Assignment - Black Viking (5 page)

“Sam, darling?”

Again Sigrid broke into his thoughts. She stood up from the bunk, worrying a corner of her ripe mouth with her strong, white teeth. “Sam, is this weather a part of it all?” 

“I should think so.”

“It’s never been like this here, at this time of the year. It makes me feel creepy. And scared.”

“Me, too,” he said.

“I do not think anything ever frightens you, Sam.” “Some things do. You do.”

“Are you finished with the code?”

“Yes.”

“What kind do you people use?”

“It’s a forty-two group phase that changes with the calendar.”

“Committed to memory?”

“Long ago.”

“Then it’s an old code?”

“Standard. But quite secure. Changes with the date.” “When did you last get refresher training, darling?”

He looked up at her. “You’re very inquisitive, Sigrid. And you shouldn’t be. Even if we’re to work together, our departments are different and—”

Something had happened to the
Vesper’s
engine.

The, powerful diesel had sent regular, assured thuds through the laboring vessel all day, assisted only by a storm trysail rigged at dawn by the black-haired Olaf. The pulse of the engine was something you took for granted, like the beat of your own heart. But now it faltered, almost died, picked up, faltered again—and stopped. Sigrid’s face drained of color. “What happened?”

“Are you really a good sailor?”

“Yes, but—”

“Go up on deck and give them a hand. Hurry!”

She obeyed in the crisis without question, for which he was grateful. He plunged for the cabin door ahead of her, aware of angry shouts from the engine room in Sicilian dialect. Footsteps ran on deck. A man screamed. The shrill sound was cut off by the sudden thunder of a giant sea breaking over the schooner. The
Vesper
, helpless without her engine, heeled far over and lay shuddering, broadside to the wind.

Sigrid vanished up the ladder to the deck. When she opened the hatch, salt water gushed down into the cabin corridor on Durell. He shoved away from a leaning bulkhead and ran for the engine room.

Ugo Uccelatti was in the corridor. The Baron looked pale under his smooth olive skin. “There is a block in the fuel line,” he said. “My men are already working on it. Have you been on deck lately?”

“No. We’re only minutes from rendezvous, you know.” “My dear Sam.” Sweat shone on Uccelatti’s handsome face. “I do not question what you do. I have put myself and my people and my vessel at your disposal. But this is madness. A rendezvous now is impossible.”

“Those are my order, Ugo.”

“So I understand. I know what it is, to obey blindly. But it is folly now, and the Russians—”

“I’ll need two good men when I go ashore,” Durell broke in.

“
If
you get ashore. If any of us gets ashore.”

“You are free to withdraw,
bar
ó
ne
, at the first opportunity. You have been more than kind already.”

“No, no. You are too quick in temper. I only mean I fail to see the possibility of success in this rendezvous.” “You’re probably right. Can I have two men?”

“I shall choose them for you myself.”

“Good. Let’s look at the engine.”

The diesel plant that powered the
Vesper
was dark and bulky in the neat engine room. Emergency lights glowed in the bulkhead above the dead engine. Three of the
Vesper’s
tough Sicilian crewmen were hunched over the silent machinery, working with wrenches at a swift, efficient pace. Durell watched them for a moment. His features were impassive.

“An accident?” he asked quietly.

One of the engineers looked up. He was only a boy, not yet twenty, with a quick, dark face and alert, almond eyes the color of onyx. The face was round and babyish; the eyes were those of a disillusioned old man.

“No, dad. It was grunched.” The boy grinned. “But we’ll have the line clean in ten minutes.”

“Make it five. Ten minutes is too much.”

“Miracles don’t happen up here, dad. Only in dear old Sicily.”

Durell stared at the boy. His mouth was shaped in an insolent grin as he wiped his hand on a fistful of waste cotton. “You’re American?” Durell asked.

“I’m Ginelli’s son.”

“Is that supposed to mean anything?”

“You don’t read the headlines, do you, dad?”

“Watch your mouth,” Durell said. “Or I’ll shut it for you.”

“I take orders from the 
bar
ó
ne
, not from you.” Uccelatti spoke sharply. “You take orders from Signor Durell. You are not polite, Gino.”

The boy subsided, but his words were caustic. “A thousand pardons, 
bar
ó
ne
.”

