Secret sea; (25 page)

The Noose Draws Tight

JL ete, thinking This is the enemy, this tall, thin Tnan with eyes as flat and cruel as a snake's, looked at Weber standing in the cockpit with his two companions. One was a heavy-set, blue-jowled man with no neck between his head and his shoulders, the other a very erect man with a head which looked almost rectangular.

"We meet again, Mr. Martin," Weber said pleasantly. ^ / / ii

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Pete nodded.

"And you," he said, nodding his long chin at Mike. "Haven't we met before?"

"Not socially," Mike said. "You hit me with a pistol once."

"Oh yes. You are very handy with a marline-spike."

"You're no slouch yourself," Mike said.

Weber turned back to Pete. "I think we can dispense with the preliminaries, Mr. Martin. We haven't much time, and I have already spent five years searching for the Spanish ship."

"Well, if you've found her, we might as well go home."

Weber ignored him. "Shall we go below, Mr. Martin? I do not care for the sunlight."

"You wouldn't," Pete said. He waved his arm toward the companionway. All five of them went below. Pete leaned against the bulkhead; Mike stretched out comfortably on the one remaining bunk and put his hands under his head so that he could see Weber. One of Weber's men stood in the doorway. The other sat down on the gear locker. Weber, in clean white clothes, HW embroidered on the pocket of his shirt, and a yachting cap with a floppy MacArthur top, stood in the middle of the room.

"For five years," Weber said slowly, his voice soft and dreamy, "I have searched. I discovered

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that Narvez, the elder, possessed the log of the ship. I tried to get it "

"Narvez told me that," Pete said. "A little business of murder."

Weber's face changed, but for only an instant as an emotion raced across it. "Only a series of ac-. cidents."

"Who're you kidding?"

"Yes. However, I failed to get it." He pointed at Pete. "You got it. You and your cute little Navy got it."

Pete nodded.

Weber's whole attitude suddenly changed. He seemed to grow taller, his flat gray eyes began to glitter, his voice sounded like tearing canvas. ''Where is it?''

"In the post office in a certain town in the United States addressed to a certain man I know," Pete said. "In care of General Delivery."

Weber seemed to relax. His voice got soft again. He began to rock slowly back and forth on his rubber-soled shoes. "You are careful, my friend —and smart. I do not underestimate your ability. Will you give me the same compliment?"

"Sure," Pete said.

"Sure," Mike said. "You're a sharp operator."

Weber bowed elaborately from the waist. "Thank you—both. And now—where is it?"

"Wouldn't you like to search the Indra, We-

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ber? Go ahead—open the bilges, search the paneling. You won't find any treasure."

Weber stopped rocking back and forth. *'Let us be more serious," he said, his voice very low. **This is a particularly lonely part of the ocean, Mr. Martin. There are no ship lanes in the vicinity, and only wandering fishermen ever come here. . . . You understand, don't you?"

"Oh yes," Pete said. "Perfectly."

"My patience is running out. Five years is a long time. The disappearance of your ship would be a tragedy, especially if she should disappear with you and that little monster aboard her."

"Look who's talking," Mike said, uncrossing and crossing his legs again more comfortably.

Pete straightened a little. "Go back and start that one again."

Weber shrugged. "I don't like to be unpleasant, but I will wait no longer. Tell me where the Spanish ship is or . . . your ship, your friend, and you will all disappear. Is that plain enough?"

"It was okay the first time," Pete said. "Only you left out something."

"I do not agree."

"Oh yeah. You left out the part about the latitude and longitude. If I should accidentally disappear, you couldn't ever find her."

Weber suddenly laughed. "Thank you, my friend. That was what I wanted you to say." He

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stepped suddenly close to Pete. "So you do know-where it is."

Pete looked at him, their eyes on a level. "That school Hitler sent you to taught you a lot of tricks, didn't it?"

Weber's eyelids drew a little tighter and then relaxed again. "I am continually being impressed by your thoroughness, Mr. Martin. I congratulate you."

"Skip it," Pete said. "Now listen, flyweight, stop trying to push me around. If I had found the treasure, this ship would be full of it right now, wouldn't it? But—there isn't a dime's worth of stuff aboard her. Where does that leave you? Right where you always were, just a little behind the guy out in front. You won't do any disappearing act with me, Weber, because you know that I can come a lot closer to finding her than you can. And you know that this third-rate Nazi bully-boy business is all a bluff."

Weber suddenly swung his hand and hit Pete across the eyes. Involuntary tears rolled out on Pete's cheeks, and he wiped them away with the tips of his fingers. Mike sat up in the bunk, swinging his feet down to the floor. The man in the doorway stiffened. The other one got up from the gear locker.

"Are you sure that it is a bluff, my friend?" Weber asked. He took out a big white handkerchief and wiped his hand.

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Pete let his breath whistle out slowly between his teeth. "Yeah. It's a bluff," he said.

Weber hit him again. Mike jumped from the bunk, but the man grabbed him by the shirt and threw him back again. As Mike came boiling up, Pete said, **Keep your shirt on, Mike, and sit still." Then Pete turned to Weber. **Okay, knock that off or I'll stop explaining some simple facts to you."

"That was nothing," Weber said. "Depends on who's taking it. Personally I'm tired of being slapped by that bony thing you call a hand."

Weber stepped close again. Mike looked at the two guards and braced himself to leap.

