Solo - Jack Higgins [9]
Which was not enough. Not for the man he had become. So, he went to Vienna to put himself under Hoffman for a year. The final polish. Then, in the summer of 1967, he was ready.
There is an old joke in the music profession that to get on to a concert platform in the first place is even more difficult than to succeed once you are there.
To a certain extent, Mikali could have bought his way in. Paid an agent to hire a hall in London or Paris, arrange a recital, but his pride would never stand for that. He had to seize the world by the throat. Make it listen. There was only one way to do that.
After a short holiday in Greece, he returned to England, to Yorkshire as an entrant in the Leeds Musical Festival, one of the most important pianoforte competitions in the world. To win that was to ensure instant fame, a guarantee of a concert tour.
He was placed third and received immediate offers from three major agencies. He turned them all down, practised fourteen hours a day for a month at the London flat, then went to Salzburg in the following January. He took first prize in the competition there, beating forty-eight other competitors from all over the world, playing Rachmaninov's Fourth Piano Concerto, a work he was to make peculiarly his own in the years to come.
His grandfather was there during the seven days of the festival and afterwards, when everyone else had left, he took two glasses of champagne on to the balcony where Mikali stood looking out over the city.
'The world is your oyster now. They'll all want you. How do you feel?'
'Nothing,' John Mikali said. He sipped a little of the ice-cold champagne, and suddenly and for no accountable reason, saw the four fellagha walking round the burning truck and coming towards him laughing. 'I feel nothing.'
In the two years that followed, the dark eyes stared out from the pale, handsome face on posters in London, Paris, Rome, New York and his fame grew. The newspapers and magazines had made much of his two years in the Legion, his decorations for gallantry. In Greece, he became something of a folk hero so that his concerts in Athens were always considerable events.
And things had changed in Greece now that the Colonels were in charge after the military coup of April 1967, and King Constantine's exile to Rome.
Dimitri Mikali was seventy-six and looked it. Although he still kept open house in the evenings, few people attended. His activities on behalf of the Democratic Front Party had made him increasingly unpopular with the Government and his newspaper had already been banned on several occasions.
'Politics,' Mikali said to him on one of his visits. 'It's a nonsense. Why make trouble for yourself?'
'Oh, I'm doing very well really.' His grandfather smiled. 'What you might call a privileged position, having a grandson who is an international celebrity.'
'All right,' Mikali said. 'So you've got a military junta in power and they don't like the mini-skirt. So what? I've been in worse places than Greece as it is today, believe me.'
'Political prisoners by the thousand, the educational system used to indoctrinate little children, the Left almost stamped out of existence. Does this sound like the home of democracy?'
None of which had the slightest effect on Mikali. The following day he flew to Paris and gave a Chopin recital that same night, a charitable affair in aid of international cancer research.
There was a letter waiting for him from his London agent, Bruno Fischer, about the intinerary for a tour of England, Wales and Scotland in the autumn. He was spending some time going over it in his dressing room after the recital when there was a knock on the door and the stage doorkeeper looked in.
'A gentleman to see you, Monsieur Mikali.'
He was pushed out of the way and a large, burly individual with thinning hair and a heavy black moustache appeared. He wore