He took her hand gently and said, "How did you know I was here?"
"Sergeant Kytros told me." She hesitated. "I heard what happened at The Little Ship. You must forgive my uncle. Sometimes I think he is no longer in his right mind. He has lived with great pain for so many years."
"And he blames it all on me?"
She nodded gravely. "I'm afraid so."
"Along with everyone else around here, including Father John. Why should you be any different?"
"Because I know you sacrificed yourself for these people," she said calmly.
He laughed and the sound of it was harsh and ugly. "You try telling that one to Alexias and his pals and see how far it gets you."
"I did," she said. "A long time ago, but only one person would believe me."
He frowned. "Who was that?"
"Oliver Van Horn."
"They told me in Athens that he'd stayed on here after the war. I'd hoped to visit him. Does he still live in the villa out on the point?"
"I keep house for him."
His eyebrows arched in surprise. "You never married?"
She shook her head. "Never."
"He must be in his sixties now," Lomax said slowly.
The right-hand corner of her mouth twitched slightly and there was amusement in her eyes. "We have no arrangement, if that is what's worrying you."
"None of my business," he said, but he smiled for the first time and she smiled back. "How do the locals treat him these days? After all, he's English enough hi all conscience."
"Not to the islanders. He suffered as much as anyone. He was taken with the rest of us."
Lomax frowned, a thought suddenly occurring to him for the first tune. "And you, Katina? What happened to you?"
She shrugged. "They took me away with the others."
"To the concentration camp at Fonchi?"
She shook her head. "No, to another one, but they were all the same." She leaned forward and touched his face. "You look older. Too much older. I think you have been very unhappy."
He shrugged. "Seventeen years is a long time."
"Are you married?"
He hesitated briefly and then plunged straight in and it was surprising how easy it was now, almost as if he was talking about some distant relative or a casual friend who wasn't really important.
"I had a wife and a little girl. They were both'killed in an automobile accident in Pasadena five years ago."
Her sigh echoed away into the darkness. "I knew there was something, but I wasn't sure. It still shows in the eyes." She took his hands and held them firmly. "Tell me now. Why have you come back to this place?"
"When Father John asked me, I told bun I was looking for my other self," he said. "The one who existed here in these islands so many years ago, but now I'm not so sure."
"There is a deeper reason," she said. "Am I not right?"
"Who knows?" he shrugged. "Van Horn once told me that life was action and passion. If that's true, there's been precious little of either in mine for quite some tune. Perhaps I thought I could recapture something."
"And what are you going to do now? Leave on the boat?"
"That's what they all seem to want me to do. Alerias told Kytros he wouldn't be responsible for what might happen if I stayed."
She glanced at her watch. "You would seem to have twenty minutes in which to make up your mind."
"What would you like to see me do?"
She shrugged. "It isn't my decision to make. It can only be your own."
She started to get to her feet and he held her hand and frowned, because he knew that for some strange reason this was the pivot on which the whole thing would turn.
3 33
"Do you want me to stay?"
"It would take courage," she said. "Very great courage."
He smiled suddenly. "But I gave you my courage a long time ago, remember?"
She nodded, her face serious. "I remember."
For a little while they sat there staring at each other and then she gently released his hand and stood up. "I'll only be a moment."
He watched her go down to the altar and drop to one knee, then she stood up, selected two candles and placed them under the statue of St. Katherine. It was only as she lit them with a taper that he realised who they were for and a lump came into his throat that threatened to choke him.
He got to his feet and walked blindly through the half-darkness to the door.
The Bronze Achilles
Outside in the square it was very hot and he stayed in the shade of the porch and smoked a cigarette as he waited for her.
Once, Anna appeared in the door of the hotel with a bucket and cloth as if intending to wipe down the outside tables, but at the sight of him, she drew back hurriedly.
It was quiet and deserted, the shadows long and black as the afternoon waned, and nothing stirred. He stood there, the cigarette burning between his fingers as he stared moodily out into the square and hi some strange way it was as if he was waiting for something to happen.
There was a slight movement behind and he turned. Katina looked gravely up at him.
He smiled gently. "It was a long time ago."
Suddenly, there were tears in her eyes and he slipped an arm about her shoulders and held her close. They stayed there in the cool shadow of the porch for a little while and then she sighed and pushed him away.
"We must go. If you intend to catch that boat, you're running out of time."
He followed her out on to the steps, his mind in a turmoil. At that moment, Yanni staggered into the square from the street that led down to the waterfront.
His clothes were torn and covered in dust and his face was streaked with tears as he sobbed uncontrollably. In his arms, he held the little black dog.
Katina was akeady running to meet him and by the time Lomax arrived, she was on her knees in front of the boy. "What is it, Yanni? What's happened?"
He held out the dog in his arms. Its head lolled to one side, the neck obviously broken, and there was froth on its mouth.
"It was Dimitri," he said. "Dimitri killed him."
"But why?" Katina demanded.
"Because I helped Mr. Lomax," Yanni sobbed. "Because I helped Mr. Lomax."
The rage that erupted inside Lomax was a searing flame that seemed to fuse with his whole being. He started forward and Katina said, "Hugh!"
When he turned, her face was very white, the eyes so dark a man could never fathom them.
