The wind on his face carried the good fresh smell of the sea and he could taste the salt on his lips and then they came over a small rise and the dark line of^ the cliffs was no more than fifty yards below.
He cut the motor and turned as she dismounted. "Is this the place?"
She nodded. "The cliffs are a hundred feet high here. At their base there is an old jetty and a boathouse where my father kept his boat before the war for the fishing. Now the1 Germans have forbidden us to use it."
He pulled the body from the sidecar and laid it on the-ground. Then he put the machine into neutral and let it roll towards the edge of the cliffs.
He hoisted the dead man on to his back and went down the slope. For a moment he stood at the edge, looking at the white line of surf breaking on the rocks below, and then he tossed the body down after the machine and went back to the girl.
She was standing at the top of the rise where he had left her and he was conscious that she was looking at him through the darkness.
"I'm sorry you had to get mixed up in this," he said awkwardly. "It's been a hell of a night by any standards."
She stood quite still without saying anything and he moved closer. "Are you all right?"
And then she started to cry and he put an arm round her gently, pulling her close. After a while, they started back through the darkness towards the farm.
Of Action and Passion
Oliver Van Horn's villa was perched on the extreme end of a narrow finger of rock that jutted out into the calm waters of a secluded bay on the other side of the headland from the town. It was a two-storeyed building with a flat roof arid stood in a couple of acres of garden surrounded by a high wall.
They went down the hillside and crossed the white dusty strip of road and approached cautiously. The great. iron-bound gates stood open. They moved inside and Katina led the way along a narrow flagged path between olive trees.
The garden was a riot of color, the night air heavy with the scent of flowers. Palms lifted then" heads above the wall and gently nodded hi the cool breeze and a fountain splashed in a fish pool in a small clearing.
They could hear the low murmur of voices from somewhere near at hand and Katina moved forward quietly and crouched down.
They were on the edge of the circular driveway in front of the main entrance. A German command staff car was parked at the bottom of the steps and two NCOs in grey uniforms and forage caps lounged beside it smoking cigarettes.
A moment later, the front door opened and two men moved out into the lighted porch. Lomax recognised Van Horn at once from the many photos he had seen. Lean and wiry in a white linen suit, his clipped moustache and grizzled hair prematurely grey.
The other man was a German staff officer, a colonel of infantry and astonishingly young for such a rank with, a mobile intelligent face.
He limped heavily as he went down the steps and climbed into the car and Van Horn stayed in the porch. He raised his hand as the car moved away, scattering gravel, and then went back inside.
As the door closed, Lomax turned to Katina. "Who was the German officer?" v
"Colonel Steiner. He is in command here."
"They looked too bloody friendly for my liking," Boyd said.
She shook her head. "Mr. Van Horn depends on Steiner's goodwill for all his medical supplies. That's why he plays chess with him every week." She got to her feet. "I think it would be better if we went round to the rear of the house."
They followed another path round a corner and she paused in the bushes a few yards from a flight of shallow steps that led up to a covered terrace. A french window stood open to the night, curtains lifting in the wind, light $pilling into the darkness.
Someone was playing the piano rather well, an old, pre-war Rodgers and Hart number, nostalgic and wistful, a hint of a summer that had gone and memories only now.
"Wait here!" Katina said.
She crossed the lawn, mounted the steps and went in through the french window. Lomax leaned against a tree, the sub-machine gun crooked in his arm, and waited.
The piano stopped. The silence which followed seemed to go on for ever and he could hear the waves breaking across the rocks on the beach below. Suddenly, the curtain was pulled back and Van Horn appeared.
He moved across the terrace, leaned over the balustrade and called softly, "Captain Lomax?"
Lomax stepped out of the bushes, Boyd at his heels, and crossed the lawn.
"My dear fellow, delighted to see you," Van Horn said as calmly as if he were greeting an old friend arriving for dinner. "Let's go inside."
The room was large and comfortably furnished, its low roof crossed by great beams. A grand piano stood against one wall and a fire of logs burned on a wide stone hearth.
There was no sign of Katina, but at that moment the far door opened and she came in followed by an old woman with brown wrinkled face and sharp black eyes. She was drying her hands on the white apron she wore over her dress and looked at them curiously.
Van Horn crossed the room, the three of them held a hurried conversation in Greek and then he returned.
"I've asked Maria, my housekeeper, to fix you up with a room and a meal. We'll have a chat when I get back."
"You're going Into town?" Lomax said.
Van Horn nodded. "I shouldn't be long. The Germans took my car away long ago, of course, but I managed to get a couple of bicycles out of them for emergency calls."
"Is there anyone else here?"
"Only Maria. She's dumb, by the way, but she can understand everything you tell her." He turned to Katina. "We'd better get moving, my dear."
She was very pale and fatigue showed clearly on her face, but she looked up at Lomax and managed a wan smile. "I'll probably see you in the morning."
"Only when you've had at least twelve hours sleep," he told her.
"Don't worry, I'll see that she does." Van Horn slipped an arm about her shoulders and they left the room.
Later, after Maria had taken them upstairs and left them in the comfortable room with the twin beds at the end of the corridor, Lomax stood at the window looking out to sea and tiredness flooded through him.
