also think that you're right in your idea that I'd be in a much stronger position if, in the meantime, I could secure definite evidence that Barak is up to no good. But what I am not clear about yet is your attitude. Before Barak pushed you over the cliff, I heard you shout that you were sick to death of him and the Party and all its filthy works; and now you are suggesting that I should continue to spy on your own people. Am I to take it that you really mean to break with them for good?'

She drew heavily on the cigarette she was smoking, then nodded: 'Yes. I couldn't go back now, even if I wanted to. Since you heard me quarrelling with Vaclav, you probably also heard me threaten that I'd report him to a man named Janos for taking bribes. Janos's official job is butler at the Legation; but he is the real boss, and even Havelka goes in fear of him. He could have V&clav expelled from the Party, sent home and given a prison sentence. But that wouldn't do me any good now. Cepicka will have been the only person other than Vaclav to see the document you signed and the letter I left behind at Pirgos; and he is dead. V&clav believes me dead too, but the moment I turn up alive he will destroy both the document and my letter—if he hasn't done so already. They were my let-out that I was acting in good faith with the Party. Without them, it will be taken for granted that, in helping you to escape, I deliberately betrayed the Party because you were my lover. That will be the version of the affair that Vaclav will be reporting to Janos tomorrow; so whatever I might say about Vaclav now, whether it's believed or not, I'd be finished and better dead myself.'

T see. Yes,' Robbie murmured. 'You had told me before, of course, that for a long time your husband hadn't meant anything to you. But how about the Party? Up till this afternoon, you were definitely playing fdr their side. When you shouted out about their filthy works, were you really fed up with the way the Communists ran their show or were you referring only to Barak having planned to murder me?'

Stephanie hesitated a moment, then she said: 'All this having happened only this afternoon, I haven't quite got my bearings yet. You see, my father was a Communist and I was brought up as one. I have accepted Communist principles all my life, and I still believe that, if the ideal State on Communist lines could be established, it would better the lot of the great majority of people. But the trouble is that it never works in practice. It results only in dispossessing the old ruling class and putting another in its place. If the new lot were all idealists and prepared to work for the benefit of the masses, that might be all right. But they are not. Nine out of ten of them are out only for themselves and are quite unscrupulous; so it's a case of "dog eat dog" and every smaller dog goes in constant terror of being eaten by a bigger one. None of them dares to take any action because he believes it to be right. Instead, they spend their time spying on one another and either betraying their superiors or covering up their blunders, whichever suits their own book the better. In the meantime, they grab all the perks and privileges there are to grab and leave the masses they are supposed to represent to struggle along as best they can. Greece is a poor country, but the people here are far better off than they are in Czechoslovakia. In some of the slum areas and villages there, the poverty is appalling; yet the Party never does anything about it.'

To Robbie, it was evident that she was now pouring out thoughts which she had long kept pent-up; so he made no comment when she paused to take a drink.

'There is the Police State side of it, too,' she went on. 'It's nothing like so bad as it used to be and, of course, it doesn't affect any great number of people. Most of them have learned by now that if they do their jobs without complaining about hours, or conditions, or food shortages, and refrain from having anything to do with the occasional firebrands who want to start making trouble, they won't be interfered with. But the fact remains that Communism has to be imposed by force. All the Iron Curtain countries would blow up, like the Hungarians did, if their people weren't convinced that Big Brother in Moscow would send in his tanks. And, of course, everyone who holds a position of any importance does have to be very careful what he does and says. Anyone who is fool enough to include in a speech a few sentences implying that perhaps, after all, life was a bit jollier under the old Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, or gets so tight that he allows himself to make a dirty crack at one of the Party bosses, is still liable to disappear quietly from his home overnight. And we all know where he's gone. He's been sent to work in the uranium mines. That is equivalent to a sentence of death by easy stages. I gather that few of the workers in them last more than two years, and, personally, I would infinitely rather be shot.'

'From what you say,' Robbie commented, 'it seems as if quite some time ago you had come to the conclusion that the old way in which the capitalist countries muddle along means a better life for most people than they would have if they lived in a totalitarian State.'

'Yes, I suppose I had. I've never actually admitted it before, even to myself. But I must have recognized it subconsciously. It is the reason why I have remained with Vaclav for the past four years. I had nearly made up my mind to break with him, then I heard he had been nominated as our Security Chief in Greece. Although I was a dyed-in-the-wool Communist, and fully believed that in the capitalist-imperialist countries the bloated rich actually treated the poor as slaves, I wanted to see for myself what went on; so I decided to stick to him for a bit longer. The diplomatic staffs of Iron Curtain countries are not allowed to mix freely with the people in whose countries they are stationed; so it was quite a time before I realized that the Greek lower classes were really a good bit better off than most Czechs and that nobody here need fear being imprisoned, whatever he may say about the Government. But, meanwhile, I was becoming accustomed to the good food, the pretty clothes, the hair-dos, the really worth-while cinema shows, the glossy magazines and all the other things I'd never had in my own country. To have broken with Vaclav would have meant being sent home. I suppose it was weak of me, but rather than have that happen I put up with his infidelities and the way he treated me, and did whatever he told me to, without argument.'

'Given the same circumstances, I think most people would have done as you did,' Robbie smiled. 'But where do you mean to go from here? Up till now, you have been doing your bit to help the Communists reach the goal they have set themselves of imposing their ideology on the whole world. But, willy-nilly, you have burnt your boats with them through helping me to escape. What is more, you now admit that Communist domination brings with it misery to all classes. As you know, I've been trying to defeat what I believe to be one move in that direction. Did you suggest that I should carry on with that only because you like me enough not to wish to see me condemned to death for killing Cepicka, or are you prepared to give me your help?'

Stephanie took another drink, then sat silent for a little, while Robbie anxiously awaited her answer. At length, she said: 'The more I think about life in Greece compared with life at home, the more certain I feel that the spread of Communism ought to be checked and, if possible, rolled back.'

'Then you will help me?' he asked eagerly. 'Even though you would be working against your own country?'

She shook her head sadly. 'I haven't got a country, although perhaps I may have one again one day. Czechoslovakia is now just a part of the Soviet Bloc. Besides, as far as blood goes, I'm half and half. I told you all sorts of lies, but I was telling the truth about my mother having been English.'

'Really!'

'Yes. I haven't a drop of Greek blood in me. But, like you, I'm good at languages and three and a half years in Athens have enabled me to speak Greek very fluently. I've still got quite an accent, though, and all along I was a bit scared that we would meet a Greek who would insist to you that I must be a foreigner.'

Robbie smiled. 'I noticed your accent myself, but I put it down to you having spent your early years in England and always talking English with your mother.'

'I was born in England, but I didn't remain there for long. My father was a Czech, and a technical expert in the manufacture of pottery. The pay for such work was much higher in England than it was in Czechoslovakia and, early in the thirties, through a friend, he got a job with a firm in Staffordshire. He had always been a Communist and, although my mother wasn't one then, she was an extreme Left-wing Socialist. Incidentally she was a school-teacher, and I owe it to her that I had a really good education. They were married in thirty-five, but I wasn't born until thirty-eight. Then, at the time of the Munich crisis, the Czech Government called up its Army reserves. Father was naturally madly anti-Nazi, so he went back to serve and took mother and me with him.'

'You were there all through the war, then?'

'Yes. I don't remember much about it, except that we were all half-starved and miserable. During the German occupation, father was in the Resistance and, as he managed to survive, he was given an administrative job when the Russians drove the Germans out. From then on, things improved for us and I was sent to a good school. Owing to the private teaching I had had from mother, I found lessons easy. Then, when the Government was taken over by the Communists, father became quite a big shot, and I was made a Youth Leader in the Young Communist Organization. I was just seventeen when I met Vaclav at a Party rally. He fell for me and I was flattered, because, in his way, he is a fine-looking man and he was already regarded as quite a shilling light among the younger officials of the Party. On that account my mother and father encouraged the match, and that was that.'

Again she took a drink. There's no point in going into details about what followed. Within a year, it became a marriage of convenience. I was still young enough to console myself with the status that being his wife gave me, and meeting important people. He amused himself with other women, but was careful not to drive me too far, from fear that he would lose my father's influence in helping him with his career. Then, when we came to Greece, I liked it too much here to face being sent home, and he found he could make valuable use of me. You see, there are no other wives of the Legation staff who can speak as many languages as I can and . . . why shouldn't I say it?—are smart and attractive. One way and another, I was able to pick up a lot of useful information for him; and, of course, as I am half English, I was the obvious choice when your advertisement for a chauffeur-secretary appeared and it was decided to put a woman on to you.'

'And now?'

T thought I'd made it plain. I daren't let myself be sent home. About a year ago, my father died; so there's no one there now who would protect me. I've decided to put the past behind me and come in with you.'

Thank God for that.' Robbie refilled her glass and his own, then lifted his, saying: 'Here's to us,' and they drank to one another. When he had set his glass down, he said:

'Your decision may be the means of your saving my life for the second time—now that there is no need for us to keep any secrets from each other. For my part, I have no connection with any oil company. I came into this thing only because I speak Czech and happened, one morning out at Toyrcolimano, to overhear Barak and Nejedly discussing the oil-prospecting concession they had got from the Greeks in exchange for taking the Greek tobacco crop. When I learnt that there was no oil in Greece, I became curious and suspected that it might be cover for installing some scientific device—something that, in the event of war, could be used against the N.A.T.O. forces. I told my uncle, the Ambassador, what I thought but he pooh-poohed my ideas, so I made a start on my own. I expect you already know all about the week I spent as a stooge in the Czech Travel Agency, and how I burgled the place and got away with some of Krajcir's secret papers. Anyhow, I have no official backing and you are the only person who knows how I've been spending my time since we left Athens. Now it's your turn. You have only to tell me what Barak and Co. are up to. Then, even if the police pick me up before I can secure proof of it, I'll be able to get them to start enquiries that should lead to justifying me from having killed Cepicka.'

Stephanie shook her head. 'I'm sorry, Robbie. I wish I could tell you, but I don't know. That is the truth. I swear it. Of course, you are right about the prospecting for oil being only a cover plan. That much Vaclav didn't attempt to conceal from me. But, on these sort of jobs, no one is ever told anything that is not strictly necessary for him to know in order to carry out his work. They may be making launching sites for rockets, or perhaps a chain of radar stations to assist the Communist submarine fleet that is based on the Albanian ports. Those are just shots in the dark. Honestly, I haven't a clue.'

'Oh, dear!' Robbie pulled down the corners of his mouth. 'That's very disappointing. Still, I quite see that they wouldn't have let out their secret further than they had to, and your job was confined to keeping an eye on me. We must start again from the beginning, then. But your mind is much more fertile in ideas than mine. What do you suggest should be our next move?'

'To cover up your disappearance further by every possible means we can,' she replied without hesitation. 'We've had a lucky break to start with, by being picked up by two Americans. They can't read the Greek papers, so all the chances are against any account of this evening's affair coming to their notice. Even if it does, I shall be reported as dead and the police will be looking for an Englishman on his own; so our American friends are most unlikely to think that one of the German hikers to whom they gave a lift might have been you. Again, the people in the cafe in Tripolis and the landlord here will have no reason to connect a German couple with the wanted Englishman. So, so far, so good; but we must not let the grass grow under out feet. The sooner you can get out of Greece, the better.'

'Out of Greece!' echoed Robbie. 'But I'd be caught when I showed my passport. Besides, if we are going to try-'

'You don't need to show your passport when going to any of the Greek islands,' she interrupted, 'and surely the least risky place to try to find out what Vaclav's group are up to is on one of them.'

'You're right,' he agreed. 'Which do you favour?'

She considered a moment. 'I think it should be either Crete or Rhodes, because many more people go there than to the others. In any of the smaller ones, more notice would be taken of you as a visitor; so when your photograph is put into the papers, there would be a bigger risk of someone identifying you.'

'That's one thing we needn't worry about.' Robbie gave a little laugh. 'I haven't had a photograph taken since I was a small boy, except for my passport, and they won't get hold of that because I've got it on me.'

'Well, that's a blessing. But I still favour Crete or Rhodes. There's an air service to both, so we could get to either of them quickly. And time matters, because it's not on our side—or won't be, once the police start an all-out search for you.'

'If we are to go by plane, we'll have to return to Athens.

Since so many people know me there, that will mean my running a big risk.'

'Not if we keep to the poor parts of the city, and eat in the sort of places to which people we know never go. There is certain to be a train from here tomorrow morning and we'd better go by it. Lorry drivers and drivers of cars who give lifts would be much more likely to remember our faces than would other travellers in a third-class railway compartment. There is one thing, though. We shall need money and as soon as the police learn that you are carrying a Letter of Credit, they will notify the banks to hold you should you attempt to draw any money. It is bound to be two or three days before they get round to that; but, all the same, I suggest that you go to the bank here first thing in the morning and draw out as big a sum as they will let you have.'

Robbie gave her a glance of admiration. 'You think of everything, don't you? Without you, I wouldn't last twelve hours.'

She smiled back at him. 'You saved my life this evening, Robbie. And, knowing that you can't face heights, I can guess what coming down that slope to get me must have meant to you. For what my mind is worth, every bit of it is yours. Can you draw enough money to keep us going for a week or two?'

'Yes. When we left Athens, I had no idea how long we should be away; so the Letter of Credit I'm carrying is still good for

quite a large-' Suddenly he stopped in mid-sentence, then

continued with a frown: 'But I've just remembered. Tomorrow is Sunday.'

'So it is. I'd forgotten that, too. Then you'll have to draw the money in Athens on Monday. That is a pity as it will give away the fact that you have been there. Still we should be out of the capital again before your bank learns that the police are after you.'

They talked for another ten minutes or so, making further plans. There was always the odd chance that the Americans might learn that a car smash and murder had taken place just before their arrival at the spot where they had picked up the two young Germans. If so, and they informed the police, it was certain that the police would endeavour to trace the hikers, in order to find out if they had seen Robbie or could give any information about the affair; so they decided that, on reaching Athens, they would change their identities again and pass themselves off as French. They also decided that they would go to Rhodes. By then it was getting on for half-past-twelve, and the scruffy landlord came in to say that he was shutting up for the night.

In spite of the hardness of the beds, they were both so tired that they slept well. In the morning, a slatternly woman brought them unappetizing breakfast of bad coffee and sweet buns. The geyser in the only bathroom did not work, and the lavatory stank to high heaven but at least the bill amazed Robbie by its modesty. Having never before stayed in any but expensive hotels, he had had no idea that it was possible to get a night's lodging so cheaply.

The train for Athens left at eleven o'clock. It consisted of only four coaches: three thirds and one first. Robbie had travelled on a Greek train some months before, out to Marathon, so he knew that going first class was much more pleasant than travelling first on British Railways. A third of the coach consisted of a kitchen, and between each pair of broad, stuffed seats there was a wide table on which at any hour one could have a well-cooked meal of one's own choice from an'enormous menu.

But Stephanie insisted that they would draw less attention to themselves if they travelled third, and the third-class coaches were very different. They had wooden seats and were packed to capacity. As it was a Sunday, the travellers were mostly dressed in their best and no live-stock accompanied them. Even so the smell was considerable, and the strong sun grilling down on the roof of the carriage soon set everyone perspiring freely.

The little train puffed its way past Mycenae and up into the mountains, then round bend after bend through them and so down to Corinth. From there it crossed the canal and, ascending again to several hundred feet above sea level, followed the north shore of the Gulf of Athens as far as Eleusis. When it stopped there, Robbie drew Stephanie's attention to the name of the station and sighed with relief. They had already been cooped up in considerable discomfort for over four hours, and he judged that another quarter of an hour should see them at their journey's end. But he was counting his chickens. Instead of following the coast further, the train turned inland and, stopping frequently, made an hour-long detour right round the capital; so it was after five o'clock before they arrived in Athens.

While in the train, they had pretended to know no Greek and had spoken German to one another. Now, carrying their light suitcases, they went into the station buffet, talking loudly in French. Robbie, pretending to know only a few words of Greek, then ordered drinks for them and, in halting sentences, asked the woman behind the counter if she could give them the name of a small hotel that was both cheap and clean. The woman consulted her colleague, who called a waiter who spoke some French. A heated argument between the three ensued then, with many smiles, the Hotel Theodori in Paleologou Street was recommended, and the waiter gave Robbie the number of a bus that would take them there.

They found the hotel drab but adequate, and registered there as Monsieur Jules Colbert and Mademoiselle Louise Hachette. Until half past seven they rested in their rooms, then met again downstairs and went out for a meal at a nearby tavern. Over the meal they held another conference.

Now that Robbie was in Athens his Letter of Credit was redundant, as he had only to walk along to his own bank to draw money. But to do so would mean that the police would soon know that he either had been or still was in Athens. Stephanie suggested that he should make out a cheque, bearing a date a week old, which she should take to his bank and cash for him. He still had on him about fifty pounds in Greek money; but he felt that he ought to obtain at least another two hundred while he had the chance as, apart from the few items he had bought in Tripolis, they had only the things they stood up in. The question was, would the bank cash such a large cheque, made out simply to 'bearer', without requiring evidence of the identity of the young woman who presented it?

For Stephanie to produce such evidence would, in due course, lead to the police learning that she had not been burnt up in the Ford, but was still alive. She was greatly averse to that because, as long as they believed her to be dead, they would be hunting for Robbie as a man on his own, not one accompanied by a woman.

In this connection he said to her: 'It's a pity that we can't pose as brother and sister, but we are so unlike that we would never get away with that. It would only make people more suspicious of us.'

After a moment, she said thoughtfully: 'The best cover of all for you would be for us to travel as husband and wife. But we would have to share a room then. Of course, that need mean no more than when a man and a girl share a bathing tent and take it in turns to change in it. You could get up an hour earlier than me in the mornings, have your bath and go downstairs, and at night I would go up to bed half an hour before you. I'm not standing for any repetition of that business by the pool, though; and the question is, can I trust you?'

