Odysseus might have been murdered by his wife's suitors had he gone straight to his house alone and unarmed; but his natural caution led him first to appear as a castaway, so that he could find out what had been taking place during his absence. In turn, he revealed himself to his old shepherd, his father and his son, then he went to his own house as a beggar. No one there recognized him, except his old dog, who crept off a dung-heap to welcome him, then died at his feet. The place was filled with the suitors, who had taken it over and were wasting his substance in riotous living. While they were drinking at a banquet, Odysseus and Telemachus hid all their arms, then rallied their own faithful servants and exacted vengeance, slaying the leading interlopers with their arrows and driving the rest from the house.
As this bare outline of the greatest adventure story ever written ran through Robbie's mind, he decided that he could not leave it out. By then, the aircraft had passed over the southern tip of Kos. To the right lay the marvellous prospect of the coast of Turkey, with its mile upon mile of mountains outlined against the blue sky. Before them, only a few miles off, lay the great island of Rhodes.
Sheltered by the Turkish mountains from the east, and further south than the mainland of Greece, it was, Robbie knew, one of the most favoured spots in the world. It was said not to have been there when Zeus had taken land as his Kingdom and had given Poseidon dominion over water, but to have been thrown up later by a volcanic eruption. Apollo had asked Zeus for it and it had been given to him. It was his own tiny province and he had made it a land of sunshine and roses.
The aircraft landed and the passengers walked across the tarmac to the small airport building. Then ensued the usual wait while the baggage was being unloaded. Robbie and Stephanie sat down at a table and had cups of coffee. While they were drinking it, one of the airport men came through carrying a big bundle of the morning's newspapers which had just come off the plane. He was carrying one loose copy in his hand. Whistling cheerfully as he passed, he threw this copy on the bar counter. It did not land squarely and slipped off near Robbie's feet. He picked it up and, as there was no one behind the bar at that moment to whom to hand it, he unfolded it. The headline in heavy type on the front page was a cheerful one:
'soviet and u.s. accept india's offer to mediate'
Then, further down the page, another headline in smaller type caught his eye. It ran: 'Police anxious to trace British Ambassador's nephew.'
24
The Persistent American
The muscles round Robbie's mouth tightened and he swiftly read the paragraph, which ran:
'On Saturday evening last a fatal accident occurred on the Olympia-Tripolis road some miles west of Vitina. A Mercedes driven by Mr. Carl Cepicka, an official of the Czechoslovak Legation, ran into another car, sending it over the precipice. The second car is believed to have contained Mr. Robert Grenn, the nephew of the British Ambassador, and Mrs. Vaclav Barak, the wife of another official of the Czechoslovak Legation, who are known to have left Athens together on March 28th.
Mrs. Barak went over with the car, which was later found burnt out, and Mr. Cepicka is reported to have died shortly after the accident. Mr. Grenn, however, is said to have jumped from the car before it went over; but he has since disappeared, and the police are anxious to get in touch with him.'
Stephanie had leant over and also read the paragraph. Robbie re-folded the paper and put it behind him on the bar, then she said in a low voice: 'We had to expect they would put something in, and it might be worse. Evidently the police have not yet let on to the Press about the way Cepicka met his death. They may think, too, that making it look as though they want to question you only about the accident will induce you to give yourself up. Anyway, this won't start a public hue and cry after you.'
Seeing the paragraph had brought Robbie sadly down to earth; but he took such comfort as he could from her comment, and soon afterward recovered his spirits sufficiently to take an interest in the pretty country through which a taxi they had secured was taking them. The Airport lay inland, but the road from it led to the north-west coast, then ran right round the northern end of the island to the city of Rhodes, which faced east from its tip. The run gave them no sight of the city as the Hotel des Roses lay at its northern extremity, a palatial block surrounded by its own gardens and overlooking its private bathing beach.
They were there soon after eleven o'clock. Robbie duly signed the register for them as Monsieur and Madame Max Thevanaz of Basle and they were shown up to a comfortable room with twin beds, windows looking out on the sea and a private bathroom.
For the first time in his life Robbie was about to share a room with a girl, and the thought suddenly made him feel terribly self-conscious. To hide his embarrassment, he quickly pretended to be absorbed in the wonderful prospect of the deep blue sea and the Turkish coast, with its chain of snow-capped mountains. But Stephanie, being used to sharing a hotel room with her husband, took things in her stride. As soon as the porter had brought up their luggage, she began to allot the ample cupboard and drawer space between Robbie and herself, then, humming a little tune, started to unpack.
Before lunch, they explored the amenities downstairs—a seemingly endless succession of spacious lounges, terraces, bars, a ballroom and two restaurants. But, for the size of the place, there were comparatively few people about, and when they went to the office to get a map of the town, an assistant manager told them gloomily that the war-scare had led to many cancelled bookings.
Immediately after they had lunched, they set off for the town and, in a half hour's walk, were amazed by its contrasts. Rhodes and the other islands of the Dodecanese had been liberated from the Turks in 1912 and occupied by the French in 1915 with a promise that, after an Allied victory, they would be restored to Greece, but by the Treaty of Sevres they had been awarded to Italy. The Italians had then occupied them for over a quarter of a century, until expelled after the Second World War.
Whatever views one might hold about Mussolini, it was evident that Rhodes owed him a great debt. Between the des Roses and the 'new' town stood half a dozen splendid buildings of golden-yellow stone, erected by the Italians to house their Administration of the Dodecanese, and one for the Municipality of Rhodes with an arcade modelled on that of the Palace of the Doges in Venice.
The new town, too, had no resemblance to Tripolis or Argos. Instead of a maze of alleys for a market and streets of ramshackle buildings, its market stalls were housed in the long sides of one building that formed a hexagon, having a big open space and a bandstand in the middle. In the well-kept streets that surrounded the market, there were scores of modern shops.
Seaward of the new town lay the harbour of Mandrakhi, with the old castle of St. Nicholas at the end of its mole, and two statues of antlered deer gracing the pylons at either side of its entrance. Somewhere there, Robbie told Stephanie, had once stood the Colossus of Rhodes, which the ancients had accounted one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It had been a bronze statue of Apollo, over a hundred feet in height and with thumbs so large that only a big man could make his hands meet when embracing one in his arms. But it had been the pride of Rhodes —then a great sea-power—for only fifty-six years. In 224 b.c. it had been overthrown by an earthquake and all traces of it had long since vanished.