Jack Higgins (3 page)

I could have called one of the barmen, but he turned, putting his hand on the girl's shoulder in a curiously intimate way that I definitely didn't like and I decided to leave them to it.

As I reached the bar, Kytros appeared from his office lighting a cigar. “One China Clipper,” I called with a straight face.

He turned to Ali, the head barman, and said calmly, “You'll need a Chinese golden lime. There are half a dozen in the stillroom put up in earthenware jars. And make it yellow dry gin. We must get the colour scheme right.” He turned to me blandly. “Anything else?”

“I surrender,” I said. “I'll have a large Jameson.”

He snapped a finger at another barman. “You're looking very sharp tonight, Jack. Bogart in his prime. Yes, I like that. Could it be the young lady who has restored the bloom to your cheeks?”

Which was hitting low, even for him. “Do me a favour,” I said, “I'm old enough to be…”

“Her father? Ah, Jack, the English have succeeded in putting their damnable brand on you. What a pity.” He glanced across the room. “Nineteen is a beautiful age, but that one.” He shook his head. “She was old the day she was born.”

Perhaps he had a point, but I still didn't like it. However, he came round the bar and insisted on carrying the tray across himself.

“Your China Clipper, sir,” he told Aleko.

Aleko took a sip and nodded gravely. “You never let me down, Kytros. Will you join us?”

“I'd be delighted.”

Yanni nodded to Ali who came across on the double with his usual Bacardi. Aleko offered me a cigarette. “I've been doing a little checking up on you since this afternoon, Mr. Savage. I understand you've put quite a sizeable outfit together during the past seven or eight years.”

“Not too difficult,” I said. “There was plenty of salvage work going in Alex and Port Said after Suez and I did have the advantage that I knew the area.”

“Yes, I heard about that also. You were a captain in the British Marine Commandos specialising in underwater work. I'm surprised the Egyptians allowed you to stay on.”

“No trouble there. I'm Irish, not English. It's very useful. My passport gets me anywhere I want to go without a visa, even China.”

“I wouldn't advise it.”

“Perhaps not.”

There were voices in the foyer and Hakim entered. He glanced around quickly and seeing me, threaded his way between the tables. He looked really worried for the first time since I'd known him.

“It's important that I see you, Mr. Savage. Very important.”

He got no further. Major Ibrahim marched in briskly flanked by a couple of military policemen. He ignored everyone, including Hakim, and concentrated on me.

“We are looking for the man Raoul Guyon, employed by you as a diver, Savage. Where is he?”

“I haven't the slightest idea.” I turned to Hakim. “What's it all about?”

Before he could reply, Ibrahim cut in, “Raoul Guyon is a Jew, Savage, an Israeli agent. Of course you would know nothing about that, would you?”

In other circumstances a blow like that would have taken the wind out of me, but I couldn't afford it, not now. I was on dangerous ground. One step and I might be swallowed up.

“Major Ibrahim,” I said evenly. “Just what kind of a fool do you take me for? I've got a salvage business in Alexandria worth just over two hundred thousand pounds in equipment, work in hand and money owing.”

“Which my government will be fully entitled to confiscate in a situation like this.”

“As far as I was concerned Guyon was a French citizen when I took him on.” I appealed to Hakim. “Your own ministry confirmed his status.”

“True enough.” He turned to Ibrahim. “Mr. Savage cannot possibly have had any foreknowledge of this man and his activities.”

“Which remains to be seen. We will examine your room now,” Ibrahim told me curtly.

None of the others had said a word. For once Kytros wasn't smiling. Aleko looked calm, relaxed, ready for anything. And Sara Hamilton?

She emptied her glass, turned casually to Morgan who crouched at his table, sweating with fear. “Be a sweetie and get me another, Morgan.”

He took her glass, hand shaking, and she looked up at me coolly and smiled. “Hurry back. We didn't finish our talk.”