'You can,' Robbie gave a solemn nod. 'It's terribly good of you, Stephanie, to go that far to give me a better chance of keeping out of the hands of the police until I can pin something on Barak. If I let you down in this I'd never again be able to look at my own face in a mirror.'

She smiled. 'I believe you, Robbie. We'll do that, then. The next question is: when we get to Rhodes, are we going to stay poor or live medium rich?'

'Normally, I'd be all for staying at the Hotel des Roses. I've heard that it's one of the best in Greece. But won't it be in that sort of place that the police will look for me?'

'I don't think so. By playing poor in Argos and here in Athens, we should have put them off your track and, naturally, they will assume that you have gone to earth in some cheap hotel somewhere in the Peloponnesus. The last place they are likely to look for you would be sunning yourself on the beach of the Hotel des Roses with—if I may say so—a rather pretty wife.'

'Oh, come on!' he exclaimed spontaneously. 'Don't be so modest. You know jolly well that you are lovely.'

Her eyebrows went up and she gave a sudden laugh. 'D'you know that's the first compliment you have ever paid me? It's nice that you should think so. Still, I hope you are not going to let that give you ideas, otherwise I'll have to call off our sharing a bedroom.'

He had gone red at finding that, without thinking, he had said the sort of thing he had wanted to say to her for a long time past. But he quickly shook his head. 'Don't worry. I've given you my word.'

Stubbing out her cigarette, she said: 'There are several advantages to staying in a bi£* hotel. It is not so likely to be noticed if we never go up to bed at the same time, or come down together in the morning; and if we want to hire a car, there will be no nosey landlady to wonder how we can afford such an extravagance.'

'Right, then. The des Roses it shall be, providing we can get hold of enough money.'

That question was solved by an idea that came to Robbie while he was still lying in bed the following morning. Luke Beecham could get a cheque cashed for him without any questions being asked, and Stephanie could collect the money without having to give away her identity. As soon as he got downstairs, he wrote a note to Luke on a plain sheet of paper. Not wishing to embroil his friend, he made no reference to the events which had led to his present situation. The note ran:

I am still on the war path, and am certain now that the people I am interested in are up to something pretty nasty. But, for the time being, it is essential that 1 keep under cover, and I need money. Would you be good enough to cash the enclosed cheque right away through your bank and hand the proceeds to the bearer of this, who wishes to remain anonymous but is entirely reliable?

As soon as Stephanie came downstairs, they went out and had an early coffee. Over the table he gave her the note and the cheque, telling her the address of Luke Beecham's office. It was then agreed that if Luke were there and she got the money, she should go to the Olympus Airways office and try to get two seats on the next morning's plane to Rhodes. Then she was to buy herself a better suitcase and some clothes which would pass muster for a stay at the Hotel des Roses.

At her suggestion it was agreed that he should go meanwhile to a barber and have a crew-cut, and also buy himself a pair of dark glasses. When she had set off, with considerable reluctance he had the back and sides of his head shaved, so that he felt he looked like a convict; then, with some of the money he had on him, he bought himself two shirts, another pair of shoes, some socks and four ties.

When they met again for lunch, he learned to his relief that Stephanie's mission had been successful. Luke had asked no questions; she had the money and a note from him, which said:

I was getting quite worried at hearing nothing from you. Things are looking far from good, so anything you can get hold of in the immediate future may prove of exceptional value. 1 take it the 'bearer' is the 'chauffeuse-secretary' you told me about. No wonder you refused to take my advice, and preferred to risk blackmail or having to cough up alimony. What a dark horse you've turned out to be. Anyhow lots of luck to you, and let's hope that we are still all alive this time next week.

Robbie and Stephanie had been so completely absorbed in their own affairs for the past three days that they had not given a thought to the international crisis. Now he got hold of a paper. The headline read: 'Soviet Threat. Unless U.S. accepts terms, Russia will consider issuing Ultimatum.'

They read the leader, and a long article which amounted to little more than a recapitulation of what everyone already knew. The American submarine was sitting on the bottom under the ice in a bay on the Arctic coast of Russia. She was hemmed in by Soviet surface ships, and Moscow, asserting that she had been on a spying mission, demanded her surrender. As a gesture, the Russians had offered to release and return her crew, but they insisted on the ship being handed over undamaged and complete with all her secrets. The Americans continued to refuse.

Since there was nothing that Robbie and Stephanie—or the many millions of other people whose lives hung upon the issue— could do about it, they returned to their own affairs, and Stephanie searched through the paper to see if there was any mention of themselves. But, as they had supposed, it was too early for the police to have issued any statement to the Press.

Stephanie had also secured their air tickets. She said that she had taken them in the names of Monsieur and Madame Max Thevanaz and had given their nationality as Swiss, as a precaution against their being forced into contact with either German or French people at the des Roses. In the first case, their imperfect accents would be accounted for by the belief that they were French Swiss and, in the second, German Swiss.

Later in the afternoon Robbie bought himself, now that he no longer had to be so careful about what he spent, a dark blue suit for evening wear, a raincoat and a soft hat. Then they went to the G.P.O.; and, to his considerable relief, he saw his precious manuscript handed over to Stephanie. He straightway re-addressed it to himself, to await collection, care of Luke Beecham, then posted it off again.

On the Tuesday morning they were up early, because they had to be at the Air Terminal in Constitution Square by half past seven. There Robbie wrote labels in the name of 'Max Thevanaz' and tied them on to their luggage. The bus then took them out to Phaieron, where they spent an anxious half hour going through the formalities. But Robbie was wearing his dark spectacles and carrying his hat in his hand, so that his semi-shaved head might mislead anyone who thought he recognized him. He was given no cause for anxiety and, soon after eight-thirty, they were airborne on their way to Rhodes.

In less than ten minutes, they had crossed the Sounion Peninsula and were heading out over the blue Aegean, glittering in the sun and starred With its many rocky islands. The big islands of Andros, Kea and Kithnos could all be seen clearly from the aircraft. It passed right over Siros and, when half an hour out from Athens, over Delos.

Once up in the air, Robbie had felt a sudden relief from the tension under which he had been for several days. In Rhodes he would still be liable to be picked up by the Greek police and charged with Cepicka's murder, but the psychological effect of having got safely away from the mainland acted on him like a tonic. For the first time in nearly a week his mind ceased to be occupied with his personal anxieties, and he craned eagerly forward to see as much as he could of the sacred island on which the mighty twins, Apollo and Artemis, had been born.

Looking down on Delos made him think of his book and, in his new mood of optimism, he allowed himself to assume that somehow he would get out of the mess he was in and, in due course, finish the book. The islands below them brought to his mind Ithaca, of which Odysseus had been Prince, although that lay far away on the other side of Greece. He wondered again if he should include a chapter on the Odyssey and, as he had already done one on Homer's other immortal epic, the Iliad, with its tale of Troy, felt that perhaps he should.

That Odysseus had taken ten years to get home from the siege of Troy had been due to his incurring the wrath of Poseidon, because he had blinded one of the Sea God's sons, the Cyclopes, Polyphemus, by driving a pointed stake through the giant's solitary eye. Thinking of that, Robbie suddenly wondered if all his recent troubles had been brought on him owing to Athene's anger at his having signed that promise at Pirgos to abandon his mission. If so he could only pray that, now he had resumed it, she would forgive him.

Poseidon never let up on the unfortunate Odysseus and he was unlucky from the start. He lost some of his men on the island of the Lotus-Eaters and others were eaten by Polyphemus. Then, after the King of the Winds had tied up all the winds in a bag for him, except one which very nearly brought him home, his inquisitive sailors opened the bag and his ships were driven to the land of the fierce Laestrygonians, who murdered the crews of all the vessels except his own.

The survivors next came to the island of the lovely enchantress, Circe, who turned a number of them into swine. Odysseus saved himself and rescued them only through the god Hermes giving him a more potent drug than that used by the witch. He became her lover and stayed there a year, until his homesick men became mutinous. Circe let them go but said they would never reach home unless they consulted the ghost of the blind seer Tiresias. Under Circe's directions they reached the land of perpetual night, and there dug a great hole into which they poured the blood of sacrificed oxen, while Odysseus called on the shade of Tiresias to appear. The smell of the blood brought the ghosts crowding up from Hades to lap at it and so enjoy a brief return to life. Among them was his mother, whom he had not known to be dead, Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax and others of his companions at the siege of Troy. At last old Tiresias appeared and prophesied that, although Poseidon's malice would continue to give them a rough passage, they might get safely home provided that, should they come to the coast of Trinaeria, they did no harm to the Sun god's cattle pastured there.

On their return to Circe's isle, she gave Odysseus further good counsel, for they next had to sail through the waters of the Sea Sirens, whose beautiful voices lured sailors to their death. She told him to stop the ears of his crew with wax and have himself lashed to the mast. Circe's advice saved them but they then had to pass between Scylla and Charybdis, a narrow passage of grim rocks made trebly dangerous on the one side by great waterspouts belched out by a daughter of Poseidon, and on the other by a six-headed monster that plucked six of Odysseus's best men from the vessel as it passed.

They came then to Trinaeria and went ashore. Contrary winds kept them there for a month and they exhausted all their provisions. Odysseus's lieutenant, Eurylochus, incited the starving sailors to revolt and, despite the warning of Tiresias, they slew the Sun god's cattle. After a week of feasting, a favourable wind sprang up; but no sooner were they out of sight of land than vengeance fell upon them. A tempest arose, the vessel was sunk and all hands lost, except Odysseus. He succeeded in clinging to some wreckage and, after nine days and nights, was washed ashore on the island of Ogygia, on which lived Atlas's divinely beautiful daughter, Calypso.

He lived with her for seven years, but at last became homesick again; so Zeus decreed that Calypso must release him. He built himself a raft but, on his seventeenth day at sea, Poseidon learned what had happened and sent a storm that wrecked it. A sea nymph saved him by throwing him her veil and, three days later, he was washed up naked on the shores of the rich kingdom of Phaeacia.

At last his luck changed. The King's daughter, Nausicaa, found and clothed him. Her father received him kindly and, on learning that he was Odysseus, renowned for his exploits before Troy, but believed dead long since, did him great honour, then lent him one of his ships. When they reached Ithaca, Odysseus was still asleep. The sailors carried him ashore on his bed, leaving many rich gifts beside him on the beach, and when he awoke he found himself in his own land again at last.

It was twenty years since he had left it. Telemachus, his son, whom he had left an infant, was now grown up. His wife, Penelope, had remained faithful to him, although he had been reported dead, and a nurpber of nobles were endeavouring to force her to marry one of them. Believing him to be still alive, she had resisted their pressure by saying that she would choose a new husband only when she had finished weaving a beautiful shroud for old Laertes, Odysseus's father. Each night she undid most of the work she had done on it during the day.

Odysseus might have been murdered by his wife's suitors had he gone straight to his house alone and unarmed; but his natural caution led him first to appear as a castaway, so that he could find out what had been taking place during his absence. In turn, he revealed himself to his old shepherd, his father and his son, then he went to his own house as a beggar. No one there recognized him, except his old dog, who crept off a dung-heap to welcome him, then died at his feet. The place was filled with the suitors, who had taken it over and were wasting his substance in riotous living. While they were drinking at a banquet, Odysseus and Telemachus hid all their arms, then rallied their own faithful servants and exacted vengeance, slaying the leading interlopers with their arrows and driving the rest from the house.

As this bare outline of the greatest adventure story ever written ran through Robbie's mind, he decided that he could not leave it out. By then, the aircraft had passed over the southern tip of Kos. To the right lay the marvellous prospect of the coast of Turkey, with its mile upon mile of mountains outlined against the blue sky. Before them, only a few miles off, lay the great island of Rhodes.

Sheltered by the Turkish mountains from the east, and further south than the mainland of Greece, it was, Robbie knew, one of the most favoured spots in the world. It was said not to have been there when Zeus had taken land as his Kingdom and had given Poseidon dominion over water, but to have been thrown up later by a volcanic eruption. Apollo had asked Zeus for it and it had been given to him. It was his own tiny province and he had made it a land of sunshine and roses.

The aircraft landed and the passengers walked across the tarmac to the small airport building. Then ensued the usual wait while the baggage was being unloaded. Robbie and Stephanie sat down at a table and had cups of coffee. While they were drinking it, one of the airport men came through carrying a big bundle of the morning's newspapers which had just come off the plane. He was carrying one loose copy in his hand. Whistling cheerfully as he passed, he threw this copy on the bar counter. It did not land squarely and slipped off near Robbie's feet. He picked it up and, as there was no one behind the bar at that moment to whom to hand it, he unfolded it. The headline in heavy type on the front page was a cheerful one:

'soviet and u.s. accept india's offer to mediate'

Then, further down the page, another headline in smaller type caught his eye. It ran: 'Police anxious to trace British Ambassador's nephew.'

24

The Persistent American

The muscles round Robbie's mouth tightened and he swiftly read the paragraph, which ran:

'On Saturday evening last a fatal accident occurred on the Olympia-Tripolis road some miles west of Vitina. A Mercedes driven by Mr. Carl Cepicka, an official of the Czechoslovak Legation, ran into another car, sending it over the precipice. The second car is believed to have contained Mr. Robert Grenn, the nephew of the British Ambassador, and Mrs. Vaclav Barak, the wife of another official of the Czechoslovak Legation, who are known to have left Athens together on March 28th.

Mrs. Barak went over with the car, which was later found burnt out, and Mr. Cepicka is reported to have died shortly after the accident. Mr. Grenn, however, is said to have jumped from the car before it went over; but he has since disappeared, and the police are anxious to get in touch with him.'

Stephanie had leant over and also read the paragraph. Robbie re-folded the paper and put it behind him on the bar, then she said in a low voice: 'We had to expect they would put something in, and it might be worse. Evidently the police have not yet let on to the Press about the way Cepicka met his death. They may think, too, that making it look as though they want to question you only about the accident will induce you to give yourself up. Anyway, this won't start a public hue and cry after you.'

Seeing the paragraph had brought Robbie sadly down to earth; but he took such comfort as he could from her comment, and soon afterward recovered his spirits sufficiently to take an interest in the pretty country through which a taxi they had secured was taking them. The Airport lay inland, but the road from it led to the north-west coast, then ran right round the northern end of the island to the city of Rhodes, which faced east from its tip. The run gave them no sight of the city as the Hotel des Roses lay at its northern extremity, a palatial block surrounded by its own gardens and overlooking its private bathing beach.

They were there soon after eleven o'clock. Robbie duly signed the register for them as Monsieur and Madame Max Thevanaz of Basle and they were shown up to a comfortable room with twin beds, windows looking out on the sea and a private bathroom.

For the first time in his life Robbie was about to share a room with a girl, and the thought suddenly made him feel terribly self-conscious. To hide his embarrassment, he quickly pretended to be absorbed in the wonderful prospect of the deep blue sea and the Turkish coast, with its chain of snow-capped mountains. But Stephanie, being used to sharing a hotel room with her husband, took things in her stride. As soon as the porter had brought up their luggage, she began to allot the ample cupboard and drawer space between Robbie and herself, then, humming a little tune, started to unpack.

Before lunch, they explored the amenities downstairs—a seemingly endless succession of spacious lounges, terraces, bars, a ballroom and two restaurants. But, for the size of the place, there were comparatively few people about, and when they went to the office to get a map of the town, an assistant manager told them gloomily that the war-scare had led to many cancelled bookings.

Immediately after they had lunched, they set off for the town and, in a half hour's walk, were amazed by its contrasts. Rhodes and the other islands of the Dodecanese had been liberated from the Turks in 1912 and occupied by the French in 1915 with a promise that, after an Allied victory, they would be restored to Greece, but by the Treaty of Sevres they had been awarded to Italy. The Italians had then occupied them for over a quarter of a century, until expelled after the Second World War.

Whatever views one might hold about Mussolini, it was evident that Rhodes owed him a great debt. Between the des Roses and the 'new' town stood half a dozen splendid buildings of golden-yellow stone, erected by the Italians to house their Administration of the Dodecanese, and one for the Municipality of Rhodes with an arcade modelled on that of the Palace of the Doges in Venice.

The new town, too, had no resemblance to Tripolis or Argos. Instead of a maze of alleys for a market and streets of ramshackle buildings, its market stalls were housed in the long sides of one building that formed a hexagon, having a big open space and a bandstand in the middle. In the well-kept streets that surrounded the market, there were scores of modern shops.

Seaward of the new town lay the harbour of Mandrakhi, with the old castle of St. Nicholas at the end of its mole, and two statues of antlered deer gracing the pylons at either side of its entrance. Somewhere there, Robbie told Stephanie, had once stood the Colossus of Rhodes, which the ancients had accounted one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It had been a bronze statue of Apollo, over a hundred feet in height and with thumbs so large that only a big man could make his hands meet when embracing one in his arms. But it had been the pride of Rhodes —then a great sea-power—for only fifty-six years. In 224 b.c. it had been overthrown by an earthquake and all traces of it had long since vanished.

South of the new town lay the old city. It was entirely encircled by vast walls built by the Crusaders and dominated by their huge castle in the north-west corner. To seaward of it lay the commercial harbour and it was there that the Bratislava must have discharged the cargo that she had for Rhodes. After a few enquiries, Robbie located the Port Authority and learned that she had docked on April 7th, sailing again the following evening. He also secured from the clerk who gave him this information the name and address of the shipping agent who had acted for the ship's owners.

He was a Mr. Pilavachi and, when they found the street in which he had his office, Stephanie left Robbie on the corner. She then went on to the office and, presenting herself as Mrs. Sebesta, of the Czechoslovakian Travel Agency, enquired for Mr. Pilavachi. It transpired, as she had expected, that he had never heard of Mrs. Sebesta, but he had corresponded with Krajcir and had actually met Barak when he had flown to Rhodes to meet the Czech group landing from the ship.

