Assignment - Ankara (24 page)

“Wickham?” he called again.

Now he could see in the warm bluish air that there was a pallet in one comer of the compartment, and a man’s bulky form loomed there dimly. Durell held the knife ready as he knelt beside the man.

“Colonel, can you hear me?” he whispered.

Wickham’s eyes were open, rolling sidewise to watch the loom of his figure crouching above him. The man’s round, florid face looked oddly purplish in the strange light. Durell turned to study the door, and Wickham’s chest heaved and finally a long, sighing breath was sucked from his lips. “Thank God, it’s you.”

“Who did you think it might be?”

“Don’t know,” Wickham muttered. “I’ve been lying here, scared stiff, for hours. I’ve got to admit it. I don’t know how I ever—I guess I was so panicky, I just stumbled into this—” “You mean, pretending to be drunk?” Durell asked tightly. “Yes. It was a way out. Partly that.”

“And acting bombastic?”

Wickham’s grin was sick and frightened. “Yes. Yes, to the captain. I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid—I thought they were going to torture me. I guess I’ve spent all my life putting on a front, acting like a big shot—”

“You did fine,” Durell whispered. “You did exactly the right thing.”

“Listen,” Wickham said, after a puzzled moment. “Listen, what are you doing with that knife? What are you thinking of? How come you’re here—”

“Colonel, I want the Uvaldi tape.”

“Huh?”

“The tape you stole out of John Stuyvers’ bag.” Wickham was silent.

“Well?” Durell asked. “You’ve pretended to be drunk most of the time, but it was only pretense, right? You knew, back at Base Four, what I was looking for and what my job is. You figured out where the tape must be, didn’t you? And when you got a chance, you lifted it.”

“I—I don’t have it.”

Durell put the point of his knife under Wickham’s chin. The man’s head jerked up; his eyes widened and flared with terror. Durell said softly, “Yes, you do. You have it. Quick, now!”

“How can I—how do I trust you? You and Anderson—you both claim—”

“You have no choice now,” Durell whispered harshly. “You’ve done just fine, colonel—whatever your motives or fears might have been. You put on a fine drunk act and dropped out of the scene—with the tape.”

“I’ve been drunk with fear,” Wickham said bitterly.

“All men are afraid, at times. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. But it’s time you sobered up now.”

“Betty always said—well, never mind. A man’s wife can be a curse, if she’s the wrong sort of woman. All right, Durell. Let me up.”

“Did they hurt you, Colonel?”

“No, no. I blustered and yelled and pulled rank—I insisted on being given separate quarters. The captain is just what he says he is—a simple man. He figured that anyone who got so gloriously drunk in our situation must have a lot of authority behind him.” Wickham grinned sheepishly. “Anyway, it worked. I really just wanted to get warm down here, that’s all.”

“Do you have the tape with you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“How did you get it?”

“I stole it, just as you say,” Wickham replied simply. “After all the fuss on the plane, I was looking for a bottle, for some brandy, and I thought Stuyvers might have some privately in that bag of his, with all those old books. So when Stuyvers dozed and I sat beside him, I—I got into the bag. He never felt it, never woke up. I didn’t know I was talented that way.” Wickham grinned again and sat up and began patting his pockets. “Anyway, I knew what the tape was, the minute I got my hand on it, even if it was rolled up and off the spool. So I forgot about more raki and plucked out the tape and kept it, that’s all. I didn’t know what to do about it after that. I wasn’t sure about either you or Anderson, you see, so I just waited. Maybe I thought I could grab some credit for turning up safe with it, back in the States. In the Pentagon, I’m a good pencil-pusher, and

maybe that’s all I’m good for; and Betty, my wife, keeps shoving me into things I just don’t have the stuff to handle—” “Let’s have the tape,” Durell said.

“Sure. Here it is.”

At last Durell held the tight roll of plastic ribbon in his hands and breathed out a long sigh. Wickham watched him curiously as he held the tape under the small blue overhead light. There was no mistake about it. He looked at Wickham and said, “Has Anderson been down here to see you?” “No. Not yet.”

“You weren’t searched?”

“Well, I acted drunk and clumsy and yelled when they started to paw me. The captain of this tub just has a healthy respect for uniforms, that’s all.”

“Good. That’s all right, then,” Durell said, straightening once more. “Now let’s get out of here.”

