We went down to the canoe and I resisted the temptation to kick the transistor into the water, and then again, the urge to hit Frau Spiegel over the head with a paddle as we passed her.
Out in the lake Katerina in a husky voice said, “Never mind, darling. We make it some other time.”
I paddled hard in a fury of sublimation.
Then as we came into the back of the island, she turned and kissed me, so that the canoe rocked wildly. As she got out, she said, “We have a deal, no? Always to be truthful with each other, to look for this profit?”
I nodded.
“So ... anything might be important? Small things?”
“Yes.”
She put her hand into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me.
“What’s this?” I began to unfold it.
“I make copy of a telegram Madame Vadarci got while we were in Dubrovnik. Maybe it helps.”
She turned and began to walk up the path that led back to the hotel. I watched the thrust of her long brown legs against the slope and the bright flutter of her dress until she was out of sight. The cable in my hands read:
Luka Pomina. Date as arranged.
Komira.
Underneath this Katerina had added a comment—
Sent in German from Athens.
I put a match to the message, let it burn away, and then dropped it overboard. I paddled around to the front of the hotel and ran the canoe ashore by the generator shed. Pomina and Komira didn’t mean a thing to me, but somewhere in my mind the word Luka was recently familiar.
An elderly woman was in the reception office, making out bills. I stopped and bought a couple of picture post-cards, and then asked her if she had a map of the island. She ferreted around in a cupboard for a while and finally produced a tourist map which looked as though someone had wrapped sandwiches in it. I took it up to my room and flopped out on the bed with it.
Mljet was a long, thin strip of island running roughly north-west to south-east. There were very few villages on it and most of the island was labelled – Nacionalni Park. On the southern side of the north-west end, a great arm of sea ran into the body of the land with a small entrance into the Veliko Jezero – which was the lake that had the island with the hotel on it. At the western end of this lake was a narrow entrance to another and smaller lake, the Malo Jezero. Beyond this lake a narrow strip of land separated it from the sea. There, marked in a small bay, protected by a few off-shore islands, was the word Pomina. Polace, the place where we had left the steamer, was marked on the northern side of the island, and in front of it was the word Luka. So, I guessed, Luka meant harbour or port. Fodor was silent on the subject.
At some date, already arranged, something was going to happen in – or off – the small port of Pomina. The map gave no clue to Komira.
There was a knock on the door. I slipped the map under my pillow, and called out.
Herr Walter Spiegel came in. He sat down on a chair, rested his silver-knobbed stick across his legs, gently mopped his face with a silk handkerchief, then beamed at me.
“You have a pleasant afternoon spent?”
“Not particularly.”
“You learn things?”
“Self-control mostly.”
He smiled, full of understanding for youth, and then because he thought he was using me, I decided to use him and get a second opinion and maybe a few crumbs of information. I said, “I don’t trust this girl Katerina Saxmann. She knows I’m following Madame Vadarci, but she plays along with it, without telling the old girl. I can’t figure her angle – and she gives nothing away. I thought I was good at mind reading but she has me baffled.”
He nodded, pursed his lips, frowned, and thought for a while, taking his time over all of them. Then he said weightily, “I give her much thought. She is a dedicated girl. Dedicated to herself. With a face, a figure, and an intelligence like hers what else could she be? Anything else would be a waste. She accepts that she has been chosen. But that is not all. Now she looks to see, and waits to see, what most she can make of it. She keeps you coming because you may ... sometime, somewhere ... be useful in her plans. But, of course, a girl like that does not work alone. Somewhere behind her is a man. This is psychology. A woman, no matter how beautiful, how intelligent, how determined, must always have a man. It is a law of nature.”
“Could be.” He was a shrewd old number, worth his place on the pay-roll more than ever Howard Johnson would be. Old school, too, no emotions, no heroics, just a job to do and nothing he liked better than a quiet evening with a book and then to bed. I said, “You and I know little, just keep our noses to the scent and jog along. I think she knows a great deal. Everything, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“Any idea who the man is?”
He smiled and it was full of friendly cunning and understanding. “I think you know that as well as I do. You do not go into some things with your eyes shut. Not these things.”
“I shouldn’t have thought he was her type.” I was thinking of Herr Stebelson and hoped he was. Stebelson was the only candidate in my book.
“What is type? There are only men and women, and the combinations are infinite. You will not have seen his dossier since