Having established these mutual acquaintances, Stephanie said that she believed one of the engineers in the group was an old friend of hers, named Zdenek, and, as she was on a few days' visit to the island, she would very much like to renew her acquaintance with him. Upon this, the Greek shipping agent made no difficulty about telling her that the Czech group was prospecting for oil in the bay of Monolithos, which lay on the south-west coast of the island, some eighty-odd kilometres distant.

When she rejoined Robbie, they walked along to a pleasant cafe on the water-front, with Venetian arches surrounding a square terrace, and over a drink there discussed future plans. Both of them were only too well aware that, now the police were looking for Robbie, time was an all-important factor; so there could be no question of putting off until Sunday an attempt to find out what was going on at Monolithos.

As they thought it almost certain that Barak would believe Robbie either to be lying low in one of the small towns in the

Peloponnesus, or in one of its ports endeavouring to get himself smuggled out of the country, it seemed very unlikely that the Czech group in Rhodes would have been specially alerted to keep a look-out for him. Even so, the chances of his being able to secure photographs of the site during a week-day seemed slender.

In consequence, Stephanie put forward the idea that she should go openly to the site and enquire for her mythical friend, the engineer Zdenek. Presenting herself as a Czech should allay the suspicions of whoever §Jie talked to there and, although she would not be able to take any photographs of the site, she would be able to carry away in her mind a very full picture of it.

Robbie was naturally greatly averse to her exposing herself to danger, but the odds against Barak's being there, or anyone else who knew her, were so long that he had to admit that the risk of her running into trouble was very small. As he could think of no other plan, he reluctantly agreed to hers.

That evening ihey made up for their past three days of privation by an excellent dinner, washed down with a bottle of the local red wine, Chevalier de Rhodes, which they found quite palatable. They followed it with two glasses apiece of another local product, the rich, sweet wine of Kamiros, which they thought really excellent.

There was dancing in the ballroom, but Stephanie evaded further contact with Robbie's large feet by saying that, having got up so early that morning, she was tired out. Shortly before ten o'clock she went up to bed.

He gave her the stipulated half hour, then followed. Although he had every intention of keeping his promise, he could not prevent his thoughts from running riot as he went up in the lift; but on entering their room he saw that she was lying in bed with a woolly bedjacket over her shoulders, reading a book, and she did not even give him a glance. He undressed in the bathroom then, while she continued to ignore him, slipped off his dressing gown and got into bed. For some ten minutes he lay there, not daring to look at her, then she yawned, put down her book, said: 'Good night, Robbie. Let's pray that we have good luck tomorrow,' and switched off the light. For a time he lay awake; but he, too, was tired from his long day and, while still vaguely thinking of her as so near and yet so far, he dropped off to sleep.

He had already informed the office that he was one of those eccentric people who preferred to get up and have his breakfast sitting down at a table downstairs; so when they were called at eight o'clock, he dressed himself in the bathroom, then left her in bed to enjoy her coffee, rose-petal jam and rolls.

They had decided that, as Monolithos lay some distance from any of the main roads in the island, they might have some difficulty in finding it if they hired a car for Stephanie to drive; so Robbie had booked one with a chauffeur.

At half past nine, with a picnic lunch on board, they set off, and they had not gone a mile before they found that their driver, Tino, spoke quite good English. As a Swiss couple of the educated class, it would have been absurd for them to pretend that they did not also speak English, and there was no escaping his determination to act as their guide.

Some thirty kilometres from Rhodes he insisted on pulling up and taking them round the partially overgrown ruins of Kamiros, which had once been the capital of one of the three City-States of the island; but later they were amazed to find that, although he had not a good word for the Italians, the only decent buildings in the squalid little townships through which they passed had been Fascist Headquarters.

Believing them to be tourists, which they were in no position to deny, he took them on a long detour up to the Prophet Elias mountain, from which the whole island, set in its deep blue sea, could be seen. Half an hour later they left the main road, snaked inland through the Ataviros Mountains until, still at over two thousand feet above sea level, they passed through the village of Monolithos, turned into a rough track and, a few miles further on, came out of the woods to a flat piece of ground that was evidently a roughly-made car park. There Tino pulled up and, pointing to a ruined castle perched on a mound a hundred feet or more above them, announced: 'We are arrived.'

When engaging him, Robbie had not realized that Monolithos, although off the ordinary tourist beat, was considered one of the beauty spots of the island, but naturally Tino imagined that to be the reason why he had been hired to bring them there. In the circumstances, and as they still had no idea in which direction from that spot lay the site at which the Czech group was operating, there seemed nothing for it but to accept the situation. By a steep, twisting path between stunted pines they climbed the hill and when, panting, they reached the ruin, they felt that their effort had been well worth it.

The view from the crumbling walls of this long-deserted stronghold was superb, but to them it awarded something more. To the left of the headland, near the shore on the long bay that curved away southward, they could see some scattered buildings. Near them rose a pylon that, from that distance, looked like a child's piece of Meccano, and beyond the tiny line of creaming surf several boats were anchored. These indications made them confident that it was the place they were seeking.

Returning to the car, Robbie gave Tino his instructions. During the next twenty minutes, going slowly over devious stony ways, he brought them down to within a hundred yards of the buildings. There Stephanie got out and went forward on her own.

For some ten minutes Robbie remained in the car, a prey to considerable anxiety, until he saw Stephanie emerge from the largest of the cluster of buildings with a squat, broad-shouldered man beside her. When they reached the car Stephanie, now speaking Czech, introduced her companion as Comrade Rybacke, the engineer in charge of the group, and Robbie to him as Comrade Witold, a Polish travel agent who was making an exploratory tour of Rhodes with her.

Comrade Rybacek said that he and his two senior assistants had been just about to sit down to their midday meal, and he would be delighted if Comrade Sebesta and Witold would join them. It then emerged that the mythical Comrade Zdenek, for whom Stephanie had enquired, was not one of the group and that Comrade Rybacek did not recall his name as that of one of the hundred-odd passengers who had sailed in the Bratislava but, no doubt, he was in one of the other islands.

Stephanie, having introduced Robbie as a Pole, protected him from discovery, through his accent, that he was not a Czech. He readily accepted Comrade Rybacek's invitation and they spent the next hour very pleasantly with the three Czech engineers in a little house which for many generations had been occupied by a Greek family of modest means.

During the meal, Stephanie kept up her role as Krajcir's principal assistant by mentioning Havelka, Najedly and Barak with the respect due to Party bosses, but implying that she was well acquainted with them. She then asked innocently how the work was going.

It was Rybacek who replied: 'As well as can be expected, Comrade, since we are working with an entirely new type of machinery. But, no doubt, our scientists know what they are up to and we shall strike oil in due course.'

From his answer it was impossible to guess if he really believed that his group was prospecting for oil by some new process, or if he was in the confidence of his superiors and blandly maintaining their cover plan. However, both on their way into the house and out of it, Robbie and Stephanie had ample opportunity for a good look around.

The plant being used was exactly similar to that at Pirgos: a single, hollow pylon formed of steel struts, inside it the big screw piercing the earth, nearby a crane for hoisting the weighty sections of screw into position and a powerful engine for driving down the screw; a light railway with tip trucks to run the excavated earth into the sea, and a pile of fifty or more as yet unused screw sections. At these Robbie was able to get a closer look than at those at Pirgos and he saw that, instead of being solid screws, they were more like drainpipes with spirals on their outside. The six-foot lengths were about a foot in diameter, and of that foot eight inches were hollow.

Having said good-bye to their hosts, they saw, as they walked back to their car, that another car had drawn up behind it and that a young man was talking to Tino. In that lonely spot, so difficult of access except by sea, they naturally supposed that he belonged to the Czech group working there; but as they approached, he hailed them cheerfully in English, with a strong American accent.

'Hullo, folks! What goes on around here?'

Robbie, who had constantly to remind himself that he was supposed to be a Swiss, tried to make his voice as guttural as he could, and replied: 'I understand they prospect for oil.'

'Is that so, now,' the American smiled. He looked about thirty, was tallish, loose-limbed and had crew-cut fair hair. Extending a muscular hand, he added: 'Let me introduce myself. My name is Mahogany Brown—Henry Mahogany Brown.'

As he caught the flicker of surprise in Robbie's eyes, his smile broadened to a grin and he went on: 'Funny name, Mahogany, isn't it? Just a quirk of humour on the part of my old Dad. I've two brothers and he called them Elliot Walnut Brown and James Satinwood Brown. I got Mahogany, but I'm Henry to my friends.'

Robbie shook the outstretched hand, gave his name as Max Th£vanaz and introduced Stephanie as his wife. Mr. Mahogany Brown jerked a thumb in the direction of the castle far above them and asked: 'Been up to the top?'

'Yes,' Stephanie replied. 'The view is marvellous, isn't it? And all this wild, unspoilt country is absolutely beautiful.'

'It certainly is,' he agreed, 'and, if I may be allowed to say so, Mr. Thevanaz, it's made just that bit more beautiful by the presence of your lady.'

That was just the sort of compliment Robbie was always wanting to pay Stephanie, yet never managed to, and it annoyed him that a complete stranger should get away with it so glibly. But he hid his feelings with a smile as the American went on: 'It's all the more pity that these vandals here should be allowed to spoil the bay with their pylon, though it doesn't look to me the sort of gear that's used for drilling oil.'

'They are using, I think, a new process,' Robbie informed him.

For some minutes they continued talking. Apparently Mr. Mahogany Brown had seen the Czech working site from the ruined castle, and idle curiosity had brought him down to find out what was going on. It then transpired that he, too, was staying at the Hotel des Roses; so when he left them to go back to his car, he gave a cheery wave and cried: 'I'll be seeing you.'

Slowly the two cars made their way back up the narrow, stony track, then the American put on speed and left the other car behind. Tino, still determined to show his passengers as much of his lovely country as he could, drove them back by a different route, via Petaloudes, so that they might see the famous Valley of Butterflies. It was a delightful glen with several waterfalls and, as they walked through it, there rose a pinkish-grey cloud, formed by the myriads of butterflies that breed there year after year.

Soon after they got back to the hotel Robbie wrote to Luke, describing as exactly as possible all that he had seen on the Czech site. He then added a final paragraph:

By this time, you will have seen from the papers that the police are looking for me. Although they have not so far disclosed it, I have good reason to believe that, if they catch me, they may bring a very serious charge against me. For this reason, I am staying here under the name of Max Thevanaz. The fact is that 1 have landed myself in a very dangerous situation and about my only hope of getting out of it is if it can be proved that the Czechs activities are some form of preparation for a war against the West. There are two ways in which you can help me in this. The first is that, should the particulars I have listed above give you any idea what the Czechs may be doing, you lei me know immediately as I will then do my best to check up on it. It is in the hope that you will have some idea that I can work on that I mean to keep my freedom as long as possible. The other thing is that you should pass on such information as I have secured to the police and persuade them to start an investigation. With this threat of war, there is every possible justification for their doing so; and if they do find out that the Czechs are up to no good, that would let me out. I really am in a bad spot and shall be eternally grateful for anything you can do to help.

In his letter he purposely refrained from telling Luke what had actually happened, so that it could not be said later that he had known both that Robbie was wanted by the police for having killed Cepicka and Robbie's whereabouts, yet had failed to inform the police. Stephanie knew how much Robbie wanted to pour out the whole story to his friend but, on reading through the letter, she agreed that it would not be right to compromise him. Having sealed the letter and marked it 'Private', Robbie took it down to the Post Office himself, to make certain that it would catch the air mail for Athens next morning and, when it reached the capital, go by express delivery.

That evening after dinner Mr. Mahogany Brown, dressed in a smart tuxedo, came up to their table, asked Stephanie if she would like to dance and, on her replying that she would, suggested that they all move into the ballroom. The two hours that followed were miserable ones for Robbie. The American danced with practised ease and Stephanie obviously enjoyed partnering him. Robbie knew only too well that he could not compete. He felt, too, that it was one thing to flounder cheerfully round a little night-club in Patras, and quite another to make an exhibition of himself in a ballroom, with several score of sophisticated people looking on. Even when, having danced twice with the slim, loose-limbed Mr. Brown, Stephanie asked him if he wouldn't like to dance, he said that he preferred to watch. Yet he could not altogether dislike their new acquaintance and when Stephanie, to get herself half an hour to undress, suggested that the two men have a last drink together, he found that the American had a seemingly endless repertoire of funny stories.

Next morning, when the papers came in from the daily aircraft, the news was still good. Delegations of United States and Soviet statesmen were on their way to Delhi to submit their respective cases to the mediation of the Indian Prime Minister. Hastily Robbie and Stephanie scanned the other sheets, then went through them carefully, but they held no mention of their own affair.

They were already in bathing things, which they had bought the afternoon of their arrival; so they went out to the beach. As they emerged from their first swim Robbie was far from pleased, but not surprised, to see Mr. Mahogany Brown appear. With an affability too polite to be resented, he settled himself beside them and began to talk amusingly of other pleasure resorts at which he had stayed. As they were posing as a married couple but in fact had never before been to a famous holiday beach together, they had to conduct their side of the conversation with considerable care, but the American did not appear to think it strange that they had never been to any of the places he mentioned.

Just before lunch they went in for their second swim, and Robbie at least had the satisfaction of showing that, although he was no good on a dance floor, he was much the better man in the water. As they came out Mr. Brown, who by then was calling Robbie Max and Stephanie by the name she had given herself, Julie, asked them if they had yet been along to the old city. On their replying that they had not, he declared:

'But it's a "must"! The place those old Crusaders built there is real history, and the greatest sight in the whole Aegean. I've hired a car for my stay here, and I'll run you down there this afternoon.'

To have refused would have been not only churlish but stupid, so by three o'clock they were on their way there with him. Although they had already seen the castle and the walls of the old city from a distance, they found the third of a square mile within those walls both fascinating and astounding.

Part of the fascination lay in the narrow streets and alleys in the lower part of the city, adjacent to the harbour, where for four hundred years the Greek population had lived under Turkish rule. Coppersmiths, leather workers, cobblers and tailors still plied their trades there, as they had done for a thousand years, in small, windowless shops. There could have been no greater contrast to the new town erected by the Italians outside the walls.

But the upper part of the city held far greater interest. There lay the great stone palaces in which the Crusaders had lived.

After being driven from the Holy Land early in the fourteenth century, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem had made Rhodes the bastion of Christianity against the Infidel and, although within sight of Turkey, they had held the island for over two hundred years. In 1480, the Sultan Suliman I had brought an army of two hundred thousand men against it, yet had been forced to abandon the siege after losing nearly half his troops. It had not been until forty years later that the Knights had abandoned Rhodes, and then upon honourable terms.

The Knights had been of several nationalities, among them French, English, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Each group had been termed a 'Tongue' and had lived in their respective 'Inns' as the stone palaces in the Street of Knights were called, while their Grand Master had lived in state in the enormous castle. A great part of the castle had been allowed to fall into ruin before the arrival of the Italians, but their Governor, de Vesci, had made it his life-work to restore it. Mussolini had provided him with many millions of lire to carry out this task; so the battlements again towered up in all their pristine glory against a background of bright blue sky.

The most staggering thing about this fortress city was its walls. They extended for three miles, completely encircling the city and being strengthened by more than a dozen great protruding bastions. In most places, they were a hundred feet in height and over forty feet broad at the top; so that along their now grassy surface four or five cars could have been driven abreast.

While Robbie, Stephanie and Mahogany Brown were making the tour of the city and the vast ramparts, they naturally talked in English about the extraordinary achievements of its mediaeval builders. Stephanie expressed herself well but, being Czech, had a marked accent. Robbie, however, having temporarily forgotten that he was supposed to be a Swiss, lapsed into his normal speech. As they came down from the wall to the broad quay outside it enclosing the harbour, the American suddenly turned to him and said:

'For a foreigner, Max, you speak remarkably good English.'

Robbie was completely nonplussed, but Stephanie stepped into the breach and said quickly: 'That is not surprising. He was at school in England.'

That evening after dinner, Robbie again had to watch Mr. Mahogany Brown—now 'Henry' to them—and Stephanie obviously enjoying themselves as they danced together. He would have given a great deal to break the association but, short of being deliberately rude and probably also upsetting Stephanie, he could think of no way of doing so. And before they parted for the night, it had been agreed that next day Henry should take them in his car to Lindos.

On the Friday morning the paper reported that the statesmen from East and West had met in Delhi and that, at the opening of the proceedings, the heads of both delegations had made conciliatory speeches. Everyone was much cheered by this; guests at the hotel who had been talking of curtailing their holidays, to get home in case of trouble, decided to stay on, and the management was receiving numerous cables from people who had cancelled, renewing their bookings.

There was, however, a disturbing paragraph on an inside page of the paper headed 'British Ambassador's nephew wanted in connection with death of Czech official'. The letterpress beneath it read:

Tn a police statement, it has now been disclosed that Mr. Cepicka, an official of the Czechoslovak Legation, did not meet his death as a result of the car collision which occurred some miles from Vitina on the evening of Saturday last, but that he subsequently died from other causes. Mr. Robert Grenn, the nephew of Sir Finsterhorn Grenn, C.M.G., is known to have been present at the time of Mr. Cepicka's death, but has not been seen since, and the police are anxious to take a statement from him.

It was earlier reported that Mrs. V&clav Barak, the wife of another official at the Czechoslovakian Legation, who was travelling with Mr. Grenn, had gone over the precipice in their car; but no human remains have been found in the burnt-out body of the car. It is possible, however, that Mrs. Barak's body was thrown clear and is lying still undiscovered among rocks or scrub somewhere on the mountain-side. The search for her body continues.'

It was in order to see the morning paper that Robbie had stipulated that they should not start for Lindos before half past eleven. But now they settled themselves in Henry's car, Stephanie beside him and Robbie, with a well-stocked picnic basket, in the back, and set off.

