We were nearing the row of weathered buildings close to the docks. “Why go to all that trouble?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to arrest the guy? Or eliminate him?”
“Well, you know the man in Washington; he doesn’t explain anything he doesn’t have to. But my theory is that if we had arrested Graves and tried him, it would have been a senseless exercise. After all, he was merely a local fisherman doing a dirty little job on the side for extra money. A trial could very well have made a martyr of him, and these days we have more than enough of those. On the other hand, if we could convince the other side that he was a double agent, which we seem to have done to some extent, they would be forced to spend a great deal of time and effort in checking out their other common labor to be sure they weren’t all like Graves.”
It was exactly the way I had figured it, so I dropped the subject. “What about her?” We were slowing in front of Mrs. Gormsen’s shuttered hotdog stand and bike-rental emporium.
“I wouldn’t bother,” Nathaniel said. “We had no evidence that she was involved in any way.”
“Somebody told Graves we were on the island.”
“Yes, of course. But even if it was she, it wouldn’t necessarily implicate her. After all, visiting yachtsmen who rent bicycles aren’t exactly common at this time of the year.”
“Well...”
“But I suggest we return to our boat and make for home tonight. There’s no point in making too many assumptions, is there?”
Four
By the time we were back at the mooring late that night, Nathaniel seemed to have forgotten the ugly little incident on Block Island. He was as serene and self-possessed as ever as we walked into the darkened house, and when I did a quick check of the rooms, he looked at me with a kind of amusement.
“One cannot live in constant fear of assassination, you know,” he remarked. “Otherwise, what’s the point of living? We do the nasty little jobs we do and are more or less prepared for the consequences. So do a great number of other people in this world. And just imagine. Mr. McKee, how it would be if we all worried about who might be lurking around the next corner. Why, who would possibly have the gumption to run for president? Will you join me for a sandwich and some coffee?”
During the next few days, when we weren’t sailing I was studying, mostly catalogues and old clippings about the New York Boat Show. Nathaniel had a file drawer stuffed with working designs of every imaginable type of sailing craft, from day-sailers to ocean-going trimarans, together with photographs and advertisements from newspapers all over the country. We visited a number of boatyards in the vicinity, inspected hulls of those boats that were hauled out and the interiors of a whole lot of others. A couple of times he took me to Christie’s, a sprawling restaurant on a dock in Newport where the service and food were superb, and where you could run into a stray yachting Vanderbilt or a fuzzy-cheeked ensign from one of the local Navy bases. Nathaniel knew them all, and after a couple of visits I was pretty well established in my cover role as Daniel McKee, yacht broker from the west coast of Florida. I was even beginning to believe it myself.
The “exam” at the yacht club wasn’t all that easy. The members were men who knew their boats; they weren’t dockside cocktail-partiers, and the only yachting cap I saw was nailed to the wall above the bar. Nathaniel led the conversation at a big, round table, guiding it casually — maliciously, I thought — into technical areas where I was forced to come up with some answers. I guess I passed, because nobody in the crowd looked dubious. At any rate, when we left — very late — Nathaniel clapped me on the shoulder and looked very pleased. Walking back to his house, we stumbled in the sand a lot and I don’t know which of us held the other up.
It was still dark when an urgent pounding on my door woke me up. My head was a little fuzzy — they didn’t stint on the bourbon at that club — but I was on my feet instantly.
“What is it?” I demanded.
“Nick!”
“I’m Dan!” I snarled back.
“Yes, yes,” Nathaniel said. “But you have to get up and get moving.”
“Now?” I wondered what else he was going to put me through.
“It’s urgent. You’re to catch a flight for Tampa, and we barely have time to make it to the airport.”
“Tampa?”
“I don’t know why. David just called, and it’s top priority. Now get dressed. Hurry!”
Tampa, I thought as I shucked out of my pajamas. This was becoming one of the most confusing assignments I’d ever been on. And if the job was in Greece, I sure wasn’t getting any closer to it.
Five
Contact was simple; a message for Daniel McKee at the Tampa airport, informing me that reservations had been made in my name at a motel close by. I checked in and had just finished a quick shave — no chance before I left Nathaniel’s house — when there was a light tapping at the door.
I hesitated, looked at my suitcase where Wilhelmina lay in her special compartment. But I didn’t think I’d need the stripped-down Luger, not now. As far as I knew there was no reason for anyone to be looking for me who wasn’t likely to be friendly. Not at this point. Still, I opened the door with caution, and when I saw Hawk standing there I felt an odd kind of relief.
He came in without so much as a word of greeting, sat down on one of the pair of oversized beds and looked up at me. I swiped at a stray dab of lather, turned around the chair in front of the plastic-imitation-wood desk and planted myself in it facing him.
“This room has been thoroughly checked out,” Hawk said. “One of our electronics men spent last night here, and it’s been under surveillance ever since.”
I glanced automatically at the wall behind him; most motels seem to be built out of cheesecloth these days, and even a senior citizen without his hearing aid can hear everything that goes on in the next unit.
“Don’t worry,” the old man said. “We’ve booked the rooms on either side; no one will overhear what we say.”
That satisfied me; I never doubted the Chief’s ability to think of every detail.
“Zenopolis is doing it our way,” he said without further preliminaries. “The precise date hasn’t been set yet, but it will be within a week. He will cross the Albanian border and make his way to Korfu. Time and place of rendezvous to be established at that time.”
I nodded, then frowned. “How am I to be in contact with him?”
“Through his sister.”
Hawk said it so matter-of-factly it didn’t register at first. “How was that again?”
“His sister. Her name is Christina, and she is his only living relative. At present she is a student nurse in Athens, but she is taking a vacation on the western coast. You will pick her up, and... I don’t have to go into details.”
But he did anyway. Christina, it developed, was twenty-two, hadn’t seen Alex since he defected fifteen years earlier. But Alex, according to Hawk, wanted his sister to be present when we met; he had a bad case of suspicions, and after the preliminary negotiations with our people had insisted on bringing Christina into the deal. The only one he could trust, he said, and also, Hawk and I agreed, he was using her as a buffer between himself and possible betrayal to the Greek government.
“I won’t pretend to understand exactly what he’s doing,” Hawk admitted, “but it seems worth our while to go along with him as far as seems feasible.”
My assignment seemed relatively simple: I was to fly to Athens, hire a car and spend a few days nosing around boat yards along the coast. At Pirgos I would pick up the girl (“quite attractive, I’m told,” Hawk assured me), then rent a sail boat for a short cruise up to Korfu. There, on that island which lies more off Albania than Greece, the two of us would contact Alex Zenopolis.