Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [41]
We ran the dinghy up on shore and got out. Langley said, "Now what?"
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe Zingari won't be here until later. We'll have a look around."
"At what?" he inquired.
I led the way, moving up from the beach past the stone pier. The houses were poor places, two of them on the edge of an olive grove. Another had a large veranda and, to judge by the baskets and fishing nets which hung from the roof and the cooking pots on display, was obviously the local store.
A man wearing a woolen barracan, the day-to-day dress of the average Libyan, was drinking a bottle of beer and watching us at the same time.
At the other end of the olive grove there was a huddle of black goatskin tents, a hobbled gray camel and a few goats grazing on the stunted grass. Nothing else except the harsh, barren landscape beyond, the dirt road dwindling into infinity.
"What do you think?" Langley said.
"We'll have a beer. If he doesn't come soon we'll go back to the Palmyra and wait there."
The man in the barracan on the veranda of the store came down the steps to greet us as we approached. "One of you gentlemen is Signor Grant?" he said in excellent Italian.
"That's me," I told him.
He smiled delightedly and showed us to a couple of cane chairs. "My good friend, Signor Zingari has been here this morning and told me to look out for you. He said he would be back this evening."
His name was Izmir and he owned the store and a half interest in a tunny boat or so he told us with the kind of cheerful lack of inhibition that some people show toward strangers.
He naturally wanted to know who we were. I told him we had a permit to dive in the area. That we were looking for old wrecks. I even offered to pay for any useful information he managed to obtain in that connection from local fishermen and he agreed enthusiastically.
He brought us a couple of bottles of warm beer, a local brew that was really quite pleasant and we'd just started drinking when an old Ford truck with a canvas tilt came over the rise by the olive grove and braked to a halt.
Zingari climbed down from behind the wheel. He was wearing the same shabby linen suit and straw hat and his face was paler, more anxious than ever and damp with sweat.
He patted his forehead with a grimy handkerchief and tried to smile as he came up the steps, "So, gentlemen, you are here."
"You look as cheerful as a man who's just learned he has about six months to live," Langley told him.
"A lifetime, signor, compared to how long I will live if anything goes wrong." He sat down, mopping away at his face. "This is a dangerous business. Colonel Masmoudi is a cruel man--the kind of man who delights in cruelty for its own sake. If you fell into his hands, gentlemen ..."
"But we won't," Langley said. "Positive thinking, my old dear, that's the order of the day."
Which didn't seem to have any appreciable effect on Zingari's morale. He swallowed some of the beer Izmir brought him.
"I'd like to take a look at the fortress," I said.
"You mean now?" His jaw sagged.
"Yes, from the sea. We'll go in the Palmyra. It shouldn't take long."
He looked distinctly unhappy. "But, signor, a boat nosing around in the area of Ras Kanai might arouse suspicion."
"A tunny boat?" I said. "With nets draped around the deck? I should have thought they must see dozens of those from up there on the ramparts."
He brightened at that--not too much, but enough to go inside to have a word with Izmir and when we went down to the dinghy a few minutes later we carried two large tunny nets between us.
The moment he was over the Palmyra's rail he darted into the wheelhouse as if for protection. Barzini was sitting on the engine-room hatch and stood up. "What's all that about?"
"Nothing," I said. "That's our good friend, Zingari. I thought we might take a little trip to see what the fort looks like from the sea and he's not exactly enchanted