by Joseph Badal
She gave him a tired, but warm smile and walked off.
Christo found John in Zoë’s room. “How is she?” he whispered.
“Sedated,” John said. “She’ll be out for a long time. You don’t have to whisper. She’s so drugged you couldn’t wake her if you shouted.”
This was the first chance John had to talk with Christo since the explosions in Pythagoria Harbor. “How much damage was done by the explosions in town?” he asked.
Christo thanked God, and then explained they had cleared all the buildings prior to the time that Leidner was expected to rendezvous with John on the Penelope. They hadn’t wanted to take the chance that stray gunfire might injure someone. “Your meeting with Leidner was supposed to happen too damn close to shore for comfort. There were no civilian casualties, but we lost eight sailors and five policemen.” He clenched his fists and looked out the window in Zoë’s room. John could see the anger Christo felt. “If I get my hands on that Swiss bastard . . . .”
After a moment Christo calmed enough to tell John that an entire block of buildings across from the quay had been destroyed.
“You know, Leidner must have more people on Samos,” John said.
Christo just nodded.
“Well, let’s go into town,” Christo finally said. “We can get something to eat. We’ll pick up Nick at the hotel. He just called the Vathi police station. They relayed the message that he’ll meet us in town. He said he wants to talk to us.”
“I don’t know,” John said. “I shouldn’t leave . . . .”
Christo walked forward and laid a hand on John’s shoulder. “Come on, my friend. There’s nothing you can do for her now. We’ll return later; maybe she’ll be awake then.”
John blew out a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, trying to inject some enthusiasm in his voice, despite feeling as low as he’d ever felt. “I can’t do anything for Zoë as long as she’s drugged up, I guess.” Then he brightened a bit. “Did Nick say anything about the Sabiya?”
“Not a thing. The message I got just said he wanted to meet us. No explanation.”
“Nick is crazy enough over Zoë’s kidnapping,” John said on the drive to town. “When he finds out Zoë was raped, he’ll be uncontrollable.”
“And you, John?” Christo asked. “How controlled are you?”
He took some time to think about his answer. “The difference between Nick and me is pretty basic,” John said. “He’ll seek revenge and will do so with passion. And when the job is done he’ll feel fulfilled—no self-recrimination, no remorse. The act of revenge would actually be cathartic for him. With me it would be different. If I get the chance, I’ll make Leidner suffer. But I’ll be left with no feeling of fulfillment. I’ll have performed an unrewarding task that’ll leave me with nothing but a hollow feeling. I don’t come from a culture grounded in revenge. I can seek revenge when I think it’s the only alternative, but I don’t believe I can feel good about it. Does that make sense to you?”
“Yes, but I don’t like any of it. Let me handle the revenge business. You concentrate on helping Zoë get well.”
John tried to control his anger, but he was only partially successful. “How the hell will you handle anything? You’ve lost most of your policemen. When will the idiots in Athens send in reinforcements?”
Christo turned scarlet. He remained silent for a while, but finally said, “They’ll be here tomorrow.”
“What changed?” John said.
Still red-faced, Christo said, “An Internal Affairs Investigator somehow learned about phone calls made to Zurich by the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Public Affairs, Dimitris Kostamaris. With all that’s gone on here on Samos—the Swiss connection and all that—the investigator checked on the phone number in Zurich. It was the number for Banque Securite de Swisse. Leidner’s bank. The Deputy Minister has apparently been on Leidner’s payroll for years.”
More to himself than to Christo, John wondered aloud, “How the hell did an investigator even think to check phone records of the Deputy Minister?”
Christo smiled at John. “The investigator is married to my little sister. I called him the other day and asked him to check on Kostamaris. I couldn’t understand why he denied me the reinforcements I’d requested.”
John gave Christo a toothy grin, but his expression changed after a few seconds. “I heard what you said about revenge. You’re right, of course. But, if I find myself alone with Leidner or any of his men, I can’t promise that the first thing I’ll do is call you.”
They pulled up to the front of the hotel. “Then let’s hope you don’t find yourself alone with him or any of his men,” Christo said.
“Let’s hope,” John echoed, not convincingly.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Nick paced the hotel lobby in Pythagorio where the police command post had been established. Like an expectant father in an obstetrics ward, he criss-crossed the ceramic tile floor. Worry showed in the set of his jaw, in the way he held his head and shoulders. When he saw John and Christo come in, he rushed over.
Nick grabbed the inspector by the arms. “Christo, one of your men told me Zoë’s in the hospital. How is she? How’s my sister?”
“She’s fine. She’s resting,” Christo answered. “She was sound asleep when we left.” It was the truth, but not the whole truth—and Nick seemed to know it.
“If she’s fine, why is she still in the hospital?”
John came to Christo’s rescue. “Nick, the men who took your sister beat her up. She has cuts and bruises and a few cracked ribs; but, thank God, there are no internal injuries. The doctors have her heavily sedated, so she feels little or no pain. They just want to keep her in the hospital for observation for a day or two.”
Nick hugged Christo. “Thank you for rescuing her,” he said.
Christo grimaced. “It wasn’t me who rescued Zoë. I failed her again. John saved her.”
