Betrayals (23 page)

F
or the first night, largely from the fatigue of her previous sleeplessness, Janet slept soundly and awoke the following morning absolutely refreshed, wishing there was something, some activity, she could use to fill in the intervening days.

She telephoned her father, who asked at once when she was coming home. Janet was off-balanced by the demand. She said she had what she thought was another hopeful lead and because of it had no plans whatsoever at that moment to return. He pressed: Did she genuinely think there was any purpose in remaining on the island? Janet replied that if there wasn't any purpose then obviously she wouldn't stay. So what was it then that was so promising? Remembering the first disappointment, Janet held back, saying she thought she'd met people who had contacts in Beirut.

“Your mother and I are worried: now we've had time to think about it, your being there doesn't seem very sensible at all.”

“I'm all right.”

“Hasn't Partington been able to help with anything?”

“No,” said Janet, then added: “I had dinner with him and his wife. There had been some link with Beirut. The word was that it was hopeless.”

“There!” pounced the man at once. “If people on the spot say it's hopeless, what chance do you stand!”

“Daddy, we've been through all this!”

“I think you should come home.”

“I don't want to fight about this.”

“Neither do I,” said her father.

“Let's not then.”

“Set yourself a time limit, at least.”

“Why?” demanded Janet. “What's time got to do with it?”

“You can't stay there forever.”

“I don't intend to,” said Janet. “But I'm certainly not coming home yet.”

The conversation depressed Janet, dampening the enthusiasm with which she had awoken. Trying to remain objective—and thinking, too, of their age—she supposed it was natural that her parents should become increasingly concerned the longer she stayed but she really hadn't been on Cyprus long, less than two weeks, and the change in their attitude seemed abrupt, disorienting.

To force the argument out of her mind, Janet tried to consider her other problem, how not to be cheated out of more money, remembering as she did so the policeman's threat to monitor the account. A £10,000 withdrawal could be the immediate trigger for that other, more worrying threat, of his manipulating something to get her expelled from the island. The timing would be crucial: she'd have to make the withdrawal on her way to the cafe on the Dhekelia Road, not giving Zarpas any time to intercept or question her. And then what? Uncomfortably Janet accepted yet again that she didn't know.

Although they had parted with half promises of meeting again, Partington's call was unexpected, and Janet responded at once and not just because she had time to occupy before the Thursday meeting. Partington remained her official link, the conduit she still might have to use.

They met at the Ekali, on St. Spyridon Street, and without Partington's wife this time. Janet let the diplomat guide her through the
meze
, the Cypriot way of eating fish and meat and vegetables ferried in practically continuous procession from the kitchen: it all came too quickly for her properly to enjoy.

“So how's it going?” asked Partington.

“I don't know, not really,” said Janet, guardedly.

“You're wasting your time, you know?”

“Maybe,” Janet said. She paused, revolving her wine glass between her fingers, and then said: “Let's talk hypothetically for a moment. Let's say—just say—that I was told something that looked good. Some sort of new information.”

Partington was staring intently at her across the table and momentarily Janet wondered if she should not have delayed this conversation until after Thursday. “All right, let's just say that,” agreed Partington.

“It would have to be properly assessed: judged whether it was accurate or not, wouldn't it?”

“Go on.”

“So who would do it?”

“Why don't we stop talking hypothetically?” challenged the diplomat. “Why don't you tell me what you're really saying?”

“I'm not saying anything at the moment.”

“At the moment!”

Damn, thought Janet. She said: “There might be a possibility of my learning something.”

“Who from?”

“I can't say.”

“Why can't you?”

“Won't say,” Janet qualified.

“Why not?” Partington repeated.

“Because at the moment there's nothing to say. It's all too vague.”

“Don't,” Partington said.

“Don't what?”

“Don't go on … get any further inveigled … in whatever it is you're caught up in.”

“This isn't what I want to hear.”

“It's the only thing you need to hear.”

“I'm not giving up! When the hell will people accept that!”

“I won't help you, Janet. Encourage you.”

“I told you I'd seen the Americans?”

“Yes,” Partington agreed, curiously.

“Actually, they saw me,” the woman admitted. “Warned me off. If I tried to tell them anything, they wouldn't listen.”

“I'm not sure I'm following.”

“Would you listen?” Janet asked, openly.

“I told you before that we couldn't get mixed up in this.”

“I'm not asking you to get mixed up in anything!” Janet pleaded. “I've told you the Americans wouldn't listen to me. But they would to you.”

“Which would make it official.”

“No!” Janet protested. “I know the way embassies work: all about the backdoor conversations.”

Partington shook his head. “Not about something as sensitive as this: it's too important. Which you know it is. I couldn't become linked unofficially. It would have to be official.”

“All right, then! Will you pass on anything officially?”

Partington leaned closer towards her, over the table. “Tell me what it is!” he insisted. “Tell me who you're dealing with, how they operate, where they operate. What they're doing: everything. Only when I know everything—and I really mean
everything
—will I ever begin to contemplate answering your question.”

It was not an outright refusal. Janet knew she was seeking a supportive straw: in fact it was as firm an undertaking as she could have expected, from what she'd told him. “I can't, not yet.”

“When!”

Janet opened her mouth to speak and then clamped it shut. “A few days,” she said, instead.

“This week!”

“I'm not sure,” said Janet, trying to escape the pressure. “I hope so but maybe not so soon.”

“What guarantees have you got?”

Janet smiled, thinking the question naive and surprised the man posed it. “What sort of guarantees could I have?”

“Exactly,” said the man, turning her answer against her. “Don't do it!” he repeated. “By yourself you
can't
do anything that is going to get John free!”

