sniggered.
Bond stood stock still and waited.
'I see you from... up,' the man went on in a tone of good-humoured explanation. 'Now... we go up.' He pointed to the hillside with his left hand.
Bond made no move.
'No? Then... shoot you. Not too bad.' The Russian slapped his leg. 'Friend of me... up.' He made hoisting and carrying motions, but the revolver never wavered. 'Is difficult. You fall maybe. Me... that's all right.' Another snigger.
It was plain enough. The only hope was to wait for a chance of finding a moment's cover from the revolver during the proposed climb and before the absent friend made his appearance. Bond nodded.
'Good boy.' A gold-toothed grin. 'Come to here.' The left hand indicated a point on the platform well beyond rushing distance. Bond went to it.
'Now... gun of you. Slow, please. Slow slow.'
The revolver pointed steadily at Bond's breast-bone. Nobody can aim and fire faster than a man already on aim can fire. Helplessly, Bond took the Walther from his hip pocket and held it out in the palm of his hand.
'Intelligent. Throw... away.'
Another chance gone. Bond tossed his automatic aside and heard it land on rock.
'Friend of you' - a gesture towards the beach - 'no good, eh? Now... walk, Mister Bond. Slow slow.'
Bond was on the point of obeying when the other lurched abruptly as if slapped hard on the back and the unmistakable sharp bang of a medium-calibre cartridge came apparently from beneath their feet, immediately followed by the sound, thin but clear, of a rifle-bolt being pulled back and returned. There was one echo of the shot, distant and delayed.
The man's gun-arm had dropped. His eyes held Bond's with a dreadful look of puzzlement, of pleading to be told how this thing could have happened. Bond said hoarsely, 'You've been shot with a rifle, from the beach.' His heart was thumping. He never knew if his message was understood. The Russian had half turned to look behind him when a second shot flung him off balance. He went down the slope in a sort of slack-limbed dive and finished with his face in a heap of small stones. There was a patch of blood on one shoulder-blade and another above the hip.
After scooping up the Walther Bond made it to the beach in two minutes. Litsas had the dinghy already in the water, pushed off at once and grabbed the oars.
'Good shooting, Niko,' said Bond at length.
'Not bad, eh? Uphill too, but fighting in Greece makes you used to that. Anyhow, not more than two hundred yards. I dropped a Jerry staff-sergeant once at six hundred with that little beauty.' He gave the Lee Enfield, now lying across Bond's lap, an affectionate nod. 'These fellows today forget all about the rifle. If they see nothing for fifty feet all round they think they're safe. Eh, I bet our friend up there had a very big shock when I hit him.'
'He did,' said Bond in a hard voice, remembering the look on the man's face.
'I was watching jolly carefully but I had no idea he was there until he popped up at you. Didn't give me much time.'
'He saw you all right. He said as much.'
'Oh, really? Then he had no excuse at all to show himself to me like that and to stay exposed while he waved his gun at you. Who was he, anyhow?'
'One of Arenski's men. He saw me while he was patrolling the hillside and came down to cut me off.'
'I'm afraid we make the brave general very angry. Let's hope he doesn't try to interfere with our plans for tonight.'
Chapter 16
The Temporary Captain
AT NOON that day the _Altair__ was five miles due south of the port of Vrakonisi, running north-westwards. Visibility was excellent, promising fair weather to come, but the sea had again got up a little since the early morning, and the caique, moving diagonally across the direction of the waves, lurched clumsily from time to time. More clumsily, in fact, than an experienced hand at the wheel would have permitted.
George Ionides was relatively inexperienced with boats of this sort, though he was an expert handler of his own little coastal runabout, the twenty-four-foot _Cynthia__. He hoped the weather would not get any worse before it got better, not for his own sake - his next few hours' sailing would be mostly in the protection of one island or another - but for the sake of the _Cynthia__ and, to a less extent, of the people now on board her. What did they want with her and where were they making for?
First things first. With a satisfied grin, George brought the head of the _Altair__ round just far enough to take an extra steep sea squarely under the bow and so forestall any tendency to roll. He was learning fast; he always had. It was a matter of instinct, of being a natural sailor. His grandfather had often said.... But forget that. Those people. They were up to something illegal, no doubt of it. The two Greeks, the man and the girl, had been smooth and plausible enough, but the other man, the hard-faced Englishman, was undoubtedly a desperate type. George Ionides had seen that immediately. It had been no surprise to him at all when, an hour previously, the men had taken aboard the _Cynthia__ two objects wrapped in sacking that were clearly guns of some sort. George had politely turned his back, of course, and pretended to study the weather. It was not for nothing that he was a native of Cephalonia in the Ionian islands. That was the Cephalonian way of handling things: use your head, use your eyes, keep your mouth shut. So, except to agree to everything proposed to him, George had kept his mouth shut when this Athenian approached him at the harbour and suggested that, for a consideration of three thousand drachmas (half now, half later), he might be willing to exchange boats for thirty-six hours or so. He had merely nodded his head, as if such things happened every day, when the Athenian stipulated that the hand-over should take place, not here at the anchorage, but at a sea rendezvous to the south, and that he should let half an hour go by before making any move to set off. He had shown no surprise, let alone resistance, when the Athenian told him very forcefully that, as soon as the transfer was complete, he must head straight on south to Ios and stay there until the two parties rejoined contact tomorrow afternoon or evening. Cheerfully and readily, he had sailed south at a good eight knots until the _Cynthia__ was below the horizon. Then he had simply turned and headed north-west. For George had never had any intention of going to Ios. Not today, anyway. By six o'clock that evening at the latest he would be moored in the port of Paros. Anything like an early start in the morning would give him a nice comfortable southward run, with the weather behind him, down to Ios in plenty of time to be sitting innocently drinking coffee outside one of the harbour _tavernas__ when the _Cynthia__ arrived. He grinned to himself, then shouted to his
