Operation Stranglehold (16 page)

Walter repacked the bread and cheese in the string bag. “Maybe we should go back down to the beach and work our way up through the trees?” he offered.

“We may have to, but all we need is enough cover to get behind the houses on that side of the street. Let’s see how it looks.”

We left the shelter of the low-hanging willow and crossed the road. I led the way in a deeper arc than the curve of the road, closer to the water. We came to a path going in the same general direction, hard-packed earth rutted out of coarse grass by thousands of passages. Other paths crossed it, most appearing to lead down to the beach. I was sure we were between the village’s only street and the waterline.

“Suppose this man turns us in, too?” Walter said from behind me.

“A calculated risk,” I answered. “Name me an alternate move in this chess game.”

The trees thinned out suddenly and houses appeared. I stopped to get my bearings. “We’re behind the buildings!” Walter exulted in my ear. Then he frowned. “They all look alike, don’t they?”

“They sure as hell do.” Uniform, high-walled, dirty brick-and-mortar structures fanned out along the path before us. None had windows, and the doors were tiny. There was rubble at the base of each from unrepaired broken-out bricks and displaced mortar. Then I saw something. “Come on.”

We moved along the path again, rapidly now. It seemed terribly bright in the sunlight after the shadowy trees. We were in the open, although not visible from the street. I took out my knife and opened it.

The fifth building had empty wine casks scattered carelessly near the rear door. Wine dregs remained in the casks, and flies buzzed sickeningly. I gave one quick tug at the door, but I couldn’t open it. I slipped the knife-blade through the jamb and moved it up and down. When it met resistance, I put the blade under the resistance and shoved upward. The hook of a simple hook-and-eye catch flew free.

There was no bolt, fortunately, and the door sagged inward. I pushed it open, and we stepped inside quickly. Before I closed the door again, there was light enough to see a massive wooden bar standing beside one of the slots on either side of the door. If we’d come at night and found that baby up, we’d never have made it inside.

I knew we had made some noise, and I heard a stirring in the front of the shop. We stood while our eyes adjusted to the dark, although a little light from the front filtered into the back room. We were surrounded by additional casks and cases of stubby beer bottles. There was an odor of something fermenting in the stagnant air.

I still had the open knife in my hand, but hidden in a leg-fold of the baggy trousers. There was a scraping of heels. Someone was coming from the front of the shop to the rear to investigate. “Get into the bit about Spanish wine being so much greater than Chianti before he can say anything,” I murmured to Walter.

A short, squat-looking figure was momentarily silhouetted against the light from the front door before our company arrived. “Hola!” Walter began, but softly, and launched into his spiel. He didn’t have a dozen phrases out before the squat-looking figure held up a hand and interrupted him, but just as quietly. “He says the police have been here looking for us,” Walter translated after listening.

“Tell him we know that,” I said patiently. I could see the man now. He was old, whitehaired, and incredibly seamed and wrinkled of face. The eyes were steady, and the voice was unalarmed. It was a face that had seen a lot. There was nothing venal in it as there had been in Guardoza’s. I closed the knife and slipped it back into my pocket. “Ask him what the next step in the escape route is supposed to be.”

Walter put it into Spanish, and the old man replied at length. Walter was shaking his head when he turned back to me. “He says one of the younger fishing boat captains used to take passengers to Portugal, but he’s in jail at Rabat for smuggling. Man, wouldn’t that be something if we could get to Portugal? Croswell has a branch office in Lisbon too.” His tone was wistful.

“Ask him about the other fishing boat captains,” I urged. “Would one of them do it for a price?”

The old man’s reply was so emphatically a negative that Walter didn’t even need to translate.

“Okay, I get it,” I said.

“He says the police have got them scared to death,” Walter relayed the balance of the message. The old man was speaking again. “He says he would like to help, but he still has a family,” Walter added.

The bronzed, seamed face was studying me to see if I understood.
“Niños,”
the old man said, holding a hand out at knee level.

If he had
niños
at his age, the old boy still had a lot of juice in him. “Tell him okay, we’re going,” I said. “It’s sure as hell not his fault.”

Walter was listening again. “If we take the first path to the left from this path, it will take us right down to the beach with no chance for the Guardia Civil in the car to see us.”

“Gracias,”
I said, and held out my hand.

The old man took it. His palm was dry and rasping, the hand of a man who has known a lot of hard work. I started to turn toward the door, but the hand in my hand stopped me. The old man picked up an empty wine cask, opened the door, and stepped outside. He set down the cask, then looked casually up and down the path before he gave a beckoning all-clear signal.

