by Gar Wilson
The bus from Cheyenne stopped at the covered walkway to the sparkling white ship with Greek markings.
Katz made one last low pass. He saw the ship's name. The Odyssey. That was all he needed. He headed out to sea with every eye on the wharf watching him and the other two aircraft.
They flew twenty feet above the water in an attempt to keep from being detected by radar.
Once he accepted that his feet were not going to drop into the surf, Calvin took on a new worry. "Now what, Katz? We're going to have MiGs on our tails any minute."
"We need a boat," Katz said.
"What kind of boat?"
"Anything as long as it's within swimming distance from where we dunk these things."
"And precisely where are we going to do that?"
"Some place before we run out of gas."
Accomplished frogman that he was, Calvin James wasn't happy. He shouted over the small engine that was disproportionately loud for its size. "I don't see any ships out here. Things are still very iffy, aren't they?"
Katz looked at him. "I think we have accomplished something close to a miracle already. After all this trouble, our luck just has to hold out. We will report to Stony Man Farm yet! And this is our best chance."
James mumbled to himself. "Yeah, man. And if not, what a way to go!"
15
The three Ultralights circled the small freighter, closing in around her until the fragile wingtips threatened to touch the ship's radio antenna. The skipper cut power. She went dead in the water.
He guessed correctly. The birds were signaling distress.
He watched in disbelief as a loud popping sound launched a tethered white object flying straight up from each plane. Three parachutes bloomed. He put a dinghy over the side and sent his crew about the business of collecting the floating aviators. Their crafts began to sink slowly into the Black sea.
It was a part of the world Katz remembered his father talking about with pleasure.
Seven hundred and fifty miles long, the Black sea formed a large part of Russia's southern border and was the only coastline for Communist Romania and Bulgaria. To the south was West-leaning Turkey, once the heart of the Ottoman empire that had controlled the Middle East and southeastern Europe.
Turkey still controlled the Bosporus, the Black sea's only exit to the Mediterranean.
If the freighter were headed there, Katz calculated that there would be no trouble. If it had departed Yalta for one of the other Communist ports, he was prepared to take the ship by force. The five warriors came aboard carrying the AK-47s and a pistol or two tucked in each of their belts, and the crew backed away in fear of the tattered, battle-ravaged blood-stained strangers climbing up the rope ladder.
The captain appeared at the door to the bridge and shouted in a language that Katz did not understand. In response, Katz asked, "Do you know English? French? Russian?"
"English will do," the captain said with a heavy accent. He was a short, thick-bodied man with olive skin and wiry gray hair. "Are you pirates? Do you intend to take the ship?" Despite the questions that seemed to indicate that he expected the worst, the captain appeared to be unnaturally calm.
Katz sensed that there was a danger of misunderstanding. "Where are you bound?" he asked evasively.
"Istanbul."
As a peaceful gesture, Katz put his rifle on the deck where crates stacked high covered the hatches and everything stored below.
"Put your rifles down, too," Katz instructed his men.
The captain accepted his visitors' token act of goodwill by stepping into the open and leveling an automatic weapon at them. Two other armed men appeared at the stairway to the other side of the bridge.
McCarter cursed, but Katz held up his hand warningly. He knew that at any moment his men would leap for cover and a violent firefight would erupt. But one or more of them might end up paying with their lives for going up against automatic rifles already pointed in their direction.
"We were escaping Russia," Katz said.
The captain laughed. "In those things? Better you should sail the Atlantic in my skiff." He lowered his weapon and made a sweeping motion with his hand. "Come up. All of you. We must get under way. And bring your guns. I boast too much when I think anyone would want to take my old ironside wife."
All along the deck of the small ship, the crew relaxed and nodded with welcoming smiles, following the captain's lead.
"Of course, if the Russians come for you, I will say you are pirates who overpowered my crew and me."
On the bridge, the captain turned on more lights although the sun reddened the eastern sky to their stern. He was the typical craggy master seen around the world aboard rusting trucks of the sea. If he had a nationality, he had no doubt severed his relationship in favor of citizenship in his own floating domain.
"Let's see, what do we have here?" He looked at Gary Manning. "An American, yes."
Gary was emphatic. "No." Like most citizens of a country overshadowed by superpower neighbors, he was fiercely proud of his homeland. "Canadian."
"Ah, yes. And you," he said to McCarter. "A limey, yes?"
"You bloody well better believe it."
"And you, Russian?"
"Israeli," Katz said quickly. "Well, I spring from Jews in Russia."
"A good place to spring far away from. And an African," he continued.
"No. American through and through," Calvin James corrected him.
"Cuban," Encizo hurried to inform the curious man. "The non-Castro kind."
"A veritable United Nations," the captain continued as he interspersed his conversation with orders in several languages addressed to his crew members getting the ship moving again. "You must all be CIA or MIS, perhaps KGB disguised to trap a poor seaman who plies the open seas. Do not answer. You would lie. Everyone lies these days; it is the plague of the twentieth century."
Katz interrupted. "You work these waters regularly?"