Nick released his hold on Christo and turned to face John. He gathered himself to his full height; his posture suddenly turned formal. He almost stood at attention. “You have a habit of aiding people I love.” He embraced John, the way a brother would hug a brother.
John coughed his embarrassment; his face reddened. He patted Nick on the back several times until he stepped back. There were tears in the man’s eyes.
Nick took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped his eyes. “I want to go see her. How do I get onto the Army base?”
“Nick,” Christo said. “She’s asleep now. Heavily sedated. Why not wait until later, after the drugs have worn off? She won’t even know you are there for at least several hours. Let’s have dinner. I can escort you to the base later.”
Nick seemed satisfied with Christo’s suggestion. He let out a giant sigh. Like him, John suspected, Nick struggled to remain calm on the surface, while deep down his insides churned with hate and a need for retribution.
They found a taverna along the quay and took a table near the front. They ordered beers and, after they finished two each, told the waiter to bring them a bottle of wine. The alcohol seemed to take the edge off John’s anger and hunger for revenge against Leidner. He didn’t realize how exhausted he was and welcomed the relief the beer and wine brought him. They had just ordered meals when John noticed a cruise ship slowly peek around a headland and move toward the harbor. Nick spied the giant ship a moment after John did and voiced a crude curse involving the Virgin Mary.
Christo scolded Nick. “Remember, my friend, without those tourists you wouldn’t be able to sell as many fish as you do.”
“I know, but sometimes—”
Christo cut him off. “I’ll bet you had no problem with these ships when we were younger. You probably entertained many young European women who came to the Greek Islands to get their annual dose of sun and a little romance.”
Nick rewarded them with a guilty
smile. John felt glad to finally see him relax a little. Up to that moment he’d been so tense it had appeared he might explode. John wanted to ask Nick whether he’d found anything on his dive. He wanted to barge ahead—take care of business. But he somehow resisted the urge. He took it as a bad sign that Nick hadn’t already volunteered any information about his day. The dive had apparently been a bust.
Christo ordered another bottle of Samian wine and then another after that one. John now felt lightheaded and he could see that Nick and Christo, who had each consumed twice as much as he had, were seemingly without inhibition. The alcohol had loosened them up. They regaled him with stories of one youthful adventure after another. Without ever leaving Greece, Nick, in particular, had vicariously traveled the world through young female tourists. He spoke of each romantic experience with reverence and respect, rather than salaciousness. Not until their meals were served did Nick change the subject. And he did it in a way that belied any indication he had consumed a large amount of alcohol. He sounded completely sober.
“I guess you both would like to hear about my day,” he said, a forlorn look on his face. He looked first at John, then at Christo.
“Absolutely!” John said.
“Asfalose!” Christo added.
“After Christo and I left the Penelope,” Nick said, with little expression on his face, “after our little dynamite sabotage mission, I followed your instructions. I went to the dock and picked up the boat you hired—the Aphrodite. All of the supplies and dive equipment were on board, just as you said they would be. I called a couple of my father’s old friends who used to have a fishing boat together and asked them to join me. I figured I would need someone to help with the dive gear and to keep a lookout while I was underwater. I told them I wanted to do dive, but didn’t mention anything about a sunken boat.”
Nick spoke in a slow, deliberate manner. He showed no enthusiasm. John wanted to tell him to cut out all the detail and get to the bottom line, but he controlled his impatience and let Nick carry on with his story.
“Once I arrived at the general area you had marked on the map, it took me an hour to recall how to work the range finder. Then it took me even longer to pinpoint the exact spot. The water in that area is deeper than where you and Zoë dived near Pythagorio, but still shallow enough to use scuba equipment.”
“How deep?” John asked.
“About thirty meters. Any deeper and I wouldn’t have felt comfortable with the gear I used. Anyway, at first I descended about ten meters to the top of a coral formation that forms a reef that runs parallel to the shoreline. I inspected the length of the reef twice. I have to tell you I was plenty disappointed by the time I finished there. I found no sign of any boat having gone down near there.” Nick stared directly at John. “I must have cursed you out a dozen times for putting me up to such a waste of my time.”
John felt a terrible letdown. It seemed Nick was taking an awfully long time to relate a story of failure.
“Then I saw a stretch of lava flow. It appeared to extend all the way to the shoreline in one direction and for another mile out to sea in the other direction—like a bumpy blacktopped road that ran away from the shore.” He paused and then said, “I didn’t see a sunken boat. No debris, no nothing. By this time, I was very low on air.”
Christo looked disappointed and exclaimed, “Scata!” which expressed John’s sentiments exactly.
Nick raised both hands as a signal to let him continue.
“I then dropped to just above the top of the lava bed and explored both sides of the formation. On one side the lava had frozen into a sort of rolling mass about ten meters high. The other side was a different story. The lava had apparently flowed in a way that caused it to form a sort of cavern all along that side. Sand had piled up along the side of the lava flow. Where I first saw it, there was a two meter-high opening at the top of the flow. I swam through the opening and moved along the side of the lava formation, going further from shore. It appeared that the opening in the lava grew larger the farther from shore I swam. I have to tell you it was pitch dark in there. Thank God I had a flashlight.
