by Joseph Badal
It was after he was awakened again by the dream that he thought he heard something. The steady, heavy beat of rain hammered on the deck. But that wasn’t it. A motor. In his half-sleep state, the sound didn’t really register until it stopped. The sudden silence alarmed him. He was already on his feet when he heard a thud and felt a slight jolt that could have meant another boat had bumped against the Penelope’s hull. He shook Nick, but in his sodden condition Nick was good for nothing more than ballast. John pulled on a pair of shorts and a tee shirt, and slipped into his deck shoes.
He crept up the ladder to the main deck. When he reached the top step, he heard a grunt of exertion from the starboard side of the boat, near the bow and the anchor chain. Someone had boarded the Penelope.
He’d left Christo’s pistol under his bunk—still in the bag the inspector had handed to him back on the Vathi dock. The shortest distance to a weapon was up eight more steps to the wheelhouse, where the policeman had collapsed earlier. Zantsos might still be incapacitated from seasickness, but he had a pistol and an automatic rifle. The rain had already drenched John as he stepped on the first rung of the ladder up to the wheelhouse. But he only reached the fourth step before a flashlight beam froze him. He looked back over his shoulder.
In a growling whisper, a man ordered him to come back down to the main deck. The voice sounded German—or maybe Swiss, if Christo’s information was correct—and he spoke with the authority that comes with being armed. John backed down the steps and slowly turned to face him.
“So, Herr Hammond, we have been after you for a while, no?” he rasped and aimed the flashlight at John’s eyes. Because of the light, John couldn’t see more than the outline of the man’s shape. A second man, off to his left, scrambled over the side of the Penelope. He limped to stand beside the man with the flashlight and whispered, “Sehr gute, Hans.”
The man with the light quietly answered, “Ja, Josef, wir haben unser fisch.” They both laughed and then one said something else in German to the other, who walked with a pronounced limp toward the captain’s quarters at the stern, where Zoë slept.
“Mr. Hammond, I think you should relax,” Hans said. “I would not want to shoot you before we have a little talk.” He let the light fall slightly away, and when John’s eyes adjusted he could see the man held a pistol in his right hand, aimed at John’s chest.
John strained to detect any sounds from the stern. Occasionally, he saw the beam of a second flashlight sweep over the breadth of the deck. When Josef returned, he looked at Hans and said, “Niemand!”
No one! John thought. Where the hell was Zoë? The two men seemed confused, as though they’d expected to find Zoë on board. Josef, the one who’d searched the bow, now appeared agitated. He swung his arms around and raised his voice.
“Shut up!” the one named Hans hissed back at Josef.
Josef stormed away and went below deck to the crew’s cabin. John heard him shout and assumed he’d discovered Nick. John guessed Josef would have no more success than he had earlier in getting Nick out of the rack. Josef came back up to the main deck and said, “Ein mann unter der deck ist betrunkentot.”
John had trouble following the brief conversations between the two men. He understood just enough German to know that Josef had found Nick passed out below, but why hadn’t he found Zoë?
Then Hans climbed up to the wheelhouse. Josef now held a pistol trained on John’s chest. Hans was about to enter the wheelhouse when a gunshot shattered the night. It sounded like a thunderclap. John flinched and ducked. A spray of liquid showered onto him. Josef raised the beam of his flashlight toward the wheelhouse.
With the flashlight beam off him, John dove headfirst down the short staircase that led below deck. The sound of a gunshot roared behind him. He heard the crash of a bullet as it struck the bulkhead. Then something heavy slammed into the deck. Then another shot sounded.
John lunged through the small cabin—even the gunfire hadn’t awakened the besotted Nick—and reached under his bunk. He opened Christo’s bag and grabbed the 9mm, released the safety, chambered a round. Then he carefully climbed back up the steps. A body blocked the hatchway. It was the one named Hans, with a gaping hole in his head. He’d just managed to shove the body aside with one hand when Josef slammed his flashlight down on John’s gun hand. The pistol clattered down the stairs and skittered out of reach.
