Byron's Shadow Read online

  Spyro stepped back as if bit, then turned to check which of his neighbours had seen. Lisa scurried away, feeling dirty.

  Costas worked for Korifi, the circle was squared, Flint was elated, giving Lisa a warm kiss, supposedly as a reward.

  She pulled away from the passion. ‘It’s time we met Boukaris,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Flint replied.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve worked it all out now. I need to phone Vikki.’

  ‘Vikki is a thousand miles away — how is she going to get my hotel back?’

  ‘Priorities...’

  ‘It’s my priority!’

  ‘Phone first, argue later,’ he asserted.

  Lisa said nothing as they walked back to the Post Office. Flint joined a two-person queue for the telephone booths.

  ‘I’m parched,’ Lisa moaned, ‘I’m going next door to buy a coke.’

  ‘Get me one — and grab as much change as you can, we’re going to need it.’

  Flint found himself a phonebooth, and dialled Athens on the off-chance Owlett had re-materialised. He made one more attempt at the Embassy, then with dry throat looked around for his coke, and for Lisa.

  Quickly he dialled the office number for Vassilis Boukaris. A secretary asked his name, but he refused to give it. The lawyer eventually came to the phone.

  ‘Boukaris.’

  ‘It’s Doctor Flint here,’ he said, ‘We were due to meet about now.’

  ‘We were?’ asked the voice, with a hint of surprise.

  Flint closed his eyes and would have shrieked aloud. ‘Forget it,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I’ll get back to you.’

  Flint put down the receiver, then gave the aluminium booth a hefty thump. Lisa had her priorities. Only one man could give her back the hotel, but that was not the man she was going to meet.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Angelos sipped at the glass of Chablis, then sat back into the shadows. A woman had walked into the bar, rather wide-hipped, her floral pleat skirt rather dusty, her white tennis top marked with red soil. The weighty taverna keeper recognised her at once.

  ‘Has Vassilis Boukaris arrived yet?’ she asked with urgency.

  Andreas said nothing, simply licking his lips, then wiping a drip of perspiration off his cheek. He looked directly at Angelos.

  ‘Madam,’ Angelos spoke in his clear, educated English.

  She turned to face him. The dyed hair suited her, thought Angelos. He bared his teeth in a smile. ‘Will you join me for a drink?’

  The offer was declined in Greek. Of course; her veneer had to be maintained.

  ‘I would like to talk; you are English?’

  Andreas glanced from one to the other, as if this were one of Flint’s old movies and a gunfight was about to break out. If someone had been playing a piano, he would have stopped.

  ‘What will you have, Lisa?’ Angelos used her name with deliberate familiarity. ‘May I call you Lisa?’

  The irritation in her face turned to chill fear and she took a few wary steps closer. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Perhaps you could come and sit at my table. I have just ordered some wine, I hope you are happy with French white.’

  ‘My name is Elena...’

  ‘…Kyriacou, yes, I know. Now, come sit with me and we can talk about your friend Paul Adams, or is it Jeffrey Flint?’

  She glanced towards the door.

  ‘Don’t run Lisa, I’m not alone. There’s a very apt English phrase which describes your situation: rat in a barrel.’

  Angelos picked up the car keys that lay beside the wine bottle and jangled them. He was pleased to see the way her face fell.

  ‘Toyota Land Cruiser. I’d never buy Japanese, but that’s the Americans for you. We have Max.’

  The door again attracted her hope.

  ‘I’m tired of the chase, Lisa. And so are you.’

  *

  ‘Vikki! It’s all going horribly wrong.’

  At last, Flint had found someone to share his growing panic.

  ‘You must find Hugh Owlett, get him to drive to Nauplion and meet me, with someone from the Embassy, or try the Consulate...anyone. The Athens branch of the Salvation Army will do…’

  The mobile line was disintegrating, whilst around him, the hollow interior of Nauplion Post Office echoed with afternoon hubbub. A commotion in the street seemed to be growing, it demanded attention. The coins gave him just time to bawl the description of a rendez-vous. ‘There’s a pull-in directly below Acronauplion...it’s a Venetian fort. Six o’clock, seven at the latest...’

