Shot on Location (14 page)

EARLY MORNING IS much the same everywhere. The air is cleaner and cooler and the troubles of the world seem far away—unless an enemy position is entrenched just over the horizon. Brad awakened at dawn, cramped and cold but much too healthy to be dismayed by his condition. He had nothing for breakfast but water from the spring: water to drink and water to splash over his face and douse himself awake. He had gone without breakfast before, and cigarettes, carefully spaced because he had neglected to re-stock before leaving Athens, would stave off the hunger pangs until he could locate Harry’s shelter. It was at the stream that he hit upon a
modus operandi
. Harry Avery found a spring in his half-conscious wanderings. It was possible that this stream had its source in that spring and following it might lead him to the ruin. That he was disobeying Avery’s dying request that he take his story to Brooks Martins was unimportant. By this time Stephanos might have been forced to tell how he got to Kastoria, assuming that Koumaris didn’t already know, and the reception Brad would receive in town could be no less vigorous than the young Greek’s. The situation would soon change. The priests would go to the police when they found their patient dead, and the discovery of Avery’s body would lure a horde of newsmen and even Martins himself. There was still something to be said for safety in numbers.

Satisfied that the ruins weren’t within the range of his binoculars, Brad returned to the cave for the knapsack and rifle and began to follow the course of the stream as closely as footing would allow. He scanned the ground for clues. Avery had always been a health buff who didn’t smoke, and so he didn’t look for cigarette butts or matches. But the man had been badly hurt—bleeding, perhaps, from the shattered arm. Even if there were no bloodstained rocks to give him direction, there might be broken and crushed shrubbery where Avery had fallen or rested on his descent. There might be matted grass or stripped berry bushes, where a starving, half-delirious man might find sustenance. But the land was increasingly barren and rocky. Once Brad sighted movement on a distant hill and swung the binoculars up in position. Donkeys. Donkeys grazing on whatever small vegetation could grow in the rocky soil. That meant there were farmers or shepherds in the area. Harry might have seen the donkeys—at times they were visible to the naked eye—and cried out for help. Sound could carry far, or go nowhere if the wind was contrary.

“Damn it, Harry! Where did you find that ruin?”

Brad didn’t shout but his words echoed back their ghost answer. Harry Avery was dead. Brad was beginning to live with what had been only the shock of reality, last night. Harry was dead and Rhona was a widow.

“
I don’t sleep around
,” Rhona had said. “
When I’m married, that’s it.”

It was strange to be remembering those words, while he toiled up the mountain in search of Harry’s cache, but they were strange words to be given to another man while occupying his bed. And if he had reached out for Rhona she would have accepted him. It was almost as if she had already known he was dead. But the whispers in his mind ceased abruptly, when Brad heard the sound of a small plane somewhere below him. He scrambled to the top of a high crag and searched the sky, until the glint of sunlight on metal wings brought the plane into focus. There was more than one aircraft. The plane, circling, diving, rising to circle again, was guiding a helicopter to a target. Like a scavenger bird sighting prey, the little plane circled over the small pile of twisted fuselage and scattered wings. Brad focused his binoculars again. It was the wreckage of the Greek pilot’s plane they had sighted, and the ‘copter now nosed down to hover a few yards above the wreckage, while one of the two occupants of the cockpit held a camera to his eye. Press photographers. It was official now. The true site of the wreckage could be revealed, because Harry Avery’s body had been found and the search was over. The remoteness of the mountainside vanished. The ravine had given up its gory secret to the world. Fascinated, Brad watched the antics of the ‘copter, until he was aroused by the sound of gunfire behind him. Rifles. He swung around and swept the horizon with his glasses. He could see no one and the shots had come from a distance. Hunters, he decided. There must be game birds in the mountains. Only hunters. Still, he must make a splendid target, poised on the edge of a rock formation with no foliage for camouflage. It would be too great an irony, to survive the Vietcong only to be shot for a mountain goat. Tightening his grip on the rifle, he started to scramble down to a less conspicuous place. Scrambling, he lost footing and half-rolled, half-slid for at least a hundred feet before finding firm footing. Using the rifle to pull himself up to a standing position, he found himself looking directly at the fragmented wall of an old ruin, about fifty yards dead ahead.