"I want one thing, Mr. Martin. I will get it. It may mean that I will have to put you through great pain, perhaps even maim and cripple you. But I will get the information."

"Aw, shut up," Pete said. "Try listening. . . . As I explained before—if I knew where it was I would have, by now, some of the stuff aboard this ship. Since I haven't got any of it, it should be apparent even to you that I haven't found it. But I know her location better than you do, Weber. I can come closer to her than you can. . . . Do you want me to draw you a picture?"

"Please go on with your pretty tale," Weber said.

"Okay. You and your hoodlums start putting

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the pressure on me. I can't take it. I give you a latitude and longitude. You follow?"

"My ideas exactly, my friend."

"I thought so," Pete said. "But you keep leaving out stuff. For instance, you beat me up until you break it out of me. How will you know that I gave you the right numbers? This is a big area around here."

"Don't worry, my friend, you will."

"Maybe so. I understand that you Nazis got pretty good at torturing people. But—how will you know? While you search mile after mile of bottom, how will you know that I gave you the right numbers? One, two, three, four, five, six . . ."

"I warn you, Martin. My patience is ended."

"Forget it. . . . So there's no point in breaking me all up because you'll never know whether I told the truth."

"There is always the little monster," Weber said. "You two will be separated but both will receive a certain amount of—what shall we call it?—the treatment. Both will talk."

"You can do better than that," Pete said. "That's a street urchin I picked up in Miami. Does he look like he can tell north from south, latitude from longitude? Does he just automatically remember ten or twelve numbers in an exact sequence? Just for the fun of it? . .. You can count him out. Stay up in the league with me."

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"You are most persuasive," Weber said.

"Thanks. In other words, a great hght is beginning to dawn on you, isn't it, pal? Now if Vd found the Spanish ship, it would all be different, wouldn't it? All you'd have to do would be to hammer on me until I talked. And you could check my talk within an hour and, if you found nothing, you could come back and hammer some more. Until at last you did get the right answer. But you see, Weber, there isn't any treasure aboard here, there isn't any trace of evidence that I've found her. So there you are again, up solid against that old 'How do you know?'"

Something inside Pete had been lying still, waiting. It was almost as though he had been holding his breath. Now it began to wake up. As he watched Weber walk slowly over and lean against the galley bulkhead, Pete could feel the triumph rising steadily inside him.

The battle was over. And Pete had won. He had planted a seed of doubt in Weber's mind, and it had grown and blossomed into a tangle of briers.

Pete glanced for an instant at Mike and almost imperceptibly winked an eye. Mike let a shadow of a smile flit across his lips.

Pete turned back to Weber. "So, good-by, Weber."

Weber had been leaning with one arm resting on a shelf. As he straightened, he looked at the

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sleeve of his white shirt, pulhng it around on his arm.

There was a smudge of rust on the white silk.

Weber pulled out the handkerchief and began to scrub at the smudge. When he had cleaned it off as much as he could, he turned, frowning, and looked at the shelf.

Pete followed his glance.

Lying on the shelf was the deadeye, covered now with rust so that it looked fuzzy and soft.

A silence as solid as stone filled the cabin and seemed to hold the people in it motionless.

Then Weber moved. Pete saw his bony fingers reaching, saw the white silk shirt sleeve dangling gracefully from the skinny arm. With two fingers, as though the thing was dirty, Weber lifted the deadeye by the rusted metal shank and held it, block downward, so that the wooden insert with the three shroud eyes looked like the upside-down face of a monkey.

Weber spoke in a low voice in German. The man at the door turned and went up the companion ladder. No one else moved.

The man came back in a Kttle while. He walked to the man sitting on the gear locker and held out to him a Walther P-38 pistol. Then he handed to Weber a small coil of thin rope. Finished, he walked back to the door, spun around, and stood squarely in it, a Steyr submachine gun cradled in one crooked elbow.

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"Looks like the makin's of a party," Mike said. His voice was faintly husky, and Pete looked over at him.

Weber pointed toward the bunk. "Sit down, Mr. Martin."

Pete walked slowly over and sat down beside Mike.

Weber held up the deadeye, looked at it, and put it back on the shelf. "I am almost sorry that you overlooked this one so small detail," he said. "Frankly, until it stained my sleeve, you were in control of the situation. Now—I am."

"So I've found her," Pete said. "What makes you think I'll tell you where it is?" He knew that

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that was weak. But his triumph was gone; now he was desperate.

Weber said something in German. The man put the P-38 down, took the coil of small rope from Weber, and motioned for Pete to hold out his hands, wrists together.

"Tell him to fly a kite with that rope," Mike said.

Pete shook his head. "We've got to go through this, Mike. Might as well get it over before sup-pertime."

The man bound Pete's wrists very tightly but not painfully. As he turned to bind Mike's, Pete saw that the rope he had used was a loosely laid up affair, gray in color, and soft in texture. Pete had never seen rope like it.

Finished with Mike, the man walked out into the galley and came back with a deep pan full of water.

Pete remembered then and looked up at Weber. "This is a Jap idea," Pete said.

On Guam, Pete had seen Americans who had been Japanese prisoners of war, who had had the rope-and-water treatment. Some of them had had the rope tied around their heads, running between their teeth. When the rope had been soaked with water and drawn tight by it, the men's cheeks had been split open back to the jawbone.