“Stranger things have happened. A lot of confused men are coming back from Vietnam.”
“Well, I’m not confused. I’m just a mid-western country boy. Some damned fool shot my president and I got mad. Vietnam seemed like a good place to let off steam. Now, if you want the whole truth I’ll tell you about Avery. We were friends five years ago. But while I was in the war, he was making a few million and it all started with my idea. I couldn’t touch him legally, but I thought if I found him, and got him back to Athens in one piece, he might feel more like making an adjustment.”
“Including Mrs. Avery?”
“That’s another matter.”
Martins grinned and put his gun in his pocket. “Okay, I’m buying,” he said. “I suspect that you’re an expert with a rifle. You might come in handy, riding shotgun for me, on the hike back to Kastoria.”
“Expecting trouble?”
“Always. I sat in a dining room last night, with a man who’s come a long way just to make sure that Avery’s mission isn’t completed. He’s in the Russian K.G.B. and he didn’t come alone. Remember, Smith, Albania is Chinese Communist. We aren’t the only people curious about what certain highly talented technicians and physicists are doing, behind those mountains. I imagine Popenko’s suspected Avery’s aerial hedge-hopping for some time. He was in South Africa last year when Saga produced an adventure picture. That sort of thing gets around. So, if you come down the mountain with me, you may have a little excitement on the way. But if you do come with me, I’ll tell Captain Koumaris that you’re one of my agents and there’ll be no questions asked about the money.”
“I have a question,” Brad said.
“What?”
“Is Brisos a Communist?”
“Your driver? I don’t know. He’s probably just a hot-blooded Greek, who hates the excesses of the Junta like a lot of others. He may be. He’s young enough and idiots like Koumaris manufacture them on a mass production basis. I think it was Lenin who said: ‘God Himself has ordained that the young should be stupid.’ Who knows? If I were twenty years younger, I might be fooled into thinking a bearded extremist in Havana could do more for my people than we can do for ourselves. But I’m old enough to know an opportunist when I see one. Why do you ask? Is Brisos so important to you?”
“He gave me things to think about,” Brad said. “He talked about Greeks being beaten with American rifles.” He walked over, to where the rifle Stephanos had tossed to him was still standing against the wall. He put all the money inside the knapsack and swung it up over his shoulder and then picked up the gun. “But I’ve seen this model before,” he added. “We took them off dead Vietcong by the thousands. Let’s get started. Do you want me to walk in front of you or behind you?”
Martins picked up Avery’s cameras and slipped them into the knapsack. “I think you’re a good man to have at my back,” he said. “Someone I can trust.”
Brooks Martins walked ahead, easy and loose, with his gun back in the shoulder holster, and nothing to distinguish him from any wayward tourist, except the lack of a camera. The wreckage was on the far side of the mountain now and the planes were no longer audible. The quiet country sounds came in: bird calls, the wind rustling the foliage and the brittle twigs snapping under foot. There was a spicy scent of sage in the air and the incredible clearness of a Greek sky above. In due time Martins reached the stream that had its source in the spring behind the old ruins and stopped. He looked back and beckoned for Brad to join him. He held out his hand as Brad approached.
“Let me take your binoculars,” he said. “This is a good vantage point. I thought I saw something across the ravine.”
Brad unwound the binoculars from his neck and gave them to Martins. The black man re-focused the lens and swept the horizon slowly, until something caught his attention. After a few seconds he passed the glasses to Brad. Brad looked and saw a narrow path threading down the distant hillside. There was movement on it—a donkey laden with what seemed to be piles of fur. No, two donkeys and two men leading them. The men were wearing boots, baggy trousers and jerkins, and walked in great strides, as they urged the animals along.
Brad lowered the glasses.
“Peasants,” he said. “They must be heading for Kastoria.”
“So it would seem,” Martins agreed. “The town’s a centre for manufacturing goods made of fur. Have you ever trapped or hunted in the States, Smith?”
