by Joseph Badal
It took him a few seconds to spot Zoë, all the way on the bottom, working something loose from between several rocks. After he surfaced momentarily to fill his lungs with air, he tried to kick down to join her, but could only make it halfway before he had to retreat to the surface. While he gasped for air, Zoë swam up beside him and rolled on her back and floated like a sea otter. A sponge balanced on her belly. Drops of water on her breasts twinkled in the sunlight.
“My God,” John said. “You must have been down there almost two minutes.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” she declared. “I’m just a little out of shape. My brothers and I used to dive for sponges with my father all the time. I’ve been under water for two-and-a-half to three minutes many times.”
With that, she tossed the sponge at John, giggled, turned on her stomach, and dove again. This time he decided to just wait for her. The water was cool but comfortable. He bobbed in the sea, then turned slightly with the waves until he faced the beach and the cliffs that enclosed it. He wondered what it would be like to spend every day like this.
A sudden movement caught his eye. From his spot twenty-five yards out from the beach, he saw a flash of brilliance, like sunlight caroming off glass. The light blinded him for a moment. He could have sworn he’d seen someone—just a person’s head—near where they’d left Zoë’s rental car. He backstroked farther out from the shore until he could see the top of the car. The butterflies erupted inside him again, but this time they weren’t stirred by passion. Two men stood between Zoë’s car and a second vehicle. They appeared to look inside Zoë’s car, then they turned to the path he and Zoë had followed. Neither man seemed to have seen him yet, but John knew they wouldn’t miss him once they reached the horseshoe of cliffs that enclosed the little beach.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
John slipped beneath the surface and kicked with all his might toward the bottom. He spied Zoë rise to meet him. He grabbed her arm, pointed upward, and made a “Let your fingers do the walking” sign. She seemed to get the message and swam under water on a course parallel to the shore.
He followed her and, after thirty seconds, his lungs felt as though they would explode. John was grateful when she suddenly rose to the surface. When he broke above the surface of the sea, he gasped for breath.
Because the beach was so narrow, the short swim had taken them beyond the cliff at one edge of the beach. He had to fight with all his strength to avoid being thrown by the waves up against the rock wall.
“What is it?” Zoë asked while she treaded water.
“I saw two men by your car,” John wheezed.
“Probably tourists.”
“Maybe, maybe not, but with all that’s happened, why take chances. These guys could be trouble.” The words rapidly burst from his mouth while he tried to keep his head above water.
“What can we do? Because of the cliffs, there’s no other place to get out of the water for at least a mile in either direction.”
John looked left and right and saw she was correct. He’d expended a lot of energy and he knew he would be in real trouble if they tried to stay afloat much longer. “Look,” he said, “let’s swim to the edge of the wall and see if we can get to our things under the overhang without being seen.”
She looked where John pointed and nodded.
John churned after Zoë and made it to shore on pure adrenaline. His limbs shook from the effort. They crawled out of the water and plastered themselves against the side of the rock wall. Fortunately, the overhang shielded them from view from directly above, where the two men now apparently stood. John heard voices—Germanic voices.
They reached their clothes and dressed quickly.
John pointed upward with his index finger, as though Zoë had not already figured out where the men were. She nodded to let him know she understood.
“I think we can get out of here without them catching us,” she said in a hushed voice. “But if they have guns . . . .” She didn’t finish her thought, but only shrugged.
“What do you have in mind?” he whispered.
“I know this area well. Better than they do. From the direction of their voices, those men took the path around the top of the stone wall and are right above us. They missed the path we took down here to the beach. Once they see where we are, they’ll still have to go all the way around the other side to get to us. I think we can climb back up before they can reach us. Then all we’ll have to do is outrun them the rest of the way to the car.”
John thought her use of the words ‘All we’ll have to do . . .’ was the height of optimism. But if they stayed where they were, the men would eventually find them. “I’m ready if you are,” he said, with much more confidence than he felt.
“Let’s go then!”
She raced across the beach with John in hot pursuit.
They’d barely broken out from under the shadow of the wall when one of the men above shouted, “Achtung, Josef!”
While Zoë climbed, John looked over his shoulder and saw the men run toward the rim of the cliff, toward the base of the horseshoe. They were powerfully built, like weightlifters, but they appeared to move with a fluidity of motion that was surprising considering their bulk.
As Zoë had hoped, she and John reached the top of the wall and raced to the fork in the path before the two men could catch them. But the men moved quickly and John had doubts he and Zoë could outrun them to the car.
He again looked back over his shoulder. The men were maybe twenty yards behind. But, just when he was about to turn his head back toward the road, he saw the lead man try to rush around a large boulder, appear to lose his balance, and crash to the stone path. John heard a muffled “oomph” and then a loud string of what sounded like curses. The fallen man apparently blocked the narrow path and obstructed the way for his companion, which gave John and Zoë the few seconds they needed to run the twenty yards to their car.
Zoë jumped into the car and screamed, “Get in—quick!”
