Jack Higgins (15 page)

“Prohibition,” I said. “The twenties. You've got the wrong decade.”

“The same thing when it comes down to it. What will they give you if you're caught?”

“Seven or eight years with hard labour.”

“And for this you get all of a thousand dollars?”

I managed a small laugh. “All right, rich girl, so some of us have to work a little harder than the rest.”

“I'm glad you can joke about it.”

“Like Yanni said, easy as falling off a log. We go in, we come out. No trouble—no trouble at all.”

“Which is why you keep this little lot so handy, I suppose?”

She reached under the chart table, pressed the button and the flap containing my small armoury dropped down.

“What have we got?” she went on. “A sub-machine gun, an automatic pistol and a revolver. Nothing like the quiet life. No self-respecting motor yacht complete without this interesting collection.”

I shoved it back into place with the toe of my boot. “Are you going to rattle on like this at breakfast every morning?”

Which appealed to her and she struck out in that sudden wild way of hers, laughing, punching me on the shoulder. “All right, but I just don't want to lose you. It's been one hell of a day, that way, or had you forgotten?”

And now it was my turn. “So what do I do for money? Live off you?”

“And why not? Would it offend your peasant conscience?”

So now we were scratching. But she was right, of course. Money, as the economists would say, was only a medium of exchange. Hers or mine? What difference did it make? And these were special circumstances after all. Time was limited and not just for her. For the both of us.

But the awkward silence remained, the constraint was there. For the first time we had clashed—really clashed, with something important underlying it. It was the sort of situation where mutual pride is involved and best solved by going to bed, but this was neither the time nor the place and after a while, she went out quietly and left me to it.

 

Five miles on the other side to Nisiros on the inner curve of the Dodecanese, I hove to and gave the agreed signal. A white light flashed five times, a clear interval of a second between each light. The reply was instantaneous. Three red flashes repeated twice.

We waited, the
Gentle Jane
rolling considerably in the heavy swell and the other vessel slid out of the darkness, her deck lights on.

She was larger than I had anticipated, a fifty-footer, with diesel engines from the sound of it. There were five men on deck, all Turkish fishermen, another leaning out of the window of the tall and rather old-fashioned wheelhouse. A trawl was set up in the stern and there were nets festooned all over the place. Either they were genuine, which was possible, or else it was a damned good front.

They slipped alongside surprisingly neatly for such a large boat in that sea and the man in the wheelhouse came down and clambered across. The others stayed where they were for the time being, presumably waiting for credentials to be established.

The one who had boarded us was large and squat and wore a black oilskin jacket that glistened in the rain. I didn't like him and not just because of the greasy moustache and pockmarked face. It was the eyes mainly. Restless, cunning, constantly moving.

He said in good English, “I am Amer—Captain Rasi Amer,” and held out his hand.

I didn't like the feel of it, soft and warm and the look on his face as Sara moved out of the shadows didn't do anything to improve matters. His tongue flipped along
the edge of his lips and then he smiled and it was entirely the wrong sort of smile.

“You have the cases ready?”

“In the hold,” I said. “You can start unloading as fast as you like. I want to get out of here.”

“But why bother, my friend? To unload, I mean,” he added by way of an explanation.

“I don't follow you,” I said although I was already most of the way there.

“The boat.” He tapped the rail. “It is a fine boat. And the girl.” He grinned, looking about as depraved as any human being could reasonably expect to do. “I can find a use for the girl, too.”

He raised his right hand and snapped his fingers negligently and the two men who had been standing aft of the wheelhouse on the Turkish boat whipped some nets aside and disclosed a light machine gun mounted on a tripod. One of them got behind it as if he knew what he was doing.

The other three came over the rail to cover me and Morgan, who looked as if he might pass out at any moment. Sara had stayed exactly where she was in the entrance of the wheelhouse, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her reefer coat. Her face was very calm, even when Captain Amer advanced on her.

He put a hand under her chin. “Beautiful,” he said. “Exquisite.”

His other hand got about as intimate as it possibly could. Her mouth lifted in that superbly contemptuous way of hers and she backed into the shadows of the wheelhouse. Amer, shaking all over from what I could see, went after her.

