"I know. There was a yellow smear on the deck, next to the forward hatch cover. It looked and felt just like what I found in a barrel offshore, near Panagiotes’
villa. I think the cargo was off-loaded here, maybe to another ship, and the barrel was lost overboard.”
General McFee stared at him for a few troubled seconds. "It seems Panagiotes was pulling some kind of stunt with a uranium shipment, when Lazeishvili got lost in the shuffle.”
"The stunt could have been a hijacking,” Durell offered.
"Of his own ship?”
"It was his own ship—that was what would have made it easy. But not his cargo: someone had already paid the Russians for that, or it would never have been loaded.”
McFee was thoughtful. "I’d estimate the worth of a shipload of processed uranium ore to be at least ten million dollars on the black market . . ."
"Worse yet,” Durell said, "is the use it would be put to.”
McFee’s words were clipped and demanding. "That ore must be found, Samuel. Our gun-running Panagiotes may just be about to market the seed of World War III.”
14
A new sense of urgency touched Durell, and he saw it in General Dickinson McFee’s face as well. If what they conjectured were true, Costa Panagiotes had stepped beyond all civilized bounds. The reach of his greed had taken him into the realm of the obscene, where he would supply the means of nightmarish violence to the highest bidder.
"I will be leaving the island shortly,” General McFee said. "I will see to it that the world Intelligence community is alerted.”
"If I may suggest, sir: enlist the help of only those governments we are sure we can trust. Otherwise there may be a mad scramble that only would make matters worse.”
"Yes. I see what you mean, Samuel. Unfortunately, too many countries would kill to get their hands on that uranium. We’d end up with a lawless melee as they fought for possession of it.”
"Meantime,” Durell said, "I think I’d best remain here until my forty-eight hours are up. The key to the whereabouts of that yellowcake could be right under our noses.”
McFee showed an almost imperceptibly raised brow. "Panagiotes?”
"He’s as likely to be here as anywhere else. It started here; I have a feeling it will end here as well.”
"Consider yourself free to act as necessity deems,”
McFee said in his clipped, precise voice. "But for the moment, we have an appointment with Widich Santesson.”
The denim-clad man with the kinky blond hair was still in the lobby as they passed through. He strolled out the door and watched as McFee’s driver sped them down the hill and out of the old town.
Jackdaws strutted in front of the green-tiled arcades of the New Marketplace, the Néa Agorá, where they parked. They got out of the big Mercedes and entered the stream of predominantly Nordic tourists, the air doubly hot and humid after the air-conditioned car. Viewed through the arches, the six-sided courtyard was alive with activity in cafes and souvenir shops, stands for fruit and vegetables, meat and seafood. A current of incense wafted from the pseudo-Gothic church of the Evangelismos, built along with the marketplace, Durell recalled, by the Italian fascists. It was part of Mussolini’s grand scheme to transform the island into a summer retreat for Italy’s rulers.
The scent of bougainvillea, hibiscus and oleander flavored the heavy air. Swallows cavorted over intimate gardens.
They came out on Eleutherias Street, fronting Mandraki Harbor, followed it past idlers at sidewalk cafes until McFee stopped. He caught Durell’s eye, then tilted his head toward a hundred-foot motor yacht moored near the Church of St. John.
Durell glanced over his shoulder, saw no sign of a tail, wondered briefly about the blond muscle-man back at the hotel.
They boarded the yacht by way of a pneumatically operated gangplank that extended from its gleaming white stem. The flag of Sweden, a yellow cross on a blue background, fluttered in a light breeze. The vessel was jauntily rakish, a luxury galley of elegant streamlining and lavish comfort. They crossed a teak afterdeck brightened by white and red tables of molded plastic and polished-steel deck chairs. Along both rails were deeply cushioned banquettes, upholstered in chamois.
Durell’s eyes quickly roved the horizon. Fort St. Nicholas squatted at the harbor entrance, patches of yellow lichen splashed on its stones. On either side of the ship channel rose stone columns, topped by the symbols of Rhodes, a bronze stag on the one, a doe on the other. A stone jetty topped by drum-shaped windmills, relics of the Middle Ages, ran from the crenellated old fort to shore.
