"Up there.” The Greek sailor pointed toward dimly lighted portholes in the upper bridge.
Durell slapped his arm down, nodded toward a party of four men. They made a line of ghostly silhouettes in the hot, driving grit as they moved cautiously along the rail, rifles at the ready.
Before Durell could do anything to stop him, Link jumped up and delivered a murderous fire that raked the group. The range was point-blank, fifteen yards at the most, and the four men simply disappeared from view in the blowing dust and night.
Durell spat a curse for the lost secrecy of his position and yelled, "Run for the bridge.”
"You’re never satisfied, are you, old chum?” Link panted, as the bridge superstructure rose before them like a dark cliff.
Bullets from behind zipped over their shoulders and whacked into the metal wall. The Greek sailor grunted and fell on his face. Durell scrambled up a ladder, ripped a blind volley toward where he guessed the shots had originated, and the chatter of Link’s Uzi joined in.
Floodlights burst on all over the ship.
Durell glimpsed the afterdeck through writhing yellow sheets of hurtling sand. Russians—he didn’t know how many, maybe a dozen—stood rooted in the blaze of light, anxiously scanning the ship for intruders. All were equipped with automatic-firing AK assault rifles, which Durell identified easily by their high-rise front sights and banana magazine clips. Further back toward the raised poop, he saw a man pointing at him, mouth working with shouts that the tempest whipped beyond Durell’s hearing.
Bullets snapped and hammered all around, blasted paint from bulkheads, slung hot needles of fragmented slugs.
He fell unceremoniously into a corridor. Link, an instant behind him, tripped, sprawled, saw his rifle skitter out of his hand.
The two picked themselves up. Durell slammed the hatch to the companionway closed, banged with his fists on stateroom doors, yelled for Lazeishvili.
They found him in a stateroom halfway along the gray-walled corridor.
He looked vaguely like photographs Durell had seen of him: fortyish, high-domed forehead, determined jaw and somewhat worn countenance. His wide-set eyes held a misty green cast. But there was something more, a calm competence, self-confidence that seemed to draw on resources superior to that of ordinary men. He was dressed in serge slacks and threadbare tweed jacket shapeless as a blanket, and he sweated profusely.
"Who are you?” he demanded in Russian. He was clearly apprehensive.
"Come with us, quickly,” Durell replied in kind, his tone sharp.
"Nyet!”
Link grabbed the man’s arm, moved him toward the door where Durell waited. Lazeishvili’s feet dragged protestingly on the dusty deck. "What the devil’s the matter with you?” Link snarled in English, his nerves raw.
Lazeishvili raised his voice, speaking in English now. "I wish to return to the Soviet Union, don’t you see?”
Durell sighed grimly.
He and Link exchanged a fidgeting glance of despair.
"But we are your friends,” Link pleaded.
"You are Americans; I know the accent,” Lazeishvili countered.
"What of it? We’re here to help you,” Durell said.
"Of course,” Lazeishvili snorted. "You want me.”
Durell spoke quickly: "You will be safe. Don’t worry.”
Lazeishvili said: "You don’t seem to understand. I am a loyal citizen of the USSR. I have no desire to aid the Americans to the detriment of my own country.”
Link’s tone was surprised: "What are you talking about?”
Durell broke in: "We don’t have time to discuss this now.” He glanced into the corridor. "They’ll be coming through that companionway hatch—”
Lazeishvili ignored him: "The Americans will try to use me, use my knowledge, you see,” he told Link. "I am a nuclear physicist, until recently involved in research of supreme importance to the security of my country—but you must know that.”
"I am with the Human Rights Congress—”
"Still you’re an American, and what about him?” Lazeishvili’s finger was aimed at Durell. Durell and Link exchanged troubled glances, neither speaking. Lazeishvili had caught Durell off-balance; he hadn’t expected this.
Lazeishvili smiled grimly, and said: "I would never tell the Americans what I know, but they will attempt to make me. Or they will pretend to my countrymen that I have, to gain a psychological advantage. One way or another, the Americans will use me to make the leaders of my country believe they have no secrets left.”