“Vayan ustedes con Dios,”
the old boy said gravely as we passed him in the back yard.

Walter waved to him when we turned down the path to the left before we disappeared among the trees. “Another dead end,” he said gloomily as we reached the beach almost in front of the moored fishing boats.

“I wouldn’t say that,” I answered. “We could really have saved ourselves part of this trip once we got our first look at the village. The answer to the question we were asking had to be a fishing boat. There’s nothing else here.”

“So?”

“So tonight we come back here and cut us a fishing boat out of the herd.”

Walter stared. “But you heard the old man say they were all afraid to do it!”

“With a gun in his ribs, one of them will be more afraid not to do it.”

“But at night he might sail us to—to—”

“To the nearest Spanish Coast Guard station? You’re a sailor, aren’t you? You’ve got a compass. What are you going to be doing while he’s trying to change the course we give him to sail?”

We had trudged all the way across the sticky sand to the woods from which we had had our first view of La Perla before Walter spoke again. “I’ll say one thing,” he said fervently. “There’s never a dull moment around you.”

“We’re just doing what we have to do. Now let’s make a little time. I want to be back here with the girls at the edge of the woods by sundown. We want to look the situation over carefully and give ourselves the best chance possible.”

We worked up another good sweat on our return journey to where we’d left Hazel and Lisa. I kept an eye out for the lightning-marked big pine tree, and from there we hiked directly to them. Lisa was asleep, curled up like a puppy, but Hazel was sitting with her back against a tree. Her expression was glum, but she brightened at the sight of us.

“I was just sitting here wondering what to do next if you didn’t come back,” she said, throwing her arms around me. She reached for Walter’s string bag. “Mmmmmmm, food!”

She hadn’t raised her voice, but a long shudder rippled through Lisa’s body, and she sat up abruptly. Her eyes darted around the clearing until she had everyone in focus before she relaxed. Walter knelt down beside her. “Bad dream, Lisa?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered matter-of-factly. “It has been a long time since I had any other kind.”

It was the closest to a complaint I’d ever heard her make. Hazel sat down alongside her and displayed the contents of the string bag. Lisa smiled and helped herself. Walter moved still closer to her and whispered in her ear. The girl’s smile became a beautiful thing to see.

I caught Hazel’s eye, and she left the engrossed pair to come to where I was standing. “Any luck?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She eyed me carefully. “Good?”

“The best. We’re taking a sea voyage.” I continued on before she could ask questions. “We’ve got some walking to do before sundown, but right now Walter and I can use—” I gauged the height of the sun through the trees “—an hour’s sleep. We’ll tell you all about it when you wake us.”

She pestered me, naturally, but I found a comparatively comfortable spot with a slight depression into which I could fit my hip bone, stretched out, and forgot everything.

I felt Hazel shaking me, but it took me a long time to make the transition back to the present. I hadn’t had any bad dreams; I hadn’t had any dreams. When I could make my eyes work, I saw a fuzzy-eyed Walter across the clearing receiving the same treatment from Lisa. “Ohhhh, man!” he groaned. “What I wouldn’t give for twelve hours sleep!”

“Let’s hear about this sea voyage,” Hazel insisted when we were on our feet. Walter glanced at me quickly. “It’s on the
Queen Elizabeth,
I suppose?”

“Just so it isn’t the
Andrea Doria,”
I replied. “No, baby, it’s on one of the fishing boats in La Perla.” Lisa had stopped picking up the remaining scraps of food and putting them in the string bag to listen.

“The boat captain will take us?”

I nodded. “Except that he doesn’t know it yet.”

“I knew it!” Hazel cried. “You couldn’t do any good with the second contact!”

“Because the first contact sold us out. We found a Guardia Civil watching the front entrance of the wine shop.”

“We talked to the owner, and he said the police had already been to see him,” Walter confirmed.

“How could you talk to him if the police were watching?” Lisa asked.

“A little jujitsu with the back door.” I swung my arms to restore sleep-numbed circulation. “Listen, why all the sad faces, everyone? What’s changed? We just get on a boat and go.”

“Go? Where?” Hazel demanded.

“Portugal,” Walter said. “Croswell has a branch office in Lisbon. And they won’t be operating with the eye of the Spanish police upon them.”

Hazel had rebounded with her usual ebullience. “I wish we’d brought the airplane charts,” she regretted. “Although they wouldn’t help with water depths, I suppose.”

