A Dead Man in Athens (17 page)

Again on Seymour’s advice, the Lady Samira’s sins were forgiven her. The Acting-Vizier had never much cared for the cat, either. Besides, with Irina gone the issue of who was top cat in the harem could be swiftly resolved and what was left of the harem now entered upon a period of stability, although not, alas, harmony, under Samira.

Chloe left the Sultan’s employment and took up a position first with the Metaxas family and then with another Vlach household; which Irina visited from time to time. After a crisp exchange between her and Chloe’s uncle, the old man abandoned forever any idea of arranging a marriage for his niece. On Popadopoulos’s advice, he henceforth confined his carrying, whether of milk or poison, to the mountains.

Popadopoulos enjoyed a brief period of popularity in Athens as the man who got the man who had tried to interfere with their beloved flying machines, but then fell foul of Greek politics.

The war did actually start and the Greek soldiers did actually seize Salonica. In fact, they seized a great deal more and the collapsing Ottoman Empire was forced into major territorial concessions; concessions which they mostly took back a few years later when the Greeks pushed their luck a step too far and landed an army in Anatolia, whereupon they were soundly defeated and the Balkans returned for a while to peace and tranquillity. For about five minutes, actually.

For a while, too, things looked very promising between Seymour and Aphrodite; but then life intervened. Aphrodite had to stay in Athens to support her mother while Andreas was away at the war, and Seymour had to return to England. He promised to come back when he had his next holiday, but he never had a holiday. A couple of big jobs came up, first in one part of the world and then in another, and just when he thought he had finally made it, it was 1914 and he had other things on his mind.

It was then that, sitting in the trenches, and watching the flying machines overhead, he began to think that possibly Stevens had been right after all about the use that might be made of them in a war, and that things might have been different. But by then, of course, it was too late.