'What a place to live!' Robbie muttered, turning away with a shudder. Tve no head for heights and within a week I bet I would have thrown myself over.'
'Fortunately, I don't mind them,' Stephanie replied. 'But all the same, I'd hate to live here, especially if I had children. I should be worried out of my wits. But I suppose the mothers in these places get used to it aod the children soon become as surefooted as goats/
The township, as they saw from the map, was called Tropaia, and soon after leaving it they began the long descent. For the better part of another hour they again slewed round bend after bend, occasionally slowing down to pass another vehicle, until they reached the fertile plain through which runs the river Alfios. The last lap was through charming woodland country, and it was just on five o'clock when they drove up a slope to the Spap Hotel.
Its main block, with a fine entrance hall and broad staircase, gave it something of the atmosphere of a big, private villa; but it had recently been built on to, and was now one of the few deluxe hotels in Greece, outside Athens. From the rooms they were given they could see, about a mile away, a part of the famous ruins and beyond them the curve of the broad river, but most of the ruins were hidden by tall Scotch pines which grew among them.
Their day had been a tiring one, so after resting they dined early with a view to getting in a long night. But before they went to bed, Robbie told Stephanie that he wanted her to drive him into Pirgos in the morning.
She expressed surprise that he was not anxious to see the temples; but he said that, as the next day was Saturday, if he did not make a start with his business in the morning he would have to waste the whole week-end.
As it was quite a short run, they reached the port by ten o'clock. It was nowhere near as large as Patras, but a little bigger than Tripolis, and most of the buildings were of the same shoddy variety. A few sites were occupied only by cracked walls and heaps of rubble, as the town had suffered from a long series of earthquakes.
They parked the car and Stephanie went off to have a 'hair-do' while Robbie set about locating the Czech group by the same means he had used in Corinth. In this somewhat larger town it took him longer, and he had to announce himself as a representative of United Kingdom Petroleum at three estate agents before he had any luck. Eventually, he learnt from a Mr. Levantis that the Czechs had bought a small factory some three kilometres to the south of the port. The factory had been partially destroyed by the last earthquake and then abandoned.
At half-past-twelve he rejoined Stephanie and asked her to drive him out of the town along the coast road until they were in sight of the factory. The solitary chimney had broken off about twenty feet up and some of the walls were jagged, with big gaps in them. But a small house to one side of it, in which the owner or manager had probably lived, still appeared intact, and several of the smaller buildings had their roofs on. After Robbie had studied the place for some minutes, Stephanie turned the car round and they drove back to Olympia in time for a late lunch.
Later in the afternoon they paid their first visit to the ruins, set so attractively among the sprinkling of tall pine trees. But Robbie seemed unable to get up much interest in them because his mind was now once more fuliy occupied with the Czechs.
On the Sunday morning he suggested to Stephanie that they should have a swim in the river; so they collected their bathing things and strolled down to it. The Alfios was several hundred yards wide there, but at that season the greater part of its bed consisted of dry, stony patches, between which the main stream and a few smaller ones meandered. However, after walking some way along the bank, they came upon a good-sized pool about five feet deep where water had collected from a little stream that flowed through it. They changed behind some bushes and on going in found the water delightfully warm, so they spent most of the morning either in it or sunbathing on the sandy bank.
It was not until they were seated at lunch that Robbie announced that he wanted to be driven into Pirgos again that afternoon. He then went on to say that he thought it fairly certain that the Czechs, like other people, would take Sunday off; so the odds were that most, if not all, of the group would have gone into the town, and that would give him a better chance than at any other time during the week to take some photographs without being caught.
Stephanie made no demur and by three o'clock she brought the car to a halt behind a group of tamarisks about two hundred yards from the factory. Instead of making for it, Robbie walked down to the beach, then sauntered slowly along it as though he were looking for pretty shells or brightly coloured stones. One wail round the half-ruined building merged into a stone jetty that ran out into the sea and barred his further progress along the beach. Turning inland, he followed the wall until he reached the first gap in it. He saw at once that it had recently been rendered impassable by a score of strands of barbed wire stretched at intervals of nine inches or less across it. But he had chosen his hour well. It was the middle of the siesta period and, on peering through the wire, he saw that, even if all the Czechs had not gone into the town, none of them was about.
The gap in the wall gave on to a spacious yard. Near the middle there stood a tall, steel tripod with very stout legs, the upper part of which he had already seen from a distance over the top of the wall. Near it, there was a small crane and a bulky piece of machinery, which he took to be some form of powerful motor or electric engine, under a shelter that had been rigged up to protect it from rain. The barbed wire was no impediment to his taking photographs so, resting his camera on one of the strands, he took two shots.
He then moved along the wall to another gap. That, too, was sealed off with barbed wire, and the view through it was the same from a slightly different angle; but it did include a better sight of a big pile of spiral screws, each about six feet long and one foot in diameter, so he took two more shots from there. Lastly, through a third gap round the corner of the wall, he got two photographs of a line of trolleys on rails that were evidently being used for running the earth churned out by the drills down to the jetty and from there into the sea. He then made his way back to the beach, sauntered along it again and so returned to the car.
'Did you get what you wanted?' Stephanie asked.
He nodded. 'Yes; and they are drilling after all.'
'Drilling?' she repeated interrogatively.
'Perhaps I didn't tell you; but the information my firm secured was that this Czech company meant to drill for oil. We couldn't believe it because there are not supposed to be sufficient oil deposits in Greece to make it worth while. We thought they might be up to something else. I mean . . he added hastily, 'establishing depots with storage tanks, and that sort of thing.'
'But you are satisfied now that what you were told is right?'
'Yes. There's no doubt they are drilling. I've got photographs of the plant and the tip-trucks they're using to run the churned-out earth down into the sea. One can only suppose that by some new radar process, or something, they have been able to detect oil deposits that no one else believed to exist.'
Stephanie gave a sigh of relief. 'Thank God for that, then. Now you have done your job you won't have to take any further risks of being beaten up. We can forget all this and concentrate on your book. That is if your firm will give you a few weeks' leave, and they jolly well ought to.'