Ник Картер - Assassin - Code Name Vulture

“You look like a tourist, Nick,” she smiled as she sat down beside me. “Except for the jacket and tie.”

“Give me another hour,” I said. “What did you find out?”

She ordered a cup of hot tea from the waiter, and he left. “It was a good thing I went alone. Maria was very reluctant to talk at first. These islanders are very distant with strangers and any person who doesn’t live here is a stranger.”

“What did she have to say?”

Erika began to speak, but had to wait until the waiter left her tea. When he was gone, she spooned a little sugar into the cup from an open bowl. “There is a camp near Ornos beach, and only a couple of islanders have been inside. The commander resides in a rented villa near the camp. His name is Galatis. One of the two local taxi drivers took two Americans to the Rhenia Hotel just at the edge of the village; Later the same man drove them to the villa of Galatis.”

“Excellent intelligence work, Miss Nystrom,” I said. “Come on, let’s visit the Rhenia.”

“I just sat down,” she complained. “I still have a half cup of tea.”

“I’ll get you another cup later.” I thrust a few drachmas onto the small table.

“Okay,” she said as she hurriedly sipped some more tea and then rose to follow me.

We walked along the waterfront past the cafés and a small band to an open square where busses to outlying points stopped. The post office and the harbor police headquarters fronted the square, and there was a tarnished bronze statue of an ancient hero. We passed this square and turned off the waterfront into a short block and soon arrived at the Rhenia. It was a multi-level hotel built on a hill with an almost-tropical garden in front.

The slender young man at the reception desk was quite cordial. “Yes, two Americans checked in yesterday. Are they friends of yours?”

“What are their names?” I asked.

“Let me see.” He took a register from under the counter and thumbed it open. “Ahh. Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith.”

“Yes. They would be our friends,” I said. “What room are they in? We would like to surprise them.”

“They are in 312. But they have left already. They mentioned returning for lunch at the hotel before noon.”

We checked the room anyway. I knocked on the door and then let myself in with a Lockpicker’s Special supplied by the Special Effects boys. We closed the door behind us and looked around. Both big beds were still unmade, and there was a bottle of scotch half gone, sitting on the night table. Stavros was not much of a drinker, so I figured it was the gunman he had brought with him who had drunk the liquor.

Besides the scotch and a few cigarette butts, there was nothing else the two had left behind. Stavros had probably brought no luggage. What he had to do wouldn’t take long. He had to inquire about that phone call from a man identifying himself as Minourkos, and he had to test the loyalty of Galatis, the camp commander. Galatis’ life was in immediate danger if he had obeyed Minourkos’ instructions not to move until hearing from him further. Since Stavros had arrived yesterday, Galatis might already be dead.

“We’d better get out to the villa,” I said.

“I’m with you, Nick.”

After a half hour search, we finally found a cab driver sipping an ouzo in a café. He didn’t have any inclination to drive us to the villa until I showed him a wad of drachmas, whereupon he hunched his heavy shoulders and led us to the cab. It was a beat-up 1957 Chevrolet with most of the paint gone and cotton stuffing protruding from the upholstery. The cabby started the old engine, which emitted a loud belch just as we drove away.

Most of the drive was over a badly paved road along the rocky coast of the island where sheer cliffs dropped off into the Aegean Sea. When we were almost at Ornos beach, the driver turned into a pocked gravel road toward the camp and the villa. We got only a glimpse of the camp, green buildings crouching in the distance, as we passed a high, barbed-wire fence. We turned away from the fence onto a long drive that led toward the villa. When we reached the tiled-roof house, I asked the cabby to wait, and he seemed very content to do so.

We were ready for anything when I knocked on the ornate wooden front door. Erika had the Belgian revolver hidden behind her purse again, and this time she hoped to use it. She stood coolly beside me at the door, waiting. I had put the Luger into the side pocket of my jacket, and my hand was in there with it. A servant, an elderly Greek, opened the door.

“Kali mera,” he greeted us. He continued in Greek. “You wish to see the commander?”

“Excuse me,” I said, gently moving him aside. Erika and I moved into a large living area with one glass wall overlooking a hillside of trees.

“Please!” the old fellow protested in English.

We went from room to room, cautiously, finally meeting back in the big room. Nobody was there.

“Where is the commander?” Erika asked the old man.

He shook his head violently from side to side. “Not at villa. Away.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Go with Americans. To camp.”

“Efharisto,” I said, thanking him.

We went out and climbed back into the cab. “Take us to the military camp,” I told the driver.

“What will we do when we get there?” Erika asked.

The cab pulled away from the house and started back along the gravel drive. “I’m not sure yet,” I admitted. “I just have a feeling we should at least take a look from the outside.”

But we never got that far. When we turned back on the road that paralleled the fence and proceeded along it for a few hundred yards, I saw a place where tire tracks left the roadway and stopped near some scrub brush.

“Stop!” I ordered the driver.

“What is it, Nick?” Erika asked.

“I don’t know. Stay here.”

I got out of the cab and pulled out the Luger. I moved slowly past the tire marks toward the scrub brush. There was evidence of a scuffle near where the car had been parked. When I got into the brush, I found what I had feared. A tall, slim man lay behind a thick bush, his throat cut from ear to ear. I had apparently found Galatis.

I returned to the car and told Erika, and we just sat there for a moment while the cabby eyed us in the rearview mirror.

“Stavros must already have one of Galatis’ subordinate officers on his side,” I said heavily. “If we don’t find Stavros, he’ll have these troops in Athens tomorrow.”

“We can’t go into the camp after him, Nick,” Erika said. “He would have a small army to defend him there.”

“We’ll return to the hotel and hope that what Stavros told them there is true — that he intends to be there by noon. We’ll be there waiting for him.”

At the Rhenia, Erika and I got to Stavros’ room undetected. We locked ourselves in and waited. It was mid-morning. The beds had been made, so we didn’t have to worry about the maids. I poured us both a short shot of the scotch, and we sat on the edge of a bed drinking it.

“Why can’t we be here on vacation like the tourists?” Erika complained. “With nothing to do but visit the windmills and go to the beaches and sit at the cafés, watching the world go by?”

“Maybe we’ll get here together some day,” I said, not believing it for a minute. “Under different circumstances.”

Erika had removed the small vest that went with the slacks suit. She wore only a sheer blouse tucked into the slacks. She lay back on the bed, her feet still on the floor and her red hair spread in disarray against the plain green bedcover.

“We don’t have much longer together,” she said, staring at the ceiling. A small breeze came in through an open window, a soft sea breeze. “No matter how this all works out.”