The Mediterranean Caper (18 page)

He glanced at his watch as he hurried back to the wheelhouse. The luminous hands showed 4:13. The sun would be blossoming soon. He scrambled onto the bridge and replaced the flashlight in the rack. His haste was almost frantic. He had to be off the ship, into his diving gear and a good two hundred yards distant before daylight gave him away.

The forward deck was still deserted, or at least it seemed to be. A fluttering noise came from behind Pitt. Instantly he spun around in a sudden renewed fear and unsheathed the knife in one deft movement. His nerves were stretched taut to the border of panic, his head pounded like a drum roll. God, he thought, I can't be caught now, not this close to safety.

It was nothing but a gull that had flown out of the night and landed on a ventilator; the bird pointed a tiny eye at Pitt and cocked its head questioningly. No doubt wondering what sort of crazy human would run around a ship in the early morning, clothed in nothing but a flotation vest while holding a knife in one hand and a bathing suit in the other. The relief made Pitt feel weak at the knees. It had been quite a scare and he was badly shaken. When he boarded the ship he didn't know what he expected to find: what he found was silence tinged with unknown terror. Limply he leaned against the railing, getting a grip on himself. At this rate he'd have heart failure or a mental breakdown before sunrise. He took several deep breaths, exhaling slowly until the fear subsided.

Without a backward glance, he swung over the rail and shinnied down the anchor chain, vastly relieved at departing the ghostly ship. It was a welcome comfort to be in the soothing water again. The sea opened its arms and gave him a sense of remoteness from danger.

It took only a minute for Pitt to slip on his swim trunks and retrieve his diving gear. Fitting an aqualung tank on your back in the darkness with the swells pushing you against the sides of a steel hull isn't an easy operation. But the Ditch and Recovery experience he had obtained during his early diving days came in handy now, and he accomplished the task with little effort. He looked around for the wooden crate, but it had drifted into the black curtain of night and disappeared, the wave action and incoming tide, by this time, carrying it halfway to the beach.

He lay there dead in the water and considered the possibility of diving under the
Queen Artemisia
and examining her hull. The weird scraping noise he had heard in the engine room seemed to have come from somewhere outside the plates and below the keel. Then it occurred to him the plan was hopeless. Without an underwater light he could see nothing. And he wasn't in the mood to grope like a blind man along a four-hundred-foot hull that was encrusted with razor-sharp barnacles. He'd heard old tales that described in detail the ancient and brutal practice of keelhauling insubordinate British sailors. He remembered one particularly bloodcurdling account of a gunner's mate who was dragged under the keel of the
H.M.S. Confident
off the coast of Timor in 1786. Punished for stealing a cup of brandy from the captain's locker, the poor fellow was dragged under the keel of the ship until his body was sliced to ribbons and the white of his ribs and backbone were visible. The unfortunate man might have survived, but before the crew could hoist him back on board, a pair of Mako sharks, attracted by the scent of blood, attacked and chewed the man to pieces before the horrified eyes of the men on deck. Pitt knew what a shark could do. He had once pulled a boy from the surf in Key West who had taken a nasty bite by a shark. The boy had lived, but a massive piece of tissue would always be missing from his left thigh.

Pitt cursed out loud. He must stop thinking about things like that. His ears began to ring from a humming sound. At first he thought it was a trick of his imagination. He shook his head violently: it was still there, only louder; it seemed to be gaining momentum. Then Pitt knew where the humming was coming from.

The ship's generators had started again. The navigation lights blinked on, and the
Queen Artemisia
suddenly came alive with sound. If there was ever a time when the better part of valor was discretion, it was now. Pitt clamped the mouthpiece of the regulator between his teeth and dove clear of the ship. He kicked his fins with every ounce of power in his legs, seeing nothing under the ink black water, hearing only the strange gurgling sound of his exhaust bubbles. It was times like this that he wished he didn't smoke. After covering nearly fifty-five yards, he surfaced and looked back at the ship.