  His last coins ran out, Flint dropped the telephone and darted to the front of the Post Office. Outside, the excitement was subsiding. Anxiously he began to seek English speakers.

  ‘What happened? What’s going on?’

  A helpful red-skinned tourist told him. ‘Four men...’

  ‘...three,’ his wife corrected, ‘And the woman.’

  ‘…and the man in the white car...’

  ‘...I counted him in the four...’

  Flint recoiled as if a sledgehammer had been smashed into his groin. He stepped back and faded into an alleyway, desperate for ideas. After a spasm of terror, he knew he must return to the street to confirm his fears.

  Two Ray-Ban touting tourist police beside Aghios Spyridiou seemed bemused by the incident with the white Citroën. As Flint walked rapidly past the Byzantine church and deeper into old Nauplion, he recalled the disaster again and again. Lisa had tried to see Boukaris and bargain for her hotel, but Boukaris had not even known about the rendez-vous. Dracopoulos had sprung a trap and Lisa had been driven away in the white Citroën. The police had not been involved.

  As he lost himself in the tangle of backstreets, Flint was lost in conflicting thoughts. It would have been simple for the local police to halt the Toyota on its way into Nauplion, if Dracopoulos or one of Max’s excavators had tipped them off. It would have been simpler, perhaps, to search the half-dozen campsites in the vicinity; Max had found them without trouble. If the authorities wanted them formally arrested, it would have been done.

  Nauplion’s enchanting charm had been extinguished in an instant. The exotic architecture now seemed alien, the ancient houses now haunted by threatening ghosts. Heat radiating from old stonework made his head throb, the light tired his eyes as he squinted from cold doorways. When shopkeepers looked his way, he felt a challenge instead of a welcome. He had never felt so naked.

  Under his arm he carried a notepad and in his pockets was less than thirty pounds in drachmae. With his evidence and his chance of escape gone, Jeffrey Flint’s thoughts turned to Lisa. Where would they take her?

  ‘Bang!’

  He threw himself against a wall as the shot rang out.

  ‘Bang! Bang!’

  Two guns spurted noise from point-blank range, as a pair of small English boys burst from within a shop. ‘You’re dead mister.’

  One of the terrorists fired a last shot to put Flint out of his misery. The cap exploded with a sharp crack and a suggestion of flame. Blue smoke caught the breeze and wafted towards the cowering archaeologist.

  ‘Sorry,’ said the parent. ‘Come on, you tykes!’ He ushered the trainee assassins away.

  The guns had been frighteningly realistic. Humiliated by his shock, Flint stopped to gather breath under the orange striped awning of the shop, where local tack plus imported tack was draped for the delight of the easily pleased. One model .38 revolver in Taiwanese steel hung on its card sling. For the first time since turning ten years old, Flint wished he too had the comforting, powerful symbol of the gun in his hand. At long range he might confuse policemen or villains. Thrust into the ribs, the gun could intimidate taxi drivers or even, he realised, uncover the truth.

  He took down the toy. It was a little underscale in his adult hand, but possessed that weight which carried realism. Flint the pacifist had once been Flint the small boy, touting a similar gun. It held a plastic ring of twelve high-powered caps
, the most powerful on sale to children. For a moment, he regressed to childhood games on wasteland and building sites. He recalled the ear-splitting bangs of yesteryear, the whiff of gunpowder and the drifting blue smoke. He took out a handful of money.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Flint sat alone, high above the town, amongst the weeds and dusty herbs which roamed amongst ruins of mixed parentage. Greek, Byzantine, Frankish and Turkish stonework was slowly reverting to nature, settling once more into the hillside. From the top of Acronauplion, he looked down upon the rendez-vous. A new road snaked upwards from the south of the Palmedhi rock, winding under, then over the ancient fortifications. Owlett could pull his car onto a short track just beyond the first bastion, then halt at a point unseen from the road. An extra hundred feet of elevation, plus a three hundred and sixty degree view, allowed Flint to watch for unwelcome observers and time his sprint for safety.

  Six o’clock, said the clock tower at the western wall of the fort. His stomach rumbled. Lunch had been missed, again. Would Lisa have been given lunch? Was Lisa still alive?