"If there is cargo that no one else wants to carry. Yes. If not, I sail anywhere."
"Do you know the cruise ship in the harbor at Yalta?"
"Know her well. I look across at her berthed at the best pier in all Russia. I think, that could be me in whites with braid on my cap and rich old women swooning to have a dance with me so they can tell their neighbors back home how the captain tried to seduce them and would not take no for an answer. His is a caviar life. But I talked to the captain once, and he has tired of caviar and cherries jubilee. He longs for the stew he fondly remembers from his youth as a third officer of a junk not much better than my own."
"Of course you know her name."
"The Odyssey. That name must have graced a thousand ships since Homer wrote his tale of one man's wanderings so many centuries ago. Perhaps I should give my own ship such a name. I am not unlike the adventurous Odysseus. The skipper of that great white beauty travels the same course over and over again. I go where I wish."
"What is the Odyssey's itinerary?" Katz asked, using his last reserves of strength. He wanted to get the information he needed from the wiry old skipper and then get some sleep for himself and his men.
"From Venice to Greece, Istanbul, and Russia. Then he retraces his own wake. That would never do for me, even if the adoring women passengers were young and lithesome, which most are not."
"It is faster than your ship?" Manning asked.
"When the passengers sleep and the seas are calm, yes."
"Is there any way we can get ahead of her?" Manning asked.
"She will stop to give the passengers a train ride into Romania. So we will be in Istanbul before them. Is she the reason you carry guns? I do not know that I can allow my ship to help rape such a beauty."
"You can keep the guns when we reach Istanbul. We would never get them ashore, in any case."
"Then go below," the captain said. "Find one of my men who speaks a little English or French or whatever you can understand. He will give you hot food — no caviar, of course — and dry clothin
g. You can sleep in the bunks of the men who are on watch. You will be well rested when we reach Istanbul."
We will need to be well rested, Katz thought. They would somehow have to interfere with the Russians whom they had seen boarding the cruise ship. He didn't know the reason for such deep undercover tactics, but it was clear to him that they were masquerading as Americans with some very important objective in mind. He just felt in his bones that a lot was at stake for America.
16
Hal Brognola sat alone in the Stony Man Farm War Room and looked again at the pictures taken by spy satellites several days before.
He felt the same apprehension in his stomach.
There was no doubting what the photos showed. Flames had consumed half of the small village he had sent his men to check. The photography experts had circled small dots. "Bodies," they told him. "A lot of bodies."
What about his men? he wondered. How had such a simple mission gone so awry?
He blamed himself for not being emphatic enough. The mission did not warrant a risk of life, and he knew Katz had good judgment in such things.
It wasn't like Katz to overreact. Nor was it like him to stay out of contact with Stony Man for so long. Without success, Brognola had tried every communications link he knew, including an open telephone call to the Hotel Yalta.
All he knew was that a battle had engulfed the mysterious Russian village. The latest computer-enhanced photos showed trucks and vans moving in to take away the dead and the injured and to begin cleaning up the debris.
Washington pressured Brognola, too. The President wanted to know what had gone wrong. Where was the Phoenix team? Where was their report?
"Send in someone else," the White House said. "If the burning of that village is laid on our doorstep, we could be humiliated at a crucial time in our relationship with the man in Moscow."
It was always a crucial time in Moscow-Washington relations, Brognola thought bitterly.
What had happened to his men? That was his first concern.
When the phone rang, he grabbed for it as if it might spring away from his fingers. "Yes?" he said.
"It's me."
The familiar voice of Yakov Katzenelenbogen provided a relief that almost sent him soaring. But there was more to come. So cautiously he asked, "You all right?"
"Good enough."
The head Fed hated to ask the next question. "And the others?"
"Okay."
"Where are you?" Brognola realized the call had come in on a line that was not secure. Katz could be calling from a pay phone anywhere in the world. Brognola could only hope the wrong ears were not listening.
"Istanbul."
"I thought you were going to visit your old hometown."
"You mean Cheyenne, Wyoming?"
What was Katz talking about? Brognola wondered, but said nothing.
"No. I didn't get home, but the place we visited made me think of the old homestead."
Brognola was still puzzling over the reference to Cheyenne, and his mind raced, looking for clues, something that would click in.
"It was a great place to train for a rodeo."
Finally, Brognola thought he understood. The town must have been much like a small city in the States. And training? Hell, yes, he got the picture. The town was a KGB training ground for foreign agents. That explained why the team had left it in flames.
"Then you're ready to come home?" Hal asked.
"No. We'll take a few days off, a kind of odyssey."
Odyssey? A trip.
"What airline will you be flying?"
"No planes. Can't get reservations this late."
Well, you're sure not going by bus, the Fed told himself. Car? Maybe. Or a ship. Odyssey sounded like a ship's name.
While he talked, he pressed the speaker button to free his hands. He typed the name into the computer and fed in a number of commands. He had it before Katz said anything more significant.
The terminal displayed the information he was looking for. The Odyssey, due out of Istanbul early the next day.
