And then the other Aleko peered out for a moment, the real man he might have been if things had not happened to him in the way they had. He smiled, a genuinely engaging smile, ruefully like a small boy caught out.
“Naturally, a small meed of thanks is due to the Texas oil fields that gave me my first million.”
“America, America,” I said and got up. “Ah, well, I’ve got work to do. Have that gear here in the morning and we’ll go tomorrow night.”
“So soon?” He seemed surprised.
“No sense in hanging about. I’d like to get it over with.”
“You’ve really worked the thing out to that degree already?”
“I think so. I’ll go over the details with you later on. Right now, I’d like to have a look at that diving gear of yours.”
I had my hand on the door when he said, “One more thing—Sara.”
I turned, suddenly wary. “What about her?”
“I’d be obliged if you would involve her as little as possible in this business from now on.”
“Isn’t that for her to decide?”
He sat there staring at me for a long, quiet moment, then he got to his feet, went to a corner cupboard and produced a decanter of brandy and two glasses. He was grave, and very, very dignified. Whatever was coming, was going to be good, that much was obvious.
He handed me one of the glasses and poured a generous measure. “I deal in facts, Captain Savage, because they are the only things that pay off. That is why I am where I am and who I am. Because I can accept things as they really are without any illusions.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I said. “On the other hand, what about the Pavlo business? A strange kind of knight errantry for a man who deals only in facts, in things as they really are.”
He seemed surprised. “The present government cannot last, surely you see that? Any sensible man must see that. Read the history of my country. An object lesson to would-be tyrants.”
Which was all nice and flowery, but didn’t really get us any further.
“And Sara?” I asked. “Where does she fit in to all this?”
He held his glass rather tightly and it was the one sign of stress as he spoke. “My wife was everything to me. For her sake, I love Sara. Love her as dearly as if she were my own sister.”
He could have meant every word of it. It was impossible to be sure, but there was certainly great emotion of some kind in his voice as he carried on.
“Chronic leukaemia is unusual in a girl of Sara’s age. The symptoms first became apparent when she was working in Biafra with a relief mission.”
“I know about that,” I said, and suddenly didn’t want to hear any more. Did not want to know what I sensed was now to come.
He carried on relentlessly, his voice a little calmer now. “To you, she must appear as you would expect any normal healthy girl of her age to look, but you have not seen her as I have. As she was last year at the first real onset. She almost died.”
“But she didn’t,” I said and my throat was dry.
“No, the doctors obtained what they call a remission. She was luckier than most. In her case, the drug worked. Her blood count gradually returned to a reasonably normal level. She has now joined the fifteen per cent who can expect to survive five years.”
And he was telling me the truth, the absolute clinical truth, I was certain of that.
I remember losing my air once during a job at the bottom of the Suez Canal, the sudden choking sensation like great fingers wrapping themselves around your throat and squeezing. It felt exactly like that now.
I said, “And that’s it?”
“There have been cases in which the patient has survived ten years. Anything can happen, of course. New drugs are being developed all the time. Who knows?”
“Only you don’t think so, do you?” I put down my glass. “Why are you telling me all this?”
His voice was urgent and he moved closer. “She needs what I can give her, Savage, don’t you see that? Constant care, every attention. Everything money can buy she will have. The right doctors, the rarest medicines. I can give her all these things, but you, Savage? What can you give her?”
His eyes were wild and there was a smell on him like an open grave, cold and damp, cutting to the bone, the touch of death. It sent my heart pounding wildly.
“Go to hell,” I said hoarsely, turned and got the door open, running as if all the devils in that place were snapping at my heels.
When I went into my cabin she was sitting in the swivel chair at the desk examining the old German plan that was the key to the whole operation. She swung round to face me and smiled.
“Ciasim’s gone back to the Seytan. Says he wants to get her floated by this evening. Did you see Dimitri?”
“I saw him.”
It was in my voice, I couldn’t help it, and her face changed, altered before my eyes, the skin tightening over the cheekbones. She knew, by instinct, I suppose, or perhaps on past knowledge of him.
“What did he say?” she said calmly and got to her feet. “What did he tell you?”
“I love you, Sara Hamilton, whatever that word is supposed to mean, but is it enough?”
She frowned as if not understanding and then, I think, suddenly saw it all. She smiled, that delightful smile that was herself alone. She started to laugh, came close, grabbed a handful of my hair and shook it vigorously.
“It’s everything there is. Do you mean to tell me you’ve got this far without realising that fact?”
I could have died for her at that single moment in time, an absurdity if you like, but as I took her in my arms, it did occur to me that to live for her sake might be of more use. How strange life was. And she seemed so alive. It was beyond belief.
Allowing for the traditional contempt to be expected from any self-respecting Turkish sponge diver for skin divers, Ciasim had, in fact, had plenty of aqualung experience at one time or another. In spite of that fact, Sara and I took him out beyond the point in the early evening in the speedboat after the Seytan had been successfully floated.