A slender Oriental in crisp, red mess jacket appeared from around the deck superstructure, accepted their identification.
Hidden speakers emitted dulcet music into the muggy air.
Air-conditioning machinery purred.
Wavelets slapped and purled around the hull.
The attendant led them through a flattened oval of tinted glass doors and into an enormous salon carpeted in deep white shag with gold and blue highlights. The air chilled Durell’s collar, moistened with sweat in the brief walk from the Mercedes. A number of expensively dressed guests—Durell recognized an Italian count and a French film actor among them—sipped cocktails, chatting in the same vapid tones the wavelets had made against the hull. The walls were padded with white kid; furnishings, with patent leather.
No one gave the two men any notice.
They were ushered into a study. Widich Santesson sat behind a leather-upholstered desk, his hands clasped on the highly polished ashwood of its writing surface.
He was impressive in a white linen blazer, breast pocket colored by a fluff of red silk handkerchief, ascot of pale olive showing between stiff white collar points. From beneath a cap of hair that had aged to a gleaming white stared eyes the blue of an arctic fjord.
Something was wrong.
For a moment, he seemed unable to speak.
Then, he said: "Aleksei Lazeishvili has been kidnapped. He’s being held for ransom.”
"I can’t believe it.” General McFee sat down. He looked ten years older.
"I can,” Durell rasped. He did not react like the cerebral McFee. He felt the pain in his gut, personal and primitive. It wasn’t merely broken plans; he’d been betrayed. He wanted to lash out.
Santesson’s face flushed red. "And what does that mean, sir?” His voice cracked like a whip. He had recovered his composure; he was a man of means and power, and it came through.
The tone only speeded Durell’s mounting fury. He planted his knuckles on the desk and leaned over the wealthy Swede, his eyes hard.
"It means,” he said, "that your organization is a collection of loose-mouthed, fumble-fingered clowns—”
"Samuel!” McFee interrupted.
Durell ignored his superior. "The HRC never should have got involved in a clandestine operation. You are untrained and totally unfit for it. But in your low quest for publicity—”
"Take it easy, Mr. Durell!” Santesson’s voice was icy. "I assure you that our quest, as you call it, was motivated only by the highest principles.”
"Very well,” Durell said, and countered: "But your principles cost us a dead agent in Athens, because you or more likely O’Dell couldn’t keep quiet about our meeting there. Now it may cost us Lazeishvili—it may even cost Lazeishvili his life. Just when we thought we had him safe home.”
McFee had recovered. He spoke with authority: "This is not the time for recrimination!”
"Thank you.” Santesson raised wary eyes back toward Durell, who still hovered over him.
"Let us begin by—” McFee started.
"Where’s Link O’Dell?” Durell demanded. "I want to hear him tell me what the hell went wrong.”
McFee’s face showed astonishment at the interruption.
"I have no idea where Mr. O’Dell might be,” Santesson said sharply, and turned back to McFee. "You, sir, were saying . . . ?”
Durell did not let McFee reply. It was all he could manage
not to lay hands on Santesson; he certainly would not be pushed aside. "Where did you have Lazeishvili when the kidnappers took him?” he asked, his voice rough and angry.
Santesson’s intensely blue eyes just stared at him for a long moment. McFee seemed content now to allow Durell to press the matter; at least he was silent. Then, as if explaining to a child, Santesson said: "Don’t you understand? I never had Mr. Lazeishvili. I haven’t seen Mr. Lazeishvili or Mr. O’Dell.”
"Link O’Dell never brought him to you?” Durell spoke with sudden understanding. "He never intended to. That’s why he left me high and dry in Egypt. Why, that bastard . . .”
McFee took a turn: "But I thought you sent Link out of Egypt.”
"He deserted me. He and Sirena Alatis. Link wasn’t more than five minutes ahead of me. I could have made it.”
"Why didn’t you tell me?” McFee asked.