He gave a sudden cry of dismay and came out back
wards very, very slowly, the barrel of the Walther rammed up under his chin and from the look on Sara's face, she had every intention of using it.

The boys with the machine gun were in something of a quandary. I solved it for them by moving across quickly and relieving her of the Walther. I got a strong grip on Amer's greasy hair and shoved the barrel another half-inch into his throat.

“Tell them to toss that machine gun over the side fast or I'll blow the top of your head off.”

He was no hero which helped because there were still six of them to deal with. The machine gun went into the water with a splash and I told Morgan to take the controls and move us apart.

By then I had Amer and the other three lined up at the rail. As our engines rumbled into life, the gap between the two boats widened. I waited till it was a good twenty yards and told them to start jumping.

Amer was the last to go, shaking like a leaf, sweat on his face. I think he believed to the end that he was going to get a bullet in the back of the skull which was, after all, exactly what he would have given me.

I rammed the barrel of the Walther into the back of his neck just to frighten him some more, then said in his ear, “I hope you can swim, you bastard.”

I put my foot to the base of his spine and shoved him over the rail. Morgan had been watching from the wheelhouse, and now he boosted the engines and started to take us away.

Sara crossed towards me and at the same moment, one of the men on the trawler's deck, dropped to one knee, produced an automatic rifle from beneath the nets and started firing.

I pulled Sara down fast and fired three times in reply, just to keep his head down for considering the range and conditions. I couldn't expect to do much else with the Walther.

He managed to get ten or twelve rounds off. One of them shattered a couple of panes of glass in the wheelhouse and several more chipped the woodwork here and there, but that was all. By that time, Morgan had taken her past twenty knots anyway and we were streaking into the darkness.

 

“Can I get up now?” Sara asked from beneath me.

“It's a nice position, but if you insist.”

She stood up and leaned on the rail, breathing deeply as if to steady herself. “Straight in and straight out, the man said. Easy, like falling off a log.”

“See this little item?” I tapped the side of the Walther with my fingernail. “It's called a safety catch. Next time you want to shoot somebody under the chin, I'd make sure it was off if I were you.”

 

I was at the wheel and alone again an hour later when for the second time that night, she appeared with tea on a tray. We were making time, the sea was calm and still and only a feather of spray came over the rail pushed by a small wind.

“How's Morg?” I asked.

“Not too bad. He's only had three drinks. I made him promise. What happens now?”

“To the rum? That's Yanni's headache. I got paid in advance.”

“That seems fair enough.”

She sat there sipping the scalding tea, holding her cup between both hands. I said, “You know something, you're quite a girl. You handled a gun as to the manner born back there, safety catch or no safety catch.”

“I had my thumb on it the whole time,” she informed me. “My father had me out with a shotgun when I was barely strong enough to lift it.”

“Grouse on a Yorkshire moor is one thing. What you've just been through back there, quite another. You'll never be as close again to being raped. The most I can say is that our good friend Captain Amer would probably have kept you to himself.”

She said quietly, “The first time we met you made a few cracks about the kind of life I'd probably been leading and you couldn't have been nearer the truth. I got kicked out of a very superior school for young ladies near Geneva when I was sixteen and I jumped into the swinging London scene so hard, I went in over my head. I'll miss a hell of a lot out and move to the morning after my eighteenth birthday when I woke up in bed with someone I didn't even recognise. I suddenly started wondering what it was all about.”

“What was your answer?”

“As always with me, I went to the other extreme. Social work in an East End mission. Drop-outs, junkies, meths drinkers wetting the bed five times a night. The terrible thing was that it didn't move me. Not one little bit. I just found it disgusting so I looked elsewhere.”

“And did you have any luck?”

“Oh, I think you could say that. My step-mother has a cousin, a Church of England bishop, God bless him. He was organising a group of relief workers to go to
Biafra. People who would be willing to turn their hands to absolutely anything that needed doing.”

“And you went?” I said incredulously.

“I spent nine months there. Only came back because I began to show the first signs of my illness. Believe me, poor old Amer back there with his sweaty hands and bad breath was very small beer compared to some of the things I saw out there.”

She went out, closing the door behind her. A small wind lifted the charts like a sail, then died. Not for the first time, I began to wonder what life, the whole cockeyed business, was all about.