“All right, asshole,” Josef screamed. “Come out on this deck. I have had enough of your games. I want that map you took from the old Greek or I will shoot you in places that will not kill you, but will make you wish you were dead.”
John did as ordered. He stared at the armed man and said, “What map?”
The man stepped forward, grinned, and then shot out a fist. The blow landed square in the middle of John’s chest and knocked him to the deck.
John felt as though he’d been hit with a baseball bat. He wheezed while he tried to get air back into his lungs.
The armed man gripped John’s shirt and tugged him up off the deck. He poked his pistol painfully into John’s stomach while he pulled John to him. “Listen to me, you dumbass. You have three seconds to show me the map or I will kill you and your drunken friend below.”
Eye to eye with the man, John had no doubt the man meant what he said.
Angling for time, for an opening to escape, he told him the map was in the wheelhouse. The man waved his pistol in the direction of the wheelhouse ladder.
John’s foot slipped on the rain-slick surface of the ladder’s first step. The slip earned John a painful poke in the back. As he climbed, Josef jabbed his pistol into his butt. John tried to put the sequence of shots together. The first shot must have killed Hans. But who had fired it—Zoë, Zantsos? Josef had fired the second shot at him—the one that embedded itself in the bulkhead. So who had fired the third shot? Zantsos’s limp body just outside the wheelhouse door answered his question. Zantsos must have shot Hans. Then Josef shot the young policeman.
Other than Nick passed out on the lower deck, Josef must have been convinced John was now the only person on the Penelope. Josef’s concentration centered on John and John knew that once Josef had his hands on the map, Nick and he would be dead.
As soon as they entered the wheelhouse Josef saw the map and Zoë’s notes and calculations on the navigation counter. He shoved John roughly toward a corner. John lost his balance and fell. Josef ordered him to roll over and lie on his belly. Now apparently satisfied John was no threat, he shined his flashlight on the map.
Out of the corner of his eye, John watched him scan the document, then exclaim, “Endlich! Finally I have what we were sent to get.” Josef tapped the map with the muzzle of his pistol, then turned to look at John. The killer was framed in the wheelhouse door; the eerie light from the flashlight filled the tiny room with a mournful glow. Josef looked ecstatic. John had not the slightest doubt he was about to die.
Josef smiled and said in a dead calm voice, “Gehen sie zum teufel. Now you die.” He aimed the pistol at John’s head.
John’s concentration on the bore of the gun barrel almost made his eyes cross. The pistol bore looked huge. He could think of nothing else to say but “Fuck you!”
Josef laughed and resteadied his aim. Then John heard him cough and groan—almost as though he’d had the wind knocked out of him. Josef lurched forward, dropped the flashlight, and then reached up behind his back with his left arm as though to scratch an itch between his shoulder blades. His gun hand dropped, though he still gripped the pistol.
He began to turn slowly toward the wheelhouse door, all the while futilely trying to reach that spot on his back. John got up from the floor and took two quick steps towards the man, who stumbled directly into the beam of the fallen flashlight. A metal rod protruded from his back.
John grabbed the gun from Josef’s hand when the killer awkwardly turned to face him. A large, barbed spear point s
tuck out from his chest.
Josef lowered his gaze. An incredulous look came over his face, his eyes wide, mouth agape. Then he collapsed to the deck.
John heard movement outside the open wheelhouse and pointed the pistol.
Zoë’s head cleared the top of the steps and then she stood outside the doorway—dripping-wet in T-shirt and bikini underpants. The rain partially obscured her. He saw she gripped an empty spear gun in one hand as she walked toward him.
