Specter (16 page)

“Yeah,” Brown said. “Who're the two bad dudes with them, though?”

“Son of a bitch,” Murdock said. “One of 'em's our friend Captain Beasley.”

“Maybe his buddy's big-D too,” DeWitt said,

Murdock glanced up and down the street. No one appeared to be paying any attention to them. “Let's go join the party and find out, huh?”

As they walked up to the four men on the promenade, Murdock took the time to study the two strangers. Beasley had exchanged his Japanese camera for a pair of big 7x40 binoculars hanging by their strap around his neck. The other man clearly had something bulky concealed beneath his half zipped nylon jacket, tucked away beneath his left arm.

“Mac!” Murdock called as they came near. “Scotty! Stepano! Fancy meeting you guys here. What's going on?”

Beasley turned, studying Murdock through narrowed eyes. “Good evening, Lieutenant. I was just telling your men here that they're a little out of their element.”

“Actually, he called us froggies,” Mac said in a hurt voice. “Not very friendly at all.”

“We don't want any trouble,” Beasley's companion said. He smacked one meaty fist into his palm. “We got some bad guys staked out here, and you SEALies are just gonna get in the way.”

“Cut the shit,” Murdock snapped, his voice going cold. “We're both after the same thing, and that's information that'll let Kingston get rescued. I don't give a shit who does the rescuing, but if you Army assholes get that woman killed while you're playing your damned games. . .”

“Nobody said anything about games.”

“Good. Now it seems to me that your people and mine can cooperate, Captain, or we can do this strictly by the book, which would cramp everyone's style. What's it going to be?”

“Captain,” the second Army man said. “We can't let these sons of bitches—”

“You want to go by the regs, Captain? What's your date of commission?” It was a bluff, because he wasn't about to involve Washington in something that would be better settled privately here and now. An Army captain and a Navy lieutenant were the same O-3 rank, and the threat of going regulation on this guy might give Murdock the wedge he needed.

“Easy, Lieutenant, easy,” Beasley said. He looked Murdock up and down and seemed to arrive at some sort of a decision. “No point in getting hostile. But this is an Army op, and we would appreciate it if you would respect our jurisdiction.”

“I will if you tell me what you've got.”

Beasley considered that for a moment, then jerked his head forward. “Fair enough. Your word on that, Lieutenant?”

“My word, Beasley. We'll respect your jurisdiction.”

“Okay. Come on. Having you people lined up in the open like you're passing in review makes me nervous.”

“Where we going?” Magic asked.

The Army officer grinned. “Best place in town for a good view of the harbor,” he said. “The White Tower, of course.”

Rising above a small, public park on the waterfront, the White Tower might once have been a prison, but now it was a tourist attraction, complete with souvenir shop and a small museum. There were no tourists in the place, however, only more of Beasley's men. Murdock couldn't tell whether it was past the museum's hours, though, or if Beasley and his people had commandeered the place under authority granted them by Solomos and the local police. “Y‘think maybe Notre Dame's team is visitin' today?” Papagos wondered, nodding toward one of the big, hard-muscled troopers in civilian clothes.

“Shh,” DeWitt hissed. “Don't mention Notre Dame around Army. It's
not
a pretty picture.”

“Keep it down, people,” Murdock warned. “Papagos, Roselli, you two with me. The rest of you stay down here.”

He stayed on Beasley's heels as they strode through the darkened museum, where mosaics and Byzantine gravestones and ranks of vases lurked in the shadowy surroundings. Past a black, iron grillwork held open by a civvies-clad trooper holding an Uzi submachine gun, stone steps wound up the inside of the tower, toward the parapets over one hundred feet above.

The White Tower had two observation levels, with a smaller, central tower that rose another twenty feet above the main parapets like the top layer of a wedding cake. They emerged on this higher platform to a breathtaking view of city and harbor. The wind had a cold bite to it, whipping across the top of the tower out of the north.

