Critical Mass (27 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass
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THE FISHING VESSEL
DHODHÓHI,
HER LIGHTS OFF, BOBBED IN the gentle swells off the protected east coast of the island. A few miles away they could make out a few lights above the almost sheer cliffs that rose in some spots five hundred feet straight out of the sea. In all other directions was darkness, the blackness of the sky merging with the blackness of the water.
Theotokis had suggested Karamanlis' boat, and had sent along a younger, darker, even more ruggedly built Greek by the name of Evangolos Papagos as crew.
It was nearing one in the morning, and they had been waiting just offshore since before midnight. So far they'd seen nothing. The three of them were in the wheelhouse; Karamanlis standing at the helm, McGarvey with his back against the door, and Papagos insolently facing him from the corner.
“How will we know this boat of yours?” Karamanlis asked, scanning the pitch-black sea to the north. They'd seen only one other boat since Thira, a freighter well south and heading into the open Mediterranean.
“If, as your uncle said, there is a route to the old church from here, then they'll show up sooner or later.”
“Maybe you are being tricked,” Papagos rumbled, his voice deep. He was staring out to sea.
“She'll probably be running without lights,” McGarvey continued. “At least until Spranger and the others get off.”
Papagos looked up. “What is your quarrel with Ernst Spranger?”
“You know him?” McGarvey asked, tensing.
“He's an old friend.” The Greek grinned broadly, showing nicotine-stained teeth.
“Not to worry,” Karamanlis was quick to explain. “He and my uncle have had a falling out. If it is the East German you are hunting, then we will help you.”
The entire thing was a setup, McGarvey understood at last. Spranger had been one step ahead of him the entire way. He'd taken Elizabeth and Kathleen to lure McGarvey out of Japan, and then had marked the trail all the way here. To what?
To a killing ground, of course. Somewhere on the island, in the end, if he survived that long.
He focused on the two Greeks again. “How do I know you're telling me the truth? Maybe you're working for Spranger. The Germans always had a way with you Greeks. A fatal attraction on your part.”
Papagos's jaw tightened. “You will find out very soon,” he said.
Karamanlis said something to him in Greek that McGarvey didn't catch.
“Out there,” Papagos said in English. “Two points to starboard.”
McGarvey didn't bother to look. “You knew it would be here.” He reached into his pocket, his fingers curling around the grip of his pistol.
Papagos shrugged, his eyes going to McGarvey's gun hand. “It's why we came. You hired us to intercept them. Well, we have. They're just out there. Dark, as you predicted.”
“They must already be on the island,” Karamanlis said. “We must have missed them.”
“We'll check the boat,” McGarvey said.
Karamanlis started to protest, but Papagos cut him off. “Naturally. Maybe something went wrong, maybe they're still aboard.”
Again Karamanlis said something to him in Greek, and Papagos stiffened, his entire attitude suddenly changing.
McGarvey took out his gun and pointed it at them,
Karamanlis' eyes going nervously from the gun to the starboard windows.
“We'll go over there now,” McGarvey said.
“Why is it you are pulling a gun on us?” Papagos asked. “Don't you have any trust?”
“It may be a trap over there, you know,” Karamanlis said nervously.
“Yes, it might be.” McGarvey cocked the hammer.
“Do as he says, Spyros,” Papagos said, a cunning look coming into his eyes. “And be quick about it. Let's help Mr. McGarvey find what he's looking for.”
 
The
Thaxos
showed no lights, nor was there any movement on her decks. She was drifting slowly to the southwest, and there was no way of telling how long she'd been left apparently abandoned, but her portside boarding ladder was down and one of her lifeboats was missing from its davits.
“She's been abandoned,” Karamanlis said, as they bumped up against the boarding ladder. He put the engine in neutral.
“We'll go aboard and see,” McGarvey said, motioning with the gun. He opened the door and backed out on deck. No sounds came from the bigger ship. No machinery noises. Nothing.
Karamanlis and Papagos followed him out of the wheelhouse, and he stepped aside so that they could tie a line to the bigger ship then precede him up the ladder.
The cargo vessel was set to blow, there was little doubt in McGarvey's mind about it. That was what Karamanlis had told Papagos. And that was why they were both nervous. But so long as they didn't jump ship there was a possibility some time remained.
