The Balkan Assignment (14 page)

I walked down that tunnel just as slowly as any condemned man walking that last mile. Most of what passed through my mind during those moments, I cannot recall . . . which is probably just as well. I still wake up in a cold sweat on bad nights dreaming about the weird tableau that met me as I came down the tunnel to the cistern; Mikhail had stripped off his shirt in spite of the clammy chill, his face hideous and bright red with exertion, the crushed shapeless cap on his head rearing up at the corners in imitation of horns, exaggerated in the black shadow swelling on the far wall. Maher standing expectantly against the wall, waiting, face set and eyes locked queerly on the cistern. The pale hiss and whitish glare from the Coleman lantern cast flickering shadows that seemed to move of their own volition. The entire scene was a sojourn in hell. As I moved into the light, both men turned slowly to examine me, both sets of eyes, I noticed, moving carefully to my equipment. Then Maher burst into a deep laugh that ended in a series of dry chuckles. Even Mikhail had a chilly smile on his face.

"After all these years," Maher breathed softly. "After all these years." Mikhail glanced sharply at him and then at me. I was wearing my wet suit, having changed in the aircraft and I was damned glad now that I had shoved the short-barreled Walther into the inside pocket of the suit. Not for anything in the world would I have parted with it at that moment.

Klaus, still smiling strangely, walked carefully around the edge of the pool and clapped me on the shoulder.

"This is it, my friend. This is what I have been waiting for for over twenty-five years. In a little while we will be looking at one million dollars in gold. One million dollars, imagine!"

I forced a grin back at him. Mikhail joined me, his very stance recalling our bargain: the two of us allied against Klaus at any price. Fortunately, Klaus was too excited to notice. He even smacked Mikhail affectionately on the arm before pushing me toward the edge of the pool.

"Is your equipment ready?" he asked impatiently.

I twisted the valve on the air tank and listened to the steady hiss of air pouring out. The pressure was holding on 2200 PSI and the needle shuddered delicately as the air rushed out.

I nodded at him and dipped my mask into the water of the cistern and sniffed at it. It smelled of the normal, flat smell of pure water; I had been concerned about seepage from accidental reservoirs of gasoline or acid left in the bowels of the destroyed submarine base. If any had leaked into the fresh-water cistern, I wanted to know about it, even though no matter how slowly the water in the cistern, was renewed, after twentyfive years any lingering traces should be gone. It was better to be safe than sorry. I rinsed the mask and slipped it on, adjusted the strap and sat down on the edge of the cistern. I shrugged into the web straps of the tank and buckled the weight belt on. I had not bothered with flippers since in the confined space of the cistern, I did not expect to do much swimming. Mikhail handed me the powerful underwater torch that I had bought in Brindisi the week before, and I slipped down into the cold water. The first shock of water against your skin is always terrible. The coldness literally swims in between the foam rubber layer and your skin; it's as if someone had wrapped you in an icy blanket in a single instant. Then body heat quickly warms the water trapped between rubber and skin and from then on you are aware only of the frictionless sliding of wet rubber.

The heavy lead belt took me down quickly and the inside of the cistern became a quicksilver pool when I flicked on the torch. A moment later my head broke water and I hooked a hand over the edge of the cistern. Through the watery lens of the mask I saw blurry shapes of Klaus and Mikhail.

"What's wrong?" Klaus demanded sharply.

"Nothing, damn it," I said spitting out the mouthpiece. "Just getting my bearings. It's blacker than the inside of hell down there."

Just as I started to pull the mask down again, I caught sight of something that chilled me even more than the water had.

Lying just beside my hand was the tarnished glint of a brass cartridge case; a stubby, fat cartridge case. Instantly I knew that it was from one of the bullets that had been fired that day at the cistern to murder five slave workers.

I am usually not squeamish, but the moment I realized that I could encounter five dead bodies at the bottom of the cistern, I can only say that the hairs on the back of my neck actually lifted of their own accord and the nerve shock that scored down my spine left me shaking.

"What is wrong?" Klaus demanded again.

