The Balkan Assignment (18 page)

us. Our only hope was in relying on the darkness and Mikhail's extensive experience running Nazi wartime blockades.

When the rain began to seep through and around the slicker I went back to the deckhouse. Mikhail acknowledged my company with a nod and mentioned that Klaus had gone below to the small cabin to sleep.

We stood in companionable silence for a while. I asked if he would like me to take the wheel, but he shook his head and continued to stare fixedly through the forward windows. The compass was bearing steadily on the course he had set, 272° WSW. In the light reflecting from the red dash lamps, I studied the big man's face. Lit from beneath, the coarseness was gone from his features. The red light obscured the folds and wrinkles, smoothing the skin and making him look younger. He must have been a great one with women in his younger days, I thought. His face was all angled planes; no' round weaknesses at all. The strange light made it crystal clear that he had grown older refusing to accept changing ways, and this obstinacy had begun to show in his face. Now in his fifties, he had the appearance sometimes of a punch-drunk fighter. Apparently the pitiless glare of change had also affected him mentally. I could not picture the childish man I knew as Mikhail Korstlov ever surviving the rigors of a guerilla existence against an enemy as cunning as the Nazis. Yet that night in the deckhouse of a tiny fishing boat, fleeing from the Yugoslav authorities with a cargo of contraband, I found I was not only seeing Mikhail in his natural environment, but also as he had been thirty years earlier. Physically, he may still have been as powerful as in his youth, but only his strength had survived the years. I could feel a great pity for this man; no affection, only a pity for the wreck who stood before me grasping the spokes of the wheel with competent hands. He was a man from another age, an age when war was still conducted on a man-to-man basis. He had not been suited to the peculiar rigors and demands of the cold war nor to peace time nor to the strange non-wars with which we now occupy ourselves. He had become an outlaw, an outcast, a restless spirit of a kind doomed in a technological world. As I stood watching him, I honestly could not decide if the world would be better off when his kind were gone completely. Maybe we would; but a certain vitality of spirit and purpose would also disappear with him. The effects were already to be seen among the young all over the planet as mankind fought desperately to adapt himself to an alien way of life, a way that could only inevitably treat him as an inconvenience not properly programmable on a computer punch card. We adaptable ones would probably make it, but never men like Mikhail. This was probably his last great adventure, the last opportunity to "accomplish". I knew that if we survived this crazy quilt of cross-purposes and managed to get cleanly away with the gold, Mikhail would not live beyond another year. It would ruin him. I wondered if he realized that?

They were not happy thoughts that strange night, but they clarified much for me. I had finally come to see that Mikhail resented Klaus for the authority that he somehow represented rather than for any past political ideology which he had fought against for nine continuous years from Spain to Dalmatia. Mikhail was an anarchist, not a Communist; simply an anarchist. I was fully aware that Klaus was the authority figure and it rankled; but nowhere near to the same extent that it rankled Mikhail. I was of a different generation and background; one taught to respect authority . . . perhaps unfortunately for my generation, taught too well. But in any event, since I had decided to co-operate fully with Interpol, Mikhail, the anarchist, and I, the fool, were forced to become allies against the Nazi. We had reached a working agreement that morning on the beach, and I felt that that was about as far as I dared go. Presently, the gentle swaying of the boat and the closeness of the cabin made me desperately sleepy and rather than go below, I spread a couple of blankets on the deckhouse floor and fell asleep. The explosion occurred so close that it lifted the old boat and slammed it sideways in the water. I was thrown solidly against the flimsy bulkhead and shocked out of a drugged sleep into a fierce disorientation that lasted several seconds until a second explosion cast a vivid white light, bright as lightning through the windows of the fishing boat etching Mikhail boldly against the glare as he struggled with the wheel. He wrenched the wheel sending the boat away in a spinning circle to heel dangerously to starboard. I staggered to my feet and propped

my back against the bulkhead, bracing a hand on the railing in front of me. A third vicious crack followed and a spear of lightning lanced down from the tortured clouds and I laughed insanely.

