Jack Higgins (22 page)

Kapelari and Christou appeared from the main com
panionway, Yanni between them. He could hardly walk and looked terrible with his smashed mouth and the blood soaking his shirt and trouser leg.

Ciasim relaxed, the breath going out of him in a long sigh, and Melos chuckled. “Good, now you are being sensible. First you will transfer the diving equipment and anything else of value, then you will take her out into the channel and you will put a hole into her. You understand me?”

Ciasim nodded. “Perfectly.”

Melos turned and seemed to notice Yanni for the first time. He smiled. “I have just had a rather excellent idea. A sacrifice to Poseidon, just like the old days. You can go down with the ship, Kytros.”

Yanni managed a ghastly smile and shuffled forward slowly. “Please, Melos, I beg of you…”

Melos swung him round and kicked him in the backside, sending him sprawling. Yanni fell flat on his face with a groan and Kapelaris and Christou started to have a good laugh.

What happened next was not all that funny from their point of view, for Yanni suddenly sprang to his feet, his leg apparently no longer a liability, and ran for his life.

Cunning and devious to the end, he had been playing a part again. He was round the corner of the main deck house as Christou fired a short burst that chipped the woodwork.

Melos didn't waste any time on angry shouting, he was too much the professional for that. He ran along the port deck towards the stern and was almost there when there was a splash that told us Yanni had gone into the water.

I caught a glimpse of him swimming into the mist and
then Melos loosed off a burst that lifted a curtain of spray six feet high. I heard Yanni cry out, his arms went up and he disappeared. We waited in the silence that followed, but he did not come up again.

Melos turned, his face grim. “So, now we understand one another, eh? So let's get started. Too much time wasted already.”

 

They left it to Ciasim and me to do all the work. We got the diving gear across, the aquamobiles. Everything that was worth having, or worth having by Melos's standards. He made Ciasim leave his own diving gear on board.

When we were ready, we took the old
trenchadiri
out into the channel and dropped anchor for the current was particularly strong now with a sea running. Melos hadn't bothered sending a guard with us. There was no particular need, so that in the mist, we might as well have been alone.

Ciasim killed the engine and came out of the wheelhouse. He produced a tin of Turkish cigarettes and offered me one. “I had this boat a long time, Jack, and my father before me.”

“I know,” I said. “It's a bastard, but don't rub it in.”

“You know something, Jack? I liked what you said back there in the saloon.”

“Whiskey talk.”

“Always you sell yourself short.” He leaned against the wheelhouse. “I want my boys to live. I want Lady Sara to live, you understand me? But this is a bad business. Two hundred men, Jack, two hundred good men will face death or worse, because their names are on that
list.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Anything you can think of, anything that might help. You can rely on my support. You know this?”

“I'll give it some thought.”

“Good, that is what I had hoped.” He picked up a fire axe. “Let's go now. I wish to end this thing.”

Trenchadiris
didn't have sea cocks so he sank her by the simple expedient of hacking a hole in her hull near the prow with the fire axe, standing up in the dinghy.

I pulled away as she started to go down, resting on my oars when we were perhaps fifty or sixty feet away. Ciasim remained standing, the axe in his hand, and watched without the slightest concern as the prow dipped under the surface and the stern lifted.

The old
Seytan
seemed to hang there for a moment, then went all the way down with a sudden smooth rush. As the ripple widened, he tossed the fire axe into the centre of them. When he turned to sit in the stern of the dinghy, tears were running down his cheeks.

Kapelari and Christou, the terrible twins. Melos sent them with us on the run to Turk's Head in the
Gentle Jane
and at the last minute threw in Lazanis as well. Now that was cause for alarm indeed because in the circumstances, it was totally unnecessary.

The plain truth was that Melos had us bound hand and foot for where was there to run to? Not to the authorities. We'd certainly get short shrift there. No, once we had recovered the briefcase, there was only one place to go. To the
Firebird
to exchange it for Sara and the two Divalni boys.

Christou was in the wheelhouse for Melos had made it plain I wasn't to be in physical control of the vessel. Kapelari and Lazanis lounged against the rail, talking to him through the open window.

I suppose they thought they had nothing to worry about. Melos had sewn the whole thing up beautifully and Kapelari gave us only half an eye occasionally as
we worked on the stern deck getting the diving gear ready.

Ciasim said, “I have been wondering what guarantee we have that things will turn out as we want when we take this briefcase back to the
Firebird
.”

“You mean Melos and his friends are just as likely to finish us all off.”

“Exactly. On the other hand, Lady Sara poses them something of a problem. To start with there is Aleko to consider who is hardly likely to stand by while they put a bullet into the back of her head.”

“I wouldn't be too sure about that. He's a sick man. He doesn't know what it's all about any more. And nothing as crude as a bullet in the head, please. An unfortunate accident. The
Gentle Jane
might follow the
Seytan
.”

