"We have to keep running,” he said, and crouched to go.
"But they have guns.”
"Dodge side to side.”
"You can’t get away, unless—”
He cut her off. "We’ll find a place to hide, up there.” She did not bother to look, her eyes wide, fixed on his. "If you run, they’ll kill you.”
Impatience vexed him. "If we don’t, they’ll catch us and kill us for sure,” he barked. Ignoring her, he leaped up and hurried off, feet slipping on loose stones, slacks tangling in thorns. She did not stay behind.
The sky was windy, a clear blue lens that seemed to focus the sun’s brilliance. The whole hillside seemed ready to burst into flame. Yet there still remained dew on the underside of the brown grass, in the parched bracken and scrub; it soaked his shoes. A kestrel flapped and hovered and darted away to the left. Something else caught Durell’s eye.
Below and to the left of Maximov’s group, two more men broke loose from the village, headed around the horizon of the hill, as if to cut him off.
He kept running as hard as he could go. There were no more pistol shots for the moment. The range was extreme for a sidearm, and Maximov was saving his ammunition. He heard the sob of his breath as he lurched through the line of flame-shaped cypresses and sat down to rest in the mangled shadows. Sirena stumbled through a few seconds later, dropped down beside him sucking air.
There was a great deal of rubble along the foundation of the acropolis wall. Boulders, weathered chunks of marble, tangled deadwood. Durell regarded the debris as he got his breath. "We’ll move along there, maybe find an old sally port or escape tunnel,” he said.
Sirena’s voice was flat. "They’re going to catch us,” she said.
"They’ll have to work at it.”
"Sam—” she gripped the lapel of his jacket—"if you’d go to them for Lazeishvili, tell them you knew where he was and would take them there in exchange for your release—”
Sudden anger rowled Durell. "I couldn’t do that! If I did, do you think they’d honor it?”
"He’s still on Costa’s yacht,” she said, as if not hearing.
"You’re sure of that?” He needed to know.
"Will you go back, tell them you’ll take them to him?”
"I’d take them to hell, before I’d take them to Lazeishvili.” He tasted the sweat at the corner of his mouth. There was a fragrance of cedar and ocean salt. He judged the Russians would have to move circumspectly when the tourists started coming, and he would have a chance. If he could just find a place to hide until then . . .
"Sam, listen to reason—”
"You tell them,” he challenged.
"They wouldn’t pay any attention to me. Not until they had killed you.”
"What is Lazeishvili’s game, anyhow? Doesn’t he know Panagiotes plans to trade him to the Russians in any event?”
"What if they won’t bargain? Then it may be the Americans. He won’t be a traitor, Sam. Besides, he says he doesn’t trust Costa; anything could happen.” She moved closer, urging. "He’s a great man, he sees more than ordinary souls, like us. He has a mission, a great mission, to bring freedom to his people. I’m determined to help him, however I can.”
"The way you helped your own people regain their freedom? The stakes are bigger here, Sirena. What affects the relations between the US and the USSR affects the world.”
"The principle is the same.”
"Except that one mistake can send the world up in flames.”
They held each other’s eyes, she unconvinced, he angry.
The cicadas were beginning their sawing song.
Durell had no more time for this. He saw that Maximov had been joined by the pair he had left behind at the house. They stood down by the olive tree and scanned the cypresses and the flat stone armor of the acropolis foundation, looking hot and harried. Pistols were out in their hands, glinting dull and black in the sunlight.
Durell peered to right and left, saw no sign of the second pair, the ones who had emerged from the village below the first three and disappeared around the hill. Worry fizzed in his gut like a burning fuse.
His hands were swollen still, but he had the full use of them and a sense of touch once more. He had pounded the circulation back into his feet running up the hill. He didn’t think about them anymore. The unpredictable méltimi wind was freshening; it ripped around the acropolis, shoving foliage and making the weeds and flowers dance crazily.
The Russians came straight at him.