He had to make sure that Kathleen and Elizabeth hadn't been left behind. It was the kind of monstrous joke that Spranger liked most.
On deck a man dressed in dungarees and a watch cap was crumpled in a heap half in and half out of a hatch. Blood had pooled behind his head. He'd obviously been shot to death.
“Spranger's work,” McGarvey said. “The rest of the crew are probably dead as well.”
“He's probably planted explosives,” Karamanlis said.
“Then we'd better hurry,” McGarvey said. “We'll start with the bridge.”
“What are you looking for?” Papagos asked.
“I'll tell you when I find it. But we're going to check every space aboard this ship before we leave. So if you're worried about being blown out of the water, I suggest you get on with ; it.”
Karamanlis and Papagos exchanged glances, and for a long moment neither of them moved, until suddenly Papagos ducked through the hatch and was gone.
McGarvey started after the man, but Karamanlis shoved him aside and darted for the rail.
“Stop,” McGarvey shouted, regaining his balance, and he snapped off a shot striking the Greek in the left leg and sending him sprawling.
Papagos fired from somewhere inside the ship, the bullet ricocheting off the hatch. McGarvey reared back at the same time Karamanlis pulled out his pistol and fired. The shot smacked into the bulkhead inches from McGarvey's left shoulder, leaving him no other choice but to fire back, his shot catching the Greek in the head just below the right eye socket.
 
The six-man team of SEALS rode in one rubber raft powered by a highly muffled eighty horsepower outboard. The boat was big enough for them and the two hostages they hoped to free, but no larger. There were no plans to bring anyone else out alive.
They had made all possible speed from their position well to the north the moment they'd received radar vectors on the stationary object just off the eastern coast of the island, and an update on McGarvey's position showing him converging on the same target. But they'd badly guessed Spranger's plans, and the mad dash across had taken nearly thirty minutes.
“Definitely a muzzle flash,” Ensign Tyrell said. “Small caliber.”
“Do you see anyone on deck?” Lipton asked. They were still a half mile out, but Tyrell was studying the ship through a starlight scope which showed figures as ghostly images in all but a total absence of ambient light.
“There was a movement just behind the flash, but the decks are clear now.” Tyrell looked up. “How the hell did he get here before us?”
“They said he was a sharp sonofabitch. And the man is well motivated.”
“I'll say,” Tyrell agreed. “But this isn't going to make our job easier.”
“No,” Lipton said, tight-lipped. “No it won't.”
THE CELL IN WHICH THEY'D BEEN PLACED WAS SMALL AND very cold. A tiny window in one wall was dark. Kathleen lay on one of the cots, still only semiconscious, but Elizabeth sat on the stone floor in the corner, her knees hugged to her chest. Her head was spinning from the aftermath of the drugs she'd been given since Grenoble, with the almost total lack of food or water, and with what the woman—Liese Egk—had done to her aboard the boat.
She shuddered, not so much because of the damp cold, but because of what had happened. She felt dirty and used; as if she had been forced to age a hundred years overnight.
Yet there was enough defiance in her that she could fantasize about what would happen to her captors once her father got here.
“Keep your head down, because I'll be coming in swinging,” he would say.
She could see him dressed in black, darting silently down a dark corridor, moving like a deadly jungle animal that no one could resist.
He'd have to be warned about the woman. It was the only trap they could possibly set for him, and yet in her heart of hearts she knew that her father would see through Liese Egk. He would recognize the woman for what she was.
“I wasn't born yesterday. I've been around. I've seen a few things.”
In the end the Germans would be dead, Armand's murder avenged. And she could almost feel her father's strength flowing into her as he led her and her mother away. It would
be morning. The sun would be brightly shining, warm on her shoulders and head.
Her mother said something, but her voice seemed muffled and indistinct, and for a moment Elizabeth was confused. In her fantasies only her father ever spoke.
She remembered her father from when she was a young girl, but lately she'd had a difficult time visualizing exactly how it had been. At times she wasn't certain if she was recalling genuine memories or her fantasies.
“Elizabeth,” Kathleen said thickly.
