Robbie’s glance suddenly came to rest on lights sixty yards away. They were those of the car at the end of the track. As twilight had been falling when Stephanie drove up, she had switched them on before leaving the car. He had not driven a car since he had taken the Ford Zephyr into Pirgos, but he knew that most cars were much alike; so he should be able to get this one started and drive it to the police station. The explanations he would have to give there would necessitate his giving himself up but, in the circumstances, he felt that was a small price to pay for help.
He started off towards the car. Before he had taken two paces that muffled, agonised wail came again. The sound brought him to a halt. He had no idea where the police station was. Even if he met with no hitch in starting the car, a quarter of an hour or more must elapse while he enquired the whereabouts of the station, then found it. To rush in, shouting that a woman was being tortured, would not be enough. He would have to give particulars, perhaps to some slow-witted junior who might insist on taking them down, then repeat them to someone higher up before any action was taken. Even after that further time would be needed for the return journey. Given the best of luck, it would be twenty-five minutes before he could bring a squad of police to the house, and it might well be forty.
Meantime, what would be happening to Stephanie? In the space of half an hour, she could be made to suffer terribly. Far worse, having wrung all he could out of her, Barak might kill her. He had failed when he pushed her over the precipice, but here there was no one per cent chance of her possible survival should he decide to rid himself of her for good, and no attempt could be made to stop him. In a matter of minutes, he could strangle her and, with the help of his man, in a further ten carry out her body and bury it under a pile of rubble. If Robbie went for the police, it could easily be all over by the time he came back with them; Stephanie dead: her body hidden, Barak and his thug gone and only Robbie’s word for it that they had ever been there.
Driven frantic with fear that Stephanie might be murdered before he could get help, he decided to go in. Whatever Stephanie had said to Barak, he would hardly ignore the possibility that Robbie might return to the house. Therefore it seemed certain that, while he held her prisoner upstairs, he would have left his companion downstairs; so that he could hold up Robbie the moment he entered the front door. If that were so, Robbie felt that he had at least a sporting chance, because he could enter the house from the side where the wall had collapsed. With luck, he might take the man on guard by surprise, overcome him and get his weapon. Then the odds between Barak and himself would be even.
Quickly, but as quietly as possible, Robbie moved round to the side of the house. He was armed only with the plaster-filled sock and, while that would be as good a weapon as any for knocking out an unsuspecting man from behind, he might have to tackle his opponent from the front. Fortunately, amongst the rubble of the kitchen wall, there were a number of pieces of broken wood. He knew roughly where they lay and the star-light was now sufficient for him to find them without difficulty. Hastily he rummaged amongst them, discarded two or three, and chose a tapering piece about three feet long, with a thick end, that would make a good club.
Stepping over what was left of the side wall of the kitchen, he tiptoed across it. As he did so, the fallen plaster crunched under his feet. Actually the sound it made was faint, but to him, in his state of acute tension, it seemed so loud that his enemies could not fail to hear it. At the doorway to the hall, he paused for a moment. Down its side showed a two-inch-wide streak of faint light. When he had first taken up his quarters in the house he had tried to shut this door, but the wood had swollen and it had jammed like that. The question that now faced him was—should he attempt to ease it open on the chance that he would not be heard, or should he wrench it wide and go bald-headed for Barak’s watch-dog, if he were standing on the other side?
As Robbie stood there, he clearly heard a moan that came from upstairs. Spurred to action by this confirmation of his belief that Stephanie was being tortured, he pulled the door open. There was no one in the hall but next moment a dark figure showed up in the faint light, emerging from what had been the sitting room. Robbie raised his club high and rushed at it. The figure side-stepped so that the club, instead of striking it on the head, came down on the shoulder. At the same moment, a pistol flashed. The bullet struck Robbie in the upper part of his right arm, partially swinging him round. The club dropped from his nerveless fingers. He heard a clatter of feet on the stairs and realised that Barak was plunging down them. As he turned his head to look up at Barak the man who had shot him hit him hard under the chin, knocking his head back violently against the door post. The double blow made his head sing. The bitter thought that he had failed, and failed dismally, entered Robbie’s mind then his knees gave, he slumped to the floor and passed out.