"Do you need tickets?" he asked.
"Yes. They might be hard to get this late."
"That's my problem. Need anything else?"
"Yeah. Everything. We left home without American Express traveler's checks."
"Go to the American Express office. They'll have money waiting for you."
"Thanks, Dad."
"What?"
"Like a college kid," Katz said. "Calling home for money."
"Oh. Well, when can I expect you home?"
"We haven't seen the high point of the trip yet."
Hal puzzled over that one. The team had almost leveled a Russian espionage training facility, but that was not the high point of their trip?
The team should not be on a mission he did not understand. He wanted no loose cannon on the decks of his battlewagons.
"You sure that you should extend your trip? Your health isn't that good."
"That's the truth, but we hope to see some of the people we met during the first two days of our stay."
Brognola shook his head. He would get a clearer report as soon as Katz could use code, but there was no relaxing until then.
"Okay, but don't overdo. Father's orders."
"Yeah, Pop. Just don't forget the money."
* * *
Katz inspected himself and his four companions whose wrinkled clothes made them look like bums who slept on street corners.
"We're going shopping," he told his tattered group.
They left the booth and elbowed their way into the bedlam that is Istanbul.
They noticed one of the many ornate minarets, from where would come the call to the faithful to prayer. Taxis choked the streets and honked, adding to the noise of pedestrians milling about.
It was a city of many ages: modern skyscrapers and exclusive shops gave way without warning to giant marketplaces not much changed since the time of Jesus Christ. In the markets, loosely covered by sagging tarps, were hundreds, perhaps thousands of open-air shops and stalls. They created a maze that threatened to ensnarl newcomers and never set them free. Buyers could buy computer programs in one stall and bargain for pails of water in the next.
Having collected their money, they cleaned up in the hotel they had checked into. After buying clothes and luggage, the Phoenix Force crew entered the dimmest and most remote section of a large bazaar. In the eerie light, welders squatted on dirt floors to create wrought-iron ceiling fixtures. It was there that the five commandos had to shop for guns.
Reluctant Turks, wearing turbans and long shirts that reached to their shoes, forgot their fear of entrapment and arrest when the price was high enough, usually reached after a good deal of haggling. They sold guns, knives, garrotes, plus an assortment of grenades, smoke bombs, kung fu throwing stars, and a few other trinkets of self-defense. Certainly, it was one of the more fascinating places they had seen and could well imagine what some of the customers were who frequented the place.
Satisfactorily clothed and armed, they were back on the dock when the Odyssey's side thrusters cozied up to her berth.
While Turkish officials were aboard clearing the ship and her passengers, the five Phoenix Force men were allowed to go aboard.
The ship they boarded was so luxuriously appointed that it seemed as if they'd entered a floating palace. The foyer was a carpeted piece of art dreamed up by an imaginative interior decorator. Curved staircases with brass railings led to decks above and below. Murals in the Impressionist style portrayed the ship's ports of call.
There were nightclubs and cozy bars, reading rooms and casinos. Swimming pools, saunas, shuffleboard courts, and rows of deck chairs were available to the passengers.
But there was an unusual feature. Everywhere, it seemed, were personal computers and network terminals. They were lined up in corridors and in waiting areas. Each had its own desk and comfortable chair. There were also terminals for mainframes in one conference room.
; Katz was certain that the modems beside most of the keyboards connected with super computers in the States.
Each station was occupied by a youngish-looking man or woman, some of them looking as though they had no time for combing their hair. Often there were arguments in progress, over RAM and ROM and artificial intelligence. They all appeared so intent on the machines that they apparently had no plans to leave the ship.
But the other five hundred passengers were waiting impatiently to go ashore.
The computer conventioneers — he was sure that's what they were — didn't concern Katz. He remembered Hal Brognola telling him that the top Western brains in the computer field would be traveling and meeting in the area. But seeing them reminded the Israeli that the President of the United States would be in Venice to meet them.
Katz's mind locked in on the idea. That would explain, he thought, why the Communists got aboard the ship. By appearing to be part of the group of mainly American experts, the Russian agents could get close to the President.
The Russians must be planning to assassinate the President, Katz thought. For a moment the idea was deposited firmly in his mind. He was positive he was right.
Then he tested his own premise.
"No," he muttered aloud. No. The preparations are too elaborate. "They're going to kidnap him," he said aloud.
Encizo heard. "What was that?"
"Nothing, nothing at all," he replied, and lapsed back into his thoughts.
Find them aboard the ship, he told himself. Neutralize them before they disembark and take a crack at the President in Venice.
Katz knew there was no time to waste. Mykanos was the only other stop before Venice. Later he would compose a coded message to Hal Brognola, warning of a kidnapping plot in Italy, but just then he wanted his men off the ship and onto the pier. The passengers had been cleared and were flooding down the gangway to tour buses, vans and taxis.
The team hurried onto the pier. "We have to spot someone from Cheyenne," Katz repeated, as a follow-up to the run-down he had just given his men. "If we're in luck, they'll still be traveling as a group."