Solo - Jack Higgins [70]
'Good God. How?'
'I haven't the slightest idea. I did establish that be hadn't passed the information on. He was too anxious to have me for himself.'
'You've taken care of him?'
'Permanently.'
Deville frowned, thinking about it, then made his decision. 'Under the circumstances, I think we should get together. If I catch the breakfast plane to Athens, I could be in Hydra by one o'clock, your time. Will that be all right?'
'Fine,' Mikali said. 'Katherine Riley's arriving in the morning, but no sweat about that.'
'Of course not,' Deville said. 'Let's keep things as normal as possible. I'll be seeing you.'
Mikali poured himself another brandy, crossed to the desk and opened Morgan's file. He found the photo and stared down into the dark, ravaged face for a long moment, then he took it and the rest of the file and threw it on the fire.
He sat down at the piano, flexed his fingers then started to play 'Le Pastour' with enormous feeling and delicacy.
12
For most of his seventy-two years George Ghika had been a fisherman by profession, living in the same small farm he had been born in, high up in the pine woods above Mikali's place.
All of his four sons had emigrated to America in turn over the years, leaving him only his wife, Maria, to help him work the boat. Not that it mattered. Whatever he liked to pretend, she was as tough as him any day of the week and could handle the boat as well.
Twice a week, for the excitement and a little extra money, they would set out to lay their nets as usual at night, then turn out the lights and make the four-mile run across the strait to a taverna on the coast of the Peloponnese where they would take on a cargo of untaxed cigarettes, a commodity for which there was considerable demand on Hydra.
On the return journey, once back at the nets, they would carry on fishing. It had always worked perfectly until that night, when Maria switched on the great double sodium lamps in the prow of the boat whose light attracted the fish and saw, instead, a hand reaching out to her and then a bloodstained face.
'Mother of God, a sea-devil,' old George cried, and raised an oar to strike.
She pushed him away. 'Back, you old fool. Can't you tell a man when you see one? Help me get him in.'
*
Morgan lay in the bottom of the boat while she examined him.
'He's been shot,' her husband said.
'Can I not see this for myself? Twice. The flesh is torn across the shoulder and here, in the upper part of the left arm. A bullet has passed straight through.'
'What shall we do? Take him to Hydra town to the doctor?'
'To what end?' she said with contempt, for like many old Hydriot peasant women, herbal remedies and potions were a way of life to her. 'What can he do that I cannot do better? And there would be the police. It would be necessary to report the affair and the question of the cigarettes would arise.' Her leathery face creased in a smile. 'You, my George, are too old to go to jail.'
Morgan opened his eyes and said in Greek, 'No police, whatever you do.'
She turned and punched her husband in the shoulder. 'See, he has spoken, our man from the sea. Let's get him ashore before he dies on us.'
They were in a small horseshoe bay, he was aware of that, with a tiny fringe of beach, pine trees flooding down from the mountain above.
The jetty was built of massive stone blocks, stretching out into deep water. A strange thing to find in such a deserted spot. He didn't know then that it was over a hundred and fifty years old, dating from the Greek War of Independence when this bay had held up to twenty Hydriot armed schooners waiting to pounce on any vessel of the Turkish fleet unwary enough to approach that coast.
It had stopped raining, and in the moonlight Morgan was aware of several ruined buildings as the old man helped him ashore. He swayed a little, curiously lightheaded.
Maria put an arm about him, holding him with surprising strength. 'Now is not the time to fall down, boy. Now is time for strength.'
Someone laughed and Morgan realized, with a sense of surprise, that it was himself.