He was not out for long. When he came to, Barak and the other man were dragging him up the steep stairs. By the time they threw him down on the bedroom floor, his eyes were wide open and taking in everything round him; but his right arm was hanging limp, he had lost his club and he was miserably aware that Barak had him at his mercy.
As he sat up, his glance met Stephanie’s. She was sitting in the folding canvas-backed chair she had bought for him. The cord he had bought only that afternoon, with the optimistic intention of using it to bind Barak, now bound her. Its ends secured her wrists to the two flat pieces of wood that served as the arms of the chair. Her hair was dishevelled, her blouse torn open, tears were streaming down her cheeks and a towel was over her mouth. Its two ends dangled behind her, so that it could be pulled tight to muffle her cries.
Suddenly, to his horror, Robbie saw that the two middle fingers of her right hand were bent back unnaturally. It was obvious that, while her wrist was tied, the finger tips had been raised and gradually turned over backwards, until the joints at her palm had broken, enabling the useless fingers to lie at an acute angle to the back of her hand, which was now dripping blood.
If Robbie had had the power, he would have killed Barak there and then; but, still half stunned and with his right arm useless, he could do no more than curse him. Barak only smiled at him with cynical satisfaction, then he said to his man:
‘Keep him covered, Alexej. If he tries any tricks, put a bullet through his other arm. But don’t kill him. I want to arrange his death myself.’ Then he went round behind Stephanie, began to undo the cord that bound her, and added: ‘We shall need this to tie him up.’
Owing to the collapse of the plaster partition at the time the house had been bombed, the back and front bedrooms on that side of it had become one. Only two stout, wooden posts which had given strength to the partition, and a heap of plaster on the floor, remained to show where it had been. When Barak had freed Stephanie, he said to Alexej: ‘Get him up now. I want to tie him to one of those posts.’
Alexej gave Robbie a sharp kick and he stumbled to his feet. For a moment he contemplated striking out with his left fist, but he was still feeling very groggy and realised how futile it would be. Under the threat of Alexej’s gun, jabbed against his left shoulder, he backed up against the post. Barak went round behind him and lashed him to it. When he was firmly secured, the Czech came round to the front, fingered his little hair-line moustache and said to him:
‘I don’t know exactly how you two turtle doves planned to get the better of me, because my wife is still reluctant to talk about it. But I guessed that you must be somewhere round and that by letting her open her mouth a little, while giving her the treatment, I should bring you running to the rescue. Anyhow, now you’re both in the bag.’
He paused for a moment, then went on: ‘This is a nice little hide-out you have here, Mr. Grenn. You could stay here for months without anyone being the wiser, couldn’t you? And that is exactly what you are going to do. Presently, we will tear your towels and a few other things into strips and use them to tie my wife firmly to this other post. Then you can stand looking at one another until your e
yes begin to pop and your swollen tongues stick out of your mouths from thirst. I’m told it takes quite a time to die that way, and it’s very unpleasant. But before—’
‘You … you! My God, if I could only get my hands on you!’ Robbie burst out, beside himself with mingled anger and terror. What Barak had said was so terribly true. Not a soul, other than those then in the room, knew about the hide-out; so, if Barak left them tied up there, before anyone found them they might have become skeletons hanging from posts in loose bundles of clothes. Their only chance, Robbie realised, lay in his being able to shout loud enough to be heard perhaps by a passer-by on the water-front. He opened his mouth to yell for help. But Alexej was too quick for him. Guessing his intention, the thug hit him a sharp blow in the stomach.
As Robbie gasped for breath, Barak nodded. ‘Good work, Alexej. I doubt if anyone would hear him, but we’ll take no chances so you’d better gag him.’
Seeing that one of Robbie’s side-pockets was bulging with something soft, Alexej put his hand into it and pulled out the very strips of stuff that Robbie had prepared for the purpose of gagging Barak. Before he could get his wind back, Alexej had forced one of them into his mouth and tied its ends behind his head.
