'Where is everyone?' Newman asked. 'We haven't seen a soul.'
'Indoors. Resting.' Nick replied. 'Even for Siros today is very hot. It helps. If we see someone out we must wonder why. Who they are. Did you see that old Sikorsky with the blurred markings which flew over the ferry?'
'What about it?' Newman asked, glancing at Marler, who looked damnably cool and relaxed as he lolled in his seat.
'A woman passenger wearing dark glasses and a scarf over her hair was checking the ferry through binoculars. I think she was trying to find someone. Maybe us?'
'Cross that bridge when we come to it,' Marler responded.
'This is a good place to stop,' Nick went on. 'Then I can get the guns from under the car…'
He had reached a tortuous turn and pulled up half-way round so they had a view both down and up the street which was still deserted. Sliding under the car, he was less than a minute before he handed Marler his sniperscope rifle, followed by Newman's weapon. Scrambling out from under the car, he glanced round as he dumped a hip holster with his revolver on the front passenger seat.
'It's all right.' Newman assured him, 'we watched both up and down the street while you were under the car.'
Nick strapped on the holster while Marler raised his rifle and peered through the sniperscope at a fisherman walking slowly along a jetty far below. Nick slipped on a lightweight linen jacket he kept slung from a hook behind the driving seat. He left it open and grinned at Newman.
'It will be hot wearing this – but it conceals what I carry. You hide your rifles under that travelling rug rolled up on the floor in the back.'
'And now?' Newman asked.
'We meet Spyros who is waiting at the top. He will take us to Mount Ida – to the place where the Greek was murdered during the war. ..'
They have disappeared,' said Dimitrios. 'One moment the Mercedes is driving up towards us, then it vanishes. What kind of a trick is this?'
'They're probably parked at the corner of the road down there. Where it turns a sharp bend. That church dome hides it from us,' concluded Christina.
She sounded thoroughly rebellious. She shook her dark mane, exasperated with her cousins' slave-like obedience to Petros.
Constantine shrugged his shoulders, irked by her attitude. This was not women's work. Like Dimitrios he was thin and bony and he sported a moustache which curved round the ends of his slit of a mouth. He looked after his moustache proudly: it had made him a big hit with the girls, really rolled them over. On their backs.
They were perched on the roughcast terrace of a house overlooking the port of Siros. Through his binoculars Dimitrios had observed Newman, Marler and Nick coming ashore from the ferry. It was Christina who had earlier confirmed they were aboard when Constantine had overflown the ferry.
The house belonged to Petros and was empty. Today was Wednesday. On each Monday a local woman came to clean up the place. Parked in front of the house was a battered Cadillac, paint peeling from its bodywork. Petros had bought it for a song from a man in need of money. The weapons transported aboard the helicopter were stowed inside the Cadillac. Shrubs sprouting blood-red flowers decorated the terrace in large Ali Baba pots. Christina put on her dark glasses, lit a cigarette.
'You won't need to use the guns,' she told them.
'We use them if they go near Mount Ida,' Constantine snapped at her. 'You remember what Petros ordered?'
'Ordered! You are like a couple of puppets he dangles at the end of a string. Harm the Englishmen and everything goes wrong. The police will hunt you down. Sarris himself might come. He only waits for his chance to put you all inside for ever. Then what happens to me? If necessary I will handle Marler, lead him and the others away from where it happened…'
Constantine grinned unpleasantly, made an obscene gesture. 'Ah! You and Marler. Petros was right. You will do as we tell you to do.. .'
His left hand gripped her arm. He froze. Her free hand had whipped out the knife from the sheath attached to her belt. He felt its point tickle his throat. Her black eyes blazed with fury.
'Let me go or I'll rip your throat open. God knows how many women you have had, you fornicator…'
He released her, stepped back carefully. The fear was written large on his face as she followed him and his back pressed into the terrace wall. It was only as high as his hips and there was a long drop to the paved street below. She rested the point of the knife against his breast bone. He breathed heavily. She was strong; if she pushed the knife a couple of inches more…
'You will never use that filthy gesture in front of me again,' she told him. 'You will not use the guns. We will find some other way of diverting them. You understand?'
'Yes, Christina. For God's sake…'
She sheathed the knife suddenly, turned away. Her expression was contemptuous. As she had always suspected Constantine was a coward. Dimitrios, careful not to interfere – he had previous experience of Christina's temper -stood staring through his binoculars. He lowered them quickly.
'You were right,' he told her. 'They had hidden behind that corner. Why? Could they have spotted us? Impossible. They are driving this way. We must leave in the Cadillac quickly before they arrive, drive up towards Ida and see what they do next…'
Nick turned yet another sharp-angled bend in the zigzag road which went up and up. Newman glanced out of the window on his side. Nick was a superb driver: he had missed scraping the wall of a house by inches. They were very high up now and Newman caught glimpses of the sea which was an incredible mixture of brilliant colours -sapphire, turquoise, lapis lazuli. No picture postcard had ever captured this. The car slowed and stopped.
'Spyros,' said Nick.
An old hunchback, clad in peasant clothes and with a face like a wrinkled walnut under his wide-brimmed straw hat, sat perched outside a house. He was whittling a piece of wood with a knife. He stood up, adjusted the angle of his hat, opened the rear door of the car and joined Marler.
Nick drove on as he made introductions. 'Spyros. Sitting next to you is Marler. My other friend is Bob Newman.'
'I am pleased to meet both of you,' Spyros replied in English and with quaint old-world courtesy. 'You take the next fork to the right when we leave Siros port and climb the mountain.'
He opened the cloth he had used to wrap the piece of wood and the knife and continued whittling, careful to keep the pieces carved off on the cloth. Marler stared at the wood. It was beginning to take the shape of a madonna. Spyros kept glancing up as he worked, checking their position.
They emerged from the labyrinth of the port of Siros suddenly. Ahead the road was no longer paved. A track of white dust, it snaked up the mountain which rose sheer above them. Before long they were driving along a ledge just wide enough to take the Mercedes. On Nick's side rose a sheer wall of limestone. Newman peered out on his side and the mountain fell away into a deep precipice. Far below a grove of olive trees spread their stunted branches. Beyond the grove the sea spread into the distance, ink blue.
'You're sure the Merc can get all the way?' Newman enquired in what he hoped was a casual tone.
'Spyros would not have let us come if it was not possible.'
'Good for Spyros…'
Newman glanced down again and began to feel the symptoms of vertigo. He averted his gaze, forced himself to concentrate on the track ahead spiralling up and round the mountain. At several points there were tracks leading off through gulches in the mountain. Newman would have given anything to tell Nick to turn into one of the gulches – away from the hideous precipice which was growing deeper and deeper. Had the old Greek sensed his fear? Still whittling at the wood, he said suddenly, 'We are very close now. The country will open out. We shall leave the abyss.'