by Paul Gallico
Rogo was caught like the principal actor in the floodlight, screwing his pugnacious face against the glare. Behind him, it showed Martin and Manny standing together, Klaas holding his daughter, and the wet-suited girl tall and straight and unflinching.
The beam lifted to catch Hely more directly. “Ah yes, of course. The one that got away. I believe you met some of my colleagues earlier.” She did not reply. Rogo thought for a second of all his unanswered questions. To one side, Jason raised a puzzled eyebrow for his benefit alone.
The silky voice went on with its commentary as the flashlight continued its search of the room. “Here, I presume, we have the captain of the little freighter.” Klaas gave a formal, stiff bow. “A girl, two little men whose New Year’s Eve dinner must have been rudely interrupted, and a tough guy.” The last remark came as the light landed again on Rogo’s narrow-eyed face.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the voice soothed, with elaborate courtesy. “May I introduce myself. I am Captain Ilich Bela, captain of the salvage ship Komarevo, and I am afraid that from now on you must accept that I am in authority here.”
The eloquent beam momentarily illuminated the armed guards on either side.
“I am, in this context, a salvage expert.”
Another voice, equally casual, cut in. “An expert in salvaging other people’s money, an expert in smuggling and stealing and killing. Right, captain?”
It was Jason. Bela’s swiftly moving beam found him sitting astride a shattered generator, his back against a girder. He was grinning. “Well, Bela,” he went on, “I had a feeling you might be dropping in.”
His smile held through an interminable silence. At last, Bela spoke, “You have the advantage of me, Jason. What are you doing here?” He was obviously shocked, and not too pleased.
Jason grinned back, “Why, the same as you, of course. Trying to earn an honest crust.”
The light again flashed on the expressionless figures of the three gunmen and the towering Anton, and Bela’s words came clipped and anxious, “Don’t play games with me, Jason. You should know better than to try to take me lightly.”
Mock gravity replaced the grin. “Don’t try to frighten me with your trained poodles, Bela.”
Rogo was confused. He did not like the familiarity between the two of them. What was so special about Jason that he could joke with this crew of killers? He demanded, “What the hell is going on here?”
Jason explained, “Bela is quite a character. He’s probably the only Communist ever to grasp the principle of the profit motive. But he also knows his limitations. And he knows that if he kills me, there isn’t a port anywhere he could land and stay alive for twenty-four hours. Isn’t that a fact, Bela?”
Bela sounded more composed again. “You have a lot of friends, Captain Jason. But why argue? We are in the same line of business.”
“Oh no we are not!” Jason’s gravity was quite genuine now.
Bela was teasing. “Come, Jason, you surprise me. I heard your name mentioned in connection with several rather unorthodox cargoes.”
The others watched this meaningless exchange in silence. Jason spoke quite evenly. “My business is my business, Bela. But I don’t make money out of arming murderers. I don’t take checks for slitting throats. I don’t shift Mafia men across frontiers. No, Bela, we’re not in the same business at all.”
“Ethics, my dear Jason, mere ethics. We both supply demands. It is the law of your admirable capitalist world, is it not? I may do it for money, you may do it for some more romantic motive. It is the same thing.”
The discussion halted as one of the half-lit figures moved forward. The guns and lights turned on him. It was Klaas. He looked what he was, frightened but determined.
There was a slight quaver in his voice as he gripped tightly onto a bent rail and said, “Captain, I wish to speak with you. I have a line aboard this vessel, and you must realize that you are trespassing and will be held to account for it. As captain of the authorized salvage operation, I am in charge and I must ask you to withdraw and take these armed men with you.”
Bela’s laugh was full of enjoyment. Anton, bored with the talk, grunted with pleasure. He did not understand. But if Captain Bela was laughing then everything was all right.
“Skip it, Klaas.” The Dutchman heard Jason’s plea. “Keep out of this.”