The ancient town lay less than sixty kilometres away, down the east coast of the island; so they reached it by half past twelve. The town itself, lying in a bay behind the shelter of a great headland, was small but picturesque. It had a number of mediaeval houses, in some of which the many-generations-old craft of tile painting by hand was still carried on, but the streets were so steep and narrow that they had to leave the car down in the square.

Up on the headland, dominating the scene for miles round, stood the well-preserved ruins of another vast Crusaders' castle. After twenty minutes' muscle-testing walk up paths with a gradient of one in four, they passed through the huge portico. Mounting still higher, they made the round of this impregnable fortress which rose, on its far side, from cliffs that dropped sheer nearly four hundred feet to the sea below. It was unique also in that, nearly two thousand years before the Crusaders built their castle, the site had been that of a splendid temple, the remains of which still stood in the centre of the castle. On its highest platform of rock, a broad flight of steps led up to a row of Doric columns, clear-cut against the brilliant blue of the sky.

Half an hour later they selected a place to picnic, just off the road near the headland on the opposite side of the bay. Thinking again of the paragraph in the morning paper, Robbie was far from happy but, as there was nothing further he could do until he received a reply from Luke, he felt that it was just as well that his mind had been occupied by Henry taking them on this expedition. After their meal they chatted, then dozed for some while. It was nearly five o'clock when they got back to the des Roses*

As Robbie passed the hall porter's desk, the porter on duty gave him a letter with his key. It was from Luke. Robbie had not expected a reply until the following day. Evidently, Luke had received his letter the previous afternoon and had got off a reply at once, so that it had come in on the morning plane. Swiftly, Robbie opened it and read:

/ am most deeply distressed to learn from your letter that your efforts have landed you in such grievous trouble, more especially as among the well-informed here all sorts of rumours are flying round. It is being said that you took Mrs. Barak away from her husband; that he was with Cepicka in the car which ran into yours and that, after your car had gone over the precipice, you had a blood row with the two of them, during which you killed Cepicka. I only pray to God that these rumours are untrue.

It is also said that, as no human remains have been found in your burnt-out car, Mrs. Barak may still be alive. This naturally leads me to speculate upon the identity of the charming young lady who brought me your cheque to cash. But the less I know from you about the business, the better; and I am grateful to you for not having compromised me in any way by admissions about what you may have done.

With regard to the Czechs, the machinery described by you bears no resemblance to the machinery normally used when drilling for oil; but, alas, I am at a complete loss to suggest to you any further line of investigation. From what you say, there are no indications whatever that they are erecting some form of radar station, and their sites cannot be designed as bases from which to launch missiles. For that it would be necessary to drill a number of holes, perhaps some twenty or thirty feet in depth, into which to sink pylons to support a heavy concrete platform, or to excavate a large chamber having a concrete platform underground; but for such a purpose one very deep hole would be completely useless.

About passing on the information you have so far secured.

Soon after you left Athens, / mentioned to a friend of mine in the N.A.T.O. set-up the possibility that the Greco-Czech tobacco/ oil deal might be well worth investigating. But I am afraid that it would be quite useless for me to pass on to the police your description of the apparatus the Czechs are using. There is little prospect that any action would be taken. You must remember that the Czechs hold a concession from the Greek Government to prospect for oil, and that we can offer no proof that it is not what they are doing, with a new type of machinery.

Further to this, I am the last person who could expect a sympathetic hearing from the Greek authorities on such a matter. It is certain that they would jump to the conclusion that, as the chief executive in Greece of one of the biggest oil companies in the world, I was simply endeavouring to hold up the Czech activities and queer their pitch, as a means of protecting my own company from future competition.

To end, Robbie, I can only say how sorry I am that for the present I can see no way to help you. But of one thing I am certain. Whatever you may have done has been brought about through your honest desire to serve your country. And whatever may befall you, you may rest assured of my continued friendship.

Up in their room, Robbie showed the letter to Stephanie. She read it through, handed it back to him with a shake of her head and said: 'It's terribly disappointing, Robbie. I feel sure Mr. Beecham would help you if he could but I do understand how he is placed, and there is nothing more we can do here. What do you intend to do now: give yourself up and trust that the truth will prevail?'

He shook his head. 'No, I won't do that. At least Luke says that he put the N.A.T.O. people on to this thing. If they have taken it seriously, they are far more likely to get to the bottom of it than I ever could. For all we know, they are on the job in half a dozen places—Patras, Kalamai, Crete, Milos, here, Chios and the rest. Even if they are investigating only one of the groups, there is still a sporting chance that they will find the answer to the riddle before the police get me. So I mean to keep out of their clutches as long as I possibly can.'

After dinner that evening they followed the same routine of sharing a table in the ballroom with the lively, talkative, somewhat inquisitive Mr. Mahogany Brown. Robbie found it beyond his powers to hide the depression into which Luke's letter had plunged him. It seemed that there was now no more that he could do, and that for him the outcome of the affair was almost certain to be disastrous. His gloom was such that the American kept on enquiring if he felt unwell, and Stephanie, having vainly tried to cheer him up, sent him off early to bed.

He went with reluctance and, having got up to his room, regretted that he had allowed himself to be got rid of. As he lay in bed, he began to be tortured by ideas that, by this time, Stephanie and Henry were out on one of the dimly lit terraces, or perhaps on the beach, and that she was letting him make love to her.

Suddenly he decided that, although he was not her husband in fact, he was in name, and that he would no longer put up with playing second fiddle to this American interloper. He would take him aside the following morning and tell him in no uncertain terms that he, Max Thevanaz, found Mr. Mahogany Brown's attentions to Madame Thevanaz unwelcome. If Mr. Mahogany Brown wanted a lady to flirt with, he must seek one elsewhere, otherwise Monsieur Thevanaz would find himself under the regrettable necessity of pushing in Mr. Mahogany Brown's face.

However, on the Saturday morning, the Fates decreed that Robbie should be deprived of any opportunity of playing the role of an exasperated husband. Soon after eleven o'clock, clad in his bathing robe, he was anxiously waiting in the main hall for the papers to come in. A taxi from the airport drove up and a couple got out. As they entered the hall, Robbie gave one look at them and his blood seemed to freeze. They were the English couple that he and Stephanie had met at Olympia, the Jacksons. At the same moment, they recognized him and Frank Jackson exclaimed:

'Why, if it isn't Mr. Grenn!'

25

A Trap is Set

'Why, so it is!' added Ursula Jackson, as she and her husband came up to Robbie. 'For a moment, I didn't recognize you with those dark glasses and your hair cut like an American student. Is that charming Miss Stephanopoulos still with you?'

'Yes ... Oh yes,' Robbie managed to reply. 'How . . . how nice to see you again.' Meanwhile, he was in agony that the reception clerk behind the desk near which he was standing might have heard him addressed as Mr. Grenn.

'We returned to Athens the day after you left Olympia,' Frank Jackson went on. 'Things looked so bad we had made up our minds to go home; but we could not get a seat in an aircraft for love nor money, and every sleeper on the trains had been booked for a week ahead. While we were still wondering what to do, the good news came through about both sides accepting the Indian offer to meditate. That was a sure sign that neither side really

l

317

meant to fight so we decided not to curtail our holiday after all, and to put in a week here as we'd originally planned. At first sight, this place reminds me of the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido at Venice. Is it as good as it looks?'

'It's fine,' Robbie assured him. 'Lovely bathing, good food and the town—the old city—is fascinating.' Swiftly, he stole a look behind him at the desk. The reception clerk had not been there, but was just coming out from the office behind it. Hastily he said to the Jacksons: 'You'll be wanting to register. Julie—Stephanie, I mean—is waiting for me to go out and bathe, so I must run now. I'll be seeing you later.'

As soon as he was clear of the hall, he dashed upstairs. Stephanie had been manicuring her nails in their room, while waiting for him to bring up the morning papers. Breathlessly, he said to her: 'We're sunk! The Jacksons have just come in on the plane! They greeted me as "Mr. Grenn", and asked after you as Miss Stephanopoulos.'

'Oh dear!' she exclaimed, her blue eyes widening. 'What damnable luck. Still, if they did no more than that, they can't know that you are wanted by the police.'

'No; it was obvious that they didn't. It's very unlikely that any mention of our business would get into the English papers until I'm actually charged with murder. But my name would be sure to ring a bell with some of the Greek management here, and there's that damned American who is always shooting questions at us. He speaks Greek and I expect he'll have read about us in the paper. You can bet that he will be hanging on to us all day, as usual, and we can't possibly avoid the Jacksons. Naturally, they will go on calling me "Grenn" and, before the day is out, that is certain to be noticed by a waiter or someone. The management will telephone the police and they'll be coming here to collect me.'

'Then we must leave—leave at once.'

'Yes, but how can we—leave the island, I mean? The daily plane for Athens left over an hour ago.'

'We could move to some place in the town—get lodgings there.'

'That's no good. Rhodes is much too small for us to stand any chance of going to earth. The police would trace us within a matter of hours. And once they are on to me, if they don't pick us up tonight, they'll have men at the airport to stop us getting away tomorrow.'

For a few minutes they stood facing one another in dismayed silence, then Robbie snapped his fingers. 'I've got it! Today is Saturday. It's the one day in the week that there's a flight from here to Crete, and I remember when I looked at the time-table wondering why it didn't leave till afternoon. If only we can get seats on it.'

As Robbie spoke, he stepped over to the bedside telephone, snatched up the receiver and asked to be put through to the office of Olympic Airways. In agonized suspense he waited until the booking clerk replied to his enquiry. Now they had good reason to bless the war scare. It had so thinned out tourist traffic that the aircraft was almost empty. He was told that he could pick up the tickets at the office at two o'clock. The flight left at ten past three.

They started to pack at once, so as to get out of the hotel as soon as possible. Robbie had some anxious moments while paying the bill downstairs, but neither Mahogany Brown nor the Jacksons appeared in the hall. By half-past-twelve they were on their way to the town in a-taxi and, after lunching there in a back-street cafe, caught the airport bus. Soon after three, they were on their way to Crete.

On this flight the only land they saw was the northern tip of Karpathos, and Robbie's mind was much too occupied with his own problems for it to drift to the gods and Heroes. His elation at getting away from Rhodes, too, was marred by one unavoidable circumstance. When telephoning for their air tickets, he had realized that the call would be booked to him as Monsieur Thevanaz and, as the hotel telephone operator could hear what he said, he had not liked to risk arousing unwelcome interest in their abrupt departure from the des Roses by giving a different name. In consequence, the booking had left a clear trail behind them and they had no option but to land in Crete as Monsieur and Madame Thevanaz.

He made up his mind that, somehow, he must get the labels off their suitcases when they arrived at the Crete airport so that, when they registered at an hotel in Heraklion, they could do so under yet another identity; but in this he was defeated by the informal procedure at the little airport. There was no bus there; only two taxis, into one of which the four passengers from the plane were crammed, while all their luggage was loaded into the other. When they arrived at the Town Terminal and Robbie had pointed out their bags, a porter asked him at which hotel they intended to stay. He had thought that they would stand a better chance of escaping any enquiry from Rhodes if they went on to a small place, but he had had no chance to get the name of one.

On his replying that he had not yet booked anywhere, the porter pointed to the des Roses labels which had been stuck on the bags, gave a toothless grin and said: 'Hotel Astir for you. New and very good. Just across the road. You follow me.'

Then he picked up their suitcases, and five minutes later Robbie was at the hotel desk, forced to continue the fiction that he and Stephanie were Monsieur and Madame Thevanaz.

The Astir was not very large, but was bright and pleasant, and they were given a good room on the first floor, with a private bath. However, when they had had a wash and came downstairs, they were greatly surprised to learn that it had no restaurant; neither, as the hall porter told them, had any other hotel in

Heraklion. The custom was for him to give guests a 'chit' on which they could eat out, and the amount they spent was then charged on their hotel bill.

As it was by then nearly eight o'clock and they had had only a light lunch, they decided to go out straight away. The porter recommended a restaurant that rejoiced in the curious name of the Glass House, and gave them the number of a bus that stopped on the corner opposite the hotel. He said the bus would take them to the restaurant in ten minutes.

The bus ride confirmed the impression they had formed when coming into the city from the airport that, unlike Rhodes, Heraklion had neither beauty nor glamour. There were ugly gaps between half-ruined buildings, even the mainstreet was full of potholes and, as the bus turned from it along the water-front, it was still light enough for them to see that for a quarter of a mile the inland side of the road consisted almost entirely of great heaps of rubble. As they soon learned, Heraklion had suffered terribly in the war. First the Germans had bombed it, then, for many months, the British and Americans. Hundreds of buildings, in fact one-third of the city, had been destroyed and, although twenty years had elapsed, the Greeks had been unable, through lack of financial resources, to rebuild more than a small percentage of their properties.

The Glass House proved to be the only building on the seaward side of the road. It occupied a promontory at the end of the water-front and justified its name for, except for that part of the building in which the kitchens were housed, its walls consisted entirely of small, rather dirty panes of glass. It was a big place with perhaps eighty tables in it and a three-man band. Not more than a dozen of the tables were occupied; so they chose one well away from other people and, over a meal of fresh fried mullet, settled down to discuss their situation.

They felt that, had they remained at the des Roses, the discovery that Max Thevanaz was Robbie Grenn would have proved inevitable; but, now that they had left it, there was no great reason to fear that fact would emerge. It was certain that Mahogany Brown would ask at the office what had happened to his friends the Thevanaz, and the Jacksons might enquire there for Mr. Grenn. However, with the large managerial staff at the des Roses, those enquiries might not be made of the same person and, even if they were, might not be linked up. Yet if these enquiries did start anything, the search would be for a married couple who had flown to Crete using the name of Thevanaz. For this reason, Stephanie said she thought they ought both to abandon that name and separate as soon as possible.

Robbie gloomily agreed with her, then began to speculate on their chances, if they could locate the Czech group in Crete, of penetrating the secret that lay behind the group's activities. But he had little hope in that direction as it seemed almost certain that a view of the site where they were working would disclose no more than had those at Pirgos and Monolithos. It was then that Stephanie remarked:

'You had your chance to get right to the bottom of things when we were in Corinth. It's a thousand pities you didn't take it.'

He gave her a puzzled look. 'I'm afraid I don't get you.'

'I mean when you had Vaclav at your mercy in that cul-de-sac. You could have screwed it out of him then, by just keeping on gently making more and more of a mess of his face until he had told you all you wanted to know.'

'But that would have been using torture on him,' Robbie said in a shocked voice.

Stephanie shrugged and finished the glass of Malvoisie wine she was drinking. 'Considering that you kept on hitting him until you spoiled his looks, isn't it rather straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel to imply that it would have been a bad thing to get something out of him while you were at it? Given the same circumstances, he would certainly have tortured you without hesitation. And, you know, seeing how much may hang on this thing, it might even be argued that if he would use torture, and you wouldn't, he's the better man as far as serving his country is concerned.'

'I suppose there is something in that,' Robbie agreed reluctantly. 'But what's the good of talking about what I might have done over three weeks ago?'

'Because I wanted to see how you felt about it. If you are too squeamish, an idea I've had would be of no use.'

He refilled her glass. 'Well, anyway, let's hear it.'

'It is that I should try to get Vaclav to come to Crete. The fact that he came after us from Pirgos shows how obsessed he is with the desire to pay you out for what you did to him. By offering to betray you to him, I believe I could lure him here. In spite of the fact that he did his best to kill me, I'm not thirsting for revenge. It is simply that I would rather that he had his ears torn off than that you should be convicted of having murdered Cepicka.'

Robbie gave her a wry smile and said: 'Horrible as this idea sounds, I give you full marks for being realistic. I certainly count my life of more value than your husband's ears, and if I felt faint-hearted when I came to tackle the job, as you've pointed out, 1 could gin myself up with the patriotic motive. But how would you set about it?'

'I could write and offer to make a bargain with him.'

'Say he accepted and came here, what could we do then? It is not enough to lure him to Heraklion. You would have to persuade him to come to some place where I could beat the daylights out of him, without anyone hearing his shouts for help. How could you possibly manage to do that?'

Stephanie lit a cigarette and pulled hard at it. 'I think the answer lies in these new arrangements we have to make. Instead of your moving to a small hotel, it should be possible for you to rent a little house or, better still, a cottage just outside the city. Then, if I could bring him there, you would be able to tackle him without anyone being the wiser.'

Robbie considered that for a good minute, then he said: 'If you write to him you'll have to tell him how he can contact you. Isn't there a big risk that, instead of coming here himself, he'll simply put the police on to you, knowing that you will lead them to me and so he'll get his revenge that way, without lifting a finger?'

She shook her head. T don't think so. I know Vaclav and the way his mind works. He thinks that justice in the capitalistic countries is just as corrupt as it is behind the Iron Curtain. By charging you with Cepicka's murder, he knows that he will be putting you in a nasty spot; but I would bet any money that he doesn't believe that, if you are caught, that will be the end of you. Given the same set-up at home the bosses would get you off, and I haven't a doubt that Vaclav thinks that here your uncle and the N.A.T.O. people have quite enough influence to secure your acquittal. That is why I feel pretty certain that he would come to Crete if I offered him the chance of quietly putting a bullet into you.'

Again Robbie gave a wry grin. 'Well, I suppose he might, unless we handle this jolly carefully.'

'Yes,' she agreed soberly. 'Vaclav is no fool and if he does come it will be with the intention of killing you. That is a very nasty risk. The question is, are you prepared to take it, for the chance of being able to blow sky-high the whole of this secret Communist operation?'

Robbie nodded. 'As far as I am concerned it's the last card in the pack, so let's play it.'

When they got back to the Astir, Stephanie sat down in the lounge to write to her husband and, after two rough drafts, she produced the following:

By now the failure of the police to find my dead body will probably have led you to guess that I am still alive. That is no fault of yours, but luckily for me my elbow caught in the fork of a tough root protruding from the steep slope just above the precipice. Grenn found me there and, at the risk of his own life, pulled me up on to the road.

