“Whatever it is, you tell ’em, Morg. Tell them anything they want to know. Look after yourself.”
The two constables got a grip on him between them and one of them poked the end of his truncheon at my fingers. I moved out of harm’s way quickly and they ran Morgan out through the end door.
They’d taken everything. Not only the thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills which I had received from Kytros, but also cigarettes, matches, loose change. I sat on the cot, my back against the wall, and wondered what it was all about. Even if Loukas had caught me with the booze on board he would, in normal circumstances, have done nothing. The lawbreaking was strictly at the Turkish end of the line and since when did a Greek policeman start worrying because someone was putting one over on the Turks? No, there was more to this than met the eye—much more.
The graffiti on the whitewashed wall opposite had a certain political interest. As well as the usual sexual passages and the various unsuccessful attempts at drawing the more private portions of the human anatomy to scale, there were a great many anti-government slogans. The military junta and the prime minister didn’t come out of it at all well and would have found most of the suggestions a physical impossibility.
Toughest of all was an inscription which read Spadakis was here. Keep his gun oiled. He’ll be needing it. Up the Patriotic Front.
I wondered what had happened to Spadakis. He sounded a pretty hard nut, and then the door was unlocked and I was ordered outside.
They took me up to the ground floor where Loukas had his office. Morgan was sitting outside on a bench, his hands shaking, the fingers plucking at his old cap. They took me straight inside without giving us a chance to talk.
Like everywhere else in the place, the walls were whitewashed, mainly for cheapness, but also because it made it a little cooler in the heat of high summer. It wasn’t much as offices went. A couple of metal files, a cupboard and the old desk behind which Loukas was seated.
He was writing away busily, waved me to a seat with hardly a glance and told the two constables to leave us. He kept on writing, so I helped myself to a cigarette from a packet on the desk, leaned back and waited.
He finally looked up. “I’ve just been completing my report. There are twelve separate bullet holes in the super-structure of your vessel, are you aware of that fact? We may also presume that several more were fired. There are three panes of glass shattered in the wheelhouse.”
“Some crazy fisherman took a shot at us near the Turkish line,” I said. “You know how touchy they are about Greeks fishing their waters? It happens all the time.”
He shook his head very deliberately. “No nonsense, no pretty stories, Mr. Savage. I know what you were doing in Turkish waters. Plenty of other boats are engaged in the same trade and I can turn a blind eye and do, as you are perfectly well aware, as long as there is no trouble.”
“And what trouble have I caused you, exactly?”
“This is a nice quiet little island and the tourist trade is very important. We can’t have boats coming into harbour in the condition yours is in. It would alarm the ladies. It is bad for our image.”
I couldn’t quite see where all this was leading. I said, “Have I actually committed a crime?”
“An offence,” he corrected and tapped a fat leather tome that lay before him. “Under two different statutes in here, I have the power to insist that you behave in an orderly and reasonable manner where you have been guilty of conduct likely to cause public distress and alarm.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Do you want my assurances in writing?”
“No, I’m afraid that wouldn’t do.” He sat back, looking definitely distressed. “You see where the individual concerned is an alien, it is necessary for him to find some reputable Greek citizen to act as a surety for his behaviour. A citizen of some standing. Someone, to take a good example, like Mr. Dimitri Aleko, who is, I understand, known to you.”
Some sort of light was beginning to dawn. “Let me get this straight. What happens to me and my boat in the meantime?”
“You personally are free to go, Mr. Savage, to seek what help you can. As for your boat,” he sighed, “I’m afraid I must impound it until you can produce the kind of surety I require. You do understand, I’m sure. I have my duty to perform.”
“Oh, I understand all right.” I got to my feet, the anger poking around in my guts like a living thing. “Can I go now?”
“But of course and you may take your mate with you. Your boat will naturally be under guard until this unhappy affair is resolved. You may return on board once only to pick up clothing or any other personal items of an essential nature that you may need.”