Mikhail whipped his head around, lips drawn back in a grimace of exertion and surprise. He obviously thought I had gone mad. I laughed again and pointed through the windows at the storm raging outside, throwing up mountains of water around the little boat; waves that lost their crests to the wind slashing the angry seas.

"A storm!" I shouted at him. "I thought we were being attacked!"

"We are, damn you!" he shouted and as if to lend confirmation, another roar and a strip of railing exploded and vanished into the waves.

By God, I thought insanely, he's right.

"A patrol boat," Mikhail panted. "They fired across our bow. I do not know where they are. Then they fired again, closer and then right at us." He spun the wheel frantically, letting the bow fall away into the wind. The old boat shuddered as the wind clawed her broadside and she slewed sharply, almost corkscrewing, across a wave crest and then slipped sideways down into a trough. The port rail dipped under the greenish black water and the deck foamed upward, the railing torn away from bow to amidships. Mikhail spun the wheel again and she staggered and then steadied, driving up a towering wave rearing in front of us. Another shot whistled overhead, clearly heard in spite of the storm's fury. But this one was wide and all we saw was the lightninglike glow of its explosion far to starboard.

"We're losing them," I yelped. Mikhail snorted and muttered about radar. We had not lost them I realized. Their gunfire was wild in the heavy seas. The hatch banged open and Klaus squirmed through. Mikhail roared at him to stay out of the way and he sidled over to brace himself beside me.

"What in hell is happening?" he shouted into my ear.

"Must be the Yugoslav Coastal Patrol," I shouted back. I pointed out the missing rail and the smashed deck barely visible in the strobelike effect of the rapidly flickering lightning. Another shell screamed at us and exploded; nearer this time. Then another followed, falling short on the port side.

"Bracketed, by God!" Mikhail chortled.

A sixth shot smashed into the waves behind us and exploded in a geyser of water that reached the boat, for a moment doubling the intensity of the water pouring down on us.

"Only a few more shots and they will have sunk us," Mikhail boomed, his voice full of admiration. He rammed the engine throttle forward and spun the wheel, heeling the boat to starboard again. As he did so, the seventh shot smashed into the water just beyond the bow deluging the boat with the geyser of its explosion. I thought I had lost my eardrums; I could see Mikhail's mouth working, but could hear no sound for several seconds.

. . using . . . three-inch deck gun. Must be impossible . . . aim properly . . . these seas . . . yet . . . sink us yet. Must . . . old German boat or . . . hit us . . . third shot . . . radar does not control guns directly . . . furnishes

plot."

I didn't know much about artillery fire from the deck of a moving ship, but I did know about radar and about artillery fire. Semiautomated fire control, they called it. Radar locates the target and watches the shell on the first part of its trajectory; superimposing the plot on the radar scope. The spotter watches and calls off new co-ordinates to the gunner who readjusts and fires another shell. The process is repeated until a direct hit is scored.

The only thing in our favor was the heavy seas which made it impossible to lay and fire a gun accurately. But even that would only delay the inevitable. They had us bracketed and could saturate the area with gunfire. Eventually, one of the shells would damage or sink us.

The rain had slackened momentarily but now poured down harder than ever; almost a tropical downpour. At the same time, the wind screamed at us in full gale. The old boat faltered, struck on the beam by the almost solid, wall of air. The waves, seen in the incessant flickering of lightning, towered around us, mast high in some instances, burying us from sight in their troughs and exposing us to the attack of the wind on the crests. The pounding we took was terrible. As I watched, another section of railing carried away as the calque doggedly lifted her bow out of churning green water once again. I only hoped that Mikhail had been right in his assessment of the soundness of the boat. She carried pumps but if the boat were taking on water, they would be next to useless.

Two shells in quick succession smashed in just short of our portside, throwing great geysers of water skyward, the concussions stabbing at our ears. Mikhail whipped the spokes of the wheel again to turn us to starboard, bringing the boat up short relative to the patrol boat. Again it worked as we saw a shell explode a hundred yards ahead.

"How far outside of Yugoslav waters are we?" Maher demanded.

