by Paul Gallico
Again, Bela gave a perfunctory nod. He steepled his fingers and became businesslike. “Very well, I see no reason why you should stay.”
“One thing.” Jason was relaxed again. “I must take the girl.”
Bela shrugged. “And him?” His toe tapped the policeman’s bulky figure and he was watching Jason’s face.
Jason lifted Hely up easily in his arms and met Bela’s gaze full on. “Who wants a dead cop? He was a nice guy, but the fight’s over.”
“Please.” They both turned, in evidently equal surprise. It was the baby-faced man. He was balanced on one leg, his suspended foot bare, like a timid little bird. “Please, he was a friend of mine. We were on vacation together. We sat at the same table and everything, me and Mike.”
Boredom and contempt mingled on Bela’s face. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting that. But take him if that is your wish. Now I must ask you to leave quickly. I have business to complete.”
Jason led the evacuation on its tragic trail to Bela’s rope ladder. His head was held back and he did not look down at the soft figure in his arms and the long sash of silver hair swinging at his side. Klaas took Rogo under the arms, Martin lifted his legs and, hopping and wincing, followed the Dutchman with the body slung between them. The nurse walked beside them, weeping quietly. Coby backed out last, her rifle trained on Bela right across the room.
Bela was already giving orders to his men to put down their guns and start moving the gold. He viewed the girl with a glint of humor in his eye. “What is this?” he said, with ingenuous surprise. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Like I’d trust a mad dog,” she called out.
“Ah, so many heroes, mademoiselle.” Bela sighed dramatically. “And so many heroines. You should not let your feelings cloud your judgment. It is only business.”
He raised his glance to Jason, framed for a moment in the cutaway square. “It has been a pleasure dealing with you, Captain Jason,” he shouted. “Perhaps another day?”
Jason’s reply was faint. “I should be immensely surprised, Bela. Immensely surprised.”
The dapper captain laughed pleasantly as he watched them leave. Coby, still backing out, stumbled for a moment at the bottom of the ladder and then ran up it quickly and vanished over the top.
Bela strode over to the hold and switched on his torch. The slim gold bars were spilling out. He checked his watch and ordered his men to hurry.
Then he folded his arms and hummed an old-fashioned waltz to himself. It had after all been a good day. But then, Captain Bela thought, they would all be good days after this.
The eerie sound of a bosun’s whistle wailed in the peace of the Mediterranean morning. It was the Still, the sea’s traditional call to attention, and the one piercing note instantly brought the semicircle of survivors to a stiff-backed silence on the after deck of the Magt. The oaken-faced seaman who was blowing it removed the pipe from his lips, and Klaas, his solemn voice unwavering, began to read from a small prayer book. “I am the Resurrection and the Light . . .”
This was how it should be, Jason thought. Behind them, sea and sky were the same featureless blue. The mad dash to safety had sustained them all through the first few minutes after they had returned to the Magt. The ancient engines had rumbled into uncertain life, and the gallant little freighter, shaking from bow to stern, had carved her way furiously through the ocean. Klaas had sensed Jason’s anxiety and agreed, and the rapidly organized service reflected the Dutchman’s meticulous nature. He produced the battered prayer book and found the correct service. He even found an old hand who still had his bosun’s whistle.
He had arranged it discreetly, as Jason stood on the deck and watched the scene of so much tragedy and death, and a few minutes violent happiness, fall behind. At first, Jason could see Bela’s men lowering the cases of gold into the pinnaces. Gradually the gap widened as the Magt rocked on her way. But now the engines were still. The only sound was Klaas’s voice. Soon, he thought, it will be over.
Four deckhands standing behind the group moved up to the rail and knelt down. They were holding on their shoulders a hatch cover. On it was Hely, sewn into a clean white sheet. Klaas had apologized to Jason: he did not have a French flag on board. The two men at the back prepared to lift the inboard end of the cover, but Jason stepped forward. He looked at Klaas and saw the brief nod of the head, and slipped his arms under that lifeless form as he had when he had carried her off the Poseidon. “We therefore commit her body to the deep . . .” The weighted body entered the water with hardly a splash and sank instantly. Klaas continued, the soothing powerful words rolling out, and Jason saw that the waters were smooth again. She belonged more to the water than to the land, he thought. He did not want marble crosses and flowers. Now every wave would be a memorial to her. This was indeed how it should be: the healing words and the forgiving sea. “. . . and the love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all ever more, Amen.”
