Levkas Man (9 page)

Outside the entrance the sea was rough and it was cold, so that I was glad of the oilskins I had purchased. We were hoisting the jib then in flurries of spray, and when we had got it properly set at the end of the short bowsprit, Bert switched off the engine, and in the sudden quiet we sailed close under the stern of an American carrier of the 6th Fleet and set course for Greece on a bearing just north of east.

Visibility was good and it was not until almost 1700 hours that we lost the low line of Malta below the horizon. An hour later we broke the seal on the bonded stores locker and had our first drink at sea, the boat sailing easily at about six knots with the wind on our starboard quarter. We had an early meal, and then, as darkness fell, we went into watches, Bert and I sharing the night turns, with Florrie relieving us for the dawn watch.

When I called her, at the end of the last night watch, the wind had strengthened to nearly force 7 and the helm was heavy with the ship showing a tendency to yaw. I think she was already awake, for her eyes were open when I switched on the light in their cabin. ‘Do you want to shorten sail?' she asked as she slipped quickly out of her bunk, her black hair tousled and her face still flushed with sleep. ‘I'll wake Bert, if you like.' He was snoring gently in the other bunk.

‘Better see what you think first,' I said, and I went back to the wheelhouse. We had swung about a point off course and I brought her head back. The light of the compass was fading with the dawn. I could see the waves more clearly now. They were steep and breaking, the sea flecked with white to the horizon, the sky ahead a pale translucent green just starting to flush with the sun's hidden rays.

She didn't take long to dress, and when she entered the wheelhouse, she stood there a moment, looking at the sea and at the sails with eyes slightly narrowed, a cool, almost professional appraisal. Then she took the wheel from me and held it, getting the feel of the boat. ‘No, I think she's all right,' she said. ‘It always sounds worse below.' She gave a quick little laugh. ‘I'm inclined to get panicky when there's a lot of noise.'

She was wearing a thick black polo-necked sweater and red oilskins. ‘It's hard on Bert,' she said. ‘He did want to run that new engine of his. But I like it like this—just the noise of the sea.' She was fully awake now and her eyes sparkled with the exhilaration of the speed and the movement. ‘Doesn't it excite you—the sea, when it's like this?' But then she laughed. ‘No, of course—you must have experienced plenty of really big seas.'

‘In the North Atlantic, yes. But with a large vessel it's much more remote.'

She checked the wheel as a breaking wave rolled under us, biting her lip with concentration, and the jib emptied and filled with a bang to the roll. The green had gone from the sky ahead. Ragged wisps of cloud showed an edge of flame and right on the horizon an island of molten lava seemed to blaze up out of the sea.

‘How old is your father?' she asked.

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘Sixty-ish, I suppose.'

She glanced at me then. ‘You're worried about him, aren't you?'

‘Yes, I suppose so.'

‘Then why didn't you fly out?'

I had no answer to that, but fortunately she took my silence as a rebuke. ‘I'm sorry, I ask too many questions, don't I?' She gave a little laugh, low and strangely musical, and then she was looking up at me, her lips slightly parted, her dark eyes gentle.

We were alone, the two of us in a wild dawn, and I put my hand on her shoulder and the next moment she was in my arms, her mouth soft, her body clumsy in her heavy weather clothing. She stayed like that for a moment, and then the ship yawed and she pushed away from me and took the wheel again. She was smiling, a quiet, secret smile. ‘You're lonely, aren't you?'

‘And you?' I asked.

‘I'm not lonely. It's just the sea. It excites me.' And she added, ‘Now go to bed. You've been up half the night.'

‘I'm not tired.' I hesitated, conscious of a need, but no way of satisfying it.

‘Of course not. You're too tensed-up to feel the tiredness.'

‘Perhaps.'

She was looking at me, those large, dark eyes of here suddenly offering sympathy. ‘Those two days in Malta—nothing but work, and you hardly left the ship. Even Bert noticed it. And now—at sea …' She shook her head. ‘I don't know what the trouble is, and I'm not asking, but bottling it all up inside you—that's not good.' She checked the wheel, staring ahead. ‘Try to relax, why don't you?'

