The Mediterranean Caper Page 8

  Von Till was on his feet in an instant, his oval face contorted with anger. “You have probed too far and too deep. Major Pitt, into areas that don’t concern you. I shall take no more of your absurd implications. I must ask you to leave my villa.”

  A look of contempt crossed Pitt’s face. “Whatever's fair,” he said turning to the stairway.

  Von Till glared at him bitterly. “No need to return through the study, Major,” he said pointing to a small doorway that clung to the far wall of the balcony. “This corridor will lead you to the front entrance.”

  “I’d like to see Teri before I leave.”

  “I see no reason to prolong your presence.” Von Till blew a contemptuous cloud of smoke toward Pitt’s face, driving home the angered words. “I also demand that you never see or talk to my niece again.”

  Pitt’s hand clenched into fists. “And if I do?’

  Von Till smiled menacingly. “I will not threaten you, Major. If you persist in exercising aggressive stupidity, I shall merely punish Teri.”

  “You rotten shit-eating kraut,” Pitt snarled, fighting down a surging urge to kick von Till in the crotch. “I don’t know what the hell your little conspiracy amounts to, but I can definitely go on record as stating that I’ll take great personal pleasure in screwing it up. And I can begin by telling you that the attack on Brady Field failed to achieve its intention. The National Underwater Marine Agency’s ship is staying right where it’s anchored until its scientific research activities are completed.”

  Von Till’s hands trembled but his face remained impassive. “Thank you, Major. That is a bit of information I did not expect quite so soon.

  At last, the old kraut is dropping his guard, Pitt thought. There could be no doubt about it now, it was von Till who had plotted to get rid of the First Attempt. But why? The question still remained unanswered. Pitt tried a shot in the dark. “You’re wasting your time, von Till. The divers on the First Attempt have already discovered the sunken treasure. They’re in the act of raising it now.”

  Von Till broke out in a broad smile, and Pitt knew immediately the lie was a mistake.

  “A very poor attempt, Major. You could not be more wrong.”

  He drew the Luger from under his armpit and pointed the dark blue barrel at Pitt’s neck. Then he opened the corridor door. “If you please?” he said, beckoning with the gun toward the threshold.

  Pitt took a quick glance through the darkened doorway. The corridor beyond was dimly lighted with candles and seemed completely deserted. He hesitated. “Please express my thanks to Teri for the excellent dinner.”

  “I shall pass on your compliment”

  “And thank you, Herr von Till,” Pitt said sarcastically, “for your hospitality.”

  Von Till smirked, clicked his heels and bowed. “It was my pleasure” He placed a hand on the head of the dog, whose lip curled, showing a prodigious white fang.

  The door’s archway was low and Pitt had to stoop to enter the tunnel-like entrance. He took a few cautious steps.

  “Major Pitt!”

  “Yes,” Pitt replied, turning and facing the fat shadow at the entryway.

  There was a sadistic anticipation in von Till’s voice. “it is a pity you will not be able to witness the next flight of the yellow Albatros.”

  Before Pitt could answer the door slammed shut and a heavy bolt dropped into its catch like a thunder-clap and echoed ominously toward the unseen reaches of the dim corridor.

  7

  A spasm of anger swept over Pitt. He was half tempted to slam his fist against the door, but one look at the heavy planking changed his mind. Turning again to the corridor, he found it still empty. He shivered unconsciously. He had no illusions as to what lay ahead. It was certain now that von Till never meant for him to leave the villa alive. He remembered the knife and felt a tinge of assurance as he slipped it out of his sock. The flickering yellow light from the candles, mounted in rusted metal holders high on the walls. glinted dully on the blade and made the tiny pointed knife look woefully inadequate for the job of self-defense. Only one comforting thought ran through Pitt’s mind: However small, the knife was better than nothing.

  Suddenly a blast of heavy, chilling air blew through the corridor like an invisible hand and snuffed out the candles, leaving Pitt standing in a sea of suffocating blackness.

  His senses strained to penetrate the gloom, but could detect no sound, no glimmer of light.

  “Now the fun begins,” he murmured, bracing his body for the unknown.