 

The room was as empty as I had expected it to be, which didn't stop Ibrahim and his boys from turning the place upside down. He wanted me dead to rights, that was the trouble. Wanted an excuse to drag me off into the night to see what he could squeeze out of me the hard way.

After fifteen rough minutes, he gave up with every sign of reluctance and we returned to the others. They were still sitting in the same group by the open french windows except that Morgan was now with them, clutching a glass that was half-full of whiskey, too frightened to drink it for the first time in years.

“It will be necessary to leave guards around the ho
tel,” Ibrahim said and made an effort to be diplomatic. “I regret this, Mr. Aleko, but I'm sure you will appreciate my position.”

“Perfectly,” Aleko told him.

At that moment the electricity was cut again, the fans stopped abruptly, the room was plunged into darkness. Outside, the only light was the merest trace of orange fire on the world's edge and a pale glimmer from the new moon.

Kytros called to the barmen and a second later, there was a violent rumbling explosion out there beyond the harbour. About twenty pounds of plastic gelignite going off from the sound of it, tearing several million dollars” worth of Mirage into as many pieces.

I could have told them then where Raoul Guyon was.

In the glare of the M.T.B.'s searchlight the fact of the matter was plain to all. The surface of the sea was strewn with wreckage, pieces of fuselage carpeting the water as far as the light extended. So extensive was the damage that I could only conclude that the air-to-air missiles the Mirage was carrying had also exploded.

Ibrahim grabbed my shoulder and swung me around. “And now will you tell us that you had nothing to do with this.”

“I've been up at the hotel since the middle of the afternoon,” I told him patiently. “Plenty of witnesses.”

“He is right, Major,” Hakim said. “You are pursuing the wrong line of investigation. Guyon is our man.”

But Ibrahim wouldn't let go. He wanted me so badly he could taste it. “How do we know that he did not plant a charge when he went down this afternoon?”

But that was going too far, even for Hakim. “Now you are being stupid. Must I remind you that we were here, watching everything the man did?” He turned to
the naval lieutenant who had been listening impassively. “You will take us back into harbour as quickly as possible, then return and search the entire area thoroughly.”

“I must protest.” Ibrahim started again and Hakim gave him the blade right across the back of the neck.

“You seem big with words and little else, Major. Less talk and more action is what I require of you. I will give you till midnight to find Guyon. If you have not been successful, it will be necessary for me to inform your superiors of that regrettable fact and request a replacement. You understand me?”

I think Ibrahim was close to tears as he turned and stamped away in utter frustration.

Hakim offered me a cigarette. As I took it, I said, “So, you
can
be rough when you want to be?”

“You are forgetting. Mr. Savage.” He smiled gently. “I was a prefect in one of the better public schools. The English are past masters of all the arts, but excel more than most in being bastards when it is necessary.”

He certainly had a point there.

 

He left me at the hotel with strict instructions not to leave without permission. On that he was polite, but definite and the two military policemen on the door were not just there for show.

The bar was empty except for Morgan, who had obviously had more than his usual quota. He was slumped across the table, eyes wide, staring. I hauled him to his feet and gently slapped his face. He returned to life with a start.

“Go on, out to the Land Rover. Sleep it off,” I said.

He had difficulty in forming his words. “What about Guyon?”

“God knows, it's one hell of a bloody mess. I'll tell you about it later. Go on, get out of it.”

I gave him a shove towards the foyer and turned to the bar. Kytros had come out of his office and his face was grave in the light of the oil lamp which had been placed on the counter.

“The Mirage?” he said.

I nodded. “Give me a whiskey. I need it.”

The barmen were no longer in evidence so he got it himself and joined me, which was unusual. “Any sign of Guyon?”

“Not a trace. A guard on the jetty did some shooting into the water as we came back into harbour, but it looked like a false alarm. With the kind of charge he used, he's probably in as many pieces as the plane.”

He shivered, obviously finding the idea rather unpleasant and poured himself another drink. “What's wrong?” I said. “Did someone just walk over your grave?”