  A motorboat led a sharp v-ripple towards the southern shore of the peninsula. Out to the north, a ferry was manoeuvring around the island castle of Bourdzi. A green car stopped by the roadside. Flint stood to watch, his heart thumping in anticipation, but after a few moments, a hand emptied an ashtray out of the window, and the car moved off around the hill and down into town.

  Seven o’clock. A lizard ran across Flint’s foot and into hiding. The sun was dropping towards Arcadia in the west, lending the scene a surreal air, adding to his sense of detachment. The bell tower stretched a long finger of shadow towards him and Flint fidgeted on the stony ground. Night would come, but would Owlett come?

  The mountains of Arcadia swallowed the globe at four minutes to eight. As the air fell quiet with the passing of the sun, he heard approaching voices and scrambled into an angle of exposed stonework. A pair of Greek lovers giggled past, seeking a patch of ground with less brambles. Flint crawled out and looked again at the empty rendez-vous. Vikki had not found Owlett. Owlett was not coming. Owlett had set out, but had been delayed. Owlett intended coming but had been prevented. Owlett was waiting below the wrong Venetian fortifications.

  What he needed now was a good lawyer. He remembered how relieved he had been when Vassilis Boukaris had visited him at Argos police station, but that act of charity could only now be explained as an excuse to see Flint cleanly ejected from Greece before too many questions were asked. As he thought about his lawyer, he remembered how Boukaris had a habit of touching his hairline. Too late, all the facts tallied; Flint could have wept.

  Whilst it was still light, he stood and looked along the northward road, where a construction site had been the scene of Sebastian Embury’s death. A mile down the southern coast road lay a different objective. What the commando Byron Nichols might have called a soft target.

  *

  Villa Dafni was terraced into the hillside above the sea, close, but not too close, to other refuges of the comfortably flush. At any other time, the stroll along the coast road would have been pleasant. A few cars nipped past, but for most of the way only mosquitoes accompanied him. From the coast, he walked three hundred yards up a steep, poorly-metalled incline. Should things turn badly, he fancied he could bolt down the slope, flag down a car then poke the toy gun into the ribs of the driver as a final mode of escape. Escape to where was unclear.

  Flint knew all about the house and its occupants. The details were written on one of his little cards.

  Just past the villa, the road edge became an unfinished kerb and beyond this lay sweet-scented pines with reassuring shadows. Flint slipped into the darkness of the trees, thinking, and watching. A ten-foot wall surrounded the house, which seemed quiet, and heavy wooden gates stood closed.

  Could Lisa and Max be inside the villa? No was the sensible answer. Korifi owned warehouses, dark sheds, isolated cottages and unfinished chalets. The directors need not soil their own hands or compromise their own property.

  With a quick bolt, Flint rushed across the road on the balls of his feet and vaulted to grab the top of the gate. Ornamental studs of heavy iron served as footholds and he pulled himself over in moments. Within the embracing walls, a long garage block lay to the right, and dustbins to the left. Ahead, the white, two-storey villa glimmered on its terrace, with faint music from within; opera, perhaps. Flint chose to wedge himself behind two dustbins. The month had seen so much hiding and waiting, a little more would make no difference.

  A little more waiting dragged into a little more. Two figures came out of the house, servants perhaps, making their way home through a postern gate. Flint moved along the left wall, and clambered up the terrace and looked over a shallow parapet which framed the patio. A dining table had been cleared and the French windows beyond were open, with only light curtains to deter insects. Flint crouched back below the parapet and lay still. Had burglar alarms got as far as the Argolid? If so, were they habitually turned on? Should he make his move now, or wait until the lights were out?

  In the dark, listening to the cicadas and the sound of unwanted food slipping from plates, he became aware of movement off to the side of the house. A dark mass of Bouganvillea swamped the far wall, and below it grew a clutch of conifers and shrubs which formed a small apology for a garden. Flint strained his eyes to see motion to accompany the noise, but after ten minutes became convinced it had been a cat, or a rat, or paranoid delusion.

