“Marhaba,” she said, out of breath.
“The lady who speaks good Arabic.”
“I thought you had gone.”
“Gone?” He appeared apprehensive.
Janet nodded back towards the mooring. “The yacht you were on the other day. It’s sailed.”
“I fix engines,” said the man.
“I misunderstood: I thought you were a crewman.”
The man hitched himself on to a low wall, one leg swinging. “And you’re still here, too?”
Janet nodded. “Still looking,” she said, cautiously. No more mistakes, she promised herself.
He gestured generally in towards the town: they could both see the Marina bar. “What happened?”
“No luck,” she said.
“Such people do get there, sometimes,” said the man, urgently.
Janet abruptly gauged the cause of his uncertainty: the Arab thought she was going to demand her money back. Just as quickly she said: “I’m sure they do! I wasn’t doubting you.”
He relaxed, visibly. “Not easy to find,” he said.
“That’s why I’m glad I ran into you again.”
He tensed again, slightly. “Why?”
Janet indicated the bar in which she had been tricked. “I am not going to get anywhere trying to find people by myself, am I? I need more than just places.”
The man looked away from her, to the ground. Janet saw for the first time that he wasn’t wearing shoes: his feet were horny and calloused, as if he never did. Very quietly, practically to himself, he said: “Maybe it is possible.”
“What?” she demanded. “What may be possible?”
The Arab waved towards the marina and said: “Any idea how much those sorts of yachts cost?”
Janet forced herself to be patient, realizing it would have to be at his pace. “No,” she said.
“Thousands,” he said. “Half a million some of them, easily.”
“A lot of money,” Janet agreed, to keep the conversation going.
“Would you take a yacht costing that much somewhere where it might get damaged? Destroyed even?”
“Probably not.” Dear God, what sort of game was the awkward bastard playing now!
“Always important, to consider the cost of things.”
Awareness registered with her. Janet said: “I’m prepared to pay for help: for a proper introduction. Pay more than last time. But it’s got to work.”
The man looked back to her, smiling his gap-toothed smile. “Keep thinking about money,” he suggested. “What sort of boats don’t cost half a million and can sail much more safely in Lebanese waters?”
“I don’t…” began Janet and then stopped. “Fishing boats,” she said.
“Big industry here in Cyprus, fishing. Lot of boats.”
“How much?” Janet asked directly, fed up with the constant pirouettte.
“What exactly do you want?”
“To meet a man… men… who go there. Who know people who can find out things.”
“What sort of things?”
She would have to tell him. “There is a man, a hostage. I want to find out about him.”
The Arab’s face clouded. “That will not be easy.”
“I understand that.”
“Dangerous. Perhaps the people I am thinking about will not want to do it: will not be able to do it,” he said.
“Ask!” Janet pleaded.
The man nodded, head bent again in apparent thought. He said: “I will ask.”
“Now?”
He looked up, squinting against the sun in the cloudless sky. “Now the boats are out, not yet returned from the morning catch,” he said, professionally.
“When?”
“Late afternoon maybe. If I can find them.”
Janet guessed the vagueness was being intentionally introduced. She said: “One hundred pounds.”
He shook his head, sadly. “For something like this! Two hundred.”
“One hundred and fifty,” countered Janet. “And that must be for an introduction to people who can really help. I won’t pay for nothing.”
“Two hundred,” repeated the man.
She was in no position to bargain and he knew it, conceded Janet. She said: “Two hundred. But it’s got to be for something definite. A positive, worthwhile introduction.”
“I can’t guarantee that they will agree. Not for something like this.”
“I’ve accepted that,” Janet reminded him.
“Tonight, in the square,” said the Arab. “Seven.”
“You’ll know something by then?”
“You’ll have the money?”
It would mean driving back to Nicosia, thought Janet. But she had nothing else to do until that night’s appointment. She said: “I’ll have the money.”
“I’ll try to have arranged something.”
There was none of the euphoria during this journey back that there had been on the previous occasion when Janet thought she had made a contact. It looked promising, certainly. But then so had the encounter with someone who’d turned out to be a syphilitic thief. This time she’d want more, be less gullible. I’m learning, thought Janet: expensively but learning.
Janet did not bother to go through the assistant manager this time because the amount was so small, joining a line for an ordinary counter withdrawal. From the hotel she telephoned England, to give her parents assurance about her safety, dismissing her father’s query about her hopefulness during the last call by quickly saying that the approach that had looked so good then had turned out to be nothing, which was not really a lie. She lunched by the pool and that afternoon lay by it, for the first time not feeling bored: right not to become euphoric or even excited, but borrowing a word from the telephone conversation to England she decided she was allowed to be hopeful.
Unsure what to expect that evening, Janet dressed once more in jeans and an evening shirt and flat shoes. She chose a handbag with a long strap which she could loop across her body and at the moment of departure stood looking at the money she had withdrawn from the bank. Impulsively she stuffed it into the rear pocket of her jeans, not her handbag: she’d made the withdrawal in?20 notes and it lay flat and unobtrusive.
The route now was very familiar to her. Cautiously she had allowed herself more than enough time but there were no traffic holdups, so she was early. She parked in her accustomed place and strolled along the front and cut up to the square from the seaward side.
She saw him at once. He was sitting on a bench near the tourist information office. He’d changed into a blue workshirt, faded but clean, light-colored baggy trousers that had long ago lost any crease, and open-toed, open-heeled sandals. Janet knew he had not seen her and so for a few moments she remained in the shadow of a large and unidentified building, watching him. He looked very relaxed, apparently quite content for her to seek him, not bothering himself to find her.
He saw her when she began to approach, smiling but not standing. When she reached the bench he patted it, for her to sit. She remained looking down at him for a few moments and then lowered herself on to it leaving a wide gap between them.
“Well?” she said at once.
He nodded, satisfied with himself. “I have found people who are prepared to talk to you.”
“They can find something out?”
“That is for you to decide, when you meet them.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Right away?”
“We had a deal.”
“Which was for proper, useful contact,” Janet said, remembering the lost?5,000. “You get nothing until I meet your people…” She paused, realizing that the bargaining positions could be tilting in her favor now. “And that they can do something,” she added.
He looked steadily at her, not responding for a while. Then he said: “You have a car?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll need a car: it’s out of town.”
And she would be in it with him by herself, thought Janet, recalling the obvious sexual examination of their first encounter. “Where?” she asked, apprehensively.
“About five kilometers: on the road to Dhekelia.”
Even the same route as before. Janet said: “What are the arrangements?”
“There are three men, who jointly own a boat,” said the man. “They sail out of here although they live nearer to Dhekelia. They fish the mullet: it is better on the Lebanese coast. They say they know people.”