“No, no,” said Bela, still burbling with laughter. “The good captain is right. We must address ourselves to the facts of the situation. And, of course, my good fellow, you do have salvage rights. That is a fact. It is also a fact that I can, if I wish, kill you and all your companions. You will still be quite within your rights. I shall see to it personally that it is inscribed on your gravestone.”
The Dutchman’s face crumpled. The order by which he lived had no application here. He was a man of peace among men of violence. He was powerless. He backed slowly out of the light.
“Now let us come to another fact,” Bela continued. “Which of you is Detective Lieutenant Michael Rogo?” Silence. He gestured impatiently with the flashlight. “Come now, which one?”
No one looked at Rogo. The cop stood where he was. He was amazed when he heard Martin’s shaky voice say, “Me, I’m Mike Rogo.” They all looked, everyone incredulous. “I’m the cop,” he added, and folded his arms in an unconvincing gesture of masculinity.
It was his big chance. He had watched with envy as Jason and Rogo had led the action and made the decisions. No one ever asked him what he thought. Now he was up there with the men, even if he was frightened. He knew that he could be committing suicide.
The response he got was not what he expected. Again Bela’s clear, amused, and pleasant laugh rang out. Whatever Captain Bela’s weaknesses, he was an authority on policemen. He knew, for instance, that they did not come five foot six inches high with freckled faces and voices like choirboys.
“Ah, a little hero, I see. Very brave, my friend, but it will not do, I am afraid. I would say that the policeman must be our silent friend here.” His gun barrel in the light indicated Rogo. “Yes, he has the right look of cretinous hostility.”
Rogo kept his eyes on the gun. He said, “So I’m Rogo. What’s it to you, pal?”
Bela had reverted to his persuasive mood again. “There you are, Anton,” he called across. “I promised you a little fun.”
Anton lurched forward, delight all over his face.
“Tame gorilla, huh?” Rogo said. “Call him off, fella, or I might have to throw him back in the trees.
Play it the way you know best, Rogo told himself. Don’t back off before hired muscle.
Bela was talking again, “You see, Lieutenant Rogo, you set us something of a problem. I personally, of course, have no argument with you. However, my employers feel it would be better if you did not leave this ship.”
The tone, the setup, the type were all familiar to Rogo. What he did not understand was the background to all this. “Why me?” he asked.
“Those are my instructions,” Bela sighed, with infinite regret. “My employers are anxious that the world shall not know about your cargo of gold. You are surprised I know about it? Ah, officer, the world is perhaps a good deal more complicated than you realize. Now please tell me where it is stored.”
So this guy was just a hood who wanted the gold. He might shoot him. But at least now Rogo would know why. He stabbed out a finger at Bela.
“This lousy tub must be about a hundred miles long and most of it’s under water. So you go swim for the gold, wise guy, because I ain’t telling.” He clamped his arms across his chest. Rogo was going down fighting.
Bela was angry. He was totally conscious of the time limit set by the boat’s precarious position. He issued rapid instructions:
“Get those sheep lined up over there. I do not want people hiding in corners.”
Directed by the gun barrels, Manny and Martin, Klaas and Coby and lastly Hely moved along the bulkhead into the light, where they grouped blinking by the companionway.
Jason did not move. He stayed in the shadows, a few feet in front of the hold door. Bela ignored him.
When he turned again to Rogo, Bela was sharp and businesslike. “You will tell me where the gold is and you will tell me quickly. I am not prepared to be hindered by some ignorant American policeman.”
Rogo stepped closer to him and no fear showed. “And I ain’t going to cooperate with a fancy-talking smart-ass Commie.”
Bela was decisive and explicit. “Anton—break his bones!”
A look of anticipatory pleasure covered Anton’s face.
Rogo braced himself as he heard the giant lumber up behind him. He felt his own steeled biceps squash beneath fingers of terrible strength. He closed down the shutters of his mind and surrendered himself to the future.
It was several seconds before he realized that the calm drawl he heard was Jason talking.
“If you want to waste time bashing cops, Bela, go ahead,” he was saying. “But I would have thought a guy like you would be more interested in a deal. This ship is sinking, you know.”
