Bloody Passage (v5) (3 page)

She walked out, her footsteps echoed across the terrace. I poured myself another large gin with a steady hand. From somewhere a thousand miles away a door slammed. There was a pause, the engine started and then she was gone.

So that was very much that.
And why worry? As a great man once said, a woman was only a woman. I raised my glass and found that my hand was not so steady after all and that would never do. I put the glass down very deliberately on the bar top, went into my bedroom and found a pair of bathing shorts. Then I went out onto the end terrace and descended the three hundred and twenty-seven concrete steps which zigzagged down the cliff to the beach below.

The morning was dull and gray and the white sand cold to my feet as I crossed to the boathouse by the small stone jetty. I opened the door and went in. Skin-diving being closer to a religion with me than a sport at that time, I carried a pretty comprehensive range of equipment. Everything from my own compressor for recharging air bottles to an Aquamobile.

I took down a neoprene wetsuit in black and pulled it on because from the look of that sky it was going to be cold down there this morning. I slipped my arms through the straps of a fully charged aqualung, found a face mask and went back outside.

I had an inflatable with an outboard motor on the beach beside the jetty, but I didn't bother with it. Simply pulled on the mask, waded into the sea and struck out toward the entrance to the cove. I did this most mornings. So much so that it had become a habit, mainly because of the fascinating wreck I'd discovered about a hundred yards beyond the point.

There was a heavy sea mist rolling in toward me pushed by the wind and it started to rain again, not that that bothered me. There wasn't much of a current and it took little effort to reach the appropriate spot. I dropped under the surface, paused to adjust my air supply and went straight down.

Visibility was excellent in spite of the gray morning and the water was clear as glass. At fifty feet I entered a neutral zone, colors muted, a touch of autumn and then a ship's stern moved out of the gloom.

I hung onto a rail with some care for they were covered with black mussels and her plates were encrusted with dog's teeth, a razor-edged clam quite capable of opening you up like a gutting knife.

The name across the counter was clearly visible,
S.S. Finbar.
I'd checked up on her after that first discovery. A Clydeside freighter of three thousand tons. Strayed from a Malta convoy in the summer of 1942 and sunk by Stuka dive bombers.

She was tilted slightly to one side, her anti-aircraft gun still in place on the foredeck and remarkably well preserved. I moved toward it and paused, hanging on to the rail, adjusting my air supply again.

There was a sudden turbulence in the water and I glanced up and saw an Aquamobile descending, two divers hanging on behind. It drifted to a halt ten or fifteen feet above me. The divers were wearing bright orange wetsuits and black masks. One of them waved cheerfully, dived down and hung on to the rail beside me.

I leaned close, putting my mask close to his. The face seemed oddly familiar, which didn't make much sense and then he reached over and in one quick gesture ripped my air hose away from my mouth.

The whole thing was so unexpected that I took in water at once. I started to struggle, instinctively clawing for the surface and he moved fast, grabbing for my ankles, pulling me down.

I was going to die and for what, that was my final thought as everything started to go. And then I became aware of the other diver dropping down, towing a spare aqualung, holding its air hose out towards me, silver bubbles spiralling out of the mouthpiece. It seemed to grow very large, to completely envelope me, then I blacked out.

I surfaced to a world of pain, my head twisting from side to side as I was slapped into life like a newborn baby. I suppose I must have cried out because somewhere, someone laughed and a voice said, "He'll live."

I opened my eyes. I was lying in the bottom of an inflatable boat. Justin Langley was bending over me wearing an orange wetsuit, his long blond hair tied at the nape of his neck in a kind of eighteenth-century queue. Gatano, in a similar suit, worked the outboard motor.

Langley smiled. "You don't look too good, old stick."

I tried to sit up and he pushed me down without the slightest effort. At the same moment his friend called, "We're here," and cut the engine.

A Cessna seaplane drifted toward us through the mist, we slid in under the port wing and bumped against a float. I tried to sit up and Langley shoved me down again. There was a hypodermic in his right hand now and he smiled.

"Go to sleep like a good boy and we'll try to see you don't get airsick."