“Very liberal of you.”
He pushed an envelope across the desk. “I think you will find everything intact. Ten hundred-dollar bills, some loose change, cigarettes and a leather wallet.”
I grabbed it and made for the door. As I got it open, he added, “There is nothing personal in this, Mr. Savage.”
Looking back on it all now, I think he was deliberately needling me, but whether he was or not, he certainly succeeded.
“Why don’t you get stuffed?” I said and slammed the door hard enough to shake the entire building.
It was still barely mid-morning when I went into Yanni’s, Morgan trailing behind me, and trade was hardly brisk. I slipped him enough loose change for a couple of drinks and asked the barman for Yanni. He was on the roof, it seemed, so I left Morgan to it and went looking for him.
A flight of stone steps led up from the courtyard at the rear of the building to a kind of Moorish roof garden, all potted palms and tinkling fountains. Yanni was seated at a wrought-iron table by the parapet at the far end, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. He was wearing a rather exotic robe in gold and red stripes, the whole thing held together by a golden cord around the waist. It was obviously one of his Egyptian mornings.
“Ah, Jack, you will join me?” He waved me to a seat and poured coffee into a spare cup.
His smile was of the instant variety. It wasn’t that he was worried. He wasn’t the kind, I’ll say that for him. He always did have all the guts in the world when the chips were down in spite of the stone and a half of excess weight he carried.
It was more subtle than that. He knew why I was there, had known in advance. To make it even more complicated, I think he knew that I knew.
“How much did Aleko pay you to set up last night’s little affair, Yanni?” I asked.
“Are you going to be angry or reasonable, Jack?” he said, and I noticed that his right hand was hidden under a fold of the newspaper.
“All I want are a few answers,” I said. “Then I’ll go and see the man myself.”
He produced a .38 magnum revolver from beneath the paper and slipped it into one of the wide pockets in his robe, then he opened a sandalwood box on the table and offered me a cigarette, Egyptian on one side, Turkish on the other. So we were going to be civilised about this?
“Aleko is a powerful man, Jack, in Egypt as well as Greece. He has friends at government level in both countries and money talks, you know that as well as I do. He as good as has a licence to print his own.”
“Get to the point,” I told him. “I’m in a hurry.”
“All right, give me a chance. He came to see me the day before yesterday. He’d discovered that we’d had a working relationship in the past and he knew about most of my more clandestine affairs in Egypt as well as here. He was polite, but firm. Either I helped him as required or he would see that the squeeze was applied to me in both countries and he meant it, Jack. You don’t rise from barefoot peasant boy to multi-millionaire by the age of thirty-seven unless you consider people to be expendable when the need arises.”
“What was the set-up?”
“He wanted you to lose your boat. To be on the beach. He told me he had asked you to work for him and that you had refused. This way, you wouldn’t have any choice.”
“So this latest effort i
s strictly improvisation?” I said. “My boat impounded until I find an upright citizen to vouch for my good conduct?”
“Everything went wrong. We didn’t expect you to get away, Jack, and no one expected Lady Hamilton to be with you.”
“What did Aleko have to say about that?”
Yanni shuddered. “I have never seen a man so angry. He is arranging personally for something extremely unpleasant to happen to Captain Amer.”
I can’t say that prospect worried me particularly. “What was supposed to happen in the original plan?”
“The Turks were to take over the boat and dump you on the beach outside Tatca. My agent was to pick you up there, lift up his hands in horror, cry Allah’s curse on them for stealing your boat and his rum, and arrange for your return to Kyros.”
“To go cap in hand to Aleko, willing and eager to accept his proposition.”
“You have it exactly. Neat enough, Jack.” He had recovered himself completely by now. “I think you must admit that.”
“His proposition,” I said. “Did he tell you what it is?”
“No, that didn’t enter into our conversation. In fact I think I prefer it that way.”
