She threw it to him, liquid gold in the sun, and he caught it, closing his hand over it at once, knowing what it was.
“I give you back your courage,” she said, and drove away very quickly.
He went into the cool darkness, aware of Anna’s frightened face peering at him from the kitchen doorway and the stairs seemed to stretch into eternity.
When he reached his room, he closed the door very carefully and stood with his back against it staring at his clenched right hand with the two ends of gold chain hanging down. After a while, he opened it gently and looked at the small bronze coin that bore the face of Achilles.
A long time ago, he thought. A hell of a long time ago. He lit a cigarette and went and lay on his back on the bed and stared blindly into the past.
Book Two
Cover of Darkness
It was the throb of the diesels that brought Lomax awake with a start. He lay there for a moment on the bunk, staring up at the steel bulkhead, a slight frown on his face as he tried to remember where he was.
After a while, something clicked and he pushed himself up on one elbow. Alexias was sprawled in a canvas chair in the far corner watching him.
The Greek removed the cigarette that smouldered between his lips and grinned. “You talk in your sleep, my friend. Did you know that?”
“That’s all I needed,” Lomax said. “Have you got one of those to spare?”
The Greek nodded and rose to his feet. He was a big,.dangerous looking man badly in need of a shave and his massive shoulders swelled under the blue reefer jacket. “I think that maybe you’ve been playing this game too long,” he said as he gave Lomax a cigarette and struck a match.
“Haven’t we all?”
Before the Greek could reply, the curtain was pulled back and Sergeant Boyd appeared with two cups of coffee. He gave one to Alexias and the other to Lomax ùwho took a sip and grimaced. “Everything tastes of submarine. I don’t know how they put up with it.”
Boyd was a big, dependable northerner with the ribbon of the Military Medal sewn neatly into place above his left breast pocket beneath the SAS wings.
“We’ve just surfaced,” he said. “Commander Swansea asked me to tell you to be ready to go in fifteen minutes.”
“Is all the gear ready?”
Boyd nodded. “I had to occupy myself somehow. Couldn’t sleep. Never can in these things.”
“How do you feel?” Lomax asked.
“About the job?” Boyd shrugged. “The same as usual. Why?”
Lomax shook his head. “No special reason. We seem to have been doing this sort of thing rather frequently lately, that’s all. We can’t last for ever, you know.”
“Neither can the war,” Boyd told him. “In any case, it’s fifty-fifty every time. Even I know that much mathematics.”
“I don’t know,” Lomax said. “This one’s different. In Crete, a man could run a long way in those mountains, but Kyros is a small island.”
“We’ve been on small islands before,” Boyd told him. “Besides, we’ve got Alexias here to show us around. We’ll fee all right.”
Alexias grinned and his teeth looked very white against the dark stubble of his beard. “Sure, everything’s going’ to be fine. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Who said I was worried?” Lomax swung his legs to the floor. “You two get the stuff together. I’ll see you up top in five minutes.”
After they had gone, he sat there on the edge of the bunk finishing his coffee. It tasted foul, but then so did the cigarette.
He was tired, that was the trouble. Too damned tired and everything was beginning to blur a little at the edges. He definitely needed a rest after this one. A month in Alex should do it, but he’d been promised that for a year now. He pulled on his sheepskin coat, reached for his beret and moved outside.
He moved through into the control room and mounted the conning-tower ladder to the bridge. Above him, the round circle of the night was scattered with brilliant stars and he breathed the fresh salt air deep into Ms lungs and suddenly felt better.