He pulled Sirena to her feet and moved with anxious hurry along the jointure of dressed acropolis stone and native strata that jutted from the hilltop. Far below was an amphitheater. They waded an eroded ditch weaving with blowing tiger lilies, then struck through heaped dead brush.
Durell stopped, turned back.
"What?” Sirena demanded.
"Something in there.”
He picked his way through the fallen branches, saw the glimmer of a trickle of mossy water. Pushing aside branches of bent pine trees, he found a dark cleft in the stones. He looked up and down the wall, saw none of the Russians, beckoned Sirena with a crooked finger. She worked her way over the rough ground and he pushed her into the narrow slot and went in after her.
There was barely room for them to stand side by side. Bats fluttered and squeaked overhead. The place was dank and foul. Water seepage had marked the walls with delicate white tracings, dim in the dusky light. The path sloped upwards, and he had hopes that it would lead to the fortress above, but it stopped after ten feet or so, plugged by the loose rubble of a cave-in. He brushed spider webs from his face, stared alertly at the green dazzle where sunlight filtered through foliage at the entrance.
"You can rest here,” he said. "This is the end of the line.”
"If they find us, there’s no way out.”
Durell made no reply, his eyes toward the entrance. "It isn’t too late to cooperate,” she said.
"It was too late for that years ago.”
"Mr. Lazeishvili said he was certain the Russians would let you go, after you took them to him.”
Durell was silent.
"He would put in a word for you.”
"He’ll be lucky to stay alive himself.”
"Sam, I don’t want you to die.” There was anguish in her voice.
"I don’t want that for you, either. Those men won’t kill me and turn you loose.”
"I was willing to take that risk when I came back to you. But Aleksei is part of the bargain.”
"No bargain of mine.”
She slid her arms around his neck. "I understand, darling. My way may be the only way to save your life; yet, to do it, you must lose him to the Russians. But Mr. Lazeishvili must not be turned over to the United States, no matter how you feel.”
"He was Aleksei a minute ago; what happened?”
She looked bewildered. "I don’t know. I—I suppose I feel one way about him one moment and another the next.”
"You’re confused about a lot of things.” He took her arms away. "Lazeishvili has you under a spell. What made you leave him with Link in the first place?”
"He said the HRC would do whatever Mr. Lazeishvili wanted, but that he had to be extremely cautious in approaching them. Both sides would want him, Link said, and there might be violence—that’s why we hid. He sent me away, so frightened I didn’t dare even tell Costa.” Her eyes were pleading. "Don’t you believe me?”
"Maybe. Maybe not. In any case, you are too close to Lazeishvili to trust, where he’s concerned. My orders are to bring him in, like it or not.”
She threw herself at him, pounding his chest in mute rage; Durell struggled to hold her off, got tangled up, tripped on the loose earth and both of them fell to the floor of the narrow passage. He felt her nails rip at his eyes, dodged a knee to the groin, threw the full weight of his body across the straining softness of her writhing form. His nerves flashed alarms as he thought of the noise and the Russians, somewhere just outside. Then, s
uddenly, he was astounded by a long, bruisingly hungry kiss, the warmth of her arms around his neck, her moaning breath against his cheek. He returned the kiss, furious with himself, was aware of the betrayal of his chemistry as her firmly rounded body yielded pliantly into the hollows of his own. She smelled of honey and wildflowers, like the island itself, her long black hair a pillow that wreathed about her cheeks. The pounding of her heart came through the flimsy blouse that covered her heaving breasts, as her arms tightened eagerly around his neck. "Darling,” she moaned. "Darling—not here.”
"No more alleycat?”
"Will you take a promise—for later?”
He smiled.
She lay under him, not stirring, tormentingly desirable. Then she ran a finger across his cheek, and whispered: "I want it to be beautiful, in a quiet and lovely place.”
"I hope those Greek gods of yours see fit to provide a time later than this,” he said darkly.
"They will. If you are ready to be reasonable.”
Durell sat up. His voice held a warning of anger. "Don’t start that again.”
"I saved your life!” she cried, her renewed fury shattering all bonds of restraint.
