“Very wise. You should be safe that way. Your tactical eye is getting as good as mine.”
We put the girls out in Athens, where they could take the bus to Delphi, a passionate bit of tongue licking from Bill for both. Traffic blared their klaxons telling us to stop blocking the road.
Bill tagged close, and jumped a red light so as not to lose me, at which every car in Athens played the Concerto for Motor Horns. Signs for the airport made it easy to find the way, and in half an hour I pulled up between the designated hotel and the sea. Bill positioned himself a couple of hundred yards away, and in his flowered shirt and shorts, leaning nonchalantly against the Corsa, and wielding binoculars to take in the boats, he looked as dead common as any holidaymaker.
I lit a cigar, and gazed at a yacht bobbing a little way out, so big and smart I expected Mr Onassis to get off and walk across the water. A dry sharp wind blew in from Africa, so I turned to stop smoke painting my face. A beautiful young girl and her boyfriend paused to adore the Rolls, matching it perhaps against one of her uncle’s. She had short black hair, and eyes like lamps, and I supposed that despite her innocent features she would be able to tell me a thing or two in a few years, should we ever meet.
A decade or more ago Bill had advised me to practice all round vision like a pigeon without being noticed, and I had, enough to realise I was being observed. The town would be crowded in summer but wasn’t now, so I must have been conspicuous.
A boat being rowed from a medium tonnage yacht near the shore was obviously coming for me. A tall thin man with a naval cap directed the two who were rowing. When close enough he called: “What’s the weather like in London?”
I responded with my part of the recognition signaclass="underline" “Belting it down. We had twenty-six inches last year.”
“Better you than me.”
When I strolled to the boot, as if to begin unloading, he bawled: “No there, you stupid fucker. Drive to the back of the hotel, and wait.”
He was English, so I had to forgive his language, and in any case couldn’t smack him across the chops as he deserved because of the audience we’d soon have if I did. As they tied the boat up I drove round the corner and parked between a couple of Mercedes. It was the right place, because one of them was unlocked by the man with the foul mouth, who now shook my hand, and smiled: “Call me Ronald. We’re glad to see you. Tell Moggerhanger to send you again. We like somebody who turns up dead on time, and knows his stuff.”
In no mood for a conference, I didn’t reply, while he took on board what I had brought from London. Then he transferred a dozen parcels into the Roller’s boot, as well as some carrierbags containing, I could only suppose, Lady Moggerhanger’s groceries of local produce.
“Check it,” he told the man I handed the briefcase to.
I wondered, should they find nothing but plain paper inside, if this was where they chopped me into bits and posted me like a bag of Smyrna currants back to Blighty, or fed me to the seagulls. Yet I felt all would be well, and it was, when guardian Bill came from the door of the hotel and passed with a wink of approval at the way things were going.
It was as neat a transaction as could be wished for. The man with the briefcase drove off in his Mercedes to I couldn’t think where and cared even less about, while Foulmouth and his mate, fags smouldering to their satisfaction, strolled back to the boat knowing their work for the day was done.
Bill came out of the hotel. “I’ve booked you a nice room overlooking the sea.”
I had intended churning out a lot of miles before nightfall. “Stop nannying me. I can look after myself.”
He leaned on the bonnet. “Michael, you’ve had a busy week, enough to do in any man. Take my advice, and have a well earned rest for a couple of nights. You won’t regret it. When you leave you’ll be as fresh as a daisy.”
He got into his Corsa and wound down the window. “I might not go to the airport till tomorrow. I’ll find a nice cushy billet somewhere in the mountains and write my operations report to Major Blaskin. He’s a real martinet, and if he doesn’t get it prompt I’ll be on the carpet.”
“Going to Delphi, are you? You’ve fixed me up to stay here because you want those girls to yourself?”
“That’s unworthy of you, Michael. But what if I do stop off in Delphi for a ladle of coffee and some cakes?” He let loose his unbeatable laugh. “It behoves you to trust people now and again, especially me,” and he ground the gears in such a way they’d need replacing in a couple of days: “It’s all right. It’s only a hired car,” he called at my grimace, and drove away without leaving me time to shout that the girls would probably go to Corinth first.
He was right, though. I caved in, and stayed the two nights. Sophie would still be in Italy and, as for Moggerhanger, he could wait a bit longer. After a siesta, whose dreams should have worried me but didn’t, I threw underwear and a couple of drip dry shirts into the shower. Shampooed water beat down on them, and with a five minute stamping on the mush they were ready for rinsing.
A phone call to Moggerhanger would have given him the pleasure of moving more pins on the map, but I no longer liked being a pawn in the Great Game, nor the risk of my call being overheard. In case he’d brewed up a change of plan I decided to extend radio silence until getting to Italy. Let him worry.
I enjoyed my evening meal of fish, lamb, fruit and a bottle of wine, and as for the list of itemised expenditure, didn’t Moggerhanger already have enough monogrammed toilet paper to wipe his arse on? After coffee and a cigar I went to my room, and fell asleep over a Sidney Blood on realising it was one I had written for Blaskin a few years ago.
Shaved and showered, I lingered an hour over breakfast to let the rush hour traffic calm itself. Then I made sure nobody had taken a tin opener to the motor. Finding Athens’ centre was easy, but unthreading onto the road I wanted made me sweat blood, till at last, more by accident than navigation, I found the great west artery pointing towards Patras.
I coughed up forty draks for the use of the highway, and motored beyond Corinth, till sliding into a lay-by at one o’clock to get the stove going and have a strong mash with sugar and milk that could only otherwise be made at home. A blue flame hissed under the kettle, and boiling water followed tea into the pot. I sat in the driving seat, legs outside, sipping the ambrosial brew.
Cars and lorries played acrobats along the road as I waited to get out into the stream. I waved them on till I made it, then kept up a trundling rate, relaxed and content to be on my own. The back end of a blue Corsa was angled steeply at the edge of the road, and I wondered how its unfortunate passengers had got sidesmacked — probably in trying to compete with a mad local motorist. I sorrowed how a family of man, wife and two lovely kids must have suffered, now in a casualty ward being looked after for cuts and bruises, glad I hadn’t caught a similar packet even in my sturdy Roller.
The tarmac came on like a river under the wheels, and I paced my way with perfect ease, wondering where in the world I’d go if I had an endless supply of currency and a motor van big enough to sleep in. I would travel the highways, and the low ways, for as long as I could hold a steering wheel and see a hundred yards in front. But I was getting too old to think of such an escape route out of life, and instead pictured lovely Sophie strolling topless around her rustic Umbrian farmhouse, impatient for me to call and set her to rights.
My mind splits in two while driving (though in no way like loony Ernest’s) one part entertaining the imagination, and the other keeping every yard of the road in sight. The two states never meet because they don’t need to, each knowing their place. And so it was when, as Sophie’s divine flesh faded, I saw a tall figure with a suitcase limping along the hard shoulder some way in front.