Jack Higgins

by Night Judgement at Sinos

  “You tried to be too clever, Yanni,” I said. “You and whoever gave you your orders. Now you’ve got nothing.”

  Pavlo groaned. I examined him quickly. He was still unconscious, sweat on his face. I wiped it away and Yanni said, “Will he live?”

  “If he’s lucky. It’s the lung I’m worried about. This sweating could indicate the start of pneumonia.”

  “Did he manage to tell you anything?”

  I turned, caught slightly off guard by the question. I suppose he saw his answer in my face.

  “God help you, Jack, if they even suspect that you have such information. They have their own ways of dealing with that kind of situation and it is anything but pleasant.”

  “And what makes you think I wouldn’t tell them?” I demanded. “Remember me, Yanni? Jack Savage is the name. I used to have a salvage business in Cairo worth better than two hundred thousand quid and I wasn’t interested in politics.”

  He stared at me, shocked, incredulous. “I don’t believe you, Jack. You wouldn’t. I know you too well.”

  “A little while ago you were telling me you left me in the dark because you couldn’t be sure of me. Make up your mind.”

  I was suddenly angry, tired of the whole damned business and of men and their silly little games. Schoolboy games that ended in death for too many people when played on the adult level. To hell with them all. What did it have to do with me?

  “You try and save Greece if you want to,” I said. “I’ve got more important things on my mind,” and I left him there and went up on deck.

  Melos still sat in the prow, the boys on the deck in front of him. He was smoking a Dutch cigar and looked remarkably relaxed.

  “How about Kytros?” he demanded.

  “He’ll live.”

  Inside the wheelhouse, Ciasim’s head seemed disembodied in the light from the compass. He was still wearing his wet-suit and it occurred to me that he must be cold.

  I said, “I’ll take over. You go and change.”

  Melos cut in sharply, “He’s all right where he is. You worry too much, Savage. These Turks are like pigs rotting in a field. They can exist where others die. Animals.”

  He spat over the side. Ciasim didn’t move a muscle. I went below and got the brandy bottle and a mug. Kytros was sitting beside Pavlo, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

  “Trouble?” he said.

  I shook my head. “The usual thing. Greek and Turk. Do what you can for him. I’ll be back in a little while.”

  I half-filled the mug with brandy and Melos said sharply, “Never mind him. I’ll have that.”

  I gave it to Ciasim anyway. “Go on,” I said. “Shoot us all for a cup of brandy.”

  He glared and then for some reason saw the humour in the situation, however grim, and laughed. “Yes, you are right, Savage. We still have a use for you. So live a little longer.”

  “As long as I can survive you,” I said, “I’ll be satisfied.”

  “Which is unlikely, I assure you,” he said and laughed again.

  But there was some small comfort in the thought and I held on to that and bided my time.

  A couple of miles out of Kyros, Melos gave Ciasim a new course that took us round to the south side of the island, a wild and rugged coast of high cliffs and scrubland with beaches that were virtually inaccessible from the land side.

  There was a bay called Paxos, a place I knew well because of its unusual situation. The entrance was a narrow passage between two jagged peaks known to local fishermen as the Old Women of Paxos. Inside, there was an enormous landlocked lagoon fringed by white beaches and backed by a scattering of stunted pine trees.

  There was a heavy coastal mist that morning which didn’t help on the way in, for it was a tricky passage at the best of times and doubly so in the dim light of early dawn.

  We found the Firebird anchored close to the shore, the Gentle Jane tied up on the starboard side which was something of a surprise. Ciasim cut the engine of the trenchadiri and I got the fenders over the side and stood ready to throw a line.

  There was plenty of activity on the deck of the Firebird as we got closer. Kapelari and Christou stood waiting by the ladder, Kapelari holding a sub-machine gun and then Aleko appeared.

  “Did you get him?” he called. “Did everything go all right?”

  Melos grinned up at him. “What do you think?”

  Before Aleko could reply, a door banged, Kapelari was pulled out of the way and Sara appeared at the rail, a coat thrown over her shoulders.

