Jaybird, Stepano, and DeWitt settled down to wait, sitting in the dilapidated hotel room with the prisoner, saying nothing to each other.
Damn, Jaybird thought. What else could I do? Why the hell couldn't Razor dive over the side and swim for it?
Because the bastards would have searched for him, idiot, and probably caught you both.
He eyed the man, who was lying unconscious on the bed, still wearing nothing but a damn pair of boxer shorts.
"You'd better be worth it, you bastard," he said.
2324 hours Kaftanzoglu Street Salonika, Greece
"Parking garage," Magic said, pointing. "Turn in there." At this time of night, there were few customers. They turned up to the building's entrance, accepted a ticket from a sleepy-looking attendant, then drove to a far corner of the garage and parked. The huge, dimly lit concrete cavern offered a relatively secure spot to talk to the girl they'd rescued.
At the moment, she didn't seem all that sure that she had been rescued. Her name was Nikki latrides, and she spoke very little English. She answered Papagos's questions in Greek, speaking in a low, scared voice, and she seemed preoccupied with tugging the hem of her borrowed shirt as far down her bare thighs as she could manage.
Clearly, she was terrified; a night of fun and friendly sex aboard her boyfriend's yacht had ended in gunfire and the yacht crewman's blood splattered over the cabin windows. She'd tried hiding under a galley table, but soldiers had burst in and dragged her, naked, onto another boat filled with leering, gun-waving men. Someone had given her the shirt. Someone else had handcuffed her, then herded her ashore like an animal with Eleni and a stranger wearing swim trunks and a wet, black T-shirt. She didn't know what she'd done, she didn't know who the SEALs were, she simply wanted them not to hurt her.
Gently--as gently as he could, under the circumstances--Murdock questioned Nikki, with Papagos as interpreter. She told them that she was an office secretary for Trahanatzis Shipping and that that was how she'd gotten to know Eleni Trahanatzis, the boss's son. Though Eleni didn't work for his father, he was frequently in and out of the office, and she'd started dating him perhaps five months before. She didn't know anything about the IMRO or the EMA. She was a Macedonian Slav--with her pale blond hair and blue eyes she could hardly be anything else and still be Greek--but she knew nothing of politics and cared nothing about "that other Macedonia, across the border." She'd been born and raised in Lankadas, a village a few miles north of Salonika, and in her entire eighteen-year life she'd never even been as far away as Athens.
More than once during the interview, her low voice had gotten louder and higher and louder and higher, and Papagos had been forced to stop and spend long minutes trying to calm her down. She had no idea what was going on. She'd assumed that she and those with her were being arrested for some reason ... but why did he--and at that point she'd turned and stared with wide, terrified eyes at Roselli, seated beside her--why did he trip Eleni when he tried to run away? Did it have anything to do with narkoticos, with drugs? She'd started wondering about that when Eleni's friend had started flashing so much money about. She didn't use drugs, she didn't know about drugs, she didn't ...
"Okay, okay," Murdock said. "Tell her she's not under arrest. We just want to ask some questions, okay?" When Papagos had spoken to her and she'd calmed down again, he added, "Ask her about this Vlachos character. What does she know about him?"
After speaking briefly with the girl and getting a considerably longer and more emotional reply, Papagos turned to Murdock. "Interesting, Skipper. She met the guy through her boyfriend Trahanatzis a couple of months ago. She doesn't really like him, though."
"Why not?"
"Well, I'm reading between the lines here, but I get the impression that Vlachos is a libidinous son of a bitch. It was supposed to be a cozy, romantic weekend, with Nikki and Trahanatzis and Vlachos and his girlfriend, Maria. Vlachos wanted to turn it into an old-fashioned orgy, but Nikki here just wanted to screw with her boyfriend. Trouble was, Trahanatzis was awfully eager to impress Vlachos and was pressing Nikki to, uh, be extra nice to him."
"Cute. Get her to tell you about Vlachos. Why doesn't she like him?"
Papagos rattled off the question in Greek. Nikki's reply was a long one, accompanied by quick, nervous hand gestures. Once the words started coming, there was no stopping them.