“I swam for about five minutes, and the opening gradually grew to almost twenty meters high and at least ninety meters wide, but it was clogged with sand. It resembled an amphitheater in there, a giant, wide-mouthed underwater cave. The sand had accumulated across the mouth of the cave and obscured most of the opening, except for a gap at the top.”
He paused and met each man’s gaze. “The cavern was big enough to hide a pretty good-sized boat,” he continued.
Nick paused again. “In fact, that’s exactly what I found inside that giant cave—a pretty good-sized boat. A ship, really.”
Nick laughed at the surprised looks on their faces, and the more questions they asked and the more excited they became, the more he laughed. Soon, tears flowed down his cheeks and he held his sides in pain.
John reached over the table and slapped Nick on the shoulder. “You’re a sonofabitch,” he said. “You couldn’t have told us at the beginning that you’d found a boat. You had to drag it out and make us suffer.”
“Oh, but it was worth it,” Nick roared. He slapped the tabletop and inadvertently knocked over bottles and glasses. “The looks on your faces are priceless.”
“Did you see a name on the boat?” Christo asked.
“I couldn’t find a name anywhere on the hull,” Nick said. “But I did find a life preserver still attached to the ship’s rail. Some of the letters had worn away, but I could read a few of them.”
He paused again, asked Christo for a pen. John wanted to shake the name out of Nick. Nick wrote several letters on a paper napkin. When he’d finished, he turned the napkin so they could see what he’d written: _ab_ya.
“I’ll be damned!” John exclaimed. “You found it! You found the Sabiya.”
Nick beamed. “Yes, and I found something else. He fished around in his pants pocket and came up with what looked like a military ID—a “dog tag.” It hung on the end of a chain. “I found this wrapped around a piece of jagged metal on the bulkhead. It’s an old Greek Army name tag.” He placed it on the table so John and Christo could read the printing stamped into the one-inch long piece of metal: PETROS VANGELOS.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
When John, Nick, and Christo entered the wing of private rooms at the military hospital, they ran into Dr. Stavrogianni in the hall outside Zoë’s room.
“How is she, Doctor?” John asked. “Any improvement?”
She hesitated. When John realized she might be uncomfortable talking in front of two strangers, he introduced Nick and Christo to her.
“We confirmed with x-rays that she has no broken bones, other than three ribs, and no internal injuries,” the doctor said. “We gave her antibiotics to reduce the possibility of infection and a less powerful sedative to help her sleep. But it’s the dullness in her eyes, her lethargy that worries me.”
Nick didn’t wait to hear more. He barged into Zoë’s room. John followed him to Zoë’s bedside.
She was awake but showed no sign she recognized either of them.
“Kookla mou,” Nick said. “Eesay endoxie?” Zoë didn’t respond, except to roll over and turn away from them. John guessed that, like himself, Nick had noticed that Zoë’s eyes lacked sparkle and that her usual smile was absent. No, she wasn’t okay. “Must be the sedatives,” Nick said.
John knew better.
They tried for an hour to engage Zoë in conversation, with no success. They finally left her in the care of the medical staff and solemnly drove back to Pythagorio. Their visit to the hospital had definitely taken the edge off their excitement around Nick’s discovery of the Sabiya. Halfway to Pythagorio, Christo said, “I’ve had no news about Leidner or his people. Whoever was on that speedboat yesterday, got away clean. I had the entire southern coast of the island searched, but there was no sig
n of him or the speedboat. He may have gone to another island. He could be almost anywhere within a hundred kilometers, or more.”
“Did anyone notice how many people were on the speedboat?” John asked.
“Two,” Christo said. “But we never got close enough to get descriptions.”
“Bad luck,” Nick said, almost to himself. He seemed to only half- listen to their conversation. John assumed his mind was still on Zoë.
“Well, let’s go get the Aphrodite and dive the wreck,” John suggested. “We’ve got to find whatever it is on the Sabiya that has turned Leidner into a killer.”
“I’d love to get my hands on that sonofabitch,” Christo said. “What bothers me is we have no evidence he’s the one behind all this mayhem, other than the admissions of a couple killers who are now dead. This guy Leidner is mighty careful.”
This seemed to pull Nick away from his thoughts. He turned in his seat next to Christo, looked at John in the back seat. “The Aphrodite and all that equipment has got to cost a fortune. Why don’t we return it and use the Penelope?”
“I guess I forgot to tell you about the Penelope,” John said. “You remember those explosives you helped me plant on her?”
CHAPTER SIXTY
Leidner stalked the yacht deck and screamed curses at John Hammond, Petros Vangelos, and Zoë Vangelos. Even his own father, Friederich, and the Sabiya’s captain, Mehmet Arkoun, dead for over seven decades, didn’t escape his wrath. He was as angry as he’d ever been. But he was also scared. Nothing had worked out the way he’d wanted. He shot Theo a vicious, teeth-bared look and shouted, “An old fisherman, his professor daughter, and an American tourist have defeated you and four of your well-trained assassins.” He said “well trained” as though they were dirty words. “What other surprises do you have for me?”
Theo visibly swallowed, shook her head, but said nothing.