“What deal?” All playfulness was gone from Bela.
“Rogo knows and won’t tell. You unleash the gorilla on him, it wastes time and you haven’t got a lot of that left. Besides, Rogo might not talk for a long time. Look at him. He’s all leather, that guy.”
Bela was impatient. “What deal?”
Jason still flopped unconcerned against the girder. He said, “Me, I’m in the neutral corner here. I’m not on anyone’s team. And I know where the gold is too.”
They were going to kill Mr. Rogo. Manny could see that quite clearly, and he marveled at his own lack of horror at the situation. It seemed as though he could not feel anything anymore. The sequence of disaster and tragedy and menace had anesthetized him. He was numb. He trudged on mechanically. All the talk of gold, the tiger, even these evil men with guns did not seem to touch him. He watched it all wonderingly. Rogo appeared to understand it. So did Jason. Even little Martin wanted to be a part of it. But Manny felt himself to be a spectator at a grotesque charade: he had no role. Now they were going to kill Mr. Rogo and he could not understand why Rogo did not protest.
His eyes returned to the steps of the companionway, barely four feet away. He leaned back against the bulkhead, and could feel the tension and fear of the others beside him, feeling nothing himself. He could see the steps that led through to the rest of the ship, to that terrible journey they had made. Belle had died there. That too was where her body had been swept by the merciful waters; plucked from his sight. He refocused on the tangle of debris on the floor. The light had improved since these men had cut a hole in the side of the ship. He could see the pipes and conduits now. Of course, he remembered, that had been the ceiling. The ship was upside down. Everything was upside down. Throwing his mind back to the time before everything was upside down was as difficult as recalling childhood. Scenes before the catastrophe flashed back to him, like old photographs. Belle tidying her cabin. “It’s our home, Manny, at least for a little time.” The New Year’s Eve celebrations that terrible night. With a start he realized it had only been the night before. It could not be possible. But that was when his world had, in every sense, turned upside down, and there was a memento of that time down there amongst the rubble. It was a champagne bottle. It must have been part of that New Year’s Eve celebration, swept through the ship on the rising waters, and then stranded as the lurch altered the angle of the liner.
Then he saw something else beside the bottle. It was jammed between two of the conduits, and it took him a full minute to recognize it among the flotsam and jetsam of metal and machinery. Rogo’s gun. Manny had seen hardly half a dozen in his life. He knew plenty of people who kept firearms. Self-defense they called it. But Manny never wanted to play around with them. “Dangerous,” Belle always said, and he agreed. Anyway, who’d want to hurt poor old Manny Rosen? The day Manny joins the Cosa Nostra, he gets a gun. Belle used to laugh at that. What was Rogo’s gun doing there? Ah yes. He remembered. Rogo had thrown it away when he discovered it didn’t work. No one wants a pistol that doesn’t work. Obvious, thought Manny, even to me who knows nothing about guns.
Through the insulation of shock that had protected him from the madness around him came a message so clear he almost jumped. His eyes riveted on the gun. It was such a small one, not a bit like the big pistols policemen usually carried. It had been soaked. But, and he grabbed the fleeting thought, these men did not know it would not fire. As the aged force their legs to carry them, Manny Rosen began to force his tired, stunned mind to work on that thought. He knew what he must do, and he knew too that he could do it. Belle would have wanted it that way.
It all rested between Bela and Jason now. The hovering violence, the threat of the looming Anton, the gritted courage of Rogo, faded. The tension between these two men was as taut as a wire from one side of the hull to the other. Bela dropped his elaborate courtesy. Jason abandoned his idle teasing. They were talking business.
Bela saw the opening that Jason was offering. “You will tell me?” he asked. He instinctively looked for the catches.
“For a price, Bela. And you know all about the price of things.”
Bela nodded. “What price?”
They were trading now. Jason said, “I have a consignment in the same place. I take my parcel, you take your gold. That is the deal.”
