The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [91]
Harper looked at me again. “Why the cracks, Arthur? What’s the problem?”
“How do you imagine you’re going to get away with it?”
“Oh, I see.” He relaxed again, all smiles. “So our Arthur’s worried that the bloodhounds are going to start snapping at his butt, is he? Well, forget it. They won’t. All they know so far is that a bunch of armed men in a Volkswagen van roughed up one of their guard posts. So the first thing they’ll do is set up blocks on all the roads leading out of the city and look for the van. They’ll find it, abandoned, over in Galata. Then they’ll start the usual routine—Who’s the owner? Where is he? What did he look like?—and get no place. By then, though, they’ll have done some thinking, too, and some big brain will be starting to wonder why it had to be that particular post and why nobody got killed—why a lot of things. He may even think of checking out the Treasury Museum and so come up with the right answer. When he does, they’ll double up on the road blocks and throw out the dragnet. Only we won’t be inside it. We’ll be going ashore at a little place sixty miles from here and two hours’ easy driving from Edirne and the frontier.” He patted my arm. “And where we go ashore, Arthur, Miss Lipp will be waiting to pick us up.”
“With the Lincoln?”
“What else? We wouldn’t want to walk, would we, or leave without our bags?”
I had to laugh. I couldn’t help it. And it didn’t matter, because Harper thought that it was the beauty of his plan that I found so amusing, and not the bloody great hole in it. I thought of the customs inspector’s face when the Lincoln drove up for clearance—if Tufan allowed it to get that far—and when he saw me again. I laughed so much that Fischer began to laugh, too. It was the best moment I had had in days. I ate some sandwiches and had another drink. There was garlic sausage in the sandwiches, but I didn’t even have a twinge of indigestion. I thought my worries were over.
The place we were to go ashore was a port called Serefli, a few miles south of Corlu. Harper said that it would take five hours to get there. I cleaned off the filth I had collected from the Seraglio roof as best I could and went to sleep in the saloon. The others used the cabins. Giulio and Enrico ran the boat between them. I found out later that they had sent the boat’s regular crew ashore at Pendik for an evening on the town, and then slipped out of the harbor after dark. The patrol boat that was supposed to be keeping an eye on the Bulut missed it completely.
It was getting light when voices in the saloon woke me. Harper and Miller were drinking coffee, and Fischer was trying to make his dirty bandages look more presentable by brushing them. He seemed to be having some sort of discussion with Harper. As it was in German, I couldn’t understand. Then Harper looked at me and saw that I was awake.
“Arthur can use a screwdriver,” he said, “if you just show him what to do.”
“Which door?” Fischer asked.
“Does it matter? How about the right rear?”
“We were talking about a safe place for the loot,” Harper said to me. “Inside one of the car doors seems a good place for the customs people to forget about.”
“Arthur would not know about such things,” Miller said waggishly.
They had a good laugh over that gem of wit, while I tried to look mystified. Luckily, Enrico came in just then and said that we would be entering port in ten minutes.
I had some of the coffee and a stale sandwich. Harper went up to the wheelhouse. Half an hour later, the sun was up and we were moored alongside a stone jetty.
Fishermen are early risers and the harbor was already busy. Cuttlefish boats were unloading the night’s catch at the quayside. Caïques with single-cylinder engines were chugging out to sea. A port official came aboard to collect dues. After a while, Harper came down and said that he was going ashore to make sure that Miss Lipp was there. He left the velvet bag with Fischer.
He returned fifteen minutes later and reported that the Lincoln was parked in a side street beside a café-restaurant on the main square. Miss