Decision at Delphi (62 page)

She tried to take one more step upward, and couldn’t. She hung on where she was. At least she was sure of this ledge on which her feet rested. She must not look down. Desperately, she stared at the grey rock streaked with coarsely mottled veins of gleaming crystals. The dog jumped again, and fell back. Not a friendly animal, she thought, and knew she had overcome her paralysing terror: she was frightened sick, she could climb no more, but at least her mind was functioning again. She laid her cheek against the cold rock. She heard one more leap, one more thud against the cliff below her feet, and the wild barking filled the whole ravine like the early spring torrents. If I can just stand on this ledge long enough, she thought, the shepherd will come. Or Xenia? No, Xenia would not risk coming near that dog. But she could see me here; she would wait; she could—

“Cecilia!” It was Ken’s voice. “Cecilia!”

Or was that only what she wanted to hear? The barking came in waves, lapped at her, tried to pull her backward into the surge of hideous sound. She pressed her body to the rock, closed her eyes, tried to close her ears, and hung on.

Strang, as he ran and jumped down the sloping side of the ravine, saw the dog leap and fall again. Each time, as it landed back on the harsh, dried bed of the stream, it yelped with pain and rage. He picked up a couple of stones, a fallen branch from a stunted tree. It would be useless; it felt rotten even to his touch, but it looked better than nothing.

He moved instinctively. He threw a stone hard, struck the dog’s flank. The dog jerked around to face him. He ran at it,
shouting, the branch raised to strike. The dog hesitated. For a long minute, they faced each other, the dog’s growl beginning to rise with its mane. Then, as he watched it, ready to throw the second stone when the dog charged, he heard a yell behind him, an avalanche of curses. The shepherd came rushing down the bank of the ravine, and the dog stood still. With a whine, it turned and in a limping run tried to escape the blows that fell around its head. The shepherd had it by the neck, pulling it away from the ravine, cursing, pulling.

Two policemen, and Costas—with his revolver ready—and the shepherd’s friend from the village came clattering down the bank towards Strang. He snapped the stick he was holding in his hand and threw it away.

“I hope,” said Costas, white-lipped, “he beats its brains out.”

Strang walked across the bed of the ravine. “Cecilia!” he called, gently.

She didn’t move.

“Cecilia—” She has frozen, he thought. She can’t even turn around.

Her voice said, as if she were a great distance away, “Ken! I can’t—I just can’t—”

“Then don’t move l Just stay there. We’ll get you. Darling, just hold on!”

It was a short climb, only twelve or fifteen feet above the base of jagged rocks. While the others grouped underneath to break any slip, Strang pulled himself carefully up over the face of the cliff. He found an easier way than Cecilia had taken, but he hadn’t a hundred and thirty pounds of dog at his heels. He reached the ledge where she stood, and moved sideways along it until he could reach out and grasp her
wrist. “That feels good,” he said.

Slowly, she turned her head to look at him. Slowly, she nodded. She even managed a smile.

“This way,” he told her. “It is much easier. Your right foot a little toward me. Now your left. Face the cliff. Keep the flat of your other hand against the rock. That’s the way. You
chassez
very prettily, Miss Hillard.”

She laughed a little, and then caught her breath sharply as if even a laugh might topple her backward. But would he be talking so lightly if this were not easy? She listened to his quiet, confident voice, to his funny little remarks, and her confidence came slowly back. His grasp on her wrist was gentle and yet firm. Her thighs were no longer rigid, her feet were obeying her mind at last. “I’m all right,” she said delightedly. “Ken—I’m all right!”

“I’ll go down first, just beneath you.” He let go of her hand slowly. “I’ll guide your feet on to the ledges. Right?” Now he was below her. He said, “I’m going to grip your right ankle— steer it—see? There! The foot has got a good grip of that ledge. There’s room for another. That’s the way. Only two more efforts like that, and then— That’s the way.” At last, he could stand on a boulder at the base of the cliff, and reach up to catch her waist and lift her down beside him. He stood looking at her, his arms around her.

Now, all the joking was over, the light, easy voice had gone. He said, the strain showing naked in his eyes, “Oh, God! Cecilia—” The tight voice broke. “Oh, God!” he said again, and buried his mouth in her hair.

They were pulled apart by three quick shots. “The signal,” Costas called to them from the opposite bank, his revolver still held up above his head. “I let everyone know she is safe.”

