Jack Higgins (18 page)

“In other words, you become prisoner and escort?”

“Exactly.”

“And how do you get to Pavlo?”

Melos again.

“He's on the third floor under guard in the room at the end of the corridor,” I said. “We play it by ear from there. Today's information is that he can walk a little and a little is all we need. Once out of the hospital block, we go back into the sewerage system via the storm drain in the garden.”

“And you think he will be able to stand it?” Aleko asked.

I shrugged. “He'll have to stand a damned sight more than that because we come back to the
Seytan
exactly the same way we left. Underwater.”

There was a heavy silence. Surprisingly, it was Melos who came in to support me. “With the aquamobile, even with two of you and allowing for the greater load, the trip should take no more than fifteen minutes and it will require no physical effort from Pavlo himself, or very little.”

“But what happens afterwards?” Sara said.

Melos frowned. “After what?”

“When they find Pavlo missing. When they start searching the general area of the island. If they know the
Seytan
was in the area, they're bound to start checking, especially when they find she's left during the night.”

It was the weak link and I acknowledged the fact. “The
Seytan
is a boat well known in the area. Poor Turkish sponge divers and so on. The excuse for return
ing to Kyros can be a technical one. A faulty compressor, a leak in the hull. If everything goes according to schedule, we'll be back in Kyros by four a.m. With any luck, Pavlo's absence won't be noticed till six a.m. which is the time things usually start to stir at the prison. Any check on the
Seytan
will be of a routine nature. They'd probably get in touch with police headquarters here and ask them to interview Ciasim.”

“Which means Sergeant Loukas,” Aleko said, and he smiled broadly at Melos.

Melos said briskly, “Nothing to worry about there. An excellent plan. Highly dangerous, but hare-brained enough to work.” He added calmly, “Who knows, Captain Savage, you might just make it back alive.”

Who knew indeed
.

I said, “One last thing. We'll be needing an extra man on the
Seytan
, just in case one of those M.T.B.s decides to make a check. There are supposed to be three in the crew, remember.” I turned to Melos. “Come to think of it, you look a lot like a Turk to me.”

Ciasim bellowed with laughter and Melos gave him the kind of look any good Greek reserves for a lump of dung on his foot.

Aleko said, “Captain Melos will be happy to help in any way he can.”

So he was back in charge again, or was he? There were many things here I didn't like. Things under the surface. Relationships that were not all they seemed to be.

 

Later, much later, when I was lying in bed in the darkness of my cabin smoking a cigarette, the door clicked
open and she slipped inside, locking it behind her. There was a rustle of something or other and she got in beside me, naked and shivering, her breasts ice-cold.

“Warm me up, Savage,” she ordered.

“When I've finished my cigarette.” I put an arm around her. “What can you tell me about Melos?”

“Nothing much. He's new, but then they all are. The entire crew. Dimitri had
Firebird
laid up for a year before this cruise. Too busy to have fun, he used to say. Why do you ask?”

“Melos seems to have a lot to say for himself, that's all.”

“He's a Greek, just like the rest of them, isn't he? What do you expect?”

I put out my cigarette in the ash tray at the side of the bed and she came on top of me, breasts crushed hard against my chest, her face in the hollow of my neck.

“No, don't move,” she said in a muffled voice. “Just let me stay like this for a while. Just hold me.”

She started to cry, great sobs racking her body, really letting go for the first time since I'd known her. The desolation, the loneliness in her voice when she at last spoke was like a knife in the heart.

“What happens if I lose you? What happens then?”

And there was nothing I could say. No single thing that would comfort her. Outside, it had started to rain and I held her quiet in my arms.

It was a dull, grey morning and reminiscent of the English Channel in November with a fair sea running and an easterly wind. It caused chaos for a while in the old harbour, particularly amongst the small boats which were drifting around all over the place for they weren't used to that kind of weather in the Aegean.

I wouldn't have given much for any floatplane's chances of putting down in those conditions, but it wasn't necessary. The firm in Athens who supplied the aquamobiles had half a dozen in stock at their branch on Rhodes and had two of them brought over by fast launch during the night. Anything for the magic name of Aleko.