  Upstairs, someone was moving about a bedroom, but someone else had just turned off the opera record. With one last nervous glance towards the conifers, Flint crawled over the parapet and advanced to the curtains. Partly transparent, they revealed a single figure filling an armchair, seeming to be brooding over his empty brandy glass.

  Flint drew the toy gun. Pathetic as it was, it gave him confidence and it was the gun which led the way through the curtain and into the room.

  ‘Don’t make a noise,’ Flint said.

  The face was full, folded by years, creased by a sin that time could not erase. Boukaris had deep, black eyes which disappeared within his skull. His hair was unnaturally thick and black for one of his age.

  His chest drew a few heavy breaths before he spoke. ‘Doctor Flint? I was expecting you.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  A female voice called from within. Flint flicked his toy gun.

  ‘I shall tell her to go.’

  ‘Do it.’

  Boukaris dismissed the voice in a tone which carried no note of alarm. His words echoed in the plain, white-walled room and Boukaris looked at the gun. From fifteen feet, only a fool would assume it held no bullets.

  ‘What is the gun for? Put it away. You do not frighten me.’

  Jeffrey Flint had spent years cultivating the image of a pacifist, now he recalled the mean, Clint Eastwood look, hoping it fitted his own face. Unshaven, hunted, frightened, the new look carried credibility.

  ‘Then take a seat, please.’ Boukaris waved to a deep leather armchair.

  ‘I’m not playing games.’ Flint walked slowly across the terracotta tile floor, closing the internal door with his toe.

  Boukaris gave another wheezing exhalation. ‘So, you come to shoot me? It is not easy to shoot people.’

  ‘And I suppose you should know. I have your life story, I know about the Civil War.’

  ‘So you have been spying on me. You have been very clever, but you will not shoot. I have seen men stand before their bitterest enemies and be unable to shoot. It takes a special sort of man to pull a trigger.’

  Damn the bloated bastard: Flint knew he was right. ‘So you know about killing?’

  ‘I fought for my country. I have seen death. But the war is history, even the communist executioners are allowed back into Greece. All the wounds are healed.’ There was an element of pleading in his voice.

  ‘And the dead are buried.’

  Boukaris inclined his head as if to say ‘please let it remain.�
�

  ‘I want to know where Lisa is.’

  ‘I do not have your Lisa.’

  ‘You’re a liar.’

  ‘So, I am a liar and you are a murderer.’

  ‘No, I’m looking at the murderer. You had Sebastian Embury killed and you had me arrested. I have the evidence, I posted it to the British Consul in Athens.’

  This sounded like a good idea; Flint wished he’d thought of it earlier.

  ‘You are finished, Boukaris.’

  ‘You cannot threaten an old man,’ Boukaris said. ‘I am going to die, sooner than you. So you rob me of ten years of my life. You pay fifty.’

  ‘If I’m framed for murder, will a second make a difference?’

  The gun had a realistic double-action hammer, Flint pulled it back with a click, which to him sounded weak and tinny.

  ‘I want you to tell me what happened in 1947.’

  Boukaris showed no fear, only a deep sadness. ‘That was so long ago.’

  Flint levelled the revolver. ‘Take off your toupee.’

  Boukaris simply snorted and took a mouthful of brandy.

  ‘Do it, or I shoot.’

  ‘Yes, the British Empire. Do what we say or I shoot. Always the way, ha?’

  Now Flint looked closer, above the bridge of the lawyer’s nose, he could see the beginning of a thin white line. With a grunt, Boukaris removed the square of limp hair. His denuded forehead was disfigured by a long scar leading upwards and to the right where it divided in two, defining a Y-shaped region of dead scalp.

  ‘Does that give you satisfaction?’ Boukaris touched the wound, as if even the memory of it gave pain. Such an injury could lead to a lifetime of hatred.

  ‘So that’s what the communists did to you?’

  ‘I escaped lightly. You cannot imagine the horrors I witnessed when I was half your age. You read history, but I saw history.’

  ‘Do you remember Sofia Kiounghis?’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘She was kidnapped, and rescued by a British officer named Byron Nichols and a boy with a scar on his forehead like the letter Y. Do you remember Byron Nichols? He remembered you, I even think he liked you and trusted you. Did you know how distressed he was when you nearly died?’