Which was, Strang considered, a polite but practical way of jogging them all into motion out of the ravine. He picked Cecilia up and carried her across the rocks and the gravel to the other side.

“I left my coat,” Cecilia said. “Up there, by those bushes. That’s where I lay—”

He sat her down on a boulder. “Don’t walk. We’ll carry you and get your feet attended to, at once.”

“Poor feet!” Cecilia said. “They were all right until that last dash across the ravine.” There had not been much time for picking and choosing her way then.

He knelt to look at the cuts and scrapes.

“Oh, it isn’t too bad,” Cecilia said cheerfully. “Blood always makes things look worse than they are.” She laughed. “It’s extraordinary how brave I am when you are around, Ken.”

He kissed her, caught Costas’s polite but impatient eye, and went to get her coat. Her shoes were over there, too. He paused for a moment, as he picked them up, and looked at the bushes that had sheltered her. From whom? He had a lot to learn.

He returned, and wrapped her inside the warm cashmere. It was cool now on the hillside. The sun had not much more than another hour to travel before it slid behind the far mountains. And from the east, the grey-white mist was thickening, lowering slowly. The two policemen and the man from Arachova had left. He saw them climbing quickly, far up the hill.

Costas noticed his surprise. He said, “There is a cave up there. They go to see it before the light is bad. The shepherd said the bandits—” He paused, looked at Cecilia, and said nothing more. “We carry her. Yes?”

Strang looked at him, looked back up the hill toward the hidden cave. His lips tightened, and he nodded.

By the pool at the top of the wood, they halted. Strang bathed her feet gently in the cold, clear water. He moistened a handkerchief and wiped the dust and tearstains from her face. She had not spoken at all since they had climbed out of the ravine. But now she said, “They have gone? They really have gone?”

“The police caught one of them. A man. He was trying to get his motorcycle out of some bushes—”

“Anastas. That was Anastas... But wasn’t the woman with him?”

“No, darling.”

“Alone? He was alone?”

“Yes.” Strang smoothed her hair, and kissed the questions out of her eyes. “Forget them both,” he told her. “Let’s concentrate on us.”

She nodded and tightened her grip on his arm. But as they left the clearing and started down through the wood, she looked back for a moment. “I never thought Xenia would give up the search so easily,” she said slowly.

“Now—” Strang warned her, gently. She laughed, and kissed him, and watched the worry leave his face. She settled her head against his shoulder. She had never known anyone could feel so happy as this.

Down near the road, the clusters of people had thickened. One search party had returned, several more children had arrived
out of nowhere; there were two more cars strung along the edge of the meadow.

Elias hurried across the grass to meet them in a bustle of energy and excitement. The Colonel had been here; he had stayed until he heard the three shots; then he had left for Arachova, where he was setting up headquarters; the house had been traced; it was a matter now of moving quickly, of throwing a cordon around it and pulling it tight.

“What house?” Strang asked. He was amused, in a way, that their arrival on the meadow was causing so little excitement. The girl was safe; everyone was delighted, but there were other things to think about. The police officer was talking earnestly to some of the search party, no doubt about the reported appearance of two sheep-stealers, marauders, outlaws, what have you, on the hills. The peasants had grouped around a tall, powerful man with light-coloured hair. Who was that? Levadi? He was so washed and brushed that Myrrha Kladas would scarcely have recognised him.

“The house near Delphi,” Elias explained. But that seemed to mean little to Strang, so he added quickly. “The house where the Roilos father and son hid when they got back from Yugoslavia.”

“Oh—that house!”

Elias glanced at him, and dropped the subject. “Your friends are waiting,” he said, and pointed to a car. “There is a comfortable hotel at Delphi where you can sleep tonight.”

“Delphi? No, not tonight, Elias. We are getting back to Athens.”

Elias looked at Cecilia, then at Strang. “Athens is at least three hours away. Delphi is thirty minutes, perhaps less.”

“I’m taking Miss Hillard nowhere near that house on the Delphi road.”

Elias said quietly, “There will be three Americans and three Greeks to make sure she is safe. Besides—” he shrugged—“in a few hours, we all stop worrying. Perhaps, even now, he is caught.”

Christophorou... “He is in that house?”