“With one subtle difference?”

“That's right. We'd all be locked up nice and tight below.”

He took a deep breath. “And why not? These are ruthless men and they play for high stakes, Jack. They play for a whole country. For a great nation.”

“Now I've got you worried about that, try this one for size,” I told him. “Why has Melos bothered to send Kapelari and his two pals along? We certainly don't need them and he knows we've got to return once we find the briefcase. We have no other choice.”

“
If
we find it, you mean?”

“If it's to be found, then we'll find it,” I said. “But what happens when we do? When we climb over the rail clutching the thing that's been the object of the whole damned exercise.”

His eyes widened and then he sighed gently in that
strange way of his. “Ah, I see now. We are no longer needed. We go back over the rail immediately, but full of holes. Is there anything we can do about this?”

“I think so,” I said and proceeded to tell him. But it was a long shot. One hell of a long shot. Guts and timing and a great deal of luck. I wondered if the lesser gods were on my side today? It was about time they were.

 

Finding the plane was one thing, but getting into it might prove to be something else again. You could never be sure when a plane had crash-landed at sea for the impact damage could be formidable, or such had been my experience.

So we made ready for any and every eventuality and got an assortment of tools laid out neatly on the deck beside the diving gear plus the paraphernalia that went with the oxy-hydrogen cutting equipment. It all looked very impressive and Kapelari and Lazanis came and watched us for a while.

“You need all that stuff?” Lazanis demanded.

“That plane could have closed up tight in the crash,” I said. “We might have to open it up just like a sardine can.”

He grunted and idly kicked a tin biscuit box. “I wouldn't do that if I were you,” I added. “Twenty pounds of plastic gelignite in there with a box of chemical fuses. Something nasty might happen.”

He turned a very satisfactory shade of grey and took a hurried step back, even going so far as to cross himself, which gave me the first lift I'd had that day. Oh, there was gelignite in the tin all right, but the idea that
you could blow yourself up by giving it the odd kick was straight out of the boys' magazines.

Kapelari and Lazanis departed more quickly than they had arrived, and Ciasim grinned. “Maybe he messed his pants,” he said and spat over the rail. “Greek pigs.”

 

It was better than a three-hour run to Crete and we raised Cape Sidheros first and Turk's Head on the far side, a little way into the Gulf of Merabello. Turk's Head was a good name for it, for that is exactly what the great rocky headland resembled most, a gaunt profile staring blindly out to Kapala a quarter of a mile away.

Kapala itself was little more than an acre or two of barren rock jutting out of the sea, not even a living for goats to be had of it. We finally dropped anchor a couple of hundred yards to the north as Pavlo had indicated, just after noon. The weather had cleared gradually during the morning and the sun was a ball of fire in a sky of brass, the heat was so intense that the ship's metalwork was too hot to touch.

Ciasim and I started to get into our wetsuits and the three of them stood watching us. Kapelari, who seemed to be in charge, said, “It shouldn't take you long this business. Pavlo gave you a pretty accurate position.”

“For a man who surfaced, dazed and shocked with multiple injuries after crash-landing at sea in the darkness.” I laughed shortly. “It could be right under the boat. On the other hand, it might be anywhere in an arc north from here and several hundred yards out if he miscalculated badly enough.”

Not that I believed that myself for a moment. Pavlo hadn't seemed the type to get that sort of information
wrong and it is instinctive in any good pilot to note his position accurately on the way down. It can too often make the difference between life and death. But there was no harm and every advantage to be gained by dressing the whole thing up to look as difficult as possible as far as they were concerned.

Ciasim and I helped each other with our aqualung straps, then went over the side together. I adjusted my air supply and signalled to him and we went down together.

We had dropped anchor in five fathoms which was what I had expected for Pavlo had specified shallow water, but I soon found that the sea-bed shelved steeply, a wide expanse of sand stretching into the shadows dotted with clumps of sea grass.

At one point, I came to a jumbled mass of broken pottery, with here and there great double-handled amphora encrusted with marine growth, but otherwise in perfect condition. In ancient times each one had carried seven or eight gallons of wine and they were to be found on the sea-bed all over the Aegean, usually indicated where a ship had foundered in Classical or Roman times. It didn't surprise me for any storm must have made Kapala a bad lee shore to be driven on to in days of sail. At any other time, I'd have been interested enough to make a closer inspection, but not now.

We were ten fathoms and still descending, swimming a parallel course, perhaps thirty or forty feet apart. The sand was behind us and the sea-bed was a great moving carpet of marine grass that undulated constantly, fading into the green mist on either side.

Surely Pavlo couldn't have been so badly out?
And then something caught my attention over to the left on
the edge of visibility. I signalled to Ciasim and changed direction.

