Jack Higgins (7 page)

I went over the rail fast. Morgan was already casting off as I ran into the wheelhouse and pressed the self-starter. Those magnificent Penta engines roared into life instantly and I swung the wheel hard over and took the
Gentle Jane
away in a great sweeping curve.

I ran her hard for a couple of miles before slowing down. When I glanced over my shoulder, Morgan stood in the doorway.

“Feel any better?”

“Some,” I said.

“Well don't get too happy. You left those sponges, the good ones, on board the
Seytan
.”

 

We came into Kyros in the late afternoon. It was a spectacular little island, six or seven miles long by three across, and a single double-peaked mountain towered three thousand feet high into the sky at its centre.

A single-masted
caicque
, sails bellying, slipped out through the narrow harbour entrance and turned towards Crete, passing so close that I could see the eyes painted on each side of the prow. The man at the tiller waved. I waved back and took the
Gentle Jane
into harbour.

There was one new arrival since the morning, a ninety-foot diesel motor yacht with gleaming white hull and scarlet trim. The kind of craft that must have set someone back all of fifty thousand pounds. She was anchored a hundred yards out from the main jetty and carried the Greek flag.

I passed her well to the other side of the harbour and made for my usual mooring beside the old stone jetty where there were no dues. Brightly painted
caicques
were beached on the white curve of sand and fishermen sat beside them mending their nets while children ran through the shallows, their voices clear over the water.

I killed the engines, we drifted in and Morgan jumped for the jetty and tied up. I stepped over the rail and joined him.

“You going someplace, Jack?” he asked.

“I'll buy a few tins of something or other,” I said. “I feel like stretching my legs anyway.”

He didn't try to argue and I walked away quickly in case he did. There was more to it than that, of course. Much more. I had some thinking to do. The business down there in that old wartime wreck had really brought
things home to me in a big way. I was finished.

To try with my kind of problem to earn a living as a diver could only lead to one certain end. A quick and messy death.

I came to that conclusion in a small
taverna
at the other end of the waterfront after my third glass of
retsina
. So be it. No more diving. But what was I going to do instead? That was the question. The only other thing I seemed to be much good at these days was drinking.

I walked back along the waterfront in a world of my own for a while as I considered every angle. It was one hell of a situation, that was for certain. I turned along the jetty and went towards the boat. There was no sign of Morgan, but when I went over the rail to the deck I could smell coffee.

For some reason, I felt better and went down the companionway briskly. “That's the ticket, Morg,” I called as I entered the saloon and tossed my cap on the table.

Lady Sara Hamilton moved out of the galley and stood there, a coffee pot in one hand, a tin of cream in the other. She was wearing light blue linen slacks, a white shirt knotted at the waist and looked about as beautiful as any woman could ever usefully hope to.

And the face? God help me, that dear, dear face, the wide generous mouth lifting a little in scorn, but not at me, I knew that now. And the calm, grey eyes.

“Hello, Savage,” she said crisply. “Pleased to see me?”

When she smiled, it was as if a lamp had clicked on inside, touching everything in sight.

Anything might have happened in that first golden moment if Dimitri Aleko had not appeared from the galley behind her. I don't know what he was supposed to be. He wore old denims, faded blue sweatshirt, scarf knotted carelessly at the throat and a battered and salt-stained cap. He looked every boy's ideal of a hard-line bosun off a Finnish windjammer.

For some reason he actually seemed pleased to see me and pushed out his hand in that rather stiff Bostonian way of his that was so alien to his Greek background.

“Good to see you, Mr. Savage. You certainly left more than a little confusion behind when we last met.”

He slipped an arm around Sara Hamilton's shoulders in another of those little intimate gestures of his that was probably even for my benefit, just to let me know where we stood.

“It was something to see, wasn't it, Sara?”

In a way, she seemed to ignore him and gave all her attention to me. She poured coffee into a cup, added
cream, then gave it to me, a deliberately personal gesture that carried its own intimacy. I was hard put to it to stop the cup from rattling in its saucer.

“Colonel Hakim sent a message,” she said. “In case, as he put it, we just happened to run across you in the islands. He said it was a magnificent gesture and he hoped you never had cause to regret making it.”

“He'd be an unusual man if he didn't,” Aleko said. “Two hundred and thirty-seven thousand pounds. That's real money. To anybody, that's real money.”

I showed my surprise at the accuracy of his figure and he smiled in a slightly complacent way. “I hope you don't mind, but I was interested enough to have a few enquiries made in Alex. The figure I quote excludes good will. You haven't any left, I'm afraid. Not in the United Arab Republic, and I'd keep well clear of their waters if I were you. If they ever lay hands on you, they'll hang you out to dry.”

