The Mediterranean Caper

10

“The Thasians were great lovers of the theatre, considering it a vital part of their education, and everyone, including the town beggar, was encouraged to come. In the ancient city of Thasos, during the premieres of new dramas from the mainland, all shops were closed, all business ceased and prisoners were released from jail Even the city’s whores, barred from most public events, were allowed to practice their trade in the shrubbery by the theatre gateways without fear of legal harassment.”

The swarthy Greek National Tourist Organization guide paused his spiel, curling his lip in a pleased grin at the horrified expressions on the faces of the female tourists. It was always the same, he thought The women whispering in put-on embarrassment while the men, draped in Bermuda shorts and festooned with light meters and cameras, guffawed and poked each other’s ribs in unison with know-it-all winks.

The guide twisted the end of his magnificent moustache and studied his group more closely. There was the usual sprinkling of fat retired businessmen and their fat wives, viewing the ruins, not for historical interest but rather to impress their friends and neighbors at home. His eyes wandered over four young school teachers from Alhambra, California. Three were plain looking, wore glasses and giggled constantly. It was the fourth girl who attracted his attention. Excellent possibilities. Large protruding breasts, red hair, long legs— like most Americans — and quite shapely. The kind of eyes that flirt and suggest better things to come. Later tonight he would invite her on a private moonlight tour of the ruins.

The guide pulled at the lapels of a tight jacket and tucked the bottom neatly under a bright red cummerbund.

Slowly, with a professional kind of carelessness, he turned his gaze toward the rear of the little crowd, stopping it uneasily on two men who leaned indifferently against a fallen column. A tougher, more battered and villainous pair of hard cases he had never seen. The short one with the puffed out chest, obviously an Italian, looked more like an ape than a man. The taller brute with the piercing green eyes, carried himself with an air of sureness and sophistication, yet there was an aura about him that advertised

“Caution: highly dangerous.” The guide twisted his moustache again. German most likely. Must love to fight judging from the bandages on the nose and hands. Strange, most strange, the guide mused. Why would those two take a dull tour of old ruins? Probably a pair of sailors who jumped ship. Yes, that must be it, he suggested to himself smugly.

“This theatre was excavated in 1952,” the guide went on, flashing a set of bright teeth. “So buried under centuries of silt washed off the mountain that it took two years to reveal it all. Please notice the geometric mosaic of the orchestra floor. It was fashioned from naturally colored pebbles and signed Coenus Set It.”

He hesitated a moment, letting his flock of excursionists study the floral design of the worn and faded files.

“Now, if you will follow me up the stairway to your left, we will take a short walk over the next mound to the Shrine of Poseidon.”

Pitt, playing the part of a tired and worn-out sightseer, feigned exhaustion and sat down on the steps, watching the rest of the tour climb the granite stairway until their heads disappeared beyond the top.

Four-thirty, his watch read. Four-thirty. Exactly three hours since he and Giordino left the First Attempt and casually strolled into Liminas, joining the guided tour of the ancient ruins. Now he and Giordino…

The little Captain was impatiently pacing the stone floor beside him, clutching a small flight bag… waited a few more minutes, making absolutely sure the tour was continuing without them. Satisfied that they weren’t missed, he silently motioned to Giordino and pointed toward the stage entrance of the amphitheatre.

For the hundredth time, Pitt tugged at the irritating chest bandage, thought about the ship’s doctor and grinned in self amusement. Permission to leave the ship and return to von Till’s villa had been firmly denied by the bearded doctor, and by Gunn too. But when Pitt insisted that, if necessary, he was ready to fight the entire ship’s crew and swim back to Liminas, the old physician had thrown up his hands in defeat and stormed from the cabin. So far, paying for the wine while killing time in a small taverna, waiting for the sightseeing trip to begin, was his only contribution to the backdoor reconnaissance of the villa. It was Giordino who had cursed and sweated over the huge lump of rust attached to the dory’s propeller shaft, trying to crank it to life. And it was Giordino who nursed the weather-beaten derelict back to the harbor at Liminas. Fortunately the old boat had not been missed… no irate owner or local police officer waited on the beach to punish the yankee pirates for boat theft. To tie the dory up to its original mooring and walk across the beach to the main part of town took only a few minutes. Pitt, certain it was a waste of time, led Giordino a block out of their way to see if Athena was still attached to the corner mailbox. The donkey was gone, but immediately across the narrow street, over a neat little white plastered office building, a sign, lettered in English, advertised the Greek National Tourist Organization.