“Water depths? Our flagship floats on a heavy dew,” I said. “Right, Walter?” He smiled but said nothing.

I’ll admit it; I was trying to stir up the troops. A little enthusiasm covers a gross of inefficiencies. I wasn’t concerned about Hazel, but Lisa seemed to have run out of steam. Maybe it wasn’t to be wondered at in view of what she’d gone through in the past few days, but I’d have picked a different time for it to happen if I’d had a choice.

“Time to get it in gear, squad,” I said lightly. “It’s a forced march for a bit now. Lead the way, Walter.”

We made good time since Walter knew the way. Lisa followed him, then Hazel, and I brought up the rear. And with nothing to do except watch our flanks and occasionally our rear to guard against surprise, I had time to think.

The chief subject of my thoughts was Portugal.

I didn’t blame Walter for thinking wistfully about it when it came to our escape, but I’d had reservations from the first time he mentioned it. He could picture himself walking into the Croswell office in Lisbon and having the fatted calf spread out on the front counter. But Portugal had definite drawbacks.

It was a long way.

By boat it was a slow way.

And the Straits of Gibraltar had to be negotiated.

Theoretically Gib was in international waters, but with the British trying to get the Spanish to be less beastly to them on the Rock, the British might respond favorably, on some pretext, to a request to intercept a fishing boat.

No, Gibraltar represented problems, including Walter’s limitations as a skipper if we didn’t get ourselves a boat captain along with a boat.

On the other hand, straight south of us was the country of Morocco, less than a hundred miles away. We could skirt the Straits in approaching it. Moreover, in Morocco there was the city of Tangier. Now
there
was an enlivening prospect. Tangier is an international city with everyone’s rights respected. It’s a city where, if you have a few dollars to spread around, your rights are respected even more.

Portugal—possible problems from several angles.

Tangier—a free ride if the navigation held up.

By the time we reached La Perla again, I was ready to discard and draw three.

Walter stopped, and our Indian file bunched up. “The
La Perla beach is right ahead of us,” he said, keeping his voice down.

“You girls squat here while we take a look,” I said. Walter and I moved ahead cautiously to the fringe area where the woods phased out into shoreline. The fishing boats were still bobbing at anchor. There were only two changes in the scene we had gazed upon earlier in the day: fifteen or eighteen men were performing various tasks on the boats, and the sun was in the west. I estimated we had another hour of daylight.

I was feeling good. The situation was like a bank job where you plan endlessly for three minutes’ action. We were out of the planning stage now and ready for the action. All I had to do was make it go right.

Walter was looking at me expectantly. “Did you see a phone line when we were in the village?” I asked him. “There’s almost got to be at least one telephone.”

“I didn’t see one, but I wasn’t looking,” he replied.

“We’ve got to make sure, but first let’s move the girls closer so they can keep an eye on the beach.” We went back and got them. “This shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes,” I explained, when we’d settled them where they could see the activity on the shore but remain unseen themselves. “Then we’ll be right down there.” I pointed to the beach. “I’ll wave to you when I want you to join us.”

“Join you right out in the open?” Hazel said doubtfully.

“Sure. We’ve got this tiger by the tail now, baby. See you in a few minutes.”

“Look,” Walter said. He was staring at the fishing fleet. Stalking along the shore, hands behind his back, was the green-uniformed Guardia Civil. I could see the holster on his hip.

“That’s a good place for him,” I said with satisfaction. “His instructions probably have him dividing his time between the front entrance of El Tio Pepe’s wine shop and the fishing fleet, the only effective way out of town. Come on, Walter.”

We made our way up to the village, avoiding the beach. Walter saw the lines before I did. There were no poles, but a double strand about a foot and a half apart looped from building to building. “I’ll jump up there and snatch that down,” Walter said, preparing to leap.

“Hold it,” I told him. We were within yards of the store where we’d picked up the supplies earler in the day. Two women wrapped in rebozos were standing near the store, eyeing us curiously. I could see the Guardia Civil’s dust-covered car up the street, parked exactly where it had been previously. I took out my knife and opened all four blades.

I tossed the knife upward at the lower line fastened to the corner of the building. The knife struck the line, then fell back into the street. I picked it up and tossed it at the higher line. I missed and had to do it again. The second time it connected, and there was a great flashing arc of flame and a loud sizzling noise. The line burned through, and one end fell across the lower line and burned that one through. The knife landed at my feet, a fused mass of metal.

“One of them had to be a power line,” I said. “Now let’s get to that car.”