  Pitt’s spirits touched zero and he could feel the first terror striking symptoms of panic edging rapidly into his mind. He remembered reading somewhere that nothing is more horrifying or uncomprehending to the human mind than total darkness. To not know or be able to perceive what lies beyond one’s sight or touch, acts on the brain like a short circuit in a computer it runs amok. What the brain cannot see, it creates, usually some nightmarish event that is grossly exaggerated or embellished like a delusion of being bitten by a shark or run over by a locomotive while locked in a closet Recalling the semi-amusing phraseology, he grinned in the darkness and the first probes of panic slowly reversed into a sensation of logic calm.

  His next thought was to use the Zippo to relight the candles. But if someone or something were awaiting in the ambush further down the corridor, he reasoned, it would be best to remain in pitch darkness and keep them at the same disadvantage. Stooping, he quickly unlaced his shoes, discarding them, and began inching along the cool wall. The corridor led him past several wooden doors, each barred by large bands of iron. He was in the midst of testing one of the doors when he paused, listening intently.

  There was a sound somewhere ahead in the blackness. It was indefinable and inexplicable, but quite audible. It could have been a moan or a growl; Pitt didn’t know which. Then the sound faded and died into nothingness.

  Determined now that a real menace was waiting, some creature of the dark, that was physical, could make noises and probably reason, spurred Pitt’s sense of caution. He lay down on the corridor floor and crept ahead without sound, his ears listening and his sensitive fingertips feeling out the way. The floor was smooth and unyielding, and In spots it was damp. He crawled on through an oily slime that soiled his uniform, soaking into the material and causing it to stick to his skin. He mentally cursed his uncomfortable predicament as he crept onward.

  After what seemed like hours, Pitt imagined he had dragged his stomach over at least two miles of cement, but his rational mind knew it was close to eighty feet. The musty smell of antiquity lay on the floor and reminded him of the interior of an old steamer trunk that once belonged to his grandfather. He remembered hiding in its dark cubicle and pretending he was a stowaway on a ship bound for the mysterious orient. It’s strange, he thought incongruously, how smells can bring back dormant and forgotten memories.

  Abruptly, the feel of the floor and walls changed from smooth concrete to rough, jointed masonry. The passageway left the more modern construction behind and became old and hand hewn.

  Pitt’s hand felt the wall stop and branch to the right. A gentle touch of air on his cheeks told him he had come to cross-passage. He froze and listened.

  There it was again . . . The sound was halting and furtive. This time it was a clicking noise, like the kind long nailed animals make on a hard surfaced floor.

  Pitt shivered uncontrollably and broke out in a cold sweat. He pressed his body flat into the damp cobbled ground, knife pointed in the direction of the approaching sound.

  The clicking became louder. Then it stopped and a torturous silence set in.

  Pitt tried to contain his breathing to hear better; all his ears could detect was his own heartbeat Something was out there, not ten feet away. He compared himself with a blind man who was being stalked down a back-street alley. The eerie, spine-chilling atmosphere of the surroundings numbed his thinking with a sense of hopelessness. He shook it off, forcing his mind to concentrate on methods of combati
ng the unseen terror.

  The musty stench of the tunnel suddenly became overpowering, nearly making him sick. He also detected a faint animal odor. But from what kind of animal?

  Quickly a plan formed in Pitt's mind, and he decided to take a gamble on the unknown quantity. The Zippo came out of his pocket. He flipped the little wheel against the flint and held it a brief instant until the wick burned brightly. He cast It up and into the air ahead. The tiny flame sailed through the darkness and illuminated two glowing fluorescent eyes, backed by a giant shadow that danced hellishly on the walls and floor of the passageway. The lighter clinked to the ground, its flame snuffed out by the fall. A low menacing growl came from the eyes and echoed through the stone labyrinth.

  Pitt reacted instantly and coiled on the hard floor. Then he whipped over on his back and thrust the knife up into the dark void, holding the handle tightly in the sweating palms of both hands. He could not see his ghostly attacker, but he knew now what it was.

