Mission: Earth "Voyage of Vengeance" (30 page)

In a sudden surge of enlightenment, I thought I knew what this was all about.

THEY WERE TRYING TO DRIVE ME HOME!

I drew a huge circle around Nurse Bildirjin's father. Certainty congealed. He had connived with the women and the Greeks to drive me out of Thessalonica. He was hoping to get me back to Turkey where he could work his will on me.

THAT WAS IT!

I shuddered. I would not only be shotgunned to death but, by the law of the Qur'an for adultery, I would also be stoned to a pulp!

I stared at the list. My eyes focused on that ringed name. Oh, Gods, I must be very alert indeed!

I spent the rest of the day praying that never again in my life would I set foot in Turkey.

It would be the most painful method of suicide ever devised!

Cowering in my room, I stared hauntedly at the porthole. Darkness had fallen.

The atmosphere was very strange. No one had come down to tell me to go to dinner. No one had come near me with any food. It was just as well. The ship was moving with the slightest hint of a roll under the impact of a following swell.

Rain had begun to fall as we moved into a belt of storm. Black drops glistened on the black pane like tears. I tried to see through it but only got a sheen of porthole light reflection on the surging waves of passage.

I glanced into a mirror. My cheeks were gaunt and gray. It was the first time that I noticed the scar: healed now, it gave me a ferocious frown. I felt very far from ferocious. I felt hunted and forlorn. Out there in that blackness, near to hand now as we passed it, lay Turkey and inevitable doom were I to so much as set a toe upon it. I could almost hear the boom of a shotgun and the lethal thud of agonizing stones. This scar would be nothing if I fell into those hands!

I turned back to the porthole and peered out.

A sound behind me!

I whirled, repressing a scream.

It was Teenie.

She had on an old bridge coat on which stood bright globes of rain. A battered officer's cap hid her ponytail and shadowed her oversized eyes. She was looking at me, saying nothing.

She walked toward me. She put out her hand and pushed my chest slowly. I backed up toward the bed and sat down on it.

"You look awful, Inky."

"I'm worried about Turkey," I said, swallowing hard.

She shook her head. "In a few hours, that will all be over. There's no reason for you to be upset. Everything is being handled. You should learn to trust people, Inky.

And most of all, trust me. I may very well be the only friend you've got."

I flinched. According to the very best Apparatus textbooks, that is what you say just before you slide a Knife Section knife between somebody's ribs. But I showed no sign of what I thought.

She reached into her pocket. "The best thing for you to do is simply go to sleep and awaken to a better day when we're sailing free and clear near Egypt." She was pushing something toward me.

I knew it. Hashish candy!

For some reason, Teenie wanted me helpless!

"Take it," she urged, when I did not.

I stared at it. THREE pieces! It would knock me out like a brutally wielded club.

Oh, I was thankful I had told myself to be alert and wary.

I was wearing a bathrobe with large sleeves which partially covered my hands. I was adept at this sort of thing. I took the first piece and went through the motions of putting it in my mouth. I chewed and swallowed. But the candy had simply dropped into my sleeve no matter how my jaw bulged: it's done with the tongue.

I took the second piece. I made the motions of putting it in my mouth and chewing it. "Um, urn," I said. "Delicious." But the second piece was in my sleeve.

The third piece went the same way.

"That's better," said Teenie. "Now, soon you'll simply go to sleep and it will all be over. It's still six hundred miles to Alexandria, but by dawn Turkey will be far astern. So just be a good boy and sleep."

She went to the door. She looked back. "I'm spending the night up on the bridge just to be sure everything gets handled. Don't worry about a thing." She left.

I went to the door. Yes, her footsteps, heard above the engine throbs, were receding.

I went to the bathroom, dropped the three pieces of hashish candy out of my sleeve and flushed them down the electric toilet drain.

I went back and lay upon my bunk. The look in her oversized eyes, the expression on her too-big mouth-yes, she was up to something. Apparatus training tells.