Wickham’s face and posture collapsed. “I can’t—I don’t know how to fight anyone—”

“Time to learn, then,” Durell said. “Let’s go.”

DURELL opened the compartment door carefully. The beat of the laboring diesel engine filled the heavy, warm air. He could see no one in the engineroom. He stepped onto the steel catwalk beside the engine housing and listened for any sound of alarm from the main deck above, through the opening where the iron ladder spiraled up through to the bridge. Nothing there. He felt uneasy, and looked back for Colonel Wickham. The fat man stood uncertainly, his face blanched.

“Please—I’d rather stay here.”

“I’ll find you a weapon,” Durell said.

“I wouldn’t—I couldn’t use it—”

“Come on,” Durell said, indicating the ladder, “climb up.” “You want me to go first?”

“Yes.”

“But suppose—”

Durell pushed him toward the ladder. “Go ahead, Colonel.”

He began to feel hopeful in that moment. The trawler’s crew was either asleep, or somnolent in their sense of security. There was nothing to cause alarm. If there was any chance at all for surprise, it had to be seized now—

And just then someone screamed from the deck above.

The sound shrilled through the creaking and groaning of the ship and rode high over the muted anger of the sea. It pierced the hot, oil-scented air of the engineroom like a dart of flame, carrying with it a note of terror, outrage, and a fanatical death cry.

Instantly, Durell turned away from the ladder, spinning on one heel. He smashed into Wickham, shoved the fat man aside, and jumped for the doorway at the opposite end of the tiny engineroom. It was just swinging open. A startled fisherman stood there, mouth open, eyes worried and querulous. Beyond him, Durell glimpsed the bunkroom, with three tiers of bunks on each side, and several others of the crew sitting up, puzzled and alarmed.

There was no time for careful planning now. He drove into the first man, caught the sleepy, hulking man and sent him careening backward against the bunks. The man’s mouth gushed blood from a broken tooth. There came another wild scream from above-decks, but it was drowned by the roar of anger from the first fisherman down here. Durell tried to slam the bunkroom door shut as the man charged back at him. He was too late. A booted foot lashed out, caught his ankle, made him stagger. A horny hand grabbed for him. Confusion crowded the dim, smoky compartment as other fishermen tumbled from their blankets to the tiny deck between the tiers of bunks.

Durell did not use the knife-blade. He turned the hilt in his hand and used it as a weight for the hammer-blow of his fist in the fisherman’s face. The man yelled and fell back again, his face bloody. Durell grabbed a second time for the door and tried to slam it shut. This time he succeeded. But immediately there came a thundering shock as the crewmen trapped inside drove their weight against it. He reached for the bolt to dog it down, but could not quite make it against the wild pressure from inside.

“Wickham!” he gasped.

The fat man saw what was needed and hurried to him. He lent his weight to Durell’s pressure on the steel bunkroom door. The lever handle still seemed to evade its catch. And then, as Wickham heaved, the steel dog dropped into place and Durell was able to turn away.

“Thanks,” he breathed.

“What—who’s screaming up there?” Wickham gasped.

“We’ll soon know.”

He had glimpsed about five fishermen in the bunkroom. They were safely out of the way for the moment, unless there was another hatchway up to the deck, designed as an escape measure. He jumped across the engineroom, grabbed at the ladder, and hauled himself up.

A booted foot swung at him from above and missed. He grabbed at it, yanked hard, and another crewman tumbled down the spiral ladder to the engineroom deck. Durell did not look back. He hauled himself up into the narrow corridor above, between the galley and messroom. The fisherman who’d been asleep up there stood in the doorway with his mouth agape. He had , a gun in his hand, a Tokarev, half-raised; his eyes were vague and puzzled, having seen his companion vanish so abruptly down the engineroom hatch. The gun gleamed with a dull gray, oily light. It seemed to loom larger than the universe as Durell jumped for it—the muzzle lifting, jerking up in surprise, a small dark circle of blackness that held eternity as it suddenly burst with a flaring roar—

The shot cracked by Durell’s head. He caught at the gun, jerked it up, twisted hard. The crewman yelled, fully awake now. His strength was massive. Durell chopped at the inside of his elbow, chopped again at the man’s neck, aiming for vital neural centers. The fisherman’s eyes widened in inner astonishment and pain. He staggered, a hoarse rasp in his throat his only attempt at an outcry. He fell heavily. Durell caught up the Tokarev before it hit the deck and ran out of the deckhouse aft.