  The beast had noted Pitt’s exact location in the brief flickering flame from the lighter. It hesitated for an instant, then it sprang,

  The ageless animal instinct of sniffing its prey before attacking spelled the big animal's doom. The delay gave Pitt precious time for his sudden evasive body roll, and the huge white dog overshot his quarry. The action happened with such blinding speed that all Pitt could recall afterwards was the feel of the knife slicing into a soft furry surface and the wetness of heavy liquid splattering in his face.

  The growl of the killer turned to the howl of the mortally wounded as the knife laid open the great Shepherd's flank just behind the ribs. The walls of the stone corridors thundered in a chorus of reverberating roars that burst from the thick, hairy throat a split second before the hundred and eighty pounds of animal fury crashed into the vertical stone beyond Pitt and fell heavily to the ground, thrashing in spastic agony for several moments before dying.

  At first Pitt thought the dog had missed. Then he felt a sting across his chest, and he knew it hadn’t. He lay without moving, listening to the death throes in the blackness. Long minutes after the passageway returned to a ghostly stillness, he remained limp on the uneven floor. The tension finally passed and his muscles started to loosen, and the pain began to arrive in earnest, clearing his mind to a new sharpness.

  Pitt slowly rose to his feet and leaned wearily against the unseen blood splattered wall. Another shudder shook his body and he waited until his nerves calmed before stumbling into the darkness ahead where he shuffled his feet back and forth until they came in contact with his lighter. He lighted the little metallic box and surveyed his wounds.

  Blood seeped from four evenly spaced furrows that began just above the left nipple and extended up and diagonally over his chest to the right shoulder. The claw marks were deep in the skin but their depth barely penetrated the muscle tissue. Pitt’s shirt hung down like a shredded flag of red and khaki. All he could do for the moment was tear off the dangling strips of ragged cloth and pad the gashes. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to collapse to the ground and let a wave of comforting unconsciousness gather him in its trough. The temptation was strong, but he resisted it. Instead he stood on steady legs with a quartz clear mind, planning his next move.

  After another minute, Pitt walked over to the dog. Holding the lighter aloft, he stared down at the dead animal. It was laying on its side, the entrails in a gruesome heap outside the body cavity. Trails of blood streaked the floor, running in separate little streams toward an unseen low point somewhere in the direction from which he had crawled. The weariness and the pain dropped from Pitt like a falling coat at the gruesome sight. Rage and anger engulfed his body and soared

  from the state of fearful, life saving caution to a state of uncaring indifference toward danger and death. One thought held and gripped his mind: murder von Till.

  His next step sounded simple, absurdly simply; be must find a way out of the labyrinth. The odds seemed long, and the chances hopeless. Yet the thought of failure never entered his mind. Von Till’s words about the next flight of the yellow Albatros settled any doubts for him. The gears in Pitt’s head meshed in analytical thought, spitting out facts and possibilities.

  Now that the scheming old German knew the First Attempt was remaining anchored off Thasos, he would have it attacked by the Albatros. It would be too risky for the old plane to try another afternoon attack, Pitt reasoned. Von Till, no doubt, would send it aloft as soon as possible, probably at dawn. Gunn and his crew must be warned in time. He glanced at the luminous dial on his wrist watch. The needle-like hands registered 9:55. Dawn would break at approximately 4:40, he figured, give or take five minutes. That left six hours and forty-five minutes for him to find an exit from this crypt and alert the ship!

  Pitt shoved the knife in his belt, snapped the lighter shut to conserve fuel and started up the left passageway toward the source of a very slight air current. The going was easier now. Pitt was damned if he’d crawl anymore. He hurried without hesitation. The passage narrowed to three feet in width, but the roof stayed out of reach above his head.

  Suddenly his outstretched hand struck solid wall The passage ceased; it was a dead end. He flicked the lighter and saw his mistake. The air current came from a small crack between the rocks. An audible humming noise also issued from the crack. It was the sound of an electric motor, hidden somewhere beyond the wall in the bowels of the mountain. Pitt listened for a moment, but then the sound ceased.

