“I didn’t need local assistance,” Lomax said. “I had half a dozen good men with me.”
“That’s strange,” Steiner said. “So far we’ve only accounted for you and the dead sergeant who was with you when you were picked up. How do you explain: that?”
“The rest of my men must have made the rendezvous on time.” Lomax glanced at his wrist-watch and tried to
7 97 sound convincing. “We were due to be picked up by a submarine at eight o’clock on the other side of the island.” He smiled faintly. “You’ve missed the boat, Colonel.”
“Then it is impossible for us to come to an understanding?”
“There’s nothing to come to an understanding about”
“Somehow I thought you’d say that.” Steiner pulled on his gloves. “No hard feelings, Lomax. I respect a brave man, but I’ve got to do my job.”
“No hard feelings,” Lomax said.
The German shook hands and went out and Lomax lay back against the pillow. Nothing seemed to matter any more and he was beginning to feel sleepy as the drug started to take effect. The strange thing was that Steiner had seemed to be laughing at him and he couldn’t think why. The nurse lowered the end of the table and lie stared up at the light and after a while drifted into sleep.
When he awakened, he found himself lying on a stretcher in an ambulance. Two medical orderlies in field uniform were sitting beside him and he turned his head weakly and frowned. “Where am I? What’s happening?”
One of them leaned across, a young, pleasant-faced boy, eyes serious under the forage cap. “There’s nothing to worry about. You’re going to Crete, that’s all. Your leg needs a special operation.”
He lay there in a daze, trying to make some sense out of it, but he found it impossible to concentrate and then the ambulance stopped and they opened the doors and took him outside.
It was early morning, grey and overcast with a light rain falling and a cold wind blew across the harbour. Thirty or forty people stood talking in little groups on the pier, mostly fishermen with ona or two women hovering on the fringe,
They moved forward curiously as the two orderlies picked up the stretcher and the guards had to push a way through.
It took them a minute or two to get the stretcher down the ladder to the waiting E-boat and the orderlies laid him on the deck beside the wheelhouse and stood beside him as the sailors quickly cast off.
As the water churned at the stern and the boat pulled away from the pier, the people crowded silently forward to the edge. Lomax looked up at the line of white, meaningless faces, his vision blurring slightly, and then Katina’s seemed to jump out at him.
So she was safe? There was that much to be thankful for. She was wearing a headscarf and looked exactly as he had seen her on that first night, very young, the eyes like shadows in the white face and a lump rose in his throat that threatened to choke him.
He lay there on the deck, the cold rain falling on his face and as the island faded into the mist a seagull dipped over his head and fled through the grey morning like a departing spirit.
Book Three
A Sound of Hunting
One Should Never Return to Anything
When he awakened, the coin was still firmly clutched in his right hand. He stared at it, a frown of bewilderment on his face, his first conscious thought that it should not be in his possession, and then he remembered.
The past and the present had become so inextricably ùmixed that it was difficult to make sense of either. He dropped the coin and chain on the small beside table, swung his legs to the floor and sat there trying to get his bearings.
Who am I, he thought? The Nightcomer or Hugh Lomax, residence California, scriptwriter and novelist oœ sorts? There was no answer or none that would suffice. He had become a stranger to himself and he got to his feet and moved across to the washstand.