 

We were back in Kyros just before dawn and the first thing I did was to get Morgan to run Sara across to the
Firebird
in the dinghy in spite of her protests. I told her she needed a bath and at least ten hours' sleep which was partially so, for she was looking drawn and tired. The truth was that I wanted her out of the way before I saw Yanni Kytros, just in case there was any trouble.

I marched up to his place with blood in my eye and had him out of bed double-quick. Surprisingly, the whole thing was something of an anticlimax. He was horrified at my story. Unfortunately, the quality of the hired help at that end was not under his direct control, but he would certainly see that Captain Amer was dealt with as he deserved.

He insisted that I have an early breakfast with him while Papas rounded up a few of the boys and afterwards, I drove down to the jetty with them in an old truck and watched while his men emptied the hold of the cases of rum.

I felt a whole lot better as the truck moved away along the jetty. Admittedly in daylight, there were one or two more bullet holes in the superstructure than had been apparent during the night, but I was still one thousand dollars in pocket. It could have been a great deal worse.

I felt quite pleased with myself as I went down to the saloon. Morgan was already snoring in one of the bunks. I started to take off my reefer and heard a step on the deck.

“Mr. Savage, are you there?”

I went back up the companionway and found Sergeant Loukas standing by the wheelhouse. “Anything I can do for you?” I asked.

“Indeed there is, Mr. Savage.” He looked as mournful as usual. “I am afraid I must ask you to accompany me to police headquarters. I am placing you under arrest.”

I had a cell to myself, a fine and private place with whitewashed walls, stone floor, stray palliasse on an iron cot and a bucket of water into which I could relieve myself should the need become urgent.

There was a small barred opening in the oaken door, giving a reasonably clear view of the passageway outside. After I'd been in there for an hour, I heard steps, the drone of voices, the sound of a key in the lock.

I went to the door and looked out. A couple of constables stood by a cell at the far end of the passage. As I watched, Morgan shuffled out looking anxious and bewildered. They shoved him along in my direction. When he got close enough, I called to him.

He turned, his rheumy eyes widening and stumbled towards my cell. He was frightened, I could tell that much from the tone of his voice alone.

“What do they want, Jack? What shall I say?”

Anything I told him would have been a waste of time.
He was like an old, rusting padlock, ready to snap at the first pressure of the crowbar.

“Whatever it is, you tell 'em, Morg. Tell them anything they want to know. Look after yourself.”

The two constables got a grip on him between them and one of them poked the end of his truncheon at my fingers. I moved out of harm's way quickly and they ran Morgan out through the end door.

They'd taken everything. Not only the thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills which I had received from Kytros, but also cigarettes, matches, loose change. I sat on the cot, my back against the wall, and wondered what it was all about. Even if Loukas had caught me with the booze on board he would, in normal circumstances, have done nothing. The lawbreaking was strictly at the Turkish end of the line and since when did a Greek policeman start worrying because someone was putting one over on the Turks? No, there was more to this than met the eye—much more.

The
graffiti
on the whitewashed wall opposite had a certain political interest. As well as the usual sexual passages and the various unsuccessful attempts at drawing the more private portions of the human anatomy to scale, there were a great many anti-government slogans. The military junta and the prime minister didn't come out of it at all well and would have found most of the suggestions a physical impossibility.

Toughest of all was an inscription which read
Spadakis was here. Keep his gun oiled. He'll be needing it. Up the Patriotic Front
.

I wondered what had happened to Spadakis. He sounded a pretty hard nut, and then the door was unlocked and I was ordered outside.

They took me up to the ground floor where Loukas had his office. Morgan was sitting outside on a bench, his hands shaking, the fingers plucking at his old cap. They took me straight inside without giving us a chance to talk.

Like everywhere else in the place, the walls were whitewashed, mainly for cheapness, but also because it made it a little cooler in the heat of high summer. It wasn't much as offices went. A couple of metal files, a cupboard and the old desk behind which Loukas was seated.

He was writing away busily, waved me to a seat with hardly a glance and told the two constables to leave us. He kept on writing, so I helped myself to a cigarette from a packet on the desk, leaned back and waited.

