“I’m glad to hear it,” said Heller. “It was touch and go there for a while. But after a time she began to come around.”
I mourned the loss of my ally.
“Now, there’s one more thing,” said Mr. Twaddle. “You finished your senior year as an ROTC officer. According to your enrollment in the ROTC, you should be sworn in to the United States Army as a second lieutenant and go on active duty.”
“Sworn in?” said Heller.
“Take the oath of allegiance and all that,” said Mr. Twaddle.
“That would be . . .” Heller stopped. I knew the quandary this was putting him in. As a Grade Ten Royal officer of the Voltar Fleet, he would incur the death penalty if he swore allegiance to some alien force. I became very alert. If this happened, I had him!
Mr. Twaddle raised a hand to silence him. “Your ROTC studies were for G-2, Army Intelligence. Your diploma is for nuclear science.
“Colonel Tanc sent over a new Army ruling. Here it is, right here. As there is no war in progress at the moment, the Army has no need of more intelligence. Unless war is declared, any nuclear engineer is permitted to apply himself to his trade in a civilian capacity. So the news is that your induction into the Army has been deferred. And you can accept all those high-priced industry offers that will be raining on our students come graduation day.”
“Wonderful,” said Heller.
My heart sank. There went my last chance. Heller would be as busy as a hurricane getting out new fuel and wrecking Rockecenter and Lombar. This was BAD!
Gloom deepened around me.
The reality of the mess I was in was reaching me.
Suddenly the thought hit me that Bury would be on my trail when Heller’s villainous determination to save this planet reached his ears. A better, cleaner fuel would be just wonderful for five billion Earth people but would be death for Rockecenter and that’s what counted.
I couldn’t stand any more. I dragged myself to my bedchamber and lay down.
I must have dozed. I awoke to find Teenie rummaging in my closets.
She saw I was awake. “Inky, do you have an alpenstock?”
“What’s an alpenstock?” I said.
“A thing you climb mountains with. I’m getting all ready for tomorrow. Maddie and I are going to drive down and climb Mount Olympus if we can.”
“For Gods’ sakes, what for?” I said.
“For Gods’ sakes,” she said. “They tell me that’s where all the Greek gods live. Zeus and the rest of ’em. And Alexander thought he was a god and maybe he went up there, too.”
“Hey, no,” I said. The thought of so much exertion made exhaustion run through me. “It’s nine or ten thousand feet high, snowcapped, a whole series of peaks. It’s dangerous. You might get dizzy and fall. For Gods’ sakes, don’t let yourself be killed!” That was all I would need to drown me in the soup I was barely swimming in. “Besides, I think all those gods packed up when people stopped sacrificing goats so they could eat. I doubt you’ll even find a busted laurel wreath.”
“Oh, that isn’t my only reason. I want to get a bird’s-eye view of the sea out there and the islands. And I want to try to see Turkey. It’s only about two hundred and twenty-five miles due east and nothing between it and us but water. Hey, what the hell’s the matter with you, Inky?” She yelled louder. “Steward, you better come in here with a bucket! Inky’s gotten seasick in port!”
PART FIFTY-EIGHT
Chapter 2
The first inkling I had of real trouble came the following afternoon.
I was stricken in my bed, as I had been since yesterday. There was a tap on the door. The wireless officer looked in. “Is Miss Teenie here?”
“Why do you want her?” I croaked from my bed.
“It’s just that her radio traffic is piling up and I haven’t seen her all day.”
“Radio traffic?” I blinked. What the hells was Teenie doing getting radio traffic? From whom and why? “I’ll take it,” I said cunningly.
“No, no,” he said. “It’s always marked confidential.”
The elderly stewardess heard the commotion. She came up the passageway carrying a laundry bag. “Miss Teenie won’t be back until supper,” she told the wireless officer. “You know better than to come down here and bother Mr. Bey. He’s ailing.”
The man saluted and withdrew, carrying the mysterious sheaf of messages in his hand, unread by me.
The next event was less mysterious but more shattering. About four, I heard a rumbling on the dock beside us. I raised myself on a shaky elbow and looked out the port.
DEMONSTRATORS!
They were carrying signs, shaking fists, marching round and round beside the ship!
TURKS GO HOME!
TOOLS OF YANKEE IMPERIALISM
DOWN WITH TURKEY!
I always knew there was bad blood between the Turks and Greeks. It began with the Persian Wars. And although Alexander had conquered Asia Minor, as centuries passed, the Asians had gotten their own back and the Seljuk Turks had conquered all of Greece and held it right up into modern times. It looked like the bad blood had spilled over at the sight of our Turkish flag.
But this was a mystery. We had been made quite welcome here, strictly red carpet. And now this!
The dock guards were just standing around doing nothing.
Then here came a car. It nosed through the demonstrators. It stopped by the gangway.
Suddenly the demonstrators realized it was stopping at the yacht.