The
Queen Artemisia
rode at anchor in tombstone solitude, her silhouette outlined against the graying eastern sky like an old-fashioned shadowgram. Dim shafts of white light came to life here and there about the ship, interrupted only by the green glow of the starboard navigation light. For several minutes nothing more happened. Then without any signal or shouted command, the anchor clattered up from the seafloor and clanged into the hull. The wheelhouse was lit and Pitt could see it clearly; it was still vacant. It just can't be, he repeated to himself over and over again: it just can't be. But the old ship hadn't yet finished the last act of her ghostly performance. As if on cue, the
Queen Artemisia
's telegraph jangled faintly across the calm pre-dawn sea. The engines responded with their gentle throb, and the ship continued on her voyage, the secret of her evil cargo still locked somewhere within her steel plates.

Pitt didn't have to see the ship move to know it was under way; he could feel the beat of her propellers through the water. Fifty-five yards was more than enough. At that distance he was invisible to any lookout and had little to fear from being sucked through the huge propellers and mangled into fish bait.

A seething flood of frustration swept over Pitt as the great hull slowly slid past his bobbing head. It was as though he was watching a ballistic missile lift from a launching pad and hurtle on its pre-set path toward devastation and death. He was helpless, he could do nothing to stop it. Hidden somewhere on the
Queen Artemisia
was enough heroin to drown half the population of the Northern Hemisphere in delirium. God alone knew what chaos would erupt in every city and town if it was distributed to all the peddling scum who preyed on its malignant addiction. How many people would become listless dregs and eventually die from the drug's deadly narcosis? One hundred and thirty tons of heroin on the ship. What was that song again, the little ditty that he'd sung all those long years ago in school? “A hundred bottles of beer on the wall.” It had nearly the same ring, but it was for light hearts and souls, not drugged minds and lost hopes.

Then Pitt thought of himself. Not with self-pride for destroying the yellow Albatros or searching the
Queen Artemisia
and getting away with it undetected. He thought of himself only as an idiot for risking his life on a job he had no business performing, a job he wasn't paid to do. His orders were to expedite oceanographic expeditions. No one said anything about chasing after drug smugglers. What could
he
accomplish? He wasn't a guardian angel of humanity. Let Zacynthus, Zeno, INTERPOL and every other damn cop in the world play cat and mouse with von Till. It was their game, they were trained for it. And they were paid for it too.

Again Pitt swore loudly to himself. He had already spent too much time daydreaming. It was time to head for shore. Mechanically, his eyes watched the ship's lights diminish bit by bit into the fading darkness of the early morning. He was just wading onto the beach when the sun lifted itself from the horizon and threw its rays on the rock-strewn summits of the Thasos mountains.

Pitt stripped off the tank and let it fall to the soft wet sand along with the breathing regulator and his mask and snorkel. Exhaustion curled its numbing tentacles around him and he succumbed to it, dropping to his hands and knees. His body felt sore and beat, but his mind hardly noticed these things; it was busy with something else.

Pitt could find no indication of the heroin on board the ship, nor would the Bureau of Narcotics or the Customs Inspectors. That much was certain. Below the waterline, that was a possibility. But surely the wary investigators would have divers examine every inch of the hull when the ship docked. Besides, there was no way a cargo of that size could be removed, unless it was dropped in the water and recovered later. That wouldn't work either, he thought, it was too obvious; retrieving a watertight container filled with a hundred and thirty tons of solid material would require a full scale salvage operation. No, there had to be a more ingenious method, one that had successfully defied detection for so long.

He took the driver's knife and idly began sketching the
Queen Artemisia
's outline in the wet sand. Then, quite suddenly, the idea of a diagram intrigued him. He stood up and traced a hull that stretched for approximately thirty feet. The bridge, the holds and engine room, every detail he could recall was etched into the yielding white sand. Minutes passed and the ship started to take shape. Pitt had become so totally absorbed in his work that he didn't notice an old man and a donkey, trudging wearily along the beach.

The old man stopped in his tracks and stared at Pitt from a ripened old face that had seen too many decades of strife to show an expression of bewilderment. After a few moments he shrugged uncomprehendingly and ambled off after his donkey.

Finally the diagram was nearly complete, down to the last companionway. The knife flashed in the new sun as Pitt added a final humorous touch; a tiny bird on a tiny ventilator. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork. He stared at it for a moment, then laughed aloud. “One thing's certain, I'll never be acclaimed for my artwork. It looks more like a pregnant whale than a ship.”