The rest was simple; joining a tour, whose itinerary included the amphitheatre, and mingling with a group of sightseers, offered the perfect cover for reaching the labyrinth and gaining entrance to von Till’s retreat without detection.

Giordino rubbed a sleeve across his damp brow.

“Breaking and entering in the middle of the afternoon. Why can’t we wait until dark like any other honorable burglars?”

The sooner we nail von Till, the better.” Pitt said. sharply. “If he’s off balance from the destruction of the Albatros this morning, the last thing he would expect is a resurrected Dirk Pitt in broad daylight”

Giordino could easily feel and see the revenge in Pitt’s eyes. He remembered watching Pitt move slowly, painfully, as best he could, over the steep trail through the ruins without complaint He had also watched the bitterness, the hopelessness that took and held Pitt’s face after Gunn announced the disappearance of the mystery plane. There was something ominous about Pitt’s grim features and unmoving concentration.

Giordino wondered dimly whether Pitt was driving himself with a sense of duty or with an insane compulsion for retaliation.

“You’re sure this is the right way. It might be simpler to… “

“This is the only way,” Pitt interrupted. “The Albatros wasn’t eaten by a whale, yet it vanished without leaving a stray nut or bolt. Knowing the identity of the pilot could have settled a number of loose ends.

We have no choice. The only course that lies open is to search the villa.”

“I still think we should take a squad of Air Police,” Giordino said morosely, “and crash in through the front door.”

Pitt looked at him, then looked once more over his shoulder up the stairway. He knew exactly how Al Giordino felt, for he felt the same way himself… frustrated, unsure, grasping at every string that offered a small touch of hope for obtaining an answer, no matter how small, to the strange events of the past few days. Much depended on the next hour whether they could enter the villa unseen, whether they found evidence against von Till, whether Teri was a willful member of her uncle’s, as yet unknown, scheme. Pitt glanced at Giordino again saw the set brown eyes, the grim mouth, the knotted hands, saw all the signs of an intense mental concentration; concentration on the possible dangers that lay ahead. There was no better man to have on your side when the odds were long.

“I can’t seem to pound it through your thick head,” he said quietly. “This is Greek soil. We have no legal right to Invade a private residence. I couldn’t begin to think of the problems it would cause our government if we broke in von Till’s door. As it is now, if we’re caught by the Greek authorities, we’ll play the roles of a couple of crewmen from the First Attempt who wandered into the underground passage during a guided tour to sleep off a shore leave drunk. They should buy that, they have no reason not to.”

“That’s why we’re not packing any weapons?”

“You guessed it, we’ll have to risk a disadvantage to save a possible predicament.” Pitt halted at the crumbling archway. The iron grillwork looked different in the daylight, not nearly so massive and indomitable as he remembered It. “This is the place,” he said, his fingers idly flaking a spot of dried blood from one of the rusting bars.

“You squeezed through that?” Giordino asked incredulously.

“It was nothing,” Pitt replied broadly grinning. “Just another one of my many accomplishments.” The grin quickly faded. “Hurry, we don’t have much time. The next tour will be through here in another forty-five minutes.”

Giordino stepped up to the heavy bars and within seconds was a man absorbed with a difficult and hazardous job to do. He opened the flight bag and carefully removed the contents, laying them out in order on an old towel. Quickly, he fitted two small charges of T.N.T. around a single bar, spacing them twenty inches apart, inserted the primer and heavily wrapped each charge under several layers of metal plumbers tape. Next he spun strands of heavy wire around the bulbous bands and then covered the wire with more layers of thick adhesive tape. A final look at the charges, imbedded in the thick wrappings like cocoons, and he connected the wires to the detonator.

