Read Online Jack Higgins by Night Judgement at Sinos - Free Book Online

board. I’ve known tenders who were so expert that they could work out what was happening below just by the feel of the lifeline. A bad one could be the death of you. Abu was a natural which was hardly surprising.
    Yassi reached over the side with a big grin and gaveme a hand up. I pulled off my face mask and held up my bulging net. We used Greek, for only their father spoke English and I had but a smattering of Turkish. He had a look at the sponges, picked one or two out and shook his head. They looked all right to me, but over the side they went.
    â€œHow can you tell?” I demanded.
    â€œEasy,” he grunted. “It’s the size of the holes.”
    As his father rose, Abu was calling off the depth in kulacs , the Turkish equivalent of the fathom, roughly five feet. I unstrapped my aqualung, went and helped myself to water from a huge earthenware jar roped to the mast. It was Greek or Roman and a couple of thousand years old. Most of the sponge boats used the same. They were to be had with ease from the bottom of the sea in those parts from the many wrecks.
    They had Ciasim over the rail a few moments later and I went to give them a hand. A diver in regulation dress is a clumsy creature out of water. The shoes weighed seventeen and a half pounds each and he had eighty pounds in lead weights strapped around his waist. And the great copper and brass helmet weighed over fifty pounds.
    I unscrewed his face plate and he grinned. “Jack, my dear friend, how goes it?”
    He was about forty-five, dark and handsome with a great sweep of black moustache. He should have looked older considering the way he lived, but he didn’t.
    â€œHow long were you down there, idiot?” I demanded.
    Abu had the helmet off by then and Ciasim grinned. “Don’t start with your compression tables again. Just hand me a smoke. When I die, I die.”
    I gave him a cigarette from a little sandalwood box Yassi handed me. Ciasim inhaled deeply. “Wonderful. Where’s your boat, Jack? Why not bring her round to join us? We’ll go to the island and eat on the beach. I have been wanting to talk to you anyway. A business matter.”
    â€œOkay, I’ll leave the sponges till later,” I said and reached for my aqualung.
    Yassi and young Abu helped me into it and I went back over the side. They accepted me because I was a dalguc like Ciasim—a diver. With him, it was something more for he had served with the Turkish infantry contingent sent to join the United Nations Force in Korea in 1950.
    I had been there myself which was a bond between us. Had seen them arrive at the front, strange fierce-looking men in ankle-length greatcoats who carried rather old-fashioned rifles with sword bayonets. They were just like something out of the First World War, but fight…Everything I’d heard about Johnny Turk was true.
    Ciasim had been a prisoner in Chinese hands for nearly two years, subjected to the same brainwashing techniques as other Allied prisoners. With the Turks it had failed completely and the Chinese had finally given up in some desperation and had placed them in an enclave of their own.
    They were like rocks on which the sea breaks with no effect. Hardy, utterly indomitable men. The best friends in the world…the worst enemies.
    Â 
    They lit a fire on the beach and Yassi and young Abu busied themselves with the cooking while Morgan,whose Greek was about as broken as it could be, contented himself with watching while perched on a rock, a jug of wine between his knees.
    Ciasim and I went off some little way and sat by the water’s edge with a bottle of arak and a box of halva , that unique Turkish sweetmeat made out of honey and nuts, something to which he was particularly partial.
    It was hotter than ever and very beautiful and on the horizon a congoa , the kind of boat that trawled for sponges instead of using a diver, drifted by.
    â€œLook at that,” Ciasim said angrily.