Pitt continued to absentmindedly gaze at the sand drawing. Suddenly his eyes took on a trance-like glaze and his rugged face lost all expression. The spark of a novel and fanciful idea lit dimly in his conscious mind. At first the idea seemed too outlandish for him to consider, but the more he dwelt on its possibilities, the more feasible it became. Quickly he traced additional lines in the sand. Completely absorbed again, he raced to match up the diagram with the picture in his mind. When the last change was finished, his mouth slowly twisted into a grim smile of satisfaction. Damned clever of von Till, he thought, damned clever.

He wasn't tired anymore, his mind was no longer burdened with unsolvable questions. It was a new approach, a new kind of answer. It should have been discovered long before. Quickly, he gathered up the diving equipment and started to hike over the incline that separated the beach from the coastal road. There was no thought of quitting the game now. The next inning would prove to be the most interesting. At the top he turned and looked back at the sketch of the
Queen Artemisia
in the sand.

The rising tide was just washing over and erasing the ship's funnel, the funnel marked with the big Minerva “M.”

Giordino lay stretched
out beside a blue Air Force pickup truck, dead asleep, his head resting on a binocular case and both feet propped carelessly on a large rock. A trail of ants tramped across his outflung forearm and, ignoring the obstacle in their path, continued their uninterrupted journey toward a small mound of loose dirt. Pitt looked down, smiling. If there was one thing Giordino could do, and do well, he thought, it was sleeping anywhere at anytime and under any condition.

Pitt shook his fins, letting the salty dampness dribble on Giordino's composed face. No drowsy babble, no sudden reaction greeted the rude sprinkling. The only response came from one big brown eye that popped open, gazing straight at Pitt in obvious annoyance.

“Aha! Behold! Our intrepid guardian with the watchful eye!” There was no mistaking Pitt's sarcastic tone. “I shudder to think of the death toll if you should ever decide to become a lifeguard.”

The opposite lid slowly raised like a window shade, revealing the matching eye. “Just to set the record straight,” Giordino said wearily. “These tired old eyes were glued to the night glasses from the time you got into your packing crate to the time you came ashore and started playing in the sand.”

“My apologies old friend.” Pitt laughed. “I suppose that doubting your unflagging vigilance will cost me another drink?”

“Two drinks,” Giordino murmured slyly.

“Consider it done.”

Giordino sat up, blinking in the sun. He noticed the ants and casually brushed them off his arm. “How'd your swim go?”

“Robert Southey must have had the
Queen Artemisia
in mind when he wrote ‘No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, the ship was still as she could be.' You might say that I found something by finding nothing.”

“I don't get it.”

“I'll explain later.” Pitt lifted the diving gear and loaded it in the truck bed. “Any word from Zac?”

“Not yet.” Giordino trained the binoculars on von Till's villa. “He and Zeno took a platoon of the local gendarmerie and staked out von Till's baronial estate. Darius stayed on the radio at the warehouse, traversing wave lengths in case there was any transmission between the shore and ship.”

“Sounds like a thorough effort, but unfortunately a waste of time.” Pitt toweled his black hair, then ran a comb through it. “Where can a man find a drink and a cigarette around here?”

Giordino nodded toward the truck cab. “I can't help you on the drink, but there's a pack of Greek cancer sticks on the front seat.”

Pitt leaned in the truck cab and removed an oval-shaped cigarette from a black and gold box of Hellas Specials. He'd never tried one before and was surprised at the mildness. After his ordeal of the past two hours, rolled seaweed would have tasted good.

“Someone kick you in the shins?” Giordino asked matter-of-factly.

Pitt exhaled a cloud of smoke and peered down at his leg. There was a deep red gash below the right knee and blood was oozing slowly along its entire length. For two inches in every direction the skin was a colorful combination of green, blue and purple.

“I had a bit of bad luck, a run-in with a bulkhead door.”

“I'd better fix that for you.” Giordino turned and pulled an Air Force–issue first aid kit from the glove compartment. “A minor operation like this is mere child's play for Doctor Giordino, the world renowned brain surgeon. I don't mean to brag, but I'm rather good at heart transplants too.”

Pitt tried to suppress a laugh, but failed. “Just make sure you put the gauze on before, not after the tape.”