  “Savage?”

  She was smiling and then she took in the scene below. Yassi and Abu still flat on their faces, Melos holding the machine pistol jauntily. Her smile faded.

  “I know, angel,” I called. “We’ve been had. All of us.”

  Looking back on it all, the one thing I find difficulty in understanding was the fact that they hadn’t bothered to bring a doctor along, although it had been Aleko himself who had pointed out during the planning stage that it would probably be essential. It had been obvious from the beginning that some deterioration in Pavlo’s condition must be expected.

  I suppose the real truth of the situation was that they had no real interest in his personal survival after he had told them what they wanted to know. The mistake we had all made was in miscalculating so badly what a terrible effect the trip out would have on him.

  When Ciasim and I took him up from the cabin, we carried a dying man. We passed him over the rail to Christou and one of the stewards, a man called Lazanis, who took him below at once.

  Kapelari waved the sub-machine gun threateningly and Ciasim and I helped Yanni Kytros up between us. Yassi and Abu followed, watchful and wary like a couple of young tigers waiting to see which way they should jump. Neither of them showed the slightest sign of fear which didn’t surprise me in the least as it isn’t a characteristic the Turks have much time for.

  Yanni Kytros seemed in a bad way, face screwed up in pain and he obviously had difficulty in putting any weight on his right leg. Not that it earned him much sympathy. Melos gave him a shove in the back that sent him staggering across the deck and told Kapelari to take him below with the two Divalni boys, which left Ciasim and me with Sara and Aleko.

  She turned on her brother-in-law looking genuinely bewildered. “For heaven’s sake, Dimitri, what’s all this about?”

  “Later.” He patted her cheek as if to soothe her. “Later, I will explain everything.”

  And now she looked angry. “Not good enough, Dimitri, I want to know now.”

  Melos took her roughly by the arm, for the first time showing his real authority. “You always did have too much to say for yourself. From now on you speak when I tell you to, understand?”

  He was hurting her which was obvious from the pain on her face. I took a quick step forward, but Aleko was there before me.

  “Take your hands off her,” he said sharply and did a little arm twisting himself on Melos who cried out and staggered back.

  A nice touch of melodrama, but Aleko looked angry and for once, genuinely formidable. It struck me then that if he could ever shake off that neurosis of his he would be hell on wheels.

  Possibly the same thought came to Melos because he tilted his machine pistol to include Aleko and said viciously, “I am in charge of this operation, Mr. Aleko. You would do well to remember that.”

  I suppose anything might have happened then if Lazanis hadn’t arrived to say that Kytros and the Divalni boys were securely under lock and key in separate cabins.

  Melos turned to Aleko. “Take this lot down to the saloon and hold them there. Lazanis will be on the door with orders to shoot anyone who tries to leave before I come. Which means,” he added pleasantly to Ciasim, “that those boys of yours will go the same way, so behave yourselves.”

  But Ciasim was giving nothing away, his face like one of those bronze Byzantine masks with holes for eyes that you can see in the Basilica of Saint Sophia in Istanbul. One thing I knew for certain.
Melos was only going to be allowed one slip, one wrong move and he was a dead man.

  When the door closed behind us in the saloon, the key clicked in the lock. I said to Aleko cheerfully, “You too, eh? Perhaps they don’t need you any more?”

  He looked angry and uncertain like a fighting bull in the plaza with the darts hanging from his shoulders, half-blinded by pain, uncertain who to charge. I went behind the bar, found the Jameson and poured a couple of large ones. Ciasim emptied his glass at a swallow and reached for the bottle.

  Sara put a hand on my arm. “Was it bad in there?”

  “It could have been worse,” I told her brutally. “I only killed one man if that’s what you mean. Two if we count Pavlo.”

  It was Ciasim who attempted to give me some kind of comfort where that one was concerned. “Don’t be a fool, Jack. What do you think would have happened if we’d left him in there? These people.” Here, he glanced at Aleko, utter contempt on his face. “These pigs differ only in kind. The government in Greece stinks. Aleko and his friends want to make it worse. Lovely people.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Aleko told him savagely.

