Down by the shore that curved away west of town there were wooden shacks, strung nets, beached boats, weather-beaten docks that seemed to sway with each wave that splashed up around the barnacle-ringed pilings. We left the car up on the road, walked down across gray sand to a group of men gathered around one overturned boat. They watched us come up; none of them showed any signs of joy at our arrival. Carmody greeted them in Greek, made what I judged were a few remarks about the weather which netted him reluctant nods. Then I caught the name Rassias. The silence that fell made their previous taciturnity seem noisy. One man crossed himself when he thought no one was looking.
"Maybe the smell of money would help their memories, Mr. Smith," he suggested. I took out my usual ten-cee note; nobody reached for it. Carmody talked some more. The men looked at each other, at their feet, out to sea. Then one of them waved an arm; another plucked the note from my fingers. They closed ranks, moved off toward what I suspected was the nearest bar.
Carmody nodded toward a lone shack, almost out of sight around a curve of the beach.
"That must be it."
"I got the feeling Rassias isn't a big favorite with them."
"They're afraid of him. They didn't say why."
I pulled the car along the road, turned off on a track that led down through the dunes, pulled up behind the house. It looked a little more substantial than the others; there were some new boards across the back, and a meter on a pole attested to the presence of electric power. We walked around to the front; a wharf led out across the mud, projected fifty feet into the water. A solid-looking thirty-foot boat was tied up beyond it.
"Looks like Rassias is in the chips," Carmody noted. He rapped on the door. Nobody answered. He tried the knob, pushed it open, looked inside.
"He's out."
"Not very far out," I said. He followed my look. A thin, wiry man with a cloth tied around his head had appeared on the dock. He wore a black turtleneck sweater, vague-colored pants that fitted tightly from the knee down to bare feet. He was smoking a brown cigarette in a long black holder.
"What you want?" he said in a low, husky voice.
"You Rassias?" Carmody called.
"That's right."
"My name's Carmody—"
"I know you, mister."
"OK. This is my friend Smith. He's looking for something; maybe you can help him."
"He lose something?"
"I understand you might be able to tell me where to get a gold coin of a certain type," I said. Rassias thought that over, came along the dock, jumped down to face us. He studied my face, wrinkling his nose at the smoke from the cigarette.
"Come inside." He walked away and we followed.
The cabin was fitted up with a neatly-made bunk, wall shelves, a newspaper-covered table, chairs. A big shiny tri-D set occupied a place of prominence at one end of the single room; a two-tube fluorescent fixture hung from weathered ceiling beams. Rassias motioned us to chairs, sat down across the table from us. He crushed out the cigarette in a sea-shell ashtray, blew through the holder, tucked it away.
"You been talking to them. . . ." He motioned with his head to indicate the town.
"They don't talk much," I said. "I'm hoping maybe you can be of a little more help."
"Help how?"
I got out my magic gold piece, the sight of which struck people dumb. "Ever see one like this before?"
Rassias glanced at it.
"What's in it, mister?"
"I'll pay for whatever you can tell me."
"Why?"
"I'm paying for information," I pointed out. "Not selling."
"You could take a walk," Rassias said. He spoke English with a unique mixture of Greek and Cockney accents.
"I've had my walk," I said. "This is the end of the line."
Rassias nodded. "Always me," he said. "Always it's me they come to with their dirty work. Why me?" He leaned forward. "I'll tell you why me. Because I'm Rassias, and Rassias is not afraid." He leaned back, looking unafraid.
"Good, then you're not too shy to tell me what you know about the coin."
"I've seen a few like it," he said flatly. I waited.
"Talk it up, Rassias," Carmody said. "Mr. Smith hasn't got time to sit here and play twenty questions."
"Mr. Smith can get in his car and tootle off," Rassias told him.
"Where did you see these coins?" I cut in. I had an idea Carmody's weight tactics would not buy anything here.
"Right here." Rassias held out a hand lumpy with calluses.
"Where did you get them?"
"They was paid to me."
"Who paid them to you?"
"A number of gentlemen." Rassias smiled crookedly. He had good teeth except for a gap at the side where a left hook might have landed once.
"What were they paying for?"
"My services."
"What kind of services?"
Rassias pointed with his chin in the general direction of the Mediterranean. "I own a boat. A good boat. Fast. Reliable. I know these waters—even now."
"You took them somewhere?"
"Sure."
"Where?"
Rassias frowned. "Out there," he said, and pointed again with his chin.
"How about getting a little more specific, Mr. Rassias?" I suggested. "I told you I'd pay for information; so far I haven't gotten any."
Rassias laughed; I thought I detected just a faint note of nervousness. "I answer everything you ask, Mister. Maybe you don't ask the right questions."
"I want to know where the coin came from."
"All I know is, they pay me. I don't ask no questions." Rassias wasn't laughing now; he wasn't even smiling.
"You know where you took them."
"That's right. I know."
"So?"
"I tell you, maybe you don't believe." His English was getting worse. He sounded worried now.
"Why wouldn't I believe you—if you're telling the truth?"
