Greek Fire Read online

  When they had rung off George Lascou sipped his coffee. From where he sat two reflections of George Lascou aped his movements and were a constant reassurance that he was still personable and still in the early forties. All the same, he was angry with himself now for having allowed himself to be surprised into an emotion which she had detected.

  His secretary came in.

  “Where had I got to, Otho?”

  “Shall I read the last piece? ‘It was Aristotle who said that Virtue consists in loving and hating in the proper proportions. The danger of a too-civilised approach is that we become afraid of the positive emotions. If this election——’ ”

  “Leave it now.” He made an impatient gesture. “Before we go on I’d like you to get Mr. Manos on the phone.”

  Otho put away his notebook, but as he was about to go out Lascou said: “And also Major Kolono.”

  “Sir?”

  “Major Kolono. You’ll find him at police headquarters. Tell him I’d like him to call round here about four-thirty this afternoon on a personal matter.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  While he waited, George Lascou re-read a report he had received that morning from a man whom he occasionally and reluctantly employed. Having done that, he put it in his wallet and began to slit open with a bronze dagger some letters that Otho had brought in. The blade of the dagger was three thousand years old and a lion hunt was inlaid on it. The handle had long since rotted away and been replaced with a modern ivory one. He read the letters, made an emphatic note in the margin of one, got up, lit a cigarette, and went to one of the windows which looked out over Constitution Square. He was high enough here to be undisturbed by the bustle and noise and all the clamour of the morning traffic below, high enough too to see over the new budding trees to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and to the Old Palace, where Parliament had recently been prorogued. Beyond were the trees of the National Garden. Along the further rim of the square three trolley-buses were crawling like centipedes surprised by the lifting of a stone. A handsome man, with that shadowed pallor that comes to some Greeks; the pince-nez he wore softened the strong cheekbones and the strong skull, gave an uncertain studious look to a face otherwise purposeful. As Otho came in again he let the scarlet-and-whitestriped satin curtain fall.

  “Sir, I phoned Mr. Manos at his office but he was in court. I left a message for them to ring when he came back.”

  Lascou put the end of his cigarette in an ash-tray.

  “Then get him out of court. I want to speak to him.”

  It was then nearly 11 a.m.

  Chapter Three

  At three o’clock that afternoon a short stout young woman was walking through Zappeion Park. Her mane of hair was dragged back and fastened under a scarlet head-scarf. Her cheeks were puffy with crying but she was not crying now; her face was set like iron; it was a good-tempered face riven by lightning, hardened by storm. She walked any way, not looking where she was going and not caring; but after a while she came opposite a statue and hesitated staring at it, not really seeing it but uncertain whether to go on or turn back. As she stopped, a man who had been following the same path stopped also and looked at the statue. After a moment he glanced at her and said in English:

  “He died here too.”

  “What? Who?” She stared at him with blind, angry eyes. “What do you say?”

  “Byron. That statue. He loved Greece more even than his own land.”

  She focused the speaker properly for the first time, saw his slight figure and down-pulled hat. “If you are from the police I will spit in your face.”

  “If I were from the police that would land you in trouble.”

  “And you are not?”

  “I am not.”

  “Then get out of my way!”

  She turned her back on him and walked off. There were not many people about and he followed her a few paces behind with his easy cat-like walk.

  “Tell me one thing,” he said, catching her up. “How did the accident happen? I was coming to see him about midday when I heard.”

  She strode out of the park but at the entrance stopped, breathing again like a bull, formidable for all her shortness, quite capable of knocking him down in the street.

  “Who are you?”

  “A friend. My name is Gene Vanbrugh.”

  “What is your business?”

  “I was at the Little Jockey last night. This morning I had a certain business proposition to put to your husband, but I was too late.”

  “So you were too late! Well, I am sorry. But that’s the end of it, isn’t it.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Why not?”

  “I might put the proposition to you, Mme Tolosa.”

  “Do I look or feel in a condition to listen to business propositions? Get out of my way.”

  “How did the accident happen? He was run over, wasn’t he? What did the driver say?”

  “Clear off or I will call the police. See, that one.”

  “Your husband perhaps took to many risks.”

  That stopped her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Take a coffee with me and I’ll tell you.”

  She hesitated, fingered an ear-ring, glanced up at him again, looked him over, taking in the lean slant of his jaw, the bony hands he kept thrusting in and out of his pockets, the old suit.

  “How do you know I have English?”

  “Most cabaret dancers do.”

  She looked behind her. “ I do not want for coffee. But if you have something to say I will sit down.”

  He nodded, his mouth still tight, but with a gleam of approval in his eyes. “ I’ve something to say.”

  They sat at a table part protected from draught by a glass screen. It was a chilly day. There were very few people about at this time of day, and a waiter, yawning, came and swept the table-top with a perfunctory cloth. Gene Vanbrugh ordered coffee for himself and a brandy for her.

  She said: “Well?”

  He looked at her! It might be she was easy-going most times, but once roused she was a fighter. He was a fighter himself and felt drawn towards her.

  “How did the accident happen?”