It had to be Harry’s ruin. He ran towards it, no longer interested in looking for clues. It was exactly as Harry had described it: one wall completely gone—the roof gone. He entered through the sun-bleached, wooden frame of a doorway, with only one supporting wall, and found himself in a semi-enclosed area with rough, wide paving stones—some of which were stained with dried blood and some of which showed signs of having been recently loosened. He tossed the knapsack against the wall and began to pry at the loose stones with the rifle. The stones gave easily. It was a dying man’s strength that had re-laid them. Underneath, the earth had been hollowed out enough to contain two compact movie cameras and a small metal box sealed with tape. He could see at a glance that the film in the box would fit neither camera, but this, he knew, was the thing that had been so important to Harry Avery that his last energy was spent in the telling of it.

Carefully, Brad took out each item, carefully dusted it and then placed it beside the knapsack. To complete Harry’s mission he need only take them to Brooks Martins. But he had promised Rhona that all of Harry’s personal effects would be returned to her. He speculated on his route back to Athens. He no longer feared the return to Kastoria. It must be teeming now with the concerned and the curious. He might even find Rhona there. If not, and if he could rent a car, he could drive himself back, over a now familiar road. It would be simpler to follow Rhona’s directions and leave the decisions to her. He thought of Stephanos and that was a sticky problem. He would have to see Katerina, of course. He might even get Martins to intervene on the boy’s behalf. But that was doubtful. These things he would do in good time. Now he was exhausted and dirty from clawing at the flooring. The spring Harry had mentioned would be close by. He would find it and wash up and then rest for a while, because the pressure was off. Leaving the rifle and gear inside the ruin, he went searching for the spring. He found it a short distance behind the old building—drank, washed and then, still kneeling behind the spring, became aware of the pungent smell of tobacco. Turning his head, he saw the source: a small lump of smouldering ash, inches away from where he knelt. The still burning residue from a recently emptied pipe.

He reached for his rifle, but the rifle was back at the ruin. He crouched, listening. Hearing nothing, he came to his feet. Seeing nothing, he ran swiftly back to the fragmented doorway and stepped inside. He saw the shadow before he saw the man. He spun about and stared directly into the barrel of Brooks Martins’ revolver.

“Sloppy job,” Martins said. “You left your weapon behind. If I were Koumaris you might be dead now.”

“How did you get here?” Brad demanded.

“Followed you—for the last hour. Last night I stayed at the monastery, chatting with a scholarly monk, who doesn’t like the captain any more than I do. This morning he took me to the place where Avery was found. He insisted that Avery had no camera equipment with him, so I assumed they must have been too heavy for a dying man to carry and that he had left them somewhere along the way. Now it’s my turn to ask questions. How did you get here ahead of me?”

Brad stepped away from the gun but Martins still held it aimed and cocked. “I was with Avery when he died,” Brad said.

“I thought someone was there. Did you take his watch and wallet?”

“Yes. I wanted his wife to have his things. A lot can happen to a dead man between here and Athens.”

“Is that why you came to Kastoria—to take Avery’s things to his widow?”

“I told you, I was his friend.”

“So you knew where to find him, when nobody else did.”

“Not exactly. My driver was ambushed when we reached Kastoria. He tossed me his rifle and knapsack. I hid for a while and then tried to make contact with his friends. I saw a boy wearing Harry’s old baseball cap—he always wore one when he was working. I grabbed the kid and made him tell me where he found it. That got me as far as the monastery. Curiosity took me the rest of the way.”

“Do you know what’s in the knapsack?”

“I do now. I didn’t know when I picked it up.”

“For your sake, I hope you’re telling the truth.” Martins lowered his gun but he didn’t put it away. His free hand went into his coat pocket and came out holding a sheaf of Deutschmarks. “You dropped this when you left the monastery,” he said. “Koumaris wants it. It was stolen from an office safe, two nights ago, while everybody in the building was distracted by a bomb exploding in the adjoining building.”

“Bomb? So that’s what it was—”

“I thought you didn’t know anything about the money.”

“I don’t. I heard the explosion—that’s all. Look, Martins, I had all the fight I wanted in Vietnam.”

