The Balkan Assignment (13 page)

"He's a damned fool. I think he's gone over the brink. Klaus, why in the name of all that's holy you brought him in, I'll . . ."

Klaus cut me off with a sharp wave. "Never mind that now. He has been useful and will be again before we are finished."

I snorted. "Providing he doesn't kill you first."

"That is my problem."

"That's easy enough for you to say with that cannon in your pocket. Suppose he takes it into his head again that I'm the cause of all his problems. What then? Maybe I'm supposed to beat him off with my bare hands?"

For the first time in days, Klaus grinned. "From the condition of your face, I would say that you have already done so."

"There happened to be a big rock handy. Look, Klaus, you better get rid of that bastard before he kills both of us. That guy is trouble . . . pay him off or something and send him packing . . ."

"No!" Even in the dim light of the dying flashlight, I could see the sheet of blood that gushed beneath his skin, suffusing his face with red. "Mikhail is my problem. I Will take care of him."

I decided that further talk was useless and spun on my heel and went back up the tunnel. As I left the tunnel for the second time that night, the vividness of the pink sky to the east startled me. My watch showed ten minutes to seven; we had been trapped in that damned tunnel for nearly five hours. In some ways it seemed like days, but in others, like minutes. The sky however, left no doubt that we had lost an entire night. I clambered aboard the calque and pushed open the hatch to the wheelhouse. Mikhail was huddled inside with his back to the far wall, staring balefully through the shutters at the deck.

"Dobro Yutro," I said politely.

"Zdravo."

I pushed inside and leaned against the other wall.

"When Vishailly sees that our -aircraft is gone and finds that we haven't cleared customs, he will be out looking for us."

Mikhail remained silent for a long moment. "Are you foolish enough to think that the Nazi will let us live after we have loaded the gold aboard your airplane?" I nodded.

"Why?" His question was sharp and challenging. "He needs a pilot." Mikhail snorted. ."So you live until he can find another pilot, until he no longer has a use for you, yes?"

"No! I don't trust him any more than you do. And to be honest, I trust you less than I trust Maher."

Mikhail nodded at this, accepting the truth of the statement. "I, too, trust you as much as you trust me."

"Okay. Now that we have that settled, let's make a deal."

"What kind of a deal?"

"Klaus is a dangerous man, and I think we both agree that he wouldn't hesitate to kill either one of us if he thinks it's necessary."

Mikhail nodded.

"Now, you may be right that he will let me live only as long as it takes to find another pilot. If so, then he has to get rid of you before then . . . and that means he will need my help. He wouldn't dare try it alone considering who you are." Mikhail nodded again. A little flattery never hurts, no matter what the situation.

"So, the two of us have only one chance to come out of this alive . . . and with our share of the gold. One chance, but only if we stick together." Mikhail had followed every word intently, nodding his shaggy head from time to time. Now he paused in mid-nod, waiting expectantly for my proposal.

"It's simple. You watch my back and I'll watch yours. That way he won't be able to take either of us."

Mikhail sat quite still for a long time. I could almost hear the rusty wheels turning.

"What guarantee do I have that you will not turn against me . . . that already this is not some kind of a trick?"

I shrugged. "You don't have any guarantee. And neither do I. But neither one of us will get out of this mess alive unless we stick together."

Another long period of silence followed while he thought that over. Finally, he nodded.

"Yes. We must stick together then."

I sighed deeply.

Our brave affiance was just so much hot air when the chips went down, and Mikhail knew that as well as I did. Whether or not we would in turn co-operate would depend on the situation and how the other stood to gain from it. I consoled myself with the thought that my motives were loftier than his . . . but I didn't believe it then, or now.