They converged on it!
Teenie and Madison and an interpreter leaped out.
Stones flew!
Teenie and Madison struggled toward the gangway through the mob. The interpreter went sprinting off. The car driver jumped out and ran.
Suddenly from the yacht came white streams. Fire hoses! Our sailors were knocking demonstrators down left and right.
Teenie and Madison made the deck.
Demonstrators picked themselves up and fled, chased by the violent jets.
Captain Bitts’ voice rang out and the fire hoses went off. I stared at the dripping, deserted dock.
Teenie and Madison came in my door. They were wet. Madison was bruised.
“Black PR,” said Madison. “Somebody has un-corked the bottle. As an expert myself, I know the signs. Who would ever have thought I would be at the receiving end of a black PR campaign.”
Captain Bitts was at the door. “I hope that didn’t alarm you,” he said. “This happens to a lot of yachts, especially when they have Americans on board. It happens most often right after a visit to an American consulate but nobody here was there to renew passports. Are you all right, Mr. Madison?”
“Wet,” said Madison.
“Better than in a hospital,” said Bitts. “I’m glad they weren’t carrying guns.”
The wireless officer was behind him, shoving a message in his hands. Bitts read it. “Local VHF,” he said, “from the harbor master. He’s requesting that we sail as soon as possible to avoid further damage to his port.”
“Black PR,” said Madison. “The only people who are that expert at it are the US State Department. Don’t even bother to ask if the harbor master did that on the orders of the American consul. I know because that’s how they work.”
“A government shouldn’t attack its own citizens,” I said. “That’s psychotic!”
“Of course, it’s psychotic,” said Madison, “but whoever said the American government was sane? You mark my words, the American consul this very minute is handing out press releases to the Greek papers saying we’re Turkish saboteurs. I’m the pro, Smith. You aren’t.”
“How do you know this?” I demanded.
He lifted his hand. He was holding a soaked placard all crumpled up. On one side, in Greek, it said, TOOLS OF YANKEE IMPERIALISM. On the back, in English, in very small letters it said, Printed in the USA.
“Whoever would have thought,” repeated Madison, shaking his head sadly, “that I would be the target of a
black PR campaign. Me, the expert. Well, let me use your radio teletype, Captain Bitts, and I’ll start up the machine guns. If they want war, I’ll give’m war.”
“What do you intend to do?” I gasped, appalled at the idea of being caught in the line of fire.
“Do?” said Madison. “Well, hell, Smith. You can see you aren’t a pro. I’ll throw a torrent of press releases into the Russian Tass news agency, exposing a Yankee plot to get Turkey and Greece involved in war to sell both sides munitions and then I’ll hire a hit man to assassinate the Greek Premier, have a Turkish flag hanging from the rifle and CIA credentials in his pocket. So that when the second hit man I hire kills him, I can release through Tass . . .”
“Hold it!” I wailed. “You’ll have Russia and the US involved in atomic war next.”
“What’s wrong with that?” said Madison.
“We’d be in the middle of it!” I screamed.
“Oh, I can tell you aren’t a pro, Smith I’m the one that got the bruises here. They want trouble, I can deliver. Count on me, Smith. Now, Captain . . .”
Yikes, he was dangerous!
Teenie had a hand on Madison’s sleeve. “Maddie, you’re all wore out from failing to climb Mount Olympus. Get your pinkie off the panic button. All we have to do is sail. Not all ports are hostile to the Turks. Egypt has been governed by Turkish officers for ages, you told me so yourself. And if they start a beef in Alexandria, Egypt, you can have your atomic war. Okay?”
“All right,” said Madison grudgingly. “I just don’t like some punk in the State Department to think he can out-PR me. It’s a matter of professional pride. I am going to send a radio telex to the Greek papers, though, and picture-transmit them this placard. They’ll tell the American consul they got it and he’ll order them to hold all press and somebody in the State Department will get fired. The American government is too goofy to live. Trying to black PR me. I’ll get on it.”
“I’ll tell the harbor master we’re sailing, then,” said Captain Bitts.
“And lay your course for Egypt like we discussed,” said Teenie.
“Aye, aye,” said Captain Bitts.
Teenie and I were left alone.
My head was churning, my nerves were raw. There was some loose end I hadn’t grasped. Then I had it. If they sailed for Alexandria, Egypt, direct from here across the Aegean Sea, they’d get awfully close to Turkey. I said so with a sudden yelp.
“Nonsense,” said Teenie. “I helped lay out the course myself. I’m an expert now, you know. The closest we will come to Turkey will be the Greek island of Chios, the home of Homer. And if we leave in a couple of hours, we’ll pass by there tomorrow night in total darkness.”
“For Gods’ sakes,” I begged. “Don’t let me fall into Turkish hands.”
She smiled an enigmatic smile. She said, “Now get this loud and clear. If it even looks like you’re going to, Inky, I will handle it. Trust me.”