The ship, as it progressed, was lifting to a swell. Two hours I lay there staring at that black, rain-streaked porthole glass. I glanced at my watch from time to time. This was one night I would not sleep. That I vowed.

Suddenly, I was aware of something: a change! For the last few minutes, there had been no ship pitch. We were travelling like a billiard table. I was not enough of a sailor to be able to figure out what this meant but I was sure it must mean something. The rain had not stopped, as witness that streaking black window. So what was the meaning of this?

Far away, somewhere in the ship, I heard a faint staccato of bells.

A vibration ceased.

THE ENGINES HAD STOPPED!

Through my rain-streaked port glass, I could see something coming out of the night.

A craft of some sort!

I could see the glow of a light in its bow. The port running light gleamed red as blood. A white light in the stern told me it was not a third the size of the
Golden Sunset.

It was approaching. Like shadowy Demons, sailors, seen by the port lights from our ship, were hanging fenders along its rails. It was going to come alongside! Yes! Somebody had thrown a line aboard!

What was it? A patrol craft? I could not tell.

Somebody, a dim shadow, was standing by its pilot house. He was even with this very deck.

A port light flashed across his face.

THE BLACK-JOWLED MAN!

Oh, Gods! What was this? My wits spun!

Quickly I grabbed my bathrobe tighter about me. I sped out of my cabin. Barefooted, I came to the deck. Like a shadow myself, I melted behind a big life-jacket box.

The pelting rain struck at me. I peered out.

The craft came against our hull with a thump.

The black-jowled man came to its rail.

Another figure came out of a door on this deck and, in the darkness, went to our rail opposite the black-jowled man. They were only about five feet apart.

A flashlight winked in the hand of the black-jowled man. It fell upon the face of the person at our rail.

My blood froze.

TEENIE! Those eyes and mouth were unmistakable even under that battered cap and in the rain.

"You didn't have to start a riot, you (bleep)!" she said. "You almost got me hit with a rock and then where would you have been? We were sailing anyway the very next morning. Jesus, I'm mad at you!"

"That's not one-sided!" snarled the black-jowled man. "You didn't have to go to Thessalonica at all. It was time to show you the party can get rough! You've been wandering all over the globe! Delay, delay! What have you got to say to that?"

"I got to say I never would have had any bullfights or clothes, you cheapskate. You know what I think? I think right now you're trying to con me. I don't think you have any idea at all of giving me what I deserve."

"Delay, delay, delay! You deserve to be shot! You weren't supposed to take a joy ride. You were supposed to deliver him into our hands!"

My heart stopped beating. Then a sickening wave of awful comprehension rushed through me. Those songs! Marijuana becoming hashish and hashish becoming hash oil. Her interest in charts, her efforts to see Turkey from the mountaintops. The search for outlaws, each one inexorably closer to Turkey! She had been shanghaiing me aboard my own yacht to return me to a place where I would be murdered!

He had begun to swear at her. She said, "Keep your voice down. You earlier threatened to pay the captain to finish it off. Well, let me tell you something, buster, Bitts and me are in cahoots. We're just like that!" And she raised two fingers parallel. "This yacht ain't going to move a foot unless I tell it to. And you know what I think, you (bleep)? I think you're going to try to get me in and then you're going to wave your dirty hand and tell me to get lost. That's what I think you're going to do."

"You wrong me," said the black-jowled man. "I keep my word."

"The hell you do," said Teenie. "Remember that Rome jeweler's? You said we could go back and pick up the necklace and what did you do? You just plain forgot!"

"I didn't!" said the black-jowled man. "I picked it up myself the day after you sailed. Here it is."

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a box.

"That ain't going to do you any good now," said Teenie, waving it back as he extended it across the gap. "You probably had him put in fake stones and hope I can't tell in this light. No sir, Mac. I don't trust you worth a (bleep)."

He put the box back into his pocket, with an angry thrust.

She raised a cautionary finger at him. "Now hear this, loud and clear, buster. I'm not moving this yacht into Turkish waters until I get my ten grand."

"Jesus," said the black-jowled man.

