Enemy and Brother (29 page)

“That was memorable,” I said.

“And then there would be the calculated risk on what the Russians and their uneasy satellites would do. … I dare say a little change above our northwest border would not distress them.” He could not restrain his enthusiasm. “It could be magnificent!”

I wondered how magnificent he would think it if I told him Frontis was a Communist. But I said, “Mr. Helmi, surely you and I cannot be the only intelligent people to suspect what is going on?”

“Certainly not,” he said, and the words rang ominously.

“If the King himself were aware, would he sanction it?”

“He would not and he could not. My dear man, Greece is a member of the United Nations, and we abide by international treaty.”

“Then this scheme, if it exists, is subversive.”

“Subversive of what? The status quo? Perhaps. But is it subversive of a people who have been sealed off from their brothers, their culture, their God? I think not. I do not believe history would call it subversive. This disturbs me not at all. I am disturbed only by the personal motives of the instigators. I do not trust a woman seeking power. And I prefer to see Greek history made by Greeks.”

“Which sends me about Lord Byron’s business,” I said, “who was also a meddler in Greek history.” I offered my hand, hoping to get away the more quickly.

“What we have said—is it not all fantasy—illusion, like the rainbow in the water?” His smile was forced.

“I should also like to think so,” I said.

We shook hands and I went round to the car while he went up the steps. I found Elsa waiting for me at the car door.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

“There is,” I said. “I desperately need a cottage or a house—somewhere I can hide a blind man—if I find him—and feel that he is safe.”

“In Ioannina?”

I nodded.

“I don’t know, John, but isn’t it possible that the safest place would be right here?”

I thought about it.

“I have a twin-bedded room,” she added. “I shouldn’t mind exchanging with you—and if it’s safer for him, we need tell no one of the change.”

“Bless you again, Elsa. I shall call you when I find him.”

“No need. I’ll be here,” she said. “Room 309. Just come back safely.”

I hesitated, about to turn on the ignition. “I shouldn’t really involve you….”

“Involvement suits me,” she said.

“Then you had better know now: I am the man who was convicted of Alexander Webb’s murder.”

She inclined her head ever so slightly at the information. Then: “Again, I feel we’ve said these very things before. Is the blind man your accessory?”

I looked hard at her, forcing her eyes to hold on mine. “Elsa, where would you say I should look for him if he is not at the place where we agreed to meet?”

Unhesitatingly she said, “Wherever you would have gone together if you had met.”

Paul was not on the bench at the lake’s edge, and the couple sitting there of whom I inquired had not seen the blind man.

I drove back toward Lord Byron Street and remembered the men Elsa and I had seen in that vicinity that morning, assuming them to be security police. I did not care, but there was none of them in sight anyway. Recklessly, I inquired of Paul at one after another of the courtyard hotels until a man beckoned me to follow him to one of the rooms. He put his hand through an open window and unlocked the door from the inside. Paul’s jacket was hung on the back of the chair, his slacks hung over the iron railing of the bed, his dufflebag on the chair.

“Where is he?”

He shrugged and described the costume he had been wearing. “The
taverna
?” he suggested.

“Where did he get the costume?”

“Ah,” the man said, “that would be the folk chorus from Kalpaki. Last night they were all singing and dancing. Nobody wanted to go home. Everybody got drunk—and this morning they brought an extra costume with nobody in it, and they came looking for him. He can sing, your blind friend.”

“But after the parade?” I persisted.

“He did not come back. It would be perhaps that he stayed with them. Tonight they will sing again for the Princess Royal.”

“Where?”

“After the festival—at the home of Mr. Chaconis. It is a great honor for your friend.”

“A very great honor,” I agreed. I paid for Paul’s room and took his things with me.

Driving north I thought that if I had taken Elsa’s advice, I would have saved a half-hour. It gave me some small comfort to know that she had been right, and that she was waiting my return with Paul.

