I had wondered how careful they would be about weapons. I had left Wilhelmina at the hotel and had taken Hugo, the stiletto, off my arm and strapped it to the inside of my right ankle. I hadn't wanted to go into the lion's den without any defense. I turned around and held my breath as the thug frisked me with expertise. After checking out my torso and arms, he worked slowly down my left leg to my knee. Then he moved down my right thigh toward the knife. He got to the knee and passed below it. My stomach tightened. He stopped just an inch or so above the handle of the stiletto.
"All right," he said. "Turn back and let me see your identification."
I pulled out the phony card, and he examined it carefully. Without saying anything, he took the card to the other man and showed it to him. The man finally nodded and the tall, dark one returned, handed the card back, and looked into the pail.
"All right. He will take you inside."
"Thank you," I said humbly.
The second man rose from the desk and studied me carefully as I went to meet him. I was beginning to feel that it would be easier and much less trouble to get into Fort Knox. He opened the door, and I preceded him into the interior of the penthouse.
I was inside the fortress at last It was a formidable feeling, considering my vulnerability if they found me out. The chances were, if that happened, I would never leave the building alive. And the way Stavros chose to kill a spy might not be the most pleasant way to die.
We had entered a spacious living area. It was luxurious to a fault. Rich carpeting covered two levels of floor, and the high ceiling was painted with a mural depicting a scene from ancient Greece. On the far side of the room was a wall of glass overlooking the city, opening onto a small balcony by way of a sliding glass door. That was where I would begin my work. I turned and saw expensive furniture all around the room, much of it antique. Ancient urns rested gracefully on polished tables.
To my right through a partially open door I could see another room with desks and cabinets that apparently had been converted into an office by Stavros. To my left there was a corridor with rooms off it, apparently bedrooms and living quarters.
"I will begin on the large windows here," I said.
"You wait here," the man who ushered me in commanded.
I hunched my shoulders. "Of course."
He went into the office and disappeared for a moment. I moved to my right so that I could see the inside of the room better. There were several dark-suited men moving about and somebody talking on a telephone. It seemed to be a communications center. There were probably a half dozen men in that one room. While I waited, two other men walked from the corridor into the big room where I was, gave me a look, and also went into the office. Stavros had plenty of people here — maybe a dozen or more at any given time. And there was little doubt that most of them wore guns and knew how to use them.
In a few minutes the man who ushered me in reappeared and returned to the corridor outside without speaking. He was followed out of the office by another man, one who wore his hair long and looked like a student radical who had outgrown his clothes and hair style. He was dressed sloppily and carried a big revolver openly on a shoulder holster over a fringed leather vest.
"How long does this take?" he asked in English.
I guessed that he, like the man at Paracatu, was an American. Stavros had taken a hard core of political activists with him.
I answered in broken English. "How long? Maybe half hour, maybe hour. Depends how dirty the windows."
"Madoupas doesn't remember calling you people." He peered at me through large, blue-lensed granny glasses. His face was slightly pockmarked, and his lips were very thin, almost non-existent. From AXE files I identified him as a crony of Stavros; he was known as Hammer, a real nice fellow who was believed to have murdered two women by strapping sticks of dynamite to their waists.
"No, he not call?" I took a scrap of paper from my pocket and studied it. "They tell me Mr. Minourkos' place."
At that moment another man came into the room and stood beside Hammer. He was rather short and dark and obviously Greek. I had seen a photo of Salaka Madoupas in the AXE files and this man looked exactly like him.
"I don't recall calling any window washers," he said in English for the benefit of Hammer. "When did you come here last?"
"I not recall without records," I answered nervously. "One must have records, you understand."
Hammer walked over to me arrogantly. "But you have been here before?"
I hesitated. "Yes, before."
He pulled the revolver and aimed it at my face. Its barrel was unpleasantly close. "Tell me what the kitchen looks like."
A trickle of perspiration broke loose under my left arm. I tried to recall the description of the kitchen that Minourkos had given me. "It is large with sink and cupboards! What is this anyway?"
"Oh, let him get started," the fake Madoupas said.
Hammer ignored him. "How many windows in the kitchen?"
I wondered how fast I could get to the stiletto if I dropped to the floor at his feet. But then I remembered that the kitchen was an interior room on the corridor of the building, not on the outside wall. "Why, it has no windows," I said innocently.
Hammer's finger was tight against the trigger. Slowly the whiteness of the knuckles disappeared, and he dropped the gun to his side. A man in a short-sleeved shirt came from the office.
"The Plaka Service people say they sent a man over," the fellow reported to Hammer.
I tried to keep the relief in my face from showing. I had bribed the girl at the Plaka office to support my story if the need arose, but had worried whether she would really follow through.
Hammer holstered his gun. "Okay. Clean the damned windows," he ordered. "But make it fast."
"Yes, sir," I said. "Mr. Minourkos sometimes wishes to talk about our sailing days long ago. Will I see him before I leave?"
Hammer gave me a blistering glare. "You will not see him," he said. "Get on with your work."
"Thank you," I said.
They allowed me to go down the corridor to fill the pail with water, and I got a quick look at the physical layout of the suite. When I began on the big windows, everybody left me alone. I had seen what I had come for and was trying to think of a graceful way to cut my visit short when a group of men came from the office and began discussing Stavros' affairs openly without noticing me. I was on the balcony with the door open.
"Both camps are ready," one man said. "I think we should recommend to Stavros that we make our move as soon as…"
Another man stopped him and pointed to me. The first man turned away and spoke again in hushed tones. At that instant, however, three other men came striding into the room from the interior corridor, and I was treated to the big bonus of my visit. The ramrod-straight man in the forefront was Adrian Stavros. He was of medium height with a receding line of dark hair. He looked very much like the photographs that I had seen, a rather ugly, hard-faced fellow who looked older than his thirty-odd years. But he was still a dynamic-looking man. He had a good breadth of shoulder and held himself like a West Point graduate. He was in shirtsleeves, a dark tie pulled down at the neck. He carried a sheaf of papers in his hand and seemed very tired.
"All right, let's make this meeting brief," he said to the others in the large room. I noticed that Tzanni wasn't there. He wasn't important enough in this organization. "Rivera, what's the latest report from Mykonos?"
Standing there, looking at this small group, remembering how cleverly they operated, I almost felt respect for Adrian Stavros.
"…and the commander says that the groundwork is completed and the troops…"
Stavros suddenly looked up and saw me for the first time. He motioned toward an underling, took several steps in my direction, then stopped dead, raw anger in his face.