Stratton thought about asking him for a hotel, but he was habitually untrusting of strangers and liked to find his own accommodation, especially when on the ground himself. ‘We’re fine, thanks.’
‘Looks like a storm is coming,’ Cristos said.‘Maybe tonight. A good time to find a cosy restaurant with a log fire and a nice bottle of wine.’
Stratton could go along with that suggestion, although he doubted it was what Gabriel had in mind.
‘You look like you have just arrived . . . Would you like some tea or coffee?’
Stratton considered the offer. A cuppa would be nice and there wasn’t a cafe open in the immediate area. He looked over at Gabriel who was staring at the battlements and the rooftops, shaking his head, compounding his belief this was not the place.
‘Gabriel? Cup of tea? We need to take a moment to consider our next move.’
Gabriel looked at him, thought on it a few seconds and nodded his head.
Stratton looked back at Cristos with a smile. ‘Tea would be great, thanks.’
Cristos beamed. ‘Come in, come in,’ he beckoned and stepped inside his shop.
The travel shop was long and narrow, and covered with posters displaying inviting beaches, advertisements for boat trips, maps, charts and souvenirs. Cristos was standing by a little table where there were half a dozen mugs and an electric kettle.
‘Come in,’ Cristos said.‘How do you like your tea?’
‘Milk, one sugar,’ Stratton said.
‘And you?’ he said to Gabriel.
‘Black no sugar.’
‘Ah. American, no?’
Gabriel acknowledged it with a forced smile.
‘Please. Sit,’ Cristos said.
A row of chairs extended from the door to the back of the shop, intended for people waiting to make bookings.
Stratton and Gabriel studied the premises. One wall was practically covered with postcards from satisfied customers from all over the world.
‘If you don’t mind me saying, you looked a bit lost outside.’
‘Not lost.We were expecting to meet some friends but it seems no one else has turned up.’
Cristos nodded understandingly as he handed them a hot mug each. ‘Are you planning on staying long?’
‘No. Just passing through,’ Stratton said as he sipped his tea. It tasted good. ‘Nice cuppa.’
‘Where are you off to next?’
‘Not sure.’
‘If you need transport, you are in the right place.’
‘We certainly are,’ Stratton said, smiling politely.
Gabriel sat down and nursed his tea as he stared into space.
‘We don’t get many tourists this time of year. Usually the ones more interested in the island’s ancient and medieval history prefer to come when the crowds of holiday makers have gone.’
‘That’s us.’
‘Are you interested in anything in particular? This city was built in the fourteenth century, but we have places dating much further back.’
Stratton stared at Cristos as he considered something. ‘You probably know the Mediterranean pretty well.’
‘I am second-generation travel shop. My father and mother had this place forty-eight years ago. There’s not much I don’t know about this part of the world.’
‘If I were to describe a town that had a horseshoe-shaped harbour, that once had a large population - several thousand people, a thousand houses say - but only a few people now lived in it, where would you think I was talking about?’
Cristos grinned.‘Kastellorizo,’ he said without hesitation. ‘Have you been there?’
‘No.’
‘Well you have just described it as if you have seen it for yourself.’
‘Kasta . . .?’
‘Kastellorizo. It’s an island. Kastellorizo means red castle.’
‘It has a castle too?’
‘Yes. The same knights who built this place built it. The soil is red so they called it
‘Where is it?’
‘Off the coast of Turkey, about seven hours from here by boat and forty minutes by plane.’
‘And this place is practically deserted?’
‘Before the First World War it had seventeen thousand people on it. It was . . . how you say . . . when people are taken from a sinking ship?’
‘Rescued?’ Stratton offered.
‘Yes, but . . . evak . . .’
‘Evacuated.’
‘Yes. It was evacuated during the Second World War by the British Navy before the Germans came. Then it was mostly burned down. Some say it was the Germans who looted it, some say the British. Who knows? Someone does, I suppose.Then, after the war, everyone was happy in their new countries, and so only a few people went back there. There was not much to go back to. There’s a ferry every few days and not many people go or come from there.’ Cristos smelt the potential business. ‘You want me to check on flights or ferries for you?’ he asked.
Stratton looked around at Gabriel who was staring at Cristos.
‘Could you?’ Stratton asked, looking back at Cristos.
‘That’s what I do for a living,’ Cristos said, pulling a book from a stack on his desk and flicking through the pages. ‘When do you want to go?’
‘Today, if we can,’ Stratton said, always preferring movement to stagnation.
Cristos paused to look at the two men, shrugged and carried on thumbing through the book. ‘We will do our best,’ he said.
Half an hour later, Stratton and Gabriel were heading out of the old city and along the waterfront towards the harbour. There were no flights scheduled from Rhodes to Kastellorizo for the next five days and even then there was no certainty it wouldn’t be cancelled, but there happened to be a ferry leaving for the island late that morning.The boat’s advertised departure and arrival times were not to be taken seriously, Cristos had advised, listing several factors that included unreliable engines and machinery as well as captain and crew lethargy. If all went well, bearing in mind the likely storm, it was expected to arrive at around seven in the evening, give or take an hour, which posed one other problem for them. Accommodation. The phone cable from the mainland was over eighty years old and for unexplained reasons foul weather affected transmissions, which was why, according to Cristos, he could not contact any one of the handful of faxes or phones on the island to book rooms for them, although he promised to continue trying.
As they approached the harbour and identified their ferry, the only large boat in the harbour, Stratton phoned Sumners to tell him about their move and to set in motion his idea about getting as many photographs of similar harbours for Gabriel to take a look at if Kastellorizo was a dead end. As they rounded the corner of the mole, the poor condition of their boat became apparent. Rusty streaks from the rails on the main deck covered it from front to back, a stream of hot, dirty water spurted from a hole just above the waterline and the hum and rattle of the ancient engines grew louder the closer they got.
As Stratton and Gabriel approached the rear ramp, a crewman appeared - an older man with a roll-up stuck to his bottom lip - took their tickets, said something unintelligible while indicating inside the boat and walked away. They took it as an invitation to board and entered the ship, which smelt of a mixture of gasoline and sewage. On the other side of the vehicle deck they climbed a stairway that led to the upper deck, then pushed through a door into a large room filled with what looked like old aircraft seats. There were a hundred or so, all bolted to the floor in neat rows as in a cinema, except in this case they faced a long, grey, drab, metal bulkhead.
