The Mediterranean Caper (26 page)

“You cracked him a bit hard,” Zacynthus said reprovingly.

“Vermin don't die easily,” Giordino replied impassively, “especially when they're as mean as that old bastard.”

Darius had not moved or spoken since Giordino shot him. Any other man would have gripped a wounded and bleeding hand; not Darius. The huge brute let his hand hang limply to one side, indifferently allowing the blood to splatter on the sub's deck. The lost expression on his face reminded Pitt of a newly caged gorilla he had once seen in the San Diego Zoo, an ugly misshapen monster who could not grasp the meaning of the barred walls and the strange-looking animals beyond that stood five feet deep, observing his every movement. Pitt was very happy indeed that at least five of Zeno's gendarmerie had their guns trained between Darius' cold black eyes.

Pitt nodded toward Darius. “What happens to him?”

“A fast trial,” Zacynthus answered. “Then the firing squad—”

“There will be no trial,” Zeno interrupted. “The gendarmerie have never admitted to a traitor in their ranks.” His voice was grave, yet his eyes were filled with sadness. “Captain Darius died in the performance of his duties.”

The cavern suddenly became silent. Pitt, Zacynthus and Giordino all exchanged puzzled glances over Zeno's use of the past tense.

Darius said nothing. He displayed no emotion, no sign of fear, only a resignation to a fate that precluded even the remotest possibility of hope. Slowly, very carefully, like a man who hadn't tasted sleep in days, he climbed from the sub onto the dock and stood before Zeno, his head bowed.

“It seems I have known you for many years, Darius.” Zeno sounded very tired. “Yet I haven't really known you at all. God alone knows why you came to be what you are. It is a pity, the gendarmerie lost a good man…” Zeno hesitated, groping for words, but he could think of nothing else to say. Carefully, almost to the point of meticulousness, he withdrew the cartridge clip from his gun and removed all the shells except one. Then he reinserted the clip and held out the gun, butt first, to Darius.

Nodding, as if in secret understanding, and searching Zeno's eyes for a sign that never came, Darius took the gun, turned slowly toward the tunnel and began walking numbly across the dock.

“No good-bye, no regrets, no
to hell with you
,” Giordino said uncomprehendingly. “Just like that, he wanders off and blows his brains out. Ten will get you one that Darius makes a break for it.”

“His life ended when he became a traitor,” Zeno said quietly. “Darius knew it then—he knows it now. An early death was his fate when he dropped from the womb, there was no escaping it. Five minutes to talk with his God and prepare his soul—then he will squeeze the trigger.”

Giordino watched Darius fade into the blackness of the tunnel and said nothing. The finality of Zeno's words shattered all his doubts over Darius' intentions. Until the day he, himself, died, Giordino would never understand how anyone could let loose of life so unquestioningly.

He turned back to Pitt. “Time's a wasting, we're running out of the money. Gunn is probably having a spastic fit wondering what happened to his precious scientists.”

“Can't say as I blame him.” The voice came from Knight, who was climbing out of the deck hatch, a sly smile across his face. “Great intellect is hard to come by these days.”

“An egghead comedian.” Giordino groaned. “What has science come to?”

In spite of the pain in his leg, Pitt couldn't help but laugh. “Maybe some of Knight's intellect will rub off on you when you escort him and the other eggheads back to the
First Attempt
. I'm holding you responsible until they're safely on board.”

“Talk about appreciation.” Giordino groaned again. “After all I've done for you.”

“It's better to give, than to receive,” Pitt said soothingly. “Now hop to it. If you expect to swim out through the submerged tunnels, you and the others will have to retrieve the diving gear from the bottom.”

Woodson crawled from the hatch and walked over to Pitt. “Maybe I better stick with you, Major, until you're bedded down.”

“No thanks.” Pitt answered, mildly surprised at the look of genuine concern on Woodson's otherwise expressionless face. “I'm OK. Zac here is going to take me to a hospital full of nymphomaniac nurses, right, Zac?”

“Sorry.” Zacynthus smiled. “Not unless the Air Force has changed its enlistment policy. I'm afraid the base hospital at Brady Field has the only decent facilities on the island for plugging bullet holes.”

The litter-bearers arrived and immediately eased Pitt onto the stretcher. “Oh well,” he said, “at least I travel first class.” Then he sat up. “Damn! I almost forgot. One last thing. Where's Spencer?”