‘Now,’ said Barak. ‘As I was about to say when you so rudely interrupted me, I owe you something extra for this.’ He gingerly fingered his broken nose. ‘Before we leave you, I mean to do some carving on your face.’
Producing a long flick-knife from his pocket, he opened it and took a step towards Robbie. Stephanie had so far remained silent, her face a picture of pain and despair. Suddenly she jumped up from the chair, seized Barak’s arm with her un-injured hand, and cried: ‘No; no! Not that. We’ve lost! I know you mean to kill us. But at least have the mercy to do it quickly.’
Snatching away his arm, Barak turned and gave her a violent push that sent her reeling back into the chair. Then he said to Alexej: ‘Get behind her. Hold her down by the shoulders if she tries to interfere again. When I’ve finished with him we’ll tie her up to the post, then we’ll go and have some supper.’
As he advanced again, Robbie began to struggle violently. The cord that bound him to the post was too strong and too tightly tied for him to have any hope of freeing himself; but the post was loose, both where it entered the floorboards and about two feet above his head, where it joined the rooftree that formed the apex of the ceiling.
Barak stood for a good minute, watching his futile struggle with amusement, then he said: ‘I think your nose first. We’ll see what you look like when I’ve slit it.’
At that moment, there was a sharp knocking on the front door of the house and a voice cried in Greek: ‘Open up! We know you’re there. We can see chinks of light round the windows.’
Alexej was standing behind Stephanie. She opened her mouth to shout. But, as he had been with Robbie, he was too quick for her. His hands shot out, gripped her round the neck and strangled her cry.
Barak said to him in a whisper: ‘Quick. Go down. Find out who it is. Get rid of them somehow—anyhow. I’ll look after her.’
With a swift, cat-like tread, Alexej ran across the room and down the stairs. Barak put away his flick-knife and took a pace towards Stephanie. Then all three of them up in the bedroom strained their ears to catch further sounds from below.
They heard Alexej wrench open the front door, then the Greek voice came loud and clear: ‘We are police officers. Mr. Robert Grenn, alias Monsieur Thévanaz, I have a warrant for your arrest in connection with the murder of Mr. Carl Cepicka.’
Robbie’s mind took in the words as though they had been printed in poster-size letters and held in front of his eyes. The police had succeeded in tracing him after all. The trail had been clearly laid from Rhodes to Crete, yet how they could have succeeded in discovering his hide-out he could not imagine. But what did that matter? Their arrival at this moment could have been decreed only by a Divine Providence.
Then an awful thought struck him. They had taken Alexej for the man they were after. Barak had told his underling to get rid of whoever it was, ‘somehow—anyhow’. The police probably had only a rough description of the wanted man and, in the uncertain light of torches down in the hall, would not get a very clear view of Alexej’s features. What if he let them believe for the moment that he was Grenn—alias Max Thévanaz—and allowed the police to march him off? Stephanie and he would again be left to Barak’s mercy.
The same thought had rushed into Stephanie’s mind. Again she made a move to cry out. Alexej had gone from behind her chair, but it was no more than three feet from Barak. His left hand shot out and grasped her throat in time to prevent her uttering a sound. With his right, he took her injured hand and crushed it in a sudden, fierce grip. What would have been a scream of pain passed his stranglehold on her windpipe only as an agonised gurgle. Her eyes rolled up and she slumped back in a dead faint.
Being gagged, Robbie could not cry out, but already he had resumed his desperate struggle to free himself from the post. Planting his feet firmly, he tensed all the muscles in his strong back and strained on it. Under the tug of his body, the top of the post was now attached to the rooftree by only a single nail. Compelled to witness Barak’s fiendish treatment of Stephanie, Robbie was seized with a frenzy of rage. He redoubled his efforts. Barak, evidently fearing that the groaning of the post against the floorboards would catch the attention of the police below, again pulled out his knife. Flicking it open, he stepped up to Robbie and said in a fierce whisper:
‘Keep still, you swine! Keep still, or I’ll stick six inches of this into your stomach.’
