Solo

The concert was a total success. Mikali was called back again and again with many sections of the audience clamouring for an encore. Finally, he obliged. There was an excited murmur, then complete stillness as he seated himself at the piano. A pause and he started to play ‘Le Pastour’ by Gabriel Grovlez.

He parked the hire car some distance from the garage and walked the rest of the way on foot through the heavy rain, letting himself in quietly through the judas in the main gate. He still had the Colt in the right-hand pocket of his raincoat. He felt for the butt as he stood there in the darkness listening to music faintly playing in the apartment above.

He went upstairs quietly and opened the door. The living-room was in half-darkness, the only light the lamp on the table at which Jarrot snored gently in a drunken sleep.

One bottle of Napoleon beside him was empty, another already a quarter down. A portable radio played music softly and then the announcer’s voice interrupted with more details on the massive police hunt for the assassin of Vassilikos and his men.

He reached over and switched it off, then took the Colt from his pocket. A soft voice said in excellent English with a slight French accent, ‘If that’s the gun I think it is, it would be really an error of the first magnitude to kill him with it.’

Deville stepped from the shadows at the back of the room. He still wore his dark overcoat and carried a walking stick in one hand, his Homburg in the other.

‘They would extract the bullet from his corpse, forensic tests would show it had come from the same gun which was used on Vassilikos and his men. I am right, am I not? It is the same gun?’ He shrugged. ‘Which still doesn’t mean they would stand much chance of tracing you, but silly to spoil such a brilliant operation with even a single act of stupidity.’

Mikali waited, the Colt against his thigh. ‘Who are you?’

‘Jean Paul Deville. By profession, criminal lawyer. This creature here is a client of mine. He came to me earlier tonight in considerable agitation and told me everything. You see, we have a special relationship. I am, you might say, his father confessor. He’d been a naughty boy with the OAS a year or two back, I got him off the hook.’

He reached inside his coat, the Colt swung up instantly. ‘A cigarette only, I assure you.’ Deville produced a silver case. ‘I haven’t fired a gun in years. No blunt instruments. Nothing up my sleeve at all. This whole affair is between you and me and this poor drunken swine here. He hasn’t spoken to another living soul.’

‘And you believe him?’

‘Who could he run to? Like a scared rabbit, he came to the only safe burrow he knew.’

‘To tell you?’

‘He was afraid that you intended to kill him. Quite terrified. He told me everything about you. Algeria, the Legion. Kasfa, for example. That little affair made a deep impression on him. He gave me the reason for the whole thing as well. The fact that Vassilikos had tortured and murdered your grandfather.’

‘So?’ Mikali waited patiently.

‘I could have written a letter detailing all these acts before leaving my apartment tonight. Posted it with a covering note to my secretary asking for it to be passed on to the right people at SDECE.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

Deville walked over to the window and opened it. Rain poured down relentlessly. There was the sound of traffic in the night.

‘Tell me something – do you usually speak Greek with a Cretan accent like you did in the park?’

‘No.’

‘I thought not. A brilliant stroke that, coupled with your reference to Vassilikos and his men as fascists, to the chauffeur. Of course it does mean that all over Greece tonight, they’ll be hauling in every Communist, every agitator, every member of the Democratic Front they can lay their hands on.’

‘That’s their hard luck,’ Mikali said. ‘Politics bore me, so could you kindly get to the point.’

‘It’s really quite simple, Mr Mikali. Chaos – chaos is my business. I have a vested interest, as do my masters, in creating as much of it as possible in the Western world. Chaos and disorder and fear and uncertainty, like you have created, because what’s happening in Athens tonight is also happening in Paris. There isn’t a left-wing agitator in the city who won’t be either under cover or in police hands by morning. Not only Communists, but Socialists. The Socialist Party won’t like that and very soon, the workers won’t like it either, which makes things rather difficult for the government with an election coming up.’

Mikali said softly, ‘Who are you?’

‘Like you, not what I seem.’

‘From way back east? As far as Moscow perhaps?’

‘Does that matter?’

‘Like I said, politics bore me.’

‘An excellent basis for the sort of relationship I’m seeking.’

‘So what do you want?’

‘You, my friend, to repeat your performance in the Bois de Meudon when I require it. Very special occasions only. A unique and totally private arrangement between the two of us.’

Mikali said softly, ‘Blackmail, is that it?’

‘Don’t be stupid. You could kill me now – and Jarrot. Walk away from here with an excellent chance of no one ever being the wiser. Who on earth would ever suspect you? Good God, you even played for the Queen of England at a special reception at Buckingham Palace last year, isn’t it so? When you’re in London, passing through Heathrow, what happens to you?’

‘They take me to the VIP lounge.’

‘Exactly. Can you remember when Customs anywhere in the world last checked your baggage?’

Which was true. Mikali put the Colt on the window ledge and took out a cigarette. Deville gave him a light. ‘Let me make one thing clear. Like you, politics mean nothing to me.’

‘Then why do what you do?’

Deville shrugged. ‘It’s the only game I’ve got. I’m lucky. Most people don’t have any game at all.’

‘But I do?’ Mikali said.

Deville turned. There was a strange disturbing intimacy between them now, standing together at the window, the smell of the rain on the night air.

‘Your music? I don’t think so. I’ve often felt sorry for creative artists. Musicians, painters, writers. It’s over, particularly in the performing arts, so soon; the briefest of high points. Afterwards, down you go. Like sex. Ovid really put it very well over two thousand years ago and nothing has changed since then. After coitus, everyone is depressed.’

His voice was soft, and eminently reasonable. Patient, civilized in tone. For a moment, Mikali might have been back at the villa in Hydra, sitting in front of the pine-log fire, listening to his grandfather.

‘But this evening – that was different. You enjoyed it. Every dangerous moment. I’ll make you a prophecy. Tomorrow, the music critics will say that tonight you gave one of your greatest performances.’

‘Yes,’ Mikali said simply. ‘I was good. The house manager said they won’t have an empty seat in the place on Friday.’

‘Back in Algeria you killed everyone, isn’t that so? Whole villages – women, children – it was that kind of war. This afternoon, you killed pigs.’

Mikali stared out of the window into the night and saw the fellagha turning from the burning truck at Kasfa, drifting towards him in slow motion as he waited, stubbornly refusing to die, the red beret crushed against his wounds.

He had beaten Death then at his own game four times over. He felt again the same breathless excitement. The affair at the Bois de Meudon had been the same, he knew that now. A debt for his grandfather, yes, but afterwards…

He raised his hands. ‘Give me a piano score, any concerto you care to name and with these, I can give you perfection.’