Free The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith Page B

Colbert, and yours under another name, Robinson. She and I ought to sit together on the plane, and you should sit alone. Don’t worry about the names. You probably won’t be spoken to. No passports involved, you know.”
    Chester was vaguely piqued, and not able to say anything for a moment.
    â€œIf they’re looking for you now,” Rydal went on, “on planes, for instance, they’ll be looking for a man with his wife. I thought it might be a slight advantage this way, that’s all.”
    Chester nodded. It made sense, and the flight was only a two-hour affair. “Okay. That’s fine,” said Chester.
    â€œLooks like the bus is loading now. Did you check your luggage over there?”
    Chester went off and claimed his and Colette’s luggage.
    Then they boarded the bus, and, as it happened, all had to sit separately. The long bus tooled smoothly past the National Gardens and made a curve around the tumbled and standing columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, where Chester had taken snapshots of Colette, and an Italian stranger had taken snapshots of both of them with Chester’s camera only yesterday morning. The film was still in Chester’s Rolleiflex, and he supposed he would get it developed in Iraklion, leaving them in a name he did not yet know. The back of the seat in front of him pressed against his knees. He looked down at something rolling under his shoe, and found a pale, flesh-colored, cheap-looking fountain pen. A ball-point. Made in Germany, it said on the barrel. Trying it on the back of his hand, he saw that it wrote, in blue ink. Maybe it was a little sign of good luck.
    At the airport they had time for an espresso at the small bar which also served liquor. Chester ordered a brandy with his coffee. He was nervous. The loud speaker kept bawling things out in Greek, French and English, plane departures and arrivals and weather conditions and calls for people, and he was half expecting an announcement of the discovery of the body in the Hotel King’s Palace. Rydal left his coffee to go and buy a newspaper. It was all very confused and noisy. Only Colette looked calm, sitting with her legs neatly crossed on the high stool at the bar counter, looking about at the people seated in the deep leather chairs among tall potted plants, behind newspapers, behind thin screens of cigarette smoke. Rydal came back, scanning a Greek paper as he walked, bumping into one or two people.
    He shook his head at Chester and smiled slightly, offered Colette a cigarette, which she declined, then finished his coffee.
    They boarded the plane, Rydal and Colette going ahead, Chester following, with four or five people between them. Immediately upon leaving Athens they were over water, and then over a woolly, level field of clouds, the blue sky lost. Chester thumbed through his Guide Bleu, trying to concentrate on the pages on Crete. The maps of Knossos looked undecipherable and uninteresting today. Behind him, he heard over the roar of the plane’s engine a man and women laughing and talking in Greek. Farther behind him and across the aisle, Rydal sat with Colette. He wondered what they were talking about. Pleasantries, probably. Colette had her moods. He had never seen her so disturbed as last night, yet it had passed in a matter of minutes. Murder. Well, that was certainly a bad thing, and it was really a wonder she hadn’t been more upset than she was. It was a second-degree murder, Chester reminded himself, even merely manslaughter. Certainly. Unpremeditated and an accident. No, they couldn’t give him a life sentence for that! What disturbed him was that they were on his trail at all, and that the death of the Greek agent hadn’t solved anything, had only made the situation worse, had gained them only a few hours’ time, nothing more.
    Chester took his flask, which he had providently filled, from the duffel bag between his feet, pocketed it, and went to the