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The guide pulled at the lapels of a tight jacket and tucked the bottom neatly under a bright red cummerbund.
Slowly, with a professional kind of carelessness, he turned his gaze toward the rear of the little crowd, stopping it uneasily on two men who leaned indifferently against a fallen column. A tougher, more battered and villainous pair of hard cases he had never seen. The short one with the puffed out chest, obviously an Italian, looked more like an
ape than a man. The taller brute with the piercing green eyes, carried himself with an air of sureness and sophistication, yet there was an aura about him that advertised “Caution: highly dangerous.” The guide twisted his moustache again. German most likely. Must love to fight judging from the bandages on the nose and hands. Strange, most strange, the guide mused. Why would those two take a dull tour of old ruins? Probably a pair of sailors who jumped ship. Yes, that must be it, he suggested to himself smugly.
“This theatre was excavated in 1952,” the guide went on, flashing a set of bright teeth. “So buried under centuries of silt washed off the mountain that it took two years to reveal it all. Please notice the geometric mosaic of the orchestra floor. It was fashioned from naturally colored pebbles and signed Coenus Set It.” He hesitated a moment, letting his flock of excursionists study the floral design of the worn and faded files.
“Now, if you will follow me up the stairway to your left, we will take a short walk over the next mound to the Shrine of Poseidon.”
Pitt, playing the part of a tired and worn-out sightseer, feigned exhaustion and sat down on the steps, watching the rest of the tour climb the granite stairway until their heads disappeared beyond the top. Four-thirty, his watch read. Four-thirty. Exactly three hours since he and Giordino left the First Attempt and casually strolled into Liminas, joining the guided tour of the ancient ruins. Now he and Giordino.. . the little Captain was impatiently pacing the stone floor beside him, clutching a small flight bag. . . waited a few more minutes, making absolutely sure the tour was continuing without them. Satisfied that they weren’t missed, he silently motioned to Giordino and pointed toward the stage entrance of the amphitheatre.
For the hundredth time, Pitt tugged at the irritating chest bandage, thought about the ship’s doctor and grinned in self amusement. Permission to leave the ship and return to von Till’s villa had been firmly denied by the bearded doctor, and by Gunn too. But when Pitt insisted that, if necessary, he was ready to fight the entire ship’s crew and swim back to Liminas, the old physician had thrown up his hands in defeat and stormed from the cabin. So far, paying for the wine while killing time in a small taverna, waiting for the sightseeing trip to begin, was his only contribution to the backdoor reconnaissance of the villa. It was Giordino who had cursed and sweated over the huge lump of rust attached to the dory’s propeller shaft, trying to crank it to life. And it was Giordino who nursed the weather-beaten derelict back to the harbor at Liminas. Fortunately the old boat had not been missed. . . no irate owner or local police officer waited on the beach to punish the yankee pirates for boat theft. To tie the dory up to its original mooring and walk across the beach to the main part of town took only a few minutes. Pitt, certain it was a waste of time, led Giordino a block out of their way to see if Athena was still attached to the corner mailbox. The donkey was gone, but immediately across the narrow street, over a neat little white plastered office building, a sign, lettered in English, advertised the Greek National Tourist Organization. The rest was simple; joining a tour, whose itinerary included the amphitheatre, and mingling with a group of sightseers, offered the perfect cover for reaching the labyrinth and gaining entrance to von Till’s retreat without detection.
Giordino rubbed a sleeve across his damp brow.
“Breaking and entering in the middle of the afternoon. Why can’t we wait until dark like any other honorable burglars?”
The sooner we nail von Till, the better.” Pitt said. sharply. “If he’s off balance from the destruction of the Albatros this morning, the last thing he would expect is a resurrected Dirk Pitt in broad daylight”
Giordino could easily feel and see the revenge in Pitt’s eyes. He remembered watching Pitt move slowly, painfully, as best he could, over the steep trail through the ruins without complaint He had also watched the bitterness, the hopelessness that took and held Pitt’s face after Gunn announced the disappearance of the mystery plane. There was something ominous about Pitt’s grim features and unmoving concentration. Giordino wondered dimly whether Pitt was driving himself with a sense of duty or with an insane compulsion for retaliation.
“You’re sure this is the right way. It might be simpler to. . . “
“This is the only way,” Pitt interrupted. “The Albatros wasn’t eaten by a whale, yet it vanished without leaving a stray nut or bolt. Knowing the identity of the pilot could have settled a number of loose ends. We have no choice. The only course that lies open is to search the villa.”
“I still think we should take a squad of Air Police,” Giordino said morosely, “and crash in through the front door.”
Pitt looked at him, then looked once more over his shoulder up the stairway. He knew exactly how Al Giordino felt, for he felt the same way himself. .
frustrated, unsure, grasping at every string that offered a small touch of hope for obtaining an answer, no matter how small, to the strange events of the past few days. Much depended on the next hour whether they could enter the villa unseen, whether they found evidence against von Till, whether Teri was a willful member of her uncle’s, as yet unknown, scheme. Pitt glanced at Giordino again saw the set brown eyes, the grim mouth, the knotted hands, saw all the signs of an intense mental concentration; concentration on the possible dangers that lay ahead. There was no better man to have on your side when the odds were long.
“I can’t seem to pound it through your thick head,” he said quietly. “This is Greek soil. We have no legal right to Invade a private residence. I couldn’t begin to think of the problems it would cause our government if we broke in von Till’s door. As it is now, if we’re caught by the Greek authorities, we’ll play the roles of a couple of crewmen from the First Attempt who wandered into the underground passage during a guided tour to sleep off a shore leave drunk. They should buy that, they have no reason not to.”
“That’s why we’re not packing any weapons?”
“You guessed it, we’ll have to risk a disadvantage to save a possible predicament.” Pitt halted at the crumbling archway. The iron grillwork looked different in the daylight, not nearly so massive and indomitable as he remembered It. “This is the place,” he said, his fingers idly flaking a spot of dried blood from one of the rusting bars.
“You squeezed through that?” Giordino asked incredulously.
“It was nothing,” Pitt replied broadly grinning. “Just another one of my many accomplishments.” The grin quickly faded. “Hurry, we don’t have much time. The next tour will be through here in another forty-five minutes.”
Giordino stepped up to the heavy bars and within seconds was a man absorbed with a difficult and hazardous job to do. He opened the flight bag and carefully removed the contents, laying them out in order on an old towel. Quickly, he fitted two small charges of
T.N.T. around a single bar, spacing them twenty inches apart, inserted the primer and heavily wrapped each charge under several layers of metal plumbers tape. Next he spun strands of heavy wire around the bulbous bands and then covered the wire with more layers of thick adhesive tape. A final look at the charges, imbedded in the thick wrappings like cocoons, and he connected the wires to the detonator. Obviously pleased with his handwork, the entire operation had taken less
than six minutes from start to finish, he motioned Pitt toward the safety of a wide block retaining wall. Slowly Giordino followed, walking backward, playing out wires leading from the detonator to the charges. At the wall, Pitt grasped him on the arm to draw his attention.
“How far will the explosion be heard?”
“If I did it right,” Giordino replied, “it shouldn’t sound any louder than a popgun to someone standing a hundred feet away.”
Pitt stood on the lower base of the wall and hurriedly scanned a three hundred and sixty degree circle of landscape. Seeing no sign of human activity, he nodded, grinning at Giordino. “I hope dropping in uninvited through the service entrance isn’t beneath your dignity.”
“We Giordinos are pretty broadminded,” he said
, returning Pitt’s grin.
“Shall we?”
