Although they had parted with half promises of meeting again, Partington’s call was unexpected, and Janet responded at once and not just because she had time to occupy before the Thursday meeting. Partington remained her official link, the conduit she still might have to use.
They met at the Ekali, on St. Spyridon Street, and without Partington’s wife this time. Janet let the diplomat guide her through the meze, the Cypriot way of eating fish and meat and vegetables ferried in practically continuous procession from the kitchen: it all came too quickly for her properly to enjoy.
“So how’s it going?” asked Partington.
“I don’t know, not really,” said Janet, guardedly.
“You’re wasting your time, you know?”
“Maybe,” Janet said. She paused, revolving her wine glass between her fingers, and then said: “Let’s talk hypothetically for a moment. Let’s say-just say-that I was told something that looked good. Some sort of new information.”
Partington was staring intently at her across the table and momentarily Janet wondered if she should not have delayed this conversation until after Thursday. “All right, let’s just say that,” agreed Partington.
“It would have to be properly assessed: judged whether it was accurate or not, wouldn’t it?”
“Go on.”
“So who would do it?”
“Why don’t we stop talking hypothetically?” challenged the diplomat. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re really saying?”
“I’m not saying anything at the moment.”
“At the moment!”
Damn, thought Janet. She said: “There might be a possibility of my learning something.”
“Who from?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Won’t say,” Janet qualified.
“Why not?” Partington repeated.
“Because at the moment there’s nothing to say. It’s all too vague.”
“Don’t,” Partington said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t go on… get any further inveigled… in whatever it is you’re caught up in.”
“This isn’t what I want to hear.”
“It’s the only thing you need to hear.”
“I’m not giving up! When the hell will people accept that!”
“I won’t help you, Janet. Encourage you.”
“I told you I’d seen the Americans?”
“Yes,” Partington agreed, curiously.
“Actually, they saw me,” the woman admitted. “Warned me off. If I tried to tell them anything, they wouldn’t listen.”
“I’m not sure I’m following.”
“Would you listen?” Janet asked, openly.
“I told you before that we couldn’t get mixed up in this.”
“I’m not asking you to get mixed up in anything!” Janet pleaded. “I’ve told you the Americans wouldn’t listen to me. But they would to you.”
“Which would make it official.”
“No!” Janet protested. “I know the way embassies work: all about the backdoor conversations.”
Partington shook his head. “Not about something as sensitive as this: it’s too important. Which you know it is. I couldn’t become linked unofficially. It would have to be official.”
“All right, then! Will you pass on anything officially?”
Partington leaned closer towards her, over the table. “Tell me what it is!” he insisted. “Tell me who you’re dealing with, how they operate, where they operate. What they’re doing: everything. Only when I know everything-and I really mean everything -will I ever begin to contemplate answering your question.”
It was not an outright refusal. Janet knew she was seeking a supportive straw: in fact it was as firm an undertaking as she could have expected, from what she’d told him. “I can’t, not yet.”
“When!”
Janet opened her mouth to speak and then clamped it shut. “A few days,” she said, instead.
“This week!”
“I’m not sure,” said Janet, trying to escape the pressure. “I hope so but maybe not so soon.”
“What guarantees have you got?”
Janet smiled, thinking the question naive and surprised the man posed it. “What sort of guarantees could I have?”
“Exactly,” said the man, turning her answer against her. “Don’t do it!” he repeated. “By yourself you can’t do anything that is going to get John free!”
Janet sipped her neglected wine, refusing to get on the roundabout. “Thank you for listening,” she said. “And for saying what you did: what you were able to say, that is.”
“I haven’t said anything: given any undertaking,” Partington insisted at once.
Always the need for a diplomatic avenue of escape, thought Janet. She said: “I haven’t inferred any undertaking.”
For the first time for many minutes the man looked away from her. He said: “I feel I’m failing your father.”
Don’t sit with your hands between your legs then, thought Janet, irritably. She said: “If there is a need for us to talk… about what we’ve been discusing now… and it’s out of office hours, can I call you at home?”
“Of course you can.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I can’t say anything to stop you?”
“You know you can’t.”
“Then…” Partington began but Janet cut in.
“… be careful,” she completed.
“Yes,” he said, seriously. “For God’s sake be careful.”
Janet returned unhurriedly to the hotel, quieted but not completely disheartened by the encounter. And when she entered the foyer her mood lifted abruptly at the sight of a group of American tourists crowded around the cashier’s desk negotiating the exchange of travelers’ checks. Briefly she stood, watching, realizing she knew the way to protect the money demand, wondering why it had taken her so long to think of it.
The last intervening day dragged boringly by and Janet was up once more at first light on Thursday, impatient to begin. She made herself eat and thought as carefully as she had before about how to dress and as before decided upon jeans and a shapeless shirt. She checked the car, the oil and the water as well as the fuel, and timed her arrival at the bank to give herself two hours to reach the meeting spot, without the need to return again to the hotel.
At the bank she insisted upon a bearer’s letter of credit endorsed in her name, waiting while the official went through the procedure, alert to his using the telephone. He didn’t, not that she saw, but Janet knew a message could have been passed to Zarpas through any of the clerks and lesser officials whom the man apparently felt it necessary to consult.
She left the bank imagining their continued concentration and was glad she had not parked the hire car where they could have identified it to record the number. The encouragement was short-lived: it would only take Zarpas minutes to find out at the hotel, she guessed.
The journey to Larnaca took Janet longer than she’d scheduled because there was a delay of nearly thirty minutes getting around a vegetable lorry which had overturned, shedding its load, on the outskirts of Markon. She drove fast afterwards, to catch up, and still reached Larnaca with forty-five minutes in hand. She headed directly out upon the hotel-lined road, seeing no reason why she should not get to the cafe ahead of time.
She did, by fifteen minutes, but the three men were already there, sitting proprietorially at the same outside table, drinking ouzo as they had been the night of the first encounter. As before they studied her approach across the open area, each quite expressionless. The smell of bad cooking oil was as bad as it had been on Monday and Janet wondered if that were why they occupied the verandah instead of the inside area. The captain identified to her as Stavos still wore his suit: when Janet got close she could see in the brighter daylight that it was very old, greasy with age.
“I’m glad to see you here,” she said.
“There was an arrangement,” the moustached man reminded her.
Janet pulled a chair away from the table so that she could sit directly opposite him and said: “Well?”
Instead of replying, the man looked slightly over her shoulder and Janet turned to the attentive boy with the tray. Impatiently she ordered beer, because it would come capped, and the men indicated three more ouzos. Turning back to Stavos, she said: “Have you found out anything!”