It was the tail section which I had noticed, lifting out of that jungle of marine grass at a sharp angle and the rest of the plane was almost buried in the stuff. It was the Aztec, no mistake about that, and the wings and both engines were still intact. For a moment, my mind skipped back in time to the Mirage III out there beyond the harbour bar at Bir el Gafani. A long time ago, or was it? Certainly a lot of water under the bridge.

Ciasim joined me and we went down together into that forest of pale green fronds. They seemed to live, those tendrils. To have a desire to hold on like the tentacles of an octopus and the sensation was anything but pleasant.

For the first time since my dive to the German wreck to help Ciasim, I was conscious of a sudden resurgence of my old neurotic fear. But it was nothing. It no longer had any power to hurt me. I told myself that, believed in spite of the fear and it left me as quickly as it had come.

I pressed on, pushing my way through the waving grass, and reached the main body of the fuselage. The windows were still intact and I could see the instrument panel inside, the controls, the seat straps moving gently as if suspended in air. The cabin door was partly open and moved stiffly when I pulled on it. I turned to find Ciasim at my shoulder, nodded and ventured inside.

It was not so much dark as gloomy in there and a certain amount of light came in through the windows. Something stirred in the shadows and the coldness moved in me again.

It was Apostolidis, up there against the roof of the
cabin, anchored to a two-foot length of chain from which was suspended a slim and rather elegant briefcase. I reached up to touch him and the body spun round and it was as if the left arm was reaching out to encircle me, to pull me closer to the swollen putrid face and bulging eyes.

I closed my own for a moment, opened them again and found Ciasim at my side. He had his knife in his hand and there was little doubt about his intentions. Not that he had a great deal of choice, but when he started to cut off the dead man's right hand at the wrist, I turned and went out.

I waited for two or three minutes, hanging on to the port wing and then he appeared, the briefcase in one hand, the knife in the other. He fastened the case securely by its chain to the cabin door handle, raised his thumb and we made for the surface.

From now on it was going to be strictly improvisation and hope. And luck, too, of course. One could never have enough of that.

 

We surfaced a couple of hundred yards north from the
Gentle Jane
. Ciasim stayed to mark the position and I swam back to the boat.

Christou and Lazanis helped me up the ladder and Kapelari said eagerly, “You've found it?”

I nodded. “Back there where the Turk is waiting. You'll have to move the boat.”

I started to unbuckle the straps of my aqualung. He nodded slightly to the other two. “You heard what he said.”

They moved away and I went to the stern and squatted
beside the equipment we'd made ready. Kapelari gave me a cigarette. “How does it look?”

“Not so good. There's been a hell of a lot of damage, particularly to the cabin area, but he's in there.”

“Apostolidis? You saw him?”

“Through what was left of one of the windows, but we're going to have to cut our way in to get at him.”

He took it, hook and all, his eyes gleaming as he left me to join his friends who already had the anchor up. The engines rumbled into life and we moved towards Ciasim who waited, one arm raised.

I busied myself with the cylinder and lines, making ready for the great pretence which was to come and my hands trembled very, very slightly, just like the old days when you knew you were on the brink of violent action and death could be waiting to make that last appointment. It was a sobering thought, but one I couldn't really afford because there was Sara to think of.

 

An oxy-hydrogen cutter is ignited from the surface, gases passing down through a tube to the diver below where a rather ingenious device allows air to bleed out, forming an air bubble, an artificial atmosphere inside which the flame burns.

I went through this useful information step by step with Kapelari, stressing the considerable personal danger we would be in if he got the signal wrong and ignited at the wrong time.

It was all good stuff and they swallowed it down and Ciasim and I got our aqualungs on and went over the side for the last time. We went down together, following the lines he had already placed and hovered above the
Aztec for a moment. Ciasim descended to the plane itself, checked that the briefcase was where he had left it, looked up towards me and raised a thumb.

Which gave me exactly two minutes. I checked my watch and swam away from him quickly, passing well beneath the
Gentle Jane
at depth.

I came in towards the boat again from the port side and hovered six feet below the surface to unbuckle the straps of my aqualung. I released it and surfaced close to the hull and amidships so that the wheelhouse was between me and the three Greeks.

I wasn't a moment too soon. A second later, Ciasim sounded with a great splash on the starboard side. Kapelari shouted something to him, I couldn't catch what, although presumably, he wanted to know what was wrong.

I was already hauling myself over the rail as Ciasim cried, “It's Savage. There's been an accident. Stand by the line. I'm going down again.”

Which was all supposed to keep the three of them leaning over the starboard rail to await eventualities. And it almost worked. The great difficulty was the fact that the wheelhouse door was on the starboard side, but I calculated I could just reach the chart table through the sliding window to port.

I couldn't see the Greeks, but I could hear Kapelari cursing freely as I leaned in through the window and reached beneath the chart table. My finger found the secret button and the flap fell down.