We used some of Aleko’s diving equipment and I gave the big Turk a thorough briefing on the technical side of things again, just in case he’d forgotten anything. It wasn’t really needed. He was like one of those great early pilots of pioneering days. The men who flew by the seat of their pants. In the same way, he dived by instinct, using his senses like an animal. To go under the surface of the sea seemed the most natural thing in the world for him.
I think he was probably the most likeable man I have ever known. On the run back to harbour after we had changed, he had Sara laughing hard at one outrageous story after another, most involving his many encounters with women like his German hausfrau of the night before last.
“Ciasim Divalni, you are a rogue—King Size,” she told him.
He simulated bewilderment. “But I render such excellent service, dear lady.”
Dear lady. He always called her that and there was something different in his voice, in his manner, when he was with her. I think he sensed in some way that she was different from other women. One apart. Perhaps that animal instinct of his hinted at the reason. One thing is certain. I would not have given much for the chances of any man who insulted her or gave her hurt in his presence.
“The operation can be divided into four main areas,” I said and turned to the maps pinned on the board behind me.
We were in the main saloon of the Firebird. My audience consisted of Sara, Aleko, Ciasim, Captain Melos and the two hard-faced young men who never seemed to stir far from his side. They were not, as I had first imagined, brothers, but cousins. One was named Christou, the other Kapelari.
“Phase One,” I continued, “involves actually landing on the island. We make an underwater approach from the Seytan which will be anchored at this point half a mile south of Cape Heros just below the outer walls of the fort.”
“A long swim,” Melos put in.
I think that was the first moment i
t struck me that his status might be very different from what was pretended. The intervention had a quality of authority about it. In a way, he had made a slip and knew it, his eyes darkening as I turned to him.
“The aquamobile is good for just over three knots an hour. A ten-minute run to the Cape at the most. There is a static minefield to negotiate, but they’re well spaced, if the map I’ve been provided with is accurate, and shouldn’t give us much trouble. Not if we take care.”
Ciasim bared his teeth. “I love you too, my dear friend.”
“Aren’t the beach approaches mined?” Aleko demanded.
I nodded. “But that won’t bother us. If you look at the official plan of the fort and the prison area produced last year and compare it with the German military plans of their improvements in 1942, you’ll notice a significant difference. The Greek plans indicate the modern sewerage system and leave it at that. The Germans, thorough as always where this kind of thing is concerned, have shown the underlying system of drainage tunnels put in by the Turks seven hundred years ago. In some cases they actually used them as main outfalls.”
Aleko got up and examined the plans closely. “See, Melos, he is right.”
Melos looked over his shoulder. “So, the main outfall is here in this small bay at the foot of Cape Heros and under water, from the look of it.”
“Exactly. No problems with those mines on the beaches this way.”
“You could be wrong,” he said. “Have you considered that? Perhaps the old Turkish workings have simply been missed from the new plan because they have been blocked.”
“I don’t think so. German plans of this nature are usually extremely thorough and completely reliable. If we accept that, it means that the main tunnels are five and six feet in diameter. To block such a complex would be extremely difficult.”
“But you cannot be certain,” he persisted.
“You take a chance every day of your life. Captain Melos,” I told him. “If it won’t go, then we turn back, just like the north face of the Eiger. At any stage of the game if we find the hole has been plugged, we turn back.”
“Without Pavlo?”
“If necessary.”
“So, the British Marine commandos could not teach you how to make miracles.”
“Only sometimes,” I said, which seemed to shut him up for the moment.
“What about Phase Two?” Aleko asked impatiently.
“According to the plan there is a storm drain linking up to the garden of that section of the fort which is now being used as a hospital. It also indicates a three-foot grid at the entrance which we ought to be able to cope with. At that point, or perhaps earlier if convenient, we change clothes. Once out in the open I become a prison guard and Ciasim a prisoner, which is how we get into the hospital itself.”
“In other words, you become prisoner and escort?”
“Exactly.”
“And how do you get to Pavlo?”
Melos again.
“He’s on the third floor under guard in the room at the end of the corridor,” I said. “We play it by ear from there. Today’s information is that he can walk a little and a little is all we need. Once out of the hospital block, we go back into the sewerage system via the storm drain in the garden.”
“And you think he will be able to stand it?” Aleko asked.
I shrugged. “He’ll have to stand a damned sight more than that because we come back to the Seytan exactly the same way we left. Underwater.”
There was a heavy silence. Surprisingly, it was Melos who came in to support me. “With the aquamobile, even with two of you and allowing for the greater load, the trip should take no more than fifteen minutes and it will require no physical effort from Pavlo himself, or very little.”
“But what happens afterwards?” Sara said.
Melos frowned. “After what?”
“When they find Pavlo missing. When they start searching the general area of the island. If they know the Seytan was in the area, they’re bound to start checking, especially when they find she’s left during the night.”
It was the weak link and I acknowledged the fact. “The Seytan is a boat well known in the area. Poor Turkish sponge divers and so on. The excuse for returning to Kyros can be a technical one. A faulty compressor, a leak in the hull. If everything goes according to schedule, we’ll be back in Kyros by four a.m. With any luck, Pavlo’s absence won’t be noticed till six a.m. which is the time things usually start to stir at the prison. Any check on the Seytan will be of a routine nature. They’d probably get in touch with police headquarters here and ask them to interview Ciasim.”
