He was standing ten feet away, looking as unmoved as an undertaker figuring how much to mark up the florist's bill. There was a liberal sprinkling of plaster dust on his shoulders, a streak of something dark along his jaw; the slicked-back hair was a trifle ruffled, like a bird in a high wind. But the gun held steady as a tombstone. I saw his finger start to tighten—and the floor picked that moment to rock sideways.
Sethys staggered, put out a hand to catch himself; the gun went off, and the iron radiator beside me rang like a bell. Dust was spurting from the cracks between the dark-varnished floorboards. Sethys backed, braced himself with his feet apart, took careful aim at my second shirt button—
A section of the ceiling sagged, dropped suddenly, obscuring his view. He stepped sideways, started between the obstruction and the wall. There was a sound of tearing metal. Part of the fallen framing swung around, and a projecting stub of a broken joist stabbed out, caught him low in the stomach, thrust him back against the wall. He stood there, still neat, still unhurried; then his arms went out. The gun fell, bounced away and disappeared through a gap in the floor. He made a sound like a rusted nail being drawn from an oak plank. Then the rusting bulk of a radiator dropped out of the hole in the ceiling. When the dust cleared, Sethys lay face down, half under the radiator, with six inches of splintered timber projecting from his back.
It was no fun checking his pockets, but I did the best I could, brought out a much-folded map from inside his coat. A colorful spread published by the Oceanographic Institute at Woods Hole, the map showed the oceans of the world complete with bottom contours and the locations of ancient wrecks—as out of date now as last year's almanac. A mark on it caught my eye—a loose circle drawn around the island of Crete. It was a place that had been named earlier, by Zablun, the little man with the disappearing coin trick. It was an interesting thought, but just then another section of ceiling fell, close enough to seem personal. Research would have to wait; it was time to get out. I tossed the map aside and headed for the open air.
The house was coming apart fast. I picked a path through broken walls to the stairwell, jumped down bare seconds before the ceiling let go with a sound like Golden Gate Bridge falling into the bay. The front of the building had fallen outward; I climbed across ruins toward the red glow of the fire across the way. The remains of the front door frame blocked the way; I started around, and a glint of green caught my eye. Something fluttered in the draft—a strip of cloth caught on the broken timber. I pulled it free, recognized the strange metallic fabric of Ricia's garment. It had been cut, not torn.
I wanted to think she had dissolved our partnership—run out on me when the going got rough, but a little voice back of my left ear said it was not so—and the strip of cloth proved it. She had waited—until Sethys showed up. His goons had taken her, while he waited around to clean me up when I arrived. For all my efforts, the girl was back where she had started.
I tossed the scrap of cloth aside and went on out into the roar of doomsday.
The boathouse was still standing; inside, my boat was floating high, looking ready and efficient. I got the doors open, saw strange, choppy whitecaps sliding across the black water—moving away from shore. The engines caught immediately; I backed the big cat out, brought her about, gunned toward open water. The big bow lights trained on the water dead ahead illuminated floating trees, half submerged roofs with shingles awash, the bodies of cows, a dead man. I rode out three big waves that overtook me, traveling fast from the west. They sluiced down over my deck like Niagaras, left me half drowned but still aboard. The boat did not seem to mind; she kept her transoms to the wind, came up purring smoothly as an outboard on a freshwater pond. The white crests of the big waves rushed on ahead into darkness. Behind me, the lights of Miami gradually sank down, winked out. I did not know whether I was losing the city over the horizon, or if it was sliding down under the waves. I hoped Ricia was clear—free or captive. Drowning is a bad way to go. I was remembering the scared, hopeful, trusting look on her face when I had left her alone the last time. She had put herself in my hands—and I was running out.
But damn it—what could a man do when the town was falling to pieces around him? I had myself to keep alive, too. I thought of the ring she had given me—some kind of token of trust. To hell with rings. I tugged at it; it seemed to tingle on my finger like a reminder of duties undone, faith betrayed. The harder I pulled, the harder it jammed itself against my knuckle. All right, I would get rid of it later, and forget the waif who had given it to me.
Meanwhile I had a course to chart. I could swing north, cruise the coast until I found a suitable harbor, rejoin the mainstream of human society—such as it was. Somewhere in the mountains I would find a nice town built on rock that had been stable for a few hundred millions years where I could ride out the cataclysm until the smoke cleared and the glow went out of the night sky and life picked up where it had left off. . . .