But John hesitated and then ran to the car parked behind Zoë. While she revved the engine of the Toyota and yelled at him, he pulled his Swiss Army Knife from his pants pocket and selected the punch blade. He stuck the blade into the right front tire. Air hissed from the tiny hole then abruptly stopped.
He looked back down along the path. The second man had passed his fallen comrade and sprinted toward him. Still forty yards away, he raised a pistol, pointed it at John, and fired. One shot, then two more. John ducked and scooted to the Toyota. He jumped into the front passenger seat; Zoë threw the car into gear and punched the gas. The rear wheels momentarily spun in place, shooting a spray of gravel at the Peugeot, before they caught the macadam. She negotiated a wild U-turn, tromped on the accelerator, and sent the Toyota hurtling down the road toward Vathi. The acceleration slammed John’s door shut.
While Zoë concentrated on driving, John turned and looked back. The guy with the pistol stood on the edge of the road and looked back down the path. Then the Toyota took the first curve in the road and he lost sight of the gunman.
Zoë yelled at John above the roar of the engine and the squeal of the tires, “What were you doing back there?”
“I punched a hole in one of their tires,” he yelled back.
“Didn’t do much good, did it?” she shouted, an edge of panic in her voice.
“What . . .?”
“They’re right behind us.”
“Oh shit!” John groaned. “They must have non-deflating tires.”
They careened around the switchback curves. Zoë barely kept all four wheels on the pavement; the more powerful Peugeot was now only ten yards back. While they swept in the wrong lane around another tight turn, Zoë screamed.
A small truck came at them. Zoë jerked the wheel to the right and skidded into the right lane, but the rear of the Toyota sideswiped the truck with a sickening screech o
f metal against metal.
“Sonofa—!” John shouted. He thought their options were not good—crash into a rock wall beyond the road’s shoulder or careen across the road to the other side and catapult into the sea. But Zoë gunned the engine and suddenly they once again rocketed down hill.
“Jesus,” Zoë exclaimed, “I thought they’d killed you when I heard the gunshots.”
“Now that I think about it, he may have just tried to get us to surrender. I think these guys want us alive—at least for now.”
Their pursuers had obviously made it past the truck. The Peugeot was now close behind them again, barely six feet off their rear bumper. The men had to be aware they had only a short distance to stop John and Zoë before risking crowds of witnesses—they were only a couple of miles from Vathi.
John ducked at the noise of popping sounds. Gunshots! The shots came at regular three-second intervals, as though the gunman carefully aimed his weapon. One of the bullets ricocheted off the paving and splattered into the rock wall just to John’s right.
John looked back. It was unreal to watch their pursuers from just a few yards away, like watching a movie. The driver was blond, the other dark-haired. The Peugeot seemed too small to hold their bulk. Their expressions were grim, determined. They had the square-jawed, crew cut appearance of paramilitary types.
He started to turn back to the front, when he saw something on the car floor between the seats. “What’s this tin can back here?” he yelled as he felt the heft of the metal container.
“It’s olive oil,” Zoë screamed. She sounded as though she thought he had lost his mind asking about the container.
John grabbed the large can, placed it on his lap, and hit the button for the sunroof. He twisted into a kneeling position on his seat, unscrewed the cap on the tin, and then shoved himself up head and shoulders through the open roof of the car. He balanced precariously while Zoë took the curves in the road at speed, raised the tin above his head, and began to shake out the olive oil. The slipstream carried the liquid back and splashed it against the Peugeot’s hood and windshield. John’s hands, arms, and face became slick with oil. He saw the Peugeot’s windshield wipers make several rapid swipes, which only smeared the yellow liquid over the glass.
The driver and passenger stuck their heads out their windows. John raised tossed the half-full tin above his head and tossed it at the Peugeot. It smashed into the windshield and the glass spider-webbed.
The shriek of brakes and rubber against macadam seemed deafening. The Peugeot skidded to a halt at the very edge of the cliff above the sea. One front wheel hung over the precipice.
John dropped back into his seat and yelled at Zoë to slow down. She didn’t respond. Her concentration on the road ahead was complete. He placed a hand over one of hers on the steering wheel. “Zoë,” he said, “everything’s all right. You can slow down now.”
She peered into the rearview mirror and then back at the road ahead.
“We’re okay,” John said. “Pull over.”
Half-a-mile further down the road, she found a spot where the shoulder was wide enough and pulled over. Zoë leaned toward John and burrowed into his shoulder. He could feel her shake. He said over and over that everything was all right, and, after a couple of minutes, she calmed down.
John put a hand under her chin, lifted her face so he could see her eyes, and then kissed her forehead.
“When I see your mother,” John told her, “I’ll give her the biggest hug she’s ever had. Magic olive oil, that’s what it is. It saved our lives.”
