Bond ran across to where Markos had fallen. The Greek lay on his face, his arms stretched forward as if he were diving. There was a large thick patch of blood on his cheap cotton jacket below the left shoulder-blade. When Bond turned him over, the limbs moved with the dummy-like lack of all resistance that no living body ever shows. Markos's eyes were open. His face was frozen in a look of mild astonishment, the exact equivalent of the cry he had given when hit. Bond closed the eyes. With a quick look at the house he ran back to the alley. There, methodically, he went straight to the other fallen figure, the gunman he had shot.
This body was perhaps not a dead body yet. The man had collapsed in an awkward half-sitting position, his back against the wall of the alley. Bond spared no attention for the wound the Walther slug had torn in the chest. It was the face that interested him, a pale, hook-nosed face with unusually heavy eyelids, now half-closed so that the eyes were hooded, a face he had seen at Quarterdeck some thirty hours previously: that of the group leader. Here was clinching evidence, if any were needed.
Enough. Bond got up and turned to his two companions. What he saw dismayed him. Gordienko was leaning against the other alley wall, breathing slowly and shallowly. He looked up at Bond and the thin mouth laboured with the effort to speak.
'He was hit in the back, I think,' murmured Ariadne. 'The man in the doorway.'
The Russian went on trying to speak a moment longer. Abandoning the attempt, he brought his right hand up slowly and pointed successively at Bond and Ariadne, Bond and Ariadne in a gesture as plain as any words could have been. Then blood suddenly welled over the lower lip, lots of blood, life-blood, something went out behind the eyes and Major Piotr Gregorievitch Gordienko of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate, Committee of State Security, fell over sideways and lay in the gutter.
Ariadne was crying. 'We must do as Mr Gordienko told us to do.'
'Yes,' said Bond shortly. He had enjoyed his fifteen-minute alliance with the grey man. 'Now we've got more running ahead of us, I'm afraid. Can you find us somewhere safe? Anywhere!'
'That's easy. I've a friend who'll look after us.'
Ariadne's friend, whose name Bond never learnt, turned out to be a plump brunette in a grubby expensive nightdress who showed no surprise whatever at being got out of bed at past 3 a.m. to open the door to two highly suspect-looking people - Ariadne with a ripped seam and earth-stains down one side of her dress, Bond, after his second successive night on very active duty, obviously in the later stages of exhaustion. There was an exchange of Greek between the two girls. The friend smiled and nodded at Bond, said something gracious and incomprehensible, acknowledged his bow, and waddled back to her bedroom. A man's voice sleepily asked a question; there was a shrill reply and a duet of ribald laughter.
'We're lucky,' said Ariadne, smiling at the sound. 'The spare room's vacant. There are drinks in the kitchen cupboard. You go fix yourself one while I put some sheets on the bed.'
Bond kissed her on the forehead and went to do as ordered. The kitchen was small, almost airless and smelt, not unpleasantly, of goat's-milk cheese and overripe figs. In the cupboard, among tins of Italian soup and packets of biscuits showing signs of age, was a huddle of bottles: ouzo, cheap red wine, local brandy, and - blessedly - Bell's Scotch. He poured himself about a gill, cut it with a similar quantity of the excellent Nigrita mineral water, and swallowed the drink in two draughts. Already, as he prepared a weaker follow-up, he felt the familiar spreading, smouldering glow enfold his stomach and seem to blow away the mists of fatigue that had overhung his brain. An illusion, surely that last part: the body must warm alcohol to blood heat before absorption can even begin. Yet, as always, illusion or not, it worked.
It was a pleasant little bedroom with gay hand-painted furniture and brocade curtains, but Bond had eyes only for the girl who sprang up off the bed when he appeared.
'I only put an undersheet,' said Ariadne. 'I thought we wouldn't need something over us.'
'No. It's very hot.'
She hesitated. 'We've many things to do and not much time. But I thought we couldn't do any of them before we'd slept.'
'No. And before we sleep...'
The unfinished sentence hung in the warm air. Ariadne smiled, a calm, self-possessed, sensual smile. Then, her sherry-coloured eyes never leaving Bond's face, she stripped naked, unhurriedly but without coquetry or exhibitionism, her movements and expression showing an absolute certainty that he would find her beautiful. She had a truly magnificent body, slender but rounded, longer in the leg than is common with Greek girls, the breasts deep and yet youthfully taut, the belly slightly protuberant with a soft honey-blonde triangle at its base. She narrowed her gaze now and her lips parted. There was nothing leisurely about Bond's undressing. Within seconds they stood flesh to flesh. She shuddered briefly and moaned; her arms tightened round his neck, her loins thrust against his and he felt the strength of her as well as the softness. As if they had become one creature with a single will, the two bodies sank to the bed. No preliminaries were needed. The man and the woman were joined immediately, with almost savage exultation. She leapt and strained in his grip, her movements as violent as his. The pace was too hot for their strivings to be prolonged. Their voices blended in the cry of joy that sounds so oddly akin to the inarticulate language of despair.
The creature separated, became two bodies once more. Bond tried to think of tomorrow, but his mind, like an overridden horse, refused to budge. He fell asleep with his head against Ariadne's bosom.
They left the flat early and made their necessary preliminary moves: coffee and rolls and splendid thin Hymettus honey at the busy little _kafenion__ round the corner, a lurching but speedy journey to Constitution Square in one of the big yellow sixwheeled trolley-buses, a whirlwind shopping expedition along Stadiou to equip Ariadne (her apartment in Loukianou would certainly be watched), and straight into the Grande Bretagne, keeping with the crowds all the way. The hotel too was no doubt being watched, but here they would be safe until nightfall at any rate, and long before then they would be gone.
At the same brisk tempo they changed and showered. By the time Bond had finished shaving in the grey- marble bathroom, all traces of fatigue had dropped from him. He even felt guardedly optimistic - no longer the tethered goat at the tiger-shoot, but a hunter on equal terms with the opposition and accompanied by an associate of proven value.
Finally, with Bond sitting on the bed and Ariadne on the blue-covered couch, the council of war went into session. 'Let's take the most obvious point first,' said Bond, lighting Xanthis for the two of them. 'Your position is horribly dangerous. You're the only survivor of the three people Gordienko felt he could trust. You daren't contact your organization - more than that, after what happened last night this traitor character will be actively interested in having you killed. You can disappear, of course, slide off to Salonika or somewhere and wait for the storm to blow itself out. But you're not going to do that, are you?'