I was thinking about the girl again, about the cold-eyed men closing in on her, breaking down the door, dragging her away; hurting her—
Damn them! Damn her, too! Where would they be by now? Not in Miami—not if I was any judge of survivorship. Sethys had had a bad break, but his boys would be in the clear. As to where they would go. . . .
Crete, the name popped into my mind. Sethys had marked it on his map. Zablun had mentioned it; the coin came from there. I took it out, held it in the binnacle light. The dull gold winked at me; the figure of the bird with spread wings seemed to be poised, ready to leap off into flight to unknown lands.
Crete. It was not much to go on—maybe nothing at all; but the name seemed to tug at me. It was a long haul, but barring typhoons at sea, I could circle the globe on the supplies I had aboard. And it was not as though I had a destination. . . .
I flicked on the North Atlantic chart, checked the compass, and plugged in a course three points north of east. I was laughing at myself; I felt like a fool. But in an odd way, I felt better, too.
The route I had charted through the channel north of Great Abaco Island turned out to be a sloping ridge of black mud from which a salty ocean breeze blew an odor of broken drains. It was dawn before I found a clear passage north of Great Bahama, now a mountain range on a new subcontinent, a series of green peaks raised above rolling plains of stinking gray sands, shining in the ominous dawn. Far away on my port beam I saw shapes resting on the former sea bottom: the rusted hulks of drowned steamers, the gaunt ribs of wooden sailing vessels, sunk long ago.
Long, businesslike swells were passing in under my stern at fifteen-second intervals, rolling in on the long beaches with a sustained hiss like a forest fire. I quartered across them, holding my easterly course again. Four hours' run took me past the position from which Bermuda should have been a dark smudge on the port horizon. I could not sight it—either my navigation was off or another nice piece of real estate had gone to the bottom.
It was a long haul then, booming along at high speed across open water under skies that were as near clear as any on the planet. The sun was filtered to a flat red disc by a high stratum of stringy smog; a low haze layer carried the familiar hot-stone and sulphur odor. Five hundred miles at sea I was still brushing cinders off the map screen and picking them out of my mouth and eyes. The deck was crunchy with a drift of tiny black fragments of lava. I sighted drifting trees, boxes, rubbish of every description. It was like sailing on and on through an endless scene of shipwreck, but still it was the same sea I had always known. It had weathered other eras of planet-wide disaster, and when this was over, man and his cities might be gone, but the ocean would endure.
My rations were not bad—a big improvement over the cans I had been opening lately. There was smoked turkey, artichoke hearts, fresh-water prawns, plenty of Scottish wheat bread, a variety of fresh-frozen vegetables, even some irradiated apples. The small freezer yielded an ample supply of ice cubes to chill my whiskey, and my unknown benefactor's taste in wines left nothing to be desired: I had a chilled Dom Perignon with my gammon and eggs, a Spanish rosé for lunch, a Chateau Lafitte-Rothschilde with the evening's rare beef and crepes suzette. The diet kept me in a mild alcoholic fog, a state that had my full approval.
The boat's radio produced nothing but a crackle like New Year's Day in Chinatown, but there was a tape system aboard that boomed out Wagner and Sibelius and the jeweled sounds of deFalla and Borodin while the sun burned red across the sky, sank in a blaze like a continent afire.
The steady wind blowing through open windows had cleared the odor of death and decay from the cabin, but I brought up a folding bunk, clamped it to the roof of the deckhouse and slept under the open sky the first night. In the morning the drift of soot that covered me sent me below again.
On the third day the wind shifted to the south; the sky darkened with big black rain clouds; then the downpour started. It seemed to clear the air, though. By late afternoon the sun was out, looking more like its old self than I had seen it for months.
An hour before sunset I sighted Madeira, a misty rise of green far to the north of my course. At dusk the African coast was in view, looking normal except for an expanse of glistening mud flats that the charts did not show.
I sailed north during the night, passed lights that I identified as Casablanca and Rabat, reached Gibraltar at dawn. The famous rock was gone, and a new channel that I estimated at twenty miles wide stretched ahead into the open water of the Mediterranean. A fifteen-knot current poured out through the strait; I bucked it for more than two hours before I made still water under the cap above Tetuan.
The town looked peaceful—after four days at sea, I needed a drink ashore. There was a rough-and-ready wharf scabbed to heaped rock by the shore. I tied up to it, waved at a lean Moroccan who came down to stare at me.