“When I was a boy in Iowa. Small animals.”
“What time of the year did you do it?”
“Winter, of course. That’s when the pelts were good.”
“That’s what I thought. Mind if I keep the glasses? We’ll be following the stream now. I’ll try to keep them in sight.”
They started off again, with Martins still walking about a hundred yards ahead. From time to time he stopped to use the glasses and then continued. Finally he stopped and pointed at the black mouth of a shallow cave, in the rocks above them. Brad sprinted forward.
“That would make a good place for an ambush,” Martins said. “It looks deep enough to hold a man.”
“It is deep enough,” Brad agreed. “I slept in that hole last night. Why don’t I climb up above it and drop down to have a look? It’s almost like home to me now.”
Martins agreed. Brad began to climb the rocky wall and Martins continued following the stream. The space between them now became parallel. From his higher position Brad could now see farther into the valley below but, as the path ran close to the rocky wall, the path and the stream were occasionally lost to sight. When he was directly above the shallow cave where he had slept on the previous night, he picked up a small rock and tossed it down in front of the opening. There was no answering sound. He tried a second rock and waited for response. Anyone within the cave would surely have moved or peered out. He slid down until he could find footing at the level of the cave opening and then crawled inside. It was as he had left it, with only a few cigarette stubs and dead matches to show for the recent habitation. He crawled out into the light again and looked for Martins on the path. Through a lacework of foliage, he saw something moving. A match flared. He saw Martins’ hand raising a straight stemmed pipe towards his mouth, with the flaming light held above it, and then heard the sharp crack of a revolver as the pipe split open and flew out of Martins’ hand. Instantly, the man who had fired the shot disappeared from view. Brad watched the silver ribbon of the stream eel its way from behind a rock formation, carrying with it the fragments of the shattered pipe.
Brad didn’t move. There was no sound from the scrub brush, behind which Martins had dropped. There was the acrid smell of gunpowder. Forcing his attention away from the spot where Martins had stood, he looked in the direction of the shot. Now emerging from the shelter of the rocks were two men—both with guns drawn. One was a huge, barrel chested figure with a square, lantern-jawed face. The other younger and more eager, stepped ahead. He aimed in the direction of Martins, muttering something indiscernible to his companion. Brad swung the rifle around and fixed the advancing man in his gunsights. The range was easy. He pulled the trigger and heard one surprised cry, as the man’s body fell backwards and disappeared behind a boulder, facing the stream. As the barrel chested man spun round, looking for a target, Brooks Martins stepped out from behind the foliage.
“Popenko!” he called.
The big man looked behind him. His gun was drawn. Martins’ gun was drawn. For an instant they faced each other, with no more than a dozen steps between them, and then Martins fired. The big man dropped slowly, as if huge hands on his shoulders were pushing him down. He tried to raise the arm holding the gun, but it was too late. He fell back against the rocks and squatted, like an exhausted hiker who had paused for a rest. Martins walked forward and took the weapon from his dead hand.
“Are you all right?” Brad called down.
Martins waved him to silence. Brad tossed his rifle down on the path and scrambled down beside it. Retrieving the gun, he saw that bloo
d was streaming down Martins’ left sleeve and over his hand. He didn’t seem to notice. He was looking at the dead man, with a kind of sadness in his eyes.
“Popenko,” he said. “He was fighting at Stalingrad when I was seventeen and had lied my way into the Eighth Army, landing at Tripoli. We were allies then. Whatever happened to World War Two?”
“You’ve been hit,” Brad said.
Martins looked at his arm, surprised. “So I have,” he said.
“There may be others. We’d better find cover.”
“Good idea.”
They moved back into the foliaged area. Now Brad could see the body of the man he had shot, his face buried in the stream and the water running red below it. He propped his rifle against the rocks and ripped open Martins’ coat. Martins was wearing a white dress shirt. Brad pulled out the tail and tore off enough material to make a tourniquet for the bleeding arm.