Elizabeth looked up out of her thoughts. Her mother had rolled over. She was clutching the thin blanket up to her chin but she was still shivering. “Are you all right, mother?”
“What's happening? Where are we?”
“I don't know for sure,” Elizabeth grunted, getting painfully to her feet. She had to stand for a few seconds, holding onto the stone wall for support lest she lose her balance and fall.
“My God, what happened to your head?” Kathleen asked in shock.
Elizabeth raised her fingers to her bald skull. Already a light stubble had begun to appear. “Your head is the same. They wanted us to look like hospital patients.”
“But why?”
“So that they could take us across the border without question.”
“We're not in Switzerland?” the older woman asked, panicking a little. She seemed very frail and weak.
“We're in Greece, I think,” Elizabeth said. “The island of Santorini. Or at least I hope we are.” She tottered over to the window.
It was pitch-black outside, and she couldn't make out a thing. Even the dim light from a tiny bulb in the ceiling overpowered her night vision.
“What's out there,” her mother asked anxiously.
“I can't see yet,” Elizabeth said. She climbed up on the edge of her cot so that she could reach the bulb, and gingerly unscrewed it, plunging the room into darkness.
“Elizabeth?” her mother cried.
“It's all right, mother. I just want to look outside. I'll put the light back on in a minute.”
“But I can't see. I'm frightened, and I'm cold.”
Elizabeth felt her way across to her mother's cot and sat down, taking her mother's hands in hers. She leaned in close and lowered her voice in case someone was standing on the other side of the wooden door listening to them.
“Father will be coming to rescue us very soon,” she whispered.
Kathleen's grip tightened. “How do you know?”
“I left a clue for him back at the chalet. In the fireplace. I'm sure he's found it already and is on his way with help.”
“What kind of clue? What do you mean?”
“Don't worry about it. Father will know what it means, and he'll come for us.”
“But that's what they want. Elizabeth, what have you done?”
“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked, a sudden sick feeling coming to her stomach.
“I came to bring you back to Washington. One of your father's friends warned me that he was in danger. That we all were in danger.”
“Daddy's working for the CIA again. Is that it, mother?”
“I think so. These people want to trick him into coming here so they can kill him.”
“He's too good for them.”
“He's only one man, my darling. And there's too many of them. They're too well organized.”
“But before, back in Switzerland, you said that he would come for us.”
“I know, but I was wrong for wanting it.
Elizabeth pulled her hand away and got up. Her mother was a contradiction. First she was weak, a simpering idiot, and then she was suddenly strong. What was happening?
Elizabeth went to the window, tears beginning to well up in her eyes. It was the drugs and everything that had been
done to them that made her confused. That made them both confused, and say things they didn't mean.
At first she wasn't able to make out a thing; just as amorphous blackness, a featureless nothing. But then she thought she was seeing a movement far below. A white, almost ghostly swirl that lasted for a second or more, but then was gone.
“Elizabeth?” her mother called, but she ignored her.
The white swirl came again, rushing inward, far below, until suddenly she understood that she was seeing waves breaking on the rocks. The room they were in was perched on the edge of a hill, or a sheer cliff that plunged down to the sea. They were in a castle of some sort. A medieval keep. Perhaps a Roman or Greek ruin.
She was about to turn away when a tiny flash of light directly below caught her eye, and she sucked her breath.
Someone was outside, just beneath her window. Father?
She searched with her fingers in the darkness for a latch, and finding one, fumbled it open, breaking two of her fingernails against the stonework.
The window opened inward, a rush of fresh air bringing the odor of the sea into the room. Standing on tiptoes she was just able to look out over the edge. Barely ten feet below her a man dressed in black dangled from a series of ropes. He was concentrating on doing something directly in front of him. It seemed as if he was stuffing something into a big crack in the stones.
She almost called to him, but something made her hold back. It wasn't her father. He was the wrong build, his hair the wrong color. Even in the darkness she could see that.
He switched on a small flashlight for just a second or two, shielding it from the sea, but not from Elizabeth's view, and kept it long enough for her to see what he was doing.
She pulled back into the room, her heart pounding. The man had been attaching wires to whatever it was he'd stuffed into the crack in the wall.
Wires leading to explosives that when they blew would send this entire side of the castle into the sea far below.

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