Janet sipped her neglected wine, refusing to get on the roundabout. “Thank you for listening,” she said. “And for saying what you did: what you were able to say, that is.”

“I haven't said anything: given any undertaking,” Partington insisted at once.

Always the need for a diplomatic avenue of escape, thought Janet. She said: “I haven't inferred any undertaking.”

For the first time for many minutes the man looked away from her. He said: “I feel I'm failing your father.”

Don't sit with your hands between your legs then, thought Janet, irritably. She said: “If there is a need for us to talk … about what we've been discusing now … and it's out of office hours, can I call you at home?”

“Of course you can.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I can't say anything to stop you?”

“You know you can't.”

“Then …” Partington began but Janet cut in.

“… be careful,” she completed.

“Yes,” he said, seriously. “For God's sake be careful.”

Janet returned unhurriedly to the hotel, quieted but not completely disheartened by the encounter. And when she entered the foyer her mood lifted abruptly at the sight of a group of American tourists crowded around the cashier's desk negotiating the exchange of travelers' checks. Briefly she stood, watching, realizing she knew the way to protect the money demand, wondering why it had taken her so long to think of it.

The last intervening day dragged boringly by and Janet was up once more at first light on Thursday, impatient to begin. She made herself eat and thought as carefully as she had before about how to dress and as before decided upon jeans and a shapeless shirt. She checked the car, the oil and the water as well as the fuel, and timed her arrival at the bank to give herself two hours to reach the meeting spot, without the need to return again to the hotel.

At the bank she insisted upon a bearer's letter of credit endorsed in her name, waiting while the official went through the procedure, alert to his using the telephone. He didn't, not that she saw, but Janet knew a message could have been passed to Zarpas through any of the clerks and lesser officials whom the man apparently felt it necessary to consult.

She left the bank imagining their continued concentration and was glad she had not parked the hire car where they could have identified it to record the number. The encouragement was short-lived: it would only take Zarpas minutes to find out at the hotel, she guessed.

The journey to Larnaca took Janet longer than she'd scheduled because there was a delay of nearly thirty minutes getting around a vegetable lorry which had overturned, shedding its load, on the outskirts of Markon. She drove fast afterwards, to catch up, and still reached Larnaca with forty-five minutes in hand. She headed directly out upon the hotel-lined road, seeing no reason why she should not get to the cafe ahead of time.

She did, by fifteen minutes, but the three men were already there, sitting proprietorially at the same outside table, drinking
ouzo
as they had been the night of the first encounter. As before they studied her approach across the open area, each quite expressionless. The smell of bad cooking oil was as bad as it had been on Monday and Janet wondered if that were why they occupied the verandah instead of the inside area. The captain identified to her as Stavos still wore his suit: when Janet got close she could see in the brighter daylight that it was very old, greasy with age.

“I'm glad to see you here,” she said.

“There was an arrangement,” the moustached man reminded her.

Janet pulled a chair away from the table so that she could sit directly opposite him and said: “Well?”

Instead of replying, the man looked slightly over her shoulder and Janet turned to the attentive boy with the tray. Impatiently she ordered beer, because it would come capped, and the men indicated three more
ouzos
. Turning back to Stavos, she said: “Have you found out anything!”

“Yes,” said the man, simply. “Quite a lot.”

Although Janet had rigidly controlled any hope during the intervening days, refusing to let herself imagine they would come back with anything at all, there had always lurked in that locked-away part of her mind the supposedly ignored faith that they would, in fact, be successful. She turned the opening key now on that optimism and it engulfed her, a dizzying burst of excitement. She had to close her eyes briefly against the sensation and was glad she was sitting down because inexplicably her legs began to tremble.

“Thank God!” she said, but quietly, to herself. “Oh, thank God!”

“We had an agreement,” Stavos said, flat-voiced and unemotional.

“I have the money,” Janet said anxiously.

“All of it!”

“Please tell me: what have you found out!”

“The money,” insisted the man, monotone.

Janet began to take the bearer letter from her pocket but he raised his hand, stopping her. From the rear the waiter approached and set out the drinks. Janet remained unmoving until the man said: “All right,” and then she completed the movement, handing him the document.

Stavos stared down, frowning with incomprehension. “What is this!”

Janet leaned across, indicating the amount. “A letter of credit for £10,000,” she said.

“It is not money.”

“It becomes money.”

“How?”

Janet pointed again to the endorsement. “Once I sign it … once I'm satisfied with what you've got to tell me … any bank on the island will exchange it, for cash.”

The elder of the other two men, Dimitri, leaned close to the captain and spoke so softly that Janet could not detect the words. Stavos nodded and looked back at her. He said: “You didn't trust us!”

“I was tricked before. I lost my money,” replied Janet. She wondered if the medical tests had been completed upon the Australian girl.

Stavos turned it over in his hands, examining its blank back as if expecting to find something there. He said: “All you have to do is sign it?”

“That's all.”

This time Janet discerned the nod of agreement, between the two older men.

Stavos added water to his drink, watching it whiten, and then said: “Sheridan worked for the CIA?”

“Yes.” She hadn't told the man that, she remembered. Premature to believe it significant: it was fairly public knowledge, not difficult for him to have discovered.

“They were extremely indiscreet, the Americans,” said the man. “It was commonly known what his position was within the embassy.”

“I don't know about that,” Janet conceded.

“They were very stupid, after what happened before.”

Janet gauged that to be a clear reference to William Buckley. Would a Cypriot fisherman—all right, a Cypriot fishing boat captain—be that familiar with the circumstances without some informative links on the mainland? She said: “Please be honest with me! Have you found someone—anyone—who
knows!
”