"What difference did it make? I was happy enough that he got Lazeishvili out. That was the goal.” Durell shook his head. "Link played us all for fools. I nearly got myself killed so he could cash in on Lazeishvili.”
He sat down wearily, regrouping his thoughts. The back of his chair brought an ache to a bruise above his kidney, left by a Russian boot, and he moved to ease it.
The piped music sounded mocking and forlorn in his mood.
No one spoke for several seconds.
Then, Santesson said: "I refuse to believe it. I—I . . .” His voice had no edge. He lapsed into thought. "Why can’t you?” Durell said.
"It’s so—transparent.”
"Not necessarily. Things didn’t look good for me, left behind on the Nereid. If I’d been killed there, no one would have known for sure what happened to Lazeishvili—for all you knew, Link might have died there, too.” Durell blew a disgusted breath. "He would have put a dozen borders behind him and settled down in a cozy country that had no extradition treaty.”
McFee spoke: "Just what are the terms of the ransom, Mr. Santesson?”
"One million dollars.”
"Cash?”
"Certified check to a numbered account in the Suisse Banque Cantonale de Genéve. It must be deposited by ten o’clock tomorrow evening.”
"And Lazeishvili?”
"Released somewhere within Rhodes Town, for us to find as best we can.”
McFee’s manner was decisive. "We won’t pay it,” he said. "Let O’Dell stew. Lazeishvili is all he has; I don’t think he’ll harm him. We’ll run O’Dell down, no matter where he goes. The best he can get is his freedom in exchange for his hostage.”
Santesson looked solemn as he withdrew a sheet of notepaper from his desk and shoved it toward McFee. "Fm afraid it is not that simple, General. This is the ransom note—I found it in my morning mail. Read it, please.”
McFee and Durell bent over the typewritten message, then exchanged troubled stares. McFee said: "It says an identical note has been delivered to the Russians!”
"Precisely.”
"Clever—and they must know that we have been approached as well. If it had been only one or the other of us, the temptation would have been to delay.” McFee’s voice dropped a grave note. "Neither side can afford to do that now, for fear the other will give in and somehow snatch the prize. He’s playing our mutual distrust for all it’s worth.”
Durell said: "And still pitting us in a final race to get the man, once he’s freed.”
Santesson spoke: "It’s grotesque—and frightening.”
"The note solves one mystery,” Durell said. "It explains why Skoll was so pleased, when he left me in Egypt. He must have received word of the kidnapping, and instructions to come here and follow through. His information must have been sketchy enough so that he did not know we also had been contacted, or would be the next morning. He thought his side had it sewed up.”
"Is that why he didn’t kill you, do you think?” McFee asked.
"Could be. We have lots of old debts between us. It was a reprieve, however brief. And maybe a challenge. It was like Skoll.”
"Well,” Santesson said, "the part about releasing Mr. Lazeishvili on the street should appeal to this Skoll fellow, if he likes challenges.”
"That part has the obvious benefit of allowing O’Dell to skip out while we are fighting over the prize,” Durell said. He rubbed a knuckle against his chin, and added: "But it does have a flaw. A small flaw, but not .an insignificant one.”
"And what is that, Samuel?” McFee asked.
Durell regarded the slight man with brooding eyes. "The flaw is that O’Dell has to hang around Rhodes until ten P.M. tomorrow, in order to release Lazeishvili as he said he would.”
Santesson was unconvinced. "He could already be gone. Lazeishvili could already be. . . dead.” He seemed almost to choke on the word. His eyes filled abruptly with desperation and anguish, and he shouted: "How can you sit here talking like this! We must pay the ransom, don’t you see! The HRC can’t raise money like that. Your government simply has to supply it!”
"Calm down, Mr. Santesson,” McFee said.
Durell said: "O’Dell’s approach almost guarantees the Russians will cough up—they can move and disburse large sums much more easily than we; it’s the nature of their society.”
"And what if they don’t?”
"It’s a chance we have to take,” Durell replied evenly. "If they do, then it becomes a matter of beating them to Lazeishvili, once he’s released.” He turned to McFee. "We should have at least a couple of men more here, sir. We need eyes on the Russians every minute.”