Durell’s patience was growing thin. "You didn’t slip out of Russia to turn around and go back. Why have you changed your mind?”
Lazeishvili shook his head. "Too much bloodshed. And now—Americans to kidnap me! My sole aim is to win political freedom for my countrymen, not to betray them.”
Durell spoke harshly: "If you go back, you’ll be thrown into prison, at the very least. You’ll forfeit everything, even the chance of helping your people. At least from another country your voice can be heard.”
"The voice of a traitor, if I go to the United States,” Lazeishvili said simply.
There was anguish in Link’s voice, as he pleaded: "But I told you, I’m with the HRC. You won’t have to return to Russia or go to America. We’ll see you get anywhere you wish.”
"Maybe. But I cannot take that risk. I—”
Durell clutched the man’s lapel. There was a commotion of voices and pounding feet within the superstructure, and he guessed the Russians were attempting to outflank them. His tone turned brutal under the pressure, as he said: "Save it for your memoirs, Mr. Lazeishvili—you’re coming with us.”
Quickly, he strode to the outer bulkhead, peered through a large porthole of rectangular design. Most freighters carried their lifeboats high on the bridge, he knew. The Nereid was no exception; the canvas-covered bow of a lifeboat hung from its davits just below the window.
He spoke rapidly to Link, as he returned to the threshold of the stateroom: "Get him through the porthole, onto that lifeboat. I’ll give you cover.”
Link sounded angry and high-strung. "We can’t lower a lifeboat. I don’t even know how. What about those men out there?”
Suddenly the companionway door slammed open at the end of the corridor. Durell ducked away a millisecond before a storm of lead lashed the length of the hall. His Uzi ripped an answering burst, and he yelled urgently to Link: "Not in the boat. Use it as a platform to jump from. It’ll give you clearance out from the side of the hull.”
He leaned out, fired, ducked back inside again.
The reply was a vicious jabber of slugs, but at least he was holding them at bay. No one had tried to come through the hallway door.
A sudden long howl told him that Link had managed to open the porthole. Sand and dust spurted into the stateroom. He hopped across to peer from behind the other side of the stateroom’s threshold, toward a stairlanding at the opposite end of the corridor. No one was there, but he fired briefly to intimidate anyone thinking of giving that approach a try.
Now shots erupted from the first exit, scraping and gouging the gray corridor walls. He switched sides and returned the fire, replaced the empty clip with a spare from his hip pocket, glanced through swirling dust toward the porthole.
Link and Lazeishvili were gone.
His aim was to hold the standoff for a solid five minutes. He judged the others would not attempt to storm the stateroom. They had every reason to believe they had him trapped and could have him sooner or later without further sacrifice.
The firing became infrequent and sporadic, just a reminder that they were waiting.
The storm raged on.
Sand rattled against metal.
Durell coughed dryly, wiped sweat from his eyesockets, flung glittering droplets onto the floor. He glanced at his watch. Time was up.
He clamped his teeth against the thunder and kick as he emptied almost a full clip, firing up and down the companionway, brass smoking through th
e dusty air and clattering at his feet, then threw the Uzi down, scampered across the stateroom as if the devil were at his heels. With trembling urgency, he lowered himself onto the lifeboat. The khamsin snatched at his clothing, etched his flesh, clawed at his eyes as he faced into the black void below.
In that poised moment there came a racketing stutter.
Bullets whiffed by his head, even as he jumped.
The water slapped, jarred and closed over him. It had a bitter, gagging taste as he fought his way through black silk and found the surface.
The Nereid babbled and barked with calls and commands. A searchlight lanced the howling gloom, but Durell had reached the steep slope of the bank. He scrambled out of the water, sloshing and dribbling, sand caking on his soggy clothing, and ran at a long-distance pace toward where the Learjet had been parked, half a mile away.
As he glanced over his shoulder through the tempest-bleared night, floods and spotlight went dark aboard the Nereid.