  “Accident nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He had a phone call at nine this morning. I do not know who it was from, he did not tell me. But as he left the house he was run down by a waiting car. I saw it all because I went to the window to call after him. The car came from up the street, not very fast. You know. There was a lorry turning up the street blocking it to other cars, and the street was empty. It went on the pavement behind Juan. He turned at the last minute and tried to jump out of the way, but it caught him against a wall—crushed him. I … I saw his face.…”

  There was silence. “I’m very sorry.… There was no chance of its being an accident?”

  She thrust the tears off her face. “ The police pretend to believe it was. But they are fools or liars.”

  “What happened to the car?”

  “It was—damaged at the front. It turned quickly round and went off the way it had come.”

  “Did you see the driver?”

  She shook her head. “Now what have you to say?”

  He offered her a cigarette but she shook her head again, impatiently. He struck a match and lit his own cigarette. She watched him suspiciously. He looked like a man who lived on his nerves, but his hands were steady with the match.

  He said: “I was coming to see your husband because I think he had something to sell.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Have the police searched his belongings?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I am not sure. You know. I have been so distracted since it happened. I came out, I had to come out, just to walk, to breathe, to think.”

  The waiter came with the brandy and the coffee, clacking the glasses and saucers. Gene stirred his glass, but she put out one of her small fat pointed hands and pushed hers conte
mptuously away.

  The coffee was thick and sweet. He frowned as he sipped it. “Two weeks ago you and your company were in Paris. Right?”

  “Well?”

  “At Katalan’s. I live in Paris.”

  “You saw us dance?”

  “No. I have to tell you I don’t go much for night-clubs as a normal thing. Maybe I’ve grown out of them—or through them—I don’t know. But a friend of mine met Juan Tolosa. El Toro played a lot of poker, didn’t he?”

  “So?”

  “They met in a poker game more than once. Your husband lost. Once he drank too much and got talkative. He dropped a hint of something he was going to do when he came to Athens. He mentioned a name. My friend knew I was interested in that name. When he saw me a week or so later he passed the information on. By then you’d left. I work in Paris, and it took me a couple of days to put my things in order. I got to Athens yesterday.”

  She picked up her glass now, frowned at it, contorting her flat lips, then abruptly she drank the brandy at a gulp.

  “Give me the name of the man who killed Juan. That’s all I want to know.”

  “I have no proof that would satisfy the police.”

  She said: “Tell me the name and I will not go to the police.”

  He studied her. “I believe you. But it wouldn’t help. You’d only be putting your hand into the same snake’s nest——”

  He stopped. A pale shadow had fallen over the table. In the flood of Castilian that followed he could only pick out a word here and there. He got up.

  “Join us. I was hoping you’d come.”

  Philip Tolosa said in English: “I have no wish to talk with reporters. Maria, come.”

  Gene said: “ You play the harp superbly.”

  The Spaniard’s sallow face was drawn and dirty, and there was cigarette ash and stains on his coat. He was a good lot taller than his brother, being about Gene’s height. Maria got up and there was another sharp, explosion in their own tongue. He had been looking for her everywhere, he said, couldn’t think why she had gone out; she was explaining about this man. Tolosa looked at Gene, eyes cagey and bloodshot. He couldn’t keep his fingers steady.

  Vanbrugh said: “Are you sure you’re going to get out of the country? Are you sure they’ll let you go?”

  The girl pushed her chair aside, nearly upsetting it. “What is this you are threatening us with?”

  “I’m threatening you with nothing. Perhaps your brother-in-law knows what I mean.”

  “I know nothing except that we have no word to say to anyone. Come, Maria.”

  “This man tells me——”

  “Come, Maria.”

  She shrugged and glanced again at Gene, hesitating between them.

  “If you want me any time,” Gene said, “ I am at the Astoria. Ring me or call round.”

  There was nothing more he could do now and he watched them go, Philip Tolosa holding the girl’s arm. After a few paces she jerked her arm free. But she did not look back.

  Gene sat down again to finish his coffee. Then he took out a couple of notes and put them beside the printed bill.

  Chapter Four

  As a clock was striking five Vanbrugh crossed Kolonaki Square and made his way up one of the avenues running off it towards the slopes of Lycabettus. This was a good neighbourhood, the houses individual and distinguished, some set back from the road with wrought-iron gates and balconies.

  It was raining now, a fine drizzle falling like nylon across the city; but towards the sea, towards Piraeus, the grey day was illuminated with broken blue. He walked with the collar of his jacket turned up, hands in pockets, easy slouch, as if the iron pavements were not his natural home at all. He looked like a hobo or a trapper, and had never been either.

  At the house where he called the half-coloured maid was new to him and seemed doubtful whether Mme Lindos would see him. He gave his name and waited at the door.

  When he went in he was shown in to a small morning-room where a handsome old woman sat before an open fire fingering a book of photographs. There are certain architectures of forehead and nose and cheek-bone which defy the erosions of age. She had them.

  He kissed her hand and then her cheek, while her gentle sophisticated gaze went slowly over him, noting that he had lost weight and carried like a monogram his familiar air of strain.

