Jack Higgins (5 page)

There was a kind of dry sob. Now that did surprise me, or did it? In any case, I didn't have time to consider the point because in that same moment, headlights cut through the darkness back there on the waterfront, and a Land Rover came along the jetty fast.

 

Morgan was already casting off, but as always, just a little bit too late. Sara Hamilton was back over the rail before I could stop her, which was an added complication.

I stepped into the wheelhouse, reached under the chart table and pressed a neat and inconspicuous button. The flap which fell down held an Israeli Uzi sub-machine gun with a 25-round magazine in place, all ready to go. But the Walther automatic was handier in this kind of situation. I pulled it from its clip, shoved the flap back out of sight and switched on the deck lights. When I moved out, I was holding the Walther flat against my right thigh.

Hakim, Major Ibrahim and a single military policeman, stood on the edge of the jetty peering down. Ibrahim looked like Satan himself straight out of some Islamic netherworld.

“Hello there!” I called cheerfully.

“Stay exactly where you are, Savage,” Ibrahim replied rather unnecessarily. “We are coming on board.”

He led the way, revolver in hand. I breathed in Sara Hamilton's ear, “Anything I do now gets you out of this thing with clean hands whatever happens, so do as you're told.”

The military policeman had a Russian sub-machine gun hanging from one shoulder, so Ibrahim's revolver was the only thing I had to worry about. I waited until he started to scramble over the rail, judged my moment and kicked the gun out of his hand. It splashed into the water. I rammed the Walther into Sara's backbone, turned her to one side so that they all could see.

“I will if I have to, Hakim, I've nothing to lose, and I don't think Aleko would be very pleased. Think of all that lovely investment money going elsewhere.”

“He wouldn't dare,” Ibrahim said and turned on the M.P. “Shoot, damn you!”

The military policeman stood there looking worried, the Russian sub-machine gun still hanging from one shoulder. It was Hakim, as always, who had the last word.

“Mr. Savage, I would appear to have misjudged you. What happens now?”

“We go for a little ride,” I told him. “If you all behave yourselves, I'll put you ashore at Canayis. Plenty of fishing boats work that area. You'll be all right.”

“Colonel Hakim, do we have to…?”

Ibrahim gave him his official rank for the first time in my hearing and Hakim chopped him off with a simple gesture of the hand.

“And Lady Hamilton?”

“Goes with you. I'm sorry she had to be involved. She just happened to be on the terrace outside my room at the wrong time, that's all.”

Hakim nodded gravely. “I accept your conditions. I give you my word we will make no trouble.” He turned to Sara. “A terrible experience. Please accept my apologies.”

“For what?” she said, speaking for the first time, then turned to me. “Is it all right if I go below and look at your friend?”

I nodded and she went down the companionway. I reached across and unhooked the sub-machine gun from the M.P.'s shoulder. Ibrahim didn't say a word. There
was a storage hold in the stern deck and I lifted the hatch cover, keeping them covered.

“Right, gentlemen, down you go. There isn't much room, but it won't be for long.”

The M.P. went first, then Hakim. Ibrahim, game to the last, made a grab for my ankle on his way down. I stamped on his hand and shoved him into the darkness on top of the other two.

Morgan was already casting off the stern line. As he moved off, his face looked yellow and old in the glare of the deck lights. Poor Morgan, adrift on the high seas again and I owed him more than that. Much more.

I went into the wheelhouse, gave the engines a little more power and took her out past the end of the jetty, nice and slowly, the silenced engines a whisper in the night.

The door banged and Morgan appeared. He opened a locker and found a bottle. I could smell the rum when he took out the cork. This time he didn't ask, he just swallowed.

He half-choked, leaned on the chart table, head down. “Why, Jack? Why?”

“Does it matter? It's done, isn't it? Go below and see what the situation is.”

He went and I reached for the bottle and took a pull myself although rum was never one of my favourites. Now what happened, for God's sake? There was nothing for me in Alexandria, that was for certain.

We were well out to sea now, so I took her off the silencers and pushed up to full power. The Penta petrol engines had been specially modified and would give me thirty knots when needed, so I wasn't particularly wor
ried about being chased, for the
Gentle Jane
handled superbly.