The hours that followed the long night trapped in the tunnel were an oasis of peace, sandwiched as they were between the events of the coming days and the insanity behind. The cabin of the PBY had already begun to warm with the early morning sun, dispelling the bora's chill. Both engines turned over easily and I swung the ponderous bulk of the PBY out of the cove and into the bay. The wind had dropped with the coming of dawn until it was now only a mild head wind. She rose easily from the water and climbed for altitude in one long, easy spiral. I settled back with a cigarette and relaxed for the first time

in days as the tension began to drain away. The PBY settled easily onto a course heading due west and I let her go, enjoying the peace and serenity of the morning over the rythmic beat of the engines. The abrupt transition from an atmosphere of paranoia and hate to peace and contentment was startling at first, but after the initial shock, very enjoyable.

An hour later I brought the Catalina down onto the glassily smooth surface of the bay. The fishing boats were gone from the quay to take advantage of the unexpected break in the weather. By nine a.m. I had eaten a quick breakfast, taken a swim in the icy bay and fallen into my sleeping bag for some badly needed rest. The gentle rocking of the aircraft knocked me out as effectively as a club and it was late afternoon before a loud banging on the canopy woke me. Vishailly, who else. I swore to myself as I caught sight of his long face peering back at me from the cockpit.

"Good day to you," he said, smiling. "I am sorry to wake you. If I had known you were sleeping, I would have waited."

Since it has been my experience that people enjoy waking others out of a sound sleep and then apologizing afterward, I kept silent and pointed to the nearest crate.

"You were gone last night?" said Vishailly sitting down. Although he had meant it as a question to be polite, it had come out as a command to be answered, and since they don't construe civil rights in Yugoslavia the same way as back in the States, I described the storm, the location of the cove, the cave-in, the nearing disintegration of our little band of intrepid treasure hunters, and the reason I had returned, in minute detail.

"Good," was his only, slightly bored, comment. "I wish them to think they are being watched. You must make up a story. Tell them that you are being watched, but that you think you managed to get away without being seen."

"Will I?"

"Will you what?" Vishailly was not as puzzled as he tried to appear. He knew what I meant, but I explained it to him anyway; all part of the game we were playing.

"I mean, am I going to get away without being seen? To put it even more bluntly, have you decided to play along with Interpol? Or are you going to grandstand on your own?"

"What do you mean, grandstand?"

"Are you going to work with Interpol or are you going to act on your own," I rephrased the question impatiently.

Vishailly looked at me sharply. "Why would we do that?"

"To make damned sure that one million dollars worth of gold stays in Yugoslavia. That's why. You know that Interpol is more interested in tracing the pipeline than in retrieving the gold. You know as well as I do that if they have to, they will sacrifice the gold for the pipeline and consider the money well spent. But Yugoslavia can't be that carefree with monetary windfalls. Maybe another country without your chronic shortage of foreign exchange could, but not Yugoslavia. Your superiors suspect that if the gold leaves Yugoslavia, it will be divided by Interpol among the countries it came from, or else turned over to some international organization to distribute. Either way, your government stands to lose a good part of a million dollars."

"Perhaps you are right," Vishailly answered seriously, his face troubled. "I hope not. I would hate to think that my country is so small-minded that it would forfeit the chance to wipe out the Nazi menace once and for all for mere money."

"I hope so, too," I muttered. "But then, it's not your country making the choice, it's your government and there's a hell of a big difference between the two. Govern-ments detest two things; poverty and challenges to their authority."

"Perhaps you are right. But then, it really should make no difference to you how the problem is resolved."

"Except," I pointed out, "that with the backing of Interpol I don't wind up in jail for twenty years. If the Yugoslav Government moves in without Interpol, I'm liable to get swept up into the net. And, if something happens to you, who would testify to my good intentions at the trial?"