"So you and Lazeishvili could use me,” Durell retorted. "That I understood—but I didn’t think you’d resort to prostitution!”
"Oh!”
She jumped to her feet and ran from the tunnel. "Get back here!” Durell called.
But she was already out into the open. He rushed to the entrance and tasted the copper of horror on his tongue as he saw her pass within twenty yards of one of the Russians. The startled man whirled, hefted his gun, trained its sights on the lithe, darting figure. Durell flinched to the marrow as a shot rang out. . .
21
The Russian’s head jerked sideways, half his skull blown away. He dropped in his tracks beneath an auroral haze of cranial fluid that hung in the sunlight. For a long moment of suspended belief, Durell stared without moving.
Sirena bounded on down the hill, toward the village.
There were more shots, hollow and flat-sounding out in the open.
He could see no one but the dead Russian and the rapidly diminishing woman. He left the tunnel and moved with cautious expertise through the brush, silently. The dead man lay on the roots of the tree line nearby—Durell did not care to think what would have happened if he had been allowed to probe just a bit further. His fallen 9 mm. Makarov was at his side. Durell picked it up, swung his gaze through the pines and cypresses. Save for the angry shrilling of cicadas and the soughing of the wind, an apprehensive silence had gripped the hot slope four hundred feet above the Aegean.
A gun hammered off to the right. He ducked in reflex, but the bullet had already smashed into the stones far above his head. He twisted his face up just as an arm extended out from the top of the wall. A gun bucked in its hand.
He did not know who was up there, didn’t think about it as long as they were shooting Russians. He slid past the body in a crouch, alert to the tips of his fingers, made his way to the weathered gully, crept down the slope beyond the trees.
Lieutenant Maximov was hunched behind a boulder; he showed himself to draw fire, while the third man worked his way across the poppy-strewn slope in an attempt to flank the unknown gunman above.
Durell leveled his pistol, raised up, shouted: "Throw down your gun, Lieutenant!”
Maximov whirled and fired, his long face taut with hatred. Durell felt the whiff of the slug. There was no time for subtlety: Durell shot to kill. His gun roared, knocking the man back on his heels. Maximov cursed and triggered a wild shot; caught a second slug square in his breastbone and flopped onto his face.
The last KGB man had seen what was happening and fled toward the white houses of the village.
Durell shoved the Makarov under his belt, looked back up the hill.
"Yo, Cajun!”
He saw the smiling eyes of Marty Stone, peering over the verge of the acropolis.
"Who sent you?”
"We were tailing them. Since last night.” Marty looked into the distance at his left, then back at Durell. "Arbeit’s with me,” he explained. Then a neat, calm-looking man with a student’s serious eyes came into view. The two climbed over the side and dropped six feet to an outcropping of stone and joined Durell.
"I guess we blew our assignment,” Arbeit said.
"Couldn’t very well let them have the lady,” Marty said. He spoke to Durell: "Are you all right?”
"Scrapes and bruises.” Durell turned to Arbeit. "You’d best get after that last one; see where he goes.” Then, to Marty: "Costa Panagiotes has Lazeishvili, or had him. He may have traded him to the Russians already—we can’t afford to ignore that possibility.”
"But they know who I am now,” Arbeit said. Durell spoke quickly. "Do the best you can. Work with Veerman; he’s around somewhere, isn’t he?”
"Yes, but—”
Durell didn’t wait. "Come on, Marty. You and I will hit Panagiotes’ yacht.” He started hurriedly down the hill. Arbiet ran ahead and took the car to stay on the Russian’s tail. Durell casually hot-wired someone else’s parked little Fiesta. The first tourists had arrived, but it was still early, and the road out of Lindos was all but deserted.
Durell related the events of the night before to Marty, the emphasis on brevity, as they sped north on the coastal road.
"Sounds like a rough night. What about the girl?” Marty said.
"We can’t be concerned about her now; she’ll have to fend for herself.”
"I have bad news,” Marty said. "The beacon we planted aboard the Nereid went dead.”
"Damn! The Russians must have silenced it,” Durell said.