He tried to smile, but there was more to it than that. Much more. A kind of uncertainty and he refused to meet my eyes.

“Good God,” I whispered. “You knew. You knew what he was all along, didn't you?”

“My dear Jack, don't be absurd.”

He tried to shrug it off, but I wouldn't let him off the hook. “Now I get it. All those trips to Kyros. You were channelling stuff out for them. They must have been paying you a fortune.”

He actually smiled at that. “One of my more lucrative ventures, I must admit.” I was unable to stifle my laugh
ter. “It takes a rogue to recognise one, Jack,” he added calmly.

“Which doesn't help me. I've nothing against the Israelis, even if one of their damned frogmen did blow me out of the water back in Jaffa harbour in forty-seven, but I'm damned if I want to take sides. What in the hell am I going to do?”

“Hang on,” he said. “If things turn nasty, make a run for it in the
Gentle Jane
. Wait for me in Kyros. Plenty of work for you in the Aegean, I'll see to that.”

“And leave a business worth two hundred thousand quid to Ibrahim and his pals? Not on your life.”

“So what will you do if Guyon comes to you for help? Turn him in?”

Which was the one question I didn't want to hear, the one I wanted to avoid at all costs. “I won't take sides,” I said. “I've done my share. Palestine, Malaya, Korea, Cyprus. Other men's wars. To hell with that for a game of soldiers.”

I turned away, the Celt in me well in control, and found Sara Hamilton seated at a nearby table taking it all in.

“And you can fry in hell, too,” I said, and stormed out through the French window to the terrace and the garden beyond.

 

The new moon was hooked into the branches of the cypress tree by the far wall and on either side, palm trees nodded gravely in the slight breeze. The garden was another of Yanni's special prides and the night was fresh and alive and filled with its perfume.

I wandered aimlessly from one tiled path to another,
shoulders hunched, hands pushed into my pockets, a cigarette hanging from one corner of my mouth, unlit because I couldn't find a match. The fountain drew me as it always did, a piece of pure Victoriana. An impossibly virginal-looking lady spraying water from her mouth assisted by half a dozen cherubs of doubtful sex.

I stood with one foot on the raised rim of the pool and stared into the night. A hand appeared in front of my face holding a gold lighter.
That damned perfume again
. I touched my cigarette to the flame and turned to her.

“Is it really called Intimacy or were you kidding?”

She sat on the edge of the pool and made ripples in the water with one hand. “I like fountains, they relax me. We had one something like this at Hambray Court when I was a little girl. My earliest memory.”

“A thousand years ago?”

“At the very least.” When she looked up her face was quite different. For a moment, she was that little girl again in the secret garden, life held at bay by a mile of Elizabethan brick wall. “Sometimes I think it was just a dream. A story I read somewhere, or had told to me. Does that make any sense?”

“The only kind there is.”

I don't know what happened exactly, but she changed gear again, assumed her usual role. Even the tone of voice altered, became harsher.

“So, Kytros sold you out?”

I glanced down at her sharply. “Shame on you, listening to other people's conversations.”

For some reason she was angry. “Do you
have
to make a joke of everything?”

“Can you think of a better way of keeping your sanity in this loving world?”

“Several.”

“Oh, sure. I'd forgotten you were a swinger,” I said. “The
Kama Sutra
beside your bed and fifty-seven varieties with every third man you meet walking down the King's Road. Wasn't that last year's newest kick for the jet set?”

“It was marvellous,” she said calmly. “Every golden moment.”

I laughed out loud, unable to contain it. “They broke the mould when they made you.”

“Seven hundred and twenty-three years of breeding,” she said. “You can always tell.”

“You were the nearest thing to kick.”

“I know. Are things that bad?”

“Just about. Maybe they'll be satisfied if they lay hands on Guyon.”

“And if not?”

“Eight years of sweat down the slot.”

