him, and nobody with him, nobody at all. "What have you found to live on?"
But his gaze had wandered, searching the ground. "You haven't seen the sole of my boot, have you? I lost it last night, and I've been searching."
He was wearing an old pair of desert boots, tough camel skin, and the right foot had the crepe rubber missing. "It's no good to you," I said. "You couldn't repair it here."
"Somebody may find it. ." His eyes were roving again, his voice irritable. He seemed obsessed by his loss and I realized he was afraid it might betray his presence here. "Are you sure nobody sent you?" He was looking at me again, his eyes shifting and uneasy.
I did my best to reassure him, but it was only when I told him how I had come to Greece that his attention seemed to focus. "A boat? You chartered a boat?"
I nodded.
"Where is it-at Pylos you say?"
"No, Preveza. They should have arrived at Preveza by now."
"Preveza?" His eyes gleamed, a strange suppressed excitement. "If they'd let me come on my own-that's what I wanted. I could have been there a month-more now. But they gave me a Land-Rover and an assistant." His body sagged, dejected. And then, suddenly, he sank to the ground as though he couldn't support himself any more. "I'm tired," he murmured. "Very tired. I haven't the strength I had once."
I offered to get him some food, but he shook his head. "It's only the sudden heat. And walking … I thought if I searched for it now, in the middle of the day, nobody would see me."
"But you must eat," I said.
He shook his head again. "I'm beyond that. And the last time it made me sick."
He told me then how he'd killed a sheep, had beaten it to death with a stone and taken it to his lair up there on the dune ridge where that third shaft showed a cavity in the circle of fallen stones. He'd cooked it inside his burrow, gorging him-
self sick and sucking the marrow from the bones. He told it with his eyes closed, dwelling on all the revolting details as though to saturate himself with disgust. "Have you ever gone for a long period without food?"
I shook my head.
"I did it once before-lost my way in the Kyzyl Kum desert. The mind floats free. Everything very clear. But it was different then. It wasn't of my own choice and I had no water."
He had no water here either, but every night he told me he went down to the reservoir. That was how he had come to lose the sole of his boot. "And what happens when you're too weak?" I asked. "You can't live without water."
"No, I'd die then." The dusty lips behind the stubble cracked in a smile. "That would be the easy way." The smile had lit his face with some inner calm. "But I shan't die. I mustn't die-not yet." His brows dragged down, his eyes suddenly glaring at me. "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? It was always the same with you-like talking to somebody who's never learned-who'll never bother to learn-one's own language. We're strangers, you and I."
There was nothing I could say and I stood there, silent. The stillness of the place, the sense of being alone with somebody who was not quite real … I didn't understand him. I never had. And the way he was staring at me from under those shaggy brows. . "What do you want?" he asked abruptly. "Eight years, isn't it?"
I nodded.
"Then why are you here?" His eyes drew mine, holding them, the stare so penetrating that I had the feeling I had always had that he could read my thoughts. "You're in trouble again. Is that it?"
I couldn't help it. I laughed, an awkward, jarring sound in the stillness. Looking down at him squatting there, weak with hunger and half out of his mind, and thinking I'd come to him for help. Yet perhaps he was right. In the end I had always come back to him. Perhaps it really was the reason.
"Yes," I said. He might as well know. It might help him even — to know that he wasn't the only one who was on the run. "I think I've killed a man. In fact, I'm certain I have."
I saw the shock of that register, his eyes appalled, a look almost of horror on his face. "You?" He bowed his head. "You were always violent-always that same streak of violence." And then after a while he said, "Sit down, Paul. Sit down here and tell me about it. How did it happen?"
"It was at the end of the voyage," I said. "We'd come into Fawley with oil from Kuwait-the long way round the Cape." I had seated myself cross-legged on the sand, the two of us facing each other like a couple of Arabs. "I was first officer and we had a Czech on board, a man called Mark Janovic-a good deckhand, cheerful, hardworking. The papers said he was a Pole, but I'm damned sure he was a Czech, and they were waiting for him-two toughs from the Polish embassy. The turn-round is quick, but I'd given several of the hands shore leave and I was on the pipeline terminal when they came off the ship. Janovic was the last to leave, and as he did so these two thugs closed in on him. They had a car waiting. There was an argument and I went over to see what it was all about. It was something to do with his family. I could see Janovic was scared, and then he suddenly made a break for it. One of the bastards grabbed him and I just reacted instinctively. I smashed his face in. He was right on the edge of the pier. He went straight over into the water. It was dark and the tide was running. There wasn't a chance of anybody fishing him out alive. And then the other man started to come at me." I felt like a child again, telling him my troubles. "I didn't stop to think. I just hit him in the stomach, grabbed the car and drove off."
He didn't ask me why I'd been such a fool, why I hadn't stayed to justify my actions. He just sat there, silent, lost in his own thoughts. Finally he said, "I've been afraid of this-always." The words seemed dragged out of him. "Both you and I, we've the same temperament, the same predeliction to violence …" He was staring at me as though looking at a ghost.
"It's an odd place to tell you-but you're old enough now, a man … I loved your mother once. A long time ago now." He seemed to gather himself together, his eyes looking straight at me, very direct. "You're my son. My own son."
"Yes," I said. "I know that now."
"You know?" It seemed to worry him, the brows dragged down, the eyes staring, bloodshot. "How do you know? When?" And he added slowly, almost painfully, "I tried to keep it from you. After what had happened. . the shock of their death … I felt I had to. How did you find out?"
"The letters-that note pinned to my birth certificate." And I told him how I had gone back to the house in Amsterdam, "But I didn't come here to burden you with my own troubles."
"You went to Amsterdam?"
"I needed money, somewhere to hide out till the heat was off."
"Is that all?" He sighed. "I've never refused to help you. Surely you know-"
"How the hell could you help me?"
I saw him wince. "No, of course. You're right. And there was no money in the house." He was peering at me, his eyes probing my face. "Then why are you here?"
"To tell you that Professor Holroyd left London by air last night. He should be in Athens by now. Sonia thought you ought to know."
He didn't seem surprised. "He's in a hurry, of course. And she told you where to find me?"
"Yes."
"But that doesn't explain why you came to Greece,"
I told him about Gilmore then, his concern after reading his Journal. But all he said was, "It was good of Adrian to bother." He was following quite a different train of thought. "Now tell me the truth." He leaned forward, his voice urgent. "Why did you come-after eight years? And not a word from you in all that time. You're not interested in me or my work."
I didn't know how to answer him. "I just felt I had to,"
"Because you discovered I was your natural father?" That rasping sound again, that jeering laugh.