Whatever it was, it was good. I felt the needle going in, but he probably enjoyed that part. And then, total darkness. A split second in time that must have been in reality five or six hours before I returned to life again.

It was cold and damp and very dark. I was walking, supported on either side, descending some steps that seemed to go on forever. When we finally stopped, there was only a narrow circle of light. I was aware of Langley's face looming very large, serious now and two men on their knees levering a round iron grid out of the floor. It was very dark down there and quiet.

Langley slapped my face. It didn't hurt at all. He said, "Still with us?" And then he turned and nodded to the others. "Down he goes."

I didn't attempt to struggle, I was incapable of that. A rope or a strap of some sort was looped around me and I was lowered perhaps ten or fifteen feet into darkness. There was a clang as the iron grid was replaced, footsteps echoed away.

I became aware of two things almost in the same instant. That I was only wearing the bathing shorts I had put on that morning and that when I stretched out my arms on either side, I immediately touched damp stone walls.

Not that it mattered, not then, for as yet, nothing touched me. I slumped down in a corner, knees to my chest in the fetal position and drifted back into my drugged sleep.

2
The Hole

I
t was the cold which brought me awake more than anything else and I crouched there in the dark comer, trying to get my bearings. A ray of sunlight drifted out of a channel in the stonework high above my head. I squinted up at it, tried to get to my feet and lost my balance for the excellent reason that I was wearing leg irons and the foot of steel chain between my ankles restricted movement more than a little.

I lay there in the darkness thinking about it for a while, considering the possibility that the whole thing was simply a particularly vivid nightmare, when the iron grating at the top of the shaft was removed and Justin Langley peered in.

Gatano's battered face appeared at his right shoulder, something which at that stage of the game didn't surprise me in the least. He laughed hoarsely. "He don't look so good to me, Mr. Langley."

"A good hot meal inside you, that's what you need, old stick," Langley called. "Try this for size."

He lowered a large biscuit tin on a length of string. It contained a bottle of water and a plate of some kind of cold stew that smelled like a newly opened tin of inferior dog food.

I crouched there like some dumb animal, helpless with rage. Gatano called, "Hey, you down there."

When I looked up he was urinating into the hole. I tried to toss the plate up in his general direction, a futile gesture as I got most of the dogmeat back on my own head.

Langley chuckled. "You'll change your mind, old stick. Tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, you'll eat it. I promise you."

My voice, when I answered him, was so calm, so much outside myself that I hardly recognized it as my own. "All right," I said. "What's it all about?"

The iron grid clanged into place shutting out all light and I sank down into the corner.
Some sort of complicated revenge for that evening in Almeria?
But that didn't make any kind of sense. The divers, the seaplane, this place. It was all too elaborate. There was some hidden meaning here, a deeper purpose and I drifted into sleep again thinking about it.

Most men spend their lives trying to claw their way out of one kind of a hole or another, but mine was something very special indeed. A stone shaft fifteen feet deep and four feet square and unclimbable, especially in those leg irons. It was only possible to lie down corner-to-corner, but it was so damn cold that I usually preferred to curl up in as tight a ball as possible.

No blankets and definitely no sanitary arrangements so that by the third day, the stench in that confined space had to be experienced to be believed. I could mark the passage of time simply enough by the light which filtered in through the narrow channel in the stonework above my head and there was always the daily ration lowered in the biscuit tin, although after that first day, it was never possible to see who was up there. I tried calling a few times, but nobody ever answered, and after a while I gave up, for it was obviously the intention to isolate me from any kind of human contact.

It was always the same--a bottle of water and the dog food and Langley was right. By the third day I was cleaning the plate, but boredom was the main problem. There was always sleep, but the cold didn't help too much there so I tried passing the time by undertaking a kind of personal psychoanalysis.

Freud would have been proud of me. I actually made it back to my third birthday; for the first time since that happy event recalled burying a box of scarlet-coated Grenadier Guards in a cornfield at the back of my English grandfather's Dorset farmhouse and the feeling of utter desolation at forgetting where. And the next day my father, who was a captain in the Marine Corps stationed at the American Embassy in London ...

