Jack Higgins (9 page)

“It is nothing,” she said calmly. “They wander at will.”

“What about patrols?”

“They stay in the fort,” she said. “They don't like it out here at night. This is a bad place. There was a city here in ancient times. They say the cliffs crumbled be
neath it and the sea swallowed every trace of it in a single night.”

Which was a hell of a thought. Forty or fifty good men and I could have taken the whole damned island. So much for Greek military intelligence.

“It is not far now,” she said. “Half a mile, no more.”

She carried on, leading the way across the plateau, and we climbed a boulder-strewn hillside. Not another word was spoken for the next fifteen minutes and quite suddenly, we came over the shoulder of the mountain and saw a house in a grove of olive trees below.

A dog barked hollowly in the far distance. The girl said, “I will go down alone, just to make sure. Sometimes I have visitors. Men from the fort.”

“Is it likely?” I said. “Do they come often?”

“As often as they feel the need,” she said gravely. “I am the only woman on the island.”

Which was honest enough, however hard to take, but when she was out of earshot, I whispered to Johnson, “I'm going after her. If anything goes wrong, get the hell out of it.”

He didn't argue and I went down the hillside. The house was small and obviously very old and the yard between the back door and the barn was cobbled, the heavy smell of manure everywhere. I crouched beside a small haystack and waited.

There was a slight, eerie creaking as the barn door eased open and someone said softly in Greek, “The gun—on the ground, quickly now.”

I laid the sub-machine gun down carefully and stood up. The muzzle of a rifle prodded me in the back. It was all I needed. I swung to the left which meant that the muzzle of that gun now pointed into thin air, kicked him
under the knee-cap and had him facedown in the dirt in a second.

The door opened, light flooded out, picking us from the darkness, and I saw that my antagonist was not much more than a boy. Perhaps seventeen or eighteen, with a thin, earnest face and a mass of curling black hair. He turned his head awkwardly to glance over his shoulder.

“Anna!” he cried desperately. “It's me, Spiro!”

She touched me briefly on the shoulder. “It's all right. Let him go.”

“Who is he?”

“One of them,” she said. “A Red, but he loves me. He'll do anything for me.” She gave a short, contemptuous laugh. “Men. Always the same, like children who can never have enough sweets.”

 

The plan of the fort Greek military intelligence had given me, the only one they could find, was about fifty years out of date and Spiro soon put me right on a few things.

“The walls are mostly in ruins,” he said. “Especially on the land side and there is no gate any more. Just the open archway.”

“What about sentries?”

“There is someone on the gate at all times. Usually just one man. Most of the building itself is not habitable. They keep Tharakos in the central tower on the first floor.”

“Have you seen him lately?”

“Every day. They take him out on the ramparts, just to show he's still alive in case they're watching from the ships. Mind you, I've never been very close to him.
I'm not important enough. The officers see to him.”

“And what about guards in this tower?”

“There's usually someone on his door at all times. They've turned an old cell next to the entrance on the ground floor into a guardroom.”

“Why do you say usually? Are there times when there isn't a guard up there?”

“You know how it is?” He shrugged. “Tharakos is locked in and his window is only one of those old arrow slits. How can he go anywhere? We aren't like the national army. Sometimes men want to please themselves. Stay down in the guardroom and play cards and so on.”

I had another look at the map and thought about it all. Sergeant Johnson said, “It doesn't look too difficult, sir.”

“That's what we thought about landing from the
caicque
in the planning stage.”

I didn't get a chance to take the argument any further because there was the sound of an engine out there in the darkness. Johnson was already at the window, peering through the curtain.

“Some sort of truck,” he said. “Coming down the track now.” He turned to Anna. “Looks as if you're going to have company.”

Young Dawson already had his automatic out, his face pale and tense. I grabbed him by the arm and shook him roughly. “Put that away. So we shoot them from cover and what good does that do? They go missing and our friends out at the fort start turning the island upside down.”

“The loft,” Anna said. “You will be safe up there.”

There was a ladder in one corner leading up to a trapdoor. Spiro went up quickly, shoving the trap back and Johnson and Dawson went after him.

As I put my foot on the first rung, the girl placed a hand on my arm. Funny, but somehow that smell didn't seem anything like as unpleasant, the face not ugly, but strong and full of character.

“I will get rid of them as soon as I can.”

“They might want to stay,” I said.

She shook her head. “They never stay long. What they want, they take very quickly.”

A hell of a time for this kind of discussion, but I had to say it. “And this doesn't bother you?”

“It has been a long time. It doesn't really happen any more. Not to me. You understand this?” She smiled briefly, but sadly. “One thing life has taught me above all others is that one can get used to anything.”

 

Spiro jammed the trapdoor open slightly with a piece of wood, making it possible to see a little of the room below, mainly the table and the area around it.

There was laughter, the door banged and three men moved into view. Two of them were dressed in the usual shabby peasant clothes, bandoliers at the waist, machine pistols hanging from their shoulders. The third wore an old khaki uniform which in spite of its filthy condition still managed to give him a certain military air when combined with a peaked cap on which he wore a red star.

“Major Ampoulides,” Spiro whispered. “He is in charge at the fort this week.”

What happened then, took place with extraordinary rapidity as violent events often do in life. There was hardly even time to think.

Ampoulides simply grabbed Anna Mikali the moment
he came in and kissed her. Then he laid her across the table and lifted up her dress. He was between her legs before any of us realised what was happening.

