The Mediterranean Caper (12 page)

“Where do we go from here?” Giordino said between gulps.

Pitt shrugged. “I'm not sure yet. A lot depends on what Gunn finds in the wreckage of the Albatros.”

“Any idea?”

“None at the moment.”

Giordino mashed his cigarette into an ashtray. “If nothing else, I'd say we're well ahead of the game, especially compared to this time yesterday. Thanks to you our ghost from World War I is kaput, and we have a pretty good lead on the instigator behind the attacks. All we have to do now is have the Greek authorities pick up von Till.”

“Not good enough,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “That would be the same as a district attorney demanding the indictment of a suspect for murder who had no motive. No, there has to be a reason, not a valid one in our eyes necessarily, but still a reason for all this intrigue and destruction.”

“Whatever the cause, it isn't treasure.”

Pitt stared at Giordino. “I'd forgotten to ask. Did Admiral Sandecker send a reply to your message?”

Giordino dropped an emptied bottle in a wastebasket. “It came through this morning, just before the colonel and I left Brady Field for the
First Attempt
.” He paused, gazing up at a fly walking across the ceiling. Then he belched.

“Well?” Pitt grunted impatiently.

“The admiral had a crew of ten men pore through the national archives on a crash research program. When they were finished they all agreed on the same conclusion: there is no recorded document anywhere that indicates shipwrecked treasure near the Thasos coastline.”

“Cargos, could any of the recorded wrecked vessels have carried valuable cargo?”

“Nothing worth mentioning.” Giordino pulled a slip of paper from his breast pocket. “The admiral's secretary dictated over the radio the names of all the ships that were lost on or around Thasos in the last two hundred years. The list isn't impressive.”

Pitt wiped the salty sting of sweat from his eyes. “Let's have a sample.”

Giordino set the list on his knees and began reading aloud in a rapid monotone.
“Mistral,
French frigate, sunk 1753.
Clara G.,
British coal collier, sunk 1856.
Admiral DeFosse,
French ironclad, sunk 1872.
Scyla,
Italian brig, sunk 1876.
Daphne,
British gunboat…”

“Skip to 1915,” Pitt interrupted.

“H. M.S. Forshire,
British cruiser, sunk by German shore batteries on the mainland, 1915.
Von Schroder,
German destroyer, sunk by British warship, 1916.
U-19,
German submarine, sunk by British aircraft, 1918.”

“No need to continue,” Pitt said, yawning. “Most of the lost wrecks on your list were warships. The chances are slim that one of them might have carried a king's ransom in gold.”

Giordino nodded. “As the boys in Washington said, ‘no recorded documents of sunken treasure.'”

The talk over treasure brought an alert gleam in Lewis' eyes. “What about ancient Greek or Roman vessels? Most records wouldn't go back that far.”

“That's true,” said Giordino. “But, as Dirk previously pointed out, Thasos is a long way off the beaten shipping paths. The same holds true for the trade routes of antiquity.”

“But if there is a fortune under our feet,” Lewis persisted, “and von Till found it, he'd most certainly keep it a secret.”

“There's no law against finding sunken treasure.” Giordino exhaled two streams of smoke through his nose. “Why bother to hide it?”

“Greed,” said Pitt. “Insane greed; wanting one hundred percent, refusing to share with others or having to pay the government under which the riches were found any taxes or assessments.”

“Considering the huge cut most governments demand,” Lewis said angrily, “I can't say as I'd blame von Till for keeping the discovery a secret.”

The cabin boy came and went, leaving three more bottles of beer. Giordino downed his with one tilt of the head and then dropped the empty bottle beside its mate in the wastebasket. “This whole game is like a bad deal,” he complained. “I don't like it.”

“I don't like it either,” Pitt said quietly. “Every logical avenue winds up in a cul-de-sac. Even this talk about treasure is meaningless. I tried to bait von Till into admitting he was after treasure, but the wily old bastard offered no indication of interest. He's trying to hide something, but it's not sunken gold bullion or lost diamonds.” He broke off and pointed out a porthole across the sea where Thasos slept under the rising heat waves. “The solution lies elsewhere, either near the island, or on it, or maybe both. We'll soon know more when Gunn raises the Albatros and its occupant.”

Giordino, both hands clasped behind his head, leaned his chair back on two legs. “By all rights, we could leave now and be back in Washington this time tomorrow. Since the mysterious renegade plane is destroyed, and we know who instigated the accidents on board the
First Attempt,
things should settle back to normal. I see no reason why we can't pack up and head for home.” He threw Lewis an indifferent look. “I'm certain the colonel can handle any further emergencies that might crop up on Brady Field.”