“I’ll take him with me,” Durell decided. “Pick another man to come along, Ugo.”

“But Signor Sam, this Gino is the son of Joseph Ginelli. You must have heard of him. The vice-lord of Chicago. He was sentenced to life imprisonment last year. We took the boy home with us.” Home was Sicily to Uccelatti, of course. “He is not a good boy. He is with us to learn discipline, from me and his uncle.”

“Is his uncle aboard?”

“Yes, naturally. Damone.”

“I’ll take the uncle, then, with the boy.”

Gino’s eyes were big and dark. “Where are we going?” “To learn a few things. Are you sure the fuel line wasn’t plugged accidentally, Gino?”

The boy extended a greasy hand. “Sand in the oil. From a fire bucket. It didn’t just fall in, dad.”

Durell turned and left the engine room. Ugo followed at his heels. The Baron said, “It must be Olaf. I told you it was dangerous to leave him aboard as captain, after what you discovered about him.”

“He may have outsmarted himself,” Durell said. He checked his watch. “It’s time for me to go on deck. They’ll be looking for me.”

“If they are here.”

“They’ll be here,” Durell said. “The KGB wouldn’t miss an appointment with me.”

THE wind blew harder. It had a cold bite, as if from the fangs of hell. The driving rain blinded him when he stepped out on deck. He could see nothing for a moment. Except for the cold, he might have been in one of those sudden spring storms that swept the Gulf when he had sailed as a boy. The seas were enormous, slate-green, capped with foam as if from the mouth of a ravening beast.

A heavy trysail had been rigged to keep the
Vesper
into the wind. Without her engine, however, she drifted inexorably toward a high, storm-raddled shore, just visible to the east. Durell stared at the land for a long moment. Curtains of rain, driven almost horizontal by the wind, obscured the view. The sea broke over the bow and ran hissing over his feet and ankles and spilled over the starboard rail. There were two figures aft, at the wheel. One was Sigrid. She had lost her oilskin cap, and her long pale hair streamed wildly in the gusts. She looked elated, even enraptured, as she fought the storm, an elemental pose to her body that took her back a thousand years to pagan Viking ancestors. Beside her, big and even more primitive, was Olaf Jannsen, the new skipper. They both stood in the luxurious, but sea-soaked, cockpit. Sigrid shouted something to the black-haired man, but the wind snatched away her words. Their closeness as they fought the wheel together made Durell feel uneasy.

Then a ship’s horn blared wildly from somewhere forward. Durell moved to the bow, trying to pierce the murk over the sea. The flying spray made it difficult to know where water and sky merged. The horn blared again. He looked at his watch. They were right on time.

He could not see the other boat for a moment. The stinging rain drenched him to the skin. He bent his knees and clung to a stay to give his body spring that matched the lurching of the
Vesper
. A long comber smoked out of the north, gray-green, foam-flecked, the cap torn to shreds by the wind. The schooner lifted, shuddering. The storm sail flapped with a sound like a cannon shot. Then Durell saw the other vessel at last.

She was a trawler, flying no flag, with a sleek cutter bow and a mass of radar equipment sprouting like mathematical twigs from her mast. A small knot of men lined her rail. The drag booms had been secured and the trawler smashed heavily through the sea, impervious to the storm’s violence. They were headed on a collision course.

Durell glanced again at the nearby land. That would be Visby, he guessed, that former home of rapacious pirates. But there was another sort of pirate abroad on the seas today.

Spray stung his eyes again. The trawler’s horn boomed again, across the bridge of wind. A great mechanical voice rasped a question. He could not understand the words. The voice held notes of query, alarm, and anger.

He turned abruptly and shouted astern.

“Sheer off!”

The two figures at the wheel were locked in struggle. Olaf raised a massive hand and Sigrid went down out of sight. The
Vesper
maintained her collision course. Durell cursed the folly of the men who sat at warm, snug desks and ordered this. Fear clutched at his belly. Sigrid scrambled up and plunged at the giant Olaf again. He gave her a casual swipe of his big arm and she went down again.

There was no time to watch further. A blast of wind swung the
Vesper’s
bow and she plunged sickeningly. Durell’s fingers slipped on the wet steel stay. His flesh was cut by the wire, but there was no pain. Then another giant sea lifted high above his head and, rising on it, inexorably bearing down upon them, was the gray trawler. The next moment he felt as if his body were broken in two by the smashing force of the sea that fell upon him.