He finally looked up. “I've just been completing my report. There are twelve separate bullet holes in the super-structure of your vessel, are you aware of that fact? We may also presume that several more were fired. There are three panes of glass shattered in the wheelhouse.”

“Some crazy fisherman took a shot at us near the Turkish line,” I said. “You know how touchy they are about Greeks fishing their waters? It happens all the time.”

He shook his head very deliberately. “No nonsense, no pretty stories, Mr. Savage. I know what you were doing in Turkish waters. Plenty of other boats are engaged in the same trade and I can turn a blind eye and do, as you are perfectly well aware, as long as there is no trouble.”

“And what trouble have I caused you, exactly?”

“This is a nice quiet little island and the tourist trade
is very important. We can't have boats coming into harbour in the condition yours is in. It would alarm the ladies. It is bad for our image.”

I couldn't quite see where all this was leading. I said, “Have I actually committed a crime?”

“An offence,” he corrected and tapped a fat leather tome that lay before him. “Under two different statutes in here, I have the power to insist that you behave in an orderly and reasonable manner where you have been guilty of conduct likely to cause public distress and alarm.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Do you want my assurances in writing?”

“No, I'm afraid that wouldn't do.” He sat back, looking definitely distressed. “You see where the individual concerned is an alien, it is necessary for him to find some reputable Greek citizen to act as a surety for his behaviour. A citizen of some standing. Someone, to take a good example, like Mr. Dimitri Aleko, who is, I understand, known to you.”

Some sort of light was beginning to dawn. “Let me get this straight. What happens to me and my boat in the meantime?”

“You personally are free to go, Mr. Savage, to seek what help you can. As for your boat,” he sighed, “I'm afraid I must impound it until you can produce the kind of surety I require. You do understand, I'm sure. I have my duty to perform.”

“Oh, I understand all right.” I got to my feet, the anger poking around in my guts like a living thing. “Can I go now?”

“But of course and you may take your mate with you. Your boat will naturally be under guard until this un
happy affair is resolved. You may return on board once only to pick up clothing or any other personal items of an essential nature that you may need.”

“Very liberal of you.”

He pushed an envelope across the desk. “I think you will find everything intact. Ten hundred-dollar bills, some loose change, cigarettes and a leather wallet.”

I grabbed it and made for the door. As I got it open, he added, “There is nothing personal in this, Mr. Savage.”

Looking back on it all now, I think he was deliberately needling me, but whether he was or not, he certainly succeeded.

“Why don't you get stuffed?” I said and slammed the door hard enough to shake the entire building.

 

It was still barely mid-morning when I went into Yanni's, Morgan trailing behind me, and trade was hardly brisk. I slipped him enough loose change for a couple of drinks and asked the barman for Yanni. He was on the roof, it seemed, so I left Morgan to it and went looking for him.

A flight of stone steps led up from the courtyard at the rear of the building to a kind of Moorish roof garden, all potted palms and tinkling fountains. Yanni was seated at a wrought-iron table by the parapet at the far end, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. He was wearing a rather exotic robe in gold and red stripes, the whole thing held together by a golden cord around the waist. It was obviously one of his Egyptian mornings.

“Ah, Jack, you will join me?” He waved me to a seat and poured coffee into a spare cup.

His smile was of the instant variety. It wasn't that he was worried. He wasn't the kind, I'll say that for him. He always did have all the guts in the world when the chips were down in spite of the stone and a half of excess weight he carried.

It was more subtle than that. He knew why I was there, had known in advance. To make it even more complicated, I think he knew that I knew.

“How much did Aleko pay you to set up last night's little affair, Yanni?” I asked.

“Are you going to be angry or reasonable, Jack?” he said, and I noticed that his right hand was hidden under a fold of the newspaper.

“All I want are a few answers,” I said. “Then I'll go and see the man myself.”

He produced a .38 magnum revolver from beneath the paper and slipped it into one of the wide pockets in his robe, then he opened a sandalwood box on the table and offered me a cigarette, Egyptian on one side, Turkish on the other.
So we were going to be civilised about this?

“Aleko is a powerful man, Jack, in Egypt as well as Greece. He has friends at government level in both countries and money talks, you know that as well as I do. He as good as has a licence to print his own.”

