I hadn't expected the question and I hesitated.
"You turn up here out of the blue, after the police have been searching the countryside for him without success for nearly three weeks, and the very next day you go straight to the place where he's been hiding out." He jabbed at my arm with his forefinger. "You found something in his house- his notes-locations where he worked last year?"
I didn't say anything, and he smiled as though my silence was sufficient answer. "Now, how long did you have together before you were interrupted?"
"I don't know. About fifteen or twenty minutes, I suppose."
"And what did you talk about?"
I hesitated. "The dunes mainly," I said, and I began to explain to him the significance of that odd stretch of country. But he wasn't interested in that. He wanted to know whether I had been shown any excavations, any prehistoric bones or artefacts. He brushed aside my description of the ventilation shafts. "Modern-Roman," he said impatiently. "I'm talking about things that are thirty-five thousand years old. Surely you realize that by now."
The others had fallen suddenly silent and I looked up to find Kotiadis coming into the clearing. He was alone and he came straight to where I was sitting, walking fast and with purpose. "Here's your rucksack," he said and dumped it on the table in front of me. "You know where I find it?"
"Where is he?" I demanded.
"That is what I come to ask you." He was hot and tired and extremely angry. "He has been hiding out in the top of that old shaft for a long time. The evidence is everywhere."
I was staring at him, barely listening to what he was saying.
"He must be there," I said.
"Not now."
There was finality in the way he said it, and the memory of his violent anti-Communism scared me for a moment, "Have you searched the dunes?"
"Of course I searched the dunes-the whole area. He is not there."
The intensity of his frustration convinced me and I relaxed. The old man must have realized they would come back. He had seen the trap and escaped. But where to? Weak as he was, where could he possibly have gone? Sonia caught my eye, the same question in her mind. I shook my head. I didn't know.
I put the rucksack on the ground beside me. Kotiadis had switched his attention to Leonodipoulos now, and as the changed situation was explained to him, he became very heated. Holroyd gripped my arm. "If you know where he is, laddie, you'd better tell me. It's for his own good. This Congress is a great opportunity. Where's he gone to ground now?"
"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know."
"You must have some idea, surely?" And when I shook my head his grip on my arm tightened. "What else did you discover in his house? You knew he would be somewhere on those dunes. What was the next location?"
"I don't know."
"You're lying."
Sonia intervened then, leaning across the table. "He's telling you the truth. He'd never have found Dr.' Van der Voort if I hadn't told him about the dunes near Ayios Giorgios."
"You?" He let go of my arm and stared at her. "He was there last year, was he?"
The corners of her lips turned up in a little secret smile. "It was just something I typed for him, a description of the dunes. He was very interested in the geological aspect of his discovery. It confirmed, you see, the climatic conditions. ."
"Yes, but what else? Was there something near-a cave-dwelling? What was the next passage you typed for him?"
"Nothing else."
"Nothing? But these were his notes. He was out here two seasons-"
"I'm afraid that's all I can tell you."
He hesitated, staring at her hard. Then he got abruptly to his feet, pulling his pipe out of his pocket, and went over to where the two Greeks were still arguing. Cartwright got up, too, nervous, ill-at-ease, fumbling with his pipe. Hans followed him.
I turned to Sonia then. "Have you any idea where he is?"
She shook her head. "He may have gone up to the village of Ayios Giorgios. He lived there for a time last year."
"Kotiadis will have searched there."
"Probably. But he could be in the hills, hiding. From what you've told me he's too weak to have gone very far." And she added angrily, "All Professor Holroyd cares about is where those bones came from-the ones I sent to Dr. Gilmore for dating. If it wasn't for that he'd be glad to see your father dead." Her voice shook with the intensity of her feeling.
I leaned across the table. "And where did the bones come from?" I saw the muscles of her face tighten, her eyes go blank. "Was it Levkas?" I asked, lowering my voice to a whisper. But Levkas was an island. "He couldn't possibly have got there."
"You don't realize how desperate he is." There were tears in her eyes. "This is his last chance. You mustn't-please you mustn't tell Holroyd about Levkas."
But Holroyd was talking to Kotiadis now. They were standing together on the edge of the clearing, away from the others, and Kotiadis already knew about Levkas. He knew all the locations.
"I think they'll decide to move camp to Ayios Giorgios now."
"Will Holroyd stay out here?" I asked.
She nodded. "I think so. He feels he's on to something now and he won't leave it to Alec. The time's too short if he's to read that paper. Yes," she said with finality. "He'll stay." And she added with a little jerk of her head to where Cartwright
and her brother were standing alone and silent, "They're resigned to it already, both of them. Alec is ambitious, and Hans is a dreamer. They thought this dig here-" She gave a little brittle laugh. "The academic world is full of conceit, you know."
Cartwright's dejection I could understand. I had seen the way he had flushed like a girl up there at the dig when Hol-royd had condemned it as a site of great complexity. But Hans Winters was still a student. "I should have thought your brother would be glad to work under a man like Holroyd."
She gave a little shrug. "You can't dream dreams with a man like Professor Holroyd in chajge, and Hans is my father all over again."
"Your father's dead, I believe."
"Yes, he's dead. Did Hans tell you?"
I nodded.
"Did he tell you how?" She was looking at me very directly. "He committed suicide."
"I'm sorry," I murmured.
"No need to be," she said harshly. "He wasn't cut out for this world. He was a Christian. A real Christian. And he thought everybody was like him. He was too bloody good to be true. And so unworldly … he drove his car straight off the road into the Amstel."
"You obviously don't take after him."
"No. I take after my mother's side of the family, thank God. But-" Her face suddenly softened. "On the surface, that is; deep down-I'm not so sure."
"You're older than your brother."
"Yes. Two years."
"He says you studied biology."
"Foreign languages. Biology was only a sideline." The habitual tenseness of her face was lit fleetingly by that quick elfin smile of hers. "You're wondering how I came to be associated with Dr. Van der Voort."
"I presumed it was through your brother."
"Yes. Indirectly. Dr. Van der Voort's books have never been published in Holland, but Hans got hold of the East German editions, and German being one of my languages-" She gave a little shrug. "I just became fascinated, that's all. Not the writing. He writes very technically. But the ideas, the way he correlates man and his environment-the effects of the Wiirm glaciation in particular-the extraordinary changes produced by the interstadials-hippopotamus, rhinoceros, reindeer, bison, mammoths, tropical animals interchanging with an almost arctic fauna, and man himself evolving all the time. And then, when I realized he was in Amsterdam, actually lived just across the canal from us-"