Obviously pleased with his handwork, the entire operation had taken less than six minutes from start to finish, he motioned Pitt toward the safety of a wide block retaining wall.

Slowly Giordino followed, walking backward, playing out wires leading from the detonator to the charges. At the wall, Pitt grasped him on the arm to draw his attention.

“How far will the explosion be heard?”

“If I did it right,” Giordino replied, “it shouldn’t sound any louder than a popgun to someone standing a hundred feet away.”

Pitt stood on the lower base of the wall and hurriedly scanned a three hundred and sixty degree circle of landscape. Seeing no sign of human activity, he nodded, grinning at Giordino. “I hope dropping in uninvited through the service entrance isn’t beneath your dignity.”

“We Giordinos are pretty broadminded,” he said, returning Pitt’s grin.

“Shall we?”

“If you insist.”

They both ducked below the top of the old wall, holding the sun-warmed stones with their hands to absorb any shock. Then Giordino turned the little plastic switch on the detonator.

Even at the short distance of ten or fifteen feet the sound of the explosion was nothing more than a mere thump. No shock wave trembled the ground, no black cloud of smoke or shooting flame belched from the archway, no deafening blast rattled their eardrums, only a small indefinable thump.

Swiftly, in a silence bred of expectancy, they leaped to their feet and rushed back to the iron gate. The two balls of tape were torn and smoldering, smelling like the burned out pungent odor of frizzled firecrackers. A tiny curl of smoke wound in a wake-like trail between the grill and disappeared into the damp darkness of the interior passage. The bar was still in place.

Pitt looked questioningly at Giordino. “Not enough punch?”

“It was ample,” Giordino said confidently. “The charges were the right size to do the job. Please observe" He gave the bar a vigorous kick with his heel. It remained solid, unyielding. He kicked it again, this time harder, his mouth tight from jolting pain in his heel and sole. The top end of the bar broke loose, bending its jagged and torn tip inward until it lay on a horizontal plane. A tense smile creased Giordino’s mouth and his teeth slowly spread into view.. “And now for my next trick.

“Never mind,” Pitt snapped brusquely. “Let’s get the hell going. We’ve got to get to the villa and back in time to join the next tour.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

Pitt was already climbing through the opening in the gate. “Last night it took me eight hours to get out, we can get in in eight minutes.”

“How, you got a map?”

“Something even better,” Pitt said quietly, almost grimly, pointing at the flight bag. “Pass me the light.”

Giordino reached into the bag. pulled out a large yellow light, nearly six inches in diameter, and passed it through the opening. “It’s big enough. What is it?”

“Alien Dive Bright Aluminum casing is waterproof to a nine hundred foot depth. We’re not going diving, but it’s rugged and throws out a long narrow beam, backed by one hundred and eight thousand candlepower. That’s why I borrowed it from the ship.”

Giordino said no more, merely shrugged and slipped between the bars, following Pitt into the passage.

“Hold on a second till I remove the evidence.”

Giordino’s stubby hands nimbly unwound the shredded wrappings — a pile of old fallen stones covered the smoldering remains — before he turned to face Pitt, squinting his eyes until they became accustomed to the dim light.

Pitt played his light into the darkness. “Look there on the ground. See why I don’t need the services of a detailed map?”

The powerful beam spotlighted a broken trail of dried and caked blood leading down the steep uneven stairway. In a few places the red stains lay in scattered clusters, separated by occasional tiny round specks. Pitt descended the steps shivering, not so much from the sight of his old and discarded blood, but from the sudden change in temperature from the outside afternoon heat to the damp chill of the musty labyrinth. At the bottom he took off at a half trot, the swaying light in his hand casting a series of bouncing shadows that leaped from the cracklined ceiling to the rough hewn rock floor. The loneliness and the fear that gripped him the night before was not present. Giordino, that indestructible sawed-off package of muscle, a trusted friend for many years, was beside him now. Damned if anyone or any barrier would stop him this time, he thought doggedly.

