Assignment - Ankara (23 page)

She looked up at Durell. “Sam?”

“Yes, Francesca. It’s all right.”

“What are you going to do about Wickham?”

“I’m getting out of here. I’m going to find him.”

THERE was an iron ladder going up the bulkhead to the hatch over the hold where they were held prisoner. The hatch was really a trap door within a larger framework, the main hatch-cover that provided the ceiling area for the compartment. The hold itself, lined with rusted refrigeration pipes, its metal plates sweating with condensation, was about twenty feet square, covering the width of the vessel’s beam so there could be no passage from the holds forward to the engine room and compartments aft, without going through here or using the upper deck.

Durell considered this, standing spread-legged against the lift and fall and plunge of the trawler. The bare light bulb danced and jerked on the end of its single cord extended by an iron pipe from the aft bulkhead. The pipe was hinged, so the light and wire could be swung aside to clear the way for the seine purse when the netted catch was dumped in here. It could be reached from the steel rungs of the ladder that went up to the trap door in the hatch ten feet from the slippery, rusted deck where he stood. Durell ignored it for a moment and studied the rest of the compartment, aware that John Stuyvers was watching him with harsh curiosity, and aware, too, of Susan’s blank face turning to follow him and of Francesca Uvaldi’s quiet composure. They watched and waited and expected anything from him now.

There was no door, no other entrance from the below-deck level. He considered the multiple rows of refrigeration pipes that circled the walls. Aft, against the bulkhead that separated them from the engine room, was a steel plate in the wall, perhaps two feet square, just above the section where most of the coil pipes went through the bulkhead. Durell turned to it, considered its riveted surface and saw that the hinges made it into a small trap door. Paint had once sealed it tight, but the alternate degrees of heat and cold down here had long since flaked away the painted seal and revealed the outline of the hinges and the dogged-down handle.

John Stuyvers stood silently beside him.

“Where do you suppose it goes?”

“Into the engine room,” Durell said, “and the refrigeration pumps. But we can’t make it out that way. Somebody would see me at once. In any case, we have nothing to open this with. No hammer or wrench.”

“Susan could get us out,” John said carefully.

“How?”

“There’s a guard up on deck, right?”

“Perhaps. The may just have fastened down the hatch in this weather and sealed us in, though.”

John said, “Let’s put the girl to work. She could twist one of these clumsy fishermen around her little finger, you know?”

Durell looked at the blonde girl. “What do you think, Susan?”

“Yes, I’ll try,” she said at once.

“All right. Go on up the ladder and bang on the trap door. See if there’s any answer.”

“And then?”

“Tell the watch you want to see the captain, at once.” “Smile at the bastard,” John grated. “Give him the works, baby.”

“I don’t see what good—”

Durell listened to the crash and hiss of the sea breaking on the foreward deck. “If there is any watch at all, it’s probably only one man. We’ll have to take him right here. So I’ll be on the ladder behind you, Susan. Go on up, now.”

She bit her lip, nodded, and climbed up. Durell mounted behind her. She leaned back in order to rap feebly on the wooden trap door in the big hatch-cover overhead, and Durell felt her body tremble against him.

“Take it easy,” he said quietly. “When I reach up past you to grab him, just hang on, understand? Don’t let yourself fall.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“If you do, just keep yourself loose. It’s awkward, I know. But do your best, Susan. Rap again.”

She banged her fist against the trap door once more and cried out. Up here close to the deck, they could hear the loud thunder of the sea, the bursting of combers against the bow, the wash and surge of water pouring across the trawler’s deck. Durell, clinging to the ladder with one hand, reached up beyond Susand and shoved at the trap. It would not yield. He hammered on it as loudly as he could.

He had almost given up, thinking the fishermen hadn’t bothered to post a watch here, when there came a rasp of metal being withdrawn, and then the trap door moved. "Da?”

A hairy, bearded face was thrust down out of the upper windy darkness of the deck; a woolen cap was jammed over unkemp hair, a scarf over the mouth muffling the single word of annoyed inquiry. Water sprayed down through the trap door and soaked Susan and Durell below.

Susan cried out, “Help me. Please. I’m ill.”