“I forgot to thank you for my life,” Martins said.
“I forgot to tell you I’m a hero.” Brad broke off a branch from the shrub and used it to tighten the bandage. “There, that should stop the bleeding. Douse your hand in the stream. You look like you’ve been butchering hogs.”
“Now I know you’re from Iowa,” Martins said.
Brad picked up his rifle again. “From now on I’m going ahead,” he said. “Wait a minute! What’s that?”
It was another shot—and not far away. Brad pushed Martins behind him and peered out on the path. He could hear someone running towards them and ducked back out of sight, just as Zervios, pistol in hand, came into view. Zervios saw the dead man sprawled against the rocks and shouted back something in Greek. There was the sound of running again and now Captain Koumaris came into view. He saw the dead man and pulled his own pistol from the holster. For a few seconds the men spoke together, and then Koumaris saw bloodstains on the rocks, leading to where Martins and Brad were hiding.
He shouted a command in Greek. Pushing Brad aside, Martins stepped out on the path.
“Captain Koumaris,” he said. “It’s me, Martins. You came just in time.”
The captain’s face and moustache were dripping with perspiration. His eyes flashed with anger.
“You,” he said, “did not return to Kastoria last night. Who is this dead man?”
“K.G.B.,” Martins answered. “There’s another one behind the rock there. Who were you shooting at?”
“Someone running, who wouldn’t stop on command. He got away, I’m afraid.”
“That’s too bad. You should have had my assistant with you. You remember Mr. Smith?”
Brad stepped out on the path and Koumaris sucked in his breath.
“Your assistant?” he echoed. “This man? This is the man who rode with Brisos—”
“And recovered at least some of the stolen money,” Martins added. “Show the captain, Smith.”
It seemed a shame to give it up so easily. Brad knew he might never see that kind of money again. But Martins was calling the shots now and keeping his word about protection from the captain’s style of interrogation. He slipped the knapsack off his shoulder and took out Harry’s cameras, and then he tossed it on the ground at Koumaris’ feet. He wanted the man to have to stoop for it, but the captain nodded to Zervios and his lieutenant obeyed. He took out a package of Deutschmarks and grinned.
“So,” Koumaris said. “Mr. Smith has recovered the stolen money.”
“That’s right,” Martins agreed. “And now you owe us a favour.”
“What, Mr. Martins?”
“You must have a car parked down below, somewhere. We’re a little tired. We’d like a ride back to Kastoria.”
“Of course,” Koumaris said.
He nodded to Zervios, who swung the knapsack over his shoulder and led the way back down the path.
Chapter Fourteen
KOUMARIS WASN’T SATISFIED with the explanation—both Brad and Martins were aware of that. They had gone too far up in the mountains not to arouse suspicion.
“When you didn’t come back to the car last night,” Koumaris told Martins, “your friend, Mr. McKeough, said you were riding back in the ambulance. When we reached Kastoria and you weren’t in the ambulance he said that perhaps you had stayed at the monastery. Why did you do that, Mr. Martins?”
“I wanted to look around a bit. See if I could find Avery’s cameras.”
Koumaris looked at the cameras Brad was carrying.
“And did you find them?” he asked.
“Mr. Smith found them.”
“I see. That’s all you wanted, then?”
“That’s all I wanted.”
“And the men who were shot—is that all they wanted, too?”
“I think they wanted me,” Martins said. “At least, that’s the impression I got, when one of them shot me.”
“All for some cameras. They must be very valuable.”
The captain was unsatisfied and angry. He was the authority here; he didn’t want the Americans playing games he knew nothing about. But he did have the money that had been stolen by the anarchists and that was a face-saving device. It was, after all, what he had come all this way from Athens to get. He strode on for a few steps and then remembered something that caused him to stop and face Brad, with one hand placed on the holster of his side-arm.
“That rifle,” he said. “Where did you get it?”