"Be careful," she said. "He's already served two years in prison for manslaughter. When he's been smoking hashish, he doesn't know what he's doing."
He turned and walked quickly across the square and when he entered the street, he started to run. By the time he merged on the waterfront he was soaked in sweat and people turned to stare curiously at him.
This time he could hear no music coming from The Little Ship and he went straight down the steps without pausing and came to a halt just inside the door.
There were perhaps a dozen people sitting drinking and none of them had been there on his earlier visit. The man behind the bar was one of those who had held him across the table for Alexias, He was hi the act of pouring wine into a glass and his mouth went slack in amazement.
Every head turned and Lomax examined the faces quickly and then crossed to the bar. "I'm looking for Dimitri."
The barman shrugged. "Why ask me? I'm not his keeper."
He picked up a glass and started to dry it with a soiled cloth and Lomax turned slowly and crossed the room.
Dimitri's bouzouki still leaned beside the chair where he had left it and Lomax picked it up and smashed it against the wall in a single violent gesture.
He turned to face the room and no one moved. "I asked for Dimitri," he said calmly.
For a moment, they all sat there looking at him quietly, and then an old man with white hair and a moustache burned brown by tobacco said, "He is on the pier waiting to see you leave."
Lomax turned and went back up the steps into the hot sunlight. He crossed the road on the run and moved along the wharf.
The steamer was almost ready to leave and he could see Papademos up on the bridge leaning out of an open window, shouting down orders to the sailors on the pier as they started to loosen the mooring ropes.
There were perhaps two dozen people standing about in small groups. Alexias leaned against a pillar, a cigar between his teeth, and little Nikoli with the scarred face stood with him.
It was Nikoli who saw Lomax first and he tugged at the big man's sleeve and pointed and Alexias said something quickly and every head turned.
Half of them were young waterfront layabouts in brightly checked shirts, hair carefully curled over their collars. They were of a type to be found in every country in the world. Mean, vicious young animals who thrived on trouble.
One of them turned and made a remark and they all laughed and then Lomax saw Dimitri at the back of them. He was leaning against a windlass, a cigarette smouldering between his lips as he shaved a piece of wood with his gutting knife.
As Lomax approached, the crowd parted and he paused a couple of feet away from Dimitri. The bouzouki player was humming tunelessly to himself. He didn't even bother to raise his head.
Alexias moved forward, Nikoli at his side. "This is the wrong time to seek trouble, Lomax. The boat leaves in five minutes."
Lomax turned vdry slowly and looked at him contemptuously. "When I want to hear from you I'll let you know. Once you were a man, but now..."
As he turned away, Dimitri reached to the cobbles for another piece of wood and Lomax kicked it out of his way.
Dunitri looked up slowly. His eyes were very pale, the pupils like pin-points. He still kept on humming to himself, but a muscle twitched spasmodically at one side of his jaw.
"With children and dogs you're quite a man," Lomax said clearly so that all could hear. "How about trying someone a little nearer your own size?"
One moment, the bouzouki player was lolling back against the windlass, the next he had moved forward, the knife cutting upwards like molten silver in the sunlight.
Lomax could have broken the arm with supreme ease. Instead, he pivoted and chopped down with the edge of his hand. Dimitri screamed, dropping the knife, and Lomax kicked it over the edge of the pier into the water.
He felt completely cool and without fear. It was as if that other, younger man had returned to take over. The one who had been trained to use such methods until they were a reflex action.
There was an ugly murmur from Dimitri's friends, but he held up a hand and shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was curiously remote and far away. "I'll break his neck as easily as I did the dog's."
All work had ceased on the ship and everyone waited. As Lomax circled warily, he saw people hurrying along the waterfront and then an old jeep appeared from a side street and braked to a halt and Katina and Yanni got out.
A segull cried harshly and swooped down and Dimitri jumped in close, his right fist swinging in a tremendous punch.
To Lomax the blow seemed to travel in slow motion. He swerved slightly, allowing the bouzouki player to plunge past him, and slashed him across the kidneys with the edge of his hand.
Dimitri screamed and fell to the cobbles. For a little while he stayed there on his hands and knees and when he got to his feet, he was slobbering like an animal.
He lurched forward again and Lomax grabbed for his wrist with both hands and twisted it round and up so that he held him in a Japanese shoulder lock. Dimitri screamed again and still keeping that terrible hold in position, Lomax ran him head-first into a stack of iron-bound crates.
There was a gasp from the crowd and Lomax stood back and waited. Dimitri grabbed for a chain and heaved himself to his feet. When he turned, his face was a mask of blood. His hand slipped from the chain as he took one tottering step forward and collapsed.
There was a moment of stunned silence and then a spontaneous roar of anger from Dimitri's friends. As Lomax turned, they came forward with a rush.
He swung a fist into the first face and then a foot caught him on the shin and he cried out and started to sag. As he bent over, a knee lifted into his face and the cobbles rose to meet him.
He rolled desperately, face tucked into his shoulder, hands protecting his genitals, and then a shot echoed flatly across the water and then another.
It was as if all the clocks in the world had stopped at the same moment. Dimitri's friends moved back reluctantly and Lomax scrambled to his feet.