His nostrils felt raw and clogged with dust.
Sweat and grime stung his eyes.
The world seemed lost in an enormous fist of hot wool. The roadway was drifted with sandy tendrils, layered in blowing gloom.
He could vaguely see lights from some ships in the anchored line, and, by counting from the first, should have located the Leaijet by now. His feet dragged to a stop. He swore under his breath, perplexity in his stinging eyes. He might have been lost, but he knew better: he had reached the place where they had pushed the rubber boat into the canal.
But the plane was gone.
Link and Sirena had abandoned him in this keening wilderness.
He sensed immediate danger, looked back the way he had come and saw where powerful flashlight beams glittered through the slashing grit.
A party of the Russians had followed, to nail him once and for all.
10
The second day after what Mahabeth, Egyptian Intelligence, would come to refer to as the Nereid Incident, General Dickinson McFee arrived from Geneva and went straight to Marty Stone’s steel-walled and tightly guarded office on Vassilissis Sofias Avenue, near the Hilton Hotel in Athens. The small, anonymous chief of K Section had dropped out of the entourage of the President, who was in the midst of a nine-day goodwill tour of Europe and the Mideast. McFee had taken the rare opportunity to strengthen relations with friendly intelligence chiefs in countries on the President’s itinerary.
A security guard had announced his arrival to Marty, who scooped reports, dossiers and memos into some order on his cluttered desk as the boss was shown in.
"What is the latest on the Cajun?” McFee said, without preamble.
"No word, sir. He might as well have vanished at the South Pole.”
"Hints from the Egyptians?” McFee sat in a padded chair, close to Marty’s desk.
"Not a word.” Marty smoothed his red mustache nervously. "Not that we’ve dared invite any,” he added.
McFee thought a moment, his eyes an icy, pale blue. His thumb rubbed the hilt of a blackthorn walking stick that contained an arsenal of lethal gimmicks. "I have kept abreast of your communications, Martin,”
he said, and straightened an impeccable crease in his gray trousers. "But I want to hear the whole story from you. As luck would have it, the President leaves Paris for Cairo within the hour—I don’t have to tell you there is potential for severe embarrassment in this.”
Marty poured a cup of oily black coffee, composing his thoughts. McFee declined with a slight shake of his gray head, when Marty offered the percolator across the desk. Teleprinters clattered in an adjacent code room.
"As I said, sir, I have had no communication with Durell since he left Rhodes night before last.” He moved to a large wall map of Egypt and touched the twin streaks marking the canal’s al-Ballah bypass. "He was headed here, as I’ve reported. Our spotter in Port Said had provided us with a convoy schedule. This seemed the best place to attempt boarding the freighter. But we don’t even know for sure that his airplane reached it.”
McFee spoke: "The odds are heavily against a mere accident that might have downed him at sea. If he were shot down over Egypt, we’d have heard about it. Let’s assume he reached his destination.” He paused briefly, and said: "What type of airplane was he using?”
"Unknown. He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”
"Then we can’t very well ascertain whether it did, in fact, return to Rhodes.”
"Surely not without him aboard, sir; and if he had returned, we’d certainly have heard from him by now.”
"Just casting about, Martin,” McFee said mildly. He knit his frosty brows, and said: "His silence can mean only one thing, then. He’s still in Egypt.”
Marty hesitated, then spoke in a deferential tone: "I don’t like to mention it, sir, but he may be dead.”
"Of course. But we must proceed on the assumption that he is not.”
"They may have taken him into custody.”
"I think not. The Egyptians would have screamed to high heaven, if they had caught him.”
"If that happened—”
McFee finished the thought for him: "Then the President’s invitation to Cairo would be canceled, at the very least.” His tone grew frigid, as he continued. "Egypt’s initiative toward peace with Israel could be shattered by the mistrust of the US that would arise, its President made a laughing-stock for relying on our good offices.”
"It seems all we can do is wait and hope,” Marty said.