“Then I'll just have to see that they don't,” I said.

Sara Hamilton sat drinking her coffee and smoking a cigarette, saying nothing, and there was a kind of hiatus. We all felt it, but Aleko most of all. He was extra ballast and didn't like the feeling.

He smiled brightly. “This is quite a boat you've got here. I'm impressed.”

I responded because it seemed the thing to do. “The best around for her size. Built by Akerboon about six years ago. Steel hull, twin-screw.”

We kept it technical for a while. I showed him the engines and then we went up top to the wheelhouse and he had a look at the controls.

Sara followed us and sat on the stern rail looking out across the harbour. She had tied a scarf around her head
and was wearing sunglasses of a style particularly in vogue that year. Very large, so that virtually half the face was covered. The whole combined to give her a strange remote air.

It was not that she had turned inwards on herself. No, it was more than that. It was as if she had stepped to one side quite deliberately, putting herself on the outside looking in. In some curious way she seemed to be waiting for something, though God knows what it could be and for some reason, I shivered in spite of the warmth.

Aleko offered her another cigarette, As she took it, I heard him ask her in a low voice if she was feeling all right. I couldn't catch what she said in reply, but she definitely wasn't pleased.

He turned with that great, fixed smile of his on his face. “I understand you're making a living out of sponge diving at the moment?”

I wondered who he'd been asking, but let it go. “Of a sort. It isn't what it was in the old days.”

“So I believe. I should have thought there would have been more lucrative openings for a man of your talents.”

I kept pace with him all the way. “Such as?”

He smiled, a different smile this time, the smile on the face of the tiger just before the kill, but didn't attempt to give me an answer.

Instead, he said, “We'd be happy to have you dine with us tonight on board the
Firebird
, Mr. Savage. Seven-thirty, or would that be too early for you?”

I told him that would be fine by me and he said he'd send a boat for me. He put a hand under her elbow and brought her to her feet.

“Till tonight, then.”

She didn't even nod and they went off along the jetty
together. I watched her all the way to the end, the way her hips moved, the slant of her shoulders, the tilt of her head. Strange, but I could tell she was angry about something just by looking at her.

My guts ached and not from belly hunger. No, it was something else I needed—needed and wanted with a fierceness I had forgotten existed.

I went below, got a bottle from my private stock, found a glass and some ice and poured myself a large one. There was a fair view of the beach through the nearest porthole. Several children played tig in and out of the
caicques
which were drawn up out of the water and there was still plenty of net mending going on.

Aleko and Sara Hamilton came into view walking close together just above the water-line. He still had a hand under her elbow, but quite suddenly, she pulled free of him. They stood there talking for a second or two, or to be more accurate, arguing. Yes, they were very definitely having one hell of a row. She ended it by walking away from him. He didn't attempt to stop her; simply turned and went off in the other direction.

I sat at the table, gazing morosely into the bottom of my glass. It was very, very quiet, the children's voices remote and far away, an echo from another world.

“What do you see?” she said from the doorway. “Past, present or future?”

“The present,” I said. “That's all there is.”

“No future?”

“Not in my line of country. I won't make old bones as my granda used to say. What happened to Morg?”

“Dimitri gave him a couple of hundred
drachmae
. Told him to go and have a drink.”

“Enough to keep him full for a week. Very generous
of your Mr. Aleko. What goes on between you two?'

“Do you mean how much time do we spend between the sheets? Is that it, Savage? Does it bother you?”

She was still standing there in the doorway, one hand on her hip, the other on the wall. She started to come in and I stood up fast.

“Nothing doing, angel, you stay right where you are. Once in here and anything goes, I'm warning you.”

I emptied my glass and made for the companionway and some fresh air. We came together in the entrance.

“I asked you if it bothered you?” she said. “Dimitri and me.”

She moved very slightly and I got the full treatment from breast to thigh. What with that damned perfume and the whiskey, I was beginning to feel more than a little light-headed and that ache was back down there in my guts again.

I took her by both arms just above the elbows and shook her. “All right, if it makes you feel any happier, it just about tears me apart. A humiliating confession for a man of my mature years, but I stand up on end the moment I clap eyes on you. Distance no object.”

I released her and she stayed exactly where she was for a moment. When she removed her sunglasses, she looked rather complacent.

“Good,” she said. “Can I have that drink now, please?”

“You come in here and I'll have the pants off you.”

She raised an eyebrow and inclined her head. “Now that
does
sound interesting.”

There was only one thing left to do. I slid my hand down across the flat belly and cupped it between her thighs.

