“I’ll do it alone,” McGarvey cut him off. “It’s my fight, not yours.” “You heard the man,” Lipton said. He stuck out his hand and McGarvey took it. “Good luck.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant, but I prefer to make my own.”
Chapter 52
The narrow stairway that led five hundred feet down to the stone dock from the monastery had been cut from the living rock late in the seventeenth century, and countless pairs of sandal-shod feet had worn grooves into the steps. It followed the inside of a huge crack in the cliff face that wasn’t visible from the sea.
Durenmatt and the other three men were huddled out of the rain just within a ten-yard-wide overhang. A starlight scope set up on a tripod was trained out to sea.
“Any sign of him yet?” Spranger asked when he reached the bottom.
The four men looked up, startled. They hadn’t heard him coming. Nobody said a thing.
“How far off is he?” Spranger asked. He was excited now that he was about to come face-to-face with McGarvey.
“Something’s gone wrong, General,” Durenmatt said worriedly.
“What are you talking about?”
“The Thaxos went down, but the fishing vessel is heading away from, not toward us.”
“Impossible!”
“See for yourself, Herr General,” Lessing said, stepping away from the starlight scope.
Spranger hesitated for a moment. He didn’t want to believe what he was hearing.
He couldn’t believe it.
McGarvey’s ex-wife and daughter were here. The man knew they were here. He had to respond. He had to come here to rescue them.
“Nothing from the boat?” he asked.
“If Karamanlis and that other fool had been successful we would have heard from them by now,” Durenmatt said. He glanced out toward the dark horizon. “If that sonofabitch is going for help we’ll be cornered here.”
“The chopper is ready to fly.”
“Pardon me, General, but if the CIA puts pressure on the Greek government we might be grounded.”
Spranger forced himself to calm down. This had become too personal, he decided. McGarvey was not the dark man, he was nothing more than an ex-CIA field officer. A good one, an assassin, but just another man for all of it. An impediment to the main plan, nothing more. And he would be eliminated tonight, one way or another.
Looking through the starlight scope he felt just a moment’s unease, recalling his conversation with Yegenni Radvonska in Rome. “I’d go one-on-one with him,” Spranger had told the KGB resident. “You would lose,” the man said.
At first he could make out little or nothing in the drizzle and mist.
“To the left,” Lessing prompted at his shoulder.
Then he had it. The Dhodhdni was definitely heading away from them, back toward the north point of the island.
Spranger slowly swept the powerful night-vision scope across the open water to the approximate position where the Thorns had gone down in two hundred feet of water.
The scope was Russian-made, but the light-intensifying electronic circuitry had come from M.I.T.
There was nothing to be seen in the darkness. But the scope was just a machine and could not perform miracles. McGarvey could be out there in the water, perhaps in a rubber raft, heading this way.
He swept the scope back toward the departing Dhodhoni, which had altered course to clear the headland. Somebody had to be piloting it.
McGarvey was returning to Thira.
Spranger straightened up. “He’s returning to port,” he said.
“Let’s go to the chopper now, General,” Diirenmatt said.
“Are you frightened of this man? All of you, against one man?”
“After what the Russians told us, and what he did in Tokyo, and now…? Durenmatt let it trail off.
“He’s going for help, Herr General,” Lessing said.
Everyone was looking at Spranger. He shook his head. “He won’t ask for help. He’ll show up in Thira, and then come here by land.”
“Call the port. Warn Theotokis.”
“I think not,” Spranger smiled and shook his head. “The Greek owns this island. He’s told us often enough. Let’s leave it to him. If he kills McGarvey for us, well and good. If not, we’ll do the job ourselves when he shows up here.”
Durenmatt started to protest, but Spranger held him off.
“He will come here, Peter. Tonight. And we will kill him. I don’t want a big fuss made in town.”
Again Durenmatt looked out to sea. “The sooner we are off this island and safely in Athens where we can disperse, the better I will feel.”
“We’ll all feel better when we’ve taken care of this irritation,” Spranger said, and he ignored the odd look the other man gave him. “I want one man down here, and the rest up top.” He too glanced out to the dark sea. “He’s received a two-or three-hour stay of execution, and given us a rest, nothing more.”
The only light in the small cell came from the open door to the corridor. Liese Egk, wearing a dark, one-piece nylon jumpsuit, the front zipper pulled low, leaned against the doorframe, an indolent expression on her face. She’d been standing there, unmoving, unspeaking, for the past ten minutes, and Kathleen, huddled on her bunk, had become agitated. Elizabeth, however, standing by the small window, understood that the woman wanted to provoke them. It was a game.
“What do you want?” Kathleen asked in a shaky voice, finally breaking the silence.
Liese grinned, her teeth perfectly even, dazzlingly white. “Your daughter. She and I are lovers, didn’t you know?”
Kathleen’s hands went to her mouth. She was shivering.
“The drugs have cleared out of my system,” Elizabeth said, matching the German woman’s grin. It was bravado, but the gesture made her feel a little better.
Liese’s smile broadened. “I’m glad to hear it, little girl. I like a partner with, what do you call it? With spunk.”
“You’ll need to kill me first.”
“Elizabeth!” her mother cried.
“Not you,” Liese said. She took a nine-inch stiletto from under her jumpsuit at the nape of her neck. “But if I killed your mother…
If I threatened to carve my name on her chest then you might cooperate. Maybe?”
“My God,” Kathleen screeched. “Are you a monster? Are you crazy?”
Liese eyed her calmly. “Yes. I think I probably am both, and more. So, you see, I wouldn’t hesitate to carry out my threat.”
Elizabeth stepped away from the window, placing herself between her mother and Liese.
“You’ll have to go through me first.”
“Little girl, you can’t imagine how easy that would be for me.”
Spranger entered the great hall section of the father superior’s residence and was headed for the stairs to the dormitory area where the women were being held when he heard his name being called. The sound came from a distance, distorted.
He stopped in mid-stride and turned around, cocking his head to listen.
“Spranger, I’m coming for you.”
His walkie-talkie lay on the table, its processing light winking red.
“Spranger, do you copy? I’m coming for you.”
It was McGarvey. Spranger cautiously approached the table. He’d never heard the man’s voice, he’d never