"She says he was boorish and loud and ... and arrogant. Sounds like he thinks of himself as a real stud, a God's-gift-to-women kind of guy. And he's prejudiced. It seems Nikki here has some friends, neighbors of her family's back in Lankadas, who are Muslims. Nice people, she says, just plain folks who helped out her father once when he was in some kind of trouble. Financial, I think. Anyway, Vlachos was always going on about Muslims ... 'Turks,' he called them. Thought they were all terrorists and ought to be butchered like pigs. Uh ... that's a pretty strong insult to a Muslim, Skipper."
"I know. Go on."
"That's about all. Something about the other three hiding all her clothes to make her fuck Vlachos. I'm not sure if she's telling the truth there, or making up a story to explain why she didn't have anything on when they dragged her out from under the table. I do know the poor kid's scared half to death. She's not faking that."
"Does she know where Vlachos is from?" Murdock asked.
A moment later, Papagos turned to Murdock, his eyes sparkling. "Bingo, Skipper. She says he never told her, but he speaks kind of clumsy Greek, like it's not his native tongue. Seems he speaks Macedonian, though. So does Nikki, enough to know he speaks it with a northern accent."
"Macedonian, eh?" The language, like the people, was Slavic, more closely related to Bulgarian than to Greek.
"Well, well," Roselli said. "A Macedonian who arranges sexy weekends aboard his yacht with members of the DEA."
"He was DEA too, remember," Murdock said. "Ask her, was he the only one she knew from up there?"
"He's the only one she knew well. She says there were these four other guys, all Greek Macedonians and all members of the DEA, that Vlachos and Trahanatzis entertained a lot. She only met them a couple of times, and Trahanatzis didn't seem to want her around those times."
"Nice guy."
"Yeah. Sounds like a real sweetheart. Anyway, sometimes they got together on Vlachos's boat. Usually it was ashore, at some restaurant or other."
"Sounds like those four might be people we'd like to meet," Frazier said from behind the wheel. "If we could get names, I'll bet a month's paycheck that they're the same as four of the names on that list of DEA agents assigned to Kingston's flight."
"At least we have a direction to go in with our questions." Murdock reached into his trousers and extracted his wallet. They'd all been issued 100,000 drachmas--about 400 American--in spending money by their embassy contact aboard the Jefferson that morning. Murdock counted off 20,000 drachmas and handed them to the girl. "Tell her she's been an enormous help," he told Papagos. "Tell her we're sorry about what happened on the boat, but that Vlachos is a bad man and we're trying to find him. She can have the money to buy herself clothes, or to get her home, or for whatever else she needs."
"What about Solomos, Lieutenant?" Magic asked. "That bastard's going to be looking for her."
"I know. Can't be helped, though. Damned if we can adopt her. Tell you what, Nick. Tell her to try to stay away from the DEA and the soldiers, but that if she can find a local cop, someone from here in Salonika, she might be able to get him to help her." People were people, whatever their language. Just as Solomos didn't like the idea of Americans intruding on his turf, the chances were good that local cops didn't care for the elite Dimona coming along and carrying out paramilitary operations in their territory.
It was the best he could do for her ... and he hated taking the added precaution of having Papagos tell her they were hunting for Vlachos, not that they already had him. If they did pick her up, that was what she would tell them ... another fiction that might delay a police search by a precious few more hours.
If they were lucky, Jaybird, Mac, DeWitt, and Vlachos were already at the new hotel, waiting for them, while the police were searching the streets.
Nikki couldn't know about any of that, of course. She did seem grateful, though, now that these mysterious foreigners were letting her go when she'd been imagining the worst. When they all got out of the car, she came up to Murdock, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on his cheek. "Sas ejharisto poli, kirie," she said, her eyes shining.
"Hey, L-T," Roselli called. "Who's your friend?"
"She says thank you very much," Papagos added.
"How do you say, 'You're welcome'?"
"Parakalo."
"Parakalo, Nikki."
"Hey, L-T," Roselli said, grinning as the girl hurried off, bare feet slapping on the concrete. "I think she kind of likes YOU."
"Shut up. Let's find that hotel."
