Jack Higgins (17 page)

It was an old Turkish saying and unintentionally carried its own poignancy. Sara took my hand under the table and held it tightly.

“Not very likely, I'm afraid.” she said and drank some of her wine.

Dear God, for a moment there I thought she intended to tell him about herself, but no. As he lowered his glass, a frown on his face, she added, “Jack, here, seems absolutely determined on getting his head blown off.”

 

When I was finished, he sat there, his face very dark and suffused with passion, his right fist tightly clenched.

“This Aleko, this Greek pig. Why not let me handle him, Jack, in my own barbaric Turkish way?”

He produced a knife from a sheath under his left arm, the blade razor-sharp, gleaming in the sunlight, as wicked a looking implement as I have ever seen.

Sara was genuinely horrified. “No, not that, for God's sake!”

Ciasim raised a hand to calm her and put the knife away. “I was forgetting the dog is your kind.” He sighed. “And you, Jack, you feel bound to your bargain with him?”

“I'm going through with it if that's what you mean.”

“Then I have no choice. I must help you.”

“Ten thousand dollars, Ciasim, for the use of your boat as a base for just a few hours.”

He shook his head. “You go too fast, dear friend. Tell me, who goes in to Sinos with you? Aleko's men?”

I shook my head. “I've done this kind of work before, with the commandos. It only works when you have absolute trust, complete confidence in your associates, whoever they are.”

“And you do not care for Aleko's men?”

“Not particularly. I can get away with this on my own—just. I'd rather have it that way.”

“Don't be a fool, Savage,” Sara put in sharply.

Ciasim nodded. “She is right. On your own, you are a corpse before you begin. No, Jack, I am afraid I will not let you use my boat, even for ten thousand dollars. I will not take your money.”

“Not mine, his,” I said.

“You miss my point. It is not that I have any objection to improving my fortune. It is just that I refuse to allow you to commit suicide. It is against the tenets of
my religion. No, there is only one way I can be persuaded to change my mind.”

“And what would that be?”

“I must go with you,” he said. “Into Sinos. Into the prison to bring this poor devil out.” I stared at him, mouth open in astonishment. He added in a slightly injured tone, “You do not think me competent?”

I was unable to reply. And Sara? If ever I saw relief on a face it was on hers.

Ciasim swallowed his wine and patted her cheek. “You are really very, very beautiful. It is a good thing Jack is my most loving friend. Now I think we go and see this bastard Aleko.”

The aquamobile is a bullet-shaped, underwater scooter, driven by battery-operated propellors. Designed to operate at up to a hundred and fifty feet, it carries its own spotlight and is capable of a speed of just over three knots an hour. I needed two and they were absolutely essential to the success of the entire operation. Number one on the list I gave to Aleko.

He accepted it without question just as he had accepted Ciasim without any hesitation when I had explained about the Seytan and the licence to work on the wreck, in the Middle Passage. He had obviously really meant it when he had said that I was in charge. The only thing that interested him was getting Andreas Pavlo out of Sinos and everything that led to that end was all right by him.

“The uniforms you ask for,” he said. “They are essential?”

“Absolutely.”

He nodded. “All the additional diving equipment you
mention here, we already have on board except for the underwater scooters.”

“Lots of skin diving clubs in this part of the Mediterranean use them now,” I told him. “There's an outfit in Athens who deal with them all the time. I've written the address on the back of the list. You shouldn't have any difficulty.”

“If they are in Athens, they will be here first thing in the morning. I will have them flown in.”

“There's no doubt about it,” I told him amiably. “Money talks.”

“Always.” There was the ghost of a smile on his lips. “I was exactly fourteen when my uncle took me to America. The land of the free, Captain Savage. An ironic phrase. My English was almost non-existent. We were so poor that we ate on alternate days and no one cared. No one took any notice. You understand me?”

“And you decided to change all that?”

“Have I not done so?”

Suddenly, he was all Greek, the Bostonian veneer stripped away, about seventeen different people staring out at me from those dark eyes. He spread his hands in a vaguely Continental gesture as if indicating everything around him. The boat, the luxury, the evidence of vast wealth.

And then the other Aleko peered out for a moment, the real man he might have been if things had not happened to him in the way they had. He smiled, a genuinely engaging smile, ruefully like a small boy caught out.

