They followed the road Miss Kingslake had traveled the day before. Rees was to pay a courtesy call on the commandant of the airfield, whose name he read out several times from a slip of paper. Grilli would leave him there and return for him. (Later Miss Kingslake was to discover that Grilli, self-conscious about his inherited Palermitan accent, preferred not to deal with purer-spoken officials—a complication that had not been foreseen at Headquarters.) Grilli and Moyers spoke of invoices, of supplies and equipment; and Miss Kingslake, considerately leaning back to facilitate their discussion, was reassured by this talk of tonnage and manpower. Was it not all this, ultimately, that mattered on an emergency mission?

When the car drew up, Grilli escorted Rees into the airport. The Captain also got out, and scrambled into the back seat, where he heavily and patriotically exhaled Canadian Club.

“That’s it. What-have-you and so on.”

“What?”

“The office. The mission. HQ Rhodes. For what it’s worth.”

Following the direction of his jabbing finger, Miss Kingslake discovered a large stuccoed cube alone in a rocky field.

“You mean, right here? At the airfield?”

“Converted military post. Lent to us by the locals. Supposed to be gratis, but they’ll want their pound of flesh, just wait, what-have-you and so on.”

Some minutes had passed in silence before Miss Kingslake inquired conversationally, “How far is it from here to Lindos?”

The door opened. “You didn’t come here for sightseeing.” Grilli climbed inside.

Having followed her companions up a short flight of steps, Miss Kingslake presently lost them in a maze of connecting rooms. The offices were high and wide, and floored with huge black and white tiles—hot weather rooms that were fringed with cold at this season. In the center of each stood a new electric stove attached by its cord to some far-off outlet. These cords went rippling and wiggling beneath desks, under double doors, out into corridors; those that had not lasted the distance had been extended with others. The whole establishment was swarming, a nest of vipers.

Clelia Kingslake made herself known to the mission accountant, a Dane, and to the radio operator, a Pakistani. With a new, urgent perception, she saw that both were of crushable substance, and her heart sank though she said some cheerful words. A room containing the local recruits, boisterous with laughter when she opened the door, at once fell silent. Half a dozen messengers and drivers sat on the edges of tables speaking Greek, and on the single chair a little old man was fitting a roll of paper into an adding machine. She inquired for the Captain’s office and they showed it to her, pointing out its particular black cord writhing down the hallway.

Following this, Miss Kingslake went to meet her Minotaur.