Dennis Wheatley: Mayhem in Greece

His year in Greece had greatly broadened his horizon, as well as adding yet another language to his repertoire. He had also become capable of going about on his own, buying his own clothes and doing many things that he had never attempted to do while in England. Although he had never been abroad before, on his arrival he had not felt like a stranger. So many of his hours had been spent reading and re-reading the Greek myths and legends that he felt that he had returned to a land that he already knew well. Indeed, with his highly romantic nature, sometimes he almost persuaded himself that he had caught a glimpse of one of Zeus's giant limbs among the clouds, or of a satyr darting behind an ancient olive tree in some woodland glade.

Only one thing marred his complete happiness: Sir Finster-horn's insistence that he should take up some form of work. Anxious to please his uncle, he had allowed himself to be initiated into various simple jobs about the Embassy, but in none of them had he given satisfaction. He had never been trained to follow a routine and found keeping set hours intolerable. Moreover, as he had no interest in these tasks, his mind wandered while doing them, so he proved more bother than he was worth. Since coming to Greece, he had taken to alternating his reading about mythical heroes with luridly-covered paper-backs of the gangster-sex variety. That he should quite often lie on a mattress in the garden reading such trash, or simply dreaming the hours away, intensely irritated the hard-working Ambassador, and caused him every few weeks to return to the charge. But Robbie could be neither coaxed nor bullied into sticking to anything for more than a few days and, as he had ample money of his own, there were no means of forcing him to do so.

Yet his uncle's periodic upbraidings greatly distressed him, and at length he had been inspired by an idea which he hoped would put a stop to them. To the astonishment of everyone present at the time, he had announced his intention of writing a book. It was to be about the gods, goddesses and heroes of ancient Greece. Regarding him as quite incapable of producing such a work, his hearers were, at first, completely nonplussed; but they refrained from saying that the subject had already been done to death. Then, rather than hurt his feelings, they hastily began to encourage him to undertake this project.

So there was Robbie, now twenty-three years of age—a big, burly young man with a slight stoop and a rather round face, the most outstanding feature of which was a pair of big brown eyes that looked as if, at any moment, they might light up with a kindly smile—sitting, on a fine morning in mid-March, at a table near the edge of the yacht harbour at Piraeus, the great port of Athens.

This harbour, known as Toyrcolimano, consisted of a small, nearly landlocked bay protected by tall cliffs. Upon one of them an ancient castle had been replaced by the Royal Greek Yacht Club, and down in the harbour a hundred or more yachts, ranging from eighteen-footers to millionaires' sea-going vessels, lay at anchor. Below the cliffs, in a semi-circle, were ranged half a dozen or more restaurants, and across the road each enjoyed a section of the wharf on which to set out tables shaded by colourful umbrellas.

Unlike the great commercial harbour that lay a mile away on the far side of the city, Toyrcolimano looked out on to the Gulf of Athens. To the south-west, through the forest of yacht masts, rose the misty outline of the island of Aegina, and the most easterly promontory of the Peloponnesus. To the south, the Gulf stretched away, so deep a blue that it recalled Homer's phrase, 'the wine dark sea'. In that direction, it was broken only by the grey bulk of an aircraft carrier and half a dozen warships attendant on her.

It was with the intention of going aboard the carrier that Robbie had that morning come by bus from Athens. The previous evening, as the Fleet was in for a few days, the Ambassador had given a cocktail party for its officers. As such official receptions were a regular feature of life at the Embassy, Robbie was no longer nervous at them. In fact, he had by then been trained by Lady Grenn to look out for guests who were standing alone, introduce himself and help to see that they enjoyed themselves. As no one of any importance ever took much notice of him, he had a fellow-feeling for others who looked ill at ease, and took pleasure in making them* feel at home. On this occasion he had done the honours for a young lieutenant named MacLean and, before they parted, MacLean had invited him to lunch the following day in the wardroom of the carrier.

When he accepted, MacLean had simply said: That's fine. Then if you'll be at the jetty at half past twelve, I'll come off in a launch and pick you up; then I'll take you for a run round the Fleet before we go aboard for lunch.'

Robbie had assumed that MacLean meant the jetty at the Yacht Club end of Toyrcolimano Bay, as on previous visits he had seen naval officers landing there. He arrived there only five minutes late, but there was no sign of MacLean. Glad that he had not kept his new friend waiting, he sat down and dreamily watched the traffic plying back and forth from the warships. A few pinnaces put in at the jetty, and twenty minutes passed, but there was still no sign of MacLean. Seeing that it was now nearly one o'clock, he enquired of a petty officer for the lieutenant, to be told to his dismay that only senior officers were privileged to land at the Yacht Club jetty. Junior officers, ratings, liberty boats and stores were all landed or taken off at the main harbour on the far side of the headland.

To have got there and found the right steps in the huge port would have taken at least half an hour and by then, Robbie felt, MacLean would have decided that something had prevented his keeping the appointment, and have returned to the carrier. Very disappointed at having literally 'missed the boat', he made his way to one of the restaurants and ordered lunch for himself.

As is customary in all but the smarter restaurants in Greece, he went straight to the kitchen to see what was to be had. The restaurants at Toyrcolimano specialize in fish and have little else to offer, apart from cheese and fruit as a second course; but he was shown a fine array of mullet, lobster, octopus and fresh sardines. Having selected a large lobster, he went out to a table on the wharf and, to while away the twenty minutes while his lunch was being cooked, ordered an ouzo.

As it was a day in mid-week, and the tourist season had not yet started, few of the tables were occupied; but the old men who earned a precarious living selling roast peanuts or the favourite Greek sweet, sticky nougat, were, as usual, meandering hopefully from table to table. From one of them he bought a bag of peanuts to munch with his drink, then he began casually to scan the people who were already lunching in his vicinity.

At the table just in front of him there were two men. One was in profile to him; he was dark-haired, tallish, wiry-looking, about thirty-five; had lean, sunken cheeks, a hard jaw and a hair-line moustache. The other, who had his back to Robbie, was older, fatter, broad-shouldered and bald, but for a fringe of brown hair round the sides and back of his head.

That bald head rang a vague bell in Robbie's mind, then he realized that the two men were talking in Czech. At that the penny dropped. Robbie had not actually met him, but the man had been pointed out to him at one of the many Embassy cocktail parties as the First Secretary at the Czechoslovak Legation.

No noise of traffic or street vendors calling their wares penetrated to the secluded bay beneath the cliffs. The silence was broken only by the gentle lapping of water against the sides of the yachts as they lay at their moorings, and the occasional clatter of a knife or fork; so the voices of the two men, although low, came quite clearly to Robbie. Had they been speaking Greek, he would probably have ignored them, and have lapsed into one of his frequent, happy day-dreams. But it was over a year now since he had practised his Czech, so he deliberately listened to their conversation, just to see how well he could follow it.