‘Was that why you kissed me?'

She smiled. ‘It helps—sometimes.'

I nodded, and we stood in silence, watching as the sun's upper rim lipped blood-red over the horizon. Then I checked the log reading and entered up the course and mileage covered during my watch. When I turned again she was a squat, almost square figure, in silhouette against the sudden flare of light that had turned the steel grey heaving surface of the sea to a shimmer of orange. She was braced against the wheel, hands holding the ship, her whole being concentrated on the lift and swoop of the movement. The sun rose clear of the horizon, a flaming ball, and the whole empty world of sea and sky was lit by blinding light, the cloud wisps swept away like a veil and the sky a brazen blue.

My limbs felt slack and I was suddenly tired as I turned without a word and went below to my cabin. But sleep came slowly. There was something of the peasant about her and I was deeply stirred, furious that my vulnerability had been so obvious.

She called me for breakfast at nine-thirty. Bert was at the wheel and we were alone. But she was cool and distant, efficiently feminine in blue slacks and white shirt. The movement was less, and by midday the wind had died away and we were under engine. We had drinks in the wheelhouse and the three of us lunched together with the automatic pilot doing the work. It was like that for the rest of the voyage, and the third day out, at dawn, Florrie and I watched the outline of Sapienza Island emerge as a dark silhouette against the sunrise straight over the bows.

‘Your navigation is very exact.' The way she said it, I thought there was envy as well as admiration, for by then I had discovered that there was a basis of fear in the excitement she felt for the sea. Bert was easy-going, almost slapdash, in everything not connected with machinery. ‘Last year our first sight of Greece was Cape Matapan. Bert was navigating on dead reckoning and he was miles out—we had to make our entry at Kalamata instead of Pylos.' She was laughing, her teeth white against the dark of her skin, which was already tanned by the sun and salt air. ‘You don't speak Greek, do you?'

‘No.'

‘Well, don't forget—if you want to telephone about your father, I can do it for you.'

I stayed with her in the wheelhouse until we had closed the coast and I had identified the gap in the cliffs that marked the entrance to Navarino Bay. Then I called Bert and went into the galley to make some coffee. When I got back to the wheel-house, we were close in, our bows headed towards a jagged stac with a hole in the middle. Just beyond it, the sea swell died and the water was glass-calm, the great expanse of the bay shimmering like a mirror in the warm sunlight. Ashore the hills were green and bright with flowers. It was suddenly spring.

‘This was where Admiral Codrington caught and destroyed the Turkish fleet,' Bert said. ‘There are eighty-three vessels lying sunk under the waters here.' He was grinning, an eager glint in his eyes. Bronze and copper are worth a lot of money and he had never dived in Navarino Bay. ‘All I've ever found in the Aegean, apart from amphorae and sherds and bits of Roman glass, is one—just one—bronze figurine, rather battered. Plenty of marble, of course, column drums and carved seats and a couple of massive statues. But nothing that was worth the trouble of bringing up.'

I asked him what had happened to the figurine, thinking he might have sold it to Borg. But he said it was ashore with friends in Malta. ‘Daren't have it on board. The Greeks are very hot on underwater looting.'

We were opening up the port now and a massive Turkish castle slung a great rampart wall over the protecting peninsula. Behind us, on hills that stood like a crater rim along the seaward side of the bay, the ruined remains of another castle perched precariously.

We dropped anchor off the end of the quay and hauled ourselves in, stern-on to the blue and yellow diagonals that marked the area reserved for visiting boats. The Port Captain came on board almost immediately, a young, very alert, very charming man who spoke reasonably good English. Customs and police followed, also the doctor. We took them down to the saloon, offered them Scotch, which they accepted out of politeness, but barely touched, and after half an hour they left, taking our passports for stamping and the ship's certificate of registration from which the Port Captain's office would prepare the transit log. ‘You may go ashore now,' the Port Captain said. And when Bert offered to collect the papers, he gave a little shrug. ‘It is not necessary. We will find you.' And he added, laughing, ‘Pylos is not too big a place.'

