The unspoken 'if' behind this statement silenced all three for an instant. Then Litsas sprang up and lifted the rust-pocked lid of the cooler.
'I'm going to have a beer,' he grunted. 'Let's finish that too. Anybody else?'
Ariadne, sitting on the deck with her knees drawn up and her gaze lowered, shook her head. Bond also declined. He had had enough of the thin, soapy local brew.
Litsas leant the neck of the bottle against the cooler lid and banged the cap off with the end of his fist. He seemed to pour the beer straight down without swallowing.
'Now,' he said, wiping his mouth, 'again the battle-plan, James, if you please. We can't have it too many times.'
'I agree.' Bond spread open on the deck the sketch-plan he had roughed out on the back of a chart. 'We leave here at eight PM and go round by the north coast. Taking it easy, we should get to that little beach about ten...'
More thoughtfully than before, Ariadne shook her head. 'I still say it's too early. Everybody will be awake and watching.'
'They'll be that all night tonight. They won't be expecting us then. We don't know what their time-table is, so we daren't leave it until late. And at ten o'clock there'll be plenty of other boats around, so there'll be nothing special about us.'
'That's logical,' said Ariadne in her brisk student's tone. 'Go on, James.'
'Good. We drive the _Cynthia__'s bows up on to the beach and moor her. Now, are you sure that's possible, Niko?'
'It must be, mustn't it? We can't fool about with anchor-chains then. Anyhow, leave it to me. No problem.'
'Then we climb the cliff. Not nearly as difficult as it sounds. But we'll need a sling for the tommy-gun - must have both hands free.'
Litsas nodded. 'My department. Easy.'
'Now here' - Bond put his forefinger on the sketch-map - 'there's this shelf of rock where Niko shot the Russian. Then the troublesome part I told you about; just troublesome; not difficult or dangerous. After that....'
Bond took over ten minutes to describe minutely the route to the enemy's house and the surrounding terrain. 'We halt here,' he said finally, pointing to the last bend in the rocky gully that led down to the house. 'Niko and I move uphill and round until we're in position to make a run for the rear terrace. That move'll be easy going, comparatively. Should take us about fifteen minutes to get to our assault station. As soon as we're there, we go in together. By that time, Ariadne, you'll have moved down the gully to the cover of that slab of stone I mentioned. You'll hear us make contact all right. From then on, this is what you do. As soon as the shooting starts you begin counting slowly. If you see anybody, shoot him and go straight in at the side door. Go to the foot of the stairs and cover the rooms opening off the passage. We'll join you there. Blaze away at any stranger you see - they won't be letting my chief run about the house, you can be sure.
'Alternatively, if you _don't__ see anybody early on, count on to thirty. Then you go in by the side door. But not unless there's shooting still going on inside the house. No shooting will mean that our assault has failed. In that event, go back the way you came, and get away in the _Cynthia__ - Niko will make it easy for you to cast off and he'll show you how to start the motor. Then disappear. Steer well clear of the islet. It won't be a healthy place to be if these people have anything to do with it. The rest of it will be up to you. I'll give you a letter which I'd like you to take to the British Embassy in Athens.
'Any questions? Then let's all get what rest we can. We're going to need it.'
Bond's sleep, by Ariadne's side on an improvised bed of seat-cushions, was fitful and haunted. A formless being, a shape too fantastic to be identified, pursued him through his dreams. He fled from it across a perfectly smooth plain of marble. At the far side of this were geometrical rows of trees, all identical, all of formalized shape, like representations in an architect's drawing. As he ran between them, one after another exploded silently into a puff of flame, leaving nothing behind. When he looked back to see what was doing this, he found himself face to face with a brick wall constructed in a strange way, such that the bands of mortar were as broad as the bricks themselves. A distant humming roar became audible and the wall began to tilt towards him. Before it could collapse, Bond had forced himself out of sleep, but the steady humming continued. With a strong sense, even in his half-awakened state, of the illogic of the action, Bond got up, twitched aside a corner of the awning and peered out.
What he saw was, to him, disappointingly irrelevant. With the vague but oppressive memory of his dream upon him, Bond gazed lethargically at a large, expensive-looking grey motor-boat which was just throttling down in the bay. A rich party, no doubt, in search of a bathing spot. Idly, he ran his eyes over the decks of the new arrival. Nothing special was to be seen there. No movement or figure presented itself. It was as if the thing _were__ controlled from afar by wireless.
Still drowsy, Bond dropped the awning and returned to sleep. He did not hear the muted roar of the motor-boat's engines as, its obscure mission completed, it backed away from the shore and moved slowly out of the anchorage. And, obviously, he could not have known of its arrival in the smaller inlet that lay a couple of hundred yards to the east, nor of the installation of an observer among the curious volcanic arches in the coloured rocks lining that side of the bay.
When Bond awoke finally, the light had taken on that faintest and most melancholy hint of dullness that, in Greece as nowhere else, makes late afternoon so oddly indistinguishable from early morning. Ariadne progressed in a second from deep childlike sleep to wary wakefulness. Blinking slowly, she looked at Bond.
'What do we do now?'
'What we do I don't know,' he said, kissing her. 'I only know what I do. And what I do is swim.'
'It's what I do, too.'
While Litsas slept on, they stripped to the skin and within seconds were side by side in the unbelievably clear water. Bond turned and grinned at Ariadne.
'This is rather daring of you, isn't it?' he asked. 'I thought Greek girls would die rather than be seen naked in public.' She laughed. 'That shows how little you understand. It isn't modesty or shame, it's social respectability.