K
ALPAKI WAS ASLEEP WHEN
I reached there, even to the dog in the middle of the street who lifted his head when I drove around him and then put it down again between his paws. I could think of no one in the village to go to for help except the priest. Paul had said he once had friends in Kalpaki, but who were they, and whose friends were they now?

I parked in front of the church and went inside, hoping to find a sexton or someone who could tell me where the priest lived. There was no one but when I went outdoors again, the priest himself was climbing the stony walk. He was a tall, slightly stooped man who by his determined gait and scrutinous dark eyes reminded me of Modenis. I offered my hand and told him my name. He said that he was Father Zachos. We went inside the church where it was cool. I saw that he looked up and down the street before closing the door behind us.

“I am looking for a blind man, Father, who may have come back from Ioannina with the folk chorus.” He gave no sign of knowing the man or the chorus. I went on: “Both he and I were coming to see you today in any case… to ask you about the woman whose tongue had been mutilated.” He fingered the heavy cross on his breast and stared at me, acknowledging nothing. I drew a deep breath and said, “I had better tell you about the blind man. When the woman was mutilated almost eighteen years ago, he took care of her that night and carried her on his back from her cottage to where she could get medical help. The man who probably mutilated her is responsible also for the blind man’s sightlessness. I took him to the cottage the night before last, and the old shepherd told us you had helped her.”

Finally the priest spoke: “And who are you?”

“I am the friend of both of them, and I was in Markos’ camp… when the tragedy began.”

He had held up his hand at the name Markos. He said, “Tell me no more.”

“Then you tell me, Father. It is a matter of both honor and necessity.” I had almost won his confidence. I could feel it: one more word, if it were the right one, would persuade him. “Peace or war. If you would have these hills run red with blood again, Father, then I have come to the wrong man for help.”

“Peace,” he said. “I will tell you about Maria.” The priest and I walked slowly round and round in the nave of the church while he spoke.

“After our troubles she lived alone for many years, then with the cousin who came down to her from the mountain. Sometimes she came here to the village to church. It was perhaps a year ago and there were soldiers—but I did not know that at first. I found her hiding here. She would not leave. She would not leave the church, and she kept showing me her mouth—where the tongue was gone. It was after many questions that I drew from her the information that she had seen the one responsible, who had done such a thing to her. But who? It was a soldier and she knew his name. She kept crossing herself. Finally I got my book of the saints and began alphabetically to name them. It was not long…” He glanced at me as though for a moment doubting he should say the name.

I said it for him: “Demetrios.”

He nodded assent. “I did not know him. I do not know him. I went to my friend, the elder councilman of the village, and asked him if he knew a soldier, Demetrios. A soldier, no, but Demetrios was the name his sons revered as some men do their saints. It was the name synonymous with glory, with Epirot nationalism. The man, he did not think they knew, or if they did, it was in very secret council.

“It was for Maria’s safety—and perhaps my own, I will confess my weakness—that I removed her to the convent in the hills. Some of the young men came afterwards. They wanted to see the woman who knew Demetrios. Word, as I feared, had spread from the councilman’s house. They asked me where she was and, looking God in the eye, I told them she was dead.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully wiped his lips as though the trace of the lie might still be there.

“But she is not dead, Father?”

“In a year much can happen. But when I rode my donkey up and dictated the letter for the nuns to write, and which they did, the woman was with them.”

“You will tell me how to get there, Father, but first I must find the blind man.”

“About him I can tell you this: when the bus came back from Ioannina at noon, he was taken from it and into a car.”

“Where?”

“They drove north. That is all I can tell you, except that it was one of the elder councilman’s sons who drove the car.”

North. To the cave? The national shrine which Demetrios was desecrating? “And the convent, Father?”

“By a difficult road it is not far. By a better road it is longer and there are soldiers.”

“I will take the difficult road,” I said, and he told me how to reach it.

At the church door I shook hands with him and said, “Father, Maria was once in possession of a very important document….”

