The Dark Side of the Island - Jack Higgins [0]
Jack Higgins
Open Road Integrated Media
New York
And this one for Ruth
CONTENTS
Book One: The Long Return
1. On Kyros, nothing changes
2. A Man called Alexias
3. Two Candles for St. Katherine
4. The Bronze Achilles
Book Two: The Nightcomer
5. Cover of Darkness
6. A Willingness to Kill
7. Of Action and Passion
8. "The Little Ship"
9. Temple of the Night
10. Fire on the Mountain
11. No Hard Feelings, Captain Lomax
Book Three: A Sound of Hunting
12. One Should Never Return to Anything
13. To the Other End of Time
14. A Fine Night for Dying
15. A Prospect of Gallows
16. The Run for Cover
17. Confessional
18. Dust and Ashes
A Biography of Jack Higgins
FOREWORD
One of my earliest forays into the Second World War. A holiday spent visiting the Greek islands and my discovery of the undercover work there by the SAS in its earliest years gave me the idea for a thriller which has the hero return to the island that had been the scene of his most brilliant exploit, only to find that local people believe him a traitor and responsible for the executions of many partisans. In a way it is a whodunit, as he tries not only to stay alive but to find out who was really responsible.
JACK HIGGINS
October 1996
Book One
The Long Return
1
On Kyros, nothing changes
Lomax lay on the narrow bunk in the airless cabin, stripped to the waist, his body drenched in sweat, and stared up at the stained and peeling ceiling.
Looked at long enough, it became a pretty fair map of the Aegean. He worked his way down from Athens through the Cyclades to the larger mass that was Crete, but where Kyros should have been there was only an empty expanse of sea. For some reason it made him feel curiously uneasy and he swung his legs to the floor.
He got up, splashed water into the cracked basin that stood beneath the mirror beside the bunk and washed the sweat from his body. His shoulders were solid with muscle, his body bronzed and fit, and somehow the ugly puckered scar of the old bullet wound beneath his left breast looked sinister and out of place.
As he dried himself, a stranger stared out of the mirror. A man with skin stretched tightly over prominent cheekbones and dark, sombre eyes that examined the world with a curiously remote expression he could no longer analyse, even to himself.
As he reached for his shirt, the cabin door opened and the steward looked in. "Kyros in half an hour, Mr. Lomax," he said in Greek.
The door closed behind him and for the first time Lomax was conscious of a faint stirring of excitement, a cold finger that seemed to touch him somewhere inside. He pulled on his linen jacket and went out on deck.
As he stood at the rail watching Kyros gradually rise out of the sea, Captain Papademos emerged from the deck-house and paused beside him. He was heavily built and almost blackened by the sun, his face seamed with wrinkles.
He put a match to his pipe. "It's difficult in this heat haze, but if you look carefully you can see Crete in the distance. Quite a view, eh?"
"Something of an understatement," Lomax said.
"I've been everywhere a sailor can go," Papademos continued. "In the end I found I was only travelling in a circle."
"Aren't we all?" Lomax said.
He took out a cigarette and Papademos gave him a light. "For an Englishman you speak pretty good Greek. The best I've heard from a foreigner. You've been out here before?"
Lomax nodded. "A long time ago. Before the flood."
Papademos looked puzzled for a moment and then his face cleared. "Ah, now I see it. You were in the islands during the war."
"That's right," Lomax said. "Working in Crete with the E.O.K. mostly."
"So?" Papademos nodded, serious for a moment "Those were hard times for all of us. The people of these islands don't forget how much the English helped. Have you been back before?"
Lomax shook his head. "Never felt like it. In any case, I always seemed to have something more important to do. You know how it is."
"Life, my friend,