Boyd had stripped to the waist and was washing his head and shoulders in cold water and Lomax followed suit. Afterwards, he felt better and they went downstairs and followed the aroma of coffee until they reached the ùkitchen where the old woman had prepared a meal of fried fish and eggs for them.
Later, they took their coffee and went back into the living room and sprawled in front of the fire smoking cigarettes.
"I think I can stand about as much of this as they've got to offer," Boyd said. "Another cigarette and it's me for bed. What about you?"
"I'll wait for Van Horn to show up," Lomax told him. "He'll probably have a message from Alexias about tomorrow."
Boyd got to his feet and moved across to the bookshelves that lined one side of the room. He examined one or two and chuckled. "All by the great man himself, bound in green leather and autographed in gold."
"Bring one over for me," Lomax said.
Boyd brought half a dozen and dropped them to the floor beside the chair. He was holding a slim pocket-book size volume in the same edition and there was an expression of real interest on his face.
"This one's called The Survivor. Seems to be mostly poems about the war."
Lomax nodded. "He was in the trenches during the last lot."
"I think I'll take it to bed with me," Boyd said. "Find if he knows what he's talking about, I'll see you later."
When he had gone, Lomax picked up a novel at random and leafed through it. It was one he had read before, but as always he was gripped by the narrative skill. It must have been an hour later when the curtains were pulled aside and Van Horn stepped through the french window.
He was carrying an old Gladstone bag, the leather scuffed and fraying, and he dropped it carelessly on the divan.
"Ah, there you are. What happened to your sergeant?"
"Gone to bed with a volume of your war poems. I hope you don't mind?"
"Not as long as I get it back. You know, Lomax, for some strange reason, most people seem to think writers ought to distribute their books free." He sighed. "My God, but it's a pull up that hill out of town. I'm not as young as I was."
His eyes were tired, the face lined with fatigue. He crossed to a cupboard in the corner, opened it and took down a bottle and two glasses. "The last of the gin."
"Don't waste it on me," Lomax said. "I'm only passing through to the main bar at Shepheard's, so to speak."
Van Horn grinned and slumped down into the opposite chair. "Nonsense, this is something of an occasion. Not often I get a little civilised company."
"Doesn't Colonel Steiner count?" Lomax asked.
Van Horn raised his eyebrows. "Good heavens no! That's strictly business. I let him beat me at chess once a week and then he feels morally bound to give me all the medical supplies I ask for."
"We saw him getting into his car as we arrived," Lomax said. "He looked surprisingly young to me."
"Twenty-seven," Van Horn said. "Badly wounded at Stalingrad and evacuated just before the Russians closed the circle. He's got the Knight's Cross besides all the usual things and they don't give that away, you know."
"He sounds formidable," Lomax said. "Did you have any difficulty when you went into town?"
Van Horn shook his head. "Alexias had only arrived at The Little Ship about twenty minutes before we did. They got him up to bed and I had a look at his leg."
"Is it bad?"
"Bad enough. I've set the bone, given him sulfa drugs.
He should be all right if he rests for a week or two. He certainly won't be able to play an active part in your operation."
"Is there any message?"
"Only that he hopes to arrange a meeting with various people tomorrow afternoon. Katina will be up to let us know when."
"So he's included you in?"
"I'm afraid so." He poured himself another gin. "Katina was telling me you're here to do something about the radar station they've set up in the main tower at the monastery."
"It isn't radar," Lomax told him. "It's a little gadget that selects a target electronically. All their planes or E-boats have to do is follow the beam and they can't go wrong. They've been doing a lot of damage to our shipping lately."
"But is it all that important? I thought they were losing the war anyway, particularly since the landings in Normandy last month."
"There's a faint chance of an invasion of Crete in the near future in which case this installation on Kyros could be a nuisance, but the Aegean is only a sideshow now, if that's what you mean. I don't think anything that happens here can affect the ultimate course of the war one iota." He grinned wryly and swallowed some of his gin. "On the other hand, they've got to keep us busy, haven't they?"
"Now I find that rather an interesting observation," Van Horn said. "What were you doing before the war?"
"University, a little journalism," Lomax shrugged. "Nothing very much."
"And then the war came along with an easy answer to all your problems." He nodded at the medal ribbons on Lomax's tunic. "It would appear you've had an active time of it since."
"I suppose you could say that,"
"Have you enjoyed it?"
Lomax grinned reluctantly. "In my own twisted way."
"The willingness to kill. Very important in a soldier." Van Horn sighed. "Funny how the same word can mean something different. For me, war was the trenches. Mud and filth, brutality and death on an incredible scale. A whole generation wiped out At times I feel like an anachronism."
"And for me?"
"A landing under cover of darkness, action by night, a chase through the mountains." Van Horn shrugged. "A week from now you'll be sitting in the main bar at Shep-heard's having a drink to celebrate another bar to your MC. I strongly suspect that the day the war finishes, you won't know what to do with yourself."
"One slight point you've omitted to mention," Lomax said. "All Special Service officers are automatically shot when captured. That's a direct order from the German High Command and it's been in force for two years now. It adds a certain element of risk."
"And so it should," Van Horn said. "Life is action and passion: therefore it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his times at peril of being judged not to have lived." He grinned suddenly and sat back hi his chair. "There I go getting emotional again. It's the writer in me taking control. In any case, Oliver Wendell Holmes said it first."