Zoë laughed. Then her laughter became a little hysterical. And, finally, it turned to sobs. While John held her, he noticed a small golden shrine by the roadside about forty feet away. He knew that Greek families placed these shrines near the spots where loved ones had died in automobile accidents. Because of the Greeks’ devil-may-care driving style, these shrines had popped up all over the country. He stared at that memorial. How close we came on this winding road to earning one of our own, he thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Hans tried to keep his hands steady while he dialed the Zurich telephone number. Even when he had good news to deliver, there was something about the banker, Fritz Leidner, that made him feel as though he was in a fog-shrouded graveyard at night, pursued by a pack of Rottweilers. The fact that he worked for that psychopathic bitch, Theo Burger, but clandestinely fed information to Leidner, only made him more nervous. God forbid Burger discovered his duplicity. He breathed deeply and thought, Today I have some good news and some bad news.
“Was!”
Hans’s voice broke as he said, “Mein Herr.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Mein Herr, we have found the man. An American.”
“And the map?” Leidner blurted. “What about the map?”
Hans breathed out slowly. “We believe he had it. We searched his room. It wasn’t there. We know he met with a police inspector the night . . . of the fisherman’s death. If he had the map, he probably gave it to a cop.”
“What do you mean, ‘probably?’ You don’t know?”
Hans decided it would not be a good idea to tell Leidner he and Josef had attacked Hammond in the Soula Hotel and nearly killed. This assignment had been botched since it started. Hans felt a visceral hatred toward the American. It was Hammond, he thought, who had caused him to look so bad to his employers. He would make the man pay. “He’s in the company of a police inspector and the fisherman’s daughter. We’re working on it.”
Leidner didn’t respond at first. Hans could hear the man tap on something on the other end of the line, as though he banged a pen against the telephone mouthpiece. Finally Leidner spoke, a timbre to his voice that made him seem to growl. “What is this American’s name?”
“Hammond. John Hammond.”
“Who is he?”
“Just a tourist, we think. He must have been on his way to his hotel when he ran into Vangelos.”
“Huh!” Leidner snorted. “That is Mr. Hammond’s bad luck.” Then his voice turned calm. “No witnesses, Hans.” Pause. “And I want that map!”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Christo’s arms windmilled as he shouted, “That’s it! That’s the last time you two will be without protection until I find out what the hell is going on and find the bastards behind these attacks.”
Within minutes of John and Zoë’s arrival at the police station in Vathi, Christo had dispatched a patrol car to look for the Peugeot and its occupants. Soon a police officer poked his head into the office. John picked up enough of the officer’s rapid-fire verbal report to learn that another officer had just radioed in about an abandoned Peugeot.
Christo cursed. “Tell him to check the car’s registration and call it in. Then I want you to call Customs and every hotel on the island and see if you can come up with information about these men. And send all available officers to search the area around the abandoned car.” Christo paused, then added, “I want every man on Samos with a German passport questioned.”
But the two men who had chased them might already be off the island, John thought.
John had recognized the men during the car chase. They were the same ones who’d put him in the hospital. Probably the ones who’d killed Petros. But how had they located Zoë and him at that secluded beach? And when would they show up again?
He also thought about their upcoming dive. How could they accurately pinpoint the location of the fourth circle on Petros’ map? Then he had an idea. He asked Christo if he would call his contact at the military base near Pythagorio and see if the Army had a very special piece of equipment.
“You don’t want much, do you?” Christo said in response.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be careful with it, assuming the Army will lend it to you.”
That night, Christo put John and Zoë in a hotel on Gagou Beach, just outside of Vathi. He stationed cop
s at the entrance to the hotel’s two hundred-yard-long driveway and on the beach behind the hotel. Because the police contingent on Samos was small, he called on the Army for two soldiers to guard the lobby and two more outside the hotel’s rear exit.
John slipped into Zoë’s room shortly after they checked in. Like two spoons, they nestled together that night and drew comfort from one another. In the first light of dawn, John opened his eyes and quietly got out of bed. He looked down at Zoë and felt his breath catch in his chest. He realized that she already meant more to him than any other woman ever had.
Christo came to the hotel at 7:00 that morning and drove them to the dock in Vathi. Zoë pointed out her brother’s boat. “That’s the Penelope, at the end of the dock.”
A man stood on the dock next to a large fishing boat. It was the man John had seen on the seawall below the Vangelos home more than a week earlier. It seemed like an eternity had passed since then. Zoë ran toward the man, while John remained at the car with Christo.
“Nice lady, nice family,” Christo said with no inflection.
Zoë brought her brother over to them and made the introductions.
Nicolaos Vangelos made a special point to thank John for being with his father at the end. His English was almost as good as Zoë’s and Christo’s, but John’s Greek was coming back. He replied in Greek, giving Zoë’s brother his condolences on the loss of his father.
In English, Nicolaos again thanked John and told him to call him Nick.
John wondered, though, if Zoë’s brother would be so gracious if he knew he’d become his sister’s lover.
The owner of the dive shop arrived in a van. He unloaded the equipment Zoë had ordered and helped Nick carry it aboard the Penelope. John started to walk over to help, but Christo signaled him to hold back.
“You see that man over by the Customs Office?” Christo said.