At least the bad weather and the disturbance it created in the harbour gave us an excellent cover during the period before we left. People were too heavily involved in their own problems to have the time to notice what we were doing.

Melos had boarded the
Seytan
under cover of darkness just before dawn and had kept out of the way ever since. Ciasim and his boys had transferred the diving gear the previous night and the rest of the equipment, including two supply canisters, packed ready to take with us.

The aquamobiles were the only major item remaining and the launch from Rhodes arrived with those just after ten a.m. Ciasim and I took delivery on the north jetty and brought them round on a handcart, still in their packing cases, a couple of fishing nets hiding them from view.

As we turned on to the old jetty, I saw Morgan sitting on a capstan, hunched and miserable in the rain, an old black oilskin over his shoulders. We were almost on top of him before he noticed me and he got to his feet, face cracking into an anxious smile.

“Hell, Jack, I been getting worried. What's been going on?”

I sent Ciasim on ahead with the handcart and pulled Morgan down against the wall out of the rain.

“Listen, Morg,” I said, “I'm busy today. I'm giving Ciasim a hand.”

“Out there on the wreck?” His eyes brightened. “Maybe I can help. Another diver's always useful, Jack.”

He seemed older, more childlike than ever. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Not today, Morg, another time.” I took a one-hundred-dollar bill from my wallet which was the smallest change I had. “Here, take this up to Yanni Kytros. He'll change it for you at a fat discount. You'll be able to sit in there out of the wet all day. I'll see you in the morning.”

He wanted to argue, but the thirst rose in his throat. I could see that from his eyes. He took the note and grinned nervously. “Just as you say, Jack. In the morning.”

I patted his shoulder and he shambled away. I stood up and found Sergeant Loukas leaning against the wall lighting a cigarette. He had an old military raincoat slung from his shoulders like a cape against the drizzle and his face carried its usual funereal expression.

“Dreadful weather, Mr. Savage. Just like England, is it not so?”

“Ireland,” I corrected him. “You're forgetting.”

“Ah, yes.” He nodded sagely. “Still, we are not used to rain like this down here. Farther north, perhaps, in Macedonia for example. It can be very wet in the Gulf of Thermai. I had a holiday there once only, on an island named Pelos. A complete waste of money. We might as well have stayed at home.”

I stood there, frozen into position, waiting for what was to come next. He sighed, suddenly looking even more mournful than usual if such a thing was at all possible.

“Nothing is ever what we expect it to be, have you noticed that, Mr. Savage? On the surface, one thing, underneath, something else again.” He flicked his cigarette over the wall and glanced up at the sky. “Still raining and more to come. Take care, my friend, dangerous waters in the Middle Passage in weather like this.”

He walked away and I watched him go, wondering what the hell he was getting at. A warning, perhaps? Of sorts, and yet there was more to it than that. And the reference to Macedonia and Pelos? Too near the mark for comfort.

The speedboat arrived at the slipway below me. Aleko got out first, turned to help Sara, then they walked towards me together, her hand on his arm.

“Is everything set?” he asked as they arrived.

I nodded towards Loukas who had by now turned on to the waterfront. “I'm not too happy about him. He seems to know a little bit about everything.”

“Loukas?” He smiled in a rather complacent way. “And so he should.”

That he had bribed Loukas to get him to act as he had done in the matter of my boat, I had accepted as a fact of life, but this was more. Much more.

“One of yours?” I asked.

“One should always cover every eventuality, Captain Savage. Every possibility. The secret of success in every walk of life, I assure you.” And then he stuck out his hand and said briskly, “But I must not detain you. I will expect you just before dawn as arranged. I have the utmost confidence that meeting will take place.”

I restrained a mad impulse to salute him and say, “thank you, sir.” He glanced briefly at Sara, then walked back towards the slipway leaving us together.

She was wearing a yellow oilskin jacket and souwester and looked tired, her eyes hot and far away, too bright and circled by dark smudges.

“So this is it,” she said. “The long goodbye.”

“Short,” I said. “The short goodbye. I'll be back here no later than four a.m. tomorrow. My life on it.”