I do not propose to go into my past or present relations with Grenn. It is sufficient to say that, whereas you deliberately pushed me over the precipice, he saved my life. For that, any woman would be grateful. So, when I realized that you would try to pin Cepicka's death on him, I gave him all the help I could to evade arrest.

However, now that a week has elapsed, I have had time to consider my own position. For a long time, you and I have remained together only because it has suited our individual interests. Your attempt last Saturday to murder me is proof enough that the time was very much overdue for us to part company and, even if you were prepared to take me back, I would not agree to return to you. But I must take such steps as I can to secure my future.

You will, no doubt, have reported to Janos that I betrayed the Party by enabling Grenn to escape from Pirgos, and by later endeavouring to protect him when you intercepted us on the road. That means that, once it is known that I am still alive, I shall be expelled from the Party and, perhaps, black-listed for 'special treatment'. Even should certain people not catch up with me, it would mean spending the rest of my life as an outcast. As you well know, I am a Communist born and bred. I could never reconcile myself to living among our enemies. 1 am prepared to make any sacrifice in order to be accepted again by our own people—even, if need be, to make a confession and submit to being disciplined. But only you are in a position to arrange this.

Knowing your feelings towards Grenn, I offer him to you as the price of my rehabilitation. We are here in Crete and, although we are not living together, I am in touch with him. He has gone into hiding in a place where it would be difficult for the police to find him and, from the time you receive this letter, I shall not go near him; so it would be futile for you to suggest to the police that they should try to trace him through me. But, if you will come over, I can take you to his hide-out, where you could surprise him on his own and do what you like with him. . .For obvious reasons J am not giving my address, so send a reply to this addressed to Madame Polacek, cjo G.P.O. Heraklion. If you agree to my terms and give me the date and number of your flight from Athens, I will be at the airport with a car to meet you.

When she had finished, she gave Robbie the letter to read through. He said that he thought it a little masterpiece, for Barak could not show it to the police without incriminating himself for attempted murder. Even if he informed them only that he had good reason to believe that the man they wanted was in Crete, they would still, from the way Stephanie had put things, have to look for a needle in a hay-stack.

'All the same,' he added glumly, 'this means that after Monday I won't even be able to see you until you come to tip me off if Barak takes the bait, and I'm going to miss you desperately.'

She smiled at him. 'Things won't be so bad. We'll have to live apart, of course, but that bit was put in only to give Vaclav the impression that there is very little chance of catching up with you unless he comes over to do the job himself. If he does go to the police, which I think very unlikely, the only way they could pick me up is by lying in wait for me to go to the G.P.O. to collect his reply. But there is no charge upon which they can arrest me and, naturally, I should say I hadn't the faintest idea where you had got to. So, until that happens—if it ever does— there is no reason why we shouldn't continue to spend most of our days together, provided we are not seen too much in the town.'

By then it was past ten o'clock, but posting the letter that night would ensure its getting on the morning flight to Athens. Robbie got a stamp from the hall porter and went out to post it at the G.P.O., while Stephanie went upstairs and undressed.

On the Sunday Robbie woke early; but the window curtains were of very flimsy material, so light was already flooding the room. In the other bed, barely a yard from him, Stephanie was still sleeping peacefully, her face turned towards him. Her chestnut curls made a halo for her head against the white background of her pillow, her eyelashes made little fans upon her pink cheeks and her full red lips were slightly parted.

He had kept faith with her only by forcing himself to think of something else every time the fact that they were together in the same bedroom consciously entered his mind. Now, he wondered if he had been a fool to be so scrupulous. He had heard it said that women who extracted from men promises to behave themselves never expected those promises to be kept, and rarely wanted them to be. Stephanie had never again referred to the episode by the pool and, from her attitude during the past week, had shown that she harboured no resentment against him on account of it. That she liked him was beyond all doubt. Indeed, the lengths to which she had gone for his protection showed that, apart from being grateful to him for having saved her life, she had come to regard him with real affection. Yet she had given him no shadow of encouragement to break his word and attempt again to make love to her.

This, he knew, was his last chance. From now on, they would no longer be sleeping in the same room, and even their separate rooms would be in different hotels. For five nights he had exerted all his willpower to exclude the nearness of her presence from his senses; in another hour or two the opportunity would be gone of feeling his arms again round her strong-limbed yet deliciously soft-skinned little body and, so far as he could possibly foresee, it would have gone for ever.

He got out of bed and stood staring down at her, his heart pounding in his chest so hard that it hurt and made him breathless. Then, with sudden resolution, he turned away, choked back a sob and tiptoed swiftly out of the room to the bathroom next door. He had undressed there the previous night; so he shaved, bathed and dressed himself. When, three-quarters of an hour later, he returned to the bedroom to collect his wallet, he found Stephanie awake.

Normally, whenever he was in the room, she kept the bedclothes up to her chin; but this morning she was sitting up against her pillows with her plump bare arms, shoulders and neck freely displayed. As he came in, she said in surprise: M thought you were only having a bath. Why have you dressed so early?'

'It's nearly half-past-eight, so not all that early,' he replied. 'And I thought I'd walk down to the harbour. Barak may ignore your letter. Even if he doesn't, while we are waiting to hear from him I can't just sit about doing nothing. I mean to find out when the Bratislava docked here and, if possible, whereabouts the group she landed is operating. There is at least a chance that I might be able to get in touch with them, as I did with that first party at Patras, and maybe I could pick up something.'

'But this is Sunday,' she protested. 'There will be nobody at the harbour office, anyhow not at this hour.'

'Oh, by nine o'clock there will be plenty of longshoremen about, and probably a few Customs officers off duty. Not many ships call at a small port like this, and a Czechoslovakian ship must be quite an exception. I've no doubt plenty of people who frequent the docks will remember her.'

Stephanie gave a little moue. 'As there is no restaurant downstairs for you to breakfast in, and this being our last morning together, I had thought that we might both have had our breakfast on trays in bed, while we talked over what we mean to do later in the day. But since you have dressed and are going out, it doesn't matter.'

Turning over, she gave her pillow a thump, thrust herself down in the bed, pulled the sheets up round her shoulders and shut her eyes again. Robbie cast an unhappy look at her, as he wondered if that idea of hers had been due to the trust she now placed in him or if, with feminine unpredictability, she had suddenly been seized with an impulse to make an overture to him. But he thought the latter unlikely and her attitude made it plain that, now he had dressed, she certainly did not expect him to undress and get into bed again.

Downstairs, he found that he could get coffee and rolls in the bar. Twenty minutes later, he walked down the depressing main street to the harbour. At the extremity of the mole it had a castle very similar to that of St. Nicholas at Rhodes, and on the inland side of the port there were still to be seen the outlines of large, vaulted berths. These forerunners of the modern submarine pens had housed the Venetian galleys during the four-hundred-and-fifty-year-long occupation of Crete by the Serene Republic—from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century —until the Turks, after a siege lasting twenty-four years, had wrested the island from that great seafaring nation.

There were plenty of people about: women and old men hawking fruit, Turkish delight, roast nuts and hot rings of dough sprinkled with sugar, and the usual collection of loungers to be found in any small port. For an hour Robbie moved about, entering into conversation, on one excuse or another, with more than a score of them; but not one could tell him anything about a Czechoslovakian ship that had berthed there early in the month. A number of them assured him that, had the Bratislava called there, they could not possibly have missed her. Much puzzled, but convinced at last that she could not have put in at Heraklion, Robbie returned to the Astir about half-past-ten.

He found Stephanie dressed and packing. She had already telephoned down to the hall porter and found out about bus services. There was one to Kliania, the principal town at the western end of the island, that left from the main square of the town at twelve o'clock. The bus would get them to Khania about five o'clock, so she had said they would take it.

It would have been easier to have covered their trail by having themselves dropped at a railway station; but there were no railways in Crete, so they would have to manage as best they could at the place where the long-distance buses picked up their passengers. As this was only a few hundred yards up the street, the head porter urged them to walk and would have sent one of his underlings with them to carry their bags. But Robbie insisted on having a taxi. By doing so, they freed themselves of the underling who would have waited to put their bags on the bus, and prevented his telling the hall porter later that they had not, after all, gone to Khania.

After the taxi had dropped them with their suitcases, they waited a few minutes, then separated. As soon as another taxi came along, Stephanie took it to a small hotel called the Ken-trikon, where she registered as Fraulein Anna Schmidt. Five minutes later, Robbie was on his way to an equally unpretentious hostelry called The Palladium, at which he registered as Signer Giacomo Lombardi. An hour later, they met by arrangement for lunch at a little restaurant named the Ariadne.

During the afternoon, they walked round the town. Except for the Venetian Morosini Fountain in the main square, there was nothing beautiful in it. By comparison, for its size, it had suffered far more from bombing than had London, and practically nothing had been done to restore it. Even the pavements in the principal streets were, in many places, still cracked and uneven. There were no fine shops and the now-deserted market was a maze of small streets resembling an Oriental bazaar which, indeed, for over two hundred years it had been.

Unlike the Venetians, the Moors, and the other great colonizing powers of Portugal, Spain, Britain, France and Italy which came after them, the Turks had done nothing for the peoples over whom they ruled during the long centuries of their Empire. They had taxed the populations of the Balkan countries to the limit, persecuted them on religious grounds, administered the laws through corrupt officials, and had given nothing in return. They had left behind them no fine buildings, no beautiful gardens, no hospitals or schools and not a single great work of art; only a legacy of incompetence, laziness, disease and dirt. Here, in Crete, the lamentable results of their rule could be seen even beneath the devastation caused by the bombing; for the Cretans, in spite of many gallant attempts to throw off the Turkish yoke, had not gained their freedom until 1898. Then had followed two world wars and Crete had not had the time to emerge from the dire poverty in which the Turks had left her.

Their walk led them eventually down to the sea wall at the western end of the city. Turning back along it, they skirted a small bay littered with refuse and, on reaching its further promontory, found themselves again at the Glass House. Now that, within a few days, it would be May, the afternoon sun was very hot; so they went in and spent half an hour refreshing themselves with iced orange juice. They then resumed their walk in the direction of the harbour.

To their left lay the sea, to their right the many acres oi desolation they had noticed from the bus the night before. Adjacent to the road, only one complete building was still standing. It looked like a huge barn. There were some stacks of timber alongside it and a glance between its loosely padlocked double doors showed it to be a saw-mill. Some way behind it, among the crumbling walls and heaps of rubble, stood a little house. The chimney pots were gone and the upper windows broken, but otherwise it appeared to be intact. Stephanie drew Robbie's attention to it and said:

That would be a perfect place for you to go to earth in and for me to bring Vaclav to, if he does come to Crete. Let's go over and look at it.'

On one side of the saw-mill there was a track made by lorries. This brought them to within sixty yards of the house; for the rest of the way they scrambled over the rubble alongside a low wall which ended against one side of it. The building had only two stories and looked as if it contained two or three rooms on the ground floor with, probably, four small bedrooms above. The downstairs windows were cracked and covered with cobwebs; the door stood a few inches ajar. The damp had warped it and it was stuck, but it flew open at a thrust from Robbie's powerful shoulders.

'You stay here,' he told her. 'As it's been abandoned, it is probably dangerous and may fall down.' But she ignored his warning and followed him into a narrow hall, half of which was taken up by a steep flight of stairs. A door on the right stood open. Through it, they could see lumps of plaster on the floor and peeling wallpaper, which suggested that it had been the sitting room. Robbie forced open a door on the left and they saw then why the house had been left uninhabited. A small, old-fashioned, now rusty, iron range showed that the room had been the kitchen, but beyond it there was no wall. From the road it had not been noticeable, but the whole of the wall on that side of the house had fallen out.

Robbie insisted that Stephanie should remain below, then went gingerly up the stairs. He returned to report that two small bedrooms on the sitting-room side of the house were habitable although virtually they were now one, because the plaster partition between them had collapsed, leaving only the two upright posts that had strengthened it.

'Do you think it would be safe to live in?' Stephanie asked.

'I don't see why not,' he replied. 'If the good half of it has stood up like this for twenty years, I don't see why it should fall down in another week.'

'It will be horribly uncomfortable; no electric light or gas for cooking, no water, and outside sanitation. But, at this time of year, it won't be damp or cold. And, if the police do start a hunt for you in Heraklion, they will check up on every foreigners in even the smallest lodging houses, whereas they are very unlikely to look for you among these ruins.'

The men who work at the saw-mill are bound to see me come and go.'

'Not necessarily. There's certain to be a back entrance to this place, and you could use that in the daytime. Let's go and see what it's like round there.'

Twenty yards behind the house a tall wall, with gaping windows, which had formed part of a much bigger building, was still standing. It screened the back entrance from being overlooked by houses a few hundred yards further inland which were inhabited, and just beyond it lay what had once been a narrow street but now blocked by rubble, was the end of a cul-de-sac.

'You're right,' Robbie declared. 'I should be able to lie doggo here for quite a time before anyone tumbles to it that I've moved in. And we could hardly find a better place to which you can bring Barak. I'll have to go without a bath, but I can get a shave at a different barber's every morning. I must have something to sleep on, though.'

'Of course you must. The only difficulty is to get a few things here for you without being seen. But I know what we'll do. Tomorrow I'll hire a car and in the afternoon we'll buy what you require and take it with us; after dark I'll drive it here as near as I can get and we will carry in the things.'

That night, they had dinner at another small restaurant, then, after arranging where to meet next morning, parted to sleep at their respective hotels. At eleven o'clock, Robbie stood waiting for Stephanie at the far end of King Constantine Avenue. A few minutes later, she drove up in a car she had hired. When they had exchanged information about the sort of night they had had, he got in and she drove on through Liberty Place out of the city.

'Where are we off to?' he asked.

'To Knossos,' she replied. 'I'm already sick of the sight of this dreary town, and the less we are seen about together in it the better. Besides, I felt sure you would be longing to see the ruins of the palace.'

'I suppose I ought to be,' he said with a sigh, 'but the truth is that these days I can think of nothing but what may lie ahead of us.'

'Oh, come! You mustn't let yourself get depressed,' she chided him. 'I know you were very disappointed yesterday to find that no Czech group had landed here; so you couldn't even check up on whether they appeared to be doing the same sort of job as the others. But, with any luck, my letter will bring Vaclav here in a few days' time, and you ought to be able to get a far more worthwhile dividend out of him.'

'Perhaps; but I'm not looking forward to the way in which I shall have to get it.'

'No decent man would. Still, it will be your one big chance to save yourself and, if that is not enough inducement, you must think of the much greater things that are at stake. Do you know, I heard a rumour at my hotel this morning that the conference in Delhi has broken down.'

'Yes, I heard the same thing, while I was being shaved at a barber's. It's said that last night the Russians walked out. I suppose something has come through on the wireless. All the same, neither side can be quite so crazy as to go to war. If they did they would blow one another to pieces, and they know it.'

While the car ran on past the back lots and dusty buildings in the suburbs, they fell silent. Soon they reached more open country and, some twenty minutes' drive from the city, ran down a hill to the valley in which Knossos is situated. The palace occupied the whole of a low, extensive hill in the valley. There was no fine view in any direction and it was some distance from the sea; although it was believed that, at one time, the sea had come up to it and its site had been chosen for that reason. However, the contours of the country had since been radically changed by violent earthquakes.

A first palace had been in existence there in two thousand b.c., as the centre of a brilliant civilization which had lasted two or three hundred years. It had then been destroyed by an earthquake. From the sixteenth century b.c., a second great civilization had arisen, and Crete, under the Minoan Kings, had become a sea power of the first rank, trading with distant lands and drawing tribute from many coast towns in the Eastern Mediterranean. But again, towards fourteen hundred, another terrible earthquake had destroyed Knossos and the other principal buildings throughout the island. The Minoans had never recovered from this second, devastating blow.

It was believed that the palace originally had five stories; but the ruins of only the two lower ones remained, and these had lain undiscovered until the colossal labours undertaken by Sir Arthur Evans in the early nineteen hundreds. No photographs could give an adequate impression of the vastness of the ruin, because there were no lines of tall pillars or lofty archways. It was simply a huge, man-made mound, riddled with passages, staircases and chambers. Owing to the prevalence of earth tremors the rooms were small, but there were said to have been no fewer than one thousand three hundred of them.

Sir Arthur Evans had done far more than simply excavate the ruins. He had spent a large part of his great fortune in restoring many of the most interesting chambers. The original frescoes had been moved for preservation to the Museum in Heraklion; but artists had painted exact copies of them on the walls where they had formerly been, and they consisted of colourful representations of birds, beasts, fish and flowers, rendered with a technique far more modern in conception than the art of any other people of the ancient world.

That the Minoan nobility had lived in a state of luxury comparable to modern standards was also evident. Some of the frescoes showed women who had lived nearly four thousand years ago, yet their elaborate coiffeurs, jewels and the richness of their brocade dresses could have rivalled those of twentieth-century Parisians. The Queen's private bathroom could still be seen and had been better equipped than that of Marie Antoinette at Versailles. By a skilfully devised system of pipes for sewage and steam, the inmates of the palace had enjoyed both modern sanitation and central heating.

For the better part of two hours, Robbie and Stephanie wandered about the endless succession of rooms and staircases; then they lunched at the Tourist Pavilion. Afterwards, they walked right round the ruin to see the theatre and the long, solidly-built sunken road which connected the great palace to a smaller one a quarter of a mile off, on the far side of the highway. By then the sun was blazing down, so they found a shady place in which to sit and Stephanie said:

'I suppose the famous Labyrinth, in which young men and maidens were sacrificed to the Minotaur each year, lies somewhere below the ruins of the palace. But the Minotaur couldn't really have been half man, half bull, could it?'

Tt is impossible to say,' Robbie replied. 'Modern opinion is that these young captives were just trained as bull-fighters and put into a bull-ring to amuse the Minoans. But there are well-authenticated accounts of some pretty queer creatures that women have given birth to in quite recent times. According to the ancient chronicles, King Minos angered Poseidon, so the god inflicted Minos's Queen, Pasiphae, with a monstrous passion for a bull. In order to gratify it, she had the great inventor, Daedalus, make for her an imitation cow that she could get inside, and the result of his efforts was so lifelike that the bull took it for a real cow and acted accordingly. The result was that she gave birth to the Minotaur.'