I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. I wondered if he had seen the cartridge case and if he had . . . I bit hard on the mouthpiece and dragged the mask down over my face and let go of the side. As the lead belt dragged me down into the black depths of the pool, the cartridge case danced in front of my eyes like a burned-in retinal image. My feet touched bottom shortly, and I sank in up to my ankles in the soft muck. I had come almost straight down along the cistern wall, my hand trailing down the rough rock where the German engineers had long ago hollowed out the shaft to increase the flow of the natural spring to supply the submarine base with a constant source of fresh water. When I turned the torch onto the wall, the scrapes and grooves left by their power machines were still visible. The cistern was not quite sterile; a thick lichenlike growth covered most of the wall, pale greenish in the torchlight. The bottom of the pool was covered with a ' brownish silt to a foot in depth. With every step I took, long strands of mud wafted up into the current, and I knew that soon the water would be full of silt. Klaus had described the ammunition boxes as being standard German Army issue .88

millimeter steel artillery ammunition crates measuring thirty-three centimeters wide by forty-four long by thirty deep. They were painted green and had been sealed with pitch. Since the bottom of the shaft had been hollowed into a shallow bowl to allow the water to continuously wash the silt away from the spring, the silt should have been deeper near the walls where I was standing than toward the spring itself. Given this configuration, then, the ammunition boxes should have congregated near the source after twenty-five years, pulled downward by gravity against the mild current. A very good theory, but that's all it turned out to be. The upwelling of fresh water through the spring was at a slow enough speed and volume that it carried silt up nicely for a distance of a few feet and deposited it in an ever-growing mound around the source. As I moved down the slope, the silt became deeper and deeper until I was sinking in up to my knees.

One tentative step more and my foot slid forward in slow motion, throwing me off balance and wrenching my leg into the source itself. I floundered helplessly for a minute and the torch slipped out of my hand and buried itself in the loose silt, leaving me in darkness.

Cursing, I regained my balance and pulled my foot out and went down on hands and knees to dig around in the area where the last flicker of light disappeared. The torch was a heavy, rubber encased affair and it had sunk deeply. I wasted almost five minutes before my fingers made contact with it and at almost the same time with the hard edge of something that felt like a metal box. Retrieving the torch, I dug carefully down through the silt again to uncover the metal. The mud was like loose sand, it flowed back into the hole almost as fast as I scooped it away. After a few minutes, I quit trying to dig away the silt and concentrated instead on feeling out the dimensions of the box. I could make out the flat metal top and along the front, the protrusions that were the snap fasteners. I was able to get my fingers under the box and found it far too heavy to move. If Klaus's memories were correct, there would be four rings, one at each corner. There were and with difficulty, I worked a strand of nylon rope through one ring and secured it tightly and attached a plastic bottle filled with air to the other end. The drill was that when I was ready for the cable to be passed down, I would send up the nylon rope using the bottle as a buoy. Mikhail would attach the cable end. Using the line, I could control the rate of descent of the heavy steel cable. It was a hell of a lot better than getting smashed with three hundred

pounds of steel dropping down through the water ... which is exactly what happened. The buoy hadn't been gone more than thirty seconds before I spotted a dark shadow above me. I'm not sure what exactly warned me, but I twisted sideways desperately and saved my life. The entire reel of steel cable plummeted down; a single loose strand slapped me across the back like a terrible whip. I lost the mouthpiece as I screamed in agony, and instantly my mouth was full of water and I was drowning. My hand hit the quick release of the weight belt and I kicked upward desperately. You can pack a lifetime of terror into a twenty-second swim for air. I know. My mouth and nose were full of water; water that was trying its best to work its way down my throat and into my lungs. At the same time, the muscles in my windpipe were constricting in agonizing coughs to clear away the water, but to open my mouth to do so would have been to drown. My head broke the surface and Klaus and Mikhail dragged me out of the cistern and up onto the paved walkway to gag and choke the water from my lungs.

The only thing that saved both of those idiots from being beaten to death was the half drowning and the coughing spasm that followed. By the time I was able to get shakily to my feet, I had regained a measure of control. Both Klaus and Mikhail watched apprehensively as I stumbled around. Then Klaus stepped forward hastily and took my arm when I tottered over to the brink of the cistern to stare at the broken hook dangling from the apex of the tripod. It had broken all right. The steel shank of the hook had snapped at the bend. The characteristic jagged fracture of stressed steel showed plainly enough. Twice now, I thought.

"Do we have a spare?" I croaked.