"I need fresh water," I told him. He nodded, led me up the slope to a collapsing shed largely supported by a chipped Pepsi Cola sign. Inside, a fat woman with bracelets to the elbow gave me a warm Spanish beer across a bar made from a boat's mahogany foredeck, stood by warding off flies with a red plastic swatter. She talked to me in bad Spanish while I drank, telling me her troubles. She had plenty, but no worse than mine.
The man came in with two boys.
"Eesa nice boat, Señor," one of the lads told me. "Where you go een eet?"
"I'm headed for Crete," I told him.
They gabbled together for a while, using their hands to help them over the rough spots. I heard "Kreta" several times, and "Sicilia." Then the boy wagged his head at me.
"No sail to Kreta, Señor. No ees passage. Ees all"—he made lifting motions—"dry land between."
I quizzed them a little further, got a reasonably coherent story. Sicily was no longer an island; its southern tip now joined Cape Bon, and its northern extremity was one with the mainland of Italy. So much for an uneventful boat ride. I gave them a fistful of worthless money, went back down and cast off. At the last minute the old man hurried down with a jug of vin ordinaire; I tossed him a package of cigarettes and pushed off.
They were right. I made it through the strait south of Sardinia dragging my keels, while the air grew fouler with every mile. Another half day's run over shoal water brought me into Naples harbor, still solidly at sea level under a blanket of smoke through which the glare of Vesuvius was only a bright haze. Wearing my respirator now, I tied up at three P.M. in darkness like an eclipse, within half an hour had sold my rig—no questions asked—to a quick-eyed man who looked like a Martian in an antique gas mask and the filthiest white suit on the planet. The deal was not good, but I got what I needed—a fairly sound-looking late model Turino ground car. I would have preferred to store the boat, but property not under armed guard was an ephemeral thing in Naples in the best of times.
I transferred two cases of rations from the boat to the car. The buyer got ready to protest when I took the cased guns, but I cut him off short; he chose not to argue the point. An hour later I was through the city, on the road leading east to Taranto. From there, my new business contact had assured me, I could ride the air cushion across some seventy miles of former sea bottom to the Greek mainland. He did not know about Crete, but his guess was I could make it all the way dry-shod.
The striking feature of the country—aside from the midnight pall from the line of volcanoes linking Vesuvius and Etna—was the absence of people. Even in Naples, they had been sparse; here there were none. It was easy to see why: even with the car closed and the filters going full blast, the air was as thick as a London pea-souper. I ploughed ahead, holding my new acquisition at fifty through the mountains, opened her up to a shaky ninety-five across the plains.
At a little town called Lecce on what had been Italy's east coast my Neapolitan friend's guess was confirmed: the Strait of Otranto was a rolling sun-hardened expanse of rock-dotted clay. The light was better here; the hills seemed to be holding back some of the smoke from the volcanoes. The crossing took two hours of eye straining through the murky twilight; then on higher ground I headed south, threaded a precarious route among broken hills. At sunset I reached a swampy stretch on the far side of which the island of Crete was a dim line of light. I found a sheltered stretch of former beach under a line of giant weed-covered rocks, pulled the car over and slept until dawn.
The Cretan shore was rocky, dry, parched, a landscape in Hell under the garish colors of sunrise seen through smoke. I found a road a mile inland, followed it to a town marked Khania on my map. It was an impoverished cluster of handmade hovels packed close along a cobbled street that led by a circuitous route up a hill from which I caught a sudden dramatic view of the modern city below, most of its church spires still intact, its streets busy with commerce.
There was a town square, a raised block, walled and turfed, where twisted dark trees brooded over benches and a small fountain from which no water flowed. I followed the imperative gestures of a small policeman in tan shorts, parked before a veranda-like promenade with chipped stone columns held upright by timber truss work. Small merchants hawked dubious wares on the cracked pavement, and busy pigeons, unconcerned by the unnatural darkness of the morning sky, flapped under the high overhang, or pecked among the hurrying feet of the shoppers. There was an air of hectic activity, like a beach town before a hurricane. The wind, from the north now, had a chill edge to it not native to these latitudes. The atmospheric dust was making its presence felt, now that fall was coming on.
There was a glowing neon rectangle suspended over the walk half a block from where I left the car. Inside, the long bar looked calm and dignified, like a judicial bench. A short, dark-faced man in a neat white jacket gave the polished top a swipe as I took a stool.
"Brandy," I said.