  “So. We cannot keep you away, Gene. Have you no home?”

  He smiled. “No home. Are you, well?”

  “When one is as old as I am one is modestly grateful for being alive at all. Let me see, have you ever met M. Vyro?”

  Gene turned to the short elderly man with the grey imperial who had been standing by the window.

  “M. Vyro is the proprietor of Aegis, one of our oldest morning papers——”

  “And one of the most distinguished,” said Gene.

  M. Vyro bowed. “That is too kind. You are English, sir, or American?”

  “American.”

  “Am I up to date with your occupation, Gene?” Mme Lindos asked. “ The last time you wrote you were——”

  “Yes, still in publishing.”

  “—M. Vanbrugh is European representative of Muirhead and Lewis, the New York publishers.”

  “Then we should have much in common,” said M. Vyro. “You are here on business?”

  “Partly, yes. We have two Greek authors on our list, Michaelis and Paleocastra——”

  “Ah, Michaelis, the poet. Yes, yes. His is the true voice of Greece——”

  “And partly I come to see old friends—among them Mme Lindos, who always knows so much about all the things I want to know.”

  “If that was ever true, Gene, it is far less true now. Fewer people come to see me.”

  “Except the most important ones,” said Gene.

  “Ah, only my oldest friends. I have known M. Vyro for nearly fifty years. What brings you at this particular time, Gene?”

  “Your elections interest me. I wanted to ask you who is going to win this one?”

  “There is an astrologer round the corner. My maid will give you an introduction to him.”

  Gene’s face changed when he smiled—the narrowness, thinness, tightness eased and broke up. Lines crinkled across it in a peculiar and original way. “ Maybe M. Vyro will hazard a guess. I imagined Aegis will support the Government?”

  “Yes—but tending to move right of the Government. It is not a tendency I approve, but two years ago I handed over direction of the paper to my eldest son. He must go his own way.”

  “What of this grouping of all the opposition parties against Karamanlis?” Gene said. “And this new party of the centre, EMO, led by George Lascou?”

  “I see you are up to date in some things,” Mme Lindos said dryly.

  “What sort of a man is Lascou?”

  The question was addressed generally, but for a minute neither answered. The question appeared to have been dropped into an empty room. Then Vyro said:

  “Intelligent, cultured. His money makes him influential. But I doubt personally if he’s dynamic enough for a popular leader. There’s something of the dilettante about him.”

  “You’ll stay to tea, Angelos?” Mme Lindos said.

  “No, thank you, I must go. You will be here some time, M. Vanbrugh?”

  “A week or so. I haven’t decided.”

  “Next week—a week today—is the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of my paper. I am proud to have begun it in a back street of the town when I was twenty-three. Next week we are celebrating the anniversary by setting in motion two new printing presses. I came to see Mme Lindos today about the reception which she is holding here first. It would be very fitting—and a pleasure to us—if you could come, having regard to your profession.”

  “I shall be glad to. Thank you.”

  “My very oldest surviving friend,” said Mme Lindos when Vyro had left. “ My husband’s friend too. A man of such integrity. His sons are poor copies.”

  “Talk Greek to
me, will you, Sophia?” Gene said. “One gets out of practice.”

  “Are you likely to need practice?”

  “Sometimes it’s convenient.”

  Mme Lindos got up. Arthritis made her moving ungainly, but once up she was as erect as he was. “You must come into the drawing-room for tea, and then I want to know what you are here for.”

  “I believe you don’t trust me.”

  “Not very far.”

  The maid came in and opened double doors into a very large airy drawing-room. The old crimson wallpaper had faded rectangles on it of varying shapes and sizes. One handsome mirror still hung over the Louis Seize fireplace. Tea was set on a small table, a fine tea-pot in a silver cradle, cups as thin as egg-shells, spoons with the Lindos crest.

  She said: “And do you really love your publishing now?”

  “It enables me to live in Paris.”

  “It’s the longest you have ever stayed anywhere, isn’t it? Always before you have been wandering, restless—homeless, perhaps? It’s the faculty of your type. You moved too much, saw too much when you were young.”

  “I still get around, but on my job—to Germany, England, Italy …”

  “And sometimes to Greece. Does anybody here know you have come?”

  “Who is there to know or care? Tell me, Sophia, what do you know about a woman called Anya Stonaris?”

  “George Lascou’s mistress?”

  Gene stirred his tea. “ Is that what she is?”

  “You have met her?”

  “What’s her history?”

  “I know very little. She is still very young but they have been together a long time. She gets photographed often because she is beautiful and smart. A hard brilliant person, and a thoroughly bad influence on him, I’m told. He of course has a wife and two children, and he poses to the electorate as a family man. But most people in Athens know of the connection.”

  Gene said: “I’ve heard of Lascou for a good many years, but until he entered politics I wasn’t interested in him.”

  “And now?”

  Their voices, though not raised, had been echoing in the sparsely furnished room. The maid came in with hot buttered toast, and the conversation lapsed till she left them.