Santesson still was agitated. "What if the Russians pay him, and he still doesn’t release him because we didn’t pay?”
"He will release him,” Durell said.
"How can you know that?”
"First, I think I know what kind of person he really is. Always needs money and will take what he can get. Second, and more important, he has better sense than to double-cross the Russians. If they pay, and he doesn’t come across—no matter what we do—they won’t rest until they hunt him down and put a bullet in his head. And that is the kind of thing everybody knows about the Russians, Mr. Santesson.”
McFee gave Durell a lift in his limousine as he started for the airport. "I’m to rejoin the President’s entourage in Bonn tonight; it’s time for me to take my leave,” he said.
It was dusk now. Street lamps flickering on. The sky still held some light the color of cognac in the west. Trebuc Tower, ahead on Aktí Sachtoúri, and the high walls of the old town were black, one-dimensional, like something pasted against the twilight.
"Thanks for your intervention with the Egyptians, sir,” Durell said.
"Don’t thank me, Samuel. Thank Sugar Cube.” He straightened a crease. "I’ll arrange for reinforcements on my stopover in Athens. Hal Arbeit and Curt Veerman, with Marty Stone as team leader, reporting to you. You will have overall responsibility, of course.”
"Fine—but with all due respect, sir, I have no intention of being confined to a command post role.”
"Of course not. I’m aware that you will be on the move, that you prefer to work alone. But, as you said, we must have someone on the bear’s tail. You will hardly know the others are here—unless you need them.”
Swallows dipped above cypresses and palms in the municipal park, once a dry moat that fronted the walls. Moments later, the Mercedes parked in front of the St. John. The small square with its mossy fountain and pyramid of marble catapult balls was busy with shoppers and sightseers.
"What will you do next?” General McFee asked.
"Call the Grand, see if Sirena Alatis has returned to her job. She sings there.”
"She may know something helpful,” McFee agreed.
Durell closed the door and spoke through a window. "I’ll also go to the Casino. It’s Link’s favorite haunt; he had lots of friends there.”
"Take care, Samuel.”
"Yo.”
The first thing Durell noted as the limousine cleared his field of vision was the muscular blond m
an in sailor’s denims who loitered across the street, staring straight at him.
The second was the hard insistence of a gun muzzle against his spine.
15
"Excuse me. You will kindly get into the car, Mr. Durell.” The voice behind the gun at his back was tense and deliberate.
A dark blue Mercedes whipped into the space vacated by the limousine; it looked like the one he had seen at Panagiotes’ villa. Its rear door flipped open.
He had no intention of getting in there.
"What’s going on?” he demanded. Over his shoulder he saw the long, farmer’s face of Lieutenant Maximov. Another KGB man was coming up beside him. A third shadowy figure waited in the back seat of the car, and the blond character in denims approached from across the street. It made four against one, without bothering to count the man driving.
"Just get into the car. Now,” Maximov snarled.
A coppery taste flooded Durell’s tongue as he hesitated against the nudge of the pistol in his ribs. Pedestrians swarmed everywhere, but the weapon was shielded from their gaze by Maximov’s back and the car. A motor scooter rocketed past.
There seemed only one thing to do.
He twisted from the waist, slapped the gun momentarily aside, then caught Maximov’s wrist and slammed it across his knee. The man should have known better than to stand so close, but that was the KGB’s problem. Maximov yelped as his blunt Makarov pistol spun away, skittered across the cobbles. Durell’s mind was already on the second Russian, the one behind Maximov.
The man moved with a start, hand darting under a lapel. Durell kicked for his groin, missed as he dodged. Maximov swung viciously; Durell caught the impact in his gut, glanced off the car. He came back with a straight right to the nose that flattened Maximov, then reached desperately to disarm the second man— only to realize with prickly dismay that the other had him beaten. . . .
Another Makarov automatic stared him between the eyes.
The instant had a stunning clarity. The ugly depth down the gun barrel; a brown mole on the flat, agitated face; thick lips skinned back over crooked teeth.
Assignment- Mermaid Page 11