“Here, Major, right here.” The red-bearded marine biologist stepped from behind Woodson. “What can I do for you?”

“Relay my compliments to Commander Gunn and give him a present for me.”

Spencer paled visibly at the sight of Pitt's bloody leg. “Consider it done.”

Pitt leaned over the side of the stretcher and rested on one elbow. “In the outer cavern, twenty feet down, there are several small fissures along the base of the north wall. One has a flat rock over the entrance. If he hasn't already muscled his way out, you'll find a
Teaser
inside.”

Spencer's face registered total surprise. “A
Teaser
! Are you serious, Major?”

“I ought to know a
Teaser
when I see one,” Pitt replied jokingly. “See to it that you don't drop him.”

Spencer let out a long whistle. “Well, what do you know. I was beginning to think no such creature existed.” He paused a moment, deep in thought. “Christ, I don't dare damage him with a spear shaft. A net bag, if only I'd carried a net bag.”

“There's only one way to catch a
Teaser
.” Pitt grinned. “Grab him by the fin.”

The pain was going away now. Pitt's leg felt like it was no longer part of him. The floodlights fused together in one massive blur, hurting his eyes. Everything seemed to slow down, and the voices became far away. Then the stretcher bearers picked Pitt up from the dock, moving, it seemed to him, as though they were wading through glue. He raised his head for the last time that day.

“Zac, one more request.” Pitt's voice was down to a bare murmur. “What is the girl's real name?”

Zac looked down at Pitt and smiled with his eyes. “Her name is Amy.”

“Amy,” Pitt repeated. “Never knew a girl by the name of Amy before.” He relaxed and fell back against the stretcher closing his eyes. The last thing he remembered before the soothing blanket of darkness fully covered him was the sound of a single shot, echoing from somewhere within the depths of the labyrinth.

The sky was
a brilliant ceiling of blue as far as the eye could see. The summer air was hot and dripping with unseen humidity encouraged by burning waves from the blazing sun. In blinding radiance, tall white buildings stood like small chiseled mountains and reflected the heat onto the black asphalt pavement below; the traffic was heavy, and the sidewalks were crowded with scurrying office workers on lunch break as Pitt pushed aside the wide glass doors and limped stiffly into the air-conditioned lobby of the Bureau of Narcotics building.

For a bachelor, he thought, one of the wonderful things about Washington, D.C., is the overabundance of girls. They come in every size, age and disposition and swarm like chattering locusts throughout every government office in the city, providing the hungry male with all the advantages of a rich kid running amok in a candy store. Pitt selected his most charming, devil-may-care smile and offered it to a trio of giggling secretaries who exited the elevator. They returned his smile, accompanied with the usual combination of cursory and demure glances that women are prone to allow for strange men, and then wiggled past him into the lobby, sneaking an additional peek at him over their shoulders.

A moment later, playing the role of the wounded warrior to perfection, Pitt leaned heavily on his cane and limped from the elevator onto the thick carpet of the eighth floor. In the center of the anteroom a dozen girls, displaying an unrestricted forest of nyloned legs, sat at a dozen desks and furiously assaulted a dozen typewriters, never once hesitating to look up at him. He moved slowly over to a well-bosomed blond whose desktop contained a small rectangular sign: “Information.” Then for a moment he stared down at her, admiring the view.

“Excuse me.”

She didn't hear him over the din of the clacking machines.

“Excuse me,” Pitt repeated loudly.

She turned and noticed him. “May I help you?” The voice was cool, the big hazel eyes unfriendly. Pitt admitted to himself that he had to go along with her icy greeting. The white turtleneck sweater, the green California sport coat, the handkerchief casually fluffed from the breast pocket hardly categorized him as an executive or important Washington bureaucrat.

“I would like to see the Director of the Bureau.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, turning back to her typewriter. “The Director is extremely busy and cannot see anyone.”

Contempt and anger began to mount in Pitt. “Inspector Zacynthus made an appointment for me—”

“Inspector Zacynthus' office is on the fourth floor,” the girl droned mechanically.

A gunshot couldn't have received more attention than the resounding bang from Pitt's cane as he slammed it on top of the receptionist's desk. The typists' eyes burst wide, and their hands froze above keyboards, sending the anteroom into a sudden dead silence. Her face drained of all color, the large-chested blond stared up at Pitt, a fear mushrooming inside her.

“OK, dearheart,” Pitt said menacingly. “You get up off your well-rounded little bottom and you go and inform the Director that Major Dirk Pitt is waiting to keep the appointment set by Inspector Zacynthus.”