"I think I can assure you that my government has no intention of acting on its own in this matter. They are very anxious to co-operate in tracking down this 'pipeline' as Herr Ley insists on calling it. I have been given orders to co-operate in every regard." Vishailly left right after that, refusing a cup of coffee. For the next two hours, I puttered around inside the PBY, securing what little cargo remained. I wondered idly how the two of them were making out, cooped up inside the tunnel by themselves. If they hadn't killed each other by now, maybe there was hope after all. By seven o'clock, it was pitch dark and only a few scattered lights remained along the top of the cliff marking the location of the village. The quay was completely deserted. This night was as different from the previous night as it could be. Where the other had included sixty-mile per hour winds and a sky so clear it could scratch like diamonds; tonight was still and somber, beginning to wrap itself in a soft shroud of fog. The air was cold and the warm waters of the Adriatic were shedding strands of mist and threatening fog by morning. Well and good, I decided. If we got away before dawn the fog would muffle our passage. I had no idea then just how welcome that fog was going to be. The trip back to the cove took less than fifteen minutes . . . in contrast to the hour of the night before. I taxied the PBY out and in one fast run toward the headlands was airborne. Heading toward the mainland, I flew on until I had covered half the distance and then made a long sweeping turn to the north and west that brought me back to the head of the deep cove across the barren and deserted northern hills of the island. I found Klaus and Mikhail lugging the last of the equipment down the tunnel to the cistern. Obviously, they had worked steadily through the day as both rockfalls had been cleared sufficiently to allow easy passage. The blasting powder had done its work well enough. Several large boulders were still scattered in the passageway, their sides blackened and freshly fractured.

The cistern formed a black hole in the middle of a small chamber,, perfectly round with mortared stone edging. The surface of the pool was still and cold. The chamber roof was a vault some twenty feet above our heads, its sloping sides were of rough-hewn stone. A narrow walkway encircled the cistern and proved wide enough to provide a purchase for the tripod we had brought along.

Klaus had described the cistern quite accurately, even to the intense cold of the water. He had estimated that the pool itself was some thirty feet deep in the center with sharply sloping sides that led down to the source, a small

spring that had been widened by German engineers. Because of the sloping sides, he was certain that the ammunition crates would be comparatively easy to find since the gravity would have worked them downhill by now to the cistern bottom. The water looked clear enough. I was counting on the fact that most springs were crystal clear due to the inflow of a constant volume of water that kept silt out of suspension. Also, as the cistern was well closed-off from the rest of the cavern, there wasn't much chance that food plants would have taken root to provide food for marine life.

Even so, I did not relish the idea of having to dive into that Stygian pool. Having done some amateur diving while in the service, I was elected to do the diving by the unanimous approbation of Klaus and Mikhail. Neither of them had ever worn a diving rig, let alone a wet suit, in their lives, and Klaus had stated very firmly that at fifty plus he did not intend to start. Mikhail had seconded him; possibly the only thing that those two had ever or were ever to agree upon.

I left Klaus and Mikhail rigging the tripod and winch while I went out to gather up my diving gear. The tripod was just that; three sturdy steel legs to straddle the pool and a hook at the center point from which to hang a block and tackle arrangement. A hand winch was attached to the other end of the steel cable running through the pulleys; five hundred pound ammunition crates of gold are not brought up with hand lines under any circumstances.

Lugging the diving gear through the deepening fog and up into the strangely echoing tunnel, I wondered what in hell I was really doing on this Godforsaken island off the coast of Yugoslavia. Surely there were more pleasant places to die than thirty feet down in a dead pool in the bowels of a barren mountain ... a mountain that had already tried to kill me. Put it down to the weirdness of the place and the hour and the fog and the company. Put it down to whatever you like. I was damned scared and I don't care now who knows it. Two half-maniacs were waiting for me to come and dredge up one million dollars in stolen gold. Who knows how many people had died for that gold . . . from the bank guards to soldiers to the SS troopers who were massacred by the partisans to the sailors and soldiers and partisans trapped inside the underground submarine base when the roof was blown down. And don't, above all, forget

the five slave laborers and, for that matter, the tourists who came after the war and died in the mudsinks and cave-ins.

But of course I now had a higher calling than mere greed . . . I was here to follow the gold, to put an end to one of the most cursed, most evil of modem political philosophies

. . . nazism. So they told me.

But it was me that was going down into that pool while those two washed-up professional killers waited for me to come back up with that last load. Maybe Klaus knew how to fly after all; maybe Mikhail did; maybe they had another pilot waiting until the last crate was up. Maybe just one of them did. If so, I would surface, pull off my mask and one of them would put a pistol bullet in my head.