I was seething. Rage had begun to take over. So that was her price, was it? Ten grand for delivering me to my death!

Teenie stepped back from the rail. Above the hiss of the rain her voice was plain. "Ten grand in my little hot hand, buster, and then and only then will I give the word."

"Jesus," said the black-jowled man. "I haven't got ten grand aboard here."

"See?" said Teenie. "You were trying to pull a con. You weren't going to pay me at all! Oh, I'm used to dealing with the likes of you. I was brought up on birds that would rather do a double switch than eat."

"Listen," said the black-jowled man. "Izmir is right over there. Our agent will have the cash. I can get it in two hours. And if I pay you, will you order this yacht to Istanbul? You know (bleeped) well, we've got to get our hands on him."

"All right," said Teenie. "We'll stand by right here off Chios."

"No, not all right," said the black-jowled man.

"How do I know you won't just sail away the moment I leave? I think you better step over that rail and come with me."

"All right," said Teenie. "I'll tell Bitts."

She passed within three feet of me in the dark. She went to the bottom of the bridge ladder. She yelled up, "Stand by right where you are off Chios. We're going into Izmir. I'll be back in a couple of hours."

"Aye, aye," came down from the darkness.

She sped back past me.

"You sure you've got him safe?" said the black-jowled man before he extended an arm to help her over the rail.

"You bet he is," said Teenie. "Drugged to the gills and I'll keep him drugged. He thinks he's on his way to Egypt. You want to go down and see him?"

"We've wasted enough time. Jump."

Teenie landed on their deck. Lines were cast off. The screws of the craft churned. It was swallowed in the rain and dark.

Oh, the perfidy of women!

I was sick to the core with her treachery.

I HAD TO ACT!

TWO HOURS!

But two hours can become two minutes if one doesn't rush.

There was a rift in the rain. A momentary luminance of moonlight spread its green horror across the scene.

There was a loom of land a mile or two away. That must be Chios, the Greek island almost up against the Turkish shore.

I yearned toward it. Oh, Gods, if I could only reach it, I would be out of their tentacles.

The rain closed in again. But I had had an omen. Some God, if only for a moment, had plucked the veil aside.

ACTION! I had to get into action quick! Even now the hurled stones for adultery were halfway through the air. Suddenly I realized that the stones of the demonstrators had been another warning from the Gods. It had been another omen and I had not seen it!

I would not miss it now!

Swift as a cat I raced below. Did I have time to pack? The hand grips that Teenie had bought me in Rome lay upon the closet floor. Anything that had to do with Teenie was bad luck. I flinched from them. No, I did not have time to pack. I would abandon my things.

I grabbed some clothes at random and began to hurl them on: running shorts, a business jacket, a straw hat, scuba slippers.

Wait, wait. I had to get some sanity into this. I could not leave behind my two-way-response radio, my money or my passports. The wastebasket had one of these liners they put in. They were waterproof. I dumped the perishable things in it, tied the top of the bag and lashed it firmly to my belt.

I was ready to swim for it.

Wait, wait. I wasn't armed.

I opened the drawer where I had thrown the guns I had brought aboard or purchased in ports. My hand went out instinctively to grasp the biggest caliber there. Then I recoiled. If I had to shoot the crew, the sound of shots might be heard for miles. A silenced gun, that was what I needed. But the only thing there that had a silencer was an old American International Model 180. I had bought it, as I am wont to do, in an idle moment from a furtive street peddler in Palermo only to discover later that it was only.22 caliber. Its virtue was that it was fully automatic, a machine gun. He had sold me the whole case, somewhat battered, that contained it. Anxiously I looked into the four drum magazines. Yes, they were loaded!

It was all disassembled. With shaking hands and many a slip and misfit, I got the ugly short thing assembled. I snapped a flat drum on top of its barrel. I slid the silencer in place. It would not make much impact but with 1200 rounds per minute rate of fire it could hold off a lot of men. I picked up the drums. I tried to find someplace to put them. A life jacket! I hurriedly cut a slit in one, tore out the stuffings and thrust the magazines in.