The fisherman answered with a spate of unintelligible words. Durell spoke in Russian. “The lady is sick and she needs help. Do you have a doctor aboard?”

“A doctor?” The man laughed. “We are only a small fishing boat, only ten men. What is wrong with her?” “She wants to see the captain.”

“Oh? What for?”

Durell winked. “Perhaps she wants to bargain with him for better treatment, eh?”

“She does? She’s plain enough, but she could begin by bargaining with me—”

The fisherman, laughing, crouched over the trap door and leaned a little farther down to look at Susan. Durell took the chance then. He reached up and around the girl, awkwardly because Susan was in his way, and caught the man around the neck and yanked hard. The effort made one foot slip off the rung of the ladder and his weight suddenly came down full force as the crewman bellowed. Durell’s elbow slipped perilously from around the watchman’s neck. But the sudden dragging yank was enough. The man plunged headlong through the trap door, slamming past Susan and falling with Durell to the deck of the compartment below.

The fisherman struck first, and Durell came down on top of him. The impact was stunning. It was a long drop down. Durell felt darkness swirl around him and forced himself to his feet, staggering. The fisherman lay sprawled on the deck, his breathing quick and shallow, his eyes closed. Durell felt his pulse, flicked back an eyelid. There was no blood. He got painfully to his feet again, searched the unconscious man for a weapon. There was only a long, sharply-edged fishknife. He took it, weighing it in his hand.

“Sam?” Susan still clung to the ladder above him. “Are you all right?”

He nodded. “You can come down now. The guard is only knocked out. He’ll have to be tied and gagged for a while. Tear up one of the blankets for the job, will you?”

John Stuyvers stood over the unconscious crewman, crouching slightly. “You ought to kill him,” Stuyvers whispered. “Get rid of him.”

“He’s only a fisherman,” Durell said. “Don’t touch him.” Susan came down the ladder and he climbed back up to take her place. John Stuyvers was on his heels immediately. “I’m going with you, Durell. I’m not staying in this stinking fish-hold another minute.”

“You’ll stay,” Durell said harshly. “I’ve got to find Colonel Wickham first. Nothing can be done until after that.” “What do I care about that fat slob?” Stuyvers breathed angrily. “I want out, understand? I want that bag backl You could use me, you said—”

“Later. Meanwhile, stay here,” Durell said.

He heaved himself up, kicked once, and wriggled through the trap door and got out on deck.

Rain slashed at him coldly, spitefully, and made him gasp. He was conscious of confused noises and movement in the dark of the night—the plunging of the trawler, the dark racing seas that burst in explosive agony over the trawler’s bow and beam, the clatter of a loose block, the screech of the wind in the halyards and dragnet tackle from the mast aft.

He looked toward the stern housing, where a single lighted window showed, then quickly covered the trap door again to cut off the light that shone up from the storage hold below. He saw no one on deck, but in the wild darkness he could not be sure. There was certain to be another watch posted, perhaps up forward, perhaps in the tub-like crow’s nest that plunged in wild arcs atop the stubby mast. But there was no sign of alarm, and after a moment he slid across the wet deck and hunched down in the lee of the main bulwark, out of the cutting wind and rain. He kept the fisherman’s knife ready in his hand.

The raging sea was dark and empty in every direction. The storm was no real danger to the sturdy, diesel-powered trawler—but it offered precious delay in its progress toward shore. Durell considered the cabin housing aft, where the single square window shone with a yellow glow against the driving black rain.

Somehow he had to find Colonel Wickham—find him and ask him the question that desperately needed an answer. Until then, there was no point in planning further.

There was the possibility that Wickham, shamming drunkenness, had been dumped into one of the crew’s bunks below—in which case he would not be alone, and it would be impossible to reach him, armed only with the knife.

It would be better if he could find a gun, somehow.

He turned aft, his back to the wind. Spray Drenched him, made him shiver, and the deck tilted erratically, sliding side-wise under his feet. He clung to a stay, fought ahead a few feet, caught at the dark bulk of a winch. Overhead, the boom on which the dragnet was made fast slid back and forth, and blocks rattled and made cracking noises woven through the thunder of the sea.

