“Never mind. How are the olives?”
“There are no olives up here, Uncle. Just apple and cherry orchards. Olives only grow down in the plain.”
McCready put the phone down and headed for the men’s room. Bill followed him. They waited till the only other occupant had left, checked the cubicles, and talked.
“Is Danny all right, boss?”
“Sure. He tailed Rowse to a hotel high in the Troodos Mountains. Seems Rowse has checked in. Danny’s in the village at a garage called Demetriou’s. He’ll wait for us there. The Libyan tail, the olive-skinned one, remained down here, apparently satisfied that Rowse would go where he was supposed to go.
“The car will be here shortly. I want you to take your grip and leave. Wait for us half a mile down the road.”
Thirty minutes later, Mr. Meldrum’s car indeed appeared—a Ford Orion with several dents, the only true sign of an “unmarked” car in Cyprus. The driver was an alert young staffer from the Nicosia Station. His name was Bertie Marks, and he spoke fluent Greek. They picked up Bill from under the shade of a tree by the wayside and headed for the mountains to the southwest. It was a long drive. It was dusk before they entered the picturesque village of Pedhoulas, heart of the Troodos Mountains cherry industry.
Danny was waiting for them in a café opposite the garage. Poor Mr. Demetriou had still not mended the rented car—Danny had ensured when he sabotaged it that it would take at least half the day to fix.
He pointed out the Hotel Apollonia, and he and Bill surveyed the surrounding countryside in the darkening light with professional eyes. They fixed on the mountain slope across the valley from the hotel’s splendid dining terrace, hefted their grips, and disappeared silently into the cherry orchards. One of them carried the hand-held communicator that Marks had brought from Nicosia. The other communicator stayed with McCready. The two SIS men found a smaller and less pretentious taverna in the village and checked in.
Rowse had arrived during the lunch hour, after a pleasant and leisurely drive from the airport hotel. He assumed he was being tailed by his SAS minders—and he certainly hoped he was.
The previous evening at Malta, he had deliberately dawdled through the passport and customs formalities. All the other passengers but one had cleared the formalities before him. Only the sallow young man from the Libyan Mukhabarat had hung back. That was when he knew “Mr. Aziz”—Hakim al-Mansour—had given him a tail. He did not look around for the SAS sergeants in the Malta concourse, hoping they would not try to approach him.
The Tripoli tail had not joined the flight to Nicosia, so he assumed another would be waiting for him there. And he was. Rowse had behaved perfectly naturally and had slept well. He had seen the Libyan leave him on the road out of the Nicosia airport complex, and he hoped there was an SAS man somewhere behind him. He took his time, but he never looked around or tried to make contact. There might be another Libyan posted in the hills.
There was a room available at the Apollonia, so he took it. Perhaps al-Mansour had arranged for it to be available—perhaps not. It was a pleasant room with stunning views over the valley to a hillside covered with cherry trees, which were now just beyond their bloom.
He lunched lightly but well off a local lamb casserole, washed down by a light Omhodos red wine, followed by fresh fruit. The hotel was an old taverna, well refurbished and modernized with added features such as a dining terrace built on piles out over the valley; the tables were set well apart under striped awnings. Whoever else was staying there, few had turned up for lunch. There was an elderly man with jet-black hair at a corner table on his own, who addressed the waiter in mumbled English, and several couples who were clearly Cypriots and might have simply come for lunch. When he entered the terrace, a very pretty younger woman had been leaving. Rowse had turned to look at her; she was quite a head-turner, and with her mane of corn-gold hair, she was almost certainly not Cypriot. All three admiring waiters had bowed her out of the restaurant before one of them showed him to his table.
After lunch he went to his room and took a nap. If al-Mansour’s laborious hint meant that he was now “in play,” there was nothing further he could do but watch and wait. He had done what he had been advised to do. The next move, if any, was in the Libyan’s court. He only hoped, if the going got rough, that he still had some backup out there somewhere.
The backup was indeed in place, by the time Rowse awoke from his nap. The two sergeants had found a small stone hut among the cherry trees on the mountainside opposite the hotel terrace. They had carefully removed one of the stones of the wall facing across the valley, which gave them a nice aperture from which to observe the hotel at a range of seven hundred yards. Their high-powered field glasses brought the dining terrace to a range that appeared to be twenty feet.
Dusk was deepening when they called up McCready and gave him directions to approach their hideout from the other side of the mountain. Bertie Marks drove according to the instructions, out of Pedhoulas and down two tracks, until they saw Danny standing in their way.
Abandoning the car, McCready followed Danny around the curve of the mountain. They disappeared into the cherry orchard and made the hut without being perceived from across the valley. There, Bill handed McCready his image-intensifying night glasses.
On the dining terrace the lights were coming on, a ring of colored bulbs strung around the perimeter of the dining area, with candles in sconces on each table.
“We’ll need Cypriot peasant clothes tomorrow, boss,” murmured Danny. “Can’t move around this hillside dressed as we are for long.”
McCready made a mental note to have Marks go to a village some miles away in the morning and buy the sort of canvas smocks and trousers they had seen farm workers by the wayside wearing. With luck, the hut would remain undisturbed; in May it was too late for the spraying of the blossom and too early for the harvest. The hut was clearly abandoned, its roof half-collapsed. Dust was everywhere; a few broken-hafted hoes and mattocks stood against one wall. For the SAS sergeants, who had lain for weeks among soaking scrapes on the hillsides of Ulster, it was like a four-star hotel.
“Hallo,” muttered Bill, who had taken back the night glasses. “Tasty.” He passed the glasses to McCready.
A young woman had entered the terrace from the recesses of the hotel. A beaming waiter was showing her to a table. She wore a simple but elegant white dress over a golden suntan. Blonde hair hung about her shoulders. She sat down and apparently ordered a drink.
“Keep your minds on your work,” grumbled McCready. “Where’s Rowse?”
The sergeants grinned. “Oh yeah, him. One line of windows above the terrace. Third window to the right.”
McCready swiveled his glasses. None of the windows had their curtains drawn. Several had lights on. McCready saw a figure, naked but for a towel around his waist, emerge from the shower room and cross the floor of the bedroom. It was Rowse. So far, so good.
But none of the bad guys had shown up. Two other guests took their places on the terrace: a plump Levantine businessman with flashing rings on both hands, and an elderly man who sat alone at one corner of the terrace and studied the menu. He sighed. His life had involved a hell of a lot of waiting, and he still hated it. He handed back the glasses and checked his watch. Seven-fifteen. He would give it two hours before he took Marks back to the village for supper. The sergeants would keep the vigil through the night. It was what they were best at—apart from violent physical action.
Rowse dressed and checked his watch: seven-twenty. He locked his room and went down to the terrace for a drink before dinner. Beyond the terrace the sun had dropped below the mountains, bathing the far side of the valley in thick gloom while the silhouette of the hills was brilliantly back-lit. On the western coast, Paphos would still be enjoying a warm late-spring evening with another hour of sunshine to go.