The door opened softly, clicked shut. I spoke without looking round. “How's Guyon?”

“He died about five minutes ago,” Sara Hamilton said quietly.

 

I got about fifty pounds of chain from the locker, then I carried Guyon up from the saloon and laid him out on an old canvas tarpaulin. I wrapped the chain around his ankles and Morgan started to sew him up. He was a good man with a sailmaker's needle, something he'd picked up as an apprentice on Finnish windjammers on the old grain run before the war.

Guyon might have been sleeping, he was so peaceful. He looked about seventeen again, every line, every care and worry washed clean.

“What was he like?” Sara asked me.

“He was a good diver, that's about all I can tell you. Not much at communicating. I see why now, of course. He always thought the sea would get him.”

“Which it has in the end, hasn't it?”

“As clean a way as any. I'll be happy with the same when my time comes.”

I lit a cigarette and moved to the rail. The boat rocked gently on the swell. Somewhere in the far distance, the navigation lights of a steamer gleamed in the night.

“Now what will you do?” she asked, leaning against the rail beside me.

“Oh, plenty of things for someone like me with a good boat under his feet.”

“And no scruples?”

“To speak of.”

“No regrets?”

“I've still got the boat, haven't I? It could be worse.”

“But not much.”

I managed a gay laugh. “That's the difference between you and me, angel. I've been poor before.”

I left her there, went and lifted the hatch cover and told Hakim to come up. He emerged cautiously, his linen suit streaked with oil.

“Nothing to worry about,” I told him. “I just want you to witness this.”

Morgan had reached the neck and was about to cover Guyon's face for all time. Hakim looked down at the dead Israeli for a long moment and sighed.

“So, in the end it was all for nothing, Mr. Savage.” He looked me straight in the eye. “I know every last detail of your background. Better perhaps than you know yourself. You are no Israeli agent, my friend. If you had looked the other way, minded your own business.” And then there was something else in his voice, something personal. “In heaven's name, why? You've lost everything. Thrown it all away and for what?”

I laughed in his face. “The last of the big spenders, that's me. Now let's get him over the side.”

I knew there was some kind of Hebrew prayer for the dead. The best I could do for him was a Hail Mary and an Our Father and I was pretty rusty on both. Hakim gave me a hand and we slid him gently into the water—so gently that he disappeared without even a splash.

 

Canayis was a tiny island three miles off the coast, mostly flat scrub fringed by long white beaches. There
was a freshwater spring, sweeter by far than anything on the mainland, and fishing boats called in to fill their goatskins every day.

From the south, there was a clear run in to a curved beach, flat sand all the way, and I took the
Gentle Jane
in close enough for her prow to bite. I had the hatch cover off without any delay and Ibrahim and the M.P. came up for air.

“Over the side,” I said, “and don't try anything.”

And they didn't, being more occupied with getting some oxygen into their lungs again. Ibrahim lost his balance scrambling over the rail and fell into the water which was about three feet deep at that point.

Hakim turned to me. “What about Lady Hamilton?”

“I'll see to her. Go on, over you go.”

“You are a fool, Mr. Savage. A brave man, but a fool. I hope I never see you again, entirely for your own sake, of course.”

He held out his hand which I took, for it would have seemed churlish to refuse, then he went over after the other two.

I turned to Sara Hamilton. “Well, this is it, the long goodbye.”

She said gravely, “What would you do if I refused to go?”

“You've no choice. Not if you want to come clean out of this business.” I turned to Morgan who was standing at the door of the wheelhouse clutching the Russian sub-machine gun I'd taken from the M.P. “Cover me with that thing. I shan't be long.”

I vaulted over the side, waist-deep in water, turned and held up my arms. “All right, let's be having you.”

She stood looking at me for a long moment then
reached down and ripped open the skirt of her dress, scattering buttons with the violence of it, freeing her limbs. She moved away from me and jumped over the rail into the water.

She lost her footing and went under completely and I waded forward and pulled her to her feet. The dress clung to her like a second skin, a nipple blossoming clearly on each full breast. She might as well have had nothing on.