“Naturally, a small meed of thanks is due to the Texas oil fields that gave me my first million.”

“America, America,” I said and got up. “Ah, well,
I've got work to do. Have that gear here in the morning and we'll go tomorrow night.”

“So soon?” He seemed surprised.

“No sense in hanging about. I'd like to get it over with.”

“You've really worked the thing out to that degree already?”

“I think so. I'll go over the details with you later on. Right now, I'd like to have a look at that diving gear of yours.”

I had my hand on the door when he said, “One more thing—Sara.”

I turned, suddenly wary. “What about her?”

“I'd be obliged if you would involve her as little as possible in this business from now on.”

“Isn't that for her to decide?”

He sat there staring at me for a long, quiet moment, then he got to his feet, went to a corner cupboard and produced a decanter of brandy and two glasses. He was grave, and very, very dignified. Whatever was coming, was going to be good, that much was obvious.

He handed me one of the glasses and poured a generous measure. “I deal in facts, Captain Savage, because they are the only things that pay off. That is why I am where I am and who I am. Because I can accept things as they really are without any illusions.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said. “On the other hand, what about the Pavlo business? A strange kind of knight errantry for a man who deals only in facts, in things as they really are.”

He seemed surprised. “The present government cannot last, surely you see that? Any sensible man must see
that. Read the history of my country. An object lesson to would-be tyrants.”

Which was all nice and flowery, but didn't really get us any further.

“And Sara?” I asked. “Where does she fit in to all this?”

He held his glass rather tightly and it was the one sign of stress as he spoke. “My wife was everything to me. For her sake, I love Sara. Love her as dearly as if she were my own sister.”

He could have meant every word of it. It was impossible to be sure, but there was certainly great emotion of some kind in his voice as he carried on.

“Chronic leukaemia is unusual in a girl of Sara's age. The symptoms first became apparent when she was working in Biafra with a relief mission.”

“I know about that,” I said, and suddenly didn't want to hear any more. Did not want to know what I sensed was now to come.

He carried on relentlessly, his voice a little calmer now. “To you, she must appear as you would expect any normal healthy girl of her age to look, but you have not seen her as I have. As she was last year at the first real onset. She almost died.”

“But she didn't,” I said and my throat was dry.

“No, the doctors obtained what they call a remission. She was luckier than most. In her case, the drug worked. Her blood count gradually returned to a reasonably normal level. She has now joined the fifteen per cent who can expect to survive five years.”

And he was telling me the truth, the absolute clinical truth, I was certain of that
.

I remember losing my air once during a job at the
bottom of the Suez Canal, the sudden choking sensation like great fingers wrapping themselves around your throat and squeezing. It felt exactly like that now.

I said, “And that's it?”

“There have been cases in which the patient has survived ten years. Anything can happen, of course. New drugs are being developed all the time. Who knows?”

“Only you don't think so, do you?” I put down my glass. “Why are you telling me all this?”

His voice was urgent and he moved closer. “She needs what I can give her, Savage, don't you see that? Constant care, every attention. Everything money can buy she will have. The right doctors, the rarest medicines. I can give her all these things, but you, Savage? What can you give her?”

His eyes were wild and there was a smell on him like an open grave, cold and damp, cutting to the bone, the touch of death. It sent my heart pounding wildly.

“Go to hell,” I said hoarsely, turned and got the door open, running as if all the devils in that place were snapping at my heels.

 

When I went into my cabin she was sitting in the swivel chair at the desk examining the old German plan that was the key to the whole operation. She swung round to face me and smiled.

“Ciasim's gone back to the
Seytan
. Says he wants to get her floated by this evening. Did you see Dimitri?”

“I saw him.”

It was in my voice, I couldn't help it, and her face changed, altered before my eyes, the skin tightening over
the cheekbones. She knew, by instinct, I suppose, or perhaps on past knowledge of him.

“What did he say?” she said calmly and got to her feet. “What did he tell you?”

“I love you, Sara Hamilton, whatever that word is supposed to mean, but is it enough?”

She frowned as if not understanding and then, I think, suddenly saw it all. She smiled, that delightful smile that was herself alone. She started to laugh, came close, grabbed a handful of my hair and shook it vigorously.

“It's everything there is. Do you mean to tell me you've got this far without realising that fact?”