The bosun’s whistle began fluting again, first a high note, then a low note. It was the Carry On. Klaas closed the small book with a snap, the engines shook into life. It was over. Jason was turning to thank Klaas when he heard Coby’s cry, “Look! Oh no! Look!” They all rushed to the stern rail.
The Poseidon was rising. The spoon-back of the ship was lifting and trembling, like some great, dying beast struggling to stand. The sea around it seemed to boil agitatedly, jets of water spitting from the surface. Suddenly, the Poseidon was thrust clear into the air. They watched in silence.
A vast mass of black lava had thrust its way up from the seabed, and the eighty-one-thousand-ton liner lay like a stranded bath toy on top of it. An island was being born. The ancient and terrible forces deep within the earth that had caused the tidal wave were now driving millions of tons of lava up through the water. It was a volcano. The sea boiled and steamed around it, and the air was loud with violent rumblings and sharp cracks.
For long seconds they saw it clearly, despite the steam. Then, in a deafening uproar, the volcano blasted a pillar of flame and smoke high into the heavens. Rocks as big as houses leapt through the air. The sky darkened and the sun itself dimmed, with a rain of ash and cinders as the primeval, imprisoned powers of the earth burst forth.
Explosion followed explosion. The column of white and yellow and orange stabbed at the sky and huge clouds of steam gushed upwards. Then the flames sank back like a guttering firework, and they saw that the top of that priapic mountain was a huge cavern. It gaped open raw and glowing scarlet, like some dreadful wound, and slow streams of coruscating red pumped out and crawled down its black steeps.
The Poseidon had gone. It had vanished. Blasted to pieces by the forces of the fire, burned in the heat that melts rocks, sucked into the raging belly of the earth itself. The tragic ship with its ghostly crew of corpses, plunderers, and gold had been totally destroyed.
The air seemed to shimmer with the extravagance of heat and light, and the spellbound spectators on the Magt winced before it and shielded their eyes. “It’s terrible, terrible,” whispered Coby, and she shuddered in her father’s arms.
“Like looking into the mouth of hell,” Jason murmured.
So mesmerized were they by that spectacle that they did not realize until it was almost upon them. “Look out!” Klaas’s warning was only just in time. The twenty-foot-high wave was tearing across the sea. It hit the stern of the Magt and fermented madly over the ship’s topsides. They felt the decks slam their feet. They were gazing into the foam, then suddenly it was the sky, as the Magt pitched and rolled helplessly. For a moment it looked as though the vengeance of the seas that had claimed the Poseidon was hounding them too, as wave after wave flung the freighter back and forth. Then the thunderous ocean quieted and they clambered to their feet to look upon a newborn land.
The showering cinders and ash had settled on the water and turned it a dull lead color. The skies had cleared. The eclipsed sun ruled again. The island sat solidly among the waters, crowned by pro
ud clouds of gas and smoke that curled about in windless air. The sea hissed around its base and the bloodlike streams slithered down its heights. But the tumult of birth was over. There was no trace of the Komarevo. She too had been committed to the deep.
The beer splashed noisily in the tin mug as Jason tipped it out of the can. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, smiling at the small group around the wardroom table, “I think this occasion calls for a toast, and here it is. To the liveliest corpse in the world!”
The odd assortment of mugs and cups and glasses clinked amidst the laughter. Mike Rogo acknowledged the tribute to him with a mock scowl that would have frightened a grizzly bear. “I don’t see what’s so goddamn funny.” Then he too burst into a growling laugh, and killed a glass of beer at one swill. “Let’s hear it again, Jason,” he called. “My bosses are gonna wanta know what happened while I was asleep down there.”
