Jack Higgins (24 page)

“Point-blank, Savage. One squeeze of the trigger and I cut them in half. Where are the others? Quick, now.”

“Dead,” I told him.

It took the wind out of him for a moment and he lowered the muzzle of the machine pistol. “All of them? It isn't possible.”

“You should know, you bastard,” I said bitterly.

“Kapelari and his friends—they tried to finish us off after we'd brought up the briefcase. Are you trying to tell me you had nothing to do with that?”

“What happened?” he said flatly.

“Divalni put his knife into Kapelari and got his hands on his sub-machine gun, then he turned it on the other two. They shot him to pieces, but he took them with him.”

Abu started to weep and Melos cuffed him roughly. “You don't look so good yourself.”

“You might say I got in the way of the action. I had a hell of a job getting here, but I've got the briefcase.”

“You'd better come up.”

I hooked the handle of the briefcase over my bandaged hand and pulled myself up the ladder. Abu was still sobbing and Yassi had an arm around his shoulders.

Sara's expression was remote yet watchful, and there was about her an extraordinary quality of stillness as if she was waiting for something, sensing that all was not as it seemed.

She made the slightest of movements towards me and Melos put the barrel of the machine pistol to her head, holding it one-handed. “Stay where you are, Savage.”

Aleko said nothing, simply stood there as if carved from stone. I knew then exactly how much hope there was of any intervention by him on her behalf.

Melos held out his left hand. “The briefcase.”

“Aren't you forgetting something? You're supposed to release Sara and the boys.”

He laughed coldly. “Is that what I said? You poor simple peasant, Savage, like all the Irish. No wonder it took you seven hundred years to get rid of the English. Now give me the briefcase.”

I moved close and held it up suspended from my left wrist. “You know about the detonator? Marvellous things. Safe as houses until you start messing about with the lock. The slightest interference, that's all it takes, and up you go. Like this, for instance.”

I'd had the screwdriver ready in my right sleeve and now I jammed the end of it under the briefcase clasp. Abu stopped crying abruptly and there was one hell of a silence.

Melos said in a whisper, “You wouldn't dare. We'd all be killed, yourself included.”

“You were going to kill us anyway, isn't that the truth of it?” I glanced at Aleko. “Isn't that right, Aleko?”

But he didn't appear to be listening. He looked up as three or four gulls cried harshly overhead, then turned and walked towards the prow whistling tunelessly.

“He's lost his reason,” Sara said quietly.

Dear God, was there no end to it?

“When these three are safely on shore, then you can have your briefcase, Melos,” I said.

He was caught and knew it and sought desperately for a way out. “And you? You will stay here?”

“I have no choice,” I said. “And neither have you. What the Americans would call a standoff.”

He nodded. “All right, they can go.”

He gave the two boys a push towards the ladder. Sara hesitated, then moved to my side. She opened her mouth to speak and I said brutally, “Get out of it! You're in the way!”

I could not afford to take my eyes off him for a moment, that was the trouble, so I didn't see the look on her face, that last look before she went down the ladder into the dinghy to join the boys.

“And now?” Melos said.

“When they reach the beach and not before.”

I could hear the sounds of their progress on the calm evening air, but didn't dare to turn my head away for a moment. “Safely home,” he told me at last and extended his hand. “The briefcase.”

Aleko stood in the prow and gazed through the passage out to sea, silhouetted against the burnished water.
Ciasim, where in the hell are you?
The thought circled my brain and I managed a wry grin.

“And afterwards? What then? A bullet in the head? Not good enough, Melos.”

The prow of the
Firebird
was blown wide open in that moment, dissolved in a fury of smashed planking and debris of every description and Dimitri Aleko simply vanished from sight so that he might never have existed.

The whole boat tilted, started to slide under at once. Melos lost his balance and his machine pistol together and slid down the sloping deck into the maelstrom below. I was in no better case and grabbed for the rail with my good hand, missed and went sliding down to join him.

We fetched up together against a stanchion, half in the water, half out and he was in better shape than I. He lashed out, his fist catching me under the eye, and grabbed for the chain of the briefcase.

It hurt like hell as the handle was yanked over my injured hand and I yelled in agony, but there was no one to hear for he was already over the rail and swimming for it.

There was only four fathoms of water at that point, but it was still enough to drown you in a sinking ship and I couldn't get over the rail fast enough myself. I was barely in time and as I started to swim, and damned
awkwardly because of my arm and leg, the
Firebird
went down.

I wasn't doing too well. All of a sudden I felt very tired and then Ciasim broke through to the surface beside me like some great black seal.

He pushed up his mask and spat out his mouthpiece. “Did I not tell you that we were great survivors, dear friend? Hold tight, now, and I will take you in.”

Melos was about ten or fifteen yards in front of us and swimming strongly using both arms, the chain of the briefcase clenched between his teeth. He stopped swimming when he was waist-deep and started to wade forward, holding the briefcase in his left hand.

