“Expand,” Shircliff said.
Patsy hit another series of buttons, and now the map scale expanded so that the port of Thira itself mostly filled the screen. “This is the last enhancement,” she said.
The EPIRB was transmitting from a location near the harbor, but not on the water.
It was definitely ashore.
“How long has he been at that location?” Shircliff asked.
“About an hour.”
“No movement?”
“None. He’s remained within a three-yard radius the entire time.”
“It’s possible he’d ditched the transmitter then,” Shircliff said, reaching for the folder of Greek maps on top of the console.
“Could be a hotel, I was about to check it out,” Patsy suggested. “The transmitter could be with his luggage.”
Shircliff opened a large-scale map showing the port town in detail. It took him a few moments to orient the computer’s perspective with the printed chart. “Looks like a waterfront taverna.”
Patsy looked up. “What do you suppose he’s doing there, sir?”
“I don’t know,” Shircliff said shaking his head. “I don’t know anything about the man except that he’s damned important.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me know the moment he makes a move,” Shircliff said, replacing the chart folder but keeping the Thira map out. “I’ll be at my console.”
Clouds were already starting to roll in from the west as Lieutenant Lipton and his five men clambered aboard the SH-3D Sea King that would take them out to the intercept point one hundred miles to the north. The wind was rising and the smell of rain was heavy on the night air. The weather system was developing faster than the meteorologists had predicted, but so far as the SEALS were concerned the weather couldn’t have been better.
“No moon, overcast skies and choppy seas. The Thaxos crew won’t know what hit them until it’s too late,” Lipton told his number two, Ensign Frank Tyrell.
“If we don’t miss them in the darkness.”
“You worry too much.”
Tyrell, who was a deceptively thin and mild-mannered man, grinned. “It’s a bitch, but somebody’s got to do it.”
Lipton started to strap in as the helicopter’s engines came to life and the main rotor began to turn, but a runner from Operations came across the deck to the open hatch and motioned for him.
“Stand by,” Lipton shouted up to the pilots, and he scrambled over to the hatch.
“Commander Rheinholtz wanted you to have the latest on Brightstar, sir,” the rating shouted over the noise.
“Is he on the island?”
“Yes, sir. Apparently he’d been holed up at a waterfront bar for the past couple of hours.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“Unknown, sir.
Lipton thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Get word to us the moment he moves.”
“Aye, aye, sir. And good hunting.”
McGarvey sat across from a very well-dressed man by the name of Constantine Theotokis, whom Karamanlis had identified as his uncle. Theotokis was a member of the Greek Mafia, and Santorini was
his island in almost every sense of the word.
During the couple of hours they’d been together at the crowded, smoky taverna, a constant stream of runners came to their corner table with messages for him which they whispered into his ear. Afterwards he’d send them off on other errands.
“These people you seek are almost certainly the very same ones who have done business here previously,” Theotokis said. He fingered the black diamond stick pin in his tie. “Unfortunately they are not on the island at this moment.”
“They will arrive by sea,” McGarvey said.
“Of course they will.”
“Soon. Probably this evening. Late.”
Theotokis nodded sagely.
“Will they land here or at Athinos? Or, considering what they are bringing with them, is there another less conspicuous place for them to come ashore? Let’s say in a dinghy?”
Again the Greek gangster nodded wisely. “They have taken a deconsecrated church in the north. It is on a cliff above the grottoes within site of Oia and the volcanic island of Akra. The only good approach is by sea. Overland…He spread his hands.
“It is a very difficult track, not to be advised in the darkness.”
“But one could wait with a small boat.”
“Yes. Such boats are available. Of course one would need a guide, perhaps two. They would have to be… paid.”
“I understand,” McGarvey said. “They would have to be discreet men. And men of a certain talent.”
Theotokis mentioned a price. It was high, but it would guarantee professionalism.
Yet there was something bothersome about the arrangement. About Karamanlis and his uncle. About the entire setup.
Chapter 48
The fishing vessel Dhodhoni, her lights off, bobbed in the gentle swells off the protected east coast of the island.
A few miles away they could make out a few lights above the almost sheer cliffs that rose in some spots five hundred feet straight out of the sea. In all other directions was darkness, the blackness of the sky merging with the blackness of the water.
Theotokis had suggested Karamanlis’ boat, and had sent along a younger, darker, even more ruggedly built Greek by the name of Evangolos Papagos as crew.
It was nearing one in the morning, and they had been waiting just offshore since before midnight. So far they’d seen nothing. The three of them were in the wheelhouse; Karamanlis standing at the helm, McGarvey with his back against the door, and Papagos insolently facing him from the corner.
“How will we know this boat of yours?” Karamanlis asked, scanning the pitch-black sea to the north. They’d seen only one other boat since Thira, a freighter well south and heading into the open Mediterranean.
“If, as your uncle said, there is a route to the old church from here, then they’ll show up sooner or later.”
“Maybe you are being tricked,” Papagos rumbled, his voice deep. He was staring out to sea.
“She’ll probably be running without lights,” McGarvey continued. “At least until Spranger and the others get off.”
Papagos looked up. “What is your quarrel with Ernst Spranger?”
“You know him?” McGarvey asked, tensing.
“He’s an old friend.” The Greek grinned broadly, showing nicotine-stained teeth.
“Not to worry,” Karamanlis was quick to explain. “He and my uncle have had a falling out. If it is the East German you are hunting, then we will help you.”
The entire thing was a setup, McGarvey understood at last. Spranger had been one step ahead of him the entire way. He’d taken Elizabeth and Kathleen to lure McGarvey out of Japan, and then had marked the trail all the way here. To what?
To a killing ground, of course. Somewhere on the island, in the end, if he survived that long.
He focused on the two Greeks again. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth? Maybe you’re working for Spranger. The Germans always had a way with you Greeks. A fatal attraction on your part.”
Papagos’s jaw tightened. “You will find out very soon,” he said.
Karamanlis said something to him in Greek that McGarvey didn’t catch.
“Out there,” Papagos said in English. “Two points to starboard.”
McGarvey didn’t bother to look. “You knew it would be here.” He reached into his pocket, his fingers curling around the grip of his pistol.
Papagos shrugged, his eyes going to McGarvey’s gun hand. “It’s why we came. You hired us to intercept them. Well, we have. They’re just out there. Dark, as you predicted.”
“They must already be on the island,” Karamanlis said. “We must have missed them.”