'It must have been joHy uncomfortable for her,' Stephanie remarked; then she added hastily: 'Anyhow, one must give Daedalus full marks for having made a cow good enough to deceive the bull.'

'Oh, he was a genius. When he got into trouble with Minos and was imprisoned here, he is said to have invented wings by which he and his son, Icarus, escaped. Unfortunately, Icarus flew too high; so the sun melted the wax by which the wings were attached to his shoulders, and he fell in the sea and was drowned. But Daedalus got away safely and later invented all sorts of wonderful things for a new patron, King Cocalus, who reigned over a large part of Sicily. It was through the Minotaur that Daedalus got on the wrong side of King Minos; because it was he who had the bright idea of providing Theseus with the ball of thread that enabled him to find his way out of the Labyrinth after he had killed the monster.'

They were silent for a moment, then Stephanie said: 'Tell me about Theseus, Robbie.'

'Oh, I don't know.' He gave a shrug. 'Somehow, I find it difficult to think about that sort of thing any more.'

'But you should,' she urged him. 'You mustn't let yourself brood about the trouble you are in, and awful things in the future which may never happen.'

He smiled at her and, after a moment, admitted: 'I suppose you're right. Very well, then. Theseus was one of the greatest of the Heroes and came of the royal line of Athens. They were a pretty tough lot and, to start from the beginning, the city was founded by a chap called Cecrops. His grandson, Pandion, had two daughters, Procne and Philomela. In those early days, the Athenians still had great difficulty in preventing barbarian invaders from ravaging their country; so Pandion called in a fierce King of Thrace, called Tereus, to give him a hand. When Tereus's tribesmen had done their stuff, Pandion said he could have whichever he liked of his daughters as a reward.

'Tereus chose the elder, Procne, married her and took her off to Thrace, where she had a son by him called Itys. But, as the years passed, Procne grew lonely; so she asked her lord and master to let her go on a visit to her old home. He wouldn't hear of it but, after a while, he agreed to go down to Athens himself and bring back Philomela, so that the sisters could have a few weeks' get-together.

'When he collected Philomela he found that, since he had last seen her, she had blossomed out quite a bit. That gave him wicked ideas. In the ship on the way back, he did his best to make a good impression on her by fetching her cushions to sit on, admiring her hair-dos and feeding her lots of Turkish delight. Naturally, she took all this simply as proof of what a charming brother-in-law she had. But, once they got ashore, as the story books say "the villain revealed himself".

* "Be mine," he said, "and I will make you my Queen in your sister's place." "No, no!" she cried. " 'Twould be a crime in the eyes of gods and men." "I care not a fig for either," he stormed.

"You shall lie with me girl, or else-" "Unhand me, wretch,"

she sobbed. "I'd rather die first—and anyway, I don't like men with beards," or words to that effect.'

Stephanie laughed. That's better, Robbie. Now you are getting into your old form.'

'Well, there is was. She was set on death rather than dishonour, and he seems to have got cold feet. He didn't like to kill her but he became scared that when he got her back to his palace, she would spill the beans to her sister about the pass he had made, and Procne was the sort of wife who might have hit him over the head with a rolling pin. To prevent Philomela telling on him, he did an awful thing. He cut out the poor girl's tongue.'

'Oh, Robbie, how ghastly!'

'Yes, wasn't it? And not really very clever, either; because be couldn't take her home with him after that, so he imprisoned her in a house in the woods and gave out that she had died en route. But Philomela still had a kick left in her. After she had been behind bars for some while, she secured permission to pass away the time by doing a bit of tatting. Her gaoler got her some white and purple wool. With that, she wove a tapestry illustrating Tereus's ungentlemanly behaviour and persuaded her gaoler to take it to the Queen.

'As soon as old Tereus had gone off to look at the rabbit snares, or whatever he did in the mornings, Procne bustled off into the woods, released Philomela from her prison and took her along to the palace. It so happened that, just as they were crossing the courtyard, Procne's son, Itys, came along whistling a bit out of tune and swinging his lesson books. It chanced, too, that this unlucky youngster had grown up the "spit 'n' image" of his father. The sight of this likeness sent Procne right off her rocker. She snatched up a bread knife and jabbed it into her own son's throat.'

Stephanie closed her eyes. 'Really, the things these people did.'

'Oh, that wasn't all. These two beauties fell on the boy, tore him limb from limb between them and put the bits in a pot. Then, when Tereus came home, his wife served him up their son for lunch. Procne stood by while Tereus had a great "tuck-in". After he had belched a bit, he asked her: "Was that delicious dish, grouse en casserole or partridge Strogonoff done with truffles?"

⁴ "No," she told him. "It was a hash of Itys." Then, just so that he should not think that she was joking, Philomela popped out at that moment from behind a curtain and threw his son's head on the table.

'Tereus had a very soft spot for his only son; so, naturally, he took umbrage at having been led into eating a good part of him. Snatching up his trusty blade, he chivvied the two women out of the house and into the woods. But evidently the gods felt that he was most to blame for having started the trouble; so they saved Procne and Philomela by turning them into a swallow and a nightingale.'

'What a revolting story. And, anyway, what has all this to do with Theseus?'

'Only that these two charming ladies were his aunts, which goes to show that even the girls in the family he came from were not the type to take things lying down. His father, King Aegeus, didn't behave exactly according to "Cocker" either. He had been married twice, but he'd had no luck in getting a son by either wife. However, he evidently believed in the old Robert the Bruce stuff of "If at first you don't succeed . . ."

'When on a visit to Pittheus, King of Troezen, his roving eye settled on the King's daughter, Aethra, who was then a pretty little piece of fifteen. That night, he gumshoed along to her room and told her about the facts of life. He concluded the lesson by saying: "Now, my dear, there's just a chance that you may have a beautiful little baby all of your own. If it's a girl you can have her for keeps, and if it's a weedy, sickly boy I don't want to be bothered about him either. But, just on the chance that he is worthy io bear my name, I'm going to bury my sword and sandals tomorrow under a heavy rock. If, when he is sixteen, he is strong enough to lift it and bring them to me in Athens, I'll make him my heir." Then he patted her on the head and told her not to let on to anyone that kind 'uncle' Aegeus had been along to see her and given up most of his night's sleep to tell her all those interesting things.

'Aethra must have been quite a smart kid because, when people began to notice that her dresses were becoming a bit tight round the middle, she said that Poseidon had been to see her in a dream. Maybe he had, since with his helmet of invisibility he could get up to all sorts of larks without the bother that Zeus had to go to of turning himself into a bull or swan or something. Anyhow, when her baby was born, Poseidon behaved like a good sport and acted as Theseus's protector all through his life.

Theseus, of course, turned out to be a boy wonder and modelled himself on Hercules, who was a friend of the family and came to stay. As a child, Theseus even attacked with his toy sword the skin of the Nemean lion, believing it to be a live animal. Hercules usually wore it, but on this occasion had left it lying about in the garden. Then, when Theseus was sixteen, his mother came clean with him about his birth; so he heaved up the rock, recovered the sword and sandals his father had left there, and went off with them to Athens.

'On the way, he spoilt the fun of all sorts of people. First he killed Periphetes, a terrible bandit who wielded a club as large as himself. Next he met a character called Sinis, who invented the game that the pirates of the Spanish Main used to play hundreds of years later. It was to bend two pine saplings inward, tie the ankles of a captive to their tops; then, having made a book on which tree would tear off the biggest piece of the victim, let them spring back. Theseus, of course, treated Sinis to his own medicine.

'A giant named Sceiron was the next unlucky person to fall in with our Hero. He kept an enormous turtle and, instead of buying food for it at the local pet shop, h.5 used to force travellers to wash his feet then, when they knelt down in front of him, he kicked them over a cliff so that they fell into the turtle's pool. The day he met Theseus, the turtle got an extra large dinner.

'Soon afterwards, Theseus came upon another giant, one Procrustes, who had a rather warped sense of humour. He invited anyone who came along to spend the night. In his guest room there were two beds, one very long and one very short. If the guest chose the long bed, Procrustes tied his wrists and ankles to cords, then used a rack to stretch him to fit it; if he chose the short one, he cut off the bits that overlapped. Theseus, of course, put paid to him too, then gaily went on his way, killing off all sorts of monsters, until at last he reached Athens.

'There he found things in a pretty pickle. King Aegeus had gone a bit soft in the head; so he was being pushed around by his two nephews, the Pallantids. Still worse, he had taken as his wife the witch Medea. You'll remember she was the sweetie-pie that Jason brought back with the Golden Fleece, but who had left him after boiling his uncle in a cauldron under the pretext of giving him a beauty treatment.

'Being gifted with psychic powers, Medea tumbled to it at once that Theseus was the heir to the throne and would do her no good; so she spun her old man a yarn that her familiar spirit had told her this brash young stranger meant to do him in. Aegeus, being under her thumb, fell for this and agreed that she should give Theseus a cup of poisoned wine. But, just at the moment she was saying to Theseus: "Here you are, Big Boy, knock this back and I'll get you another," he produced his father's sword from out of his hiker's pack. Recognizing it at once, his papa knocked the drink out of his hand and, as usual in such cases, a dog which was handy lapped it up, then threw seven fits and went rigid. Seeing the game was up, Medea gnashed her false teeth in rage, snatched up her broom and flew off out of the window.

Theseus sorted out his uppish cousins, the Pallantids, in no time at all and, as his old Pop was more or less gaga, virtually took over the kingdom. But, after a year or two, the Minoan tribute became due. Twenty-nine years earlier King Minos's son, Androgeos, had been bumped off by some Athenian athletes who were jealous because he had won so many prizes at their Games. Minos then arrived on the scene with his two-Power Navy to avenge his son, and had consented to spare the city only if every nine years the Athenians antied up their seven most likely lads and their seven most come-hither virgins for his Minotaur to chase round the Labyrinth. For the third time, the Minoan galleys turned up to carry this nice little cargo off to Crete.

'One must hand it to Theseus that he had bags of courage, for he volunteered at once to go as one of the lads. However, no one could say he was a particularly modest type, as he also declared that, after five minutes with him, the Minotaur would wish his mother had never set eyes on a bull. His old Pop implored him to stay put, but he said: "Not to worry, Dad. You go and do a spot of fishing off Sounion Head. You'll get first sight of my ship from there on her way back, and I'll hoist a white sail instead of a black to let you know that I'm O.K."

'When he reached Crete, he continued to throw his weight about and boast that the Minotaur wouldn't stand an earthly against him because he was a son of Poseidon. King Minos took him up on that, threw a gold ring into the harbour and said: "If the god's your father, in you go boy. Ask him to hand that back to you." Theseus stripped off his clothes, did a jack-knife dive and came up not only with the ring but also a diamond tiara straight out of Cartier's. This, with a graceful bow, he handed to the King's daughter, Ariadne, who happened to be looking on.

'Having had a good look at Theseus while he was still dripping wet, Ariadne felt her heart go pitter-pat; so she sought out Daedalus in his back room and said: "Look, you dear old egg-head. That Athenian diving champ has made me go all groggy at the knees. Please think of a way to save him for me so that he can restore my equilibrium." Upon this, Daedalus gave her a magic sword and a ball of twine, so that Theseus couldn't help killing the Minotaur with the one and, by unrolling the other as he went into the Labyrinth, find his way out again by it.

That evening, she passed on these useful accessories to her new boy friend. He gave her a pat on the behind and promised her the full treatment later; then went off to do his stuff. She didn't let the grass grow under her feet, either. She spent the night boring holes with a gimlet in the bottoms of all the ships in her papa's fleet, so that they sank to the mud of the harbour and could not be used for pursuit. Round about dawn, Theseus kept his date with her at his own ship and, just as a makeweight, brought along her pretty little sister, Phaedra.

Theseus's ship reached the island of Naxos, but accounts differ about what happened there. According to one version, poor Ariadne was so seasick that she had to be put ashore for a bit; then a terrible storm sprang up and drove the ship away from the island before Theseus had a chance of picking her up. In the Aegean, that could easily happen. The other version is that all the Athenians landed and spent several days holding a decidedly hectic party to celebrate their escape from an awful fate in the Labyrinth. That seems the more likely story. It goes on to say that Ariadne, being a daughter of Pasiphae, proved too much for Theseus. He simply could not take it, so he deliberately ditched her.'

'What a very sad end to the story,' said Stephanie.

'Oh, that's not the end. There's yards more of it. Theseus's abandoning of Ariadne turned out to be a stroke of luck for her. Dionysus happened to come along and found her weeping on the beach. Being a god he knew just how to console her, and they found that they were so well suited to one another that they got married.

Theseus, on the other hand, after he'd been a few days at sea, seems to have regretted giving her the brush-off. Anyhow, his thoughts are said to have been so full of her that he forgot to pull down the black sail of his ship and hoist a white one. Poor old Aegeus, upon Sounion Head, naturally took it that his son was a goner; so he threw himself over the cliff to feed the fishes that he had been killing time trying to catch.

'However, having inherited the kingdom didn't stop Theseus from taking time off now and then to go adventuring. He went with Hercules on an expedition to beat up the Amazons, captured their Queen, Antiope, and married her. But he soon got tired of her, kicked her out of bed, and installed Ariadne's sister, Phaedra, as his wife instead. Then, after several years during which he slew many more monsters, he went with a pal of his named Peirithous to Sparta and they abducted that precocious little ten-year-old poppet Helen. When they drew lots for who should have her, Theseus won and, judging by his form with the girls generally, maybe she wasn't quite as innocent as she looked when she got home again.

'Peirithous must have been as mad as a March hare. He conceived the fantastic idea of consoling himself for not having got Helen by going down to Hades and carrying Persephone off from Pluto. Theseus could not do less than lend a hand; so off they went and landed themselves literally in the Hell of a mess. Peirithous got stuck there for keeps, and Theseus got away only because the doyen of all the Heroes, tough old Hercules, came down and pulled him out by the coat-tails.

'When he got back to Athens, he found his palace in an uproar. Helen's brothers, Castor and Pollux, had turned up and were threatening blue murder unless he gave her back to them. Being pretty part-worn from his Hades adventure, he agreed; but he was faced with worse trouble between his wife and Hippolytus, a son he had had by the Amazon Queen, Antiope.

'Hippolytus had grown up into a good-looking teenager, and Phaedra felt that he was just the lad for her to talk to about this and that by the fireside on the long winter evenings, while his father was away killing dragons or teaching young girls like Helen how one and one can make three. But Hippolytus was a religious type and he had dedicated himself to Artemis; so he said to his stepmother: "Thanks awfully, but I've taken a vow never to do that sort of thing."

'If Phaedra had been a decent sort, she would have said: "You silly young mutt; you don't know what you are missing. Forget what I suggested and keep your mouth shut. That beefy Captain of the Guard is always asking me to go and hear his long-playing records; so I'll brighten up a few of my evenings with him until your pa comes home." Instead, she got mad with the youngster and, when Theseus did get back, she complained to him that his son had tried to rape her.

'That fairly put the cat among the pigeons. Theseus flung Hippolytus out on his ear and called down Poseidon's wrath upon him. The Sea god obliged by sending a sea-monster to scare the horses of Hippolytus's chariot, which resulted in it overturning and the unfortunate youth being crushed to death beneath it.

'Later, Theseus felt that perhaps he had acted a trifle hastily and that, by and large, he hadn't made a great success of his life; so he left Athens and went into retirement as the guest of Lycomedes, the King of Scyros. Unfortunately, he could not keep himself from boasting about his exploits; and Lycomedes got so bored with hearing about them, over and over again, that he had Theseus thrown into the sea so that he was drowned.'

As Robbie fell silent, Stephanie said: 'Then it was a sad ending after all.'

'Well, yes,' Robbie agreed, 'but Theseus had a wonderfully full life, you know. And, in between his expeditions, he did a lot for Athens. He was its first great King, and by his laws he laid the foundations for what it afterwards became.'

By half past four they were back in Heraklion. Stephanie dropped Robbie in Liberty Square, so that he had only to walk across it to the Museum of Antiquities, where it had been decided that he should spend a couple of hours while she bought the things he would need in his new quarters.

At seven o'clock they met again at a small restaurant outside which she had parked the car. The boot and back now contained a folding camp bed, mattress, sleeping bag and pillow, a folding chair, primus stove with a supply of methylated spirit and paraffin, about twenty yards of dark stuff to serve as black-out material, a hammer and tacks, two torches, a packet of candles, a tin bucket, a broom, two jerry cans to hold water, two towels, a saucepan, an enamel mug, three bottles of wine, coffee, sugar, oranges and biscuits.

When she had given him a list of her purchases, she added: 'With the other things you have in your suitcase, you should be all right. We can fill the jerry cans at one of the public fountains; with the water from one, you can wash in the bucket, and with some from the other boil yourself up a mug of coffee on the primus in the mornings.'

Robbie smiled across at her. 'You really are a marvel. You think of everything.'

She smiled back at him. 'I think I told you when you took me on in Athens that I rather prided myself on looking after people; but I never expected to have to do this sort of thing. I only hope now that Vaclav falls for the bait I offered him in my letter.'

After they had eaten, they sat on over coffee and liqueurs until it was fully dark. At the Morosini Fountain Robbie filled toe jerry cans, then Stephanie drove him to within a hundred yards of his hotel. A quarter of an hour later, he had paid his bill and rejoined her with his suitcase. They had some difficulty in finding the cul-de-sac behind the little house; but at length they identified it, pulled up and switched off the car lights. There was by then sufficient star-light for them to find their way over the rubble and, in half a dozen journeys, they transported all the things they had brought.