Walter followed me, whitefaced. I ignored the loudly gabbling, gesticulating women. What we needed to do now was move in a hurry.

“Get under the hood and disable this thing,” I said to Walter when we reached the car. “Make damn sure it isn’t going anywhere.” I opened the front door and picked up a five-cell flashlight on the seat. With it I demolished the radio under the dash. The assault finished off the flashlight, too.

When I rejoined Walter at the front of the car, he had the hood up and broken wires strewn like blue and red spaghetti. He leaned inside, snapped open the distributor cap, lifted off the rotor, straightened up, then turned and threw the rotor over the nearest building.

“Down to the beach,” I said.

We made our way along the same path through the woods at a fast walk. We had company now, chattering women and wide-eyed, brown-faced kids, but they kept their distance. I could hear no unusual sounds from the beach.

“Wait here,” I said to Walter when the white sand and blue water appeared. “Don’t expose yourself.”

I walked out on the beach on the harder-packed sand that made up the area near the fishing boats. Men were standing waist-deep in the water loading nets onto the boats. The Guardia Civil was still strolling the waterline, his hands clasped behind his back. He glanced at me incuriously as I walked toward him. I didn’t look any different than the fishermen, except that I was larger.

I stopped twenty yards away from him, pulled the Luger from my belt holster, and showed it to him. He stopped in mid-stride, his face darkening. The people on the shore saw the automatic too. A silence spread along the beach that eventually enveloped the fishermen on the boats.

I began to walk toward the Guardia Civil again, the Luger held loosely in my right hand. He said something in an imperious tone of voice. I kept walking. He hesitated, but there were too many people watching. His machismo wouldn’t permit him to let me disarm him. He reached for his gun.

His holster flap was unbuttoned, but I still could have waded out to the boats and back again before he could get his gun out. I waved the automatic at him, but he kept right on drawing. Before his gun muzzle could clear his holster I gave him three-sixteenths of an ounce of 9-mm. Parabellum cartridge in his right shin. His anguished scream and the crack of the automatic sent the refuse-picking gulls flying.

He went down on his back, hard, then rolled over and over in the damp sand on which he’d been walking. I went over to him and pulled his half-drawn gun from its holster. I shoved it into my pocket. The Guardia Civil’s face was gray as he rocked to and fro on his back with his leg clasped in both hands. I knew his shinbone was shattered.

I turned and beckoned to Walter, then faced in the other direction and waved to the girls. Walter reached me first. He looked down at the agonized face of the man rocking on the sand, and his tongue circled his lips feverishly. His expression was shocked. “Pick out a boat,” I told him.

He stared at me uncomprehendingly.

“The best one,” I said. “The one we’re going to get away from here on.”

He turned and looked at the fleet bobbing at its shallow anchorage. “Th—that one, I g-guess,” he stuttered, pointing to the boat at the right hand end of the lineup.

Hazel and Lisa joined us, puffing from their hard-slogging route through loose, yielding sand. Lisa cast a sidelong glance at the moaning Guardia Civil, then looked away. “Walter’s picked a boat,” I told them. “Let’s get out to it.”

I started wading through the lukewarm water. Lisa was the next to move. She hitched her ever-present knapsack higher on her slim shoulders and followed me. Hazel and Walter finally got themselves in gear.

I gave Lisa the automatic to hold while I pulled myself up over the side of the fishing boat. She handed it back to me after looking it over curiously, and I gave her a hand up. Then Hazel. Walter scrambled aboard himself.

There were three men on the boat, all eyeing us silently. “Find out who’s the captain,” I said to Hazel.

“¿Quien es el capitán?”
Hazel asked.

Two of the men looked at the third.

We all stood there dripping while I motioned to the first two men with the automatic. “Off,” I said. They may not have understood me, but they understood the movement of the gun. They went over the side with resounding splashes.

I looked at the captain, a middle-aged man. “Tell him he’s sailing us to Tangier, Hazel.”

“Tangier!” Walter exclaimed. “We’re going to Lisbon!”

“At the moment this is not a democracy, Walter,” I said pleasantly. “We’re going to Tangier.” I raised my voice when he tried to interrupt me. “Tangier is a free city that gives political asylum. Remember the hijacker with the half million? The Moroccan authorities sent back the half million, but they didn’t send back the hijacker.”

Walter turned away angrily. the same sulky, pouting expression on his face he’d had the first time I’d seen him in the mountains. I looked at Lisa. “You wouldn’t want him perfect, anyway, would you?” I said. “It wouldn’t leave you anything to shape up.”