The grating clanged above my head and Langley peered in. I got to my feet and looked up at him. By my reckoning it was exactly a week since that first morning.

"My God," he said. "Something must have crawled in and died. Hose him down."

The jet of water which followed was cold, but really quite pleasant. It stopped after a while and Langley leaned over and lowered a rope with a loop on the end.

"All right," he said. "Up with you."

I came up out of the darkness and found myself in some sort of vault, stone pillars supporting the roof. It was neatly whitewashed and lit by electric light and stone steps in one corner led up to a stout oak door. Two men had the other end of the rope, peas out of the same pod, dark, swarthy looking, wearing identical heavy fishermen's sweaters, capable of most things if appearances were anything to go by.

They released the rope and one of them said to the other in Italian, "Mother of God, he stinks like a dung heap."

Justin Langley came forward, Gatano at his back. His blond hair hung to his shoulders. He wore a black nylon shirt, skin tight and open at the neck. The broad belt at his waist had a round brass buckle that must have been four inches in diameter and he wore a gold chain round his neck with a bauble on the end which he twirled between his fingers.

I said, "You look sweet--honestly."

"I wish you wouldn't, old stick." He sighed. "It brings out the worst in me."

He nodded to Gatano who moved forward, a look of what might be termed eager anticipation on his face. When he was close enough he put a fist into my belly. As I doubled over, he hooked his foot under the chain between my ankles and pulled me down.

Langley said sharply, "Don't mark his face!"

I wasn't sure whether Gatano had heard him or not for he was obviously enjoying himself. He put his boot into me, not very scientifically, three or four times, grunting with effort and then Langley said, "All right, that's enough!" and pulled him off.

They put the hose on me again and the two Italians picked me up between them and we followed Langley and Gatano up the stone steps. Gatano opened the door and we went out into bright morning sunshine.

I was beginning to function again, well below par, but enough to get by for the moment. We had emerged into a cobbled courtyard surrounded by stone walls. There was a gate at the far end and on the right, steps up to ramparts.

I negotiated them with some difficulty because of the leg irons, but the view was worth it. Massive cliffs, a calm blue sea shimmering in the heat haze, and above us at an even higher level, a citadel standing in a garden.

There was the scent of wisteria and I could smell almond trees as we passed through an iron gate into a semitropical paradise. There was the sound of water everywhere, splashing in fountains, gurgling in the conduits as it dropped from terrace to terrace between the palm trees.

We climbed a final flight of steps and emerged on to a broad terrace at a point where the ramparts came together like the prow of a ship. The view was really quite astonishing. There was a table beneath an awning, white linen cloth, silverware, a couple of bottles of wine in a bucket, a waiter in a neatly starched coat at the ready, napkin folded over one arm.

His master stood at the ramparts, an immensely fat man in a white linen suit, long, dark hair flecked with silver. When he turned I saw that he had a walking stick in each hand and leaned heavily on both of them.

It was a strange face, dark, hooded eyes that seemed to look through and beyond you. A brutal, rather sensual mouth and overall a kind of total arrogance. And it was a familiar face, that was the most disturbing thing of all, yet for the life of me I couldn't remember where I'd seen him before.

He examined me for a long moment, those strange, brooding eyes giving nothing away, then he shuffled across to the table and eased himself down into a wicker chair. He nodded to the waiter who took one of the bottles from the bucket and filled a glass. I was immediately aware of the distinctive aroma of
anis.

"Your health, Major Grant," he toasted me.

He had a deep bass voice, totally American, nothing of Europe in it at all. I said, "You want to watch it. Too much of that stuff in the heat of the day can freeze your liver. I've seen it put strong men on their backs for a week."

Langley started to say something, but my fat friend waved him down with one hand. He stared at me intently, a frown on his face, then smiled. "By God, you know where you are, sir. Confess it!"

"I think so."

He slapped his thigh in high good humor and turned to Langley. "Didn't I tell you I'd picked the right man?"

Langley twirled the golden bauble between his fingers. "He has a big mouth, I'll give you that."

The fat man turned his attention back to me and leaned forward, hands folded over the handle of one of his walking sticks. "Come, sir, don't let me down."