On exploring the house further, they found the upper floor much clearer of fallen plaster and debris than the lower. There was the point too, that, should children play among the rubble and chance to enter the house, they were less likely to go upstairs than just look into the sitting room; so it was decided that Robbie should occupy the bedroom. While he swept the floor, Stephanie nailed the black-out material along the tops of the windows so that it would hang down over them at night, but could be rolled up so as not to show through the broken panes in the daytime.

When they had fixed everything, the agreed to meet next day at ten o'clock at the same place as they had met that morning. Since Stephanie could not expect to hear from Barak until the following evening at the earliest, she was anxious to keep Robbie's thoughts occupied; so she proposed that they should fill in the day by an expedition across the island to Phaestos, the other great centre of Minoan civilization, near the south coast. As it was advisable for Robbie to be seen as little as possible about the town, in case the police in Rhodes had asked their colleagues to try and trace Max Thevanaz, he agreed that her suggestion was a sound one. They then parted for the night.

Next morning they drove right round the outside of the great Venetian ramparts which still surrounded the city, to get on to the road leading west along the coast. After a few kilometres it turned south, inland, and ran through a valley rich in vineyards with, between the vines, such masses of oxalis that their flowers formed a bright yellow carpet. Gradually the road mounted, in a series of zigzags, until in front they had an excellent view of Mount Ida.

It was in Crete that Zeus had been brought up in secret to save him from his father, Cronos, and it was said that, as a memorial to this, he had reshaped the mountain as a portrait of himself. Seen from the south, its outline certainly looked like the profile of an enormous head of splendid proportions lying on a pillow, with brow, nose and chin all sharply defined.

By half-past-eleven they had come down through the pass and reached the village of Ayioi Dheka, in the vicinity of which had lain Gortyne, the capital of the island during the centuries of occupation by the Romans. According to a pamphlet which Stephanie had acquired, there were a number of interesting remains there on both sides of the road; so, on seeing a ruin through the trees on their left, they pulled up, got out of the car and went over to inspect it.

The country there consisted mainly of small orchards, separated by low, crumbling walls largely composed of blocks of hewn stone, obviously from ancient buildings. Sightseers were so infrequent that there were no sign-boards or even tracks, and the foliage of the fruit trees made it difficut to see far in any direction. The ruin they had seen proved to be only a fifteen-foot-high section of a thick, brick wall but, during twenty minutes of scrambling about, they found the foundations of what must have been an enormous temple, and the ruins of the Roman Governor's palace. The remains of an Egyptian temple were also said to be there, but they could not locate them; so they returned to the car and drove on for a quarter of a mile, till they came to a large ruin on the right of the road.

This, they learned from the pamphlet, was the oldest Christian church in Crete, and had been built by St. Titus. Beyond it lay a Greek theatre, in which St. Paul had preached, and a wall inscribed with the 'Law of Gortyne' which was of special interest because it was the first Code of Laws formulated in Europe, and the work of Greeks living in the second century b.c.

Having walked round the church, they followed a path to the other ruins. The theatre was quite small, with only about twenty-five semi-circular rows of seats, in good preservation and quite charming. Unlike the other ruins they had just visited, it was not entirely deserted. Two men were sitting smoking cigarettes on the edge of the slightly raised stage from which St. Paul had preached. They exchanged nods and smiles with Robbie and Stephanie who, the moment they had passed them gave one another a swift glance. The two men were talking in Czech and one of them had said:

'It went more quickly than one would have expected; but I'm glad the job is finished and we'll soon be home.'

Robbie could hardly control himself for excitement. Czech visitors were so rare in Crete that he felt it highly probable that these were some of Barak's people. What the man had said tended to confirm that. It suggested that the Bratislava had, after all, landed a group in Crete.

Stephanie had jumped to the same conclusion. In order to overhear more of the conversation, she halted to examine an inscription carved on the back of one of the seats in the front row. They heard the other man reply:

'I don't agree. I'm glad to have had the chance to see some of these old places. I only wish we had longer, so that I could visit more of them.'

For once, Robbie took the lead. To have remained where they were would have looked as if they were deliberately listening to the Czech's conversation. But, instead of walking on, he took Stephanie's elbow and guided her up the steep staircase made by the rows of seats. When they reached the top they appeared to be out of earshot but, owing to the admirable acoustics in Greek theatres, they could still hear perfectly every word spoken by the two men sitting on the stage.

As they were making their way up, the first speaker had said: 'It's all very well for you, Frantisek; you are a bachelor.'

'What of it?' the second replied. 'I'd have thought you'd be glad of the chance to get away for a bit from your wife and kids.'

Their conversation then continued:

'Well, it's a change; but I prefer ordinary jobs and the sort of food I'm used to. I resent having my life upset by the Bosses.'

'My dear Viliam, I hope you will not be fool enough to show it. Far better pretend that, like myself, you are glad to have been one of those selected to be sent here for this work.'

'Anyhow, they can have no complaints. We have made a good job of it.'

'True. All the same, I wonder if all the labour and material we have expended could not have been saved.'

'How would you have done that?'

'By making use of the place we went to yesterday. That grotto where they say Zeus was hidden as a child.'

'What! Drop one down there, instead of having bored our shaft?'

'Yes; why not? The pit there is said to be bottomless. Of course, it's not. But, all the same, it's probably quite deep enough to have served the same purpose.'

Tt might, but it's a long way from the N.A.T.O. air base.'

'I don't think that has any special bearing on the operation.'

'Perhaps not. But you couldn't possibly control the drop of a five-foot-long cylinder down a wide hole in the rock, and with jagged sides, too. It would smash itself to pieces before it got to the bottom.'

Tt could be lowered carefully. Still, perhaps you're right. Anyhow, it was only an idea. Let's get back to the car.'

As the two Czechs stubbed out their cigarettes, stood up and walked away, Robbie whispered to Stephanie: 'They are two of Barak's people. They must be, and we're really on to something now. They haven't been boring for anything; only holes down which they mean to drop something. Atom bombs, perhaps.'

'What good could that do—unless the bombs explode under something that matters? And one of them said he didn't think it had anything to do with the N.A.T.O. air base. Anyhow, we know that the sites in Pirgos, Corinth and Rhodes were nowhere near any military objective.'

'I don't get it,' Robbie agreed, 'but come on. We must follow them. With luck, they may lead us to the site where they've been working.'

Keeping the two Czechs in view, they walked back along the path. As they approached the road they saw now that, just round the bend, a hundred yards ahead of where they had left their car, there was another with a driver sitting at the wheel. The Czechs got in and were driven off towards Phaestos. Robbie and Stephanie got to their car as quickly as they could and, keeping about a quarter of a mile behind, followed.

After about twelve kilometres, they could see the ruins of Phaestos perched up on a hill ahead and, to the left, a well-made-up side road that led off up to them. But the Czechs had not taken it. For another few kilometres, Stephanie kept on their tail along the rutty, dusty, little-used main road to the south coast. Having breasted a rise, she suddenly applied the brakes and brought the car to a standstill. At the bottom of the slope in front of them, the other car had pulled up. The Czechs got out and one of them paid off the driver. He ran his car to and fro until he had turned it round, then started to drive it back up the slope. Stephanie took off her brakes, ran down the hill past the other driver and pulled up at the spot where the Czechs had paid him off.

'You stay here,' said Robbie quickly, jumping out.

'Take care of yourself,' she called after him, but he had already disappeared into the bushes on the left of the road, along a footpath that the Czechs had obviously taken. Five minutes later, he caught sight of them. The belt of trees and bushes ended abruptly along a line of greyish pebbles that formed a river bed. Some distance away, a sluggish stream flowed roughly in the middle of its course. One of the Czechs was standing on the far side of the water, the other was in the act of crossing it on a donkey guided by a peasant. Beyond the river lay a steep hill.

When the Czechs had set off up the hill, Robbie went forward. The peasant had brought the donkey back to the near bank. Pointing towards the hill, he called out: 'Ayia Triada. Ayia Triada.'

At this, Robbie was greatly relieved. He knew that Ayia Triada had been a Royal Villa used by the Lords of Phaestos in the summer months because it had a view of the sea. Evidently, the Czechs were about to pay it a visit. If they now glanced round and saw him it would not matter, because they would assume that he was simply coming up to have a look at the ruin.

He clambered on to the donkey, grasped the worn saddle and let the poor, scruffy beast splash its way with him across the shallow stream. On the far side, he paid the peasant and hurried after his quarry who, by then, had nearly reached the top of the hill. As he made his way up it by a winding track, he could not help noticing that the wild flowers there were more profuse and varied than any he had seen in Crete. Almost breathless, he reached the top of the rise and gave a quick look round.

There, only a little below the level on which he stood, lay the ruins of Ayia Triada. They were all roofless, but the small palace had had many outbuildings; so the area covered by chambers and walls was considerable. From its south-west front, the palace had looked out over the bay of Mesara. The bay was some miles away and the view magnificent. But the Czechs were nowhere to be seen.

From where Robbie stood, the ruins sloped slightly upward; so he hurried along one side of them until he reached higher ground, then pressed on through low scrub up a still steeper slope. When he halted and looked towards the bay again, he caught sight of the Czechs. They were walking in Indian file down a narrow path that led to a farmhouse about half a mile away. To one side of the house stood a steel pylon but, although it was mid-week, no men were working there and he could see no pile of six-foot lengths of giant screw. That confirmed what he had overheard while the two Czechs were talking. The job there had been completed.

Fearing again that one of the Czechs might turn round and see that he was spying on them, he got to his knees, then lay flat, peering out between two wild sage bushes. In the far distance, he could see the great N.A.T.O. air base that, while at the Embassy, he had heard mentioned as having recently been completed by the Americans. A mile or more from it, there was a little township on the sea shore that had a small harbour. That explained why the Bratislava had never called in at Heraklion. She must have anchored off the south of the island and landed a group with all its gear by lighter.

Robbie was still studying the scene spread out below him when in his rear a quiet voice said in English:

'I've got you covered, Mr. Grenn. Stay where you are and put your hands above your ears.'

His heart missed a beat. Still lying flat, he put his hands up as he had been told, but screwed his head round so that he could look over his shoulder. Lying a few feet behind him, and pointing an automatic at him, was Mr. Mahogany Brown.

26

The Show-down

Robbie drew in a quick breath. He knew now that the game was up and that he had lost it. There would be no chance of trapping Barak. That last hope of learning the Czech's secret and getting himself cleared of Cepicka's death on a plea of self-defence was gone. They had been too clever for him. He had been caught again and it seemed too much to hope that he would escape with his life a second time

The American's presence at Ayia Triada explained why he had so persistently forced himself on them in Rhodes. It was not that he had been attracted by Stephanie; he had kept them company from morning to night to ensure that they would have no opportunity of going off on their own and finding out anything further.

It was at Monolithos, just outside the Czech working site, that they had first met him As he had addressed them in English, they had naturally jumped to the conclusion that he was another tourist who, by coincidence, happened to be visiting that lonely spot at the same time as themselves. But, of course, he had been a Czech security agent, attached to the group, just returning from a run inland, perhaps to Rhodes, to buy something that was required. It seemed certain now that he was not an American at all, but a Czech who had either been brought up there or, like Stephanie, was of mixed parentage. Barak, Robbie felt sure, would have circulated his description to all the groups. The two engineers at Monolithos who had given them lunch had been deceived by his crew-cut and dark glasses, and by Stephanie's

343

story that they were travel agents. But the so-called Mr. Mahogany Brown must have spotted him at once, and probably also identified Stephanie as the missing Mrs. Barak. They had given their name to him as Thevanaz and, on his learning that they were staying at the des Roses, he had said that he was staying there too. But he had driven off ahead of them and, as they had made a detour on their return to see the Valley of the Butterflies, he could easily have bought a few things in the town and checked in at the hotel before they got back.

It was now obvious that he had been on to them from that very first meeting. When they had failed to appear on the bathing beach on the Saturday morning, he would have enquired about them at the office and learned soon afterwards that they had flown to Crete. As there was only the once-weekly air service from Rhodes, he would have had to take the Sunday plane to Athens to follow them, then the Monday flight down to Heraklion. He must have arrived the previous evening. No doubt, he would have been to the Astir and learned that Monsieur and Madame Thevanaz had spent Saturday night there, then left. An enquiry at the Olympic Airways office would have satisfied him that no couple answering their description had since left Crete by air. He would have concluded that they had gone to earth somewhere on the island and that, by then, they would probably have found out the location at which the Czech group was working. To have hunted for them would have been looking for a needle in a haystack; but it was a good bet that they would come to Ayia Triada and try to find out what was going on there, just as they had done at Monolithos. That must be why he had come out there that morning. He had probably been prepared to lie in wait for them there for several days. As things had turned out he had been lucky, and had not had to wait long.

In a few tense moments, those thoughts ran through Robbie's agitated mind. With them alternated others. Should he attempt to run for it? If he did, he would be shot in the back before he had covered a couple of yards. Should he squirm round, wriggle to his knees and pray that, by launching himself forward, in one swift move, he would be able to grab the gun? No. That would be equally suicidal. He could not possibly reach it before his enemy pressed the trigger and a bullet smashed into his heart or skull. If he surrendered, what would become of him?

In this lonely spot, it was quite possible that 'Mahogany Brown' might decide to put an end to him there and then, and hide his body in one of the many deep ditches that scored the scrub. The only person near enough to be certain to hear the shot was the peasant with the donkey down at the ford. But they were hidden from him by the rise of the hill; so he would probably think that one of the Czechs on the opposite side were out after small game.

On the other hand, there seemed a chance that his captor would march him down to the farmhouse and keep him a prisoner there during the day, with the intention of putting an end to him, as Barak had meant to, by taking him out to sea and drowning him that night. In the latter case, Stephanie would become anxious when he failed to rejoin her and, with ten or twelve hours to work in, might, perhaps, bring help to save him before he was taken down to the beach.

But she would have no idea where he had got to. Even if, when searching the hills, she came upon the Czech site and guessed he was being held a prisoner there, she would still be many miles from any police station. It was certain, too, that there would be delays before anyone high-up enough could be induced to give an order for a raid. So, even if she did find out some time during the afternoon what had happened to him, only if given great good luck would she be able to bring help to him.

At length, those silent moments that had seemed years to Robbie ended by his gasping out: 'What . . . what do you mean to do with me?'

'Do? Why, nothing.' The fair eyebrows behind the levelled automatic were raised in surprise. 'All I want is to get you talking.'

'Talking!' Robbie repeated. Then it struck him that his enemy would naturally want to get out of him how much he knew and might already have passed on, before putting him out of the way for good.

But Mahogany Brown had lowered the point of his pistol and was going on: 'I caught you napping and sure put the wind up you, didn't I? You were such a sitting pigeon I thought I'd get a laugh out of announcing myself. Come on. Let's crawl back out of sight of those lousy Czechs, so that if one of them happens to look this way he won't spot us.'

As he spoke, he put his gun back in a shoulder holster, turned round and began to scramble away through the scrub.

Robbie was left speechless. He was overwhelmed with relief at the extraordinary turn affairs had taken but utterly at a loss to understand it. After a moment, he began to wriggle after the American until they were over the brow of the hill and again within a hundred yards of the ruins of Ayia Triada. Getting to their feet, they walked the rest of the way, then Mahogany Brown sat himself down on a low wall, took out his cigarette case, offered it to Robbie who shook his head, lit a cigarette and said:

'Now, stop acting like a clam and tell all you know.'

'I ... I don't understand,' Robbie muttered.

'Then it's quite time you did. You damned Limeys are too cagey by half. I'm C.I.A. and in Rhodes I indicated that to you clearly enough, but you wouldn't take a hint. You are British M.I., and Standing Orders are that, when the occasion arises, we should work together.'

Robbie shook his head. 'No, I'm not M.I. I assure you I'm not.'

'Oh, cut it out. You're the nephew of the British Ambassador, aren't you? It's no good telling me that he let you go into this thing without putting you in touch with your own Secret Service.'

'My uncle knows nothing about this. He hasn't the faintest idea what I have been doing these past few weeks.'

'Do you really mean to tell me that you're a "lone wolf" and have been risking your neck snooping on the Czechs for the fun of the thing?'

'Well, not exactly for the fun of it. More because I am convinced that they are up to something that will do neither your country nor mine any good.'

'At least, then, you'll see the sense of our working together.'

'Yes,' Robbie agreed heartily. 'I certainly do. But how did you get on to me?'

'About the end of March, someone in Athens suggested to my Chief at N.A.T.O. that we ought to look into the Greco-Czech tobacco-oil deal. It was hinted at the time that a Britisher had already left the city to investigate some of the sites, but, as there were so many of them, it would be a good thing if our people took an interest too. My Chief put two of us on the job. I've been in Lesbos, Chios, Kos and Samos. The day I got to Rhodes, I saw a piece in the Press about a car smash up in the mountains. Your name was mentioned and that of a Mrs. Barak. We had known for some time that Barak was in charge of this so-called oil prospecting, so it looked to me that you might be the British agent we'd heard talk of. I got through to Athens on the blower from our H.Q. in Rhodes. They had had it directly from the police that you had bumped off a Czech strong-arm man named Cepicka; so odds-on I was right.'

The American paused to stub out his cigarette, then he went on: 'Of course, I was only out for information. I didn't expect to run into you, but it was just on the cards that I might; and so happen I did. I went out to Monolithos to see if the site there was any different from those I'd seen in the other islands further north; and there you were. Hoping you'd had better luck than I had, I hooked on to you, but that was as far as I got. Every time I tried to get you to open, you stone-walled me.'

Robbie frowned. 'You certainly asked us any number of direct questions, but you said nothing to let me know that you were a Central Intelligence Agency man. Why didn't you tell me straight out?'

'Because I believed you to be British M.I. If you had been, you'd have got the cue quickly enough. As you didn't respond, I couldn't be certain that my guess about you had been right. Your having left Athens with Mrs. Barak and still having her in tow seemed a mighty queer set-up. I couldn't figure it out at all. But it was just on the cards that you might be playing along with the

Czechs and naturally I wasn't taking any chances by showing my hand—not with her around.'

