There was nothing more to see in the hold. Pitt left and headed for the engine room. He lost a precious eight minutes finding the right companionway. The heart of the ship was warm from the heat of the engines and smelled of hot oil. He stood on the catwalk above the huge and lifeless machinery and searched for a sign that would indicate bona fide human activity. The flashlight caught the gleam of burnished pipes that snaked across the bulkheads in geometric parallel lines, ending in a mass fusion of valves and gauges. Then the faint beam fell on a carelessly wadded oily rag. Above the rag was a shelf containing several coffee-stained cups, and to the left of those, a tray of scattered tools with greasy finger marks. At least someone was working this part of the ship, he thought, quite relieved. He knew that most engine rooms were kept as clean as a hospital ward, but this one was messy. But where was the chief engineer and his oilmen? They couldn't have evaporated into the Aegean atmosphere.

Pitt started to leave, then he stopped. There it was again; the same mysterious sound, echoing through the ship's hull. He stood stock-still, holding his breath for what seemed a lifetime. It was an odd, uncanny sound, like the scraping of a ship's keel over a submerged rock or coral reef. Pitt involuntarily shivered. It also reminded him of the way chalk squeaked across a blackboard. The sound lasted for perhaps ten seconds, then it was punctuated with the dull clank of metal against metal.

Pitt had never sat bathed with cold sweat in a cell on San Quentin's death row, waiting for the warden and the prison guards to escort him to the gas chamber. Nor did he have to be there to describe the experience for he knew exactly what it felt like. To be alone in a claustrophobic atmosphere, expecting the footsteps of death to come treading from the black unknown, was a blood-chilling business. When in doubt, he thought, run like a son of a bitch. And run like a son of a bitch he did. Back through the alleyways, back up the companion-stairs, until at last his lungs were greeted by the pure, wholesome air on deck.

The early morning was still dark and the derricks reached toward the velvet ceiling of a sky that was alive with a dazzling array of stars. There was scarcely a stir of wind. Over the bridge, the radio mast swayed back and forth across the Milky Way, and below Pitt's feet, the hull creaked from the rolls of the gentle swells. He hesitated a moment, gazing at the dark line of the Thasos coast, yet a bare mile away. Then he looked down at the smooth black surface of the water. It looked so inviting, so peaceful.