He went to the desk and rang a small brass hand-bell. Mily came in.
- Go to the wireless room and tell the operator to contact Athens immediately. I'll come along and speak in a couple of minutes.
- And break wireless silence, sir?
Arenski clenched his small fists. This ploughboy gaping would drive him mad. He answered in a tone of caricatured patience - Yes, Mily, and break wireless silence. Exactly that. Now go and do as I say. And get one of the Greeks, the fat one, to go up to the hospital in the town and inquire about a - no, tell him to come and see me.
The fat Greek arrived, was briefed and sent on his way with Arenski's usual politeness. (Once outside the door, the man made the traditional five-finger gesture, meaning roughly, 'May all your senses leave you.') Then the general went up to the tiny oven-hot cubicle on the top floor that housed the wireless station with its R/T links to Athens and to Plovdiv in Bulgaria, which would act if required as a relay to Moscow. The latter circuit was not to be used except in conditions of threat-to-peace emergency. The room reeked of sweat and cheap Russian cigarettes. An unmade bed filled most of the space not occupied by the grey-enamelled set. Arenski pulled out a scented silk handkerchief and inhaled.
The operator, a bull-necked Muscovite with a heavy shaving-rash, handed up the microphone and Arenski got down to it.
It was frustrating, it was unbelievably prolonged and the howl of static surrounding and blurring the incoming voice set his teeth on edge, but at the end of twenty agonizing minutes he had the situation clear. He thanked the operator and left the room, sweating freely.
Descending the broad whitewashed stone stairs to the terrace, where he would sit out of the sun and enjoy his midmorning glass of fresh lemonade, Arenski almost smiled at the predictability of the answers to his questions. Why had the shootings - 'the forcible retirements of the sales manager and two representatives' - not been reported? Because on attempting to make this report the transmitter had been found to be defective. And repairing it had taken a long time. It had only been functional for the last two hours or so. Why had not the report been made then, at once? Because it had been thought better to wait until the allocated transmission period at 1200 hours. Why had the arrival of Bond - 'a dangerous English competitor' - not been reported? Because by the time the plans to detain him in Athens had broken down the transmitter had become defective. Apologies were offered, plus an assurance that the assistant sales-manager was now in complete control of the situation.
Arenski relaxed in his basket chair and sipped his lemonade. On further reflection he actually did smile. How like poor old Piotr Gregorievitch to have imagined he could deal with Bond by himself. How like him to have failed to institute an efficient maintenance-and-repair system at his wireless station. And how totally, hopelessly like him to have got himself killed in a quarrel between two bands of Western thugs. It was painful to think ill of an old comrade, but it was as well that Piotr had gone before doing any real damage.
Bond... Arenski was looking forward to the encounter. And not only that. It would be satisfying as well as advantageous to him to be able to tell the minister, 'I have a prisoner who may interest you. A Western gangster called Bond. No, oddly enough I found him quite easy to capture.' Then, when the conference was over, Bond would snatch a gun and the general would have to shoot him in self-defence. Perfect.
After a moment Arenski muttered to himself in English, 'The man who killed James Bond,' and chuckled wetly.
Chapter 13
The Small Window
'HERE THEY come.'
Litsas lowered the Negretti & Zambra binoculars and put them down on the cabin-top. Through the sun-dazzle Bond saw the smudge that was the dinghy, seemingly stationary at this distance, just off the joint of the island beyond which the islet lay. The _Altair__ had dropped anchor in a tiny cove whose granite sides dropped steeply into the water. Here they were secure enough from observation, but the north coast of Vrakonisi is never really comfortable in anything but a flat calm, and the caique, moored to a pinnacle on an odd tongue of rock and anchored on its narrow underwater continuation, was swinging and lurching unhealthily.
'Go on, Niko,' said Bond from his canvas chair on the tiny foredeck. 'By the way, where is Kapoudzona?'
'Macedonia. Mountain village. They're quite tough people there. I don't like them much, they have too many Bulgars and Turks, but they're tough. Well, just after the village the staff car comes to a road-block, some chaps rise up behind the rocks and blaze away, and all the German colonels are killed.
'Von Richter is commanding the support company of an SS infantry battalion who are training close by. There's a new German order saying that attacks of the guerrillas must be punished in a quick and - and severe way. That's enough for him.
'In two hours he's put a cordon round the village and he's lined up everybody in the square. He makes the women and the children under fourteen go into the village school. It's big and it's made of wood. Von Richter makes his men lock the doors, throw petrol down the walls and set fire to them. Some of the mothers try to push their kids out of the windows, but for them he has tommy-gunners. Then he shoots the other people. Two hundred and eight killed altogether. Two old men somehow survive to tell the story.'
After a short pause, Litsas went on: 'I'll always remember one thing. Von Richter was standing at the school door while the women and kids were going in. When he saw a child who looked nice he patted its head or pinched its cheeks like an uncle, and spoke kindly to the mother. Oh, all the Germans love the family values.'
The last words were spoken in a thick, choked voice. Litsas had turned his back. Bond went up and put his arm round the heavy shoulders, saying nothing.
'Promise me you'll let me have him, James. I must kill him myself. You understand that.'
'Yes, Niko, I promise.'
Bond moved away and looked towards the approaching dinghy. It was near enough now for him to be able to see Ariadne's blue shirt and her fair hair shining in the sun. He waved to her and got an answering wave. Thank God she was near. He realized he wanted to see her - not make love to her, just look into her face and touch her hand - with more longing than he could remember feeling towards any other woman.
A movement on the hillside above the dinghy caught his eye. Somebody, a man, was making a painful diagonal descent through the piles of rock and clumped bushes, moving across the steep shoulder of the cove. His movements were peculiar, as if he were handicapped in some way. Bond, idly curious, picked up the binoculars, but by the time he brought them to bear the figure had gone out of view.
* * *
The roughly-flagged terrace where Colonel Sun was sitting, like his whole establishment on the island, was on a more modest scale than that of his Russian opposite number on the islet. It was also far more secluded, facing inland at the back of the house. A lot of persistence would have been needed to make an inquisitive stranger climb either of the precipitous spurs that cut the colonel's headquarters off from the neighbouring coves, and a good deal of physical toughness to approach directly by scrambling down the barren hillside, overgrown with thorn bushes, littered with great chunks of granite and marble, most of them shapeless, a few of weird geometrical regularity, like building blocks for some colossal unconstructed temple.