The curtain parted and Katina stepped through followed by a round-faced, kindly looking woman in her late thirties with bright blue eyes.
“This is Aunt Sarah,” she said. “The others are already here and waiting in iny uncle’s room. Mr. Van Horn arrived ten minutes ago.’.
Mrs. Pavlo smiled and led the way upstairs.
“She seems to be taking all this with remarkable calm,” Lomax whispered.
Katina smiled. “She has been married to my uncle for twenty years. She says anything can happen and usually does. She loves him very much.”
Mrs. Pavlo opened a door at the head of the stairs and led the way in. The room was hazy with tobacco smoke. Alexias was propped up in a great bed, his pipe in his mouth. There were several other people in the room, but the only one Lomax knew was Van Horn who sat beside the bed, smoking a cigarette in a silver holder.
“Ah, Lomax, my good friend. We’ve been waiting for you.” Alexias grinned. “Here he is, everybody. The Night-comer in the flesh.”
There was a sudden silence as they all turned to look at Lomax curiously and he moved quickly from person to person as Alexias introduced them.
The parish priest, Father John Mikali, was first by convention. A dignified old man with a white beard and sombre in his dark robes, he showed no emotion at all and Lomax sensed a coldness in his manner.
A tall, bearded man named John Pares came next. He looked like the captain of a fishing boat and turned out to be the local electrician. Sitting beside him ha the corner was Alexias’s brother-in-law, Nikoli Aleko. Small and wiry with blazing blue eyes, he helped his sister run The Little Ship.
George Samos and Yanni Demos came forward last of all. Both in their early twenties with crisply curling hair and tanned faces, they might have been brothers. They shook hands, undisguised admiration on then- faces.
“Have you brought what I asked for?” Alexias demanded.
Lomax dropped the small military pack on the end of the bed. “It’s all there.”
“Good, then we can get down to business.”
“A moment, Alexias,” Father Joha interrupted. “There is a question I should like to put to Captain Lomax before we go any further.”
There was a sudden tenseness in the air and Lomax sensed that whatever matter the old priest intended to raise had already been discussed before Ms arrival.
“Your mission here, Captain Lomax,” he said. “Just how important is it?”
Lomax knew that Van Horn was gazing at him steadily, but he never faltered. “Very important,” he said calmly.
“But how can this be?” Father John said gently “The Germans are losing the war, the whole world knows it to be only a matter of time. Can the destruction of a radar station or whatever else it may be on one tiny island in the Aegean have any real effect on the ultimate end?”
“If that argument were pursued to its logical end in every theatre of the war, the ending might be different,’. Lomax pointed out. “May I ask why you’ve raised this issue?”
“As parish priest I have the welfare of my people to consider above all things,” Father John said. “Forgive me for stating the obvious, but after the completion of your mission, you will leave Kyros. We, on the other hand, must remain to face the wrath of the Germans.”
“I know that, Father,” Lomax said
“Are you also aware that when the Germans discover the identity of anyone guilty of an act of aggression, they now arrest his immediate family also and send them to the concentration camp at Fonchi on the mainland? In Ka-tina’s case, Colonel Steiner made an exception only because Mr. Van Horn and I made personal pleas for clemency on the grounds of her extreme youth. Now the child is to be involved in something infinitely worse.”
“You should come to Crete, Father,” Alexias growled. “I’ve seen entire villages wiped out as reprisals for our success. Men and women hanging from the olive trees like ripe fruit. It only made the people hate the harder.”
“We’ve put up with the Germans for three years, Father,” John Paros said quietly. “Kyros is a small island. Up till now there hasn’t been much we could do. This is probably our only chance to make a contribution.”