Jack Higgins (21 page)

But Ciasim was giving nothing away, his face like one of those bronze Byzantine masks with holes for eyes that you can see in the Basilica of Saint Sophia in Istanbul. One thing I knew for certain. Melos was only
going to be allowed one slip, one wrong move and he was a dead man.

When the door closed behind us in the saloon, the key clicked in the lock. I said to Aleko cheerfully, “You too, eh? Perhaps they don't need you any more?”

He looked angry and uncertain like a fighting bull in the plaza with the darts hanging from his shoulders, half-blinded by pain, uncertain who to charge. I went behind the bar, found the Jameson and poured a couple of large ones. Ciasim emptied his glass at a swallow and reached for the bottle.

Sara put a hand on my arm. “Was it bad in there?”

“It could have been worse,” I told her brutally. “I only killed one man if that's what you mean. Two if we count Pavlo.”

It was Ciasim who attempted to give me some kind of comfort where that one was concerned. “Don't be a fool, Jack. What do you think would have happened if we'd left him in there? These people.” Here, he glanced at Aleko, utter contempt on his face. “These pigs differ only in kind. The government in Greece stinks. Aleko and his friends want to make it worse. Lovely people.”

“Shut your mouth,” Aleko told him savagely.

He had moved towards us, but Sara got in the way. She grabbed him by the jacket with both hands and shook hard, no mean feat. “Tell him he's got it all wrong. Tell him that if you can. I knew there was something funny going on when you left the rest of the crew behind in Kyros.”

He shoved her away from him and lurched forward to grab at the edge of the bar as if to stop himself falling like a man with too much drink taken.

“You don't understand, Savage. You don't know
what's been happening in Greece. Red scum everywhere and even now, the government isn't doing enough about it.”

Strange how it was me he needed to justify himself to. I didn't understand why and don't now, but so it was and he reached out to pluck at my arm across the bar so that I had to pull away from him.

“Reds under the bed again?” I said. “Do you think they'll take your money away, Aleko, is that it?” I shook my head. “It won't wash any more, you poor bloody fool. Greece isn't Communist on one side and Fascist on the other. It's a hell of a lot of ordinary people in between who've been shoved around by both extremes for too damned long. They'll have you both out on your backsides soon now. Remember I told you that.”

Sara's eyes sparkled and she clapped her hands. “Nice going for a man who isn't interested in politics.”

“I'm not,” I said. “But I like you and I like Ciasim and his boys and conniving, slippery, devious Yanni Kytros. Yes, I even like Yanni, because when it comes right down to it, there are things that even Yanni won't put a price tag on.”

Ciasim had a funny look on his face. He poured me another whiskey and shoved it across. “On me, dear friend.”

I was an underage kid in Cohan's Select Bar again, taking it down in one easy swallow so that it exploded like a bomb in your gut, priming you to put your fist into the first face you didn't like.

I said to Sara, “You know what Melos did out there? He killed Morg. Shot him in the back of the head as casually as you would put down an old tired dog that got in your way.”

The whiskey had gone straight to my head now. She had a hand to her mouth, horror on her face, and things had gone fuzzy at the edges for me. I was a foot off the ground. I was Wolfe Tone and Charles Stuart Parnell and Big Mick Collins and all the others who'd ever spoken straight from the heart, from deep down in the guts where it counts. The only place where it counts.

“Communists—Fascists. The same under the skin. No difference at all when it comes to putting the screws on. No, I'm damned if I will take sides, Aleko, but that still doesn't mean I have to like you. In fact, I don't. I don't like you and I don't like Major-bloody-security-police Melos and his bully boys. Black and Tans, Gestapo, Security Police. They crawl out from under their large flat stones everywhere, in every country if you give them a chance.”

I hit him, right down there between the legs where it really hurts a man and he reached out in his anguish, forgetting that neurotic fear of his and had me by the arms. I've never known such strength. I went over the bar as easily as a rubber ball bouncing and even Ciasim, when he moved in to help me, was sent flying across the saloon with a casual shove.

“You will listen to me now, Savage.” Aleko's eyes were staring and there was froth on his mouth. “They came to my village—the Reds came to my village during the Civil War.” I tried to struggle and he had me by the throat. “They slaughtered everyone, Savage, after raping the women. Even the young girls.”

He stared, eyes wide, into an abyss of horror. “My mother, my two sisters. I lay under a pile of hay in the yard, Savage. I lay there and did nothing. You under
stand me? I was so afraid that I lay there and let them do that to my mother and sisters.”

I could smell the burning, hear the screams in the night and how old would he have been—thirteen? A young boy, frightened in the darkness and cursed by that fear ever since. And he wasn't asking for mercy or understanding. He was seeking no deliverance. What was it Faustus said in Marlowe's play?
For this is hell and I am in it
.

He released me suddenly, turned and swayed as if he might fall, his shirt clinging to his back, soaked in sweat. There was even something close to pity on Ciasim's iron face, but when Aleko reached out blindly to Sara as if for support, she turned from him, grasping the edge of the bar, her eyes closed against the tears.

He stumbled across to a chair and slumped down and a second later, the key rattled in the lock and Melos entered. His face was dark and angry and he went behind the bar and reached for a bottle of gin.

“All for nothing,” he said. “The whole bloody affair. What do you think of that, Savage?”

“He's dead?”

“Never opened his eyes.” He drank from the bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, then asked me flatly, “Did he tell you anything back there, Savage?”

“About the plane?” I shrugged. “No time to talk. We'd all on to get out of there and you saw the state he was in when we took him below.”