  “If at first you don’t succeed,” be mused aloud,

  “try another passage.” He retraced his steps and quickly reached the intersection, this time taking the tunnel directly opposite the one he had cautiously crawled through.

  He lengthened his stride and pounded on into the impenetrable darkness; the cool damp paving numbing his stocking feet. He idly wondered how many other men, or women for that matter, had von Till literally thrown to the dog. In spite of the near chilly air, the sweat ran off his body in streams. The pain across his chest seemed remote, too remote to belong to him. He could feel the blood mingling with the sweat and running down into his pants. He kept going and was determined to keep going until he dropped. A thought tugged at his mind to slow down and rest, but he rejected it and quickened his pace.

  Again and again his groping hands and the periodic but welcome flicker of the lighter discovered new passages that branched off into endless nothingness. In some, the rocks had caved in, sealing them off, probably forever.

  The lighter was on its last breath, the fluid almost gone. Pitt used it as little as possible, relying more and more on his bruised and scraped fingers. An hour passed, and then another. He continued on, pushing his tired and torn body through the ancient passages.

  His foot struck something solid, and he pitched forward onto the bottom steps of a stone stairway. The edge of the fourth step caught him across the nose, gashing the bridge to the bone. Blood spurted down his cheeks and coated his lips. All at once the exhaustion, the emotional drain and the despair flooded over his battered body, and he folded limply on the stairs. Everything began to slow down. He lay and listened to the blood drip on the step beneath his head. A soft white cloud materialized out of the black gloom and gently covered him.

  Pitt shook his sore and fuzzy head violently, trying to clear the cobwebs. Slowly, very slowly, like a man lifting a tremendous weight he raised his head and shoulders and began agonizingly to crawl up the stairway. Step by step he struggled, until at last he reached his destination.

  A webbing of heavy bars marked the top of the stairway. The grille work was ancient and heavily rusted but still thick and strong enough to hold back an elephant.

  Pitt hauled himself painfully onto the landing. A curtain of fresh air greeted his skin, replacing the musty odor of the labyrinth. He gazed through the rectangles between the bars and his spirits soared at the sight of the stars blinking in the sky. Back in the winding passageways he had left like a dead man in a casket It seemed l
ike an eternity since he saw the outside world.

  He pulled himself to his feet and shook the bars. There was no movement. The lock on the massive gate had recently been welded closed.

  He checked the width between each bar, searching for the largest opening. The third space from the left, held the greatest spread; about eight and one-half inches. He laboriously stripped off all his clothes and set them on the other side of the barrier. Next he smeared his blood into the sweat and exhaled until his lungs ached in protest. Then, slipping his bead between the bars, he strained to push one hundred and ninety pounds into the outside landscape. The rust from the bars flaked off against his slippery skin and stuck to the glue-like blood. A racking moan of pain escaped his mouth as his genitals scraped over the ragged edge of one bar. He desperately clawed at the ground and gave a final heave. His body came free.

  Pitt grasped his scraped crotch and sat up, ignoring the stabbing pain and unable to believe his success. He was out, but was he in the clear? His eyes, now acutely used to the dark, darted around the immediate area.

  The vaulted bars of the labyrinth faced onto the stage entrance of a great amphitheatre. The ponderous structure reflected a vaguely unearthly glow from the

  white light of the stars and the moon, whose imperfect circle peeped over a shadowed mountain summit. The architecture was Grecian but the massiveness of the construction signified Roman hands. The edge of the round stage was separated from the theatre’s upper rim by almost forty rows of steeply banked seats. Except for the invisible flight of nocturnal insects,, the entire amphitheatre was deserted.

  Pitt slipped into the remains of his uniform. Knotting the damp sticky cloth of his shirt, he stiffly wrapped his chest with a crude bandage.

  Just to be able to walk and breathe in the warm evening air gave him a new surge of strength. He had gambled back there in the labyrinth and without Theseus’ string to guide him had beat the immense odds and won. Laughter rang from his lips and traveled in loud echoes to the last row of the amphitheatre and back. The pain and the exhaustion was forgotten as he visualized von Till’s face at their next meeting.