“A hell of a thing to put in pawn,” she said acidly.

We had reached the
Seytan
. The packing cases were on board and Yassi was in the wheelhouse waiting for the order to go from Ciasim, who was on deck with Abu waiting to cast-off.

“Ready, Jack?” he called.

I waved and turned back to her. “Feeling sorry for yourself again?”

“Also good and mad,” she said. “Suddenly, it's all a bad dream.”

I didn't kiss her, but took her chin firmly in my right hand and said forcefully, “Four
A.M.
Dead or alive, Sara Hamilton, walking from the sea if I have to, but I'll be here. See that you are.”

I went down to the
Seytan
and Abu and Ciasim cast-off immediately. As we moved out towards the harbour entrance, I stood at the rail watching her.

Ciasim said at my shoulder, “There is something special about her, Jack. It sets her apart from other women and yet it makes me feel sad. You have noticed this?”

“She is going to die, old friend,” I said. “She's on borrowed time. It's as simple as that.”

That stupid, empty phrase again
.

I didn't bother looking at him, but heard his breath go out in a long sigh, heard him turn and walk away,
his step heavy. My eyes were only for her, standing there at the end of the jetty watching us go.

She was still there twenty minutes later, a faint smudge of yellow against the grey as the island finally faded into the rain.

It was a three-hour run in the old
Seytan
to the marker buoy Ciasim had left in the Middle Passage to indicate the wreck's position. We arrived just after two in the afternoon, and dropped anchor. Melos and I stayed below out of sight. It was as well that we did for after an hour, one of the M.T.B.s came roaring up to take a look. They didn't even stop. Recognising the
Seytan
they circled once, the young commander waved from the bridge and they raced away again.

Ciasim came down the companionway and leaned in the doorway, grinning. “Okay?”

“Will they come back?” Melos asked.

“Probably not. They know who it is, they know we have a licence. Why should they?” He opened a drawer and produced a pack of cards. “A little poker, eh?”

“Better than nothing.” Melos sat down at the narrow table and glanced about him in disgust. “What a sty, but what can you expect?”

Ciasim took it very well. “And that, Greek pig, will
cost you everything. Every drachma. Your shirt, your pants. I send you naked into the world.”

Melos produced a wallet, took out a wad of notes and slapped them on the table. “Put your money where your mouth is, you animal.”

Greek and Turk. Seven hundred years of hating and nothing changed. I sighed as I took up my place at the table. It was going to be a long afternoon.

The wind had dropped towards evening and took the rain with it and as the horizon darkened, the sea became calmer. The afternoon had been anything but pleasant, Ciasim baiting Melos at every turn and there wasn't much I could do about it. They didn't actually come to blows, which was a major miracle, but Melos lost a great deal of money and wasn't pleased about it.

From five o'clock on I was able to break the game up by insisting that we had everything ready in advance. There were the aquamobiles to unpack and check along with the rest of the diving equipment. They were simplicity itself to control and it didn't take Ciasim more than a couple of minutes to get the hang of things.

By nine o'clock it was time to go, the sky very dark, stars strung away to the horizon and the moon was on the wane, pale and misty at the edges.

Everything was ready on deck when Ciasim and I finally went up, dark shadows in our black Neoprene wet-suits. Yassi and Abu helped us on with the aqualungs. There was a quick final check and we went over the side.

At that stage, as always on that kind of a job, I wasn't aware of any nervous tension. Too much to think about. The supply canisters came over the side, one for each
of us, and we clipped them to a trailing harness. Last of all, the aquamobiles.

I positioned the time-elasped bevel on my watch, adjusted my air supply and gave Ciasim the thumbs up. Then I switched on the aquamobile and went under the surface.

 

Moonlight filtered down through the water making visibility a surprisingly good ten feet down, which was the depth I'd selected for the first stage of the run-in. The aquamobile had a depth gauge, compass and speedometer which also indicated the distance covered in kilometres. I had my mind fully occupied with that little lot for it was absolutely essential that I stayed exactly on the bearing I had selected from the chart if we were to find the outfall of the main drainage tunnel. And there was the minefield to consider. I couldn't afford any mistake there.

