They were in full EOKA dress uniform: filthy dirty sheepskins, sweat-saturated woollen shirts, and baggy trousers which hadn’t seen a tub in ten years. Ammunition belts worn across their bodies. One beard, one moustache with four days’ stubble, and one spotty teenager with a twitch – I’d have to keep an eye on Pete. The girl was about six years old, and had a grubby face. She carried a dirty white scrap of a flag on a short stick. The beard had an old German machine pistol dangling from one hand, the moustache had a rifle, and the spotty kid with a twitch had a small pistol. The priest, remarkably, had simply a smile. He wore a full-length priestly black number. Coco Chanel would have loved his sense of style.
I heard and felt Warboys leave the wagon. He left his door open; a little cover against a back shooter, I’d guess. He moved up alongside us, but not into the machine gun’s field of fire. I noticed that the boy had a black eye, and there was a recent red blow mark high on the moustache’s cheekbone. Warboys spoke first; so cool you’d have thought he was announcing the guests at a mess dinner. English.
‘Hello, Adonis. Everything OK? No problems?’
Eventually, after a lifetime, the priest replied, ‘Hello, Tony. Yes, everything is fine. As we agreed. Everyone is pleased to see you.’ That was a turn-up for the book. If Makarios had been telling the truth all this time, the villagers must have been the first GCs to be pleased to see an Englishman in about ten years. Warboys failed to respond, so the priest added, ‘If there was an ambush it would have been sprung already. My friends here,’ he indicated the three fighters, ‘are here to save face, nothing more.’
‘S . . . o . . . o.’ Warboys drew the sound out. ‘You have something which belongs to us, and we agreed a price for her return.’
‘We did.’ The priest looked a bit shifty. ‘But we have to talk about the money again. My friends here, and my villagers, have been unable to agree the sum.’ So, we were here to do a hostage exchange, and the first EOKA men I had seen in the flesh were going to shake us down.
‘Then keep her,’ Warboys said tersely.
The priest looked agonized. He spread his hands, and said, ‘Please, Tony.’
Warboys sounded doubtful.
‘We agreed one hundred pounds sterling, Adonis, and you shook hands on it.’
‘I did. But these are poor people, Tony. Farmers and peasants. They could only raise thirty-five.’
That was interesting. Something was slightly arse about face here.
Pete leaned over and whispered, ‘This is curious. I think they are paying us to take the woman away. Do you understand it?’
‘No more than you do.’
Warboys hadn’t said anything, so the priest continued. ‘This is so important to them, Tony, that Leonidas has led two of his captains down here to meet you. You can select one as hostage to ensure your safe passage out of the hills. You must take this girl away – she is disturbing the village. She will not choose. Men fight over her.’
Leonidas was a famous EOKA killer and leader. Like many of the successful EOKA men he had taken a field name from the ranks of the Greek heroes. What ill could befall the leader of three hundred Spartans? If he had come to supervise the exchange in person something very serious was going on here.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t kill her, and have done with it,’ Warboys observed. His voice was low-key. Disinterested.
The moustache spoke for the first time. Good English, but a gravelly voice born of a love of tobacco.
‘And start a civil war, Englishman? There are men who think they are in love with her already. Read the classics – do you think Greeks learned nothing in Troy?’
Warboys let the ensuing silence drag on a bit. Negotiation was obviously one of his strong points. Then he sighed and said, ‘OK, Adonis. Just this once, in memory of our past friendship – for thirty-five pounds I will take Leonidas’s hand on it, and take the girl.’
The priest momentarily looked as if he was about to cry, but he was made of good stuff. He said, ‘Thank you, Tony. I will not forget this.’ Then he looked at his feet, almost as if he was ashamed.
Warboys moved towards the three armed men, his right hand extended for the ritual handshake. He wasn’t taking any chances though: his left arm rested on his Sten, which he wore over his left shoulder on a sling. Moustache stepped forward, and held out his hand, but Warboys ignored it. He moved to stand in front of the boy, offered his hand and said, ‘Hello, Leonidas.’
‘Hello, Lion.’
I suppose that there wasn’t all that much difference in their names. The boy seemed to change almost as we watched him. He stopped twitching immediately, and straightened up from the slouch. Even his spare frame seemed to fill out. Not a boy: a man then. Maybe he was in his mid-twenties. He smiled a spiteful smile, handed his pistol to the priest and took Warboys’s outstretched hand. Two enemies; eye to eye. I had seen this sort of thing before – and it always ended in tears. I suppose everyone on the square knew then that Leonidas was going to take the long ride down the mountain with us. His two older captains looked anguished, but they didn’t protest – he had them completely under control, which impressed me.
Warboys asked ironically, ‘Where is she, this demon?’
‘She is besieging a farm.’ Leonidas shrugged. ‘Fifteen minutes. No more.’
‘You will accompany us?’
‘Of course. I gave the priest my word.’
Pat and Warboys handcuffed Leonidas’s hands behind his back before they helped him into the back of the wagon with us. It was a tense moment. Anger and