Passage after passage, like gaping mouths in the shadows slipped by. Pitt kept his eyes trained on the ground, analyzing the dark red spots. At the honeycombed intersections he paused briefly, studying the trail. If the blood led up a tunnel and then returned it meant a dead end. Wherever the course indicated a single line he pursued it. His body was aching and his vision was hazy at the outer edges; a bad sign. He was bone tired and felt it to the deadening tips of every nerve ending. Pitt stumbled and would have gone down, but Giordino grabbed his arm in a wrench-like grip, holding him erect.

“Take it easy, Dirk,” Giordino said firmly, his voice followed by a faint echo. “No sense in overdoing it.

You’re not in condition to play All American hero.”

“It’s not far,” Pitt said heavily. “The dog should lie around the next couple of bends.”

But the dog was gone. Only the hardened blood pools remained where the great white animal had thrashed out the final moments of life. Pitt stared mutely at the huge stains. The dank odor of blood permeated the passageway, adding to, but not quite overcoming, the musty atmosphere. He vividly recreated the. attack in his mind; the dog’s gleaming eyes, the leap in the dark, the knife sinking into warm flesh, and the agonized animal howl.

“Keep going,” Pitt said grimly, all weariness forgotten. “The entrance is only another eighty feet.”

They plunged on amid the black depths of the mountain. Pitt didn’t bother to watch the blood trail, he knew where he was to the inch: he so thoroughly recalled the feel of the walls and floor that he would have been completely confident of finding the door at a dead run without the flashlight and in absolute darkness. The light in his hand swayed in wild arcs as they pounded along into the modern corridor construction.

Suddenly the Dive Brite’s beam probed the massive door, holding it in a dazzling circle of light.

“This is it,” Pitt said softly between labored gasps for breath.

Giordino pushed his way past and knelt to the ground, examining the inside bolts. He wasted no time; already his fingers were probing the slight crack that separated the door from the frame molding.

“Goddamn,” he grunted.

“What is it?”

“Big sliding latch on the outside. I don’t have the equipment to jimmy it from this side.”

“Try the hinges,” Pitt murmured. He aimed the light toward the opposite side of the door. Almost before he said it, Giordino had snatched a short pointed bar from the flight bag and was prying the long pins from their rusty shafts.

Giordino laid the hinge pins lightly on the ground and let Pitt ease the door open. It swung noiselessly, only an inch, at his touch. Pitt peeked through the widening crack, taking a swift look around, but there was no one in sight, no sound, except their own breathing.

Pitt pulled the door aside and dashed across the balcony, blinking in the harsh sunlight, and hurried up the stairway. Giordino, he knew, was right on his heels. The doorway to the study was open, the drapes blowing inward in billowing folds from an offshore westerly breeze. He flattened against the wall, listening for voices. Then seconds passed, ticking off to half a minute. The study was quiet. Nobody home, he thought, or if they are they’re an awfully dead group, Pitt took a deep breath, turned quickly, and stepped inside the room.

The study seemed quite empty. It was exactly as Pitt remembered it; the columns, classic furniture, the bar. His eyes sped around the room, stopping at the shelf containing the model submarine. He walked over and closely examined the workmanship on the miniature craft. The carved black mahogany that made up the hull and conning tower gleamed with a satin-like: sheen. Every detail from the rivets to a tiny embroidered Imperial German battle flag looked fantastically real, so much so that at any second Pitt half expected to see a diminutive crew leap out of a hatch and man the deck gun. The neatly painted numbers on the side of the conning tower identified it as the U-19, a close sister of the U-boat that torpedoed the Lusitania.

Pitt whirled sharply from the model as Giordino’s fingers dug deeply in his arm, as Giordino’s head leaned closely to his own.

“I thought I heard something,” the voice was a mere breath.

“Where?” Pitt asked in a whisper.

“I’m not sure, I couldn’t get a good fix on it.”

Giordino cocked his head, listening. Then he shrugged.

“Just imagining things I guess.”