“Pitt…Major Pitt from NUMA,” the blond gasped. “Oh I'm sorry, sir. But I thought—”

“Yes, I know,” Pitt offered. “I'm out of uniform.”

The blond jumped from her desk, snagging a stocking in her haste. “Right this way, Major. They're expecting you.”

Pitt grinned at her, grinned at the other girls sitting awed in their chairs, felt self-satisfied at the admiring expressions from all twenty-four eyes, the bovine, adoring gaze reserved for celebrities and movie stars. It inflated his male ego.

“Keep typing, girls,” he said good-naturedly. “Mustn't keep the Bureau waiting for all those letters and reports.”

The blond led him down a long hallway, slowing her pace every so often to allow him to catch up. She halted and rapped on a walnut-stained door. “Major Pitt,” she announced, and then stood aside to let him pass through.

Three men rose as he walked into the room. The fourth, Giordino, remained comfortably anchored to a long leather couch.

“I thought I'd never see the day,” he said. “Dirk Pitt hobbling around on a cane.”

“Just practicing for my senile years,” Pitt retorted.

A short, red-haired man with a zeppelin-shaped cigar stashed jauntily between his lips came over and shook Pitt's hand. “Welcome back, Dirk. Congratulations on a great job in the Aegean.”

Pitt stared into the griffin-featured face of Admiral James Sandecker, the crusty chief of the National Underwater Marine Agency.

“Thank you, Admiral. Any word on the
Teaser
yet?”

“Only that it's alive and still swimming,” Sandecker answered. “Since Gunn had it flown over last week in a special tank, I haven't been able to get near the goddamn thing—a horde of scientists have been crowded around it, ogling their damn eyes right out of their sockets. They promised me a preliminary report by morning.”

Zacynthus came across to greet Pitt. He seemed younger, much more relaxed than when Pitt had last seen him, three weeks previously.

“Good to see you walking again,” Zacynthus said, smiling. “You look as mean and nasty as ever.”

He took Pitt by the arm and led him over to a tall man standing by the window and introduced them. Pitt studied the Director of the Bureau and was studied in return by hard gray eyes that peered intently from a high-cheeked, pockmarked face; it was a face straight out of a police lineup. Pitt amusingly reflected that the Director looked more like a narcotics smuggler than the chief administrator of several thousand federal investigators. The Director spoke first.

“I've looked forward to meeting you, Major Pitt. The Bureau is deeply grateful for your assistance.” The voice was low and very precise.

“I didn't do much. Inspector Zacynthus and Colonel Zeno carried most of the load.”

The Director met his eyes evenly. “That may be, but you carry the scars.” He motioned Pitt to a chair and offered him a cigarette. “Did you have a good flight from Greece?”

Pitt lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Air Force cargo planes aren't exactly famous for their cuisine and royal coachman service, but I must admit that it was considerably more relaxing than the flight in.”

Admiral Sandecker gave Pitt a puzzled look. “Why the Air Force? You could have flown from Athens on Pan Am or TWA.”

“Souvenirs.” Pitt laughed. “One of my mementos of Thasos was too bulky to fit in the luggage compartment of a commercial airliner. Colonel Lewis came to my rescue and helped me hitch a ride on a half empty Air Force cargo plane that was headed stateside.”

“Your wound.” Sandecker nodded at Pitt's leg. “Healing all right?”

“It's still a bit stiff,” Pitt answered. “Nothing a thirty-day medical leave won't cure.”

The admiral eyed Pitt shrewdly for a moment through a blue haze of cigar smoke. “Two weeks.” The tone reeked of cool authority. “I have more faith in your recuperative powers than you have.”

The Director cleared his throat. “I've read Inspector Zacynthus' report with a great deal of interest. There is, however, one point he didn't cover. It isn't important, but out of personal curiosity, I wonder if you could tell me, Major, how you came to the conclusion that Minerva Lines ships had the capacity to carry submarines?”

Pitt smiled with his eyes. “I guess you might say, sir, the secret was written in the sand.”

The Director's lips curled in a humorless smile. He wasn't used to indirect answers. “Very Homeric, Major, but hardly the answer I had in mind.”

“Strange but true,” Pitt said. “After finding no sign of the heroin on board the
Queen Artemisia,
I swam to the beach and began doodling with a stick in the sand. A detachable submarine seemed like an abstract idea at first, but the more I doodled, the more concrete it became.”

