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Authors: Paul Gallico
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“This confounded detective has complicated everything. Bela will be almost there now and we could have kept the whole operation quiet. I instructed him to salvage the . . . the cargo, if possible, and if not, sink it. Now he has this policeman round his neck, and if this Rogo fellow gets off alive we cannot stop him talking.”
He sighed heavily and continued. “Again I have had to act and I seek your approval. I have spoken to New York, and they are, as you can imagine, no happier than we are about this. I suggested, and they agreed, that we give Bela carte blanche. I have therefore already wired him that complete security must be maintained.” He looked round the room and added quietly, “At any price.”
The man who had been drunk a few hours earlier was sober now. He looked at Stasiris warily. “If you mean what I think you mean . . .”
Pularnos intervened. “I do not think there is any need to spell it out. We are talking about international security now. I must ask you to consider how you would balance the life of a single American policeman against the possibility of war.”
A messenger entered the room and padded silently to Stasiris. The president took the slip of paper, put his hand over his eyes, and groaned.
“What is it?” Pularnos asked urgently.
“As if matters were not complicated enough,” he replied. “A Dutch freighter got a line on the Poseidon first and is claiming salvage rights.”
Half rising, Pularnos protested, “We cannot allow that.”
“We cannot disallow it,” Stasiris snapped, writing his acknowledgment on the bottom of the message. “Without wishing to take you through the mysteries of salvage law, his claim as prime salvor is irrefutable.”
He rose. “Now, gentlemen, I suggest we all go and make ourselves look a little more civilized and reassemble here as soon as possible. We can do nothing for the moment.”
Their counterparts in New York had just been through an almost identical explanation from Mr. Arthur Haven. He stubbed out a cigar in an overloaded ashtray and added, “Athens has their guy out there, and we can only hope he can do the job.”
The Secretary of Defense was looking out of the window over the scattered lights of New York. “That doesn’t sound so damned hot to me, Arthur,” he said. “A strong-arm collector of Broadway whores and pimps muscling in on this sort of sensitive deal—my God, if he talks the whole thing blows sky high.” He turned his back on the New York night and added, “And who the hell is this character the Greeks are using anyway?”
Haven looked at the papers before him. “Bela,” he said. “A Captain Ilich Bela. He is described to me as a man of unbridled violence.”
One of the disheveled figures at the table straightened suddenly. “Hey, now look here, Arthur, I’m not going to be party to having a slug put into a New York cop.”
Haven’s calm exterior exploded. “No one is asking you to be party to anything, you goddamn clown! This Bela is going in there and he’s going to fix it so that no one will be any the wiser. Right, Mr. Secretary?”
The politician agreed. “None of us need know what happens aboard that damned ship. All we need concern ourselves with is that the contents are never known. Don’t forget, if we can’t get this shipment through to the Greek Cypriots, the U.S. government might want to set the whole thing up again. I shall also arrange for one of our security men in Athens to get hold of this bull-headed interfering cop if he should return.”
The original questioner still looked unconvinced. “Call it any name you like, it’s gangsterism,” he said.
Haven raised an eyebrow. “The name is politics, Ed. It’s one cop, or Greece and Turkey at each other’s throats and the NATO alliance in pieces. Think about it. Now let’s break it up, boys. I’ll have a call put out for you the minute we hear any more.”
UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE
5
The three survivors had waited for
He sighed heavily and continued. “Again I have had to act and I seek your approval. I have spoken to New York, and they are, as you can imagine, no happier than we are about this. I suggested, and they agreed, that we give Bela carte blanche. I have therefore already wired him that complete security must be maintained.” He looked round the room and added quietly, “At any price.”
The man who had been drunk a few hours earlier was sober now. He looked at Stasiris warily. “If you mean what I think you mean . . .”
Pularnos intervened. “I do not think there is any need to spell it out. We are talking about international security now. I must ask you to consider how you would balance the life of a single American policeman against the possibility of war.”
A messenger entered the room and padded silently to Stasiris. The president took the slip of paper, put his hand over his eyes, and groaned.
“What is it?” Pularnos asked urgently.
“As if matters were not complicated enough,” he replied. “A Dutch freighter got a line on the Poseidon first and is claiming salvage rights.”
Half rising, Pularnos protested, “We cannot allow that.”
“We cannot disallow it,” Stasiris snapped, writing his acknowledgment on the bottom of the message. “Without wishing to take you through the mysteries of salvage law, his claim as prime salvor is irrefutable.”
He rose. “Now, gentlemen, I suggest we all go and make ourselves look a little more civilized and reassemble here as soon as possible. We can do nothing for the moment.”
Their counterparts in New York had just been through an almost identical explanation from Mr. Arthur Haven. He stubbed out a cigar in an overloaded ashtray and added, “Athens has their guy out there, and we can only hope he can do the job.”
The Secretary of Defense was looking out of the window over the scattered lights of New York. “That doesn’t sound so damned hot to me, Arthur,” he said. “A strong-arm collector of Broadway whores and pimps muscling in on this sort of sensitive deal—my God, if he talks the whole thing blows sky high.” He turned his back on the New York night and added, “And who the hell is this character the Greeks are using anyway?”
Haven looked at the papers before him. “Bela,” he said. “A Captain Ilich Bela. He is described to me as a man of unbridled violence.”
One of the disheveled figures at the table straightened suddenly. “Hey, now look here, Arthur, I’m not going to be party to having a slug put into a New York cop.”
Haven’s calm exterior exploded. “No one is asking you to be party to anything, you goddamn clown! This Bela is going in there and he’s going to fix it so that no one will be any the wiser. Right, Mr. Secretary?”
The politician agreed. “None of us need know what happens aboard that damned ship. All we need concern ourselves with is that the contents are never known. Don’t forget, if we can’t get this shipment through to the Greek Cypriots, the U.S. government might want to set the whole thing up again. I shall also arrange for one of our security men in Athens to get hold of this bull-headed interfering cop if he should return.”
The original questioner still looked unconvinced. “Call it any name you like, it’s gangsterism,” he said.
Haven raised an eyebrow. “The name is politics, Ed. It’s one cop, or Greece and Turkey at each other’s throats and the NATO alliance in pieces. Think about it. Now let’s break it up, boys. I’ll have a call put out for you the minute we hear any more.”
UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE
5
The three survivors had waited for
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