And then an astonishing thing happened. There was a movement up there in the shadows amongst the pine trees and Sergeant Loukas stepped into view. He unbuttoned the flap of his leather holster as he crossed the narrow strip of beach and took out his automatic pistol, looking even more mournful than ever.

“Good evening, Captain Melos,” he said.

Melos paused, thigh-deep in water, staring at him stupidly, then suddenly seemed to recover his senses. “Not captain—major. Major Andrew Melos of the security police, Loukas. You will arrest these people for crimes against the state. All of them. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly,” Loukas said and he raised his pistol, took deliberate aim and shot him between the eyes.

 

I could have believed in any possibility after that and had to, for Yanni Kytros appeared next from the shadows up there in the pines and limped towards us, leaning heavily on a walking stick. Sara and the two boys were
running along the water's edge as Ciasim and I grounded. I coughed up a little water and managed some semblance of a grin for Yanni.

“Nine lives, eh, Yanni?”

He was positively beaming, obviously enormously pleased with himself. “You once complimented me on the excellence of my lungs considering my way of life, Jack, but I must confess I swam farther underwater this morning than I ever have before.”

“I'm sure you did.” I nodded at Loukas. “So this is the man you take orders from?”

“We work together, Mr. Savage,” Loukas said. “And with a great many other people who have the same ideas about freedom and Greece that we do.”

“You certainly took Aleko for a ride,” I said. “He seemed to think he had you firmly in his pocket.”

Melos was facedown in the water a couple of yards away still clutching the chain, the briefcase floating beside him.

“I will have that now, please,” Loukas said.

Ciasim pulled it out of the dead man's grip and looked questioningly at me. I nodded and he waded forward and gave it to Loukas.

“Watch it, for God's sake,” I said as I joined them. “Your people put a little item in the lock, remember?”

He held up a long key that seemed to be double-edged from what I could see. “Easy when you know how, Mr. Savage.”

He inserted it in the lock. There was a very distinct double click as we all held our breath and then he smiled, for the first time since I'd known him. Sara and the boys had arrived and stood there uncertainly for a
moment, then young Abu ran forward and flung himself into his father's arms.

Loukas produced a long sealed envelope from inside the briefcase and tore it open. “Amazing,” he said as he took out the sheets of paper it contained. “Still bone dry. These really are most excellent briefcases.”

Yanni produced a cigarette lighter and flicked it into life, Loukas touched the sheets of paper to its flame, held them there until they were well alight.

“A lot of trouble, Mr. Savage, a hell of a lot of trouble and all because a few well-meaning idiots committed names to paper.”

“An unfortunate habit most revolutionaries seem to share,” I said.

His fingers were getting warm. He dropped the sheets to the sand and we watched the flames eat up the final trace of white paper. He ground the ashes into the sand with his heel.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“To you and your friends?” He shrugged. “That is no concern of mine. A fine night and a calm sea. In that boat of yours, you could be in Turkish waters within a couple of hours.”

“And what about you two?”

“We left a Land Rover back there beyond the hill. An hour to the harbour. Kytros has a boat ready. No need to worry about us.”

“Then what?”

It was Yanni who answered me. “Moral indignation is a shocking thing, Jack. It simply won't go away and leave a man in peace, you see. There's work waiting for us elsewhere in Greece.”

“Then all I can do is wish you both luck.”

Loukas saluted Sara gravely, turned and walked away. Yanni took my hand, held it briefly. Even then, there at the very end of things, he had to make a joke out of it all.

“The terrible thing about getting mixed up in this sort of thing is that I'm just not the stuff heroes are made out of.” He gave me a helpless smile, turned and limped after Loukas.

“Yanni!” He paused, glancing back over his shoulder. “I think Michael would have been proud of you.”

He raised his stick in a half-salute, and disappeared into the trees.

I'll always be glad I said that to him.

 

Ciasim was at the wheel as we slipped through the dark passage and turned out to sea. He started to sing and I heard his sons' laughter, happy to be together again as is the way with families. I owed him more than I had thought to owe any man. How was it possible to repay that kind of friendship?

He leaned from the window on the port side of the wheelhouse. “You are all right, dear friend? Leave everything to me. In a boat like this I could take you round the world. For a boat like this, I would give up women.” His laughter boomed out across the water. “On alternate days, of course.”

The Gentle Jane. Would he take her?
It was a thought and she couldn't go into better hands.

I stood at the rail, fumbled for a cigarette and found none. There was a movement in the shadows. A match flared, pulling her face out of the darkness as she lit a cigarette and passed it to me.

“They made one hell of a mess of you, didn't they?” she said.

“They didn't damage anything important.”

I put an arm around her shoulders and she leaned against me. “We'll be a long time dead, Savage.”

“True,” I said. “But we've got each other for a while yet.”

“And hope?”

I nodded slowly. “Oh, yes, there's always that.”

We moved forward into the great, mysterious, purple evening and out there in the gathering darkness, the sea was touched with fire as the sun died and night fell.