"I don't know," he said. "The Customs official is coming round with us in Zavelas's boat. He's keeping the transit-log until they've seen Dr. Van der Voort on board, and Kotiadis is coming from Levkas in a coastal patrol boat. I think we're going to be escorted outside territorial waters."
I pulled the dinghy astern and made the painter fast to a cleat aft. Then we got the anchor up and jilled around, the engine just ticking over. We didn't talk. There was nothing else to be said. Zavelas came down to the quay and got into his boat. The Customs official joined him and they put off, arrowing a wake into the inlet, the outboard noisy in the quiet of the port. Sonia stood close by a bollard, a small, still figure. She didn't wave and we got under way, the three of us subdued and silent.
Half an hour later we were in the Meganisi Channel, the water glass-calm and no breeze at all under the sheltering heights of Levkas. The depth at the southern end was 65 fathoms, too deep to anchor, and Bert steered close in to the rocks on the Levkas side, holding her there whilst I hauled the dinghy alongside and jumped into it. Florrie passed me the oars, and as I pulled away she called to me-"Paul. There's a boat in there. I can just see the outboard."
I leaned on the oars, letting the dinghy drift whilst I turned to look. High above me I could see the overhang, the great scooped-out hollow in the near-vertical hillside pale in the sunlight. I couldn't see the boat, only the shape of the rocks that marked the gut where Sonia and I had landed. I had a sudden premonition, a feeling I had arrived too late, and I bent to the oars, pulling hard for the shore. It was barely twenty yards, and in a moment I had opened up the gut and there was Vassilios in his dirty singlet dozing in his boat. "Where's Professor Holroyd?" I called to him.
He turned and stared at me uncomprehendingly, moving aft to catch the dinghy's bows. "Professor Holroyd-poo ine?" He pointed above us towards the overhang, now hidden by the rocks, and I scrambled past him, the boats rocking violently as I leapt for the shore. Christ Almighty! The bloody fool! I'd warned him. The track zig-zagged up through the rocks and I clambered up it, moving fast, praying to God that I wasn't too late. The low beat of Coromandel's engine drummed against the cliff, and to the north I could hear the waspish sound of Zavelas's outboard coming down the channel. It was hot and the blood pounded in my head as I clawed my way up.
And then a voice said, "You're too late."
I stopped then, looking up to see Holroyd standing poised on a rock above me, wearing a pair of red bathing trunks and a white shirt.
"How do you mean?" The words came in a gasp and I stood there, panting, wondering what the hell he'd been up to. "What happened? What have you done?"
"Done?" He seemed puzzled. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing I could do. He's gone."
I didn't get it for a moment. But he wasn't hurt. He hadn't been in a fight. That was all that mattered and a feeling of relief flooded through me. I climbed the last few feet and joined him where he stood on the slope below the platform. "You stay here," I said. "I want to talk to him alone."
"Well, go ahead. Maybe you know where he is." And he stood aside to let me pass.
I had started up the slope, but then I paused. Something in his voice, his choice of words … I stared at him, but I couldn't see the expression of his eyes. He was wearing dark glasses, his head bare, and from where I stood now he was a slightly ridiculous figure, the shirt hiding his bathing trunks so that he looked as though he were wearing a mini skirt. "He'll be in the cave," I said.
But he shook his head. "I've tried there."
"Beyond the rubble? It goes in about ten yards."
"I've been right to the end," he said.
"And he's not in his tent?"
"No. And I searched everywhere."
"Then probably he's at Vatahori."
"Vassilios says not. He saw Pappadimas this morning." He thrust his head forward. "If you ask me, he's abandoned his dig and cleared out." And he added angrily, "But I'm not falling for it this time."
"I don't believe it," I said. "He's just avoiding you. That's all." It seemed the most sensible thing for him to do.
"Maybe," he said, but I could see he wasn't convinced, "You go and have a look for yourself. I'll go on down to the boat and wait for you there."
I left him then and climbed the slope to the platform below the overhang. I hadn't been there in daylight before and I stood for a moment staggered by the view. The island of Arkudi was almost due south, a massive pile seared brown by the sun, with the flat plain of the sea all round it, its surface rippled by the breeze. And beyond Arkudi, Ithaca and Cepha- Ionia, merged into one great mountainous mass half-hidden in a haze of heat. To the west, beyond the long scorpion tail of Meganisi, more islands and the mainland mountains rearing misty heights. I could hear the old man's voice talking as though in a dream of the hunting lands of early man, and again I felt the strange atmosphere of the place. Even in daylight, in the full blaze of the sun, it had an eeriness, a sense of evil. Or was that just my imagination?
I shrugged it off and turned to the tent. It was still there, and when I peered inside the first thing I saw was the stone lamp. He wouldn't have gone without that, surely? There was his camera, too, and his notebooks, and the sleeping bag was neatly spread as though it hadn't been slept in that night. I called his name then, but there was no answer except the sound of my voice echoing back from the cliff above. And when I had clambered to the top of the rubble, I could see at a slance that he wasn't in the cave. It was in dark shadow, of course, but I could see right to the rock fall and there was no way through.
I went back to the platform then and searched about for some way by which he could have climbed to the heights above or made his way to the end of the promontory. But the cliff was almost sheer, the great scooped-out hollow in it sealing the platform off entirely. There was no possible way of leaving the place except by the path up which I had climbed. And here, at the south end of the channel, it was a long swim across to Meganisi. To get away he would have to have had a boat.
Zavelas and the Customs official had arrived by the time I got down to the gut again and Holroyd was talking to them. "God knows," I heard him say, and Zavelas nodded: "We will see Pappadimas, but first we must wait for Kotiadis." He saw me and his eyebrows lifted. "You don't find him, eh? Then you must go back to your boat and tell your skipper he is to stay here. I guess Kotiadis won't be long now."
"We can't anchor here," I said. "It's too deep."
He conferred with the Customs official. "Okay," he said.
"Then you must go back to Vathy and wait there. You cannot leave without your transit-log. You understand?"
I could hear the chug of Coromandel's diesel very close, and once I had manoeuvred the dinghy out of the gut, I had only a few yards to row. Seeing me come off alone Bert knew something was wrong and his face, behind the glass windshield, looked sullen and angry as he backed out into mid-channel and cut the engine. "Well, what's happened? Where is he?" And when I told him, he shouted at me, "Then find him, for Christ's sake. The bloody old fool!" And he rounded on Florrie. "Why the hell did you persuade me to come back this way? If we'd gone direct to Pantelleria-"
"Paul had to come."
"Why? Why did he have to come this way?" And he added, his words coming wildly, "Paul wants this. Paul wants that. And this daft old man buggering up the whole trip."
"You're behaving like a child," she said stiffly.
"So I'm like a child, am I? Well, I'll tell you this-if we lose the boat, I'm through. I'll leave you and go back to the Persian Gulf. Make some real dough before I'm too old."