McGarvey looked up. “What is it?”
“Take a look,” the Texan said, motioning him over.
McGarvey joined him at the fireplace. Littel had found a diamond necklace in the ashes. It was Elizabeth’s. McGarvey recognized the setting. It had been his mother’s.
The only personal thing he’d ever gotten from her, the only thing he’d ever had to remind him of the side of his mother that he’d always loved.
But the setting and the necklace itself, both 18-carat gold, were intact, which meant the necklace hadn’t been subjected to any heat. Yet the diamond was black with burned creosote or pine tar.
“It’s my daughter’s,” he told Littel, who nodded.
“I know. I saw it in a file photo. I recognized it right away. They were here.”
McGarvey pocketed it as Marquand appeared at the balcony above. He looked up. “Have your men found anything yet?”
“Not yet,” the Action Service colonel said. “You?”
“Nothing,” McGarvey replied, conscious of Litters eyes on him. “I don’t think they were ever here.”
Chapter 43
A green and white private medevac ambulance pulled up on the quai beside the 208-foot Greek cargo ship MV Thaxos at two in the morning. A thick, oily fog that smelled of the sea, wet cordage, spilled bunker oil and raw sewage blanketed the low island city of Venice. The only sounds were machinery noises from the ship’s generator, and somewhere in the distance a bell buoy.
“Turn off the lights,” Spranger said from the back of the ambulance, and their driver Peter Diirenmatt switched them off, but left the engine running.
“There go the lights on the bridge,” Liese said a few moments later. She’d ridden in front since the Italian border beyond the Col du Mont Cenis above Torino. All of them were dressed in white medical garb.
They hadn’t been delayed at all. The French border people had simply waved them through, and the Italians had clucked sympathetically, with one eye checking the paperwork of the two Yugoslavian cancer patients, and with the other looking up Liese’s short skirt.
“Okay, there’s Bruno,” Liese said. “They’re coming down now.”
“As soon as we’re unloaded, get rid of the ambulance,” Spranger told Diirenmatt.
“We sail when you return.”
“See that you wait. The French can’t be far behind us, and I have no wish to remain here in Venice waiting for them.”
“Just be quick about it,” Spranger said.
Liese came back and helped him release the straps holding Kathleen and Elizabeth on their portable gurneys. They’d both been heavily sedated since shortly before they’d left the chalet, but that had been more than twenty hours ago, and Elizabeth was beginning to show signs that she was coming around.
They were dressed in hospital gowns, and the hair had been shaved from their heads, their scalps marked with surgical pen. The extra touch had been a wasted effort, because the border police had not asked to have a look at the patients.
“They’ll be angry when they wake up and see what we’ve done,” Liese said. “Especially the young one.”
“It won’t matter,” Spranger replied. “They’ll be dead in a couple of days in any event.”
“Such a pity,” Liese said, brushing her fingertips across the nipples of Elizabeth’s breasts.
“Your appetites will be your undoing one day.”
She looked up and smiled coyly. “But in the meantime…? She let it trail off.
The ambulance’s rear door opened and Bruno Lessing was there with two crewmen from the ship. “Any trouble crossing the border?”
“No,” Spranger said. “How about here?”
“We have our clearance papers, and the radar set is up to date. The captain assures me we can sail tonight.”
“Good. As soon as they’re aboard and Peter gets rid of this ambulance, we’ll leave.”
The Thaxos’ crewmen lifted Kathleen and Elizabeth out of the ambulance and carried the unconscious women up the ladder aboard the ship. Liese went with them, while Spranger and Lessing went directly up to the bridge where the captain was waiting.
His name was Andreas Bozzaris, and he was a tough little Greek whose primary source of income was arms smuggling from the continent of Europe across to Africa. He’d done work in the past for the STASI, transporting people to and from the Black Sea.
He was nobody’s fool, but he was fearless, and his loyalty went strictly to the highest bidder.
“Ernst. I thought by now that the Germans would have lined you up against the wall and shot you.”
“Would you mourn my passing?”
The Greek laughed. “No, but my bank account would.”
“Are we ready to sail?”
“We have been for the past twelve hours.”
“Then make your final preparations, Captain. As soon as Peter comes aboard we’ll leave.”
“For Izmir?”
“Yes,” Spranger said, smiling faintly. “For Izmir.”
Elizabeth regained consciousness first, and as she awoke she sat up and swung her feet over the edge of the narrow cot. She felt groggy, her lips thick, her mouth and throat extremely dry.
She was in a small cabin, aboard what she immediately understood was a ship. They were moving, she could hear the engine noises, and feel the bows rising to meet the swells, and it was nighttime. She could see the blackness outside through the single porthole.
Her mother was huddled under a thin brown blanket on a cot against the opposite bulkhead.
She was still out, but something was different about her. Something wrong, and as Elizabeth tried to work it out in her still drug-befuddled brain, she reached up and touched the top of her head, which she suddenly realized was cold.
She had no hair. She was bald. And so was her mother. The bastards had shaved them!
She shoved aside her blanket and got to her feet. She stood swaying for a moment, trying to keep her balance as a wave of nausea washed over her, trying to work out in her mind what was happening to them.
They’d been drugged back at the chalet, but not before she’d managed to hide her necklace in the fireplace. The Swiss or somebody would find it sooner or later, and she could only hope that her father would be notified, and that he would recognize the clue for what it was.
It was a long string of ifs, but they’d been lucky overhearing their kidnappers talking about their plans. It had been their only mistake so far.
She tottered across to the other bunk and checked her mother, who was unconscious but seemed only to be sleeping peacefully. Someone had drawn circles and arrows on her mother’s scalp with a pen, making her look bizarre.
Again her hand went to her own scalp. It had been made to appear as if they were hospital patients. Probably to get them across a border without questions. They were no longer in France.
She went to the porthole and looked outside, but there was very little to see. Mostly darkness and fog, and perhaps a vague glow off in the indistinct distance.
Armand was dead. There was little doubt in her mind. Poor, silly Armand who’d wanted to have an affair with her. A Parisian whose gallantry had cost him his life.
Elizabeth heard the cabin door open and she turned as Liese Egk came in with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
