The younger man plodded wide-footed from the stem of the boat towards her. The other was bent over pots, finally putting them into some sort of order, on the opposite side of the stern. He saw her look and smiled, surprisingly white-teethed, and Janet smiled back, deciding it was ridiculous not being able to properly address him. She said: “How are you called?”
He hesitated, still smiling, and said: “Costas.”
The other man continued working over the pots but said something in Creek. Costas responded and Dimitri spoke again, louder this time. The younger man’s reply was just one word and Janet wondered if it were an obscenity.
Janet’s jean bottoms were drier but not by much, and she acknowledged there was hardly enough heat left in the sun to make any further improvement. What did it matter? she asked herself, not knowing why she was even thinking of something so inconsequential. What did anything matter-this awful stinking ship or?10,000 or anything-beyond the fact that she was on her way to Beirut! To Beirut and people who might actually let her see John: people who certainly knew about him and wanted her to convey some message, back to America, to gain his freedom. And she could most definitely get any message conveyed, Janet knew, after her experience of publicity in Washington. She didn’t give a damn what sort of crap it was-she’d get the Koran published if that were one of the demands-just as long as it got John out from wherever he was. She should, Janet supposed, be feeling some sort of “I told you so” satisfaction from what she’d achieved but she didn’t. Just relief: excited relief. Any other emotion would have been an intrusion. Unnecessary. The only satisfaction she sought was that of having John back with her, safely.
It was the half-light of the Mediterranean now, Cyprus lost beyond the horizon from which night was proudly approaching in a tumble of black clouds. There was a wind coming, too, and the boat began to rise and fall more steeply as the swell increased. Janet shivered, tightening her arms around herself: the jeans were adequate, but the shirt was for the heat of mid-day, not the numb of an open boat at night. The smell was getting to her, as well, combining with the rise-and-fall movement. She swallowed deeply against what lumped in the back of her throat, tight-lipped against showing the slightest weakness.
“Here!”
Janet became conscious of Costas before her, offering a bottle. Janet could see that it was unlabeled but nothing else. “No, thank you.”
“Make you feel better.”
“I’m all right.”
“It’s brandy,” he said, belatedly.
“No, really. Thank you all the same.”
If her discomfort were that obvious it was ridiculous remaining any longer beyond whatever little protection the wheelhouse would give, Janet accepted: now that it was completely dark the excuse about drying her clothes didn’t apply, either. Using the rail, greasy to her touch, for as much support as it would give, Janet groped amidships to the tiny hut. Nearer she saw that Stavos had lighted the red and green navigation lights and that there was also a dull white light in the place itself.
She got to the door and said: “I would like to come in now, please.”
From his look it was almost as if he were startled to find her on his boat at all. He jerked his head towards the bench and said: “Of course.”
Janet eased her way into the tiny hut and sat on the lumpy padding close to the open door. The door slid back and forth on runners, she saw. There was a matching entrance on the far side of the wheelhouse but it was secured by an inside bolt. In front of Stavos was a sloped chart table but there were no charts on it. What she could see was a magazine, well thumbed, with what appeared to be a naked girl on the front. It was partially concealed by pages of a newspaper, which Stavos was reading. There was also an empty tobacco tin, acting as an ashtray. And there was a radio, although not the type Janet expected. It looked like the sort of transistor those Larnaca Bay holidaymakers would have had: as the thought came she heard, very softly, a wailing pop song coming from it. The radio was taped against the side of the chart table and swung back and forth, like a pendulum, with the rocking of the boat. Beneath the table was a tangle of ropes and lines. Stavos had taken his shoes off, like the other two crewmen, and rolled his trousers up.
“How much longer?” Janet asked.
Stavos grunted away from his newspaper. He looked briefly through the salt-rimmed glass out into the completely empty blackness of the night, then at his watch, and said: “Maybe two hours: maybe less.”
Janet checked her own watch and said: “Before midnight, then?”
“Maybe,” said Stavos.
A man of definite opinions, thought Janet. She said: “Are you sure you will be able to find the people tonight?”
“I said I would come back with a decision: with something,” said Stavos, abandoning his newspaper altogether and turning to her.
“So they are expecting you!”
“They said they would be ready.”
Costas appeared at the doorway next to her. He still carried the bottle and in the better light Janet thought his face appeared flushed. He said something in Greek and offered it to the captain but Stavos shook his head in refusal. The young man then smiled at Janet, moving his outstretched arm so that the bottle was towards her.
“No thank you,” she said again.
The doorway was completely blocked by the arrival of Dimitri. He spoke in Greek to Stavos who glanced briefly at his watch before replying and Janet guessed it was a query about an arrival time. The younger man remained looking at her, smiling. Janet smiled back. Costas took a swig from the bottle and said: “Good stuff. The best.”
“I’m sure,” Janet said.
Stavos said something, brief and sharp, and Costas’s smile flickered off. He replied, equally brief, his face sullen. No one moved for several moments and then the younger man screwed the metal top back on to the bottle.
“Would you like to eat?” Stavos asked, suddenly. “There’s some fish and bread. Olives, too. Wine, as well.”
“I’m really not hungry,” Janet said, swallowing against the sensation that came once more to the back of her throat at the very thought of consuming anything.
“It’s going to be a long night.”
“I’ll ask, if I get hungry.” Anxious to switch the conversation from food Janet gestured to what she thought was a gradual lightening ahead and said: “Is that it! Beirut!”
Without looking, Stavos said: “Yes.”
Here! thought Janet; I’m here! She said: “How much longer now?”
“Maybe an hour.”
Janet sat practically oblivious to anything and anyone around her, occupied only upon what was ahead. There was a definite break in the darkness now, an actual horizon line although she could not make out the shapes of buildings. She was surprised at so much light: without positively thinking about it she’d imagined it would be a place of enforced and protective darkness, like the Second World War blackouts in England that her parents had described. She strained to hear any sound, and realized that-ridiculously-she was listening for the sound of gunfire. All she could hear was the grating, reverberating throb of the engines, behind her. Soon, my darling, she thought: I’ll be there soon.
Stavos broke into her reverie. He said: “There’s a part of the harbor, to the west, where we can go alongside. You’ll stay aboard, while I go to find them.”
“Why can’t I come with you?”
“West Beirut isn’t a place for evening strolls,” rejected the captain. “It’s safer this way.”
“How far is it from the harbor to where you expect to meet them?”
“Not for.”
“It can’t be that dangerous, then?”
“This is how it is going to be done!” Stavos said loudly.
Janet winced, not wanting to alienate a man upon whom she was so dependent. “I’m sorry,” she said at once. “Of course.”
Beirut was more discernible now and Janet saw that the brightness was not as uniform as she had imagined it to be. The street lights and house and building lights and even the lights of cars moving along coastal highways were all to the east. Which Stavos had described as safe: practically like it was before 1975, Janet remembered. It was much darker to the west and what she calculated to be the south, the war areas. Street illumination was intermittent, over large areas none existing at all, and there were hardly any building lights, either. Nothing seemed to be moving on the roads; if there were cars they were driving without headlights.