“To hell with that,” I told him. “If I’m going down then I’m taking you with me. Our millionaire capitalist is a fanatical Left-winger at heart. He wants me to break a political prisoner out of Sinos for him. How does that appeal to you?”
He crossed himself involuntarily, horror on his face. “Mother of God, Jack, if you are caught. The secret police…”
“Will be rather unpleasant and not only to me, Yanni. You know what those boys are like when they get moving? They’ll pull everyone in. Everyone I ever knew.” I reached over and patted his face. “Just think about that. The sweating will do you good.”
I might as well have kicked him in the lower stomach for the effect was the same. His face sagged, turned yellow and there was fear in his eyes which was exactly the way I wanted it. Why, as I crossed the garden and went down the steps, I was actually smiling although in the light of future events, I suspect that if I had been able to see his face at that moment, he would have been smiling too.
I left Morgan in the bar and went along the waterfront towards the jetty. The Seytan was still down there in the old harbour, drawn up on the sand and Yassi and Abu were working on the hull. Yassi saw me and looked up, shading his eyes from the sun. I heard him call out and a moment later, his father appeared on deck.
“Heh, Jack, you wait for me?” he called.
He vaulted the rail and ran across the strip of beach to the old harbour wall. He came up a rusting iron ladder no more than twenty yards away and I sat on a capstan and waited.
“What’s happening? His face was serious. “I went along to the boat to see you and was turned away by the police. You’re in trouble?”
“In a way. Kytros asked me to run some booze to Turkey for him last night. The characters at the other end tried to take over the boat. I objected. There was a little shooting before we parted.”
“So I noticed. The wheelhouse doesn’t look as pretty as usual.”
“That’s what Loukas said. He’s impounded the boat until I mend my wicked ways and find an upright citizen to stand surety for me.”
He frowned and his eyes narrowed. “There is more here than appears on the surface. I am right?”
“Absolutely, but I can’t talk about it now. I’ve got to see Dimitri Aleko.”
“Your upright citizen?”
“All that money can’t be wrong, surely?”
He laughed and gripped my left arm above the elbow tightly. “You remember one thing, Jack. If any throats need cutting, you come to me. You understand this?”
And he meant it, which was a comforting thought. He went back down the ladder and I continued along the waterfront towards the jetty, wondering what I was going to say to Aleko. What Aleko was going to say to me. And then there was the minor problem of actually getting to him, for the Firebird was anchored a couple of hundred yards out in the centre of the harbour.
I needn’t have worried for when I went down the ramp to the lower jetty, I found Firebird’s speedboat tied up there, the two specimens who had picked me up that first night lounging against the padded seats.
They didn’t say a word when they saw me, but simply went to work. One of them slid behind the wheel and started the engine and the other prepared to cast off. So, they had been waiting for me, or rather, Aleko had. I got into the rear seat without a word and was taken away.
I was conducted to the main saloon by Captain Melos and left at the bar with a drink in my hand. Aleko, it seemed, was on the radio telephone to Athens and would be with me shortly. In fact, it was Sara who arrived first. She entered casually, a magazine in her hand, and came to an abrupt halt at the sight of me.
“This is nice. Why didn’t someone tell me?”
She wore a white shirt cut like a man’s and knotted at the waist and the tightest pair of pants I’ve ever seen in a kind of black velvet material. She sat on the stool beside me and reached for my hand. I kissed her fingers.
“I’m here to see Midas, King of all the world.”
She went very still, eyes quite blank, face expressionless. “What’s happened? Tell me.”
“Soon told. Last night’s little affair was rigged. A setup. I was supposed to lose my boat. Without the boat, I have nothing. That way I’d come crawling to Aleko, willing and eager to take on his dirty work. When the plan misfired they had to think up a subtle variation fast. I must say they came up with a beauty. I’m a very reprehensible citizen and a danger to the community. At least that’s the police version of things which means that my boat is impounded until I can find a fine, upstanding and upright Greek citizen willing to go surety for my good conduct. I don’t know whether you can think of anyone like that offhand.”