A quarter of a mile—one third. I slowed, gave Ciasim the agreed signal as he came alongside, then I switched on the powerful spot mounted on top of the scooter and went down.

I levelled off at fifty feet as we had agreed and made sure he was on my tail before continuing. That part of the journey was rather more hair-raising than the first section. Although my speed was only three knots, I seemed to fly at a terrifying rate into the wall of grey mist that was the limit of my world.

I watched the speedometer like a hawk, checking the distance accomplished as the tenths clicked by on the phosphorescent dial and then it was time and I slowed and signalled to Ciasim.

We moved forward side by side now, our spotlights gently probing until they picked out the line of cables. Up there, just beneath the surface, a mine floated at the end of each stalk, an unlovely bloom that I had no desire to see, even from a distance, which was why I had decided to approach at such a depth.

According to the charts supplied to me, the minefield consisted of a band, fifty yards across, stretching between the outer horns of the bay. I moved in gingerly, Ciasim on my heels once more, but frankly, the whole thing was something of an anticlimax. The mines were so widely spaced that I was able to thread my way between the wires with no difficulty at all. We were through and out to the other side almost before I knew it.

We were well into the bay now, the ground shelving before us, and I was aware of the turbulence in the water that would be waves breaking over the rocks of the cliffs above. If my calculations had been right, we were dead on course and yet the sea-bed still shelved before me and the moonlight was drifting down again, bringing to life a strange, unreal landscape of jumbled rocks and pale forests of seaweed.

Something was wrong. My calculations perhaps, and then a fault appeared in the sea-bed, just as the German chart had indicated, at least ten fathoms deep, slicing into the heart of the island under the ancient fort.

The spot probed into a grey curtain of mist and dark walls moved in on either side of me, black and green and covered with marine life. A lovely place, the outfall to a sewer. The thought had barely passed through my mind when I surfaced abruptly and found myself crouched in about two feet of stinking mud.

 

We were exactly where we were supposed to be, there was no doubt about that. Great square blocks of masonry merged into the rough walls of the fissure and the only sound was the drop of water somewhere far off in the darkness.

The stench was appalling, but there was nothing to be done about that. There was a platform of sorts to one side a couple of yards out of the water. We got the gear up there and opened the canisters. In Ciasim's there was the extra wet-suit and a single bottle aqualung for Pavlo on the return journey. We laid them out for a quick departure so that everything would be ready to hand.

Ciasim chuckled. “You have true faith in yourself, Jack. You expect to come this way again.”

“Positive thinking, that's what they call it,” I said. “The moment you even contemplate the other alternative in this kind of work, you might as well curl up and die.”

The other canister contained the uniforms, each packed neatly into a small shoulder haversack for easy carrying. There were also a couple of spot lamps, a canvas holdall containing a few tools that I hoped we weren't going to need, a machine pistol for me and a .38 automatic for Ciasim. I'd even remembered half a bottle of brandy.

I took a pull and handed the bottle to Ciasim who toasted me before drinking. “To a good death, Jack.”

“Not me, old friend. I can't afford it.”

And I couldn't
. I picked up my haversack and the machine pistol and hung on to that thought as I started along the tunnel, knee-deep in stinking water.

 

It was one of the more unpleasant experiences of my life and mainly because of the stench. It was all-pervading and so bad that after a while, I paused and brought up the brandy.

A slight mist curled off the surface of the water and the tunnel climbed steeply, but on the whole, it was easy enough and at that point there was plenty of headroom.

After a while the stench seemed to fade a little, probably because we were climbing away from the main outfall all the time. It was colder here, the air earthy, but not unpleasant and at least I could breathe again.

I had marked the route carefully on the old German plan which I carried in one hand, the spot in the other. We needed the third tunnel on the left and came to it some ten minutes after starting out. It was no more than four feet high, but dry as a bone.

“I'll go first from now on, Jack,” Ciasim whispered. “You tell me what to look for. That leaves you free to concentrate on the plan. The wrong turning in this place and we're finished.”