Giordino feigned a pained expression. “Such a terrible thing to say.” The sly look returned. “You'll change your tune when you get my bill.”

There was no choice left for Pitt except to shrug in resignation and place his bruised leg in Giordino's hands. Nothing more was said for the next few minutes. Pitt sat and absorbed the silence, gazing at the sky-dyed blue water and the shoreline that rested under the white sands of antiquity. The narrow beach below the road stretched southward for six miles before it faded into a thin line and disappeared behind the western tip of the island. There wasn't a soul to be seen anywhere along the surf's edge; the emptiness possessed all the mystic allure and romantic charm so often pictured on South Seas travel posters. It was indeed a fragment of paradise.

Pitt noted that the surf was running at two feet with eight-second intervals between crests. The waves broke low and at least one hundred yards out. Then in a final burst of fury, they surged forward in majestic spray-plumed rows, only to slowly dissolve and die in small eddies at the tideline. To a swimmer, the conditions were perfect; to a surfer, they were fair; but to a diver, the shallow sandy bottom and the dark blue water spelled barren waste. For sheer underwater adventure it is the greener, reef strewn waters that attract the diver, for it is there that the beauty of sea life abounds.

Pitt panned his eyes a hundred and eighty degrees and looked to the north. Here it was a different story. High craggy cliffs, barren of all vegetation, rose out of the sea, their faces worn and etched by the endless onslaught of the breakers. Great fallen rocks and yawning fissures bore mute testimony to what old Mother Nature could do when given the tools of her trade to work with. There was one particular stretch of rugged cliffline that intrigued Pitt.

Strangely enough, this one sector was not pounded like the others. The waters below the sheer, straight up and down rock mass were calm and flat, a garden pond bordered on three sides by foaming swirling waters. For a hundred square yards the sea was green and still, the boiling white ceased to exist. It seemed unreal.

Pitt speculated on what wonders a diver might find there. Only God alone could have observed the ageless formation of the island, the coming and going of the great ice ages, the changing levels of the ancient sea. Maybe, he thought, just maybe the mountainous breakers carved their fury into the sides of these cliffs, creating an underwater pockmarked surface of sea caves.

“There you are,” Giordino said in a humorous tone. “Another triumph for medical science by the great Giordino.” Pitt wasn't fooled for a second by the outward display of exaggerated vanity. Giordino's comic dialogue was forever used to camouflage his genuine concern for Pitt. Giordino stood up, running his eyes over Pitt's body, and shook his head in mild wonder. “With all those bandages on your nose, chest and leg, you're beginning to look like a spare tire out of a nineteen thirties, Depression-era comic strip.”

“You're right.” Pitt took a few steps to relieve the increasing stiffness in his leg. “I feel more like a bumper tire on a tugboat.”

“Here comes Zac,” Giordino said, pointing. Pitt twisted and looked in the direction of Giordino's extended finger.

The black Mercedes was approaching down a dirt trail from the mountains, pulling a cloud of brown dust behind its rear bumper. A quarter of a mile away it swung onto the paved coastal road, dropping the dust cloud, and soon Pitt could hear the steady purr of the diesel engine above the beat from the surf below. The car rolled to a stop beside the truck and Zacynthus and Zeno unreeled from the front seat. They were followed by Darius, who made no attempt to disguise a painful limp. Zacynthus was dressed in old faded army fatigues, and his eyes were tired and bloodshot. He gave the impression of a man who had spent a dismal and sleepless night. Pitt grinned sympathetically at him.

“Well Zac, how did it go? See anything interesting?”

Zacynthus didn't seem to hear him. He wearily pulled his pipe from a pocket, filled the bowl and lit it. Then he sank slowly to the ground, stretching out and leaning on one elbow.

“The bastards, the dirty cunning bastards,” he swore bitterly. “We spent the whole night straining our eyes and sneaking around trees and boulders, with mosquitos attacking us at every turn. And what did we find?” He took a deep breath to answer his own question, but Pitt beat him to it.

“You found nothing, you saw nothing and you heard nothing.”

Zacynthus managed a faint smile. “Does it show that much?”

“It shows,” Pitt replied briefly.

“This whole business is exceedingly exasperating.” Zacynthus accented his words by pounding his fist into the soft earth.

