Just as I grabbed at the door to close it behind me, I saw the movement from the corner of my eye, but it was too late to react. The crunching blow to the back of my skull sent a rocketing pain through my head and neck. The Luger slipped from my hand. I grabbed at the door jamb and held on as I fell against it heavily. I got a glimpse of the face before me and recognized it as the one I had seen at the penthouse in Athens. It was the hard, scowling face of Adrian Stavros. I made an animal sound in my throat and reached out toward that ugly face. But then another blow hit me alongside the head, and bright lights exploded inside. I was swimming in a sea of ebony, and there was no horizon line between the black sea and the black sky. It all closed in on me and merged into a swirling, dark mass.
Eleven
"He's coming around."
I heard the voice indistinctly, as if it were coming to me from another room. My eyes fluttered open, but I couldn't focus them. I saw three vague forms around me.
"That's right, open your eyes."
The voice was familiar. It belonged to Adrian Stavros. I tried to focus on its source. His face cleared up in my vision. I looked into the tough, hard-lined face with the receding, dark hairline and the icy cold eyes, and I hated myself for letting him take me. I looked from him to the other two faces flanking his. One belonged to a husky, dark-faced fellow with a bluish glaze over his left eye. I took him for a Brazilian bodyguard of Stavros. The other man was quite young and wore a khaki uniform. I guessed that he was the officer who would replace the executed Galatis.
"So," Stavros said in an acid-etched voice. "The window washer." He made a kind of laugh in his throat. "Who are you really?"
"Who are you really?" I answered, trying to clear my head, trying to think. I remembered Erika and wondered if they had found her, too.
Stavros hauled off and slugged me with the back of his hand, and I noticed only then that I was seated on a straight chair. They had not bound me, but the Luger was gone. Hugo was still on my forearm under my unbuttoned jacket. I almost fell off the chair when the blow landed.
Stavros bent over me, and when he spoke, his voice was a leopard's growl. "1 see you don't recognize me," he hissed. I saw the army officer glance at him. "Now you know the kind of man you are dealing with."
Yes, a psycho, I thought. A ruthless man who preyed on others. Now I realized why they called him The Vulture. I kept my mouth shut this time. He straightened, grabbed at his shirt front, and tore it open dramatically. I stared at the mass of scars across his torso, apparently from a fire. It appeared that they covered much of his body.
"Do you see this?" he snarled, his eyes sparkling a bit too brightly. "I got this in an apartment fire when I was a boy. My father took a lit cigarette to bed with him, the last of a series of wantonly negligent acts toward his family. But I survived, you see. Don't think I will go to hell, because I have already been there."
So that was the big missing part of the Stavros puzzle. The fire had snapped something inside him. It had burned out what he had left of a soul, leaving only a charred core. As he rebuttoned the shirt, I realized why he stood so erect. His entire torso must have been board-stiff from the scar tissue.
"Now you understand," he hissed at me. "Now you will tell me who you are and what you are doing here on Mykonos spying on me."
The husky, dark-faced fellow beside him took a short length of something from his pocket, apparently a club, just in case I was foolish enough to defy Stavros.
"Is it the CIA?" Stavros' ugly voice came to me. "Did you make the call to Galatis pretending to be Minourkos?"
I had to spare myself or it would be all over. If Erika were unharmed at the hotel desk, as it appeared, she would soon be back up here. If I got lucky and she was paying attention, she wouldn't just walk into the room and fall prisoner to them. She would make a fight of it I would have to be conscious to give her help.
"Yes," I said. "The CIA."
"Ah. The truth will out," Stavros said. "And you are here to initiate a coup against me?"
Stavros' eyes flashed maniacal hatred at me.
"Something like that."
"What are the details of this CIA plot?" Stavros demanded.
I hesitated. If I said too much it would sound phony. The husky man raised the club again.
"Wait," the young officer said with a thick accent. "We have learned certain techniques recently in Greece to gain the complete cooperation of prisoners. But he will make too much noise to embark on such an interrogation here. We have to return to camp anyway. We will take him with us."
Stavros thought about that a moment. "All right," he said darkly.
They grabbed me from the chair. I wondered where the hell Erika was. She should have been back from the reception desk. Maybe they had found her after all. But I couldn't ask.
As they herded me into a waiting car outside the place, at a remote parking area from the entrance, I thought of making a try for an escape with the stiletto. If they got me to that camp, I would never leave it alive.
But there was no good opportunity to make a move with the knife. The husky man held a gun in my ribs, and I was flanked on the other side by Stavros. The officer drove.
On the way out of town along the cliff road, I kept thinking of Erika. It was hard to understand what had happened to her. She had known that she would have had to return to the room immediately when Stavros arrived.
We were out of town about a mile when we rounded a sharp curve and saw the stalled car just twenty yards ahead of us in the narrow road. I remembered that I had seen the car parked at the hotel earlier and had concluded it belonged to the management. The officer slammed on the brakes and the military car skidded to a halt a few feet from the other vehicle.
"What is it?" Stavros asked curtly.
"A broken-down car, it seems," the officer grumbled.
"Well, get it out of the way," Stavros commanded.
On the right side of our car was the cliff and on the other side was a steep bank of rock. The officer got out on the left side and warily started toward the car that blocked the road. Stavros, sitting on my right, opened his door on the cliff side and stood on the pavement watching. I was in the car alone with the husky man who held the gun at my side.
"Shove it over the cliff!" Stavros ordered from beside our vehicle.
"I will try," the officer said.
Those were his last words. As he paused beside the other car, I saw Erika's head pop up over the cliff. She had obviously been listening outside the hotel room and heard them decide to take me to the camp. She had stolen the hotel car and beaten us to the road.
"Look out!" Stavros shouted to the officer as he saw Erika aim her revolver at the man.
The Greek turned as Erika's gun barked. A small hole appeared on the officer's forehead. He stumbled backward and crashed against the other car as Erika swung her gun to Stavros. He was drawing a gun of his own and I admired Erika for getting the officer first, for I knew how she wanted Stavros. She beat Stavros, and her gun barked out again and hit him.
The husky man beside me in the car had kept his gun trained on me, confused about what to do first Finally when Stavros was hit, he decided to finish me off first and then go for Erika. I saw his finger whiten on the trigger of his revolver. I swung my arm outward and hit at his gun hand, and the weapon discharged, breaking window glass beside me. The stiletto was in my palm. Keeping the gun hand at bay, I shoved hard with the knife and felt it go in under his arm. It was over for him.