The Angry Hills - Leon Uris [71]
“And by her execution we place ourselves on the same level with the Nazis....”
“And what do you propose we do? Pray, perhaps, to get her to repent?”
“Quiet! I have heard enough of your ranting for one day, Michalis. Lisa is no more a traitor than I am. Do we not already have enough killing? Remember, she is the daughter of Ioannis Rodites, a martyr of the Greek people. Is your memory so short you cannot remember the first man in Athens to recognize your union without bloodshed?”
“Do not dishonor the name of Ioannis Rodites,” Michalis shot back. “What of her sister, Maria Rodites, a whore for a German officer? What of her husband, Manolis Kyriakides, a filthy collaborator?” He spat on the floor.
“Hasn’t this woman had enough sorrow to bear? Surely, Michalis, you must realize that if she had treason in her heart she could have become the mistress of Konrad Heilser. She could have the wealth of Athens at her feet. You seem to forget she only did this to protect the lives of her two sons.”
“I am the father of a son also,” Michalis said. “I speak to you as a man who loves him as I love life itself. I would rather see him in his grave than see his father become a collaborator.”
“Yes, Michalis,” Papa-Panos answered. “Perhaps you would see your son in his grave. But tell me something, would your wife?”
TWO
THE ARKADIA WAS NEITHER fast nor trim. She was an out-sized mud scow and Mike wondered if she was seaworthy.
“Go below,” Antonis said in his longest speech of the day.
The cabin held four bunks, a galley and a head. Mike stretched out and could see up the ladder topside where Antonis stood by the rail, puffing away on his pipe and looking alternately from water to sky.
Although riddled with anxiety, Mike began to feel a certain security. So far, Julius Chesney had delivered. One thought comforted him. Somehow, Chesney knew his true identity and he knew of the Stergiou list. Perhaps Chesney was overdramatizing his love of drachmas, for Mike knew that his capture by the Germans would have brought Chesney ten times the passage money. Mike also felt an instinctive trust in the silent skipper, Antonis. Mike began to relax.
After standing motionless for an hour at the rail, Antonis poked his head into the cabin, his pipe, as weatherbeaten as his face, firmly clenched in his teeth. “I go for the clearance papers.”
It had all gone smoothly, Mike thought, almost too smoothly. At the dock gates of Piraeus there had not been so much as a raised eyebrow from the guards when Mike had passed through with Antonis. Mike credited Julius Chesney with knowing his business.
He did, however, underestimate the man’s love of drachmas. In a half hour, Antonis returned to the boat with two men and a girl.
In the cabin, a bull of a man, an Australian named Ben Masterton, introduced himself. The other man was a sallow-faced lad of about twenty, a Palestinian named Yichiel. At Yichiel’s side stood a frightened girl, his wife, Elpis, who said she was going to join the free Greek forces in Egypt.
Mike was going to protest to Antonis about the extra passage money. He had been bilked, but he decided to do nothing. He was thankful he’d have someone other than Antonis to talk to during the voyage. Then, the other three would serve as a good covering force—safety in numbers—and give the trip the air of being a routine escape.
The Greek police went through the motions of an inspection, stamped the clearance papers and the Arkadia chugged away from the dock. Chesney had apparently oiled their palms well. Mike became uneasy about the slickness of the operation. It just couldn’t be this easy, he thought.
The sea air was chilly.
Young Yichiel and his bride went to the cabin and huddled close on a single bunk and began to whisper softly.
Mike envied him. How he envied him!
The hills of Athens grew smaller and smaller. Somewhere in Athens there was a garret apartment... Only last night, he and Lisa ... Mike was sinking into a state of moroseness.
The Arkadia cleared the harbor area. Antonis stopped the engine and dropped anchor.