"Cute," said Holliday, seated on deck with Al as the big boat docked.
"What's that?" Al said, smoking another Marlboro in the fading light.
"The name," said Holliday. "Disco Volante."
"Means Flying Saucer," translated Al.
"Largo's boat in Thunderball," said Holliday. "Our boy has a sense of humor."
As the evening spun into night Holliday watched as Conti and his friends from shore partied long and loud, the music swelling across the miniature harbor, intruding on the privacy of anyone within earshot, which likely meant the entire town. It seemed unlikely that anyone aboard would be in any shape for an early breakfast.
They left for the shrimping grounds at dawn, heading out of the narrow harbor along with half a dozen other boats, leaving the sleeping pleasure craft behind them along with the tightly shuttered sleeping town on the terraced heights above.
In the morning, with the sun no more than a hot pink slash on the eastern horizon, Al ran the little trawler back and forth in the narrow strait between Santo Stefano and Ventotene, using his fish-finding gear to troll for likely shoals of shrimp big enough to grace the tables of the hotels and restaurants back in Ponza. Crammed into the tiny little day cabin- galley belowdecks Holliday, Rafi and Tidyman pored over the charts of Santo Stefano Al had found for them the day before in the Ventotene harbor master's office.
The island was a fortress in and of itself, a volcanic plug of dark basalt half a mile in diameter. Jagged cliffs rose five hundred feet to a broad plateau covered in an oddly sinister sea of wild-flowers that broke on the yellow stone walls of the crumbling old prison like bright blue perfumed waves.
The prison was circular, four bleak tiers rising out of the volcanic rock, pierced with windows and doors, everything facing in to a central courtyard with a single guard tower in the middle, an elevated platform overseeing the inmates as they went about their business. There were no toilets, nor was there any running water. The only food was what the prisoners' families sent to them. There was no work or any kind of labor. Time was a wheel that eventually broke a man. Madness was a way of life.
The cells, each holding at least twenty men, were perpetually dark and the courtyard was in perpetual sun. If an inmate was stupid enough to try to escape there was nothing between him and the jagged cliff edge except the giant field of flowers and their sweet cloying scent. He could die in the darkness or die in the sun; the guards didn't care which. A life term on Santo Stefano was just a death sentence that took varying amounts of time to execute depending on how stubborn a man was.
Like the Chateau d'If in The Count of Monte Cristo there was only one way off the island for a prisoner: in a weighted shroud. There were two ways into the prison, however: a narrow switchback road that made its way up the slightly sloping western approaches to the plateau on which the prison loomed, or by following an almost impossibly steep goat track up the northern cliffs from a tiny gravel beach that all but vanished at high tide. The switchback road was visible from the prison if a guard was posted, and the goat track was virtually suicidal.
"There's no other way up," said Holliday, peering at the chart as they bobbed along in the lightly running morning sea. A seagull swooped and called, sensing the possibility of a meal. "It's the cliff path or nothing. Even at dusk they'd see us going up the road."
"What about the tide?" Tidyman asked. "It says on the chart that the beach is covered at least half the time."
"Al says he could drop us in the late afternoon, pick us up in the late evening, ten thirty or eleven. Next pickup wouldn't be until the following morning," Holliday answered.
"In other words, we'd be on our own if there was any trouble," grumbled Rafi.
"There is no fair play in this game, I'm afraid," said Tidyman. "Sometimes the cards are stacked against you."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Rafi asked hotly. "You backing out?"
"Not at all, Dr. Wanounou," said the Egyptian, holding up one placating hand. "I'm just pointing out that whatever we do will be dangerous."
"I'm aware of that," said Rafi. "But getting Peggy back is worth it."
"She may not even be there," cautioned Holliday. "She could be farther down the pipeline by now."
Rafi muttered something under his breath, then turned away and went back up on deck.
"You realize that your cousin may very well be dead," said Tidyman. "Especially if they have discovered who she is."
"Yes, I know that," Holliday said and nodded. "I'm still trying to figure out why they took her on the expedition in the first place. If the expedition was just a cover for an attempt to find the German gold, why prejudice everything by taking along an outsider?" Holliday shook his head wearily and rolled up the chart. "It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense."
"No, it does not," replied Tidyman. "Unless they had no choice."
"Explain," said Holliday.
"An expedition without a photographer would have been suspect perhaps. Smithsonian magazine suggests a story; how could they reasonably decline? Miss Blackstock becomes the sacrificial lamb."
"I'm still not sure I buy it," said Holliday. "An American citizen held hostage by terrorists? That shines a pretty big light on these people. Would they have done that knowingly?"
Tidyman shrugged. "There is only one way to find out."
The hold of the Sofia filled to overflowing with tens of thousands of plump, squirming crustacea, Al swung the shallow-draft little trawler close in to shore, his actions hidden on the lee side of the island. As the carvel planking of the boat's almost flat bottom ground against the pebble beach, Holliday, Tidyman and Rafi dropped over the side and waded to the shore. Al would take his catch back to Ponza, a three-hour journey, offload, and then return to Santo Stefano under the cover of night, returning to the little strip of inhospitable shingle with the next low tide, guided by a flashlight signal from Holliday.
Superficially it seemed like a simple enough plan, but as Holliday knew it was the simplest plans that often went the furthest astray. As the three men began to climb the near-vertical track up the cliff he found his thoughts turning to the thousand and one unknowns that could turn their little outing into an unmitigated and deadly disaster. The higher they climbed, clinging to the sheer rock wall, the more exposed Holliday felt, and the stiff breeze plucking insistently at his clothing was like a sour omen of skeletal fingers trying to pull him off his tenuous perch. He silently chided himself for being superstitious and continued to climb.
Calves in agony, knees buckling, Holliday reached the top of the cliff more than an hour later, sweat staining his T-shirt and running in rivers down his forehead, dripping in stinging torrents into his eyes. He fell to his hands and knees, breath coming in ragged gasps, the perfume of the immense field of blue flowers thick in the air. Finally he sat up and opened the binocular case at his hip, bringing out the powerful glasses he'd borrowed from Al.
A football field away the high walls of the horseshoe-shaped prison stood before him, windows and doorways peering blindly at him, empty holes in the old crumbling stone. The sun was level with the sea, turning the old ruins the color of old gold and deepening the shadows. There was no sound except the sighing of the breeze across the field, gently wafting the flowers and the dry screams of the pallid swifts that darted like flitting bats in and out of the ruins. Nothing moved and it seemed that for an instant the world held its breath. Hot and tired as he was, Holliday felt a sudden chill run down his spine.
He'd never thought of himself as being much of a believer in the paranormal, but every once in a while he found himself in places where he could have sworn the fabric of time and place had somehow worn thin and the past found itself uncomfortably close to the present and the future.
Each time he visited Paris and stood on the Champs-Elysees he inevitably heard the echo of Nazi boots goose-stepping on the cobbles, and standing on Burnside's Bridge in Antietam, Maryland, he swore he could hear the roar of cannons and the screams of twenty thousand dying men whose blood stained the muddy waters of the creek below, all in a single day.