Again he stayed me with the raising of his hand. “She tried to give it to me on our journey. I could only read the numerals, 1948, and I was grateful God had not made me either educated or curious. Nineteen forty-eight was not a year I wish to remember.”

No more would Maria, I thought, but even as the rest of us were involved, she was going to have to remember it so that its like would not recur in her lifetime.

Two off-duty constables in Ioannina had prepared me for the gambit I now proposed to follow. A single military guard stood at attention when I drove up to the cave’s entrance. I returned his salute and got out of the car. I used as few words in Greek as possible, identifying myself as a member of the CIA. I showed him my wallet open to a membership card in the International Society for Cultural Studies.

“Colonel Frontis permits me to question the prisoner,” I said. “The blind man speaks English.”

The young soldier asked me to repeat what I had said. He seemed very stupid. I made it a little clearer, at the same time screwing up my eyes to demonstrate the condition of the prisoner.

The sentry said in Greek, for he had no English at all, that when his relief came at four o’clock, he would communicate with his superiors for instructions. It was then twenty minutes past three.

I feigned misunderstanding. How would he communicate?

By radio. The patrol car was equipped.

I asked if there was no other way. There was none. I felt it fairly safe then to assume that there was no one on duty inside the cave. He was such a nice, clean-cut youngster, college age at most, and probably strong. But I had the advantage of surprise. I asked again the time his relief was due, and in order to illustrate he put his rifle between his knees and showed me four fingers, then pointing to his watch. I lifted him from his feet with an uppercut that split open the skin on my knuckles. I did not dare look closely at him where he fell and lay quite still. I dragged him to the iron gate. It was locked. I shouted Paul’s name. Only my own voice echoed back.

The keys hung on a ring snapped to the sentry’s belt by a leather strap. I unlocked the gate and dragged the boy inside. I had to go back to the light-switch box, the hasp of which had been repaired. I turned on the inside lights. When I returned, a little trickle of blood was seeping from the boy’s mouth. Christ!

I ran down the fiercely cold passage only to find that it divided into two chambers. I shouted. This time Paul answered, a muffled cry, but he pounded his fists against the door. I had to go back to where I had left the keys in the gate. The sentry lay where I had left him. I got the keys and followed Paul’s voice to the door on which he continued to pound until he heard the key in the lock.

He was covered with dirt from where he had been trying to dig his way under the door. He was shivering with cold and yet the sweat stood out on his face. He was still wearing the white breeches, now filthy, and the tunic. I led him out, my arm around him.

“My cane, my cane!”

I went back for it, stepping over the hole he had dug. Briefly then, I glimpsed the conference table and chairs. An old wooden chest with a heavy padlock stood near the sweating walls. That men met here on midnight business I already knew, and my only concern for that business had been thrust upon me, and with it an act of violence which I abhorred. I glanced at my bleeding knuckles and returned to Paul.

“I had faith in you, my brother,” he said when I caught his icy hand and led him as fast as possible toward daylight.

“I may have killed a man,” I said. “How can I leave him here?”

“If he is dead it will not matter,” Paul said.

But the boy was breathing. He would live to identify me, but that did not matter now either. I dragged him outside again where he would be found more quickly, locked the gate and kept the keys. It would take them longer to make sure that Paul was gone.

Getting Paul safely into the car, I picked up the sentry’s rifle and flung it spiraling into the brush. We passed none but donkey traffic between there and the point at which we turned off the main road and began the rugged climb up the rutted trail to the mountain convent.

“I made a mistake,” Paul said. “I believed about Demetrios what I wanted to believe. I am not sure now he was ever a Monarchist agent.”

“He was and is a Communist all the way.” I told him about the repatriation of Alexis Frontis.

“And today he is their hero. They deserve the viper in their breasts!”

“And those to whom Demetrios is hero?”

“It is the same,” Paul said. “It should not be somehow, but it is the same.”

“You must have been singing loudly for him to have noticed you,” I said dryly.

“That chorus is his pride,” Paul said. “He loves music. He is a very cultured man. It is a great pity.”