The silence in the engine room was agonizing as Bela thought. He spoke slowly. “That is possible, Captain Jason. You and I could reach an understanding. If we can perhaps help each other and make life a little easier, why not? On the other hand, what happens to our friends here? You see, it is part of my business that the policeman must not leave alive. It is essential. I have guaranteed it.”
Rogo listened as his life was bartered. Anton was simply holding him, waiting for Bela’s word to start.
Jason’s fingers drummed the girder behind his back. His face did not move. He said simply, “So who’d miss a cop anyway?” And Bela smiled.
Martin, Klaas, and Coby flinched at the way Jason threw away Rogo’s life. Manny seemed not to hear, his eyes rooted to the floor. Hely showed no emotion of any kind. But she kept her gaze on Jason, watching and wondering: there had to be something else, she thought.
Rogo half-twisted in Anton’s grip. “Now hold it a minute! I don’t care who’s holding the goddamn guns, no one makes a deal with my life until I get something to say about it.” No one looked at him.
Coby’s sobbing followed his roar. “Please, please, please, Captain Jason, don’t say that!”
Bela and Jason continued to regard each other as though there had been no interruptions. “One moment.” Bela sounded a little curious. “How can you be so sure I will let you walk out of here with your parcel? It can hardly be, Jason, that you have such a high regard of me that you would take my word.”
He was still looking for the trap. Jason gave a short bark of a laugh. “No, Bela, I wouldn’t trust you with the church funds. I can walk out of here for the same reason I am safe now. You can’t kill me, Bela. You don’t want that much trouble. You know my friends, and you know they’d find you.”
“You’re right, of course,” Bela said, pleased and a little relieved. “We are in permanent checkmate, you and I, Jason. So I will buy your deal and we shall both profit from it.”
Hely still searched for the explanation. Bela, she was sure, was every bit as merciless and murderous as he appeared. His part of the deal was straightforward. But Jason? No. It was wrong. He operated by motives she could not begin to guess, but she knew this could not be as it appeared: the whole scene was false to her. There was not even a flicker on his face as he turned to her and said, “Okay, Hely, open up the hold and show the captain here his surprise.”
It was all she could do to suppress the laugh. The tiger! So that was it. They had all forgotten it, except Jason. That was the surprise. And Jason knew that the tiger’s arrival would give him an advantage, a chance to strike. She ducked u
nder the piping and scrambled over the wreckage, and it was only when she reached the hold door that she appreciated exactly what it meant.
When she opened the door, she could swing it back so that she would be protected. Manny and the others were across the engine room and would at least have a chance to scramble to safety. But Jason was only a few feet in front of the hold, directly in the tiger’s path.
She looked at him and saw in the grimness of his face that he knew exactly what he was doing. He understood her doubt, and his response too was unequivocal.
“Go ahead, Hely. Open the cage.”
“YOU’RE A KILLER, MANNY”
8
There should not have been a hold there at all, but Bela was not particularly surprised. It was rumored in the shipping world that the Poseidon’s new Greek owners were so anxious to make the old queen of the seas show a profit that they were mixing freight and passengers, dropping the old five-star standards regardless of reputation, and that they would carry just about anything anywhere. The hold must originally have been some sort of storage space, but, like everything else on the old liner, it had been made to pay its way.
The door opened without a creak on well-oiled hinges. Hely’s hand knocked down the securing handles and swung the door completely around so that she was obscured by it. Nothing happened. No one spoke, no one moved. Everyone’s eyes were riveted to that black hollow. Inside, dimly visible, were piles of packing cases, some smashed. Bela started towards it, saying, “Well, let us take a look . . .” when the tiger bulleted out.
It came from behind the cases. It moved at a fast, low run, as though its stomach were touching the ground, and it hurtled over the obstacle course of the floor quite soundlessly. Jason had turned sideways and pressed himself against the steel upright. It was only about six inches wide and the hot, heavy body of the beast brushed hard against his legs as it tore past. His rigid body swayed from the impact and for a second he closed his eyes. But he did not move.