“I wonder,” Martins said. “You were there a long time. Some men get to like it.”

“What does that mean?”

“You tell me, Smith, because you’re in trouble. I’ve checked you out. Good war record. Fine. But you lied about the office in London. The way it looks to me, you heard about Harry Avery’s accident and came directly to Athens. Now, if it was really because of some unfinished hanky-panky with Mrs. Avery, that’s none of my business. But when I find you with this—” Martins waved the sheaf of bills before Brad’s face. “—and with Avery’s cameras and film, then I get nervous.”

“All I know about what I dug out of this floor is what Harry told me before he died. He said I was to tell you.”

“But you didn’t.”

“How could I? Did I know my driver was a dangerous revolutionary, with a knapsack full of stolen money? Did you expect me to walk back to Kastoria and into the police station, after I saw what happened to Stephanos? They were waiting for him. They didn’t even call out his name. They just began beating and kept it up until he fell. How did I know you were up here, anyway?”

Brad must have shouted loud enough, or looked mad enough, to be convincing. Martins put the safety catch back on his gun.

“You didn’t,” he admitted. “All right, suppose I buy it. You’re just a friend of the family—especially of Rhona Brent. You came up here and found Avery before he died. What else did he tell you about this stuff?”

“Nothing. Only that he’d completed a mission. He seemed happy about that. And he said that the plane was forced down by a Commie patrol. Does that make sense?”

Martins nodded. “It makes sense. Right now we’re standing just a few miles from the Albanian border. Look at your passport. Albania is off limits, soldier. Avery and his pilot flew into Albania last Monday. They landed at a specified place, made contact with an agent and returned with this—” He tossed the sheaf of money down on the open knapsack and took the small metal box, the box sealed with tape, from his pocket.

“What is it?” Brad asked.

“Data. Plans, layouts, people—all filmed inside Albania. Reconnaissance wasn’t good enough this time. The camouflage is getting too good, and we don’t have time to make mistakes.”

“Then Avery was an agent.”

“Sometimes. He’s worked with us before. Aerial reconnaissance for film locations made a good cover, and a small plane can fly under most radar screens. But this was a special job that required a short take-off and landing technique. When the plane didn’t return to its base in Corfu, I was afraid it had been captured. When the wreckage was found I knew there was a chance for recovery—that’s why we tried to keep the press away.” Martins carefully placed the little metal box in his inside coat pocket. He nudged the cameras with his foot. “Do as you like with them,” he said. “I got what I came after.”

“What about the money?”

“That does present a problem—for you. Are you sure you never saw your driver, until you left Athens yesterday?”

“I never said that. I saw him the night before—by accident.”

“Where?”

“At the scene of the explosion—also by accident. What are you driving at? Do you think I’m mixed up in Greek politics?”

“Stranger things have happened. A lot of confused men are coming back from Vietnam.”

“Well, I’m not confused. I’m just a mid-western country boy. Some damned fool shot my president and I got mad. Vietnam seemed like a good place to let off steam. Now, if you want the whole truth I’ll tell you about Avery. We were friends five years ago. But while I was in the war, he was making a few million and it all started with my idea. I couldn’t touch him legally, but I thought if I found him, and got him back to Athens in one piece, he might feel more like making an adjustment.”

“Including Mrs. Avery?”

“That’s another matter.”

Martins grinned and put his gun in his pocket. “Okay, I’m buying,” he said. “I suspect that you’re an expert with a rifle. You might come in handy, riding shotgun for me, on the hike back to Kastoria.”

“Expecting trouble?”

“Always. I sat in a dining room last night, with a man who’s come a long way just to make sure that Avery’s mission isn’t completed. He’s in the Russian K.G.B. and he didn’t come alone. Remember, Smith, Albania is Chinese Communist. We aren’t the only people curious about what certain highly talented technicians and physicists are doing, behind those mountains. I imagine Popenko’s suspected Avery’s aerial hedge-hopping for some time. He was in South Africa last year when Saga produced an adventure picture. That sort of thing gets around. So, if you come down the mountain with me, you may have a little excitement on the way. But if you do come with me, I’ll tell Captain Koumaris that you’re one of my agents and there’ll be no questions asked about the money.”