The world became a dark, furious tumble of surging water that carried him helplessly from the bow. He lost all sense of orientation for a moment. Something slammed across his back. He seized the lashed boom that had checked his slide across the deck. The water pushed and pulled at him and drained away. He looked for the trawler.

Its monstrous voice, raucous with alarm, shouted through the wind and rain.

“Durell!”

His name blared on the wind, amplified and distorted. He wiped rain from his face and strained to see the men on the other vessel. The two boats were only yards apart now. They were waving, their slickered arms moving in semaphoric signals. Another sea lifted the
Vesper
and made her slide away, and Durell turned to shout at Olaf.

Sigrid had risen from the cockpit where she had fallen moments ago. She held something wet and black in her hand. Her long hair streamed in the dark wind. Olaf swung the wheel and turned the
Vesper
again toward the trawler, as if to crash the fisherman, and Sigrid swung the bar of iron she held and brought it down on the giant’s head. Durell ran, sliding through the water pouring over the deck. He knew he would be too late, but he had to try. Olaf fell back, arms outflung, fingers crooked as if to grab support from the wind. A sea broke over the stern and swallowed him. He was erased from sight as Durell tumbled into the cockpit.

“Sigrid, what—!”

She stood with feet apart, riding the wild motion of the schooner. Her wet face was turned to the rail. Her blue eyes were wild, feral, her nostrils flaring with a strange lust.

Olaf had gone over the side.

“Do you see him?” she whimpered.

“He’s gone.”

“No, no, he must still be alive.”

“Not in that sea.”

“He will swim ashore. He is the Black Viking, and the sea is his home—”

“Sigrid, stop that nonsense.”

“He must be alive!” she shrieked. “I didn’t want to kill him!”

Durell snatched the marlin spike from her hand. She stood as if of stone, her eyes blind, staring at the tumult of the sea. He pulled her back into the safety of the cockpit as another comber broke over them. The schooner sank laboriously under the weight of dark green water. Durell grabbed desperately at the wheel. The trawler was alongside. There came a grating, splintering sound. He heard his name again, bellowing from the other’s mechanical speaker. Through the rain he saw the face of the man who called to him.

He knew the face.

Then a gust of rain erased it. The trawler’s bow turned and its great steel shape surged off into the gloom. A single searchlight played on him as he stood in the cockpit. Then it spanned the foaming seas between the two vessels. Durell thought he saw Olaf Jannsen’s arm lift from the wild waves. But he knew he had to be mistaken. No man could stay afloat in that enraged element.

The trawler vanished.

“Sam, help me . . .”

He did not look at the girl for another moment. The face he had seen aboard the trawler haunted him. Finally he turned to Sigrid. She had fallen on a splintered piece of rail that the storm had flung into the cockpit. Her face was white with pain, and her mouth was shaped in a meaningless smile.

“It—it is too silly—”

“What happened to you?”

“I had to do it. He was going to kill me.”

“Olaf is no loss. He tried to crash us.”

“Sam, help me up. The splinters—”

He took her wet hand. The schooner rolled in the wind. He could not see the trawler now, but the lights on the island shore were nearer in the evening gloom. Some men came tumbling up from the hatch and he felt the deck vibrate suddenly as the engine started again. The first to reach him was the boy, Gino, whose eyes were still insolent.

“You having trouble, dad?”

“Take the wheel,” Durell said shortly. “We’re going in.” “Man, like everything is a mess up here.” The youngster surveyed the deck’s wreckage with awe. “How’s the lady?”

“Shut your mouth and take the wheel.”

Sigrid whimpered with pain when he helped her up. “Where does it hurt?” Durell asked.

“Where do you think the splinters are?”

He managed a crooked grin. “I’m good at taking out splinters.”

Her eyes were resentful as he made her strip off her wet clothes in his cabin. The schooner moved easier now, under power, in the lee of a small promontory of Gotland Island. As if satisfied with the damage, the storm suddenly lessened, but the rain continued to thunder down. It was almost dark. The only light in the cabin was the small lamp over his bunk, gleaming on the girl’s golden body as she lay there on her stomach.