“And now?”
He shrugged. “My talents seem to run to darker things. I don’t think there will be much demand for the qualities I possess after the war.”
“But what happens now doesn’t count,” she said. “Not for any of us. There is a saying we have-Time out of mind. That is what the war is-a dark dream that has no meaning when the morning comes.”
There was a passionate sincerity in her voice and in the soft, diffused light of the lamp, the tiredness and pain were washed away from her face and she looked very young. For a moment he wanted to tell her that life was so often not what it should be, but what it was, but he didn’t have the heart.
“Let’s hope you’re right,” he said lamely.
She nodded confidently. “If I wasn’t, life would be a mockery.”
He paused to light a cigarette and then followed at the tail of the cart as she led the mare outside. The night air was warm and scented, the sky like a black velvet cushion scattered with diamonds.
They stood side-by-side, shoulders touching, and she sighed with pleasure. “On a night like this it’s possible to forget even the war for a little while. Oh, there is so much
I could show you if things -were different.”
“If I were an English tourist straight off the Athens boat?” he chuckled. “Where should we begin?”
“That’s easy,” she said. “The Tomb of Achilles. We would visit it once by moonlight and again at dawn when there is mist on the mountain. Life could show you nothing more beautiful.”
“If you were there, satisfaction would be guaranteed,” he said gallantly, and turned and looked at the peak dark against the night sky. “The Monastery of St. Anthony is up there, isn’t it?”
He could hear the swift intake of her breath and her body stiffened. She turned and peered up at him. “So that is why you’re here?”
“I don’t understand?” he said.
“Please, Captain Lomax. I’m not a fool. Everyone on the island knows that the Germans took over part of the monastery three months ago to use as a radar station.”
He shook his head. “Not as a radar station, Katina. It’s rather more important than that.”
“I see,” she said. “And you intend to destroy it? But the monks are still living there.”
“If they weren’t, we’d have bombed the place long ago,” he said. “That’s why the Germans force them to go on living there. Typical Nazi trick. They tried it on a big scale at Monte Cassino in Italy, but it didn’t work. The place was blasted off the face of the earth.”
“Then why hasn’t the same thing been done here?” she demanded. “Since when have the lives of twenty or thirty old monks been important to either side in this war?”
“Because there’s no need,” he said, surprised at the bitterness in her voice. “Because my way is simpler and cheaper and with any kind of luck, no one should get hurt.”
“Except possibly yourself. You forget that.”
He grinned. “Something I lear-ned to forget about a long time ago. It doesn’t pay.”
She was about to reply when he heard a sound faintly in the distance and laid a hand on her arm. “Just a minute.”
They waited, and as the sound grew louder, Katina said, “It’s the patrol.”
“How many?” he demanded.
“Usually two, but sometimes one. They follow the cliff paths in a motor cycle and sidecar.”
He raised the night glasses and as he focused them the noise of the engine grew louder and the motor cycle appeared on the rim of the valley and paused.
The sidecar was empty, but he could clearly see the steel-helmeted driver, strangely anonymous in his goggles as he looked down into the valley. A moment later, the engine roared into life again and the machine descended the track hi a great cloud of dust
“Do they usually call at the farm?” Lomax said.
She shook her head. “Occasionally they stop and asfc for coffee, but not very often.”
He took her arm and they turned and ran for the house. Alexias and Boyd met them at the Wtchen door and the Greek was holding one of the sub-machine guns.