Thomas Greanias - The 34th Degree

His throat seemed to catch on this last phrase as a terrible grimace crossed his face. He doubled over to reveal a harpoon rising out of his shoulder like a flagpole and, behind it, Erin holding the gun.

“You, Niko, are too small a fish to kill,” said Erin.

Stavros reached over and grabbed the wounded Niko by his sailor’s shirt. “But you seem to have enough hot air to float.” Stavros pulled the harpoon out of Niko’s shoulder and, in a single fluid motion, hurled him into the sea. In seconds he drifted behind them and disappeared.

Andros moved quickly to man the wheel. “That was quick thinking, Erin.”

“Not quick enough. Look.”

He glanced over his shoulder. Lights appeared on the horizon.

“German motor torpedo boats,” Erin explained. “Looks like they plan to fire at us from a distance. Now what?”

“Now we make for the Cape of Koroni and wait for the signal from the submarine,” he told her, pushing the engine to a full-throttled roar. “And hope those torpedoes don’t catch up with us.”

Suddenly a torpedo struck a mine two hundred yards away, exploding into a giant fireball that lit up the night and exposed them to the Axis ships.

Andros steered a zigzag course and soon had the caique zooming through the waters, bouncing off the waves. With each chop, he winced in pain and feared that his knees would break, or that they’d strike a mine and disintegrate.

“They’re still back there!” shouted Erin. “What do you suggest?”

“We toss a grenade in their direction. The Germans will think we struck a mine and died.”

“I’m ready,” Stavros announced.

Andros turned and started. The kapetanios was holding a grenade in one hand and the pin in the other. “What are you waiting for?”

Stavros hurled the live grenade into the mine-infested waters as the caique peeled away. Twenty seconds later, the grenade blew, detonating a mine. The explosion lit up the Gulf of Messenia, and by the time it dimmed, they were engulfed in darkness.

It was still the middle of the night when the caique cleared the promontory of Koroni. To starboard Erin could see the coastal fortifications of Koroni’s Crusader castle, high on a cliff overlooking a sandy bay. Beyond the peninsula were the offshore islands of Sapientza and Skhiza. They had reached the open sea. A few more miles and they would rendezvous with the submarine.

Inside the wheelhouse, Stavros and Erin were sharing the first watch while Andros nursed his wounded leg down in the hold. Stavros had the wheel. He also had an anxious expression.

“How do we know Eliot hasn’t talked to the British already and lied about us?” Stavros asked as they passed the Cape of Koroni. “How do we know they won’t kill us?”

“We don’t,” said Erin, wiping the salty spray off her face. “Do you want to go back to Kalamata?”

Stavros said, “What happens to us once we are aboard your submarine?”

“We tell them about Kalos and the Minotaur. You’ll be vindicated.”

“No,” he replied. “I am a dead man already. Didn’t you see back there in Sparta? The British betrayed me to the Germans. They, like my comrades, wish to see me gone. I can never remove the black stain on my name for signing the Metaxas confession. I have committed the unpardonable sin and have betrayed the cause. This is my punishment.”

“Because you saved your brother’s life?” asked Erin. “That hardly seems a crime to me.”

“You don’t understand, Captain Whyte,” the kapetanios told her. “When a Communist falls into enemy hands, his imprisonment is nothing personal but part of the class struggle, a political blow to the Party. He must not waver, not under torture, failing health, nothing, or he betrays the Party.”

There was pride in his voice, and Erin began to grasp the similarities between them. Her breakdown before the Gestapo in Lyon wasn’t all that different from Stavros’s public renunciation of Marxism. Perhaps she had allowed her apprehensions about him as a man and a Communist to get the best of her back at the National Bands base.

“You know, my father the missionary endured unbearable pain for the cause of Christ in the Far East,” she said, her voice softening. “You two are very different men, but I’ll wager that you’re alike in one way: Becoming a Communist was probably the most unselfish, idealistic, and sacrificial decision of your life. And the day you betrayed your cause for the sake of your brother was equally unselfish, for you thought of him and not your reputation. Quite unlike Peter the Apostle when he denied Christ. But Jesus forgave him and restored him.”

“The Party is not so kind,” Stavros replied.

“Wasn’t your brother’s life more important than the cause?” asked Erin. “Aren’t people like your brother the reason for the cause?”

“What do you mean?” Stavros gripped the wheel and watched their heading.

“That if the souls of men like your brother live eighty or so years and die, then the Party, the state, the cause, are indeed more important, since they can last for generations. But if the souls of men are immortal, then individuals are more important than the state, than kingdoms that rise and fall and whose names we no longer remember.”

“Ah, now we are entering deep waters,” Stavros replied. “Waters in which a simple man such as I cannot swim.” He killed the engine and handed Erin the luminous signal ball. “Get ready. We’re near the rendezvous.”

She had opened her mouth to say something when the hatch cover popped open and Chris climbed up on deck beneath the night skies. He must have sensed they had entered smooth waters and seemed relieved to get out of the cramped, uncomfortable hold. “How are we doing?” he asked.

“Shhh,” said Stavros, holding a finger to his lips. “Listen.”

There was a heavy silence as the caique rose and fell with each small swell, the only sound the lap of water against the wooden hull. Then came an unmistakably faint, dull clacking noise.

“I think I see it,” said Andros, pointing. “The silhouette of the submarine.”

Erin held up the signal ball, palm toward the sea. But she was looking at Stavros. “Are you sure you won’t come with us?”

Stavros shook his head.

“Come on,” said Chris. “You could join one of the Greek army units training in Egypt or Lebanon.”

“The Hellenic Royal Army,” Stavros corrected. “No, Andros. The war is here, in Greece. And this caique should make a nice addition to the ELAS navy. It will be my peace offering to them.”

Erin said, “And if they still consider you a traitor?”

Stavros shrugged. “That is their concern. But I will not betray my conscience. I will not give up my arms until we have popular rule as well as national liberation. We don’t need King George or the Party. We Greeks must be master in our own house.”

The kapetanios ’s integrity made a deep impression on Erin, because she had seen it in her father. If Stavros had been a Party hack blindly following his misguided faith, she might have felt differently. But he knew there were corrupt leaders waiting for him back at Party headquarters, and still he insisted on going back to confront them, like a lamb to the slaughter.

“Good luck, then,” Andros said, and shook the kapetanios ’s hand. “I hope we don’t meet again in battle, for both our sakes.”

Erin watched Chris stuff the film negative and microfilm cartridge into a waterproof satchel, grab a life preserver, and wait for her by the wooden rail.

“Ladies first,” he said, gesturing overboard.

But she couldn’t leave Stavros alone.

Stavros could see her hesitation. “What are you waiting for?”