13
Thursday, March 9 0112 hours Dimitriu Hotel Salonika, Greece
They left the parking garage in two groups to avoid attracting attention, sticking to side streets where possible and taking separate routes to the hotel. Frazier led Magic and Razor, while Papagos stayed with Murdock. Navigation through the city streets actually proved to be relatively simple, since both the communications antenna above the fairgrounds to the northwest and the huge sports stadium to the east were easily recognizable, easily spotted landmarks.
Murdock and Papagos were delayed only once, waiting for a few minutes in an alley as a police car cruised slowly past on Papaphi Street. They found the Dimitriu without trouble and slipped up the fire escape in back, to find that Frazier, Brown, and Roselli had gotten there just minutes before them, while Sterling, DeWitt, and MacKenzie had arrived with their prisoner nearly an hour earlier.
"So that's Stathis Vlachos," Murdock said.
"I think he may be starting to come around," DeWitt said. "From the size of that lump on the back of his head, I'd say Jaybird damned near took his head off."
"Stepano?" Murdock said, jerking his head toward the room's single small window. "Let's talk. Over here."
"Yes, sir."
Murdock began filling him in on what the SEALs had learned from Nikki in the car, speaking quietly so that if the prisoner was awake, he would not hear. "So he's Macedonian," he concluded. "Or, I should say rather, at least he speaks Macedonian. Don't know how much English he has, but the girl said his Greek wasn't all that good. I think he's from up north."
"I had already wondered about that, Lieutenant," Stepano said, his blue eyes flat and cold. "Judging by what Razor, Scotty, and Magic told me when they came in."
"I'd say this one is in your department."
"Yes." Stepano appeared to be studying the prisoner. They had him on the bed, still tied hand and foot, still wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. He did indeed appear to be coming around, moaning and twisting his head back and forth. "Sir ... how rough can we be with him?"
Murdock sighed. "Son, that's a hard one, but I'd have to say you can be as rough as you need to be. We've got to know what he knows about the hijacking. The names of his mysterious friends in the DEA. Where he's from. Who he works for. And we've got to get the goods fast. Solomos is probably turning this city inside out right now looking for us, and we probably don't have more than, oh, let's say, six hours. We might have more, but I don't want to stretch it too close."
"Maybe we can scare it out of him," Roselli said, joining them.
"Maybe," Murdock said. "Unfortunately, folks in this part of the world are used to the idea of torture. This guy couldn't be working for the Greek government and not be aware of what would happen if he got caught."
"Shit," Roselli said. "We're gonna torture the guy?"
"We can't," Murdock said. "Even if we wanted to, we can't." He pointed at the room's nearest inner wall. "These walls are only a little thicker than paper. If he starts screaming, we'll have Solomos and his men breaking down the door ten minutes later. Count on it."
"Is possible that we can use the fact that he is from Yugoslav Macedonia," Stepano said quietly, his accent noticeably thicker as he thought about the problem. "And ... he does not know us, know who we are. What we are. I think I see way."
"He's all yours," Murdock said. He signaled to DeWitt, who was standing next to the bed. "Two-Eyes? Take everybody out except two volunteers."
"Me," Roselli said.
"I'll stay," Sterling said.
"Also, I need something," Stepano said. "Perhaps Papagos can get some from hotel desk. Or at all-night drugstore."
Papagos nodded. "Right, then," Murdock said. "Let's get this over with. We don't have much time."
After dispatching Papagos on his errand, they bound the still-groggy Stathis Vlachos to a wooden chair, using the handcuffs they'd taken off Roselli to secure his wrists behind his back, then binding his arms and torso to the chair's straight back with a length of nylon line left over from the evening's activities. Next they pulled off his shorts, then tied his ankles to the chair's rear legs, using more rope to spread his knees apart.
Stepano played the role of chief interrogator with the air of a man used to getting the answers he demanded. Roselli and Sterling carried out his instructions with the solemn air of men participating in some dark and mysterious ritual. Once, when Roselli moved a bit quickly while looping the rope around the legs of the chair, Stepano said, "Slowly, Razor, slowly. We want him to think about this, about what we are doing." Then he'd added something in Macedonian, possibly repeating his words for Vlachos's benefit.