Murdock paused, looking around to get his bearings. North lay the city proper, an improbable mix of the old Middle East and the modern West, church towers and minarets mingled with apartments and office buildings. Northeast, beyond a broad, tree-lined plaza, was a brilliantly lit fairground, tents and temporary buildings spread out beneath a tall communications tower.

Opposite, across a broad sweep from the northwest to the south, were the sparkling waters of the Thermaic Gulf. The waters close to the city were crowded with boats, pleasure craft for the most part, though several freighters and Greek naval vessels were moored by the inner harbor pier.

Two more of Beasley's men—Murdock was certain now that they were Delta—were crouched behind the crenelated parapet of the tower, overlooking the bay. One was aiming a rifle through one of the window-sized gaps in the wall, a long-barreled Haskins M500 balanced on a bipod mounted just ahead of the trigger. The weapon was slow—its precision-milled bolt had to be removed to load each round—but those rounds were .50-caliber monsters that could take down a target at a range of better than two kilometers. The Haskins mounted a bulky, low-light telescopic scope, a Varo AN/PVS-4, giving it the look of something out of science fiction. The spotter, kneeling at the next opening to the right, was peering through a heavy, tripod-mounted infrared surveillance scope.

“Hey, Captain,” the spotter said as they emerged onto the tower roof. “Who're these guys?”

“Navy,” Beasley said. “But I think they're on our side this time.”

“No shit?” The trooper shifted his face back to his scope.

“What's your target?” Murdock asked as they moved up to the wall. From the angle of the sniper's rifle and the spotter's scope, they were both watching one of the boats tied up in the outer harbor.

“Okay,” Beasley said. “Here's the way it is. Our pal Solomos and his people got a pretty good lead. Seems two guys in their Special Missions Platoon have more money in their bank accounts than their government salaries could explain.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, uh-oh. First suspect's name is Eleni Trahanatzis. Young guy, twenty-three. No known political connections. He's still officially on the DEA roster, but apparently he took an extended leave of absence a couple of months ago. See that yacht tied up to the orange buoy, about seven hundred meters out?” He pointed, handing Murdock his binoculars. “That's his. He's been living there ever since.”

Murdock took the binoculars and picked up the indicated boat. It wasn't quite what he thought of as a yacht, but it was bigger and fancier than a policeman's salary could afford, perhaps thirty feet long, with a flying bridge atop a large cabin, a well deck aft, a sun deck forward. Probably twin screws... and probably fast if it came to a chase. Murdock estimated that she'd be able to top forty or forty-five knots in calm seas.

“The guy's doing pretty well for himself,” Murdock said, carefully studying the craft. Cabin lights were on, though he couldn't see through the closed curtains. A lone man sat in the well deck aft, smoking a cigarette. A cable passed over the bow and was secured to a mooring buoy. A Zodiac raft was tied to the craft's stern.

“Second guy is Stathis Vlachos,” Beasley went on. “He's harder to pin down. Solomos says he retired from the DEA about two months ago, but he won't tell us where he worked or who he worked for. He's older, maybe thirty-five, and there's a hint that he got his job through some sort of pretty powerful political connections. Nephew of the Prime Minister, that sort of thing.”

“Is he?”

“Not so far as we know. Washington is looking into it. No lurid details yet.”

Through the binoculars, Murdock could make out the boat's name, written in Cyrillic letters. He could sound them out but didn't know what the word meant. “Papagos,” he said quietly. “What's ‘
Glaros
'?”

“
Sea gull
, Lieutenant.”

Beasley chuckled. “If you really want an eyeful,” he said, “have a look through here. Move over, Hodge. Give our guests a peek.”

The spotter grunted and moved aside. Murdock handed the binoculars to Roselli, then got down on his knees and put his eye to the glowing objective.

The
Glaros
was transformed, the boat's hull still visible, but overlaid now by ragged, glowing patterns of colored light that gave the vessel's interior an eerie, three-dimensional aspect, as though the hull were made of some substance not quite so transparent as glass. Most of the thermograph colors were shades of green and blue, but some oranges and yellows showed up as well. The water, being coolest, was black. Most of the boat's hull was ultramarine or deep purple, especially at the edges and along the waterline. The man on the after deck glowed bright yellow-orange, with a bright white spot marking the hot tip of his cigarette. The thermal image was so detailed that Murdock could see a pistol-shaped patch of blue obscuring part of the yellow of the man's chest.