He was none too soon. There was a hatch from the deck to the crew’s quarters below, as he’d suspected. The imprisoned crew were just lifting it when he jumped on it, out in the rain and dark wind that lashed the afterdeck. A heavy iron bar dropped across the hatch into a seat, and he slammed it home, made it fast. He heard a dim, muffled pounding from inside, but it was futile, and contained no more danger.

Turning, he looked up at the afterend of the wheelhouse above and drew a deep, harsh breath.

The force of the wind had abated somewhat in the few minutes he had been below looking for Wickham. The rain had slackened, too, although he quickly felt its cold, sodden beat on his shoulders as he stood on the exposed deck. Wickham had not come out of the cabin with him. And there was no sign of the source of the scream that had precipitated all this.

He tried to remember the sound of it and identify it. But he could not even be sure if it had been a man’s scream, or a woman’s. He moved forward, away from the dim thumping and bellowing of the crew trapped below. Somewhere aboard the trawler was Anderson, and above everyone and everything else, Anderson had to be coped with quickly, or all would be lost. He wondered what Wickham was doing, and felt a momentary twist of remorse for the fat man’s terror—then he turned to the port side and went quickly up the outer ladder to the bridgehouse.

He was grateful for the heavy, solid feel of the Tokarev in his hand. It was a good gun, powerful and efficient. He was lucky that the sleeping crewmen from the messroom hadn’t been faster with it.

A narrow deck ran around the forward half of the bridge from the port ladder where he crouched. Somewhere an outer door crashed open and shut, repeatedly, as the trawler lurched and fell off into the trough of the sea. A deeper thud sounded from the wheelhouse, a scuffle of feet—and then again that strange cry of wild anguish was snatched by the wind and driven thinly off into the night.

Durell moved quickly around to the open door of the wheelhouse. Something white and small sailed past him and was snatched by the wind and vanished in the hissing sea below. He pushed forward quickly, taking in the scene with a quick glance that accepted and understood everything he saw in the light of the binnacle over the wheel.

The wheel was unattended. The bearded captain stood with John Stuyvers’ open black bag in the crook of one massive arm. Scattered on the chart table were the medieval manuscripts, Biblical volumes and scrolls in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. All the backs of the volumes were tom open, and the scrolls were ripped violently into shreds. Exposed on the chart table was a small pile of white packets taken from inside the thick covers of the books—the heroin that John Stuyvers had hoped to smuggle into the States.

One by one the captain was throwing the packets of heroin out through the open door of the bridgehouse, into the sea.

The helmsman had a gun pointed at Stuyvers. The thin man stood in his wet shirt, shivering, his lanky gray hair plastered in long strangs across his forehead. His pale eyes were wild. His mouth opened as the captain grinned and hurled another packet of heroin through the doorway, to jettison it into the sea. Again John Stuyvers cried in wild anguish as he watched.

Durell stepped into the wheelhouse at that moment.

The helmsman with the gun was no more alert than the other crewman below. His shot followed Durell’s by a split-second, crashing explosively in the wheelhouse. Glass shattered. Durell’s gun bucked and the man spun, yelling, and fell against the lashed wheel. His gun flew from his broken hand. Durell had aimed only to disarm him—and he had succeeded.

Stuyvers jumped for the weapon sliding about on the wooden deck.

“Hold it!” Durell snapped. “Let it go.”

The thin man paused, crouching, his arm outstretched. His breathing was ragged. “You know what they’re doing? Torturing me, throwing away the stuff, just to make me mad! I’m going to kill this son of a bitch with the beard.”

“No. I told you to stay below.”

“To hell with that. I came up to help. You can’t take this tub over all by yourself.”

“I’m doing it,” Durell said. “Now back up against that wall with the captain.” He turned and spoke rapidly in Russian to the bearded man. “Take the wheel and control this vessel, do you understand? Or else we’ll all go to the bottom of the sea.” The trawler was rolling heavily, suffering a brutal pounding from the combers that smashed over her beam, now that no one was at the helm. The straps lashing the wheel had burst when he helmsman fell against it, and the spokes were a spinning blur as the vessel lurched out of control. Durell stood spread-legged, braced against the long, shuddering slant of the deck. The captain’s face was pale. He threw Stuyvers’ bag down on the deck and spat.