Zoë looked twenty years younger than she was—like a waif caught in a rainstorm. Her eyes were open wide with wonder—and what might be fear. Rain fell off her head and streamed down her face. Her hair was plastered to her skull and clung to the sides of her face. John moved to her and gently removed the weapon from her hand and dropped it to the deck. They embraced. Her body shivered against his. Tears rolled down her cheeks. But, at the same time, there was a determined look in her eyes. Her lips were compressed in an angry line. They stood in each other’s arms for a moment, then Zoë pushed away and stepped inside the wheelhouse. She lit two battery powered lanterns that hung from hooks in the ceiling. John knelt beside Zantsos and rolled him over on his back. The cop’s shirt was drenched in blood. His blood, now diluted by rain, had pooled around him, and John could see an entry wound over his heart. Zantsos’s eyes were open in a fixed, unseeing stare. John stood and entered the wheelhouse.
Josef was still alive, his breathing was shallow and erratic, his eyes glazed over with pain. In a hoarse whisper he said, “Take it out!”
The spear had entered his back near his left kidney and must have punctured one of his lungs on the way through his chest. There was very little bleeding except around the exit wound. John told Josef he would extract the spear on the condition he answered a few questions. The man grunted.
“Why did you kill Petros Vangelos?”
In a pain-filled voice, he said, “Hans and I . . . sent to Greece . . . to find . . . what the old man knew about . . . Sabiya. When we ve found that out . . . we had orders . . . kill him. Please . . . take it out.”
John ignored his plea. “Who’s Sabiya?”
“Cargo boat . . . chartered to Leidner…Fritz Leidner. Sank in storm off Samos . . . 1945. Vangelos . . . found boat. Contacted Turk . . . Maritime Office . . . salvage rights.”
John could tell from Josef’s weakening speech that the man was fading fast.
“Who’s Leidner?”
“Rich . . . powerful man,” Josef said. “Will never quit . . . until he finds the Sabiya.”
“Why is this boat so important?”
“Don’t know,” he gasped. It took a minute for him to finish answering. “Whatever is on . . . that boat, Leidner . . . .”
Every word he spoke was etched with pain and his voice became ever more strained, his breathing more labored.
“How did you track us down?” John asked.
Despite the pain, the murderer looked at him and leered as best he could. His lips curled up, then a trickle of blood flowed from a corner of his mouth. “Your credit card . . . the dive shop. The shop owner . . . told us he was . . . delivering equipment . . . . We watched you . . . followed you along the coast.”
The gaps between words had become even longer. Each time he coughed, more blood oozed from his mouth. Then, unexpectedly, his voice took on strength. “I curse the day I met Fritz Leidner,” he said—and then he died.
As he’d promised, John pulled the spear from the body. Torrents of blood spilled from the now-open wounds in Josef’s chest and back.
A sound outside the wheelhouse caught John’s attention. Josef’s pistol in hand, he pushed Zoë behind him and stepped through the door. The rain had stopped and the moon peeked from behind dark clouds. Nick was sprawled on the main deck, apparently having tripped over Hans’s body. He muttered something and then moaned. When he saw John stare down at him, he yelled, “What the hell happened? There’s a dead man on my boat!”
Zoë then stepped from behind John and Nick saw her in the glare of moonlight. “Look at you,” he said, his words slurred. “Dressed in your underwear!” Then he looked back at John and said, “My God, John, is that blood on you?”
Nick had slept through all the action and didn’t have a scratch on him—or a clue about what had happened.
Zoë stood with her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes. She opened her mouth as though to say something to her brother, but just turned and walked away.
Nick looked at John and shrugged, as though he couldn’t understand his sister’s reaction. Then he ran over to the boat’s rail, and threw up into the sea.
While Zoë went below to get dressed, John used Zantsos’s radio to call the Vathi police station. The officer on duty took his name and promised to call Inspector Panagoulakos at his home. Ten minutes later, just before 5:00 a.m., the radio squawked and Christo’s voice broke the quiet that had once again settled over them. John quickly briefed him. Christo said he would get out to the Penelope as fast as he could.
When Zoë returned, the three of them walked to the stern—as far from the bodies as possible. John looked at Zoë. “I was scared to death when one of the killer’s went back here. I thought he would find you for sure. Where were you?”