It wasn't even particularly brutal, that was the terrible thing, although it was rape of a kind, no matter how much that wretched girl had come to accept it as a fact of life. It was animal-like, something out of the cow byre, but there was still the girl to consider, gazing blindly past his shoulder, beyond him, beyond any of us, trying to pretend that this wasn't happening to her.

A sob rose in Spiro's throat, he had the trapdoor back with a crash and dropped through. Which left me with no choice but to go after him. I landed badly and rolled for the wall. Spiro had Ampoulides by the tunic and went over backwards, tearing him away from the girl. She pulled down her dress and started to get up.

And then all hell broke out as one of the other two men cut loose with his machine pistol, firing from the waist, trying to catch me as I rolled against the wall. He was too high, way too high, but not for Sergeant Johnson, who dropped right into the line of fire. As he fell to the floor, the girl was knocked off the table by a burst in the chest and fetched up against me.

Her eyes rolled in a kind of surprise and she died as calmly as she had lived. I shoved her away and fired one-handed from the floor, sending the man who'd done all the execution back into the far wall.

The third man was having trouble with the sling of his machine pistol which had caught in a tear in the shoulder of his old jacket. On such small turns can a man's life go one way instead of another. He died struggling, for young Dawson leaned out through the trapdoor
and shot him in the head at close range with his automatic pistol.

 

Ten, perhaps twenty seconds was all it had taken to turn the world into a bloody shambles. As I got to my feet, Spiro and Ampoulides rolled against the door struggling violently. Ampoulides ended on top, his hands wrapped round the boy's throat, but a kick in the side of the head soon took care of him.

Johnson was still alive, but not for long as far as I could judge. His left arm was badly shattered and he'd taken at least two bullets through the chest. He was in deep shock, eyes glazed, quite unable to communicate. I did what I could for him, binding him up with two or three field dressings, and gave him a morphine shot.

The girl was beyond anyone's help and I told Dawson to get a blanket to cover her with. Poor lad, he'd aged ten years in as many minutes. Forbes and O'Brien and now this. I wondered just how much more he would be able to take. This was make-or-break time with a vengeance.

Spiro had taken a pretty hard knock on the head and blood oozed from a gash above his left temple. He appeared to be dazed and very badly shocked and dropped to his knees beside the girl, pulling the blanket down from her face.

He crouched there looking at her as if not really taking in what had happened and I examined the two dead men. We were certainly well fixed for arms again now for both of them had been carrying a Schmeisser sub-machine gun, presumably picked up during the war after some German column or other had been ambushed.

I put them on the table and Major Ampoulides groaned and tried to sit up. Spiro's head turned and suddenly, the face, the eyes, were filled with what I can only describe as burning hate.

“Bastard! Filthy scum!”

He pulled a knife from his belt and jumped up and it was Dawson who got in the way first, his Smith and Wesson surprisingly steady as he pointed it right between Spiro's eyes.

“None of that, now.” He turned to me. “I presume you want Ampoulides in one piece, sir?”

“You presume right.” I moved to join him and said to Spiro, “I'm sorry. I know how you must feel, but I've got a job to do and it looks as if Ampoulides could be helpful so I don't want any rash moves from you. Understand?”

There was agony on his face. “He killed Anna.”

“The war killed Anna,” I said bluntly. “Now, are you going to help us get Tharakos out of there, or aren't you?”

He passed a hand wearily across his eyes. “It was what Anna wanted.”

I patted him on the shoulder and gave him a cigarette, then turned and walked across to Ampoulides who was sitting up now, his back against the wall. His eyes were watchful and wary, no fear there at all.

I squatted beside him. “You are alive, your friends are dead. You wish this happy state of affairs to continue?”

“What do I have to do?”

“I want Tharakos. Out of the fort, alive and well.”

“You must be crazy.”

“I don't see why. We drive in through the gate in
your truck. We get him out of his cell with your assistance and come out in the truck again, five minutes at the most.”

“And what happens to me then? Facedown in a ditch with a bullet in the heart.”

“You'll have to take your chances on that one,” I said, “But for what it's worth, I give you my word you'll survive.”

“Your word.” His tone of voice indicated the extent of his recovery.

“I could always turn Spiro loose on you,” I pointed out.

Ampoulides turned and met Spiro's burning eyes briefly. He looked back at me hurriedly. “Okay,” he said. “I'll do whatever you want.”

 

Whatever happened next had to take place that night because it would only be a matter of hours before Ampoulides and his men were missed. Under the circumstances, it seemed sensible to strike while the iron was hot and I decided that three o'clock in the morning was as good a time as any to go in. Even the card players should be asleep by then.

The truck was an old three tonner, a British army Bedford. Spiro did the driving and I sat next to him and poked the muzzle of my sub-machine gun into the major's side. Dawson lurked in the shadows at the rear with one of the Schmeissers.

The road up to the fort was very rough, more a track than anything else, and had obviously deteriorated considerably over the years. The final quarter of a mile crossed a flat, boulder-strewn plain that sloped up to
meet the edge of the high cliffs at that end of the island. It was certainly a hell of a good site for a fort strategically speaking, or must have been in the old days when the Turks ruled this part of the Mediterranean.

A hurricane lamp hung from a hook at the main gate and beneath it, a sentry, if that was what he was supposed to be, squatted against the wall, a rifle across his knees, and slept.