“You can't leave now!” Lewis was sweating heavily, his breath in gasps, barely controlling his temper. “I'll contact Admiral Sandecker and have…”

“Don't worry, Colonel,” Gunn interrupted from the doorway. He had pushed the cabin door open silently and now stood leaning against the bulkhead. “Major Pitt and Captain Giordino won't be leaving Thasos just yet.”

Pitt looked up quickly, expectantly. There was no elated expression on Gunn's face, it merely reflected a mixture of blank nothingness and dejection. It was the face of a man who ceased to care. The small bone structure showed through the shoulders, drooped from exhaustion, and the skin glistened with drops of salt water that clung to the body hair in tiny droplets. He wore nothing but the ever present horn-rimmed glasses and a European-style black bikini that did little to enhance the slender frame it covered. Four straight hours of diving had left Gunn exhausted, every bone, every muscle begging for relief.

“Sorry sir,” Gunn mumbled softly. “Bad news I'm afraid.”

“For God's sake, Rudi,” Pitt asked, “what is it? Weren't you able to raise the plane and recover the pilot's body?”

Gunn shrugged his thin shoulders. “Neither.”

“As bad as that?” Pitt queried, voice and face deadly serious.

“Worse,” Gunn replied grimly.

“Let's have it.”

For almost thirty seconds, Gunn remained silent. The others in the cabin could hear the faint creaking noises of the ship, rolling in the gentle swells of the Mediterranean, and see the tightening of Gunn's mouth.

“Believe me, we tried,” Gunn said wearily. “We used every underwater search trick in the book, but we couldn't locate the wreck.” He gestured helplessly with his hands. “It was gone, vanished, God knows where.”

“The Thasians were
great lovers of the theatre, considering it a vital part of their education, and everyone, including the town beggar, was encouraged to come. In the ancient city of Thasos, during the premieres of new dramas form the mainland, all shops were closed, all business ceased and prisoners were released from jail. Even the city's whores, barred from most public events, were allowed to practice their trade in the shrubbery by the theatre gateways without fear of legal harassment.”

The swarthy Greek National Tourist Organization guide paused his spiel, curling his lip in a pleased grin at the horrified expressions on the faces of the female tourists. It was always the same, he thought. The women whispering in put-on embarrassment while the men, draped in Bermuda shorts and festooned with light meters and cameras, guffawed and poked each other's ribs in unison with know-it-all winks.

The guide twisted the end of his magnificent moustache and studied his group more closely. There was the usual sprinkling of fat retired businessmen and their fat wives, viewing the ruins not for historical interest, but rather to impress their friends and neighbors at home. His eyes wandered over four young schoolteachers from Alhambra, California. Three were plain looking, wore glasses and giggled constantly. It was the fourth girl who attracted his attention. Excellent possibilities. Large protruding breasts, red hair, long legs—like most Americans—and quite shapely. The kind of eyes that flirt and suggest better things to come. Later tonight he would invite
her
on a private moonlight tour of the ruins.

The guide pulled at the lapels of a tight jacket and tucked the bottom neatly under a bright red cummerbund.

Slowly, with a professional kind of carelessness, he turned his gaze toward the rear of the little crowd, stopping it uneasily on two men who leaned indifferently against a fallen column. A tougher, more battered and villainous pair of hard cases he had never seen. The short one with the puffed out chest, obviously an Italian, looked more like an ape than a man. The taller brute with the piercing green eyes carried himself with an air of sureness and sophistication, yet there was an aura about him that advertised “Caution: highly dangerous.” The guide twisted his moustache again. German most likely. Must love to fight judging from the bandages on the nose and hands. Strange, most strange, the guide mused. Why would those two take a dull tour of old ruins? Probably a pair of sailors who jumped ship. Yes, that must be it, he suggested to himself smugly.

“This theatre was excavated in 1952,” the guide went on, flashing a set of bright teeth. “So buried under centuries of silt washed off the mountain that it took two years to reveal it all. Please notice the geometric mosaic of the orchestra floor. It was fashioned from naturally colored pebbles and signed
Coenus Set It.
” He hesitated a moment, letting his flock of excursionists study the floral design of the worn and faded tiles. “Now, if you will follow me up the stairway to your left, we will take a short walk over the next mound to the Shrine of Poseidon.”