“Underwater,” Zoë said.
“What do you mean underwater?” Nick asked. “How long could you have been underwater?”
John knew the answer to that question before Zoë responded.
“When I heard the boat motor, then strange voices, I sneaked out of my cabin and came up to the main deck. The door here opens aft—no one forward on the boat could see me. I crept toward the bow until I saw a man aim a pistol at John. I know enough German to understand that the man with the gun had ordered the other one to search the boat. There was no place aboard I could hide, so I slipped over the side and dived deep enough to clear the keel. It took about a minute-and-a-half to reach the other side of the Penelope and to find the boat the two men came in.”
It was too dark to see the expression on Nick’s face, but John detected admiration in the tone of his voice. “Let me get this straight. You swam under the Penelope in the pitch-black water and—while still underwater—found the killers’ boat?”
“Akrivo!” she replied. “Exactly!” she added in English.
“Katapliktiko!” That’s amazing! he said, while he turned to face the deck lights.
John now saw wonder on Nick’s face. “What happened next?” he said. “Did you hear the shots that killed Zantsos and the guy named Hans?”
“The shots must have occurred while I swam under the boat. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d heard them.” She wrapped her arms around herself as though suddenly chilled. “When I surfaced next to the killers’ boat, I heard one of them order John to climb the steps to the wheelhouse. He sounded very angry. So I shinnied up the anchor line and dropped over the rail onto the deck. I crouched down and walked around to the bottom of the steps, and that’s when I remembered we’d stored the scuba gear along the bulkhead there. The speargun and a rack of four spears lay right on top of the rest of the stuff. I almost tripped on the body at the foot of the steps, but managed to step over him instead. I went up the ladder as quietly as I could, until I could aim the speargun at the wheelhouse doorway. I heard the man say he was going to kill John. He had his back toward me. I fired.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Christo arrived with the sunrise. The three bodies rested where they’d fallen. The sun illuminated the Penelope’s bloodstained decks, accentuating the gory details of death.
Christo brought three policemen with him, along with a man from the Greek Coast Guard Office of Investigation. All of the policemen seemed to seethe with anger about Zantsos’s murder. The inspector ordered one of the cops to get headquarters in Athens on the phone. John pieced together enough of the conversation to determine that Christo had asked his sup
eriors in Athens for reinforcements. After he terminated the phone call, Christo broke off from the other policemen and joined John, Zoë, and Nick.
Christo’s skin color was paler than usual and he looked as though he’d aged ten years since he’d come aboard the Penelope. He sighed deeply when he took a seat.
“I’m sorry about Zantsos,” John said. “He was very brave.”
Christo nodded and said in a subdued voice, “That poor young man. One more wife I have to bring bad news to.” Then he looked at Zoë and Nick. “I’ve got more bad news,” he said.
Nick gave a nervous laugh. “What else? Isn’t this enough?” He swung an arm in an arc, taking in the Penelope’s deck.
Christo’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He looked first at Zoë, then at Nick. “It’s your mother. She’s . . . .”
Nick’s face went crimson. Zoë’s hands came together and pressed against her chest; her chin trembled. Neither one said a word. They just stared at Christo and waited for him to finish.
“She’s in the hospital. Her heart. Nick, your wife found her at home late last night and resuscitated her. But she’s in bad shape.”
Nick finally found his voice as tears streamed down his face. “She’s had heart problems for years. Papa’s death must have been too much for her after all.”
Christo looked over at John, then turned back to Nick. “She’d been attacked, Nick. Someone tied her up and took a knife to her face.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Fritz Leidner prided himself on his self-control. He could instill fear, even terror in others with a mere firming of his mouth and a glare. But there was so much at stake. His reputation, his wealth were at risk. He had to find the Sabiya before anyone else did. His screams echoed off the boardroom walls. As he paced the length of the room, he paused to stare out at the city of Zurich—his power base—and then walked back across the carpeted floor and glared at the woman.