Rassias shifted in his chair. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
"OK," he said, speaking in a flat, businesslike tone now. "They come here, say can I take them out, twenty kilometers, twenty-five kilometers. I say sure. Why not? They nice-looking gentlemen, dress good, speak good. From Athens, maybe, businessmen. They want to go then, same night.
"An hour out, one fellow, he comes back to the wheelhouse, stands by me, tells me steer right, steer left. I don't know where he goes, but what's that to me?
"Another half hour, he says, 'Stop here.' OK I stop. This man says to me, go below, in the cabin. I argue, but I go. You say why? I say why not? They pay me plenty, OK. But I know something they don't. Sometimes out working deep for scampi, I set the automatic steering, I go below, get a little rest. But I want to know what is up ahead. I don't want no collision. So I rig up the mirrors. I can lie on the bunk and I can see the foredeck and the sea off the bow.
"So I watch the mirror. Down below I got also a gun, you know? Maybe I have to use it, if these nice gentlemen start some monkey business. But I see them go forward, and I see them go over the side. In their nice suits. All of them. Four men, all go over the side.
"I come up on deck quick. In those clothes they drown. I got a life preserver. I put on the big deck light. But it's nothing. I don't see nothing. All I see is black water, a light sea running, good moon, stars. But no passengers. They go over the side. And they don't come back."
Carmody whistled. "What is it, some kind of crazy suicide club?"
"You tell me the name, I don't know. They hire me, they pay me, I take them out. They want to go over the side, that's their business."
"How long ago was this?"
Rassias looked wary. "I forgot."
"In the last month, say?"
"Maybe. Maybe longer."
"And you never saw them before?"
"No—not before."
"What does that mean?"
"I saw one—after."
"What did he do, wash up on the beach?" Carmody wrinkled his forehead.
Rassias pointed at the door. "He came there and knocked. I let him in."
"This was after you took him out and he jumped overboard?"
"A month later."
"They must have had a boat out there—"
"No boat. Nothing. A man in those clothes, he couldn't swim ten yards. I stayed half an hour that night, working the deck light. Nothing."
"But he came back."
"He came back."
"What for?"
"To rent my boat. He had two friends with him. He paid in advance." Rassias grinned. "For this kind of business, it is always the pay in advance, you understand."
"You took them out too?"
"Sure. It's what they pay for. To the same place."
"How do you know it was the same place. You said—"
"I know. By the smell of the sea, by the wind, by the ripples on the water, by something here"—he pointed at his chest—"that makes me the true sailor. I know."
"And what did they do this time?"
"It was the same. I go below, and they throw themselves into the sea. But quietly. This time I waste no time with the deck light. I have a quiet smoke below; then I come back."
"And they paid you in coins like this?" I picked up my trophy.
"I tell them no paper money. For this work, gold! But the second time, I raise the price. I told him, if the police hear about it, finish! I don't tell them, but—word gets out. You know—" Rassias twitched his mouth in a half-smile. "They all know about my cargoes that go out and never come back. They too don't talk to the police. What for? Who are the police? Who knows the police? Pouf!" He dismissed the police with a downward sweep of his hand.
"Some tale," Carmody said. "Wonder how much of it's true."
The sailor looked at him from the corners of his eyes.
"You think a little bit, mister," he said softly, "before you call Rassias a liar."
"I haven't called you anything—yet," Carmody grunted. "You have any proof you didn't dream the whole thing?"
Rassias smiled a quick smile, got up and went to a box on the shelf, came back and spread half a dozen bright gold discs on the newspaper that covered the tabletop. I leaned over to study them, picked one up, there was a tiny depression in the gold, just to the left of the bird's beak: the mark of my tooth. It was the coin the sailor had given me—the one Mr. Zablun had switched in his neat little office on the twenty-eighth floor at the Gulfstream, a week earlier.
"I had more," Rassias was saying. "I sold a couple."
"A month ago, huh, that last run?"
"Sure."
I swung from the floor, caught him on the cheekbone; he went down hard, came up with a knife ready. I yanked my .38 up, held it on him. Carmody started a move, checked it.
"Forget it, Rassias," I cut him off. "Can you find that spot again?"
"Sure." He looked at the gun, rubbed his face. "Inside a hundred meters, same spot." His eyes probed at me like scalpels. "Why?"
"I'm going out."
He laughed. "Maybe I was a little off on the date, OK. My boat's for hire. You pay, I take you out." He got to his feet, put the knife away.
"We won't need your boat," Carmody said. "My boat. You pilot her."
Rassias thought about it. "Cost you one hundred cees," he said. Carmody looked at me. I nodded.
"OK." Rassias showed me his teeth. "Your boat, my boat, what's the difference? I go."
"Tonight?"
"Sure, tonight."
"Meet us at nine o'clock at Stavros' Bar, Rassias," Carmody said. "That sound all right to you, Mr. Smith?"
I said it did; Rassias said he would be there. Outside, Carmody gave me his sideways look. "You got a little rough yourself."
"Yeah. A hundred cees is a nice tab for a look at a piece of sea water. Money's free, where I come from."
"What do you expect to find out there, a bottle with a clue in it?"
"I'd settle for that."
"Face it, Mal, this kid you found in the alley is dead."
"Probably."