Pitt turned back to the model submarine. “Do you recall the number of the World War I sub that was sunk near here?”

Giordino hesitated. “Yeah.. It was the U-19.

Why ask now?”

“I’ll explain later. Come on, Al, let’s get the hell out of here.”

‘We just got here,” Giordino complained, raising his voice to a murmur.

Pitt tapped the model. “We’ve found what we came for… “

He froze into sudden immobility, listening, his hand motioning a silence signal to Giordino.

“We’ve got company,” he said under his breath.

“Split up and circle around the far end of the room to that second column. I’ll go along the windows.”

Giordino nodded. He hadn’t even raised an eyebrow.

A minute later their stealthy paths met, joining behind a long high backed sofa. Both men approached it cautiously and peered over the backrest.

Without moving, without uttering a word, Pitt stood rooted to the carpet. He stood there, it seemed to Giordino, for an eternity, his mind absorbing the shock of seeing Teri peacefully asleep on the sofa. But it was no eternity, it was probably only five seconds before Pitt acted.

Teri lay curled in a ball, her head resting on a huge humped armrest, her black hair falling in piles, nearly touching the floor. She wore a long red negligee that fluffed about her arms and covered her body from neck to toe, teasingly displaying the dark triangle below her belly and the two pink discs of her breasts through its diaphanous material Pitt whipped out his handkerchief and had it firmly stuffed in her mouth before she fully woke. Then snatching the hem of her negligee he yanked it above her head and knotted it around the arms, making her completely helpless. Teri began to struggle back to full consciousness — it was too late. Before she could fully grasp what ‘was happening, she was roughly thrown over Giordino’s shoulder and carted off into the sunlight

“You’ve got to be crazy,” Giordino mumbled irritably when they reached the stairway. “All this hassle to gawk at a toy and steal a broad.”

“Shut up and run,” Pitt said without turning. He kicked the passage door aside and let Giordino enter first with his kicking burden. Then Pitt pushed the door back into place, aligning the hinge shafts before inserting the pins.

“Why bother replacing the door?” Giordino asked impatiently.

“We got this far without detection,” Pitt replied, grabbing the flight bag. “I want to keep von Till in the dark as long as possible. I’m betting he saw the obvious evidence of my wounds after the dog’s attack, and thinks I wandered off into this honeycombed maze and bled to death.”

Quickly, Pitt turned and ran through the corridor, holding the light low so Giordino, grunting under his struggling burden, could see where he was stepping. The thick coat of blackness, pierced by the small island of incandescence, opened briefly at their approach and then closed, returning the labyrinth back to its eternal night. One foot before the other, the endless routine repeated over and over. Their feet pounded across the hard floor, echoing through the darkness with a peculiar hollow sound.

The Dive Brite and flight bag clutched tightly in his hands, only dimly aware of the curious tingling in the pit of his stomach, Pitt rushed forward. Rapidly, with no attempt at stealthy caution, no expectancy of trouble, but with that strange inner sensation, half-belief of a man who has accomplished something he had thought was impossible. I’m on the path of von Till’s secret and I’ve got his niece, Pitt said to himself again and again. But somehow a lingering fear prodded his mind.

Five minutes later they reached the stairway. Pitt stepped aside, holding the light on the steps, letting Giordino climb first. Then he turned, beaming the light back in the passage, taking a last look, and his face became grim. He wondered how few men and women too, had suffered but escaped from that honeycombed hell. One thing, he thought, no one will ever know fully the history of the labyrinth. Only the ghosts lingered, the bodies had long since turned to dust. Then his mouth twisted and he looked away. Without another backward glance, be mounted the steps for the last time, vastly relieved at seeing sunlight again at the top landing. He was half-way through the rusting bars, vaguely aware that Giordino was standing oddly quiet with Teri still slung over a shoulder, when he heard a loud contemptuous laugh roar beside the archway.

“My compliments, gentlemen, on your exquisite taste in souvenirs. However, I feel it is my patriotic duty to inform you that the theft of valuable objects from historical sites is strictly forbidden under Greek law.”