Pitt, playing the part of a tired and worn-out sightseer, feigned exhaustion and sat down on the steps, watching the rest of the tour climb the granite stairway until their heads disappeared beyond the top. Four-thirty, his watch read. Four-thirty. Exactly three hours since he and Giordino left the
First Attempt
and casually strolled into Liminas, joining the guided tour of the ancient ruins. Now he and Giordino…the little captain was impatiently pacing the stone floor beside him, clutching a small flight bag…waited a few more minutes, making absolutely sure the tour was continuing without them. Satisfied that they weren't missed, he silently motioned to Giordino and pointed toward the stage entrance of the amphitheatre.

For the hundredth time, Pitt tugged at the irritating chest bandage, thought about the ship's doctor and grinned in self-amusement. Permission to leave the ship and return to von Till's villa had been firmly denied by the bearded doctor, and by Gunn too. But when Pitt insisted that, if necessary, he was ready to fight the entire ship's crew and swim back to Liminas, the old physician had thrown up his hands in defeat and stormed from the cabin. So far, paying for the wine while killing time in a small
taverna,
waiting for the sightseeing trip to begin, was his only contribution to the backdoor reconnaissance of the villa. It was Giordino who had cursed and sweated over the huge lump of rust attached to the dory's propeller shaft, trying to crank it to life. And it was Giordino who nursed the weather-beaten derelict back to the harbor at Liminas. Fortunately the old boat had not been missed…no irate owner or local police officer waited on the beach to punish the yankee pirates for boat theft. To tie the dory up to its original mooring and walk across the beach to the main part of town took only a few minutes. Pitt, certain it was a waste of time, led Giordino a block out of their way to see if Athena was still attached to the corner mailbox. The donkey was gone, but immediately across the narrow street, over a neat little white plastered office building, a sign, lettered in English, advertised the Greek National Tourist Organization. The rest was simple; joining a tour, whose itinerary included the amphitheatre, and mingling with a group of sightseers, offered the perfect cover for reaching the labyrinth and gaining entrance to von Till's retreat without detection.

Giordino rubbed a sleeve across his damp brow. “Breaking and entering in the middle of the afternoon. Why can't we wait until dark like any other honorable burglars?”

“The sooner we nail von Till, the better,” Pitt said sharply. “If he's off balance from the destruction of the Albatros this morning, the last thing he would expect is a resurrected Dirk Pitt in broad daylight.”

Giordino could easily feel and see the revenge in Pitt's eyes. He remembered watching Pitt move slowly, painfully, as best he could, over the steep trail through the ruins without complaint. He had also watched the bitterness, the hopelessness that took and held Pitt's face after Gunn announced the disappearance of the mystery plane. There was something ominous about Pitt's grim features and unmoving concentration. Giordino wondered dimly whether Pitt was driving himself with a sense of duty or with an insane compulsion for retaliation.

“You're sure this is the right way. It might be simpler to…”

“This is the only way,” Pitt interrupted. “The Albatros wasn't eaten by a whale, yet it vanished without leaving a stray nut or bolt. Knowing the identity of the pilot could have settled a number of loose ends. We have no choice. The only course that lies open is to search the villa.”

“I still think we should take a squad of Air Police,” Giordino said morosely, “and crash in through the front door.”

Pitt looked at him, then looked once more over his shoulder up the stairway. He knew exactly how Al Giordino felt, for he felt the same way himself…frustrated, unsure, grasping at every string that offered a small touch of hope for obtaining an answer, no matter how small, to the strange events of the past few days. Much depended on the next hour; whether they could enter the villa unseen, whether they found evidence against von Till, whether Teri was a willful member of her uncle's, as yet unknown, scheme. Pitt glanced at Giordino again, saw the set brown eyes, the grim mouth, the knotted hands, saw all the signs of an intense mental concentration; concentration on the possible dangers that lay ahead. There was no better man to have on your side when the odds were long.

“I can't seem to pound it through your thick head,” he said quietly. “This is Greek soil. We have no legal right to invade a private residence. I couldn't begin to think of the problems it would cause our government if we broke in von Till's door. As it is now, if we're caught by the Greek authorities, we'll play the roles of a couple of crewmen from the
First Attempt
who wandered into the underground passage during a guided tour to sleep off a shore leave drunk. They should buy that, they have no reason not to.”

“That's why we're not packing any weapons?”

“You guessed it; we'll have to risk a disadvantage to save a possible predicament.” Pitt halted at the crumbling archway. The iron grillwork looked different in the daylight, not nearly so massive and indomitable as he remembered it. “This is the place,” he said, his fingers idly flaking a spot of dried blood from one of the rusting bars.

“You squeezed through that?” Giordino asked incredulously.