"And get this,” Marty said. "NSA pulled an incredible message out of Soviet embassy traffic last night. The embassy was reporting to Moscow that the Nereid is safely underway to Uzuri with that uranium.”
"It’s crazy,” Durell said, and slapped the steering wheel. It went against every known policy of the Soviet Union that it would give the white minority the means to make war—and atomic war, at that—against Marxist-oriented, Russian-supplied guerrillas. "If the people who run Uzuri get that stuff, they’ll blow Africa apart,” he said.
"And the rest of us with it, I’m afraid,” Marty said. "The Nereid must be stopped.”
"But how?”
They passed a straw-hatted boatbuilder planking a dingy, down on the pebbled beach.
Marty said: "We don’t even know where the damned thing is. Even if we had an air search, it would be like looking for a bead in the sand.” He waved impatiently toward the Aegean. "That sea is swarming with merchant traffic. Which ship is the Nereid?”
Durell stared ahead, knuckles white on the steering wheel, eyes filled with urgency. The melt6mi had reached gale force, and it struck with triphammer blows against the side of the car. The sky was blue and cloudless, filled with hot sunlight.
"The Russians must have known where the uranium was destined all along,” he said. "Panagiotes only thought he was fooling them, telling them it was for Italian interests.”
Marty sounded incredulous. "If Panagiotes hadn’t stirred everything up by hijacking that uranium, Lazeishvili would have wound up in Uzuri.”
"You just hit on something.” Durell frowned. "If the Russians didn’t expect the Nereid to land in Italy, if they knew it was headed south for Uzuri, everything would have appeared normal to them—so why did they board her in the canal?”
"To capture Aleksei Lazeishvili and take him back with them,” Marty answered, almost as if without thinking.
"But what if they didn’t?”
"What?” Marty looked startled.
"What if they boarded her to do just what they did? Turn her around, recover the uranium ore and start her back to Uzuri again!”
"But surely they wanted Lazeishvili.”
"I didn’t say they didn’t—but they hadn’t taken him off the ship, and that is the first thing I would have done.”
&nbs
p; "They followed him here,” Marty persisted.
"Yes, after he was kidnapped—abducted from the Nereid. I repeat: I did not say they didn’t want him. But where did they want him? In Russia—or aboard the Nereid?”
"But he was smuggled aboard the Nereid.”
"They could have arranged for it to happen that way.”
Marty blew an exasperated breath, and said: "Well, if they boarded the ship to go back and recover the yellowcake, someone must have—”
He stopped and stared at Durell.
"Right,” Durell said. "Someone must have informed them that it had been taken off the ship. Most probably someone at the scene. With access to a radio transmitter.” He paused, and added: "Someone like Aleksei Lazeishvili.”
Durell smelled the brine of the sea in the hot car, and the air was sticky with salt as it came off the water and over the beaches and cliffs. Far out, white-caps rolled, dipped out of sight, rose again. Foam streaked the surface and flew into the bright air. On the landward side of the road, wildflowers swirled where the wind rippled across fields.
When Marty spoke, his voice was dubious: "Would Lazeishvili have gone to such lengths to make up with the KGB? I know he’s said he wants to return. But does he have cold feet that badly?”
"Cullinane, the man who was to have watched over him, could have told us a lot, but he’s dead. I don’t know,” Durell said. "We’ll find out.”
22
They arrived at Mandraki Harbor only a moment too late.
Durell was startled to see Sirena fly up the gangway to Panagiotes’ black-hulled yacht just as the last line was cast off. He hadn’t expected that. By the time he had skidded the Fiesta to a halt, the sleek vessel was moving gracefully out of the harbor, waves chopping at its sides.
"What the hell is the girl doing?” Marty said.
"Standing by Lazeishvili? Standing by her beliefs? Who knows?” Durell said.
He stood beside the car in the blazing sunlight and could do nothing but watch and swear under his breath as the yacht slid beyond the point protected by Fort St. Nicholas.
Assignment- Mermaid Page 16