I moved a few paces away, ears strained as I heard an engine start up down in the harbour.

“Tell me about your wife,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice.

“You've been talking to Morgan?”

“I truly believe he'd do anything for me.”

Curiously enough I didn't feel annoyed. Was even prepared to speak the name itself for the first time in years, a thing I'd had a superstitious dread of doing.

“It's soon told. I met Grace just after the end of the Palestine troubles in 1948. I was a lieutenant then, commissioned from the ranks at the end of the war. Gallant record, decorated, lots of promise. On paper, anyway.”

“What went wrong?”

“I made captain and that was it. Eight years later after Malaya, Korea, Cyprus, I was still the same rank.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I wasn't at my best when dealing with my superiors and I'd hung on to my Irish passport. They didn't care for that. Grace and I only saw each other about twice a year anyway and there were no children which didn't help. She dropped me in fifty-seven and married again the following year. An American.”

“Has it worked out?”

“As far as I know. He's got shares in Fort Knox.”

“So you decided to prove yourself by becoming salvage king of the Mediterranean?”

“Something like that.” I grinned. “All by accident, mind you. I resigned my commission and bought the
Gentle Jane
, which took about everything I had. I'd fancy ideas about making a living as a sponge diver in the Aegean and doing a bit of archaeological diving on the side. There can be real money in that if you know what you're doing. They have every kind of ship from the Bronze Age onwards at the bottom in those parts if you know where to look. I could take you to a reef off the Turkish coast near the Dodecanese where they've found traces of eleven different wrecks starting with the Bronze Age and ending with a Turkish transport of the Crimean War period.”

“Did any of this work out?”

“Not really. There isn't the demand for real sponges that there used to be. Oh, there was a living, but a damned poor one and finding new Bronze Age wrecks turned out to be rather more difficult than I had imagined.”

“What happened next?”

“Yanni Kytros,” I said simply. “I started running American cigarettes into Italy for him. Amongst other things.”

“Spare me the details. The salvage work came later?”

“It was what I wanted to do. I'd had a lot of experience at that kind of thing in the Marines. It's another world down there, you know. Something you can't really describe.”

“I had a brother who felt the same way about flying.”

“That's it exactly. There was just Morgan and myself back in fifty-nine when we started. I had a crew of Egyptian deckhands, but we did all the diving. Raised a Lebanese coaster that had gone down in fifteen fathoms and cleared twenty thousand pounds.”

“And never looked back. Tell me something. Why did you dive on your own today? Isn't that considered dangerous?”

“Hakim was in a hurry and it pays to keep in with the Ministry crowd. And there was no one else available.”

“What about Morgan?”

“But I told you,” I said. “He's had it. Oh, there was a time when he was good. The best. He was a chief petty officer in the U.S. Coast Guard. Where diving is concerned, you name it, Morgan's done it, but that was a long time ago. He was going downhill even when he first came to me. And now…”

“A dead man walking.” I frowned. “You said that yourself earlier,” she explained.

“That about sums it up,” I told her reluctantly.

“And you blame yourself? Why?”

She was right, of course. It boiled up inside me, all
the anger, the frustration, the self-hate, the fear that had twisted in my guts down there with the Mirage.

“All right, you asked for it. The truth is that until last year, about eighteen months ago to be precise, I dived regularly myself, even when there was no need. Dived because I loved every single minute of it like that brother of yours loves flying. One day I got a call in the office at Alex. A barge had gone down in the outer harbour. The main crew were away on a job, but I went out with Morgan to size-up the situation. He went down first in a regulation suit.”

“You mean with an air hose and so on? I thought that was a thing of the past these days.”

“In most circumstances, it is. I'd always use a self-contained rig under a hundred feet. Anything over, a regulation suit. Sure, you can dive three hundred feet in an aqualung. You can also bleed from the mouth, nose and ears. I've seen a lot of men do just that.”

“All right,” she said impatiently. “Point taken. But what happened to Morgan?”