Whittaker jerked the starting rope of the outboard motor. When he had it running, he checked to see that the line tied to a grommet in the heavy black rubber was in place. Then he put the motor in gear, and the boat started off.
When the line tied to the grommet drew taut, crewmen slid the first of the two larger ammunition and weapons boxes (now wrapped with life preserver flotation packs) into the water, then skidded the line of small “film” boxes after it.
Then the process was repeated for the second boat, except that both Ham mersmith and Joe Garvey got into that one.
The atmosphere had been tense: to see if the boats could be launched and whether or not the flotation packets would keep the weapons and film boxes afloat.
Then Lennox heard a guffaw, then a belly laugh, and then a high-pitched giggle. The first thing he thought, angrily, was that someone had fallen over the side. That, despite the genuine threat to life, was always good for a laugh from his men.
And then he saw the object of the amusement.
Jim Whittaker was fifty yards off the bow, making a wide turn to return to the Drum. The strain on the line towing the boxes behind the rubber boat, plus the weight of the outboard motor and of Whittaker himself, had caused the bow to rise almost straight up out of the water. The outboard was open full bore, but it was just barely moving, and Whittaker himself looked as if he was about to sink into the water.
Sound carries well over water, and Whittaker heard the laughter of the crew.
He rose to the occasion. Balancing himself precariously, he saluted crisply.
“Man overboard!” a shout went up, followed by a bellow of laughter.
Lennox looked quickly to see what had happened. The chief torpedoman had lost his footing and gone into the water. The chief of the boat was trying, with absolutely no success, to haul him back aboard by the rope around his waist.
The captain of the USS Drum picked up his electric hailer and started to put it to his lips. Then he took it down and slammed it painfully against his leg until the pain was such that he was no longer overcome with hysterics.
“Attention on the deck,” he finally announced.
“Prepare to recover rubber boats!
“And then the temptation was too much.
“And while you’re at it, see if you can recover the chief torpedoman.”
XIII
lONE]
Canidy woke in the dark in a large bedroom in the Countess Batthyany’s hunting lodge. He was buried deep in goose down, his nostrils full of perfume.
But then he realized it wasn’t perfume, it was something he had found in a bottle in his surprisingly ornate bathroom. The bottle bore a “Lanvin Paris London-New York” label underneath the words “Pour les Hommes.” His French was good enough to understand what that meant, and the stuff hadn’t smelled half bad when he sniffed at the bottle neck, and so he had liberally splashed it over himself after he’d wiped himself dry with a thick towel about the size of a pup tent.
The cologne would be a nice change from the way he had smelled after the fishing boat from Vis to the mainland, and after the farm truck–redolent of horse manure–which had carried him across Yugoslavia to the neighborhood of the Hungarian border.
It was only when he had put on a pair of silk pajamas and the odor of the “Pour les Hommes” had not diminished–had, in fact, seemed to intensify-that he began to suspect the legend on the bottle was directed to the gentle sex. If they doused themselves in “Pour les Hommes,” men would be drawn to the smell like moths to a candle.
It had confirmed the somewhat cynical impression he had formed not long after they’d first shown him his room that the Batthyany family had apparently not only done their hunting in considerable comfort, but also that when they returned from the vigors of the field, the comfort they’d received then had been furnished by females. In his bathroom, he had found a bidet, and in a heavy bookcase by the bedside was a collection of leather-bound photo albums, the photographs portraying handsome men and women in their birthday suits performing what could only be described as sexual gymnastics.