Jason sat and locked his fingers on the table. They were all free now of the terrible strain. They were rested, washed, and changed into a variety of sweaters and trousers that Klaas had produced. The empty plates on the table were the only remains of a magnificent soup Coby had made, and now they were relaxing. The pale lamp burned dark yellow above them, and the aged furniture gleamed. They luxuriated in the warmth which came of the release from unendurable tension.
“Just like you, Rogo, to sleep through the last act.” He had teased the New York cop relentlessly about the way he had been carried off the Poseidon, but Rogo was taking it well.
“Okay, here it is,” Jason went on. “It was all straightforward. I bopped you on the button, smeared the blood from my arm on your head, and the nurse pronounced you officially dead.”
Rogo tentatively massaged a bluish bruise on his jaw. “You punch your weight and then some, pal,” he said. “But howdya sell a pass like that to Bela?”
Giggling slightly, Coby joined in. “It was so funny. Well, it seems funny now. Jason said ‘No one wants a dead cop,’ and pretended he was going to leave you.”
Jason continued, “That was the bit you really would have liked. Our Mr. Martin here ought to get an Oscar. He did the scream for you when you were supposed to be shot. Hell, he nearly frightened me to death with it. Then what was it you said to Bela, Martin?”
James Martin had his injured foot, now cleanly bandaged, resting on a chair. He was still pale, but he looked lively enough as he struggled to keep his chin above one of Klaas’s big sweaters. “Well, I just said that you were my friend and, and . . .” He paused to check the cop’s face. “. . . me and Mike were on vacation together.” He paused, then added, “Mr. Rogo.”
“That’s better. Let’s have a bit of respect round here,” said Rogo, failing to hold off his own grin. “So everyone gets to take the mick out of me and all I get is a busted jaw. Hey, Jason, you’re supposed to be the brains of this outfit. Why didn’t you think of telling me the truth?”
“Telling you, Rogo? Are you serious? In the first place, you wouldn’t have left your precious gold for anyone or anything. And in the second place you wouldn’t have believed a story like that. Not from . . . not from Hely anyway.”
For a moment, silence descended on the group and the cheerful banter subsided. They were thinking of the extraordinary woman who had died to save them.
“Okay, you bunch of bums.” Rogo was rising, and he lifted his refilled glass above their heads. “Now I wanna make a toast, and this one’s serious. Let’s drink to the bravest lady we’re ever gonna know. And she was a lady.” They came to their feet and drank.
When they sat down again, the talk warmed up and Coby used the noise to shield her words to Jason. She touched his hand on the table. “I only pray that one day someone will love me as much as she loved you,” she whispered.
He squeezed her hand. “An awful lot of fellas are going to love a girl as pretty as you, Coby,” he said, and a blush the color of wine burst over her face.
The desperate air of loss and incompleteness that had haunted Jason when they first returned to the Magt had gone with the committal and the sinking of the Poseidon. He glanced up at the nurse’s question to Martin: “What are you going to do now, Mr. Martin—after you’ve had your foot looked at, I mean?”
“Join the marines, I guess, Martin, huh?” Rogo chipped in.
Martin wriggled with pleased embarrassment. “Not really, Mr. Rogo. I think I’ve had all the excitement I can stand. I guess I’ll just go back to pushing argyles across the counter in Anaheim. And you, Mr. Rogo?”
“Me!” said the cop, and he slumped back and stretched his legs. “It ain’t what I’ll do, it’s what I won’t do. And I’ll tell you what that is. Nobody better ever try to get me on a goddamn boat again—not even for a row around the park. These feet won’t leave land for nobody. But Jason’s the guy whose plans I wanna hear. What about it, cowboy?”
Jason lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “I have decided that I don’t believe in the perfectibility of the world anymore . . .”
“Jesus!” Rogo interjected. “He’s lost me already.”
“Listen now, Rogo, I’m trying to educate you,” Jason said, joking. Then he was serious again. “No, I’ve decided that the sins of the world aren’t necessarily all my fault. I think I’ll focus my mind on trying to be an average, decent, knockabout fella. That’s about as far as my ambitions go right now.”
“Hey, did ya hear that?” Rogo said. “Robin Hood walked out on the job.”