Mikhail nodded. "Yes. There is another in the tool kit."

"Then get it hooked up, damn it. And make sure it's done right. I don't want any more foul-ups in this operation."

Both men nodded quickly. I could see the beginning of hostility in Mikhail's eyes again, but I was beyond caring now. My back, where the cable end had whipped across, burned like fire. I could feel a gash through the tough butyl rubber and foam and I was damned glad I had been

wearing the wet suit. I hated to think what the cable would have done to my bare back. Klaus and Mikhail attached the new hook to the tripod and reassembled the block and tackle. It took them nearly a half hour, but by the end of that time, the ache was gone and the pain in my back was beginning to subside.

"It's ready now," Klaus muttered, wiping grease from his hands on an old handkerchief.

"All right." I refrained from saying anything further. Tensions were high enough as it was.

I pulled the tanks on to my back grimacing at the -pain where the straps rubbed, settled the harness as comfortably as possible and slid back into the water. While I readjusted the mask, I watched Klaus and Mikhail, still working industriously; Klaus on the winch, readying it to take the nylon rope I was taking down with me to fasten to the cable and Mikhail, carefully paying out the coiled line.

In all, three hours of precious darkness were wasted in bringing the cable back to the surface and bending it again to the winch drum. After that, it was relatively easy to dive again, fasten the first of the ammunition crates to the cable and haul it to the surface. By this time, I was running short of air . . . in fact I was down to the last of the three fortyfive-minute tanks by the time I surfaced with the first crate. There were three more to go and I had no intention of diving without a tank into that cistern under any circumstances. Klaus and Mikhail worked the winch and cable more tenderly than they might have handled their infant grandsons. I sat on the far edge of the cistern and watched them hook the cable and gradually wind it in, then ease the brake and let the cable run out while the other pulled until the crate was resting securely on the rubber-tired dolly. Both men grinned at each other and then at me. I was too tired to smile back. Mikhail picked up a crowbar and snapped the rusted padlock, then pried the lid up carefully. Twenty-five years of rust resisted at first. Mikhail swore, settled his feet, dug the point in for a better purchase and hunched the muscles in his shoulders and heaved upward convulsively. The lid groaned and flew open.

A mass of dirty water and rotting canvas poured out. Klaus used his knife to dig away the remains of the canvas

cover. The first strip that pulled away revealed two evenly matched bars of gold; frantically, Klaus raked away the rest of the canvas and the gold flamed in the light of the gasoline lantern.

After a minute of stunned silence, Mikhail used his knife to pry up one of the bars. I reached over and pulled its surprisingly heavy bulk out of the chest and held it up. The bar was twelve inches long by four wide and four thick. The two and one-half decades in the water had done nothing to diminish either its luster or smoothness. I turned it over in my hand and on the end found a strange seal and slavic script.

"Royal Treasury of Bulgaria," Mikhail translated and then began to laugh. In a few moments, Klaus joined him and the two of them laughed like fools at this masterful joke on the now defunct Royal Treasury of Bulgaria. I watched them for several moments, wondering seriously at the margin of sanity left to either and touched the comforting bulk of the plastic-wrapped Walther P-38 inside my wet suit. By four a.m., all of the crates were out of the cistern. We had been at work for eight straight hours. I was not able to speak for either Klaus or Mikhail, but I was ready to collapse. They were probably in worse shape, since I had had eight solid hours of sleep during the day. In my ' estimation, neither Klaus nor Mikhail were stable enough to take the kind of pressures that a combination of fatigue and fear brings; something would have to give . . . and it did, and it was strictly a panic reaction.

"Come and help me with the cable," Klaus called urgently as I shucked the diving gear. I hurried over to help him. The cable was not feeding evenly onto the drum and for the moment I was too busy to ask what had happened to Mikhail. I pulled on the heavy canvas gloves and began tugging on the heavy cable to guide it back onto the drum properly. The crate came into view and between the two of us, we got it over the cart and let it settle with a thud. Klaus came over to the cart, both of us silent; the last of four crates . . . one million dollars in gold in those rusting metal boxes. One million dollars of the hardest, firmest, most negotiable currency in all the world and it was ours. All we had to do now was load it aboard the PBY and be gone from Yugoslavian air space before dawn. Curiously enough, I