He hit the man hard across the back of the neck with the edge of his hand, and the Arab slid to the deck without a sound. Kane picked up his rifle and checked the action, then moved down the short flight of wooden steps that led to the waist of the ship. He paused in the shadows.
The crew lived in a portion of the hold and he peered inside the hatch. Voices were raised in laughter and there was a smell of cooking. He laid down the rifle and pulled the heavy storm cover of the hatch into place, securing it with metal brackets.
He started to get to his feet, hand reaching for the rifle, and from behind him there came a slight creak. The cold muzzle of a revolver touched him gently in the back of the neck, and Skiros said, ‘Very good, my friend. It almost came off.’
Kane turned slowly and the German smiled. ‘So old Mahmoud didn’t keep his promise to hold you?’
‘Not when he found you’d taken Marie,” Kane said. ‘You touched his Arab pride on the raw there.’
‘A matter of indifference to me. I’ve been waiting for Muller. Presumably he won’t be coming?’
‘I’m afraid not,” Kane said.
Skiros smiled again. ‘In a way you have done me a favour. He might have proved troublesome. You’ve only anticipated my own intention.’
‘That I can believe,’ Kane said drily.
Skiros pointed to the hatch. ‘Now you can open it again. There seems to be no further reason to delay our departure.’
Kane removed the metal brackets as slowly as possible. He pulled back the hatch, and Skiros called, ‘All hands on deck!’
The Arab seamen poured up from below and stood in a group, talking excitedly, eyeing Kane in an unfriendly manner. Skiros called forward one who was obviously the mate and ordered him to make sail, then he pushed Kane along the deck towards the stern.
He opened the door of the captain’s cabin underneath the poop-deck and pushed him inside. Kane remembered his last visit, the night the attempt had been made on his life by one of Selim’s men. The cabin looked just the same. There were rugs and cushions scattered on the floor round a low brass coffee table, and underneath the great stern windows, a sleeping couch was freshly prepared.
Skiros stood on the other side of the table and sighed. ‘If only you and I could have seen eye-to-eye with each other.’
‘Hardly likely,’ Kane said. ‘You’re finished. No great coup, the Suez canal still open. What will the Fiihrer say?’
‘He has other things on his mind. The Panzers rolled yesterday, my friend. Poland is already facing the worst defeat in Europe since the First World War.’
‘I thought that was the one Germany lost,’ Kane said.
Skiros scowled. ‘Not this time.’
‘I know. Tomorrow the world. What have you done with Marie?’
Skiros took out one of his oily black cheroots and lit it awkwardly with one hand. He chuckled, coughing heavily as the smoke caught the back of his throat. ‘I find all this rather amusing. I never thought you were the type for love and romance and all that sort of thing.’
He took a key from his pocket, moved across to a small door, unlocked it and stood to one side. Marie Ferret moved out into the room.
For a moment, she stood there, dazed and bewildered, and then she saw Kane and came straight to him.
‘Has he harmed you?’ Kane said.
She shook her head. ‘No, but I found his conversation as revolting as his person.’
Skiros laughed until the flesh danced across his great body. ‘I wonder how you’ll talk when your friend here is bait for the sharks out in the Gulf.’ He thumbed back the hammer of the revolver and centred it on Kane’s stomach deliberately.
Kane looked beyond the German, out through the open window, his eyes on the thick rope of the stern anchor. As he watched, something moved and two hands appeared over the edge of the window. A moment later, Jamal peered cautiously into the room.
Kane concentrated everything on keeping Skiros talking. He slipped a hand into his pocket and took out the knotted handkerchief that contained the necklace he had found in the passage leading to Sheba’s tomb.