I fell back on my pillow. I pretended to be mollified. But, oh, how well I knew the chanciness of life. I was going to have to be awfully alert if I was going to live through this.
Danger was in the wind!
PART FIFTY-EIGHT
Chapter 3
We fled through the night and when the day dawned we were far out in the Aegean and the only sign of Greece was a rocky reef on the starboard being beaten by the waves as we passed it by.
A swell was running and up ahead lowering clouds spoke of rain.
Steadfastly, I kept to my bunk as we plowed to the southeast. The slight lift of the deck from time to time was, to me, a threat: the ship at any moment might really start to roll.
I ventured on deck in a bathrobe. It was strange: nobody was hounding me to exercise. Some subtle change had come over the ship: A sailor hosing down a deck did not smile or speak.
The vast dome of the sky lay upon an empty circle of sea. I crept up a ladder toward the bridge, fearfully peering off our port bow to be sure there was no sign of Turkey. I did not enter into the enclosed pilothouse but stood in the wing.
A movement caught my eye: the switch of a ponytail.
Teenie. She was sitting in the captain’s pilot chair looking forward through the bridge windows. There was no sign of Captain Bitts. It was very strange: had she taken over the ship?
The steersman glanced my way and I retreated.
I knew it would not be until night when we would come close to Turkey but still, it made me nervous just to feel that it was there to the east, waiting like some monster of the deep to devour me. Eerie. The feeling was almost palpable. In imagination I could hear the snap of its teeth that would be followed by a grinding sound as it chewed me to bits.
I went back to my bedchamber. A feeling of dread was crawling in my bones.
Enemies.
I had enemies, that was sure.
I began to doubt Madison’s theory of why we had had to leave that port. I knew down deep it must be some foe of mine who thirsted for revenge.
Idleness permits the world to fill with hostile shadows. With sudden resolution, I decided to think this thing through. I must take an orderly approach to still the queasy fear.
I got a piece of paper, a pen and, knees under me on the bed, began to make a list.
Who was behind this Thessalonica attack? I began to write.
The unknown assassin? Lombar had set him on me to kill me if I failed. Had he slipped across to Greece to do us in?
The Countess Krak? It went without saying that she would murder me most painfully if she really knew I had stolen her yacht and, all the time, had been behind these assaults on Heller. Gods knew, she was capable of anything!
Heller? Did he have connections I didn’t know about? Even though he and Babe Corleone were estranged, had he set some Mafioso upon my trail from Palermo on?
Torpedo Fiaccola? No, the diseased necrophile was very dead. Gunsalmo Silva? No. He was dead, also. So that made two I could scratch from my enemy list.
Meeley, my old landlady on Voltar? Ske, my old airbus driver? Bawtch, chief clerk of Section 451? No, I had given them counterfeit money and they would have been caught and executed by now. The two forgers who had falsified the “Royal proclamations” the Countess Krak had somewhere and was counting on? No. They were not only on Voltar, they were also dead at my orders.
The Countess Krak? Had she somehow set in motion this attack upon the yacht?
The ghost of the old man with fleas that I had killed at Limnos? That island was over there not too far away and it was well known that ghosts existed mainly for revenge. When I became a ghost, if I did not get promptly routed to some hell, I knew I would want revenge. Yes, that old man with fleas was a likely candidate. He had been a Greek with Turkish connections and hadn’t he already gotten some revenge by infesting me with fleas? I put a heavy underscore below his name on the enemy list.
Adora Pinch Bey and Candy Licorice Bey, my two bigamous wives in New York? No, they couldn’t have organized that demonstration in Thessalonica, for their skill in spectacles was all confined to the sexual sector. Furthermore, they did not speak Greek.
Mudur Zengin, head of the Piastre National Bank of Istanbul? He had been very hostile the last time I saw him and now, with all these yacht expenses, he must be running very short of my funds. His bank had guaranteed the Squeeza credit card bills and maybe he couldn’t pay them anymore. He might be doing it to get revenge. He had the power and the connections to cause a commotion in Thessalonica.
Aha! Nurse Bildirjin’s father! He must have been tearing around for months waving a shotgun, slavering to ventilate the man who had impregnated his daughter!
He was a prominent physician in Turkey. These medical types stick together and he must have Greek connections galore! He must have heard I was in Thessalonica!
And yes! How easy it would be for him to go into a conspiracy with all those women that Ahmed, the taxi driver, and Ters, the old chauffeur, had violated just so they could blame it all on me. These two offenders
I had, of course, blown up, but the women were very much alive.
Maybe some of those violated women had become pregnant! Nurse Bildirjin’s father, as a medical man renowned and powerful in Afyon, would be in a position to know this.
A thought struck me. I had not looked closely at those Greek demonstrators. Were they really those Turkish women in disguise? Well, I didn’t have to know that.