"All right." I shrugged. "The architecture of this fortress for a start. Walls are Norman, probably twelfth century. Most of the rest is Moorish. Then there's the garden. Papyrus by the main pool, another Arab innovation, and the wine you're drinking.
Zibibbo
from the island of Pantellaria. I can smell the
anis."

"Which all adds up to?"

"Sicily." I squinted up at the sun. "Somewhere on the southern coast."

"Southeast," he said. "Capo Passero to be exact." He shook his head solemnly, sipped a little of his wine and said to Langley, "Remarkable is it not, what the trained mind is capable of?"

Langley looked sullen, picked up a wineglass and held it out to the waiter who filled it for him. The fat man chuckled. "Justin is not impressed, Major Grant, but then he likes to be first in the field always. It comes of having been educated at Eton."

"You mean the reformatory?" I said. "In Northern Nebraska?" I shook my head. "Poor kid, I don't suppose he ever really stood a chance."

Strangely enough Langley reacted to that one with apparent indifference, but his fat friend rocked with laughter. "I like that. Yes, I really like that." He wiped tears from his eyes with a large white pocket handkerchief. "You know who I am, Major Grant?"

"I don't think so."

"Stavrou, sir. Dimitri Stavrou." He expected a reaction and seeing it in my face, grinned slyly. "You know me now, I think?"

"I should," I said. "Your picture was on enough front pages nine or ten months ago when they deported you from the States."

"An affront to justice." He seemed angry for the moment, though whether this was genuine or assumed, it was impossible to say. "Although I was born in Cyprus, I lived in America for forty years of my life, Major Grant. I had legitimate business interests."

"Like gambling, drugs, prostitution?" I said. "Front man for the Syndicate or the Mafia or whatever they call themselves these days, wasn't that it?"

There was a hot spark of anger behind those dark eyes. "The pot, sir, calling the kettle black, isn't that how the English would put it?" He snapped his fingers. "The file, Justin, there's a good boy."

There was a briefcase leaning against the back of Stavrou's cane chair. Langley opened it, took out a buff colored folder and laid it on the table in front of him.

Stavrou put a hand on it. "Oliver Berkley Grant. In detail."

"What, warts and all?" I said.

"I must know it by heart by now." He pushed it away ostentatiously and closed his eyes. "Father, colonel in the Marine Corps, killed in action in Korea in 1951. Mother English. You were educated at an English public school, Winchester. That was to please her, then West Point. You first went to war the year your father was killed. By the end of the Korean conflict you had collected a D.S.C. and Silver Star and a wound which put you in hospital for nine months. It was the last time you fought in any conventional sense as a soldier."

Most of this had been delivered in a rather flat monotone at some speed and now, he opened his eyes. "How am I doing?"

"Now I know where I've seen you before," I said. "Gypsy Rose. You had a tent two summers ago on the boardwalk at Atlantic City."

He was not provoked in the slightest. "For the next seven years, Special Services Executive, Major Grant. Military Intelligence. You became especially expert at getting people out of places. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco the Cubans got their hands on an American colonel named Hurwitz. They intended to stage a show trial that would expose America to the world and then on the night of..." He hesitated. "The 31st October, am I right? You landed with half a dozen special service troops and spirited Hurwitz away from an apparently impregnable fortress."

I was shaken now, rocked straight back on my heel, because what he was giving out was classified information at the highest level.

"You must be on good terms with the President."

"A brilliant operation which made you famous in the Pentagon, at least in a discreet way and one you repeated seven or eight times over the ensuing years. Cuba once again. Cambodia, twice in Vietnam and then Albania. An American U2 pilot named Murphy was to be put on trial as a spy. You got him out of the top state security prison in Tirana."

"It's just a knack," I said. "Something my old grannie taught me when I was in short pants."

"And now we come to August, 1966," he said. "Sylvia Gray, a seventeen-year-old student from Boston, daughter of a friend of your grandfather. An impulsive young lady who went to Prague with a group of other students during the Czechoslovakian revolt and was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a Russian soldier. She shot him in the back three times."