Die Rich Die Happy

He threw the wooden knife into the sand, and a child ran to pick it up, to slash in the air against imaginary enemies.

'It's too easy to be like you,' said Stavros, then broke off as a man came up to him, waving the flimsy paper of a telegram. He glanced at it, and passed it to Craig.

'Dyton-Blease may be leaving,' he said.

'You were going to visit him?' asked Craig. 'Without

me?'

'I wanted to see him,' said Stavros. 'I wanted to know why.'

'You wanted to ldll him.'

'Perhaps,' said Stavros. 'I won't know until I meet him. But you haven't any doubts at all.'

'I have met him,' said Craig. 'Are you going back to Athens now?'

'I'll send for a hydroplane tomorrow.'

'I'd like to share it if I may,' said Craig. 'There's someone I have to see there.' He moved nearer to Stavros. 'I haven't thanked you properly for all you've done,' he said.

'You're my brother,' said Stavros. 'Who needs a brother's thanks?'

Craig laughed, and swung Stavros up in his arms, a parody of a brother's embrace. Stavros felt the power beneath it, and thought yet again how absurd, even wicked, it was to love a man whose one talent was destruction.

* Chapter 6 *

That night Craig went to call on Serafin's cousin Elias, who was short, round, and hard, with a look of his nephew Stavros. He listened to what Craig wanted to do and agreed at once.

'Stavros will want to come, too,' he said. 'It's his blood feud as much as yours.'

'Of course,' said Craig. 'That is why we musn't tell him. Stavros is a doctor. We can't ask him to risk this.'

Elias looked at him, hesitating, agreeing at last.

'Very well,' he said. 'You're the eldest after all.'

Craig smiled his thanks, marveling at the other's tact and kindliness that could live quite happily with explosive violence. He told Elias what he wanted to do, and Elias objected fiercely; there wasn't enough in it for him. And yet in the end he agreed; Andraki men never argued with Craig when it came to discussing a fight.

Elias and his son took Craig over to Menos under sail. He sat in the darkness, listening to the unending chuckle of water against the bows, and wishing only that the big man, Dyton-Blease, was still there. When the caique hove to near the headland, he stared into the darkness, searching out the denser dark of cliff and castle, then he stripped, piled his clothes into an inflated rubber raft, and lowered it into the water. He murmured good-bye to the Greeks, then slipped quietly into the calm, warm sea, and, pushing the raft ahead of him, swam out toward the island, taking his time, cautious not to tire himself, until at last he reached shingle, stood up, and dragged the raft on to a beach.

Craig took a towel from the raft, dried himself and dressed, then took Bauer's knife from it too, deflated the raft, and felt his way to the base of a cliff. Cautiously he drew out a shaded torch and hid the raft at the foot of a rock, then looked along the cliff face, searching patiently until he found the alarm wire he knew must be there. He climbed over it, and moved slowly, cautiously up the rock face, pausing near the top to search for, and find, another alarm wire.

Before him the castle stood, black and solid in the night's soft darkness. Craig looked out for dogs or sentries. There were none. He moved across the rock-hard ground to the castle wall, and made for the gate and a thin wedge of light. The small postern stood slightly ajar, and a man with a rifle leaned back against the wall, asleep. Slowly, with infinite care, Craig moved inside, then hit the sentry hard on the neck with his fist. The snoring stopped, and Craig caught the sentry as he fell and propped him against the postern, leaving his rifle with him. He looked more drunk than asleep, but the results would be the same if anyone spotted him. Craig felt in the man's pockets and found a bottle of ouzo. He poured some over the sentry's clothes and left the bottle beside him, then moved into the castle, across the courtyard to the keep. Again the inner gate was unlocked and he moved in like a cat, quiet and menacing.

The keep had been divided into three floors, and each floor had been subdivided into a series of rooms. Craig started at the top. The top floor was Dyton-Blease's. It contained an enormous bedroom, with a vast peachwood bed, a dressing room crammed with suits, shirts, shoes, all handmade—at least & 2,000 worth—and an office with a desk that contained nothing at all in its drawers and cupboards except a comprehensive collection of large-scale maps of the Middle East and some handsome writing paper headed Menos, Greece. There was also a huge gymnasium equipped with weights, medicine balls, expanders, for a man of superhuman strength. And there was a dojo—a judo practice mat. Craig paused by it, then moved down to the floor below. Every room was elegant, feminine, and beautiful. And yet somehow, every room was wrong. Craig looked at two vases, one with a beautiful flower arrangement, the other with an unsuccessful copy of the first. He saw a dining-room set for dinner for eight, at which only two people had eaten, a card table with the wreckage of a bridge game, one hand viciously torn across, and a tailor's dummy in the dressing room that was the most dressed dummy he had ever seen. Her expression of stupid aloofness didn't slip a centimeter when Craig lifted her skirts to discover she wore panties, girdle, and bra beneath her Balenciaga gown. Craig decided that Dyton-Blease had been teaching Selina how rich European women live and dress and occupy their day. He remembered the torn cards and grinned. Bridge bored him, too.

On the ground floor two men slept, the two men who had boarded the caique and taken Selina away. The silent one's room was a huge collage of pinups, the walls, the ceiling, even the floor. He lay on his back and snored, blowing bubbles of saliva as he exhaled. Craig hit him as he had hit the sentry. Once again the snoring stopped. When he searched the room he found only a Steyr automatic, ammunition, a knife, a cosh, and a series of photographs that used two or more human bodies to show how the letters of the alphabet could be portrayed in even the most absorbing circumstances. The photographs had been

E rinted in Cairo. Craig looked again at Q, grinned, and took is collection of weapons into the talkative one's bedroom. This room was austere, yet had richness. The furni-

ture was dark and old; the whitewashed walls showed only one picture: an ikon. The room smelled, very faintly, of chypre. Craig moved over to the sleeping man, searched the room, found more weapons, put the weapons down, and considered how best to wake him. A man hauled suddenly from a deep and secure sleep is vulnerable and afraid, and apt to tell what he knows. Craig pulled the sheet from him. He was naked, and the more vulnerable. Craig slapped him hard across the mouth. The man shot up in bed, and Craig hit him again, a backhanded blow that slammed him back on to the bedstead. The man lay still for a moment, then squirmed to one side and leaped at Craig, his hands grabbing for Craig's neck. Craig grabbed the other's hair, fell backward and threw him, still holding his hair. The man screamed and screamed again as Craig hauled him to his feet by the hair, and hit him on the nose, twice. The man wanted to fall, but the hand in his hair kept him up, stretched him on to his toes. His hands fell, his body went limp, and Craig let him fall.

Craig asked: 'What's your name?' He spoke in Greek. The man on the floor shuddered, and said nothing. Craig stopped, and hauled him up by the hair.

At once the man screamed out. 'Spiro. Georgios Spiro.' Craig pushed him back against the wall, and looked at him.

'You're going to tell me things,' he said. 'Sooner or later, you're going to tell. The choice is yours.'

Spiro leaped at him again, and again Craig threw him, dragged him to his feet, and hit him on the nose. This time Spiro fell and lay still. Craig found a water jug, slopped water over him, then, as he came round, dragged him over to a mirror.

'Look at yourself,' he said. 'You won't be pretty much longer. Next time I hit your nose I'll break it, and nobody's going to love you then.'

Spiro looked in silence, and turned away. Craig's hand dug under his chin, forcing him to look into the hard eyes, to watch the fist clench, draw back.

'I can't tell you anything,' said Spiro.

'That's a start, anyway,' said Craig. 'What are you doing here?'

'Looking after the place for Mr. Dyton-Blease.'