He reached the cabin housing with a last rush, caught at a handrail and clung there for a moment as a sea broke over the side and surged kneedeep down the deck. He was next to the small, square window with the single light in it. He peered in, saw the crew’s messroom—a table, several chairs bolted to the deck, a samovar fitted in a niche in the opposite wall, a few amenities such as magazines and newspapers. One man sat at the table with his head cradled in his crooked forearm, asleep. There was nobody else.

Durell looked up at the bridge housing above, squinting against the slash of rain in his eyes. Now he could make out the dim greenish glow of the binnacle up there, or perhaps of the radar, that helped the wheelsman keep a reasonably close course to the north, bow into the wind. There might be one other man up there beside the helmsman, tonight, Durell thought. But their visibility was poor, since they hadn’t spotted him on the deck just now. Add a third man in the messroom. That left about nine unaccounted for. Say there were two—perhaps three—in the engineroom. Three or four others in their bunks, asleep. This did not count the captain, who would be in the familiar cabin aft, directly behind the wheelhouse.

Anderson was probably with the captain.

But where had they put Colonel Wickham?

Durell grinned tightly. The colonel’s uniform and his pompous air of authority must have impressed the fishing captain to some extent, at any rate. Men like the captain had an innate respect for all symbols of authority, and the captain could see and understand Wickham’s rank, where he had only been confused by Durell’s and Anderson’s claims to command.

Or it could have gone quite differently. Wickham could be dead, like Kappic. All of his plans to recover the Uvaldi tape might be based on a false premise.

But it was too late to think of that now.

He had to keep going. . . .

Durell drew a deep breath, came around the corner of the deck house, found the door aft that led inside, and stepped in, the knife ready in his hand.

He stood at one end of a short corridor, dimly lighted by a small emergency bulb. To his left was the galley, where the fisherman slept with his head on the table; Durell could hear the sound of his snoring, now that the noise of the storm was muted by the closed door behind him. The corridor ran fore and aft, and at the opposite end, only fifteen feet away, were narrow steel ladders going up to the bridge and down into the crews’ quarters and the engineroom. The air felt hot and dry and smelled of fuel oil and cooking. There was a closed cabin door to his right, on the starboard side of the housing. The space beyond would equal that of the galley where the crewman slept. Durell paused. Anderson could be behind that door—or Wickham. Perhaps both. He decided to pass it up, however, until he had gone further.

At the foot of the ladder forward he heard the restless shift of booted feet on the bridge above, and the dim muttering talk of the helmsman with a companion up there. The trawler shuddered as the blunt bow slammed into an especially heavy sea, and there was a grunt and a curse from the dim, blue-lighted bridge above. Durell turned abruptly and swung down the ladder going below.

The scent of oil and hot metal touched him. He paused, listened. He could hear the beat and throb of the diesel engine, but no voices. He dropped down the rest of the way to the steel-plated deck, the knife ready, every sense taut for a cry of alarm.

There was nothing.

He was in a tiny engineroom, and where he had surely expected some of the crew. There were none. There was a single light over the polished engine housing, and another over the array of dials and instruments. A locker door banged open and shut with the trawler’s heavy motion, Durell reached out for it, started to close it, then left it swinging as it was.

The scent of tobacco drifted through the hot, close air in the engineroom, mingling with the odors of sweat and polished steel. Durell waited another moment at the foot of the ladder. But no one had heard him come down. The narrow engine pit had a small catwalk beside it, and beyond was a door that was hooked open. A dim blue light shone from beyond, and the tobacco smoke came from there. It would be the crew’s quarters, he decided. He looked to the right, saw another door, and this one was closed. He had to risk it now. He crossed quickly, turned down the lever handle, and stepped in.

He was in a storeroom squeezed efficiently between fuel tanks and refrigeration apparatus. A dim blue light burned here, too. He leaned back against the wall as the trawler lurched in the wild seas. He could make out very little until his eyes adjusted to the pale blue light.

“Wickham?” he called again.

There was no reply. In this cubicle, the sounds of the sea and the groans of the struggling trawler were hushed and made remote.