When they were done, the man could move nothing but his head. His legs were spread open and tied, his genitals exposed and vulnerable. Murdock watched full awareness returning to the prisoner's eyes, saw a flash of panic there ... replaced almost at once by a dark, urgent watchfulness.
They waited then for several moments, the silence in the room growing heavier. There were two quick knocks at the door, and Papagos entered, carrying a brown paper bag.
"Place it on dresser, please," Stepano said. "Thank you."
Papagos did as he was told, then crossed the room to take his place next to Roselli and Jaybird. Murdock considered ordering him to leave, then decided against it. He had a right to see, to know.
God help us, he thought blackly. We're becoming as bad as the sons of bitches we're fighting.
Stepano stepped closer to the prisoner, leaning over until their faces were inches apart. He smiled, a hard, calculating expression. "Kade e Gospogya Kingston?"
The prisoner snarled something back, bared his teeth, and spat. He was brave, certainly, Murdock was willing to give him that. Murdock couldn't imagine himself spitting in the face of anyone if he'd been in the prisoner's place.
The smile fixed rigidly in place, Stepano pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the spittle off his cheek. "Razor? Gag our friend, please."
Razor tore off a strip from the bedsheet, stepped behind the prisoner, then pulled the cloth taut between the man's teeth, knotting it tightly. Stepano stepped close again, still holding the handkerchief.
Yas sum od Goli Otok," Stepano said, and his voice, though still low, was as hard and as cold as ice. "Razbiram?"
The prisoner's face went death white at the words "Goli Otok," the name, Murdock remembered, of one of the prison islands that Tito's secret police, evidently, had made notorious.
Stepano kept speaking, his voice low, almost gentle as he carefully and neatly twisted his handkerchief into a thick, white rope. Next he looped it beneath the prisoner's genitals, then tied it in a knot, drawing the ends very slowly tight. "Dali ste zheneti, gospodin? Imate li devoyka? Ah! Zhal mi e!"
Throughout all of this, the prisoner's eyes were starting from his head, as wide and as white as the gag in his mouth.
Stepano next crossed the room to the dresser and, careful to keep all of his movements in clear view of the prisoner, slowly produced a can of lighter fluid, the kind used in refillable cigarette lighters. He held it to his ear, shaking it, then
nodding approval.
Returning to the prisoner, he showed him the can, uncapped it, then began to pour it, a small dribble at a time, onto the knotted handkerchief. All the while, Stepano kept talking, and four or five times Murdock caught again that dread name of Goli Otok.
Murdock didn't understand the spoken words, but he could certainly imagine what Stepano must be saying ... something about this was the way it was done, back at that prison on Goli Otok, and this was what happened to someone Stepano had known. Was the SEAL claiming to be a victim of Tito's torture prison, Murdock wondered, or one of the secret police's torturers? It hardly mattered; the gentle-sounding words coupled with the look on his face as he emptied the last of the lighter fluid onto the skin of the man's penis combined to create an atmosphere of utter and complete madness. The sharp stink of the liquid bit the air. The knotted handkerchief was sopping wet, as was the matted black hair on Vlachos's belly and groin. His genitals lay flaccid in a puddle of the stuff on the chair between his open thighs, and some of it was dripping onto the carpet. He was whimpering through the gag now, a quavering, horrible sound, scarcely human.
When the can was empty, Stepano set it aside, then fished about in his shirt pocket, producing at last a silver cigarette lighter. He held it delicately between thumb and forefinger, so close to the prisoner's face that his eyes crossed as he tried to focus on it.
"Kade e Gospogya Kingston, Vlachos?"
The pitch of Vlachos's whimpering went up an octave, his head thrashing back and forth, his eyes huge. There was blood on the gag now. He'd bitten his lip or tongue.
"if I didn't know better," Papagos said, "I'd swear he's trying to tell us something through that gag."
Deliberately, Stepano flicked the lighter open and struck a spark, keeping the lighter well above the prisoner's groin. Flame danced on the end of the wick, reflected brightly in the terrified mirrors of Vlachos's eyes.
Seal Team Seven 02 - Spector Page 15