The young face was very white, the skin drawn too tightly over the prominent cheekbones, the eyes in shadow. She shook her head slightly as if unable to speak and the smile vanished from Pavlo’s face.
“What Is it, Katina? Ten me!”
When she spoke, her voice sounded hoarse and unnatural. “He’s dead,” she said. “They shot him in front of the town hall last week.”
She started to cry, great dry sobs wracking her slender body, and Alexias pulled her close to him and stared blindly into space. After a while, he led her across the room to the kitchen, dragging his feet like an old man, and the door closed gently behind them.
A Willingness to Kill
When Alexias came back into the living room some twenty minutes later, Lomax and Boyd were sitting in front of a roaring fire stripped to the waist, their clothes steaming on an improvised line.
The Greek slumped down, into a chair and took out a cigarette mechanically. He seemed to have aged ten years and his eyes were full of pain as he sat staring into the fire.
After a while, he sighed. “He was a good man, my brother. Too good to go the way he did,”
Lomax gave him a light. “What happened?”
“They caught him trying to sabotage an E-boat in the harbour.”
“On his own?” Boyd said in surprise.
Alexias nodded. “Kyros is a small island. It just wouldn’t be possible for any organised resistance movement to survive here. That’s why I went to Crete two years ago. Nikoli wanted to come as well, but one of us had to stay: There was the farm and Katina to think of, especially as her mother had just died.”
“How is she?” Lomax said.
“Katina?” Aiexias shrugged. “It was nothing-a thing of the moment only. She has great courage that one. She is making coffee and preparing a little supper.”
“What’s she going to do?” Boyd demanded. “She can’t go on living here on her own. She’s only a kid.”
“She’s been staying with my wife. I have a bar down by the harbour called The Little Ship. Katina has been, coming out here each day with the horse and cart to look after things until they decide what to do. Apparently she was just leaving when she saw us coming down the hill through the vineyard.”
“Does she know why we’re here?”
Alexias shook his head. “Not at the moment. I’ll tell her later. She could be very useful to us.”
“How much do you think the fact of your brother’s death will interfere with our plans?” Lomax asked.
“Very little,” Alexias said. “But it means I’ll have to make personal contact with various local people myself now. As soon as we’ve had supper, I’ll go down into the town with Katina.”
“That could be dangerous,” Boyd said.
Alexias shook his head. “There isn’t a curfew in force on Kyros and the cafe’s on the waterfront are usually full until well past midnight. The Germans can alter many things, but not our way of life.”
At that moment, the kitchen door opened and Katina came in. She was carrying a tray which she set down on the table.
She turned, brushing back a lock of hair from her forehead with one hand. “I’m afraid there is only cheese made from goat’s milk and olives, but the bread is fresh. My aunt baked it this morning before I left.”
“It looks bloody marvellous to me, love,” Joe Boyd said, and she blushed and quickly poured coffee into four mugs.
Lomax had been pulling on his shirt and sweater at the fire and when he turned, he found her standing just behind him holding a mug of coffee.
She smiled shyly. “I’m afraid there isn’t any sugar.”
Her face was heart-shaped with a pure white skin drawn too tightly over prominent cheekbones and there were dark sunken circles.under her eyes. Her black hair was drawn back from her face and tied.carelessly with a ribbon. She was perhaps sixteen or seventeen, but it was hard to be exact. She had that tired, too-old look that he had seen in the eyes of so many people recently.