The truly interesting part was forward, however, in the yacht's cabin. The thermographic imaging of this IR unit was sensitive enough to pick up minute variations of temperature, less than a tenth of a degree or so Celsius; with barriers as thin as curtains or the fiberglass hull of a boat, radiated heat from inside could be picked up from the outside. The image was fuzzy and not nearly so detailed as that of the man on deck, but Murdock could easily make out several shapes, seen through the hull in muted patterns of heat. That bright red glow was probably an alcohol or kerosene heater. . . and that smaller one a motor of some sort, possibly the exhaust fan from a small refrigerator. Other shapes nearby were in writhing, shifting motion.

“What in the world?” There appeared to be two brighter, horizontal patterns of warmth a few feet apart, and they. . .

“Hey, Navy,” Hodge said in a flat, fake-Mexican accent. “You like feelthy peectures?”

“Definitely X-rated,” the sniper said, his cheek still resting against the stock of his high-tech rifle. “Now that's what I call a
pleasure
boat.”

With that as a clue, the thermal images resolved themselves in Murdock's mind, too fuzzy to be more than mildly titillating but obviously created by the body heat radiating from two couples lying side by side. One couple was engaged in some rather frenetic, rhythmic movement; the other seemed more relaxed . . . watching the show, perhaps.

“Okay,” Murdock said. “We have five people on board, total?”

“That's right,” Beasley said. “The guy on deck is paid help, a local thug named Katris. We think the other two hired him as muscle, or maybe he's just there to pilot the boat. Vlachos and Trahanatzis are in the cabin with a couple of girls from town.”

“Girlfriends?” Murdock asked, turning away from the eyepiece. “Or professionals?”

“Nah, they're strictly amateurs,” Hodge said. “Pickups at a bar.”

“You've been following these guys around town, I gather.”

“Ever since Solomos and his boys filled us in.”

“What are you going to do about them?”

“Nothing, at the moment.”

“Nothing?”

“The DEA has them under surveillance. We're under orders to stay clear until they complete their investigation.”

Murdock turned his eye back to the thermograph eyepiece. The hard-driving, rhythmic motion had ceased, though there was still movement going on. “Shit,” he said. “If Solomos and his people think these two are tied in with the Kingston hijacking, why don't they go in and grab them? I'd be kind of interested in what they might have to say.”

“So would we. But the Greeks are moving extra slow on this one. All they have is a couple of their Special Missions guys who might have outside sources of income. And I gather there are some sticky political problems.”

“Vlachos and his patron?”

“Worse. Friend Trahanatzis is the son of a rather wealthy Greek shipping magnate. Not an Onassis, but pretty well-to-do. And he's a steady contributor to the Greek Christian Democrats.”

“Wait a minute. I thought you said they couldn't explain his bank balance. If Daddy's a millionaire . . .”

“Apparently Poppa T. wasn't pleased when Junior didn't follow in the family business. Trahanatzis is on a tight allowance. Why else would he take a job with the Athens City Police, eh? But he has made some pretty sizable deposits in the bank over the past couple of weeks.”

“Okay. I follow.”

“Yeah. Anyway, Solomos still doesn't want to have the guy arrested, not with Poppa holding purse strings that just might find their way into the police budget, see?”

“I'm beginning to. Whose name is the boat in? Trahanatzis?”

“Negative. Vlachos.”

“Interesting.”

“Guess who made the deposits in Trahanatzis's account?”

“Vlachos?”

“Bingo. We're pretty sure Vlachos is a link in the chain to somebody higher up. We don't know who, though, and the Greeks don't even want to guess. They're too afraid of what they might find.” Beasley's words were dry and tight, only just hinting at the frustration he must be feeling.