Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (26 page)

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 proud 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 seemed 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.

“Tell me something, Rogo. You’re a cop. You’ve seen a lot. Tell me about Hely. How could she be so bad and so good at the same time? I don’t understand.”

Rogo folded his arms on his heavy chest and thought for a moment before replying. “Y’know my wife died on that tub? Linda. She was . . . hell, she was my whole goddamn life. I worshiped the kid. Know how I met her? She was a hooker. A hooker, Jason. But she was one helluva great broad.”

He was almost talking to himself now. “Me? Yeah, I’m a cop. I could just as easy’ve been a hood. Where I grew up you did your talking with yer fists. I got lucky. I got pulled into a boxing club. From there I got to be a cop. Which side of the law you land on is chance. You got a nice daddy and a swell house and proper schooling”—he brushed away Jason’s unspoken protest with one hand—“so you don’t know what it’s like on the tough side of town. Survival, that’s what it’s all about.

“Hely. I didn’t know the kid. But I know how it happens. Mebbe she didn’t have the breaks you had. Mebbe she had to grab all her life, like Linda did. I enforce the law, right? But I know that the law looks fine for guys like you in the big houses. It don’t look so sacred when your belly’s empty.

“I gotta tell you this, pal. It takes guts. It takes guts to go against the rest of the world. It takes guts to pull a gun or rob a bank. Don’t forget, it was her guts saved us all in the end.”

He stopped. He was thinking about Hely’s unexpected offer to him when he had tried to search her purse the first time. She had offered herself, and he knew it. “Take it from me, Jason, that broad would have done anything for you. Most people don’t get that in a lifetime. You had it for a coupla hours. Call yourself lucky.”

They were quiet for a long time then, each one thinking about the woman he had lost. Finally, Jason turned to the policeman and said, “Thanks, Mike. I wanted to believe in her. You just showed me how.”

A PRESENTABLE STORY

16

The young man who said he represented the American government, without actually specifying any particular department, had a college-smoothed accent, a permanent suntan, and a worried look on his face. His instructions had been explicit and urgent, and so far everything had gone to plan. The second the
Magt
had docked in Athens he was on board, together with officials from the Dutch embassy and the Greek government.

There had been a lot of talk about security. National security, NATO security. There had been a lot of talk about international incidents and leakages. Martin and the nurse had eagerly given him their assurances and, prodded by the Dutch official, Klaas and his daughter had done the same. He was perfectly satisfied with their response, and with the enthusiasm with which they agreed on a presentable story for the world.

It was the New York cop who worried him. It had been plain from the start that Rogo disliked him, and he made little effort to conceal the fact. He grumbled about “CIA monkeys” and he wore an air of surly truculence that was not at all promising. And now here he was at the inevitable Press Conference, and the young man was not at all sure that Rogo would carry it off. He was not at all sure that Rogo considered it worth trying to carry it off. And it was Rogo, sitting in the center of the group behind a gleaming mahogany table, who would face most of the questions.