painfully, as best he could, over the steep trail through the ruins without complaint He had also watched the bitterness, the hopelessness that took and held Pitt’s face after Gunn announced the disappearance of the mystery plane. There was something ominous about Pitt’s grim features and unmoving concentration.
Giordino wondered dimly whether Pitt was driving himself with a sense of duty or with an insane compulsion for retaliation.
“You’re sure this is the right way. It might be simpler to… “
“This is the only way,” Pitt interrupted. “The Albatros wasn’t eaten by a whale, yet it vanished without leaving a stray nut or bolt. Knowing the identity of the pilot could have settled a number of loose ends.
We have no choice. The only course that lies open is to search the villa.”
“I still think we should take a squad of Air Police,” Giordino said morosely, “and crash in through the front door.”
Pitt looked at him, then looked once more over his shoulder up the stairway. He knew exactly how Al Giordino felt, for he felt the same way himself… frustrated, unsure, grasping at every string that offered a small touch of hope for obtaining an answer, no matter how small, to the strange events of the past few days. Much depended on the next hour whether they could enter the villa unseen, whether they found evidence against von Till, whether Teri was a willful member of her uncle’s, as yet unknown, scheme. Pitt glanced at Giordino again saw the set brown eyes, the grim mouth, the knotted hands, saw all the signs of an intense mental concentration; concentration on the possible dangers that lay ahead. There was no better man to have on your side when the odds were long.
“I can’t seem to pound it through your thick head,” he said quietly. “This is Greek soil. We have no legal right to Invade a private residence. I couldn’t begin to think of the problems it would cause our government if we broke in von Till’s door. As it is now, if we’re caught by the Greek authorities, we’ll play the roles of a couple of crewmen from the First Attempt who wandered into the underground passage during a guided tour to sleep off a shore leave drunk. They should buy that, they have no reason not to.”
“That’s why we’re not packing any weapons?”
“You guessed it, we’ll have to risk a disadvantage to save a possible predicament.” Pitt halted at the crumbling archway. The iron grillwork looked different in the daylight, not nearly so massive and indomitable as he remembered It. “This is the place,” he said, his fingers idly flaking a spot of dried blood from one of the rusting bars.
“You squeezed through that?” Giordino asked incredulously.
“It was nothing,” Pitt replied broadly grinning. “Just another one of my many accomplishments.” The grin quickly faded. “Hurry, we don’t have much time. The next tour will be through here in another forty-five minutes.”
Giordino stepped up to the heavy bars and within seconds was a man absorbed with a difficult and hazardous job to do. He opened the flight bag and carefully removed the contents, laying them out in order on an old towel. Quickly, he fitted two small charges of T.N.T. around a single bar, spacing them twenty inches apart, inserted the primer and heavily wrapped each charge under several layers of metal plumbers tape. Next he spun strands of heavy wire around the bulbous bands and then covered the wire with more layers of thick adhesive tape. A final look at the charges, imbedded in the thick wrappings like cocoons, and he connected the wires to the detonator.
Obviously pleased with his handwork, the entire operation had taken less than six minutes from start to finish, he motioned Pitt toward the safety of a wide block retaining wall.
Slowly Giordino followed, walking backward, playing out wires leading from the detonator to the charges. At the wall, Pitt grasped him on the arm to draw his attention.
“How far will the explosion be heard?”
“If I did it right,” Giordino replied, “it shouldn’t sound any louder than a popgun to someone standing a hundred feet away.”
Pitt stood on the lower base of the wall and hurriedly scanned a three hundred and sixty degree circle of landscape. Seeing no sign of human activity, he nodded, grinning at Giordino. “I hope dropping in uninvited through the service entrance isn’t beneath your dignity.”
“We Giordinos are pretty broadminded,” he said, returning Pitt’s grin.
“Shall we?”
“If you insist.”
They both ducked below the top of the old wall, holding the sun-warmed stones with their hands to absorb any shock. Then Giordino turned the little plastic switch on the detonator.
Even at the short distance of ten or fifteen feet the sound of the explosion was nothing more than a mere thump. No shock wave trembled the ground, no black cloud of smoke or shooting flame belched from the archway, no deafening blast rattled their eardrums, only a small indefinable thump.
Swiftly, in a silence bred of expectancy, they leaped to their feet and rushed back to the iron gate. The two balls of tape were torn and smoldering, smelling like the burned out pungent odor of frizzled firecrackers. A tiny curl of smoke wound in a wake-like trail between the grill and disappeared into the damp darkness of the interior passage. The bar was still in place.
Pitt looked questioningly at Giordino. “Not enough punch?”
“It was ample,” Giordino said confidently. “The charges were the right size to do the job. Please observe' He gave the bar a vigorous kick with his heel. It remained solid, unyielding. He kicked it again, this time harder, his mouth tight from jolting pain in his heel and sole. The top end of the bar broke loose, bending its jagged and torn tip inward until it lay on a horizontal plane. A tense smile creased Giordino’s mouth and his teeth slowly spread into view.. “And now for my next trick.
“Never mind,” Pitt snapped brusquely. “Let’s get the hell going. We’ve got to get to the villa and back in time to join the next tour.”
“How long will it take to get there?”
Pitt was already climbing through the opening in the gate. “Last night it took me eight hours to get out, we can get in in eight minutes.”
“How, you got a map?”
“Something even better,” Pitt said quietly, almost grimly, pointing at the flight bag. “Pass me the light.”
Giordino reached into the bag. pulled out a large yellow light, nearly six inches in diameter, and passed it through the opening. “It’s big enough. What is it?”
“Alien Dive Bright Aluminum casing is waterproof to a nine hundred foot depth. We’re not going diving, but it’s rugged and throws out a long narrow beam, backed by one hundred and eight thousand candlepower. That’s why I borrowed it from the ship.”
Giordino said no more, merely shrugged and slipped between the bars, following Pitt into the passage.
“Hold on a second till I remove the evidence.”
Giordino’s stubby hands nimbly unwound the shredded wrappings — a pile of old fallen stones covered the smoldering remains — before he turned to face Pitt, squinting his eyes until they became accustomed to the dim light.
Pitt played his light into the darkness. “Look there on the ground. See why I don’t need the services of a detailed map?”
The powerful beam spotlighted a broken trail of dried and caked blood leading down the steep uneven stairway. In a few places the red stains lay in scattered clusters, separated by occasional tiny round specks. Pitt descended the steps shivering, not so much from the sight of his old and discarded blood, but from the sudden change in temperature from the outside afternoon heat to the damp chill of the musty labyrinth. At the bottom he took off at a half trot, the swaying light in his hand casting a series of bouncing shadows that leaped from the cracklined ceiling to the rough hewn rock floor. The loneliness and the fear that gripped him the night before was not present. Giordino, that indestructible sawed-off package of muscle, a trusted friend for many years, was beside him now. Damned if anyone or any barrier would stop him this time, he thought doggedly.
Passage after passage, like gaping mouths in the shadows slipped by. Pitt kept his eyes trained on the ground, analyzing the dark red spots. At the honeycombed intersections he paused briefly, studying the trail. If the blood led up a tunnel and then returned it meant a dead end. Wherever the course indicated a single line he pursued it. His body was aching and his vision was hazy at the outer edges; a bad sign. He was bone tired and felt it to the deadening tips of every nerve ending. Pitt stumbled and would have gone down, but Giordino grabbed his