The door of the warm room flung open and Klaas came in on a breeze of cold air. He slammed the door behind him and waved a piece of paper in the air. “More messages,” he said. He looked specifically at Rogo. “The American embassy has arranged for one of their representatives to meet Mr. Rogo and the entire party, and we are not to speak to anyone at all until we have seen him. They stress that it is vitally important.”
Rogo sniffed. “Sure they do. Their representative. I like that! It’ll be one of those goddamn kids with shades and a black belt in judo—the CIA monkeys. ’Fraid we’ll all gonna be buttoned up tight.”
Martin nodded. “It’s only natural, I suppose. They won’t want anyone talking about what really happened on the Poseidon, will they?”
“You bet they won’t,” replied the policeman.
“And, Jason.” Klaas had a twinkle in his eye as he addressed him. “We shall be in Athens very soon now. I thought perhaps you would be planning to leave our company, excellent though it is.”
With a laugh, the young American rose and clapped Klaas on the back. “You might just have something there, you old rascal. I guess I’d better slip away into the night, as they say. Hell, if I land in Athens someone might ask to see my driver’s license. It’ll cut the complications if I just vanish.”
“Talking of complications,” Rogo said, “I got two big ones bugging me. First, that goddamn lady’s gun they gave me. It went down with the ship.”
“Is that worth worrying about?” asked the nurse.
“It sure is,” he insisted, and looked around the group for sympathy. “When I get back I gotta fill in about a thousand lousy forms to explain it. Those goddamn pen-pushers in the police department’ll make a month’s work out of that.”
They all laughed at his aggrieved apprehension.
“And the second one?” Martin asked.
“The second one is that nobody’s gonna believe I tried to sit on that gold. I can’t even prove it was there. What kind of a dumb cop does that make me?”
The Dutch father and daughter exchanged sly glances. “I think it’s time for your little presentation, Coby,” said Klaas.
She reached under the table and tugged at a drawer. Her impish grin flickered in the lamplight and she adopted a formal tone. “On behalf of all those who had to put up with your naughty language and bad temper, it gives me great pleasure to present you with this!”
And she banged her hand down on the table and removed it to reveal a bar of gold. Silence reigned. Against the dark of the mahogany, it seem
ed to glow with a light of its own.
“Sweet suffering Jesus!” Rogo could say no more for a whole minute. Coby grinned delightedly at his stupefied reaction. Then he asked, “How the hell did ya get that out?”
She rushed through the explanation. “It was lying on a steel plate near the rope ladder. I’ve no idea what it was doing there. But that horrible Bela was being all clever and I thought I’d take it for you. I told papa and he thought your government might like a teeny bit of their money back.”
“Well, I’ll be . . .” Rogo’s astonished face looked all around the room and then broke into a huge grin. “That’s one helluva souvenir to take back!”
It was little James Martin who capped the whole conversation. His face set rigidly, he leaned across the table and tapped the policeman’s hand. “Sorry we forgot the tigerskin rug.” Rogo’s great gale of laughter swelled as the others joined in, and the sound echoed across the silent seas outside.
The moon was as cold and clear as steel against the black velvet of the night sky. The chugging engines pushed the Magt determinedly toward land, and the sea, which had lost its unnatural calm, slapped reassuringly against the bow. Jason was packing his equipment into the rubber dinghy on the deck when he saw the shadow beside him.
“Hi there, Rogo. Taking the air?”
“Yep. Before those CIA vultures sink their claws in.” He leaned back against the rail on his elbows and watched Jason neatly stowing everything away. “What’re you really going to do now, Jason?”
The young man continued working as he talked. “Well, I thought maybe I’d start a sailing school. Back in the States. I kinda like playing around with boats. It’s about the only damn thing I’m any good at. But I lost my yacht in the storm so I don’t know how the hell I’ll raise the money. Still, I’ll worry about that later.”
Rogo grunted. They were silent for a little while, easy in each other’s company.
Then Jason walked over and grasped the rail with both hands and leaned on stiffened arms. His eyes were fixed on the sea where the moonlight scattered on the ripples, and he spoke in a low voice.