"OK, it's your game." We went back to the car and drove into town.
Carmody's boat was a handsome thirty-eight-footer, equipped with more electronic gear than a Navy picket. Rassias followed us aboard, prowled it from one end to the other while I stowed my gun case. He came back, grinning at Carmody in the yellow light of a carbide lantern set on a pole on the wharf.
"She's nice, mister. When you die, you leave her to me, OK?"
"You know how to make sail?"
"Sure, what you think, I'm one of these gasoline sailors?"
"We'll take her out on the diesels. When we're half a mile from target, we'll shut down and ride the breeze in."
We cast loose and edged across the bar, then Carmody threw power to her and the big boat put her stern down and headed out.
"You know this is a nutty idea, don't you?" he said over the thrum of the big engines and the shrill of the airstream. "You ever used scuba gear before?"
"A few times."
"A swell way to drown."
"As good as any."
"You sound bitter, pal."
"What's there to be bitter about? Half the world is under water and most of the rest is choking to death on volcanic gas. Every building on earth over two stories high is piled in what's left of the street. The only government still operating is what a few towns here and there have managed to keep alive at gunpoint—and just to liven things up, a pack of madmen are running around loose picking victims out of a hat. But I'm still breathing, so what do I care?"
"The girl must have meant a lot to you."
"I hardly knew her."
A stiff westerly breeze was blowing cool salt mist against my face; underfoot the deck trembled and thudded like something alive. Out here, at night, it was almost possible to imagine that back on shore life went on, music played, people laughed, sang, went for walks in the woods, took picnic lunches to the park secure in the knowledge that the ground would not break apart under their feet, that the worst natural disaster they were likely to encounter was an unexpected shower.
But that dream was gone forever—or for my lifetime, at least. Man, the bright young primate, had had it lucky for his first million years. There had been a few brief eras of planetary upheaval in his time; the legends of flood and hellfire attested to their impact on the race memory. But, by and large, he had had a long vacation in which to evolve, build cities, invent culture.
And now the vacation was over.
It was nothing abnormal, as events in the life of a planet went; you had to expect an age of mountain raising, sea draining, continent breaking now and then. It was only the egotism of man that had made him imagine it could not happen to him. Now it was happening—and when it was over, future generations would tell the story to their surviving young down through the centuries, and graybeards would sort through the rock strata chipping out coffee pots and fossilized spare tires and make beautiful theories to account for it all.
But we were here; we knew: A planet is a strange and fearful place for fragile living creatures.
Forty minutes' run nearly due east, Rassias came back from the prow where he had been standing straddle-legged in the blue glow of the bow lights watching the water.
"Time to break out the sail, Captain." He was smiling as if he were pleased with the whole thing, happy to be here, eager for the fun.
Carmody cut the throttles back. "You sure?"
Rassias shrugged. "If you got no confidence, why you pay me?" He went forward, set to work hauling the tarpaulin clear of the sail locker. He finished, gave a wave; Carmody pushed a button. The telescoping mast rose up, pivoted into position; the sail shook itself out, took the wind, came taut with a soft boom. The sound of the engines died and I could hear the hiss of water, the sigh of air through the rigging. We rode in darkness now, running lights off.
"I'll go below and dress out," I told Carmody. In the cabin I stripped, pulled on cotton longjohns, then the cold-suit; rigged harness straps so that the air tanks would ride comfortably. The mask was one of the new all-in-one type—a flexible plastic helmet with a 180-degree glass window. I got it on, adjusted the air flow.
Up above, a whine started up; a moment later Carmody came down, checked me over.
"We're in position, according to Rassias," he said. "I've set the gyro anchor to hold us on the spot." His voice sounded tinny through the inductance pickups. "The bottom's at thirty-five fathoms out here," he added.
"Fine. I'm ready."
Up on deck, Carmody showed me the controls—a few simple knobs that regulated the breathing mixture, a bigger one that controlled the power unit.
"Remember this one." He tapped a flat lever set in a small panel above my right knee. "It's a wake-up shot if you begin to go woozy down there."
"I've got plenty to keep me awake."
"Sure. Remember it anyway." He took a small canvas case from a locker, clipped it to my belt.
"Tools," he said. "There's a little cutting torch, pry bars, special stuff. Maybe you'll want it."
"I'm not going down to crack a safe."
"Why are you going down, Mal? What do you expect to find down there?"
"If I knew, I might not have to go."
"I ought to go with you, but I have to keep an eye on our boy. Embarrassing if he pulled out and left us."
"It's all right."
"You don't have to go, you know. You could forget the whole thing. I need a partner."
"Thanks. I've got to play the hand I drew."
"This is no card game, pal—but every man to his own kick."
It was a fine night, as nights went nowadays. The sea was flat, moving in slow swells; there was no moon, no stars. The odor of volcano was a little thicker than it had been ashore. Carmody pushed another button and a chrome-plated ladder ran out astern. I climbed the rail and felt the tug of the water at my legs.
"Say something every now and then, old buddy," Carmody's voice sounded in my ear. "Keep in touch."
"I will. Don't go 'way."
"We'll be here, pal."
The surface closed over my head and I let go and sank down into utter blackness.