“Get your hands off me,” she said fiercely in a low voice, shoved me away with a stiff right arm and pushed wet hair back from her eyes.

“I'm forty-two years old,” I said. “This year, next year, but not much longer than that, I go Guyon's way. Over the side with fifty pounds of old chain round my ankles.”

She stood quite still, water slapping around her thighs, a hand to her face and then, God save us all, she actually smiled.

I turned from her, heaved myself over the rail, went into the wheelhouse and eased the
Gentle Jane
off the sandbank. Then I took her round in a great sweeping curve and headed out to sea.

My hands were trembling, my whole body shaking. Reaction, I suppose, or that's what I tried to tell myself.

I engaged the automatic pilot, reached for Morgan's rum bottle and went on deck, avoiding his worried eye: What was left in the bottle was foul. I tossed it into the sea.

Two hundred thousand pounds
. Everything I'd sweated to build for eight long years, all down the drain for what? Now I had nothing.

I had kept my head turned one way deliberately, but
it was no good. Let me be honest at the end, whatever else might be. I went to the stern rail and looked back towards the beach.

The three men were on dry ground by now, but she still stood thigh-deep in the silver water, the thin crescent of the moon behind her. If I reached out, I could touch her, or at least that's what it felt like and I stayed there at the stern until she faded into the darkness.

North from Kyros, I came awake from a deep, dreamless sleep and lay on the bunk staring at the bulkhead, wondering who I was—a bad sign. Then things clicked into place and I yawned and swung my legs to the floor.

It was warm in the saloon, even with the air conditioning plant in full cry, but when I went up the companionway, the heat almost brought me to a dead halt. I took a deep breath and moved out.

It was a day to thank God for, a blue sky without a cloud in it reaching to nowhere, the Cyclades fading north into the heat haze, the great bulk of Crete far, far away to the south-west. We floated, motionless in a flat, copper sea, every line of the boat reflected as truly as in a mirror.

Morgan had rigged an awning in the stern and sprawled beneath it, snoring steadily. I kicked his feet, then dropped a bucket over the side on a line, sluiced myself and gave some thought to the afternoon.

We had several dozen sponges strung on a line to dry.
They didn't look too good to me. Sponge divers are a dying breed and not only because synthetics have cornered most of the market these days. The youngsters don't want any part of it. They've seen too many men old before their time, crippled by the bends. But for some men, it's a way of life—the only way, and you still get plenty of boats working the Aegean and the waters off the south-west coast of Turkey.

So, there was still a living to be had if you knew what you were doing, but only just. I'd had three weeks of it, working out of Kyros and just managing to keep my head above water. Eating money, fuel for the boat and not much left after that.

Morgan was having to manage on local wine which came cheap at around a couple of shillings a litre and the old lady who ran the
taverna
where he bought it always seemed to give him a little over the odds, so he was happy enough.

It was a strange kind of existence. A sort of limbo between old endings and new beginnings. We had a boat, enough to eat, the sun was warm. No word from Yanni Kytros which surprised me, but we managed.

He owned an old
taverna
on the waterfront at Kyros which he'd tarted up for the tourist trade. Yanni's, he called it. It was the sort of place that looked like something out of an old Bogart movie. Fishermen and sponge divers were encouraged to use it, preferably unshaven and with knives at their belts, to give the tourists a thrill, but it was mainly a big act and the local boys were strictly on their best behaviour and got their drinks cheap. The occasional fight added a little spice and even Yanni didn't mind that as long as it didn't go too far.

It was run for him by a fat, amiable Athenian named
Alexias Papas who liked the quiet life and saw that things stayed that way by providing the local police sergeant with what amounted to free board and lodging and, as far as I could see, that seemed to include assuaging a pretty deep thirst.

As I said, there was no news from Kytros or perhaps Alexias was simply putting me off, so I gave up enquiring and concentrated on earning a living for a while.

We'd not had much luck earlier in the day and I had decided to try the area on the north side of a tiny island called Hios on the chance recommendation of an old Turk, crippled by the bends, who'd conned a couple of drinks out of me at Yanni's the previous evening.

Morgan got to his feet, yawning and scratching his face as I buckled on an aqualung. “Hope you do better than we done this morning, Jack. That lot we got drying ain't hardly worth taking in.”