'How did you find out for certain, then, that I was playing the same game as yourself?'

'Your suddenly quitting Rhodes for Crete gave me the idea that you might have got on to something here; so I followed. I got in yesterday evening, but I couldn't trace you; so I came out here this morning. I had a hunch that if I sat around for a while, you might show up. You did, and when I saw you stalking those two Czechs, that told me for sure that you were not on their side but on mine.'

'Well, where do we go from here?' Robbie asked.

'We've got to have a long talk: compare notes. Two heads are always better than one in this game. If we argue round all the possible theories we can think of, we may get somewhere, That is, unless you've already solved this riddle?'

'No; I wish to God I had.'

T take it, er . . . well, to call a rose by any other name, Julie Thevanaz is still with you?'

'Yes, she's in a car we've hired, down on the road about a mile away, waiting for me.'

The American sat silent for a few moments, then he said: 'Look, friend. I've no wish to butt in on your private life, and I've no doubt you trust her. But that's no reason why I should. I've no intention of discussing this business in front of her, and before we go any further I want your word that you won't let on to her that I'm anything but an American playboy.'

Robbie shook his head. 'I'm afraid I can't give it. Not if we are going to work together. That would mean my leaving her for hours, perhaps days, and I wouldn't do that without giving her a proper explanation. You see, she's been absolutely marvellous as far as I am concerned. You are right about my having killed Cepicka and being wanted by the police. Without her help, I doubt if I could have kept out of their clutches for twenty-four hours, so-'

'Since you admit to having killed that guy,' Mahogany Brown cut in, 'as I see it, there is only one way you can beat the rap. That is by helping me get the better of the Czechs. If we can pin the goods on them, it is they who will be up before the Judge; then, whatever actually occurred between you and Cepicka, you can plead that it was all part of the job, and put yourself in the clear by pleading self-defence.'

His proposal had exactly the same object as that by which Stephanie had urged Robbie ten days before at Argos to try to save himself, and which they now hoped to achieve by luring Barak to Crete. But Barak might not take the bait, and here was a second life-line. Robbie was desperately tempted to snatch at it but he felt that, after all Stephanie had done for him and with all she had come to mean to him, he could not possibly deceive her in this way. He was about to say so when the American, who had been watching the struggle plainly to be seen on his features, said:

'It's no good making promises unless you mean to keep them, and it's clear that this woman's got right under your skin. But say, now, could you honestly agree to this? Tell her that I'm C.I.A., and that we're going to work together; but don't disclose to her any information I may give you and keep her absolutely in the dark about any action that we may decide to take.'

'Yes,' said Robbie, 'that's fair enough. I'll agree to that.'

'Right, then, let's get moving. Since she's waiting for you, we'll have to put off our talk, because it's got to be a long one. I take it you are staying in Heraklion?' As the American asked the question, they headed for the track that led down the far side of the hill.

'Yes,' Robbie replied.

'Where about?'

That's my business.'

Mahogany Brown grinned. 'Afraid I'd make an unwelcome third in your love nest, eh? You needn't worry. It's you I'm interested in at the moment; not Julie, or whatever you care to call her. When I've left you, tell her that we are going to work together and that you are going to have dinner with me this evening at the Heraklion Club, so as to swop information. It's in King Constantine Avenue, so you'll have no difficulty in finding it. The premises and the cooking are not exactly k la Ritz, but they give you an edible meal there, and at the Candia Palace, where I'm staying, guests have to eat out. Be there at seven thirty and I'll be setting up the drinks.'

'How did you get out here?' Robbie asked.

'I hired a motor bike. It's down there among the bushes, just off the road.'

They came to the stream and crossed it in turn on the donkey. As they were walking along the path on its far side, the American said: 'Remember, as far as Julie is concerned, we've met again by chance. I don't want any talk of this and that while she is round. I'll just say that, after leaving Rhodes, I decided to fly down from Athens for a few days in Crete and came out this morning to take a look at Ayia Triada. Later, when you have her alone, you can tell her I'm C.I.A. That way she'll have no chance to ask me any questions to which I'd be put to the bother of thinking up lies for answers. Have you made any plans for lunch?'

'We meant to lunch at the Tourist Pavilion at Phaestos, but I spotted those two Czechs at Gortyne and followed them here.'

Mahogany Brown glanced at his wrist-watch. 'It's only just half after one, and Phaestos is less than six kilometres from here. There's nowhere else within miles where we'd get anything better than a slice of tough goat, olives and sour cheese, so we'd better

make for there. I'm told it's worth seeing, too.'

Two minutes later, they came out on the road. Stephanie was still sitting patiently at the wheel of the car. The moment Mahogany Brown came within sight of her, his personality changed back to that of the irrepressibly cheerful young man they had known in Rhodes. Raising his hand, he gave a loud cry.

'Hello! Hello! What d'you know! Just fancy seeing you again. Say, Julie, you're prettier than ever. What a bit of luck for me running into old Max here, while I was giving the once-over to those ruins. I've got a motor bike somewhere round in these bushes. Soon as I can find the darn thing we're all going on to Phaestos, and lunch there is on me.'

Stephanie had enjoyed dancing with him in Rhodes and had encouraged him, not with any view to making Robbie jealous but because his gay, inconsequential chatter helped to keep both her mind and Robbie's off the serious developments that might arise at any time through the police learning Robbie's real identity. Now she was far from pleased that he should have turned up again, since he might prove very difficult to throw off, and their situation in Crete was very different from what it had been in Rhodes. Nevertheless, she returned his greeting with a smile and called out: 'Why, Henry, what a lovely surprise to find you here.'

Henry found his motor cycle. Stephanie turned the car round and ten minutes later they were winding their way up the hill on which stood the ruins of Phaestos.

The situation of the Palace had been greatly superior to that of Knossos, as the hill that it crowned lay between two ranges of mountains, and it had been built in a series of terraces looking out on the long valley between them. The Tourist Pavilion was above the highest of these terraces; so while they ate a pleasant lunch on the shady verandah, they had the ruins just below them and could admire the splendid twenty-mile-long vista.

Over the meal, they talked of the international situation. The American said that he had found Athens almost empty of foreigners. The tourist season, which meant so much to Greece and which should now be in full swing, had been ruined, the Stock Markets had taken another plunge after the breakdown of the Delhi Conference, and many rich Greeks were leaving the capital, either for places in the country or the islands in the Aegean, because they thought that would give them a better chance of survival in the event of war. But he was still of the opinion that there would not be war.

The crew of the submarine was reported to be in good shape. Modern scientific devices in the ship would enable them to remain so for several weeks to come, without being compelled to surface for air. The United States had long since made a declaration that she would never be the first to launch a nuclear conflict, and the Russians would be mad to do so. There was still plenty of time for further negotiations and, in some way or other, a com-

m 349 promise would be reached. 'Anyhow,' the optimistic Mr. Mahogany Brown concluded, 'if the Russians do go crackers and start the big party, we couldn't be better situated than we are right now. No one's going to waste an I.C.B.M. on Crete.'

When they had finished lunch, they spent an hour wandering about the great open courts, broad imposing stairways and small rooms of the Palace. It was not so large as Knossos but, with its many terraces, must have been much more beautiful. It had been destroyed in the same great earthquake that had devastated the island from end to end somewhere about 1400 b.c.

A little before four o'clock, they set off back to Heraklion. As Mahogany Brown started up his motor bike, he gave a casual wave, shouted 'I'll be seeing you,' then roared away.

Stephanie let in the clutch of the car and, as it sped down the hill, said to Robbie: 'Fancy running into him again. How unlike him, though, not to have suggested our doing something together this evening. He didn't even ask where we were staying. Or did you fob him off by giving him a false address when you were up there with him at Ayia Triada?'

'No. But he gave me the fright of my life.' Robbie then told her how Mahogany Brown had held him up, and of their conversation afterwards.

She made no comment until he had finished, then she said: 'It was very loyal of you, Robbie, to have refused to co-operate with him without telling me. I take it you didn't deny that I was Mrs. Barak?'

'No. I saw no point in doing so. During the few days between your reported death and his coming upon us at Monolithos, the odds against my having found another woman who more or less answered your description and was willing to pose as my wife would be fantastic.'

'That's true; and, knowing me to be Vaclav's wife, it's perfectly understandable that he should be unwilling to trust me.'

'I didn't give him any particulars about what happened, but gave him simply to understand that you were on our side and that it was only by your help that I had so far kept out of the hands of the police.'

'He would put that down to the belief that we ran away from Athens together as lovers; but that doesn't make me any the less a Czech. You were absolutely right, though, to accept the compromise he suggested. Vaclav may not take the bait I offered, and this gives you another chance to justify your having killed Cepicka. That's the all-important thing. How about our plan, though? If Vaclav does come to Heraklion, do you intend to let Henry know?'

'No, I don't think there's anything to be gained by doing that. Quite apart from getting all I can out of Barak, I've got a personal score to settle with him and I don't want any interference.'

It was half-past-six by the time they were back in Heraklion. Parking the car in Morosini Square, they went over to a caf6 to have a drink. They noticed then that little groups of people were standing about, either moodily or arguing excitedly together. As they gave their order to a waiter, they learnt the reason. At midday Russia had issued an ultimatum to the United States. Either the submarine must be surrendered intact within seven days or mines would be exploded in the ice under which she lay, to drive her out.

That was grim news. Actually to attack the submarine would almost certainly lead to war. The Americans were a proud and courageous people. In every country, there was always a 'peace at any price' party, but the majority would not submit to the humiliation of allowing their warship to be destroyed without retaliating. The Russians must realize that so, had they really wanted a 'showdown', surely, instead of issuing an ultimatum, they could have blown New York off the map without warning. Even so, things had now reached a point where an impatient finger on a trigger might cause that to happen at any moment.

When Stephanie and Robbie had talked over this latest news and finished their drink, it was time for him to walk up the street to the Heraklion Club. Next day, there might be a letter for Stephanie from Barak; so it was agreed that, after she had called at the G.P.O., she should come in the car to their usual meeting place at ten o'clock. If there were no letter, and Mahogany Brown had not asked Robbie to give him his help in some way, they would spend the day motoring to the east along the northern coast of Crete, to see other remains of the Minoan Age and the bay of Malea with its scores of windmills.

Robbie found the entrance to the Club without difficulty and a lift took him up to the premises, which proved to be airy but bleak. Mahogany Brown was waiting for him at the cloakroom counter and led him straight down a long passage, past a room in which some men were playing billiards, to the restaurant. It was a large, lofty room that had only about twenty tables in it, although it could easily have held double that number. There was a bar in one corner and, beside one end of it, a serving door to the kitchen, which stood open, revealing a chef and three women all talking at the tops of their voices. Apart from them and a solitary waiter the place was empty, as it was well before the hour at which the Greeks usually dine.

The waiter served them drinks and they carried them over to a table in a far corner of the room, then got down to exchanging information. It soon transpired that all the groups which either of them had investigated were carrying out exactly similar operations, the drilling of a single, deep hole about a foot in diameter, with long screws having in their centre a hollow eight or more inches across. It was not until Robbie gave an account of the conversation he had overheard at Gortyne that morning between the two Czechs that Mahogany Brown showed sudden interest.

'So he wanted to drop one down the Zeus Grotto, eh?' he said. 'Well, anyway, that confirms my guess that they mean to put something down those holes. But what? Have you any sort of idea?'

Atom bombs,' replied Robbie promptly. 'Or rather, I suppose, by this time they've got cobalt bombs.'

'I thought of that. But there'd be no sense in it. Even the site we saw today on the bay of Mesara is several miles from our big, new air base, and none of the others are anywhere near important military installations. What would be the point of blowing great holes in the Greek coastline and several of the islands?'

'At one time, I thought they might be installing some form of radar gadget which would, in some way, assist Russian submarines,' Robbie remarked.

That would make more sense, but why the holes?'

'I don't know a thing about science, so I couldn't even make a guess. From tonight's news, though, it looks as if we may soon be given the answer in a way we won't like. Or are you still of the opinion you expressed at lunch?'

Mahogany Brown shook his fair, crew-cut head. 'What I said at lunch was all hooey, except for one thing. That was that, if the big bang is coming, we're as well placed here to survive as anywhere, except the outspots like darkest Africa or Peru.'

'You think it really looks like war, then?'

'I wouldn't wager more than evens that it won't come to that. We've been at maximum alert since midday, and whatever declarations may have been made from the White House, I wouldn't put it past one of our top brass in the Pentagon letting off the fireworks rather than risk letting the Russians have first crack at us.'

'If we are as near the edge as that, why in God's name don't your people go right into these sites and stop the Czechs doing whatever they are at?' Robbie asked.

'Because the Greeks won't let us.' Mahogany Brown beckoned the waiter over to replenish their drinks, then he went on: 'That's the big handicap the West has been up against all the time. Moscow has only to say the word to get done in any of the Iron Curtain countries anything the Kremlin boys want—and done at once. But N.A.T.O. has to say "Please may we?" to the Governments of each separate sovereign State in the Alliance when she wants some action taken in that State's territory. To get a reply usually takes months and, when it does come, often as not it's "No".'

'Yes, I realize that. But surely, in a case like this, you could have got the Greek Government to send their own people in to inspect these sites and find out what the Czechs are up to?'

That's what my Chief tried to do. But the Greeks wouldn't wear it. The trouble is that West and East have played at Brinkmanship for so long that most people simply won't believe that it will now ever come to a hot war. Stockholders get the jitters, but they do that anyway every year or two when there's a threat of depression, or it looks as if a disarmament agreement is at last going to put half the world's heavy industry out of business; tourists get out in a hurry because, rather than face even a remote possibility of being cut off in a foreign country, folk naturally incline to beat it for their homes. But Governments don't scare all that easy. The Greeks are getting what they regard as a lot of money for nothing out of this tobacco-oil deal and, so far, they've had only a ten per cent payment on signing of contract so, naturally, they don't want to upset the Czechs before they get the rest.'

'One couldn't blame them for that if the Czechs really were prospecting for oil. But we know they are not. They are not using the right kind of apparatus. If your Chief made that clear

to the Greek Government-'

'He has, but it's cut no ice. The Czech story is that they are using an entirely new process, and it is their secret. That's why, when it was tentatively suggested to them that they should allow⁷ an inspection, their refusal sounded quite reasonable to the Greeks. And Greece is a poor country, remember. Think what it would mean to the Greeks if the Czechs really did strike oil. Looked at from their point of view, one can't expect them to risk busting their chances of a bonanza just because an American sub. has got herself stuck in Soviet waters and there is one more of those recurrent crises that we've had during most of our lives.'

They went out to the kitchen, where the fat, cheerful chef produced in a ladle for their inspection various bits and pieces from his row of big, bubbling pots. Mahogany Brown chose one of those mysterious stews. Robbie hesitated over chicken; but as, owing to lack of corn, the hens in Greece were always so small and skinny he settled for fried meat balls.

By then, half a dozen men had come into the dining room, but none of them was near enough to the table that Mahogany Brown had chosen to overhear their conversation; so, when they were settled at it again, Robbie asked:

'If the Russians do bore through the ice to depth-charge the submarine, what will happen? She must have a dozen or more missiles on board, so could fire them off. Won't the Russians be afraid that she may, and might blot out Moscow?'

'No, she couldn't do that. If she were clear of the ice and at sea, she could. But the several feet of ice on top of her would be certain to deflect the aim of the missiles. I don't know enough about it to speak for sure, but I think the chances are that hitting the solid ice would cause them to go off prematurely. In that case, the back blast would blow her to bits. Of course, it would put paid to any part of the Soviet Fleet that was within miles. But the Russians regard ships and men as expendable; so they wouldn't lose much sleep over the sinking of a few mine-laying vessels and, perhaps a couple of cruisers.'

'Say the worst happens,' Robbie enquired. 'How do you think things will go?'

Mahogany Brown poured some more vinegar over the stew he was eating, and shrugged. 'Your picture is probably as good as mine. Even if the Russians do strike first and blot out New York, Chicago, Detroit, London, Paris and various other big centres of production, we'll flatten Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkhov, Warsaw, Prague and so on. But the earth is one hell of a big place and there's a limit to the damage that the I.C.B.M.s can do, even allowing for fall-out. After a few days the missiles will have been used up, then what's known as the "broken back" war will begin.'

Having tossed back half a glass of the Cretan wine they were drinking, he went on: 'As I see it, the big problem is going to be getting rid of the millions of dead before a plague sets in. But, providing an epidemic doesn't kill off those of us who are left, the survivors in the fighting services on both sides will gradually get themselves organized and set about having old-fashioned battles.'

'If they do, they will be pretty well back to bows and arrows.'

'Oh no; not necessarily. When I said old-fashioned, I meant sort of 1914-18, or maybe even 1939-45. There should be quite a few ships, aircraft and tanks left around, and the winner is going to be the side that's got the oil to run them. That's why, strategically speaking, the Aegean is so important. Nine-tenths of Russia's oil is concentrated in the Caucasus and Rumania. The nearer our subs can get to those fields, the more accurate the aim of their missiles will be. They daren't go through the Bosphorous into the Black Sea. That would be too risky. But you can be sure we have a number of them sitting on the bottom of the Aegean right now, ready to blast off at the word "go"; so as to make certain of putting the Soviet oil wells out of business even before the "broken back" war gets going.'

They finished off their meal with slices of an incredibly sweet cake that consisted of crystallized fruit, then had Turkish coffee and Greek brandy. As they were about to leave the table, Mahogany Brown said: 'I shall get on to my Chief tonight, to let him know that bit you picked up today about dropping things down grottoes, and urge that he have another crack at the Greeks to go in and find out what it is the Czechs mean to drop. For the moment, 1 don't see what else we can do. But I'd like you to keep in touch, because a lone wolf like you can sometimes do things that I'm barred from doing unless I go against Standing Orders and risk blotting my copy-book. Look in at the