Ten minutes later we were having our first retsina in the little tree-shaded square, where Codrington's statue stood guarded by bronze cannon. All around the square small dark men in dark clothes sat over their coffee, whilst women in black went about their shopping. And over the shops the names unreadable in the Greek alphabet.

We had just finished our first bottle of the dry resined Achaian wine, and I had ordered another, when the Port Captain came hurrying towards us, accompanied by a tough-looking Greek in light khaki uniform. ‘This is Kapetán Kondylakes of the Police.' He smiled disarmingly, his manner as charming and friendly as when he had visited us on the boat. The police officer also smiled, a flash of gold teeth in a pockmarked face.

My muscles were suddenly tense. This wasn't part of the routine passport check. This man looked like the senior police officer in Pylos.

‘May we sit down with you, please?' the Port Captain asked. ‘For one minute when we make some questions?'

They pulled up two chairs and Bert offered them a drink. More smiles and a sharp clap of the hands to summon the waiter. Extra glasses were brought, the wine poured, and I sat there, watching them and wondering what the hell I was doing here, risking my neck, when I could have been safe aboard Jahannesen's boat en route for New Zealand.

‘Kapetán Kondylakes is not speaking English, so I speak for him. Okay?' And then the Port Captain turned to me as I had feared he would. ‘Your name is Van der Voort.'

I nodded, dumbly.

The police officer produced my passport from the side pocket of his tunic, opening it at the page with my photograph and pushing it across the table to his companion. They talked together for a moment, both of them staring down at the passport. ‘Van der Voort,' the Port Captain said and he looked across at me. ‘That is a Dutch name?'

‘Yes.' My hands were trembling now and I kept them out of sight below the table, cursing myself for not realizing that Interpol operated in Greece.

‘But you have an English passport. Why, please?'

‘Both my parents were English. After their death I was adopted by Dr Van der Voort and took his name.' This took some time to explain and when I had finished he said: ‘And this Dr Van der Voort of Amsterdam—what is his full name?'

I told him and he repeated it to the police officer, who nodded emphatically. ‘And when do you last see him?'

‘About eight years ago.'

‘So long?'

And when I had explained, he said, ‘Then why do you come to Greece, if you do not like this man?'

I had no ready answer to that. But at least I could relax now. It wasn't me they were interested in, but the old man. ‘What's the trouble?' I asked him. ‘Why all these questions?'

He conferred briefly with the police officer and then said, ‘Dr Van der Voort entered Greece on March 9 with an Englishman and a Dutch student. They say they are a scientific expedition looking for prehistoric settlements. Now Dr Van der Voort is not anywhere to be found. Do you know that?'

‘I knew there'd been some trouble between him and another member of the expedition.'

‘And so you come to Greece. You charter a yacht and sail to Pylos because there is trouble between Dr Van der Voort and this Englishman, Cartwright.' The police officer stabbed his finger at my passport. The Port Captain nodded. ‘But it says here that you are a ship's officer.' He pushed the passport across to me, indicating the entry against Occupation. ‘Ship's officers do not have money to charter yachts.'

‘I'm in tankers,' I said, and they nodded. Pylos was a tanker port and they knew what the pay was like.

‘And you do not know where Dr Van der Voort is?'

‘No.'

‘Where do you expect to find him?'

‘At Despotiko, a village north of Jannina.'

He conferred again with the police officer. ‘Kapetán Kondylakes insists that you explain why you come to Greece.'

I did my best to satisfy him, but it was difficult to explain when I didn't really know myself. The Port Captain passed it all on to his companion, and when he had finished I again asked him what all the fuss was about, why the police were so interested. But I met with a blank wall. All he said was, ‘Dr Van der Voort has disappeared. Naturally the police have to find him.'

But that did not explain why, in a little place like Pylos in the south of Greece, the local police captain had been informed about a man who was missing in quite another part of the country. And when I tried to insist on an explanation, the Port Captain rose to his feet saying that Kapetán Kondylakes would have to report back to Athens. They left us then, with many apologies for inconveniencing us and a request that we did not attempt to leave until permission had been granted.

‘Well, this is a fine old mess,' Bert said.