She smothered a smile.

“Tell the captain,” I repeated to Hazel.

She jabbered at the man in the liquid-sounding syllables which remained incomprehensible to me. Before she was halfway through, the captain was shaking his head in a stubborn negative. “He says he has to live here, and he cannot afford to become involved with the authorities,” Hazel reported.

I showed the captain the automatic, much as I had the Guardia Civil earlier. “Tell him he’ll sail this floating matchbox to Tangier, or I’ll rework his face with the butt of this gun. Any more argument, and I’ll do the job well enough to let him prove he was forced to swim there, pulling the boat.”

There was no more argument.

The captain and a sullen-looking Walter hoisted sail while the western sky faded from orange to pink. The boat moved slowly out of the harbor of La Perla. As nearly as I could tell, the entire population was there to see us off.

Offshore the breeze freshened, and we picked up speed. “Check on his course with your compass,” I said to Walter when he returned to the stern.

He got down out of sight of the boat captain and took a reading. “He’s doing all right, as I see it,” he reported. “He’s certainly headed for North Africa, anyway.” He sounded civil again.

“Keep checking him from time to time.”

Night came quickly, and the air turned chilly. I found a piece of canvas in a locker when Hazel started to shiver. “First tell our boy at the wheel that he’s not making this trip for nothing,” I said to her. “Then we’ll wrap up.”

She returned after delivering the message. “You made his day, but he says you’ve got to make it look right for him.”

“I’ll make it look beautiful.”

We wrapped up in the canvas and stretched out under the lee rail. A dozen feet away Walter and Lisa resembled a similar cocoon. From time to time I could see Walter neglecting his major preoccupation while he took another compass reading. Then he would return to massaging Lisa.

The wind increased, and we began to roll. The old tub creaked and groaned as the chop slapped it around. I was in a hurry, but I didn’t want any more wind. It was a long night, despite the fact things were finally going our way.

Daybreak found us alone in a watery world. There was nothing in sight in any direction. “Are you sure this guy isn’t heading for Newfoundland?” I growled at Walter.

“He’s on course,” he insisted after another check. “You don’t make much time in these things. Five miles an hour; maybe a little better.”

I did a little mental arithmetic; sixteen or seventeen hours for the passage. I settled back again with what patience I could muster. A couple of hours later Hazel nudged me and pointed ahead. A dark mass was low on the horizon. “The Atlas Mountains,” she said softly.

We all perked up after that.

Shortly before noon the skeletal outline of a large city began to unfold in front of us. “Tangier?” I said to the captain. He nodded proudly. “Can you sail this lovely vessel the rest of the way into the harbor?” I asked Walter.

“Sure I can.”

“Then take the wheel.”

I beckoned to the skipper, and he and I did a little monetary business that left him smiling happily. He bowed to Hazel and me, and then went into the cabin. “Where’s he going?” Hazel wanted to know.

“To hide the money. It would be a giveaway if it were found on him.” The skipper came back, and I drew the automatic and showed him the butt. “One lump or two?” I asked him.

He didn’t know what I said, but he knew what I meant. He turned his back, and before he could flinch I rapped him on the skull where his hair was thickest, hard enough to give him a good-sized lump that he could show as proof that he’d been “forced.” He went bowlegged at first and then sank to his knees. “Tie him up so he’s comfortable,” I told Hazel.

The rest of the trip didn’t take long.

We must have committed a dozen nautical no-nos before we got halfway inside the harbor, because a police launch purred up, and a couple of gimlet-eyed types boarded us and listened to Hazel’s story.

After that we had an escort.

It was one of the few times in my life I wasn’t unhappy to see police uniforms.

• • •

“You mean the hundred thousand is mine?” Hazel asked.

It was two days later, and we were sitting in the Bascara Restaurant in Tangier where I had just surrounded an enormous meal of lamb-and-rice. Walter Croswell and a starry-eyed Lisa had flown to the U.S. that morning after the successful completion of Lisa’s business, but Hazel and I were in no hurry.

“That’s right,” I confirmed. “All you need is your signature on a release form at the main branch of the Washington Bank & Trust Company.”

“Well!” she said dreamily. “I believe I’ll have Nate Pepperman pick up the option on that Florida property I had him take out recently. And thank you, Horseman.”

She was silent then, and I looked up from my coffee to see a particular Hazel-smile.

“I know, I know,” I said, setting down my cup. “You’ve never done it in Tangier.”

We left the restaurant and went back to the hotel.