Levkas Man by Hammond; Innes Read Free Book Online

searching for the right word. ‘Unworldly, ja?’ He smiled.
    â€˜And that’s the boat I’m to charter?’
    He nodded. ‘I have cabled him already.’
    â€˜Is he a good seaman?’
    He shrugged. ‘You are the seaman, so what does it matter? But inshore—ja—he is good. And he knows the Aegean. He has done a lot of diving—for old wrecks and underwater cities.’
    I asked him then about the nature of the consignment and he laughed. ‘No drugs, nothing like that. Just antiques. And small objects at that—bracelets, drinking cups, pottery. You can easily stow it out of sight in a boat the size of Coromandel .’
    â€˜It’s stolen, I take it?’
    â€˜Not at all.’ He managed to look suitably hurt. ‘My friends will have purchased it at the market price. Of course, the market price to a peasant who has been plundering the graves at Alacahüyük is not the same as the open market price in, say, London or New York. But first you have to get it there.’ He sighed. ‘Governments, you see. It’s always the same—export restrictions, Customs dues, licences; it is the biggest headache I have in the antique business.’
    â€˜And it provides you with the fattest profits—so long as you can find fools who’ll risk their necks for you.’
    He raised his eyebrows slightly, the babyish face blandly innocent, and then he shrugged and said, ‘What do you want me to do—inform the English police about you?’ And he added, smiling, ‘Come here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Nina will have your air ticket by then. Okay?’ He was on his feet and moving towards the door. No offer of a drink this time.
    â€˜Where have I got to deliver the stuff?’
    â€˜Pantelleria. But we can discuss the details in the morning.’
    I hesitated. ‘This fellow Barrett—he can’t be so innocent he’ll agree—’
    â€˜How you fix it with him is your business.’
    He had the door open and I paused, wondering how sure he was of me. ‘See you tomorrow at ten,’ he said. It couldn’t be easy to find the right people for his sort of business.
    â€˜Maybe,’ I replied.
    2
    There were stars that night as I walked back through Amsterdam and I barely noticed the traffic. My mind was already at sea. The first voyage I had ever made in a tanker had been outward in ballast from Southampton, through the Mediterranean to Kuwait. That was in 1966, and by the time we were loaded Nasser had closed the Canal. Since then all my voyages had been by way of the Cape. I had never seen the Mediterranean again and all I knew of Malta was a hazy rampart of buildings looking like cliffs in the early morning sunshine as we’d ploughed our way eastwards about three miles offshore. But it was the stars I chiefly remembered, for before then I had been in cargo ships on the North Atlantic run; the night sky was so clear we could watch sputniks and satellites wheeling across the Milky Way.
    As I approached the house, I glanced up at the windows, half-expecting Sonia Winters to be waiting there for me. But they were dark, and when I went up the stairs into the study there was no message for me. I had a vague feeling of disappointment. She had seemed to haunt the place like a stray cat, and now that I had thrown her out, I was conscious of the emptiness and the past closing in again. I took my suitcase up to my room. The bed was unmade, the towel I had used still lying on the floor and the air cold from the window I had left open.
    I should have gone out then and walked the city until I was tired enough to sleep. But this was my last night, the last time I should be alone in the house, and something held me there, something more powerful than myself.
    I made the bed and went down into the kitchen. The fridge was empty, but in one of the cupboards I found a stale packet of biscuits that the mice had been at