“You worry too much,” I said and vaulted over the rail.

What he had said was true enough, but it wasn't exactly constructive. Sponges are funny things. The good and the bad often look exactly the same, nice and black and shiny. There's a definite art in being able to tell the difference and the plain truth is that I was only fair at it.

I paused to adjust my air supply and went down in a long sweeping curve. The water was crystal-clear and I could see so far and with such definition that it was like looking at things through the wrong end of a telescope.

I hovered for a while to get my bearings, aware with a kind of conscious pleasure that I was enjoying this. There were fish everywhere, dentex and black bream and just below me, a group of silver and gold giltheads. I
jack-knifed and went down fast, scattering them just for the hell of it, and found myself part of an enormous shoal of tiny rainbow-hued fish. They exploded outwards leaving me alone, suspended in the blue vault.

For a brief moment I seemed to become a part of it all and it was a part of me, fused together into something special. Man's oldest dream, free flight, was achieved and all things were possible. I experienced again the same incredible wonder I had known on the very first occasion I had gone down in a self-contained rig.

It had been a long time since I'd felt like that. Too long. I tried to hang on to the moment, to hold it tight. Perhaps because of that fact it simply drained out of me, leaving me wary and tense again and vaguely apprehensive.

I touched bottom at eight fathoms. It was suddenly gloomier. For one thing, there were a lot of rocks around which reduced visibility considerably and they reared up out of a great carpet of marine grass that stirred uneasily.

I went over a spur of rock and found my first sponges, but these were worse than useless. Bloated and horrible, they were mainly black in colour and a tinge of green gave them a suggestion of putrescence. Of some living thing gone bad. No wonder the Turks called them dead men's fingers.

I had been down perhaps ten minutes and had worked my way round the western tip of the island. I went over a great ledge of rock and got the shock of my life. Beneath me, the chasm drifted into infinity. Across the gulf on a large sandy plateau, a diver was working amongst as good a crop of sponges as I had ever seen. He was wearing a regulation diving suit, his air and lifelines
snaking up to the surface like an umbilical cord. He saw me at once and paused in his work.

I had an idea who it might be, swam across the chasm quickly and moved in close enough to peer through the front window of his helmet. He was called Ciasim Divalni and he was a Turk from Hilas in the Gulf of Kerma.

Now that the Cyprus troubles were really fading into the past, Turkish sponge boats were beginning to be seen in the Aegean again. I'd found Ciasim and his two sons on the waterfront at Kyros a week or two earlier wrestling with a faulty compressor. A serious business for poor men, for without it they could not dive. It was a simple enough fault if you knew what you were doing and Morgan had a positive genius for that kind of thing.

We were accepted from then on which was quite something where Turks were concerned and when Morgan spent a day overhauling the old diesel engine on their boat, the
Seytan
, our stock rose even higher which was good for his ego.

Ciasim reached out in slow motion, touched the empty net hanging from my belt, then gestured to the sponges scattered around the plateau, inviting me to join in. I didn't need asking again. They were definitely the best I'd seen and I filled my net very quickly.

He was ready to go himself, pointed upwards then gave the regulation four pulls on his line which was divers” language for
Haul me up
.

I ascended a lot faster than he did. There was no need for me to decompress for I hadn't been down long enough at that depth. It would probably be different for Ciasim. Not that I believed for a moment that he would decompress properly even if it were necessary. Most
sponge divers treated the whole paraphernalia of modern diving tables and decompression rates with the same good-humoured contempt they reserved for all those who used self-contained diving rigs. Their own remedy for the bends and any minor physical aches and pains experienced after diving, was to bury the sufferer up to his neck in soft sand or get him to smoke a couple of cigarettes. The nicotine was supposed to have a beneficial effect, being absorbed straight into the bloodstream, which explains why every Turkish diver I've ever met is a heavy smoker.

I surfaced beside the
Seytan
which was a
trenchadiri
, one of those strange double-ended boats made from time immemorial in exactly the same way. It carried a large, patched, ochre-coloured sail and the diesel engine Morgan had overhauled gave it a top speed of four knots.