Brad looked to Martins for direction. “Tell him,” Martins said.
“The driver I hired in Athens had it in the trunk of the car,” he said.
“And he gave it to you, I suppose.”
“He dropped it when he was ambushed in Kastoria.”
“And he dropped the money, too, I suppose.”
“That’s exactly what he did. I had no idea what was in the knapsack. When I saw my driver being beaten, I grabbed up the rifle and the pack and ran.”
“I think you lie, Mr. Smith. Give me the rifle.”
Both Koumaris and Zervios were armed. Martins was armed but he was also wounded. The odds seemed better with the rifle in his hand and so Brad shook his head.
“Not here,” he said. “In Kastoria.”
“But you are under my protection!”
“I prefer to be under my own protection. Of course, if you feel like taking the rifle away from me—”
The captain’s hand scratched at the holster, but he made no move to accept the challenge. “Your driver was taken from the police station last night by armed men,” he said. “You know nothing of that, either, I suppose?”
“Stephanos?” Brad couldn’t conceal his surprise. “He is free?”
“You sound pleased, Mr. Smith.”
“He’s just a boy.”
“But a very dangerous boy. Now he’s God knows where. Over the border into Albania, perhaps.”
So that was what was bothering the captain. The border was only a few miles away and here was the American, who had hired a car in Athens and given Brisos his escape route, walking calmly down the mountain with the escaped prisoner’s knapsack and rifle. It was enough to make anyone suspicious.
“Someone had to tell those armed men that Brisos had been taken,” the captain added. “You could have told them, since you saw it happen.”
“I suspect a good many people saw it happen,” Martins said dryly. “From what I’ve heard, it was a public event. Don’t you think Brisos had a rendezvous, captain? Wouldn’t the people he was supposed to meet in Kastoria know what happened to him, without being told?”
“That may be,” Koumaris admitted. “All right, Smith can keep the rifle until we reach the car. Then you are under my protection.”
He turned on his heel and continued down the mountain. Martins deliberately fell a few yards behind. “I hope you didn’t know anything about that jail delivery,” he said.
“How could I?” Brad answered. “I spent last night in that cave. I couldn’t know what was going on in Kastoria.”
“Okay, I’m not arguing.”
“Bu
t I’m glad he was rescued,” Brad added.
“Stay out of other people’s fights,” Martins said.
Now Koumaris had stopped again. He was staring at the hillside beyond the stream. He looked back at Martins and motioned him to come forward. “You have binoculars,” he said. “May I use them, please?”
Martins moved forward unwinding the glasses from his neck. He gave them to the captain, who immediately began to sweep the far horizon. He focused for some moments on a certain area and then handed the glasses to his lieutenant. After the lieutenant had looked, the men conferred excitedly in Greek. Brad looked to Martins for explanation.
“He’s upset about the fur-bearing donkeys,” Martins said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s early September. He says the path they’re following crosses the stream further on and intersects the road where they left the car.”
The conversation ceased and Koumaris passed back the binoculars.
“We will have to walk faster,” he said. “We don’t want to get caught in these mountains, after dark.”
“It’s the middle of the day,” Brad protested, “and we have a wounded man here.”
“I’m all right,” Martins said. “Let’s go.”
Koumaris was right about the donkey trail. They had continued for about half a mile when the stream veered off out of sight and the trail reappeared below them. The donkeys were close enough to be seen with the naked eye, and there were four donkeys now, as well as a cart drawn by a fifth. Brad counted eight men with the caravan, striding among the animals and urging them on, and he noticed that the captain, still several yards ahead, kept them within sight. There began to be a tension in the air; an excitement as if they were racing against the caravan to reach the car. When Zervios, in the lead, caught the first glint of sunlight on the chrome grille-work, he gave out a shout. They had driven the Mercedes as far up the trail as it would go. It was parked where the double track road ended, at the foot of the mountain path. Koumaris nodded and Zervios broke into a run.
Shot on Location Page 16