called Bond. No, oddly enough I found him quite easy to capture.' Then, when the conference was over, Bond would snatch a gun and the general would have to shoot him in self-defence. Perfect.
After a moment Arenski muttered to himself in English, 'The man who killed James Bond,' and chuckled wetly.
Chapter 13
The Small Window
'HERE THEY come.'
Litsas lowered the Negretti & Zambra binoculars and put them down on the cabin-top. Through the sun-dazzle Bond saw the smudge that was the dinghy, seemingly stationary at this distance, just off the joint of the island beyond which the islet lay. The _Altair__ had dropped anchor in a tiny cove whose granite sides dropped steeply into the water. Here they were secure enough from observation, but the north coast of Vrakonisi is never really comfortable in anything but a flat calm, and the caique, moored to a pinnacle on an odd tongue of rock and anchored on its narrow underwater continuation, was swinging and lurching unhealthily.
'Go on, Niko,' said Bond from his canvas chair on the tiny foredeck. 'By the way, where is Kapoudzona?'
'Macedonia. Mountain village. They're quite tough people there. I don't like them much, they have too many Bulgars and Turks, but they're tough. Well, just after the village the staff car comes to a road-block, some chaps rise up behind the rocks and blaze away, and all the German colonels are killed.
'Von Richter is commanding the support company of an SS infantry battalion who are training close by. There's a new German order saying that attacks of the guerrillas must be punished in a quick and - and severe way. That's enough for him.
'In two hours he's put a cordon round the village and he's lined up everybody in the square. He makes the women and the children under fourteen go into the village school. It's big and it's made of wood. Von Richter makes his men lock the doors, throw petrol down the walls and set fire to them. Some of the mothers try to push their kids out of the windows, but for them he has tommy-gunners. Then he shoots the other people. Two hundred and eight killed altogether. Two old men somehow survive to tell the story.'
After a short pause, Litsas went on: 'I'll always remember one thing. Von Richter was standing at the school door while the women and kids were going in. When he saw a child who looked nice he patted its head or pinched its cheeks like an uncle, and spoke kindly to the mother. Oh, all the Germans love the family values.'
The last words were spoken in a thick, choked voice. Litsas had turned his back. Bond went up and put his arm round the heavy shoulders, saying nothing.
'Promise me you'll let me have him, James. I must kill him myself. You understand that.'
'Yes, Niko, I promise.'
Bond moved away and looked towards the approaching dinghy. It was near enough now for him to be able to see Ariadne's blue shirt and her fair hair shining in the sun. He waved to her and got an answering wave. Thank God she was near. He realized he wanted to see her - not make love to her, just look into her face and touch her hand - with more longing than he could remember feeling towards any other woman.
A movement on the hillside above the dinghy caught his eye. Somebody, a man, was making a painful diagonal descent through the piles of rock and clumped bushes, moving across the steep shoulder of the cove. His movements were peculiar, as if he were handicapped in some way. Bond, idly curious, picked up the binoculars, but by the time he brought them to bear the figure had gone out of view.
* * *
The roughly-flagged terrace where Colonel Sun was sitting, like his whole establishment on the island, was on a more modest scale than that of his Russian opposite number on the islet. It was also far more secluded, facing inland at the back of the house. A lot of persistence would have been needed to make an inquisitive stranger climb either of the precipitous spurs that cut the colonel's headquarters off from the neighbouring coves, and a good deal of physical toughness to approach directly by scrambling down the barren hillside, overgrown with thorn bushes, littered with great chunks of granite and marble, most of them shapeless, a few of weird geometrical regularity, like building blocks for some colossal unconstructed temple.
The man who had made this uncomfortable journey, and who now sat facing the colonel on the terrace, was physically tough all right. He would have had to be, after sustaining fairly extensive second-degree burns on board the cabin-cruiser, spending an hour in the water and walking five miles in the sun in order to gain the ridge above the house. His left arm was bandaged and in a sling and he had fallen badly twice during his descent as a result of this handicap. Because, as well as being exhausted, he was still suffering from shock, he told his tale ramblingly and with repetitions.
Sun was tolerant about this. Hands on knees, he sat on an olive-wood stool in an upright posture that would have put a crick in any Western back in five minutes, and gazed almost benignly at the unimpressive-looking small-time crook from the Piraeus waterfront who had endured all this for two hundred American dollars. Between them Doni Madan lounged on foam-rubber cushions wearing a black-and-green check bikini, an incongruous get-up for an interpreter. Now and then she sucked noisily at the straws of a tall pale drink.
'Tell Mr Aris I think I have it all clear now,' Sun said to her, 'thank him for his services, and offer him another drink or whatever refreshment he may desire. Then I have some questions. First: how was he able to find me?'
While this was being translated, Sun kept his pewter-coloured eyes fixed on Aris's sallow, pitted face, then watched the mouth show its plentiful gold fillings as it answered. This man had behaved well, no better than any politically-conscious Chinese would, but surprisingly well for a Westerner and a non-Britisher.
Doni had leaned forward to pour more brandy into the glass that was being shakily held out to her. Now she heaved her body back on to the cushions, adjusting a shoulder-strap and revealing light wisps of uncut fine hair in the armpit. She enunciated carefully in her dry voice, 'He said he thinks it's necessary to warn you, and he had received half only of his money before.'
'That's why he made his way here, not how he knew where to come. Again.'
The colonel, sitting just as before, waited with his invariable and unnerving patience.
'He said they all were showed a map, in case that a man was killed.'
'Remarkable forethought and pessimism. Fully justified, as it's turned out. Well, I think I have enough for the moment.'
Aris gulped brandy and said something on his own account. He appeared uneasy. Perhaps he was discomforted by the bland politeness with which his story of abject and spectacular failure had been received. Fear,