He stooped, brought a squat brown bottle up from under the bar, poured. I raised it to him, took a solid belt. It went down like cool smoke.
"That's Metaxa, Mac," the barman said. "You don't take that from the neck."
"My mistake. Join me."
He got out another glass, filled it. We clicked glasses and sipped.
"Just in from down south?" he asked me.
I shook my head. He didn't press the point. The door opened, let in baleful light, closed again. Someone slid onto the next stool. I glanced his way in the mirror, saw a square, sun-blackened face, pale hair in a Kennedy bang, a neck like a concrete piling. I felt my face breaking into a grin; I nodded to the Brooklyn Greek.
"A drink for Mr. Carmody," I said.
The man beside me swung around quickly; then a smile lit up his face like a floodlight. A hand the size of a catcher's mitt grabbed mine, tried to tear it off at the wrist.
We spent ten minutes remembering our past; then I shot a look at the bartender, busy at the far end of the bar. What I had to say next was private.
"I'm not here on a pleasure cruise, Carmody," I told him. "I'm doing a little amateur investigative work."
"Must be something big, to bring you this far from the joy circuit."
"Big enough. A friend of mine's been killed—or kidnapped."
"Know who did it?"
"Yes and no. I know who, I think—but not why."
"And you think you'll find out in Crete?"
I got out the gold piece, slid it across to him. He picked it up, frowned at it, flipped it over to look at the reverse. The barman was coming back.
"Nick's all right," Carmody said so softly I was not sure I heard him. He was squinting at the engraved bird. "This come from around here?"
"That's the story."
"How does this tie to your friend?"
"I'm not sure. But it's all I have to go on."
"Where'd you get it?"
"If you've got a few free minutes, I'll tell you."
He finished his drink with a flip of the wrist, stood. "Where you're concerned, pal, it's all free. Let's grab a table."
He picked a quiet position in the corner with a good view of both doors. Carmody had always been a man who liked to know who was coming and going. The barman brought refills. While we worked on them, I told the whole story, from Greenleaf to Sethys' last big scene in the collapsing hotel in Miami.
"I don't know whether she got out, or was nabbed by Sethys' boys," I finished. "If they got her, I'm pretty sure she's dead; that's the way they operate. But maybe not."
"This sailor," Carmody said, "you get his name, or rank?"
"No, but he must have been pretty well up the ladder—commander or better, I'd guess."
"Any holes in this story of his—holes you're sure about?"
"Aside from the idea of a Heidelberg man sporting a ray gun, no. The official story was that Admiral Hayle was lost in space, that the two ships he mentioned had been sunk in one of the early eruptions—but that could have been just a cover for the operation."
"What about his getaway in a lifeboat—possible?"
"No worse than my crossing the Atlantic in a thirty-foot cat."
"You knocked off three of these birds in the hick town; any reason to think there might have been more of them around?"
"I don't know. I didn't see anybody, no signs of a tail."
"Seems like this guy Sethys wised to you pretty quick; you think he was tipped?"
"Maybe."
"Could the girl have been a plant?"
I thought about it. "She could have been—but she wasn't."
"Any idea why they high-graded your gold piece and gave you one just like it?"
"Maybe this one's counterfeit." I clinked it on the table. Carmody picked it up, weighed it on his palm, fingered it, tried a fingernail on it. "That's gold," he said. He studied the design, frowning at it in the subdued light.
"I don't think I've seen one just like this before, Mal, but I think I can tell you what that bird is. A wild goose."
"Probably," I took the coin back. Nick came up behind him, soft-footed as a hungry lynx.
"How about it, Nick?" Carmody said. "Who's the man to see about old gold?"
"Hurous. Lives in a shack a couple miles east. He might know."
"Yeah, he might at that." Carmody looked at me. "Come on, Mal. Let's go pay a call before cocktail hour rolls around."
The road came to an end a quarter of a mile from the spot we were headed for; it was a stiff climb up a goat trail to the hut perched on a cliff edge under a lone olive tree. Hurous was home, lying on an iron cot in the shade of a one-vine grape arbor. He was sixtyish, unshaven, with small black eyes, a round, bald head, a roll of fat bulging a soiled undershirt packed with hair like a burst mattress. He sat up on one elbow when he saw us coming, reached under the cot for a nickel-plated .44 revolver as big as a tomahawk.
"Put the hog leg back where it was, Hurous," Carmody said easily. "It's a friendly call. A friendly business call."