“We think so. A Renault car passed through the hill town of Arachova yesterday evening. It never reached Delphi. Early this morning another car was heard travelling through Arachova, but not through Delphi. Then the motorcycle—”

“Yes,” said Strang, “it’s all part of a pattern.”

“Exactly,” Elias said, most seriously.

“We are still going to Athens.” But his voice was that of a completely exhausted man. Bad-tempered, pigheaded, he admitted to himself angrily. Now that they were almost at the cars, he could admit he had just about ten more paces left in his legs. A hot bath, food, sleep. “Is there a good doctor in Delphi?” he asked.

“Miss Hillard’s feet will be all right tomorrow,” Elias promised.

Like hell they will, thought Strang. But the sooner they were treated, the better.

He recognised one of the men standing beside a car, who was starting forward to meet them. “Hallo!” he said to Henry Beaumont, and couldn’t conceal his surprise. “What are you doing here? Come to excavate some ruins?”

“Just rallying around,” Beaumont said cheerfully. “Someone had to drive for old Pringle. He insisted on getting out of bed and coming here.” He looked at Cecilia and smiled. “I’m the
man who almost came to dinner. Beaumont.” He thought of several things to add, and then didn’t. Instead, he turned back to his car and got the travel rug and his flask of brandy. “She’s fine,” he told Pringle. “Much better than we expected. Strang doesn’t know it, but he’s all in.”

And so they drove, along the hill road to Delphi. “We’ll telephone Effie from the hotel,” Pringle said. “She can bring up some clothes for Cecilia tomorrow.”

“And my camera,” Cecilia said.

“What did I tell you?” Beaumont asked, with a wide grin. “Miss Hillard will be up, nursing you both, tomorrow.”

“But this is the place to look through a viewfinder,” Cecilia said. She pointed to the vast semicircle of ruins, of broken monuments and columns, rising tier by tier from the roadside up their steep, wide hill. In the dusk, the golden-white pillars were pale ghosts, picked out by the dying rays of the sun, dominating the darkening valley until the last moment of light. “Oh, Ken!” She grasped his hand more tightly.

Beaumont pointed to a dark high pinnacle of stone precipice, rising to one side of the remains of ancient Delphi. “They used to throw the blasphemers from that peak,” he said amiably.

“That,” said Pringle, “is what I like about classicists. Full of beneficence and uplift.” He looked back at the precipice. “You know,” he added softly, “the Greeks might have had something there.” He was silent as the car curved around the road and climbed into a straight little village street of stone houses, wood balconies, and sloping roofs, perched along the edge of more cliffs. He turned to Strang, eased his leg with
a quick grimace of pain, and asked, “You noticed his house, four miles back or so?”

Strang nodded. At least, he was thinking, I saw the army cars drawn up on the road. I saw radio antennae, I saw a truck, some soldiers. And up on the hillside, I saw a house with closed shutters. A pleasant vacation house, it had looked, abandoned until June came along.

“My bet is that he saw them coming up the road, and took to the hills,” Pringle said gloomily. “But he won’t get far. Zafiris has got troops lined out in a wide circle. They will draw closer and closer. It is just a matter of time.” He noticed Strang’s face. “Stop worrying, Ken. Christophorou has got other things on his mind now. The hunter hunted—” He liked that idea. “He doesn’t even know that you found Cecilia. Nice going, Ken. Very nice indeed.” Then his face changed. “We all weren’t so lucky,” he said softly.

He remained silent as they drove through the village. At its far end, where the road ran free of houses, the hotel stood by itself, alone with its magnificent view. As he got out of the car, Pringle, balancing his weight on a heavy walking stick to favour his injured leg, said in a low voice to Strang, “Ottway caught it.”

“What?”

“Yes.” Pringle glanced back at the car, but Beaumont was talking to Cecilia; she couldn’t hear them. “In Cyprus. He was at a café table, watching. A tourist passed by, with a camera slung over his shoulder. Ottway recognised the case—there were even initials on it. C.O. As brazen as you like. Ottway reached for the man and got a knife in the belly. Died last night.” He paused. “They found an ingenious kind of grenade inside the camera. Enough to blow up ten resistance heroes making patriotic speeches.”

Strang and Pringle looked at each other. “Yes,” Pringle said grimly, once again. “Exactly.” He limped away, slowly, painfully, towards the hotel doorway.