He frowned suspiciously, then glanced at Ciasim's impassive face. “It's possible, I suppose. We'll see what Kytros has to say, shall we? He was down there with him for long enough.”

He whistled and Kapelari and Christou brought Yanni
in between them. Lazanis closed the door and stood against it, his sub-machine gun cocked.

Kytros didn't look too good. He still couldn't take much weight on that leg from the look of it and his mouth was swollen from someone's fist and there was blood on his shirt. His smile was what is known as a gallant try, but it didn't fool anyone for a moment.

Melos took another drink, placed the bottle down carefully on the bar, then walked forward slowly. “Did Pavlo regain consciousness at all when you were alone with him in the cabin on the way here? Did you ask him for the Aztec's position?”

Kytros smiled again. “I'd love to be able to help, Major Melos, if only to help myself, but you can't get blood out of a stone.”

Which was an unfortunate simile because Melos struck him heavily in the face and said, “I would not count on that if I were you. I am going to ask you that same question once more, but before I do, let me explain in some detail what happens if you fail to come up with an answer.”

“Even when I don't have it in the first place?” Kytros said.

“We take you to the bathroom, strip you and put you into a bath of nice cold water. Then I wire you for sound, Kytros. Your genitals, fingers, toes. Then we turn on the electricity. You will find it extraordinarily painful and it has certain unfortunate after-effects. For example, you will never be able to function as a man again. The Gestapo enjoyed great success with this method.”

“What excellent references you must have.”

Melos punched him full on the face, so hard that the flesh split on the right side of the mouth, blood spurting.

“Thank you,” Kytros said, and the most amazing thing of all was that he managed a smile. “I am still proud to be a Greek, even in your company.”

“Take him away,” Melos said.

Out of the silence, someone said quietly in the tiredest voice I'd ever heard in my life, “A quarter of a mile off Turk's Head on the north-east coast of Crete there's an uninhabited island called Kapala. You'll find the Aztec about two hundred yards due north in shallow water.”

He turned to me and smiled gently. “A sentimentalist at heart, I see, Mr. Savage, which is why you are weak and I am strong. Isn't that the story of your life? You've never been able to do the sensible thing. To keep your mouth shut. You always get yourself involved in what is never your business.”

“I know,” I said, “I'll come to a bad end through that little vice one of these days if I don't watch out.”

“Very probably,” he said. “And another thing.
We
won't find the Aztec two hundred yards north of that damned island of yours, but you will. You and this Turkish ox here if you know what's good for you.”

I had an idea what was coming, but I had to say something. “You'll have to spell that one out for me.”

“With pleasure. You don't have any choice. If I allowed you to sail out of here a free man right this minute, what would you do? Go to the authorities and tell them you broke Andreas Pavlo out of Sinos and killed a guard? Have you any idea what they'd do to you? I'm in the security police, remember. I know.”

“Let's have the rest of it.”

“You go, you and this animal, because this is a job for professional divers. You go to Crete with Kapelari and Christou to keep an eye on you, you find that place and
you bring the briefcase back here. And don't try to open it. There's a detonating device in the lock, remember.”

“And if we refuse?”

“How can you? I have the Turk's two sons, haven't I? They've a great sense of family these Turks. Didn't you know that?”

“And what if I told you they are no concern of mine?”

“But I have someone here who is, haven't I, Mr. Savage? Someone who is very much your concern.”

Sara stood there at the bar, staring at him for a long moment, at me, then walked to where Aleko sat slumped in the club chair, head in hands.

“Dimitri,” she said. “Did you hear that?”

He looked up at her in a kind of supplication. “The people on that list, Sara. To be really free we must know about vermin like that. We must root them out.”

He was incapable of making sense any more, that sick, tortured mind of his finally over the edge. I think she realised that for her hand was gentle when she touched him briefly on the shoulder.

When she looked at Melos, there was real hatred in her eyes as she said, “You tell him to go to hell, Savage.”

He turned to me enquiringly, an eyebrow raised. “Well?”

I took a deep breath, fought back a strong impulse to kick him in the groin and won. “No need to involve Divalni any further in this. I'll go myself.”

“With me, dear friend.” Ciasim smiled. “On salvage work of this nature, two divers, never one. Was it not you who taught me this?”

Sara moved close to me and grabbed for my hand, her voice urgent. “Not for my sake, I won't let you.

There must be a lot of good people on that list. Do you think I could live with that?”

I turned and walked out on her, pushing my way past the muscle men with the guns at the door and went up on deck. I stood at the rail and breathed in a little of that cold morning air. It was still pretty misty and visibility in the bay wasn't good at all.

Ciasim spoke from behind me. “She's got a point, Jack.”

“Don't you start. I've had about as much as I can take this morning.”

The good Irish whiskey was drumming in my brain and I felt mean and angry and there was a dull aching pain at the back of my head that wouldn't go away.

Melos appeared and paused, staring out into the mist. “How deep is it out there in the main channel between the cliffs?”

“Ten or twelve fathoms,” I said. “Why?”

“A good place to get rid of your boat, Turk, don't you think so?”

From his point of view it made good sense, for if the
Seytan
went missing the authorities would be certain to see a link with Pavlo's escape which would set them to scouring the Aegean to no purpose.

But for the first time, Melos succeeded in touching Ciasim where he lived and breathed, deep down inside, for to a sailor, a boat is a living thing, part of one's own being when it is your boat.

Ciasim growled like a mountain bear getting ready to charge and Melos raised his machine pistol waist-high. “I could cut you in half very comfortably from here. You wish me to do this?”