He crossed a rock-torrent by the much-worn stone bridge, over which all their supplies had come; the water still gnashed as it leaped through the sluice and into the stony bed it had carved for itself the other side. At the last corner before he turned west he repeated the familiar action which had become a habit-pattern with them all — stopping for ten minutes under the oak tree to see if anyone followed him along the path, and then lighting a cigarette. He could hear the thin beat of his heart in the crisp mountain air — a small tedious noise as of knitting needles at work in his breast.
From here on it was along the level crown of Nanolithos; the road turned and twisted under frowning limestone cliffs. He walked it with an emphatic certainty, imitating in his own mind the thousand and one journeys he had made along it in the past. Yes, here was the tiny pink shrine to St. Nicholas with its battered ikon and broken lamp; and near it on the tor the rubble left from the ruined Venetian tower.
He skirted them both and passed steadily on until the massive front of dark rock divided itself into a ravine, with a solitary pathway running down the centre. He had reached the entrance to their operation-headquarters, and for a moment he stopped to watch the shadows playing on the surfaces of rock. He felt stirring within him, deeper than his disease of mind, something like alarm — as if somewhere among those balconies of rock a watcher was sitting and observing him with invisible eyes. Wherever he turned his gaze, however, his eyes met nothing. A bush waved in the wind for a second and frightened him with its resemblance to the camouflage of a sharpshooter. He slung the pack on to one shoulder and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. In the khaki pack he carried his lunch and the old bent entrenching-tool which, for some reason or other, he had been carrying about for so many years. He remembered now Hogarth’s explanation of the reason, and smiled. Had he really been reserving it for this moment, this time and place, on a mountain-range in Crete?
He walked steadily down the causeway and through the archway. It was with a kind of numb incomprehension that he saw once more the exact site upon which Böcklin had been killed; somehow he had expected to find it disappeared, transformed, perhaps removed altogether by a landslide. Yet here it was completely unchanged: the familiar orange seams of rock, the knot they had used as a target for their pistols, even the waterlogged shreds of the old ammunition box upon which Böcklin had been sitting when he died. The sweat had started out upon his head; he could feel its coldness in the breath of the wind that played around the ravine. He stood staring stupidly at the rock, which at this point was full of caves and foxholes. In them the wind whistled shrilly. Familiar debris still lay about, broken matchboxes, bandages, a torn sock, some exhausted revolver bullets. He stopped and picked up an empty case, turning it over and over in his cold fingers. Then once more he had the feeling that perhaps he was being watched, and looked up at the frowning sills of rock above, but all was still as death. The wind moaned in the central cavern which was set like a sinus under the cliff. The marks of their fires still dirtied the walls. Outside there was nothing. High in the cloudless blue an eagle sat its chariot of Greek air; the grass rustled quietly around his boots. This was the exact spot, in the shadow of the cliff, where Böcklin’s grave had been; the winter rains had washed out any depression in the ground.
It was almost absently that Baird began to dig; but before he did so he sat down close to the grave and ate ravenously. Somehow his agitation had translated itself into a devouring physical hunger. The bread and cheese tasted delicious in that cold air. He had filled an empty beer bottle at the rock-spring. Now as he ate and drank he asked himself what he was going to do with Böcklin’s body when he had exhumed it. The monastery was half an hour off; he would have to notify the Abbot and the sacristan of his desire to bury him in consecrated ground. And if they objected?
Putting these vexatious afterthoughts aside he took up his entrenching-tool and began the work. Somewhere out of sight a bird was singing softly, complainingly, in that cold air. He dug with circumspection, gently as an archaeologist afraid of damaging a trophy. The earth was not hard, for it lay in the dense shadow of the cliff where the dews could reach it. He paused for a moment to roll up his sleeves before resuming the work. How would Böcklin look now?
It was only after an hour’s work that it suddenly became clear to him that Böcklin was not there. The idea was borne in slowly upon a long train of evidence, and for some time he refused to countenance it. But by the time the sun had passed its zenith he had dug himself a hole large enough to prove the point conclusively. At first he felt his back and shoulders convulsed by a kind of shiver — as if the chill air of the mountain had suddenly affected him. He went on working, however, long after the probability had become a certainty. It seemed somehow imperative to find the body; and yet there was not a single trace of it to be found. He walked up and down the edges of the burrow he had dug, smoking and thinking furiously. Was it possible that a War Graves unit had removed the body to a military cemetery? It was most unlikely, for they would have their work cut out on chartered battlefields — like those near Canea and Retimo. Besides, who could have reported Böcklin’s death? Or had the body decayed? He kicked around in the pit for a while, sifting the rich clayey compost through his fingers, searching for traces that would give him some clue: tunic-buttons, rags, medals. There was absolutely no trace of his victim, and he suddenly sat down on a rock with a gesture of acceptance and began to laugh. Agitation and relief mingled with a confused amazement. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps Hogarth, in order to complete the pattern of symbolism, had deliberately removed Böcklin. “That’s it,” he said to himself, still laughing, “that old bastard Hogarth has done it.” He had a long drink of water and sat for a while soberly on a rock, smoking, his eyes fixed upon the grave. Then they wandered to the mouldy remnants of the ammunition box. Somewhere, in the depths of his mind, he felt that a corner had been turned; and yet after a while he was so overcome by his thoughts and the oppressive silence that had descended upon the place that he got up abruptly and moved off, tossing his spade into the hole he had dug with it.
He soon found himself sitting in a grove of ilex and arbutus on the opposite hill-side, enjoying a sensation of relief and deliverance — as if he had conquered a grave hazard. Through the waving fronds he caught sight of the sea from time to time. Its broad candid blue tamed his anxiety. He drank in the keen air with a heightened delight.
The shadows were already lengthening when he rose and followed a rocky bridle-path downhill. He had decided to walk across to St. George and see whether the old Abbot was indeed still there; in Canea they seemed to think he was. Perhaps he could throw some light on the question of Böcklin. And over and above all these things there was the question of finding out what the good Abbot was doing with the smuggled ammunition that Whitehall were so anxious about. It would be the best policy of all to call direct on the Abbot John before his arrival had been announced; Baird’s experience of Greeks had taught him that boldness was the only method to obtain his ends.