"Yeah?" The man's voice was thick as a clogged drain.
"This is Mr. Smith. He wants to know where he could pick up some souvenirs. Old coins, for example."
"What you think, I run a souvenir stand?" Hurous lowered the gun.
"He likes big ones—the size of a five-drachma piece, say," Carmody amplified.
Hurous was looking me over like a skeptical buyer studying a secondhand slave. "Who's this fella?" He had the heavy accent of a tri-D spy.
"Mr. Smith, remember? He's a big man in the chicken business. Likes money with birds on it. He heard you might put him in line for some."
"Birds. What kind money got birds, hah? You try to pull my foot?"
"Show him a sample, Mr. Smith." Carmody flicked his eyelid in a wink. I got out my lucky piece, passed it over. Hurous let it lie on his fat palm; I thought maybe his puffed face stiffened a little.
"I don't see nothing like this before," he said. "Take it. You come to the wrong place. You waste my time."
Carmody reached for the gold piece, tossed it and caught it; the fat man's eyes followed.
"Mr. Smith is prepared to pay well for another like this, Hurous. Enough to set you up for the year."
Hurous' eyes darted a look at the blackened sky. "What year?" he growled. "Tomorrow maybe the whole island fall in the sea. What's a year to me?" He flopped back on the dirty cot, thrust the big gun under it. "You get off my place now, leave me be. I got nothing for you."
Carmody stepped forward, got a grip on the side of the bed's metal frame, heaved it over on its side. Hurous yelled, hit the ground with a heavy thump, came up reaching for his boot. Carmody scooped up the .44 with his left hand, dangled it negligently by the trigger guard.
"Let's not horse around, Hurous," he said genially. "Let's do business."
The fat man had snatched a slim-bladed dirk from its sheath on the inside of his shin. He held it point outward toward Carmody, the other hand spread as if it were a shield.
"I cut your heart out." He started around the end of the cot. Carmody did not move; he watched the man come, smiling lazily.
"You make a pass at me with that hatpin and I'll carve my initials on your jaw," he said gently.
Hurous stopped, stood, legs apart, his face a dull purplish shade. "You get offa my land." Then he said something in Greek. I had the impression it was uncomplimentary.
"Why get yourself roughed up?" Carmody inquired reasonably. "I didn't come up here for the view."
Hurous gathered in the bubbles at the corners of his mouth with a blackish tongue, spat at my feet. "Take this snooper with you."
There was a sudden move, a pow! like a cracked whip, and Hurous was lying on his back while Carmody stood over him, rubbing his palm on his thigh.
"Give, Hurous," he said.
The Greek rolled quickly, came to his feet, charged the big man head down. Carmody bounced him back with a casual swing of his right arm, followed up, twisted the man's arm behind him.
"We're wasting time," he said briskly. "Let's cut short the preliminaries. You spill or I break it. Clear?" He jerked the arm. Hurous yelped.
"Check around, Mr. Smith," Carmody said.
I gave him a look that felt stiff on my face, went inside the shack, looked around at stacked rubbish, broken odds and ends of furniture. The place smelled like the locker room at the Railroad Men's Y. I poked at a chipped teapot, lifted the lid on a cigar box filled with scraps of paper and pencil stubs, went back out.
"If there's anything in there it will have to stay there," I said. "Let's go, Carmody."
"Last chance before the fracture," Carmody twisted Hurous' arm another three degrees. The Greek went to his knees, made a noise like a rusty hinge.
"Rassias," he squealed. "Fisherman."
Carmody pushed him away, watched the man pick himself up painfully.
"What's his address?"
Hurous was working his arm experimentally. "Ten cees," he said.
I got out my wallet, handed over the paper money.
"He got a place out west of town," Hurous said. "Ask the fishermen, they tell you. You know you almost bust my arm?"
Carmody broke the .44, took out the chunky cartridges, tossed them away, dropped the gun on the ground.
"Let's go, Mr. Smith," he said.
Back at the car, I gave him a sideways look.
"You're a hard man, Carmody."
He gave me a one-sided grin. "Hurous and I are old pals. He sold me to the mainland police once. He didn't even get a good price. I was clean as a hound's tooth, as it happened. He's been waiting around for me to call ever since. Expected me to cut his throat. Old Greek custom. They can't figure us foreigners out. Right now he's counting his money and laughing. I had to bend him a little; he figures this squares things."
"Swell," I said. "If there's anything I don't need it's a new enemy."