Ciasim's eldest son, Yassi, a tall, handsome youth of nineteen kept a careful eye on the vessel's speed. It was necessary to stay on the move, not only to combat the effects of tide and current, but to keep pace with the diver down there on the bottom. It was also essential to keep the vessel in such a position that the engine exhaust was always to leeward of the compressor. More than one diver had died from carbon monoxide poisoning when someone had made a mistake over that one.

The compressor was banging away and Ciasim's second son, Abu, a bright, cheerful fourteen-year-old rogue, was acting as diver's tender, the most important task on board. I've known tenders who were so expert that they could work out what was happening below just by the feel of the lifeline. A bad one could be the death of you. Abu was a natural which was hardly surprising.

Yassi reached over the side with a big grin and gave
me a hand up. I pulled off my face mask and held up my bulging net. We used Greek, for only their father spoke English and I had but a smattering of Turkish. He had a look at the sponges, picked one or two out and shook his head. They looked all right to me, but over the side they went.

“How can you tell?” I demanded.

“Easy,” he grunted. “It's the size of the holes.”

As his father rose, Abu was calling off the depth in
kulacs
, the Turkish equivalent of the fathom, roughly five feet. I unstrapped my aqualung, went and helped myself to water from a huge earthenware jar roped to the mast. It was Greek or Roman and a couple of thousand years old. Most of the sponge boats used the same. They were to be had with ease from the bottom of the sea in those parts from the many wrecks.

They had Ciasim over the rail a few moments later and I went to give them a hand. A diver in regulation dress is a clumsy creature out of water. The shoes weighed seventeen and a half pounds each and he had eighty pounds in lead weights strapped around his waist. And the great copper and brass helmet weighed over fifty pounds.

I unscrewed his face plate and he grinned. “Jack, my dear friend, how goes it?”

He was about forty-five, dark and handsome with a great sweep of black moustache. He should have looked older considering the way he lived, but he didn't.

“How long were you down there, idiot?” I demanded.

Abu had the helmet off by then and Ciasim grinned. “Don't start with your compression tables again. Just hand me a smoke. When I die, I die.”

I gave him a cigarette from a little sandalwood box Yassi handed me. Ciasim inhaled deeply. “Wonderful. Where's your boat, Jack? Why not bring her round to join us? We'll go to the island and eat on the beach. I have been wanting to talk to you anyway. A business matter.”

“Okay, I'll leave the sponges till later,” I said and reached for my aqualung.

Yassi and young Abu helped me into it and I went back over the side. They accepted me because I was a
dalguc
like Ciasim—a diver. With him, it was something more for he had served with the Turkish infantry contingent sent to join the United Nations Force in Korea in 1950.

I had been there myself which was a bond between us. Had seen them arrive at the front, strange fierce-looking men in ankle-length greatcoats who carried rather old-fashioned rifles with sword bayonets. They were just like something out of the First World War, but fight…Everything I'd heard about Johnny Turk was true.

Ciasim had been a prisoner in Chinese hands for nearly two years, subjected to the same brainwashing techniques as other Allied prisoners. With the Turks it had failed completely and the Chinese had finally given up in some desperation and had placed them in an enclave of their own.

They were like rocks on which the sea breaks with no effect. Hardy, utterly indomitable men. The best friends in the world…the worst enemies.

 

They lit a fire on the beach and Yassi and young Abu busied themselves with the cooking while Morgan,
whose Greek was about as broken as it could be, contented himself with watching while perched on a rock, a jug of wine between his knees.

Ciasim and I went off some little way and sat by the water's edge with a bottle of
arak
and a box of
halva
, that unique Turkish sweetmeat made out of honey and nuts, something to which he was particularly partial.

It was hotter than ever and very beautiful and on the horizon a
congoa
, the kind of boat that trawled for sponges instead of using a diver, drifted by.

“Look at that,” Ciasim said angrily. “They're ruining the business, those butchers. They tear up the sea bed and everything that lives.”

“Soon be impossible to make a living in the islands at all,” I said. “What with those things and synthetics.”

I rolled a mouthful of
arak
around my teeth. It always tended to make me feel about eight years old and sucking aniseed balls again.