Solo. Jack Higgins

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 from Athens to Hydra port on the hydrofoil and found Constantine waiting to pick him up in the launch. When he went on board, the old man handed 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 СКАЧАТЬ