  He had moved towards us, but Sara got in the way. She grabbed him by the jacket with both hands and shook hard, no mean feat. “Tell him he’s got it all wrong. Tell him that if you can. I knew there was something funny going on when you left the rest of the crew behind in Kyros.”

  He shoved her away from him and lurched forward to grab at the edge of the bar as if to stop himself falling like a man with too much drink taken.

  “You don’t understand, Savage. You don’t know what’s been happening in Greece. Red scum everywhere and even now, the government isn’t doing enough about it.”

  Strange how it was me he needed to justify himself to. I didn’t understand why and don’t now, but so it was and he reached out to pluck at my arm across the bar so that I had to pull away from him.

  “Reds under the bed again?” I said. “Do you think they’ll take your money away, Aleko, is that it?” I shook my head. “It won’t wash any more, you poor bloody fool. Greece isn’t Communist on one side and Fascist on the other. It’s a hell of a lot of ordinary people in between who’ve been shoved around by both extremes for too damned long. They’ll have you both out on your backsides soon now. Remember I told you that.”

  Sara’s eyes sparkled and she clapped her hands. “Nice going for a man who isn’t interested in politics.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “But I like you and I like Ciasim and his boys and conniving, slippery, devious Yanni Kytros. Yes, I even like Yanni, because when it comes right down to it, there are things that even Yanni won’t put a price tag on.”

  Ciasim had a funny look on his face. He poured me another whiskey and shoved it across. “On me, dear friend.”

  I was an underage kid in Cohan’s Select Bar again, taking it down in one easy swallow so that it exploded like a bomb in your gut, priming you to put your fist into the first face you didn’t like.

  I said to Sara, “You know what Melos did out there? He killed Morg. Shot him in the back of the head as casually as you would put down an old tired dog that got in your way.”

  The whiskey had gone straight to my head now. She had a hand to her mouth, horror on her face, and things had gone fuzzy at the edges for me. I was a foot off the ground. I was Wolfe Tone and Charles Stuart Parnell and Big Mick Collins and all the others who’d ever spoken straight from the heart, from deep down in the guts where it counts. The only place where it counts.

  “Communists—Fascists. The same under the skin. No difference at all when it comes to putting the screws on. No, I’m damned if I will take sides, Aleko, but that still doesn’t mean I have to like you. In fact, I don’t. I don’t like you and I don’t like Major-bloody-security-police Melos and his bully boys. Black and Tans, Gestapo, Security Police. They crawl out from under their large flat stones everywhere, in every country if you give them a chance.”

  I hit him, right down there between the legs where it really hurts a man and he reached out in his anguish, forgetting that neurotic fear of his and had me by the arms. I’ve never known such strength. I went over the bar as easily as a rubber ball bouncing and even Ciasim, when he moved in to help me, was sent flying across the saloon with a casual shove.

  “You will listen to me now, Savage.” Aleko’s eyes were staring and there was froth on his mouth. “They came to my village—the Reds came to my village during the Civil War.” I tried to struggle and he had me by the throat. “They slaughtered everyone, Savage, after raping the women. Even the young girls.”

  He stared, eyes wide, into an abyss of horror. “My mother, my two sisters. I lay under a pile of hay in the yard, Savage. I lay there and did nothing. You understand me? I was so afraid that I lay there and let them do that to my mother and sisters.”

  I could smell the burning, hear the screams in the night and how old would he have been—thirteen? A young boy, frightened in the darkness and cursed by that fear ever since. And he wasn’t asking for mercy or understanding. He was seeking no deliverance. What was it Faustus said in Marlowe’s play? For this is hell and I am in it.

  He released me suddenly, turned and swayed as if he might fall, his shirt clinging to his back, soaked in sweat. There was even something close to pity on Ciasim’s iron face, but when Aleko reached out blindly to Sara as if for support, she turned from him, grasping the edge of the bar, her eyes closed against the tears.