“Get to the point,” I told him. “I'm in a hurry.”

“All right, give me a chance. He came to see me the day before yesterday. He'd discovered that we'd had a working relationship in the past and he knew about most of my more clandestine affairs in Egypt as well as here. He was polite, but firm. Either I helped him as required or he would see that the squeeze was applied to me in both countries and he meant it, Jack. You don't rise from barefoot peasant boy to multi-millionaire by the age of
thirty-seven unless you consider people to be expendable when the need arises.”

“What was the set-up?”

“He wanted you to lose your boat. To be on the beach. He told me he had asked you to work for him and that you had refused. This way, you wouldn't have any choice.”

“So this latest effort is strictly improvisation?” I said. “My boat impounded until I find an upright citizen to vouch for my good conduct?”

“Everything went wrong. We didn't expect you to get away, Jack, and no one expected Lady Hamilton to be with you.”

“What did Aleko have to say about that?”

Yanni shuddered. “I have never seen a man so angry. He is arranging personally for something extremely unpleasant to happen to Captain Amer.”

I can't say that prospect worried me particularly. “What was supposed to happen in the original plan?”

“The Turks were to take over the boat and dump you on the beach outside Tatca. My agent was to pick you up there, lift up his hands in horror, cry Allah's curse on them for stealing your boat and his rum, and arrange for your return to Kyros.”

“To go cap in hand to Aleko, willing and eager to accept his proposition.”

“You have it exactly. Neat enough, Jack.” He had recovered himself completely by now. “I think you must admit that.”

“His proposition,” I said. “Did he tell you what it is?”

“No, that didn't enter into our conversation. In fact I think I prefer it that way.”

“To hell with that,” I told him. “If I'm going down
then I'm taking you with me. Our millionaire capitalist is a fanatical Left-winger at heart. He wants me to break a political prisoner out of Sinos for him. How does that appeal to you?”

He crossed himself involuntarily, horror on his face. “Mother of God, Jack, if you are caught. The secret police…”

“Will be rather unpleasant and not only to me, Yanni. You know what those boys are like when they get moving? They'll pull everyone in. Everyone I ever knew.” I reached over and patted his face. “Just think about that. The sweating will do you good.”

I might as well have kicked him in the lower stomach for the effect was the same. His face sagged, turned yellow and there was fear in his eyes which was exactly the way I wanted it. Why, as I crossed the garden and went down the steps, I was actually smiling although in the light of future events, I suspect that if I had been able to see his face at that moment, he would have been smiling too.

 

I left Morgan in the bar and went along the waterfront towards the jetty. The
Seytan
was still down there in the old harbour, drawn up on the sand and Yassi and Abu were working on the hull. Yassi saw me and looked up, shading his eyes from the sun. I heard him call out and a moment later, his father appeared on deck.

“Heh, Jack, you wait for me?” he called.

He vaulted the rail and ran across the strip of beach to the old harbour wall. He came up a rusting iron ladder no more than twenty yards away and I sat on a capstan and waited.

“What's happening? His face was serious. “I went along to the boat to see you and was turned away by the police. You're in trouble?”

“In a way. Kytros asked me to run some booze to Turkey for him last night. The characters at the other end tried to take over the boat. I objected. There was a little shooting before we parted.”

“So I noticed. The wheelhouse doesn't look as pretty as usual.”

“That's what Loukas said. He's impounded the boat until I mend my wicked ways and find an upright citizen to stand surety for me.”

He frowned and his eyes narrowed. “There is more here than appears on the surface. I am right?”

“Absolutely, but I can't talk about it now. I've got to see Dimitri Aleko.”

“Your upright citizen?”

“All that money can't be wrong, surely?”

He laughed and gripped my left arm above the elbow tightly. “You remember one thing, Jack. If any throats need cutting, you come to me. You understand this?”

And he meant it, which was a comforting thought. He went back down the ladder and I continued along the waterfront towards the jetty, wondering what I was going to say to Aleko. What Aleko was going to say to me. And then there was the minor problem of actually getting to him, for the
Firebird
was anchored a couple of hundred yards out in the centre of the harbour.