"He's a palaeontologist," I said wearily. "He was looking for bones."
"Bones?" He stared at me, his eyebrows lifted, and I found myself in the difficult position of trying to explain my father's work. If I had said old Greek coins, or bronze statuettes, he would probably have understood, but searching for bones and worked flints, for traces of early man, was beyond his comprehension. "The only proper study in my country is the great civilization of Ancient Greece. Nothing else is important." And he went on to say that he had traced Dr. Van der Voort to a village called Ayios Giorgios. "There we lose track of him again, nothing for a whole month."
"You seem to have followed his movements very closely."
"Of course. That is why I am at Methoni when you arrive. At Methoni he take a caique north along the coast. But it all happened a year ago, so it is difficult to follow him with exact dates. About the middle of August he take the caique-to Levkas again." He muttered something to himself in Greek. "Why does he go back to Levkas? And he is on that island more than a month. Why?" he demanded excitedly.
"I don't know."
"Levkas, Kerkira, Cephalonia, all those Ionian islands-seven of them-are under a British Protectorate for fifty years. Turkey and France held them for a short time. For centuries before they are Venetian. Is that why he goes back to Levkas — because they are more vulnerable politically?"
"He wasn't interested in politics."
"No? Then why does he return to the islands? He is there all last September. What is his particular interest in Levkas?" He was staring at me again, ignoring the road, so that we touched the verge.
"I tell you, I don't know."
"You know nothing about him." He hit the steering wheel angrily. "But all the time you say he is not any more a Communist."
"Yes."
"How can you be sure? He is like a stranger to you." By then his patience was wearing thin. "Why did he attack this Cartwright?"
"I don't know."
"And to draw attention to himself by disappearing-he is either a very stupid man. . What do you think?" And when I didn't say anything, he turned his head, staring at me angrily. "You are not being co-operative."
"I can only tell you what I know. I was never interested in his expeditions."
"But you come to Greece. Why? Why you come now?"
He had put this question to me before. He seemed to sense that this was the weak point, and it worried me. "I tell you, to find out what's happened to him." I closed my eyes wearily. It was hot in the car, the smell of his Greek cigarettes strong and acrid.
The road swung away from Arta, and a few kilometres further on we came to a reservoir with the arched remains of an old aqueduct at the far end. He slowed the car where a dirt track turned off to the right. "That is the road to Ayios Giorgios-what you call St. George. See the hole in the hill up there?" He pointed to a natural bridge spanning a rock out-
crop high on the hillside. Blue sky showed through the gap. "Here is one of many places in the Eastern Mediterranean where St. George is supposed to slay the dragon; that is the hole his lance makes." And as we gathered speed again, he said, "Now, if last year he comes to Ayios Giorgios to examine the Roman ruins of that aqueduct I would understand, for it is a part of history. At the entrance to the Gulf of Amvrakikos, at Aktion, close by Preveza, is where Caesar Augustus defeated Anthony and Cleopatra. To celebrate his victory he built the city of Nikopolis and to provide water for Nikopolis he builds that aqueduct. It is a very long aqueduct, nearly fifty kilometres."
We were into the valley now, a river flowing fast below us and high rocky slopes enclosing us. The valley was cool and green, trees growing by the water, and the grass of the hills not yet seared by the sun's heat. There was peace and a timeless quality, and for a moment I forgot about Kotiadis and the future.
"Do you know when Dr. Van der Voort first come to Greece?"
"Last year you said."
"Ohi ohi." He shook his head violently. "When he first come is what I ask."
I tried to remember whether Gilmore had said anything about previous visits, but my mind was a blank.
"You do not know?"
"No."
He seemed resigned to my inability to help him, for he gave a little shrug. "My information is that he is here in nineteen sixty-five-you think that is possible?"
I remembered then that Holroyd had said something about a visit in 1965. "Since his new theories involved the Central Mediterranean it's highly likely," I said. "But I was at sea then and we were out of touch."
"You never write letters to your father?"
"No."
He sighed and offered me one of his evil-smelling ciga-
rettes. "Perhaps when you have talked with Cartwright. ." He flicked his lighter and after that he filled me in on what had happened after the old man had gone off in the Land-Rover, talking and driving with the cigarette in his mouth and his eyes half-closed against the smoke.
Cartwright had gone into Jannina the following morning on the village bus accompanied by Hans Winters, and in searching for a doctor, they had stumbled on the Land-Rover. As soon as he had had his wrist strapped up, Cartwright had airmailed a report to Holroyd, and they had then driven round the town, questioning bus drivers, garages, hotels and tavernas without success. The next day they had stayed in camp and it was not until the morning of March 17 that they had informed the police in Jannina. They were then very short of petrol and by the time London had cabled them additional funds, the security police had taken over. "That is when I go to Despotiko to interrogate them. Maybe it is true that they don't know where Van der Voort is. But I don't want any more archaeologists disappearing, so I confine them to the area of their camp with a guard to see that they stay there."
"You got nothing out of Cartwright?"
"No. Nothing that interested me." And after that he drove in silence as we passed through Jannina, still heading north. And now that we were nearing the end of our journey, I wondered whether I would do any better, whether Cartwright would give me some sort of explanation.
About twenty minutes later we turned right onto a dirt road that was signposted Despotiko. The village was on the shoulder of a hill, a huddle of nondescript buildings round a central square with the tiled roofs of older houses sloping into the valley below. We stopped beside an army truck parked outside the taverna and Kotiadis got out to have a word with two young soldiers sitting on a bench in the sun drinking Coca-Cola.
"Cartwright and Winters have gone up to the cave," he said as he got back into the driving seat. "It is about one kilometre beyond the camp." And he added, "His sister has arrived here."
"Whose sister?" I asked, but I could guess the answer.
"The Dutch boy's," he said and started the engine.
We took a cobbled alleyway that ran out into bare rock as the houses thinned, the Renault in low gear and lurching on the steep slope, scattering hens from its path. The track led down to a stream and finished at a communal wash-house where women were busy slapping and kneading clothes on flat rocks at the water's edge. Two donkeys stood with dripping wooden water casks strapped to their backs, while a boy filled the last cask from a natural fountain gushing from a rock. There was a Land-Rover parked where the track narrowed to a path, and as we drew up beside it, two pigs, long and russet-coloured like wild boars, eyed us from the edge of the stream where they lay wallowing in the sun.