"Wait for the roof to cave in? No, my boy.” McFee stirred slightly in his chair. "We have one possible trump card, if I dare attempt to play it—but first, tell me the rest of the details leading up to Durell’s departure from Rhodes.”
Marty worked backwards, relating how Durell presumably had left with Link O’Dell in a plane piloted by Sirena Alatis, and how the police had sought him for questioning in connection with the murder of Costa Panagiotes. He noted, as he had told Durell, that Greek Intelligence had shown little inclination to intercede with the civil authorities on Durell’s behalf.
McFee listened attentively until Marty had finished, then said: "Who is this Panagiotes?”
"I’m not sure, sir. Wealthy. Formerly in the government, and still wields some power in the Greek infrastructure. Just how is uncertain. A mystery man.”
"Pull aside his veil, Martin,” McFee said. "Put your people to building a file on him. I’ll want it by midnight.”
"Yes, sir.”
"In the meantime, I’ll have a talk with my opposite number in Greek Intelligence.”
"Sir?” Marty looked troubled.
"Yes?”
"What about the Egyptians? How do we handle them, if this breaks over our heads?”
"Normally, the procedure would be to disavow our man, scrap the mission, accept our losses.”
"I was afraid you’d say that, sir.” Marty was about to stare morosely into his empty coffee cup, but something, the merest hint of smug cunning in General McFee’s pale eyes, brought his face back up.
McFee almost never smiled, or showed emotion in any way, and he did not now, despite Marty’s double-take. On the contrary, his small, intelligent face turned more severe than usual, if that were possible.
"I said 'normally,’ ” he pointed out. He drew a short breath and went on. "First, there is the man Durell was after. Aleksei Lazeishvili’s state-of-the-art knowledge, when it comes to atomic science, can tell the Pentagon exactly where we stand vis-a-vis the Soviets in nuclear weaponry. That’s at a minimum. Even better, he may be induced to go to work for us. He’s a genius, no doubt about it. And if Durell has learned anything of his whereabouts, it behooves us to exert every effort to bring Durell back to tell us.”
Marty’s slender smile was turned inward, but McFee missed nothing. "What are you thinking, Martin?”
"Forgive me, sir. I assumed our interest in Lazeishvili was humanitarian—of course there would be propaganda value, as a natural spin-off, but. . .” His voice dribbled to silence at
the look in his superior’s cold eyes.
"Grow up,” McFee said, his tone distant and brittle.
"Yes, sir.” A pause. "Durell said we’d want to pick his brains.”
"Of course. He’s a realist.”
"It’s just ironic, sir. He didn’t seem to care very much for the idea. He seemed of the opinion that Lazeishvili should be allowed to proceed to any country he wished.”
"Doubtlessly, you misunderstood him,” McFee said.
"Yes, sir. How are you going to get Durell back, if I may ask, sir?”
McFee spoke almost as if to himself, thumbing the smooth hilt of his walking stick. "The Egyptian President has displayed a remarkable talent for the bold stroke, the unexpected ploy. He should appreciate that in others. Durell’s action was not directed against Egypt but the Russians—and there is no love lost between them and the Egyptian leader. If that is carefully and diplomatically explained, I believe he will cooperate.”
"You mean . . . ?”
McFee nodded gravely. "I mean, Martin, perhaps he will help us find our man—if the President of the United States asks.”
"Forgive me, sir. That simply blows my mind.” Marty’s eyes were wide. "It sounds crazy.”
McFee may have smiled. "I think not, if my judgment of character is half what I believe it to be.”
There was a momentary silence.
Then McFee said: "What are you waiting for? Have communications connect me with Air Force One.”
11
Durell nodded awake to a premonition of danger.
He was hungry and thirsty, filthy and exhausted.
The sparrows had stopped singing. He did not move. He had struck out across the desert, headed southeast toward the Sweetwater Canal that connected Cairo and Ismailia, but had turned back. The Russians had dogged him all the way. He had lived off a pocketful of stolen dates and brackish water for three days now. The Uzi was gone. He still had the snub-nosed .38, but only four cartridges.
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