Which summed the situation up admirably. I told him we wanted the fourth opening to the right and he led off, calling each entrance he came to back to me to double-check so that we knew exactly where we were.

After that it became a curiously timeless experience as we moved from one tunnel to another, Ciasim counting off each entrance carefully as I confirmed it on the chart.

The main difficulty in the final stages was the slope of the last tunnel which was only three feet in diameter anyway. The stonework was smooth and slippery, mak
ing it difficult to climb. Ciasim jammed himself between the narrow walls pushing his way upwards foot by foot and after a while, he called softly that he could smell fresh air and told me to dowse my light.

It was all I needed. I went on with what's generally referred to as renewed vigour and a moment later he reached out a hand and pulled me up to a stone ledge at one side of the tunnel. Beyond him, I could smell wet grass and reached across to touch the bars.

“The storm drain you mentioned,” he said. “Your navigating is excellent, Jack.”

“Don't thank me, thank the German engineer who drew this plan,” I said. “Will it open?”

“Half-buried in soil, but I'll give it a try.”

He got his back to it, his feet on the other side of the tunnel and pushed. Nothing happened. I crouched beside him, scrabbling through the bars at the loose earth and found the explanation.

“The damn thing's padlocked,” I whispered. “Probably not been touched since the German Occupation.”

Which was no problem, because amongst the things we'd had the forethought to bring in the tool bag was a pair of Solingen two-foot bar cutters. There was the chink of metal in the darkness, a grunt from Ciasim as he applied his considerable strength, then a satisfying click as the padlock sheared.

Again Ciasim put his back to the grill, his feet on the opposite side of the tunnel, and heaved and this time it swung to one side, slowly because of the soil piled against it, the rusty hinges groaning in the night.

He crawled out and I went after him and found myself on my hands and knees in wet grass beneath a bush of some sort beside an old stone wall.

We were in the garden behind the inner walls on the south-west corner of the fort exactly as planned and thirty or forty yards away through the trees was the side entrance to the prison hospital as indicated on the plan supplied to me by Aleko. The only difference was that there was a light over the door.

 

It was a beautiful night, the air fresh and clean after the foetid atmosphere down there below the ground, the scent of flowers everywhere in the garden except on Ciasim and me. There was no getting away from it. We stank to high heaven and the very freshness of our surroundings seemed to make it worse.

It was Ciasim who, hearing the rattle of a fountain, followed the sound and found a fishpond. We crouched in it together, washing the filth from our wetsuits. The result couldn't help but be an improvement; but time was passing. It was almost ten-thirty and there was a lot still to be done.

We unpacked the uniforms and pulled them on over our Neoprene suits. Ciasim's was a faded, pyjama-like affair in vertical stripes with a number stencilled on a white patch on the right breast pocket. Mine was a military looking effort in khaki drill with a forage cap in the same material and a leather belt at the waist. The machine pistol was apparently standard issue to all guards so there was no reason why I should not pass muster.

As a final touch, I bandaged Ciasim's head and left eye, making him look as convincing a patient as anyone could wish for.

“Let's go,” he said. “Straight in, straight out, nothing to it.”

 

There was no guard on the side door nor had I expected one. Aleko's information was certainly turning out to be accurate so far. The service stairs faced us. I was so familiar with the plan of this place by now that it was strangely like returning to somewhere I'd known well.

We passed a swing door at the end of the corridor on the first floor and went up another flight of steps. Above us, a door banged and someone clattered down the stairs. It was a young man in a white coat—a nurse or a doctor, it was impossible to say which. The only important thing was that he was in a hurry. He brushed past us with a brief apology and kept on going.

Ciasim turned, grinning, a gleam in the single eye that was on view. “See, no trouble—no trouble at all.”

It suddenly occurred to me that he was enjoying himself and he actually started to whistle softly as he carried on up the next flight of stairs.

Pavlo's room was at the far end of the corridor on the third floor. We paused, looking through the glass window in the swing door before venturing through. It was quiet and deserted which was what I'd expected and hoped, for according to the information we'd been given, Pavlo's guard stayed in the room with him.

The last guard change had been at ten o'clock, the next was at six in the morning. A long time to go before they discovered he was missing.