Solo. Jack Higgins
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him an envelope without a word, started the engines and took the boat out of harbour.
Mikali recognized his grandfather’s writing at once. His fingers shook slightly as he opened the envelope. The contents were brief.
If you read this it means I am dead. Sooner – later, it comes to us all. So, no sad songs. No more of my stupid politics to bore you with either because, in the end, the end is perhaps always the same. I know only one thing with total certainty. You have lightened the last years of my life with pride and with joy, but most of all with your love. I leave you mine and my blessing with it.
Mikali’s eyes burned, he experienced difficulty in breathing. When they reached the villa, he changed into climbing boots and rough clothes and took to the mountains, walking for hours, reducing himself to a state of total exhaustion.
He spent the night in a deserted farmhouse and could not sleep. The following day, he continued to climb, spending another night like the first.
On the third day, he staggered back to the villa where he was put to bed by Constantine and his wife. The old woman gave him some herbal potion. He slept for twenty hours and awakened calm and in control of himself again. It was enough. He phoned through to Fischer in London, and told him he wanted to get back to work.
At the flat in Upper Grosvenor Street there was a mountain of mail waiting. He skimmed through quickly and paused. There was one with a Greek postage stamp marked Personal. It had been sent to his agent and readdressed. He put the other letters down and opened it. The message was typed on a plain sheet of paper. No address. No name.
Dimitri Mikali’s death was not an accident – it was murder. The circumstances are as follows. For some time, he had been under pressure from certain sections of the government because of his activities for the Democratic Front. Various freedom-loving Greeks had together compiled a dossier for presenting to the United Nations including details of political prisoners held without trial, atrocities of every description, torture and murder. It was believed that Dimitri Mikali knew the whereabouts of this dossier. On the evening of the 16 June, he was visited at his apartment by Colonel George Vassilikos who bears special responsibility for the work of the political branch of Military Intelligence, together with his bodyguards Sergeant Andreas Aleko and Sergeant Nikos Petrakis. In an effort to make Mikali disclose the whereabouts of the dossier he was beaten severely and burned about the face and the private parts of his body with cigarette lighters. When he finally died because of this treatment, Vassilikos ordered his body to be thrown from the balcony to make the death look like an accident. The coroner was under orders to produce the report he did and never actually saw the body which was cremated so that the signs of ill-treatment and torture would be erased. Both, Sergeants Aleko and Petrakis have boasted of these facts while drunk, in the hearing of several people friendly to our cause.
The rage in Mikali was a living thing. The physical pain which gripped his body was like nothing he had ever known in his life before. He doubled over in spasm, fell to his knees, then curled up in a foetal position.
How long he stayed there, he had no means of knowing, but certainly towards evening, he found himself wandering through one street after another as darkness fell, with no idea where he was. Finally, he went into a small, cheap café, ordered a coffee and sat down at one of the stained tables. It was like the echo of an old tune, the café in Paris by the market all over again for someone had left a copy of the London Times. He picked it up, his eyes roaming over the news items mechanically. Then he stiffened as he saw a small headline half-way down the second page.
Greek Army Delegation visits Paris for Nato consultations.
In his heart, he knew whose name he was going to find even before he read the rest of the news item.
After that, the whole thing fell into place with total certainty, as if it were a sign from God himself, when the phone rang. It was Bruno Fischer.
‘John? I was hoping you’d arrived. I can get you two immediate concerts, Wednesday and Friday, if you want them. Hoffer was due to play the Schumann A minor with the London Symphony. Unfortunately he’s broken his wrist.’
‘Wednesday?’ Mikali said automatically. ‘That only gives me three days.’
‘Come on, you’ve recorded the damn thing twice. One rehearsal should be enough. You could be a sensation.’
‘Where?’ Mikali asked. ‘The Festival Hall?’
‘Good God, no. Paris, Johnny. I know it means climbing right back into another aeroplane, but do you mind?’
‘No,’ John Mikali said calmly. ‘Paris will be fine.’
The military coup which seized power in Greece in the early hours of 27 April 1967 had been expertly planned by only a handful of colonels in total secrecy which to a great extent explained its success. Newspaper coverage in the days which followed had been extensive. Mikali spent the afternoon before his evening flight to Paris at the British Museum, checking through every available newspaper and magazine published in the period following the coup.
It was not as difficult as it might have been, mainly because it was photos only that he was after. He found two. One was in Time magazine and showed Colonel George Vassilikos, a tall, handsome man of forty-five with a heavy, black moustache, standing beside Colonel Papadopoulos, the man who was, to all intents and purposes, dictator of Greece.
The second photo was in a periodical published by Greek exiles in London. It showed Vassilikos flanked by his two sergeants. The caption underneath read: The butcher and his henchmen. Mikali removed the page carefully and left.
He called at the Greek Embassy when he reached Paris the following morning, and was received with delight by the cultural attaché, Doctor Melos.
‘My dear Mikali, what a pleasure. I’d no idea you were due in Paris.’
Mikali explained the circumstances. ‘Naturally they’ll get a few quick adverts out in the Paris papers to let the fans know it’s me and not Hoffer who’ll be playing, but I thought I’d like to make sure you knew here at the Embassy.’
‘I can’t thank you enough. The Ambassador would have been furious if he’d missed it. Let me get you a drink.’
‘I’ll be happy to arrange tickets,’ Mikali told him. ‘For the Ambassador and anyone else he cares to bring. Didn’t I read somewhere that you have some brass staying here from Athens?’
Melos made a face as he brought him a glass of sherry. ‘Not exactly culture-orientated. Colonel Vassilikos, Intelligence, which is a polite way of saying…’
‘I can imagine,’ Mikali said.
Melos glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll show you.’
He moved to the window. A black Mercedes stood in the courtyard, a chauffeur beside it. A moment later, Colonel Vassilikos came down the steps from the main entrance, flanked by Sergeants Aleko and Petrakis. Aleko got in front with the chauffeur, Petrakis and the Colonel in the rear. As the Mercedes moved away, Mikali memorized the number although the car was recognizable enough because of the Greek pennant on the front.
‘Ten o’clock on the dot,’ Melos said. ‘Exactly the same when he was here the other month. If his bowels are as regular, he must be a healthy man. Out to the military academy at St Cyr for the day’s work, through the Bois de Meudon and Versailles. He likes the scenery that way, so the chauffeur tells me.’
‘No time for play?’ Mikali said. ‘He sounds a dull dog.’
‘I’m told he likes boys, but that could be hearsay. One thing is certain. Music figures very low on his list of priorities.’
Mikali smiled. ‘Well, you can’t win them all. But you and the Ambassador, perhaps?’
Melos went down to the front entrance with him. ‘I was desolated to hear of your grandfather’s unfortunate death. It must have come as a terrible shock. To have returned to the concert platform so soon after…I can only say, your courage fills me with admiration.’