I could have died for her at that single moment in time, an absurdity if you like, but as I took her in my arms, it did occur to me that to
live
for her sake might be of more use. How strange life was. And she seemed so alive. It was beyond belief.

 

Allowing for the traditional contempt to be expected from any self-respecting Turkish sponge diver for skin divers, Ciasim had, in fact, had plenty of aqualung experience at one time or another. In spite of that fact, Sara and I took him out beyond the point in the early evening in the speedboat after the
Seytan
had been successfully floated.

We used some of Aleko's diving equipment and I gave the big Turk a thorough briefing on the technical side of things again, just in case he'd forgotten anything. It wasn't really needed. He was like one of those great early pilots of pioneering days. The men who flew by the seat of their pants. In the same way, he dived by
instinct, using his senses like an animal. To go under the surface of the sea seemed the most natural thing in the world for him.

I think he was probably the most likeable man I have ever known. On the run back to harbour after we had changed, he had Sara laughing hard at one outrageous story after another, most involving his many encounters with women like his German
hausfrau
of the night before last.

“Ciasim Divalni, you are a rogue—King Size,” she told him.

He simulated bewilderment. “But I render such excellent service, dear lady.”

Dear lady
. He always called her that and there was something different in his voice, in his manner, when he was with her. I think he sensed in some way that she was different from other women. One apart. Perhaps that animal instinct of his hinted at the reason. One thing is certain. I would not have given much for the chances of any man who insulted her or gave her hurt in his presence.

 

“The operation can be divided into four main areas,” I said and turned to the maps pinned on the board behind me.

We were in the main saloon of the
Firebird
. My audience consisted of Sara, Aleko, Ciasim, Captain Melos and the two hard-faced young men who never seemed to stir far from his side. They were not, as I had first imagined, brothers, but cousins. One was named Christou, the other Kapelari.

“Phase One,” I continued, “involves actually landing
on the island. We make an underwater approach from the
Seytan
which will be anchored at this point half a mile south of Cape Heros just below the outer walls of the fort.”

“A long swim,” Melos put in.

I think that was the first moment it struck me that his status might be very different from what was pretended. The intervention had a quality of authority about it. In a way, he had made a slip and knew it, his eyes darkening as I turned to him.

“The aquamobile is good for just over three knots an hour. A ten-minute run to the Cape at the most. There is a static minefield to negotiate, but they're well spaced, if the map I've been provided with is accurate, and shouldn't give us much trouble. Not if we take care.”

Ciasim bared his teeth. “I love you too, my dear friend.”

“Aren't the beach approaches mined?” Aleko demanded.

I nodded. “But that won't bother us. If you look at the official plan of the fort and the prison area produced last year and compare it with the German military plans of their improvements in 1942, you'll notice a significant difference. The Greek plans indicate the modern sewerage system and leave it at that. The Germans, thorough as always where this kind of thing is concerned, have shown the underlying system of drainage tunnels put in by the Turks seven hundred years ago. In some cases they actually used them as main outfalls.”

Aleko got up and examined the plans closely. “See, Melos, he is right.”

Melos looked over his shoulder. “So, the main outfall
is here in this small bay at the foot of Cape Heros and under water, from the look of it.”

“Exactly. No problems with those mines on the beaches this way.”

“You could be wrong,” he said. “Have you considered that? Perhaps the old Turkish workings have simply been missed from the new plan because they have been blocked.”

“I don't think so. German plans of this nature are usually extremely thorough and completely reliable. If we accept that, it means that the main tunnels are five and six feet in diameter. To block such a complex would be extremely difficult.”

“But you cannot be certain,” he persisted.

“You take a chance every day of your life. Captain Melos,” I told him. “If it won't go, then we turn back, just like the north face of the Eiger. At any stage of the game if we find the hole has been plugged, we turn back.”

“Without Pavlo?”

“If necessary.”

“So, the British Marine commandos could not teach you how to make miracles.”

“Only sometimes,” I said, which seemed to shut him up for the moment.

“What about Phase Two?” Aleko asked impatiently.

“According to the plan there is a storm drain linking up to the garden of that section of the fort which is now being used as a hospital. It also indicates a three-foot grid at the entrance which we ought to be able to cope with. At that point, or perhaps earlier if convenient, we change clothes. Once out in the open I become a prison
guard and Ciasim a prisoner, which is how we get into the hospital itself.”