  He stumbled across to a chair and slumped down and a second later, the key rattled in the lock and Melos entered. His face was dark and angry and he went behind the bar and reached for a bottle of gin.

  “All for nothing,” he said. “The whole bloody affair. What do you think of that, Savage?”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Never opened his eyes.” He drank from the bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, then asked me flatly, “Did he tell you anything back there, Savage?”

  “About the plane?” I shrugged. “No time to talk. We’d all on to get out of there and you saw the state he was in when we took him below.”

  He frowned suspiciously, then glanced at Ciasim’s impassive face. “It’s possible, I suppose. We’ll see what Kytros has to say, shall we? He was down there with him for long enough.”

  He whistled and Kapelari and Christou brought Yanni in between them. Lazanis closed the door and stood against it, his sub-machine gun cocked.

  Kytros didn’t look too good. He still couldn’t take much weight on that leg from the look of it and his mouth was swollen from someone’s fist and there was blood on his shirt. His smile was what is known as a gallant try, but it didn’t fool anyone for a moment.

  Melos took another drink, placed the bottle down carefully on the bar, then walked forward slowly. “Did Pavlo regain consciousness at all when you were alone with him in the cabin on the way here? Did you ask him for the Aztec’s position?”

  Kytros smiled again. “I’d love to be able to help, Major Melos, if only to help myself, but you can’t get blood out of a stone.”

  Which was an unfortunate simile because Melos struck him heavily in the face and said, “I would not count on that if I were you. I am going to ask you that same question once more, but before I do, let me explain in some detail what happens if you fail to come up with an answer.”

  “Even when I don’t have it in the first place?” Kytros said.

  “We take you to the bathroom, strip you and put you into a bath of nice cold water. Then I wire you for sound, Kytros. Your genitals, fingers, toes. Then we turn on the electricity. You will find it extraordinarily painful and it has certain unfortunate after-effects. For example, you will never be able to function as a man again. The Gestapo enjoyed great success with this method.”

  “What excellent references you must have.”

  Melos punched him full on the face, so hard that the flesh split on the right side of the mouth, blood spurting.

  “Thank you,�
� Kytros said, and the most amazing thing of all was that he managed a smile. “I am still proud to be a Greek, even in your company.”

  “Take him away,” Melos said.

  Out of the silence, someone said quietly in the tiredest voice I’d ever heard in my life, “A quarter of a mile off Turk’s Head on the north-east coast of Crete there’s an uninhabited island called Kapala. You’ll find the Aztec about two hundred yards due north in shallow water.”

  He turned to me and smiled gently. “A sentimentalist at heart, I see, Mr. Savage, which is why you are weak and I am strong. Isn’t that the story of your life? You’ve never been able to do the sensible thing. To keep your mouth shut. You always get yourself involved in what is never your business.”

  “I know,” I said, “I’ll come to a bad end through that little vice one of these days if I don’t watch out.”

  “Very probably,” he said. “And another thing. We won’t find the Aztec two hundred yards north of that damned island of yours, but you will. You and this Turkish ox here if you know what’s good for you.”

  I had an idea what was coming, but I had to say something. “You’ll have to spell that one out for me.”

  “With pleasure. You don’t have any choice. If I allowed you to sail out of here a free man right this minute, what would you do? Go to the authorities and tell them you broke Andreas Pavlo out of Sinos and killed a guard? Have you any idea what they’d do to you? I’m in the security police, remember. I know.”

  “Let’s have the rest of it.”

  “You go, you and this animal, because this is a job for professional divers. You go to Crete with Kapelari and Christou to keep an eye on you, you find that place and you bring the briefcase back here. And don’t try to open it. There’s a detonating device in the lock, remember.”

  “And if we refuse?”

  “How can you? I have the Turk’s two sons, haven’t I? They’ve a great sense of family these Turks. Didn’t you know that?”

  “And what if I told you they are no concern of mine?”

  “But I have someone here who is, haven’t I, Mr. Savage? Someone who is very much your concern.”