"At least eighty kilometers," Mikhail shouted back. "We have been in international waters for hours. They have no business firing on us! It is piracy!" Maher laughed deeply at that. "Who are we to complain to," he shouted back. "Even if we had a radio transmitter!"

My arms and legs ached from having to brace myself against the fury of the seas. My eyes were full of exploding flashes of light as if I were trapped in a mad dream, sanity threatening to desert at any second. The explosions of shells were falling more quickly now . . . and nearer, the seas seemed to be continual geysers of tortured water as we ran on at full speed for the Italian mainland, twisting and turning with all the skill at Mikhail'

s command. We were marked and doomed, able only to delay the inevitable. The patrol boat would track us by radar across the Adriatic if need be, and we were helpless to either fight back or escape. There was nothing left but to surrender or die as the heavy gun pounded us to pieces.

The three of us must have realized this simultaneously because I saw the stiffness go out of Mikhail's back and shoulders and Klaus turned to me with an apprehensive look.

"There is nothing else to do . . ." I started to shout and with that weird telepathy that seemed to link the three of us now and again, they nodded assent, without argument, before I was finished speaking.

But the question was how to surrender. We were out of sight in the darkness and distance and with no transmitting facilities. Mikhail found the answer by stopping the engine and letting the calque glide forward on her momentum, then going ahead at just enough speed to maintain steerage weigh. The patrol boat must have realized what we were doing because the shells stopped exploding around

us and for the next ten minutes we were left to peer through the rain-drenched glass until Klaus caught the ghostly shape of the patrol boat maneuvering toward us several hundred feet off the port bow.

Moving more like an automaton than a human being, I pulled on the slicker again and squeezed through the screen door. The storm was beginning to peak in ferocity and the roar of the wind was almost solid. Waves towered around me, crashing over the deck as we crested first one and then dropped down the steep side into the trough of another. At odd moments, I could see the lights of the patrol boat as it slowly closed on us. I ducked back into the shelter of the deckhouse and waited. The wind was an irresistible scream in my ears, wiping away all sound but the throbbing of the patrol boat's engines as it came nearer.

Twenty minutes after the last shell was fired, they took up station off our portside, and in the lightning flashes I could clearly see the two sailors braced at the deck gun mounted forward of the wheelhouse. One other sailor stood near the stern winch with a light machine gun. There was no hope for it at all.

I stood up as best I could on the heaving deck and raised my hands over my head. At that, a hatch banged open and two men, wrapped in slickers, came out onto the deck. One carried a light heaving line. The one who appeared to be an officer leaned over the railing and shouted across the space of churning waters. I shrugged my shoulders and pointed to my ears, indicating that I could not hear over the noise of the storm. He cupped his hands and tried again; again I pointed to my ears. Then he turned and spoke to the sailor with the line who immediately ducked back into the deckhouse and reemerged with a portable loud-hailer. At the same time, Mikhail came out on deck and stood beside Me. The Yugoslav officer shouted through the loud-hailer and this time his words carried clearly across the gap in spite of the storm.

"Digni se i privuci konope." (Heave to and prepare to take aboard a towing line.) The Yugoslav officer spoke slowly enough that I was able to understand most of what he was saying.

Mikhail cupped his hands and shouted back, his voice carrying over the distance in spite of the wind.

"Sto zelite? Zasto streljate na nas?" (What do you want? Why are you shooting at us?) His accent was that of a Dalmatian fisherman, harsh and coarse.

"Uzmi ovo konope, ako ne mi cemo streljati." (Take this towing line or we will fire on you.) The steadiness of the officer's voice indicated that he had no doubts at all that we were the men he was after. He said something else but the wind carried the words away.

"Mi smo samo Ko ste Vi i sto zelite?" Mikhail shouted back. (We are only fishermen. Who are you and what do you want?)

"Ja sam Porucnik Obrevgov od Jugoslovenske Obalne Patrole. Vi ste aretirani I dodjete s nama u Mostar. Ako ne ja imam naredjenje streljati na vas." (I am Lieutenant Obrevgov of the Yugoslav Coastal Patrol. You are under arrest and will accompany us to Mostar. If you do not, I have orders to fire on you.)