“Which means Sergeant Loukas,” Aleko said, and he smiled broadly at Melos.
Melos said briskly, “Nothing to worry about there. An excellent plan. Highly dangerous, but hare-brained enough to work.” He added calmly, “Who knows, Captain Savage, you might just make it back alive.”
Who knew indeed.
I said, “One last thing. We’ll be needing an extra man on the Seytan, just in case one of those M.T.B.s decides to make a check. There are supposed to be three in the crew, remember.” I turned to Melos. “Come to think of it, you look a lot like a Turk to me.”
Ciasim bellowed with laughter and Melos gave him the kind of look any good Greek reserves for a lump of dung on his foot.
Aleko said, “Captain Melos will be happy to help in any way he can.”
So he was back in charge again, or was he? There were many things here I didn’t like. Things under the surface. Relationships that were not all they seemed to be.
Later, much later, when I was lying in bed in the darkness of my cabin smoking a cigarette, the door clicked open and she slipped inside, locking it behind her. There was a rustle of something or other and she got in beside me, naked and shivering, her breasts ice-cold.
“Warm me up, Savage,” she ordered.
“When I’ve finished my cigarette.” I put an arm around her. “What can you tell me about Melos?”
“Nothing much. He’s new, but then they all are. The entire crew. Dimitri had Firebird laid up for a year before this cruise. Too busy to have fun, he used to say. Why do you ask?”
“Melos seems to have a lot to say for himself, that’s all.”
“He’s a Greek, just like the rest of them, isn’t he? What do you expect?”
I put out my cigarette in the ash tray at the side of the bed and she came on top of me, breasts crushed hard against my chest, her face in the hollow of my neck.
“No, don’t move,” she said in a muffled voice. “Just let me stay like this for a while. Just hold me.”
She started to cry, great sobs racking her body, really letting go for the first time since I’d known her. The desolation, the loneliness in her voice when she at last spoke was like a knife in the heart.
“What happens if I lose you? What happens then?”
And there was nothing I could say. No single thing that would comfort her. Outside, it had started to rain and I held her quiet in my arms.
It was a dull, grey morning and reminiscent of the English Channel in November with a fair sea running and an easterly wind. It caused chaos for a while in the old harbour, particularly amongst the small boats which were drifting around all over the place for they weren’t used to that kind of weather in the Aegean.
I wouldn’t have given much for any floatplane’s chances of putting down in those conditions, but it wasn’t necessary. The firm in Athens who supplied the aquamobiles had half a dozen in stock at their branch on Rhodes and had two of them brought over by fast launch during the night. Anything for the magic name of Aleko.
At least the bad weather and the disturbance it created in the harbour gave us an excellent cover during the period before we left. People were too heavily involved in their own problems to have the time to notice what we were doing.
Melos had boarded the Seytan under cover of darkness just before dawn and had kept out of the way ever since. Ciasim and his boys had
transferred the diving gear the previous night and the rest of the equipment, including two supply canisters, packed ready to take with us.
The aquamobiles were the only major item remaining and the launch from Rhodes arrived with those just after ten a.m. Ciasim and I took delivery on the north jetty and brought them round on a handcart, still in their packing cases, a couple of fishing nets hiding them from view.
As we turned on to the old jetty, I saw Morgan sitting on a capstan, hunched and miserable in the rain, an old black oilskin over his shoulders. We were almost on top of him before he noticed me and he got to his feet, face cracking into an anxious smile.
“Hell, Jack, I been getting worried. What’s been going on?”
I sent Ciasim on ahead with the handcart and pulled Morgan down against the wall out of the rain.
“Listen, Morg,” I said, “I’m busy today. I’m giving Ciasim a hand.”
“Out there on the wreck?” His eyes brightened. “Maybe I can help. Another diver’s always useful, Jack.”
He seemed older, more childlike than ever. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Not today, Morg, another time.” I took a one-hundred-dollar bill from my wallet which was the smallest change I had. “Here, take this up to Yanni Kytros. He’ll change it for you at a fat discount. You’ll be able to sit in there out of the wet all day. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He wanted to argue, but the thirst rose in his throat. I could see that from his eyes. He took the note and grinned nervously. “Just as you say, Jack. In the morning.”
I patted his shoulder and he shambled away. I stood up and found Sergeant Loukas leaning against the wall lighting a cigarette. He had an old military raincoat slung from his shoulders like a cape against the drizzle and his face carried its usual funereal expression.
“Dreadful weather, Mr. Savage. Just like England, is it not so?”
“Ireland,” I corrected him. “You’re forgetting.”
“Ah, yes.” He nodded sagely. “Still, we are not used to rain like this down here. Farther north, perhaps, in Macedonia for example. It can be very wet in the Gulf of Thermai. I had a holiday there once only, on an island named Pelos. A complete waste of money. We might as well have stayed at home.”
Jack Higgins Page 17