As he followed her along the narrow path between the olive trees, the feeling remained, and what he found when they mounted the steps to the terrace and entered the house only strengthened the unreality.
Everything was exactly as it had been seventeen years before. The great stone fireplace, the grand piano, even the shelves filled with books, and he paused and touched them gently with one hand.
He swayed suddenly, feeling vaguely light-headed, and Katina said in alarm, “Are you all right?”
He took a deep breath and pulled himself together. “Nothing to worry about. It’s just that hi some strange way, time seems to have no meaning for me standing here in this room. It takes some getting used to.”
She seemed about to speak, hesitated and then turned away, a slight frown on her face. She walked out into the hall and moved along the cool, whitewashed corridor that led to the north terrace.
The circular glass room was filled with a diffused light, flimsy curtains half-drawn as a filter against the strong rays of the sun. There was no sign of Van Horn, but his magnificent collection of Greek ceramics was there, the great red and black amphora still the centrepiece, aloof on its pedestal in the middle of the room.
Lomax paused to admire it then frowned and moved closer. The surface was covered by a network of fine lines. Since he had last looked upon it, it had obviously been smashed into hundreds of fragments which someone had laboriously fitted together again.
A step sounded behind him and Van Horn said, “If you’re interested, it took me just over a year.”
His face seemed a little thinner, the hair and moustache snow-white now, but the eyes seemed very blue in the tanned face and when Lomax took the proffered hand, the grip was surprisingly firm.
“What happened?” he said.
“To the amphora?” Van Horn shrugged. “When the
Germans came to arrest me they got a little rough. The astonishing thing was that when I returned after the war, I found the pieces in a box in the cellar. It was a good thing hi a way. Piecing it together again gave me something to do during that first year. I had to take things pretty steady.”
“After Fonchi?” Lomax said.
Van Horn nodded. “Let’s go out on the terrace. It’s rather pleasant as the evenings draw in.”
Katina had withdrawn quietly and Lomax followed him outside. The view was quite breathtaking, the sun like a great orange ball dropping to meet the sea, Crete and its mountains faintly in the distance, shimmering in. the heat haze.
Lomax leaned on the concrete balustrade and looked down. The cliffs dropped a good two hundred feet into a small funnel shaped inlet. From that height he was able to see quite clearly the different shades of blue and green in the water caused by the dark basalt ledges at varying depths. A thirty-foot sea-going launch floated motionless beside a stone jetty that pushed out from the bone-white Sand.
Van Horn sat in a canvas chair beside a table on which stood a tray containing ice-water and several bottles and a portable typewriter.
Lomax picked up several sheets of paper, blown by the breeze, and put them back on the table. “I don’t seem to have read anything new by you in quite some time.”
“My dear chap, I said everything I wanted to say a long time ago.” Van Horn poured gin into two glasses. “You know, we were given to understand by the Germans that you were dead. That the boat in which you were sent to Crete never reached there. What happened?”
Lomax sat down and took out a cigarette. “We ran across a Greek fishing caicque that shouldn’t have been where it was and the captain decided to investigate. Unfortunately for him it turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Special Boat Service outfit that was supposed to take us off Kyros when we’d completed our mission.”
“So the E-boat was sunk? What happened to you after that?”
“The SBS commande’r got me to Alexandria as quickly as he could. My legs were in pretty bad shape so they flew me home to England for special treatment. I wasn’t fit for active service again until the beginning of 1945. By that tune things in Europe were moving pretty fast and they decided they could make better use of me in Germany.”