“It was nothing,” Pitt replied, broadly grinning. “Just another one of my many accomplishments.” The grin quickly faded. “Hurry, we don't have much time. The next tour will be through here in another forty-five minutes.”

Giordino stepped up to the heavy bars and within seconds was a man absorbed with a difficult and hazardous job to do. He opened the flight bag and carefully removed the contents, laying them out in order on an old towel. Quickly, he fitted two small charges of T.N.T. around a single bar, spacing them twenty inches apart, inserted the primer and heavily wrapped each charge under several layers of metal plumbers tape. Next he spun strands of heavy wire around the bulbous bands and then covered the wire with more layers of thick adhesive tape. A final look at the charges, imbedded in the thick wrappings like cocoons, and he connected the wires to the detonator. Obviously pleased with his handiwork, the entire operation had taken less than six minutes from start to finish, he motioned Pitt toward the safety of a wide block retaining wall. Slowly Giordino followed, walking backward, playing out wires leading from the detonator to the charges. At the wall, Pitt grasped him on the arm to draw his attention.

“How far will the explosion be heard?”

“If I did it right,” Giordino replied, “it shouldn't sound any louder than a popgun to someone standing a hundred feet away.”

Pitt stood on the lower base of the wall and hurriedly scanned a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle of landscape. Seeing no sign of human activity, he nodded, grinning at Giordino. “I hope dropping in uninvited through the service entrance isn't beneath your dignity.”

“We Giordinos are pretty broadminded,” he said, returning Pitt's grin.

“Shall we?”

“If you insist.”

They both ducked below the top of the old wall, holding the sun-warmed stones with their hands to absorb any shock. Then Giordino turned the little plastic switch on the detonator.

Even at the short distance of ten or fifteen feet the sound of the explosion was nothing more than a mere thump. No shock wave trembled the ground, no black cloud of smoke or shooting flame belched from the archway, no deafening blast rattled their eardrums, only a small undefinable thump.

Swiftly, in a silence bred of expectancy, they leaped to their feet and rushed back to the iron gate. The two balls of tape were torn and smoldering, smelling like the burned-out pungent odor of frizzled firecrackers. A tiny curl of smoke wound in a snake-like trail between the grill and disappeared into the damp darkness of the interior passage. The bar was still in place.

Pitt looked questioningly at Giordino. “Not enough punch?”

“It was ample,” Giordino said confidently. “The charges were the right size to do the job. Please observe.” He gave the bar a vigorous kick with his heel. It remained solid, unyielding. He kicked it again, this time harder, his mouth tight from a jolting pain in his heel and sole. The top end of the bar broke loose, bending its jagged and torn tip inward until it lay on a horizontal plane. A tense smile creased Giordino's mouth and his teeth slowly spread into view. “And now for my next trick…”

“Never mind,” Pitt snapped brusquely. “Let's get the hell going. We've got to get to the villa and back in time to join the next tour.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

Pitt was already climbing through the opening in the gate. “Last night it took me eight hours to get out, we can get in in eight minutes.”

“How? You got a map?”

“Something even better,” Pitt said quietly, almost grimly, pointing at the flight bag. “Pass me the light.”

Giordino reached into the bag, pulled out a large yellow light, nearly six inches in diameter, and passed it through the opening. “It's big enough. What is it?”

“Allen Dive Bright. Aluminum casing is waterproof to a nine-hundred-foot depth. We're not going diving, but it's rugged and throws out a long narrow beam, backed by one hundred and eight thousand candlepower. That's why I borrowed it from the ship.”

Giordino said no more, merely shrugged and slipped between the bars, following Pitt into the passage. “Hold on a second till I remove the evidence.”

Giordino's stubby hands nimbly unwound the shredded wrappings—a pile of old fallen stones covered the smoldering remains—before he turned to face Pitt, squinting his eyes until they became accustomed to the dim light.

Pitt played his light into the darkness. “Look there on the ground. See why I don't need the services of a detailed map?”

The powerful beam spotlighted a broken trail of dried and caked blood leading down the steep uneven stairway. In a few places the red stains lay in scattered clusters, separated by occasional tiny round specks. Pitt descended the steps shivering, not so much from the sight of his old and discarded blood, but from the sudden change in temperature from the outside afternoon heat to the damp chill of the musty labyrinth. At the bottom he took off at a half trot, the swaying light in his hand casting a series of bouncing shadows that leaped from the crack-lined ceiling to the rough-hewn rock floor. The loneliness and the fear that gripped him the night before was not present. Giordino, that indestructable sawed-off package of muscle, a trusted friend for many years, was beside him now. Damned if anyone or any barrier would stop him this time, he thought doggedly.