“Nothing?” she queried gravely. “Without the boat you have nothing?”
Strange how that was the one thing she had seized on and I saw at once that I had hurt her without meaning to. I reached across quickly, my fingers fastening in her hair.
“You know what I mean—must know. With the boat behind me I can keep my head above water, stay off the beach. Only just, but that’s a big thing because it still leaves me, Jack Savage, personally in charge. No orders, no arms twisted. Without the boat I’m nothing. I either sink to what Morgan is or become someone else’s man. Aleko’s man.”
“And will you do that?”
“Tell me something,” I said. “How did he react this morning when he discovered where you had been last night?”
“You’re avoiding my question,” she said. “But all right. As a matter of interest, he hasn’t mentioned it and I certainly haven’t discussed it with him. When Morgan rowed me across this morning I went straight to bed. I slept for five hours, showered and had some breakfast. I’ve seen Dimitri once and he was busy. He gave me the ritual kiss on each cheek, asked me how I was today and went about his business.”
“Which means Yanni Kytros must have told him.” I looked beyond her to where Aleko had appeared in the doorway and raised my voice. “Did you get all that? Am I right?”
He moved towards us, grimly elegant in blue linen slacks and one of those cream doeskin jackets that only millionaires can afford. There was a certain anguish on his face and when he put a hand on her shoulder, it was shaking slightly.
“Before God, Sara, I didn’t know you would be there.”
She glanced up at him and her own face actually softened. She put her hand on his hand and said quietly, “I know, Dimitri, the best laid schemes…”
I suppose it was that which really set me off. The sheer illogicality of her attitude. The anger boiled up inside and I got to my feet.
“And this is supposed to make it all right, is it? Damn you, Aleko, have you any idea what they had in mind for her?”
Something of the real man still buried deep inside broke through all that neurotic fear. His rage and di
sgust were at himself but he directed it straight at me. The unexpectedness of the attack caught me off guard.
He delivered a short and very expert right hook to my face. I tried to move, but was already too late. It landed on my right cheek and sent me back over the bar stool. Those beautiful carpets of his cushioned the shock, but the force of that punch seemed to rattle the brains inside my head.
I took a deep breath, came up fast and grabbed the bottle from the bar. Several things happened right about then. Sara cried out sharply, “No, Jack, no!” In the same moment Melos appeared in the doorway flanked by his two bully boys holding a sub-machine gun apiece.
It seemed an unnecessary amount of hardware to carry in the circumstances, but was as effective as the big battalions usually are. I looked from Melos and company to Sara who still stood between Aleko and me, arms wide in a strangely defensive attitude as if she would protect him from me. And she had called me Jack for the first time.
There was what can only be described as an air of expectancy to things. I had the stage, it was all mine, so I took my time about it, walked round to the back of the bar, found the Jameson and poured myself a large one. I took a tiny sip, savoured it for a moment, then emptied the glass. I put it down carefully on the bar and looked straight at Aleko.
“One hundred thousand dollars paid into a Geneva bank of my choosing in advance, now, today, and the boat returned to me when everything has been satisfactorily concluded. That’s what it’s going to cost you, Aleko.”
And he still managed to surprise me.
“Excellent,” he said. “I knew you would be sensible in the end. In exactly one hour you will be able to pick up the telephone, ring the bank of your choice, and confirm that the transfer had taken place. I guarantee it.”
He turned and went out taking Melos and his boys with him with a wave of the hand.
I poured myself another whiskey and said to Sara, “Some days you just can’t win, have you ever noticed that?”
Her fists were clenched, she was angry and afraid at the same time. “You fool,” she said. “You bloody, pigheaded fool. Marry me and money would be the least of your problems or hadn’t that occurred to you?”
Jack Higgins Page 15