“Exceedingly exasperating?” Pitt echoed. “Is that the best you can do?”

Zacynthus sat up and shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “I've just about reached the end of my rope. I feel as though I've just clawed my way up a steep mountain, only to find the peak enshrouded in fog. Possibly you understand, I don't know, but I've dedicated my life to tracking down scum like von Till.” He paused for a moment, then went on very quietly. “I've never failed to crack a case. I can't give up now. That ship must be stopped, and yet, thanks to our lily white code of justice, it can't be stopped. God, can you imagine what will happen if that cargo of heroin reaches the States?”

“I've given it some thought.”

“Screw your code of justice.” Giordino seemed vexed. “Let me stick a limpet mine on that old tub's hull and
bang.
” He formed a blast cloud with his hands. “The fish inherit the drugs.”

Zacynthus nodded slowly. “You have a direct approach, but a—”

“Simple mind,” Pitt interrupted again. He grinned at Giordino's scornful glance.

“Believe me, I would much prefer to see a hundred schools of doped-up fish than one drug-crazed schoolboy.” Zacynthus' voice was grim. “Destroying that ship would only solve the immediate problem; it's like cutting off one tentacle of an octopus. We'd still be left with von Till and his able gang of seagoing smugglers, not to mention the unanswered riddle of his—I am forced to admit—ingenious operation. No, we must be patient. The
Queen Artemisia
hasn't docked at Chicago yet. We'll get another chance at her in Marseille.”

“I don't think you'll have any better luck in Marseille,” Pitt said doubtfully. “Even if one of your phony French dockworkers slips on board, you have the gilt-edged Pitt guarantee that he won't find anything worth writing home about.”

“How would you know that for certain?” Zacynthus suddenly looked up, surprised. “Unless…unless you somehow searched the ship yourself.”

“With him, anything's possible,” Giordino murmured. “He was seaward of the ship when it anchored. I lost him through the night glasses for almost half an hour.”

Now all four men looked at Pitt questioningly.

Pitt laughed and flipped his cigarette over the embankment. “The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things. Gather round, gentlemen, and listen to the cloak and dagger adventures of Dirk Pitt, the naked cat burglar.”

Pitt finally leaned back against the truck and became silent. For a long moment he stared at the thoughtful faces in front of him.

“There you have it. As neat a little setup as you can find.” He smiled wryly. “The
Queen Artemisia
is in reality nothing but a false front. Oh sure, it sails the briny blue, picking up and delivering cargo. That's where any similarity between a bona fide cargo freighter and
Queen
ends. She's an old ship, true, but beneath her steel skin beats a complete up-to-date centralized control system. I saw the same equipment on an old ship in the Pacific just last year. No large crew is required. Six or seven men can handle her easily.”

“No fuss, no muss,” Giordino said admiringly.

“Precisely.” Pitt nodded. “Each compartment, each cabin is set up as a stage prop. When the ship reaches port the crew materializes from the wings and turns into a cast of actors.”

“Pardon this humble man's blind perception, Major.” The peasant choice of words failed to mask the Oxford accent of Zeno's voice. “I do not understand how the
Queen Artemisia
can engage in commercial shipping without the necessary maintenance during long voyages.”

“It's like a historical landmark,” Pitt explained. “Let's say a famous castle where the fires in the fireplaces still burn, the plumbing still works, and the grounds are always trimmed and neat. Five days out of the week the castle is closed, but on the weekends it opens for the tourists, or, in this case, the Customs Inspectors.”

“And the caretakers?” Zeno asked quizzically.

“The caretakers,” Pitt murmured, “live in the cellar.”

“Only rats live in cellars,” Darius ventured dryly.

“A very appropriate observation, Darius,” Pitt said approvingly. “Particularly when you consider the two-legged variety we're dealing with.”

“Cellars, stage props, castles. A crew buried somewhere in the hull. What are you driving at?” Zacynthus demanded. “Please get to the point.”

“I'm coming to it. To begin with, the crew isn't quartered in the hull. They're quartered under it.”

Zacynthus' eyes narrowed. “That's not possible.”

“On the contrary,” Pitt grinned. “It would be entirely possible if the good
Queen Artemisia
was pregnant.”