The Director leaned back in his chair and shook his head sadly. “Forty years, a hundred agents from twelve different nations all struggling under the most adverse conditions imaginable to break von Till's smuggling operation. Three of those agents gave up their lives in the struggle.” He looked gravely across the desk at Pitt “Somehow it almost seems a tragic joke that our efforts overlooked a solution that was so apparent to someone standing on the outside looking in.”

Pitt stared at him in silence.

“By the way,” the Director continued, suddenly cheerful, “I don't suppose you've had a chance to hear the results of our Galveston stakeout?”

“No sir.” Pitt carefully tapped an ash in an ashtray. “Until five minutes ago I haven't seen or talked to Inspector Zacynthus since we parted on Thasos nearly three weeks ago. I've had no way of knowing whether my small assist paid off for you in Galveston or not.”

Zacynthus looked at the Director. “May I fill Major Pitt in, sir?”

The Director nodded.

Zacynthus turned to Pitt.

“Everything went according to plan. Five miles outside the harbor we were met by a small fleet of von Till's fishing boats—a bit tricky at this point, not knowing the proper identification signals. Luckily I persuaded the
Queen Jocasta
's captain—with the threat of castration with a rusty knife—to desert the enemy and join our side.”

“Did anyone come aboard?” Pitt asked.

“There was no danger of that,” Zacynthus replied. “A boarding party would have looked too damned suspicious to a passing patrol boat. The fishermen merely stood off and signaled us to detach the sub. Interesting piece of machinery, that sub. The Navy engineers who studied it coming across the Atlantic were quite impressed.”

“What made it so unique?”

“It was fully automatic.”

“A drone?” Pitt asked incredulously.

“Yes, another one of von Till's clever innovations. You see, if the sub had an accident or was detected by the Harbor Patrol before it reached the cannery there was no way in hell it could be traced or connected to Minerva Lines. And without a crew there would be no one to interrogate.”

Pitt was intrigued. “Then it was controlled by one of the fishing boats.”

Zacynthus nodded. “Right up the middle of the harbor's main channel and under the pilings of the cannery. Only this trip the sub carried several uninvited stowaways: myself and ten marines on loan from the Mediterranean Tenth Fleet. I might add that the cannery was surrounded by thirty of the Bureau's best agents.”

“If Galveston had more than one cannery,” Giordino said thoughtfully, “you'd have been in big trouble.”

Zacynthus grinned knowingly. “As a matter of fact, Galveston boasts a total of four canneries, all located on pilings over the water.”

Giordino didn't have to ask the obvious question. It was written all over his face.

“I'll put your mind at ease,” Zacynthus said. “The Bureau's Gulf Ports Department had each cannery under surveillance for two weeks before the
Queen Jocasta
's arrival. The tip-off came when one of them received a shipment of sugar.”

Pitt raised an eyebrow. “Sugar?”

“Sugar,” the Director offered, “is often used to adulterate the heroin and boost the quantity. By the time pure heroin is cut by the middleman and cut again by the dealer, the original supply is increased by a substantial amount.”

Pitt thought for a moment. “So the one hundred and thirty tons was only a beginning?”

“It could have been the beginning,” Zacynthus answered, “if it wasn't for you, old friend. You're the only one who saw through von Till's plan. If you and Giordino hadn't arrived at Thasos when you did, the rest of us would be sitting up in Chicago about now, forming a daisy chain and kicking each other into Lake Michigan.”

Pitt grinned. “Write it off to luck.”

“Call it what you will,” Zacynthus retorted. “As things stand at the moment, we have over thirty of the biggest illegal drug importers in the country waiting for indictment, including everyone connected with the trucking company that transported the goods. And that's only the half of it. When we searched the cannery office we found a book with the names of nearly two thousand dealers from New York to Los Angeles. For the Bureau it was comparable to a prospector discovering the mother lode.”

Giordino let out a long whistle. “It's going to be a bad year for the addicts.”

“That's right,” Zacynthus said. “Now that their main source is dried up, and the local law enforcement agencies are rounding up the dealers, the users are about to face the worst drug famine to come along in the last twenty years.”

Pitt's eyes left the room and gazed out the window, seeing nothing. “There is just one more question.”

Zacynthus looked at him. “Yes?”

Pitt didn't reply immediately. He fiddled with his cane a moment. “What became of our old friend? I've seen no mention of him in the newspapers.”