It had been a necessary risk because Mario was the one who had to continue operating in the open and they had to be sure the pigs weren’t onto him. Maybe he wasn’t bright but he understood these things and realized why he had to take the chance. He was glad he had taken it; it had made him more sure of himself, and it had succeeded, and it was necessary to the cause that it succeed.
He began to see the dim phosphor crests of breaking whitecaps on the sea ahead. A mile, perhaps; then it would be time to throttle down. “I don’t like putting all that money in greedy hands. We ought to find a better use for it.”
“It will further the cause—what more do you need?”
“Why not treat them the same as we treated the greedy pig with the helicopter?” The helicopter hadn’t cost them anything.
“Because they’re people we may need again.” Sturka got to his feet, swayed with the lurch and lunge of the deck, bowed his head under the low overhead decking and moved forward to stand just off Mario’s shoulder, watching Mario con the boat into the surf. The boat was crashing hard on the crests; there was still a half mile but the bottom was a shallow shelf that beat up the waves. Everything shuddered, Mario heard brightwork rattling. His plimsolled feet were sure on the deck planks.
He spun the wheel a half turn to starboard but it was a fraction late and a crest broached the windward scuppers; foam rolled across the deck and sprayed him when it caromed through the overhead hatchway. “You sure you can get across there in this?”
“We’ll make it,” Sturka said.
“I’d better not go in any farther. You want to drop the anchor?”
Sturka went up through the door forward. Spray hosed into the cockpit and wind slammed the door shut. Mario watched him move catfooted to the anchor windlass. He waited until Sturka had a good grip on the railing and then he watched for a wide trough. When the boat pitched into one he spun her fast, rudder hard over, wanting to bring her into the wind before the next crest hit; but she was a little slow and the crest caught her awkwardly and rolled her hard over. There was a great deal of rolling foam and he peered through it anxiously. The lather cascaded away and Sturka was still there, rooted, drenched but relaxed. Mario held the bow straight into the wind and throttled back only a little, needing steerageway; Sturka was pitching the anchor over, letting the chain run through the ratchet.
A big one lifted her ten or twelve feet and she slid down the backside of it nose first. The bow dug into the following comber and Sturka again was buried in black marbled water but when the bow wallowed out of it he was still there with water rolling off him like oil. The chain slacked a little at trough-bottom and Sturka set the ratchet and began to make his way aft, hand over hand along the railing. Mario idled the screw down and waited with his hand on the throttle to see if the anchor had taken hold. The chain drew up taut and he had a feeling, nothing more than an intuitive sensation, of a brief distant scraping before the arrowpoint of the anchor took a grip and the boat hung, cork-bobbing like a buoy, from its straining chain, stern toward shore.
Sturka swung himself into the wheelhouse acrobatically, his clothes pasted to his bony skin. Alvin was coming up from the forward cabin and Mario gave him the wheel and followed Sturka aft to inflate the rubber raft.
He slid the folded raft out from under Peggy’s bunk. Peggy gave him a bloodshot look and rolled over; Mario said, “Won’t be long now,” in an effort to be encouraging but she only grunted. Cesar on the opposite bunk was in bleary agony and the cabin reeked of vomit; Mario was glad to hurry topside, dragging the raft, Sturka pushing it up from below. Sturka came out into the little fishing deck to help him hold the raft down while they inflated it from its canister of compressed air. It was tricky work with the deck pitching eight feet in the air and slamming down; he was soaked through within seconds.
Sturka put his mouth close to Mario’s ear to make himself heard over the roar of the sea. “If they catch you.”
“They’re not going to.”
“If they do.”
“I don’t say a word.”
“They’ll pry you apart in time. You’ll have to talk—everyone does.”
“I hold out.” Shouted gasps in the roiling night. “As long as I can. Then I give them the thing we made up.”
“Recite.”
“Now? Here?”
“Recite Mario.”
“You’re in Tangier waiting for me to pick you up in the plane.”
“Go on.” Sturka’s voice very thin against the roar.
“Jesus. I promise you I haven’t forgotten anything.”
After a moment Sturka pulled the raft toward the stern rail by its gunwale rope. “All right Mario.”
They got it overboard and Sturka held it against the transom while Mario climbed over the rail and braced himself in the raft. The bottom was already awash; he would be in water up to his navel in instants but the raft would hold. The oars were plastic, bolted into their locks; he fixed his grip on them and shouted and Sturka cast him off. He pulled hard; the boat loomed momentarily and then a wave took him; for a bit he was under water with the taste of salt. When it cascaded off him the boat had disappeared and he was alone in the raft—lost, for a bit, until the next breaker picked him up and he had time for a quick glance over his left shoulder to locate the lights of Almería. They gave him bearings and he began to row toward the black silent beach.
THURSDAY,
JANUARY 13
8:00 A.M.Continental European Time Lime paced the garage floor with apathetic weariness. He had slept on the plane but that had been more than twenty-four hours ago and things had moved maddeningly slowly in the day and night since.
The place was cluttered with scientists and their equipment; they were analyzing everything—grease spots on the floor, a wad of chewing gum stuck to the underside of the tool bench, the 500 KC marine transmitter and the Wollensak tape recorder that was plugged into it.
Triangulation by Sixth Fleet and Spanish shore stations had located the point of origin of the Fairlie broadcast—somewhere in the town of Palamos. But Sixth Fleet’s radio plot had been faulty by some decimal fraction and the location was an area, not a pinpoint; it had taken nine hours of house-to-house searching to find the transmitter in this place.
The garage sat in solitary squalor along the side of a country road half a kilometer outside Palamos. Its owner was on vacation—visiting a sister in Capetown; he had been away since the ninth of January, which happened to be the day before the Fairlie kidnapping. The garage owner’s name was Elías; the South African Government was seeking him for questioning but he hadn’t turned up yet.
When they did find Elías he wouldn’t be able to tell them anything useful; Lime knew how these things worked. Some faceless intermediary would have offered Elías a hundred thousand pestas to disappear for a week; the intermediary would be described by Elías, and another John Doe would be added to the list of individuals sought for questioning. It would consume far more time than was available; it was the kind of lead Lime never bothered with. You left that sort of thing to the minions of organization. If they turned up something useful they passed it on to you; otherwise you ignored it.