She didn't even flinch. “What a technique,” she said calmly. “Now that really must be straight off the waterfront. It has such an air of finesse about it.”

It had roughly the same effect as a stiff right hook from Henry Cooper in his prime. She patted my face and kissed me on the mouth.

“But I like it, Savage. Yes, I definitely like it. A good year, nineteen forty-three.”

She went up the companionway and was away before I knew what was happening. By the time I reached the deck she was already half-way along the jetty. She paused at the end to wave. I waved back, and then she was gone.

 

I took a shower and shaved and then had a look at my wardrobe. There wasn't much to go at, which was hardly surprising considering our hurried departure out of Egypt. I managed a clean white shirt and a rather exotic little Turkish silk scarf in place of a tie. Navy linen slacks and an old double-breasted blazer with Royal Marine buttons that had once cost me fifty pounds in a wild moment and still looked as if it had, completed the picture.

In the mirror, I looked about as good as I was ever likely to do. It was all downhill from now on, anyway, I told myself sourly and I went up on deck to wait for my transport.

There was no sign of Morgan which was hardly surprising. On two hundred
drachmae
the wine would be coming out of his ears. And why not? What else was there for him? Definitely my evening for philosophy.

The speedboat arrived with a showy flourish, one man at the wheel, another ready with the boathook in the
stern. They wore white uniform slacks and their blue Guernsey sweaters had
Firebird
emblazoned across the chest. All very Royal Navy which was obviously the way Aleko liked things and they certainly had their drill just right. I found myself frowning. There was something not quite right here, something to do with the two sailors. These were no ordinary deckhands, I was certain of that.

Hard, tough-looking men. Mountain Greeks from the south by the look of them, with sallow faces and crisp, blue-black hair and alike enough to be brothers. They had the confident air of the professional and looked as if they could handle most situations—but professional what? As we neared the
Firebird
, the one with the boathook leaned across in front of me and his jersey lifted disclosing a Smith and Wesson with a two-inch barrel in a spring holster at the small of his back.

Which was interesting enough. On the other hand, Aleko was a very rich man and needed looking after. And then there was the political situation. In Greece at that time, anything could happen and very often did.

We came in to the ladder and I found the captain waiting to greet me, resplendent in a uniform that wouldn't have disgraced the bridge of a Cunarder.

He saluted and said, in fair English, “Mr. Savage, my name is Melos. Would you come this way please?”

Everything was perfection, decks scrubbed, rails gleaming, and the steps down the main companionway were carpeted wall-to-wall as were the corridors below. We went into a largish saloon with a bar at one end. There was no one behind it. Melos asked me to wait a moment, saluted and went out.

I lit a cigarette and had a look round. The paintings
on the walls were all reproductions, I was expert enough for that, but there were one or two nice bronze pieces that looked authentic to me. One of them was particularly good. A face mask, blank eye-holes gazing into eternity.

“You like it?” Aleko spoke from the doorway.

He wore a white tuxedo and looked extraordinarily handsome. I nodded. “First century Rhodian or I miss my guess.”

He showed his surprise. “You know what you are talking about.”

I had genuinely caught him off balance. “Not really,” I said. “I tried my hand at archaeological diving for a while a few years back. I've seen stuff like this come out of plenty of Roman and Greek wrecks, off the Turkish coast particularly.”

We had a reasonably interesting conversation for a while, talking around the whole subject, about which he certainly knew a great deal, but then he was rich enough to be able to afford that kind of interest.

I suppose I'd been expecting Sara Hamilton to make some sort of spectacular entrance for my benefit, which shows, on reflection, how much I still had to learn about her, for when I turned as the conversation with Aleko started to flag, I found her sitting on one of the high stools at the bar.

She was wearing another of those simple little dresses of hers. Black silk this time, cut in the style of a Greek tunic of the classical period, no sleeves and straight across at the neck. The pleated skirt was fashionably short and sheer black stockings and gold sandals finished things off.

With that pale golden hair hanging straight to the
shoulders, she looked marvellous and knew it. The one touch of real ostentation was the pendant she wore on a silver chain, a sapphire so large that I could only conclude that somewhere in the depths of India, some temple god or other was missing an eye.

“Is someone going to give me a drink?” she demanded in that strange harsh voice of hers.

Aleko raised her hand to his lips. “As always, you look magnificent,” he said in Greek, and went behind the bar.

She took out a cigarette and I gave her a light. She held my hand to steady it, only it wasn't shaking. For a moment, there was real physical contact—real contact. Not something superficial at all. She knew it and so did I. She pushed her hair from her eyes and glanced up at me and there was something else I hadn't expected—a touch of sadness.