Robbie ignored the threat. He gave another mighty heave. The old post came away at the top. Still tied to it and with his feet still planted on the floor, he suddenly fell forward. Before Barak had time to jump out of the way, the top of the post hit him on the head. He went over backwards. Robbie came down on top of him. But Robbie’s last effort proved a minor repetition of Samson bringing down the pillars of the Temple. As the two men crashed to the floor, there came a rending round. The beam of the rooftree suddenly sagged. Great lumps of plaster began to fall, the room was filled with noise and dust. One of the lumps struck Robbie on the side of the head. Darkness descended on him, in which he saw flashing stars and whirling circles. Then he passed into oblivion.
* * * * *
When he came to, he was lying in bed and a nurse was bending over him. His wounded arm was strapped to his chest and his head ached abominably. For a few moments, he had no idea where he was or what had happened to him; so he asked the nurse in English. When she shook her head and murmured a few soothing words in Greek, memory flooded back to him. He was still very muzzy, but his thoughts flew to Stephanie and he stammered out an anxious enquiry.
The nurse had only a vague idea how her patient had received his injuries but she was positive that a girl had been brought in with him, suffering from nothing worse than shock and one hand with broken fingers, and that she was now in the women’s ward. Unutterably relieved, Robbie drank the sedative that the nurse gave him and soon afterwards fell into a deep sleep.
He was woken by the sound of cheering outside the hospital, and wondered what could be going on. It was daylight now and his thoughts turned quickly to the events of the previous night. But he had little time to ponder them, for shortly afterwards another nurse and a doctor arrived to dress his wounded arm.
The doctor told him that the cheering had been due to the news having just come through that the war crisis was over. On the orders of the President of the United States, the trapped submarine had attempted a break-out during the night. It had succeeded and the blockading Soviet warships had not endeavoured to sink her. It had been a terrible risk to take because, if the Russians had attacked her, presumably the Americans would have retaliated by launching their rockets and strategic bomber force. Once the submarine was free of ice she might, too, have sent her missiles hurtling towards Moscow before she could be sunk. Evidently, when the Russian
bluff had been called, they had had the good sense to refrain from an act which could have plunged half the world into chaos.
Robbie’s arm, the doctor told him, would probably never regain its full former strength, because muscles and ligaments in it had been badly torn; but he had been lucky that the bullet had not shattered the bone, as he might then have had to have his arm amputated. He had sustained no permanent injury but the wound was inflamed, so he must remain where he was for several days.
He sent a message to Stephanie and asked for news of her. Then he was given another draught and slept again.
It was late afternoon when he was roused by the nurse looking into his cubicle. ‘He’s awake,’ she said to someone behind her, ‘but don’t stay too long.’ She stepped aside and Mahogany Brown came in. With a grin he sat down beside Robbie’s bed, asked how he was, then said:
‘Well, we fixed them. The boys went in with the Greek security people last night and caught every group cold. You were right about their intending to put nuclear bombs down those deep holes and start a chain reaction of earthquakes. What a night and day it’s been. First scotching this Czech racket in the small hours, then the good news coming in that our sub is out again in neutral waters and heading for home.’ Robbie said how pleased he was, then asked if the police had got Barak.
‘He’s dead,’ came the prompt reply. ‘The beam you were tied to hit him on the temple. His buddy got a broken jaw as a result of resisting the police and, like you, was brought to the prison hospital. He’s only a few cubicles away.’
‘So I’m in prison,’ Robbie said.
‘Why, yes. What did you expect? The police here are holding you for Cepicka’s murder. But not to worry. I’ve already had a word with my Chief about how I met up with you, and found you were on a private venture gunning for the Czechs. When you are taken back to Athens, that will all be sorted out and you’ll be given a clean bill for having killed Cepicka during your endeavours to prevent Greece being blown off the map.’
Mayhem in Greece Page 54