Solo. Jack Higgins
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a short holiday in Greece, he returned to England, to Yorkshire as an entrant in the Leeds Musical Festival, one of the most important pianoforte competitions in the world. To win that was to ensure instant fame, a guarantee of a concert tour.
He was placed third and received immediate offers from three major agencies. He turned them all down, practised fourteen hours a day for a month at the London flat, then went to Salzburg in the following January. He took first prize in the competition there, beating forty-eight other competitors from all over the world, playing Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto, a work he was to make peculiarly his own in the years to come.
His grandfather was there during the seven days of the festival and afterwards, when everyone else had left, he took two glasses of champagne on to the balcony where Mikali stood looking out over the city.
‘The world is your oyster now. They’ll all want you. How do you feel?’
‘Nothing,’ John Mikali said. He sipped a little of the ice-cold champagne, and suddenly and for no accountable reason, saw the four fellagha walking round the burning truck and coming towards him laughing. ‘I feel nothing.’
In the two years that followed, the dark eyes stared out from the pale, handsome face on posters in London, Paris, Rome, New York and his fame grew. The newspapers and magazines had made much of his two years in the Legion, his decorations for gallantry. In Greece, he became something of a folk hero so that his concerts in Athens were always considerable events.
And things had changed in Greece now that the Colonels were in charge after the military coup of April 1967, and King Constantine’s exile to Rome.
Dimitri Mikali was seventy-six and looked it. Although he still kept open house in the evenings, few people attended. His activities on behalf of the Democratic Front Party had made him increasingly unpopular with the Government and his newspaper had already been banned on several occasions.
‘Politics,’ Mikali said to him on one of his visits. ‘It’s a nonsense. Why make trouble for yourself?’
‘Oh, I’m doing very well really.’ His grandfather smiled. ‘What you might call a privileged position, having a grandson who is an international celebrity.’
‘All right,’ Mikali said. ‘So you’ve got a military junta in power and they don’t like the mini-skirt. So what? I’ve been in worse places than Greece as it is today, believe me.’
‘Political prisoners by the thousand, the educational system used to indoctrinate little children, the Left almost stamped out of existence. Does this sound like the home of democracy?’
None of which had the slightest effect on Mikali. The following day he flew to Paris and gave a Chopin recital that same night, a charitable affair in aid of international cancer research.
There was a letter waiting for him from his London agent, Bruno Fischer, about the intinerary for a tour of England, Wales and Scotland in the autumn. He was spending some time going over it in his dressing room after the recital when there was a knock on the door and the stage doorkeeper looked in.
‘A gentleman to see you, Monsieur Mikali.’
He was pushed out of the way and a large, burly individual with thinning hair and a heavy black moustache appeared. He wore a shabby raincoat over a crumpled tweed suit.
‘Hey, Johnny. Good to see you. Claude Jarrot – staff sergeant, Third Company, Second REP. We did that night drop at El Kebir together.’
‘I remember,’ Mikali said. ‘You broke an ankle.’
‘And you stayed with me when the fellagha broke through the line.’ Jarrot stuck out a hand. ‘I’ve read about you in the papers and when I saw you were giving this concert tonight, I thought I’d come along. Not for the music. It doesn’t mean a damn thing to me.’ He grinned. ‘I couldn’t pass up the chance of greeting another old Sidi-bel-Abbès hand.’
It could be he was after a touch, he was certainly shabby enough, but his presence brought back the old days. For some reason, Mikali warmed to him.
‘I’m glad you did. I was just leaving. What about a drink? There must be a bar near here.’
‘Actually I have a garage only a block away,’ Jarrot said. ‘I’ve got a small apartment above it. I’ve got some good stuff in at the moment. Real Napoleon.’
‘Lead on,’ Mikali said. ‘Why not?’
The walls of the living-room were crowded with photos cataloguing Jarrot’s career in the Legion and there were mementoes everywhere including his white képi and dress epaulets on the sideboard.
The Napoleon brandy was real enough and he got drunk fairly rapidly.
‘I thought they kicked you out in the Putsch?’ Mikali said. ‘Weren’t you up to your neck in the OAS?’
‘Sure I was,’ Jarrot said belligerently. ‘All those years in Indochina. I was at Dien Bien Phu, you know that? Those little yellow bastards had me for six months in a prison camp. Treated like pigs we were. Then the Algeria fiasco when the old man went and did the dirty on us. Every self-respecting Frenchman should have been OAS, not just mugs like me.’
‘Not much future in it now, surely?’ Mikali said. ‘The old boy showed he meant business when he had Bastien Thiry shot. How many attempts to knock him off and not one of them succeeded?’
‘You’re right,’ Jarrot said, drinking. ‘Oh, I played my part. Here, take a look.’
He removed a rug from a wooden chest in the corner, fumbled for a key and unlocked it with difficulty. Inside there was a considerable assortment of weapons. Several machine pistols, an assortment of handguns and grenades.
‘I’ve had this stuff here four years,’ he said. ‘Four years, but the network’s busted. We’ve had it. A man has to make out other ways these days.’
‘The garage?’
Jarrot placed a finger against his nose. ‘Come on, I’ll show you. This damn bottle’s empty anyway.’
He unlocked a door at the rear of the garage and disclosed a room piled with cartons and packing cases of every description. He opened one and extracted another bottle of Napoleon brandy.
‘Told you there was more.’ He waved an arm. ‘More of everything here. Any kind of booze you want. Cigarettes, canned food. Be cleared out by the end of the week.’
‘Where does it all come from?’ Mikali asked.
‘You might say off the back of a passing truck.’ Jarrot laughed drunkenly. ‘No questions, no pack drill as we used to say in the Legion. Just remember this, mon ami. Anything you ever need – anything. Just come to old Claude. I’ve got connections. I can get you anything, and that’s a promise. Not only because you’re an old bel-Abbès hand. If it hadn’t been for you, the fellagha would probably have cut my balls off, amongst other things, that time.’
He was very drunk by now and Mikali humoured him, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll remember that.’
Jarrot pulled the cork with his teeth. ‘To the Legion,’ he said. ‘The most exclusive club in the world.’
He drank from the bottle and passed it across.
He was on tour in Japan when he received news of his grandfather’s death. The old man, increasingly infirm with advancing years and arthritic in one hip, had needed sticks to walk for some time. He had lost his balance on the tiled floor of the balcony of the apartment and fallen to the street below.
Mikali cancelled what concerts he could and flew home, but it was a week before he got to Athens. In his absence, the coroner had ordered the funeral to take place, cremation according to Dimitri Mikali’s wishes as conveyed in a letter of instructions to his lawyer.
Mikali fled to Hydra as he had done before, to the villa on the peninsula beyond Molos. He crossed