Free Passage by Night (v5) by Jack Higgins Page A

to at sea. To be alone with the night and the boat. It was as if the world had ceased to exist.
    The door opened softly, coinciding with a spatter of rain against the windows. He smelt the aroma of coffee heavy on the morning air and there was another, more subtle fragrance.
    'What's wrong with bed at this time in the morning?' he said.
    'The best part of the day,' she told him and pulled down the other seat.
    She handed him a mug of coffee and a sandwich and they ate in companionable silence, their knees touching. Afterwards, he gave her a cigarette and they sat there smoking as rain hammered forcefully against the window.
    'You love the sea, don't you?' she said suddenly.
    'I suppose I do,' he said, momentarily off guard. 'It's rather like a woman - capricious and not very reliable, but that doesn't mean you love her the less.'
    She smiled. 'You're the strangest photographer I've ever met.'
    As with the father, there was an unspoken question in her voice and he suddenly knew he was on dangerous ground.
    'I had a salvage business in Havana with a sideline in underwater photography. When the revolution came, I hung on till the last minute like a hell of a lot of other people who didn't see which way the wind was blowing. Only got out by the skin of my teeth. Lost everything.'
    He was unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice and she leaned across impulsively and put a hand on his arm. When she spoke, her voice was warm and full of sympathy. 'I'm sorry.'
    'No need to be. I was luckier than most of the poor devils who hang around Miami waiting for something unpleasant to happen to Castro. I knew the right people and that always helps. I've managed to make a steady living at this freelance game.'
    'This trip to San Juan? It means a lot to you?'
    'More than anything else in the world right now,' he said flatly.
    'Then I'm glad we agreed to go.'
    Suddenly, he was ashamed of the lies and the deceit, of the fact that he was running this girl and her father headlong into danger, mixing them up in a situation that had nothing to do with them. For a moment, he was filled with an overwhelming desire to tell her everything, but she forestalled him.
    'There's nothing quite like it, is there? A small boat and the sea on a night like this. All one's real troubles suddenly seem unimportant.'
    Her face was faintly illuminated by the compass light, the eyes dark shadows that somehow gave her a strange, mysterious quality that was quite unique.
    'You're a funny girl,' he said. 'Nikoli Aleko told me you were at Vassar?'
    She nodded. 'Until a few months ago. It was my father's idea. He'd been left a legacy. Like most Greeks, he believes there's nothing like an education so he decided to send me to the States. Only the best was good enough.'
    'What did you intend to do?'
    'I was supposed to go to Oxford this year. I was hoping to read law.'
    'And now this.'
    'My brother Yanni was drowned last year. When papa wrote to tell me, he said there was no point in my coming home. That it was all over and done with.'
    'So you stayed?'
    'There didn't seem any reason not to. In his letters, he said everything was fine.'
    'And you finally came home and found out different?'
    'Something like that.' She leaned forward, pressing her head against the window and stared out into the night. 'You wouldn't understand this, but I didn't find my father. I found an old, beaten man travelling fast downhill, and he's never seemed old to me before.' She sighed. 'He'd even had to borrow money on the boat to keep me at college. Apparently the legacy had run out even before Yanni died.'
    'And he thought he could make ends meet by going back to diving?'
    'For desperate men there are only desperate remedies.' She used almost the same words Aleko had used. 'Of course, there was always Mikali's solution.'
    'You can't be serious?'
    She shrugged. 'We are a stubborn people, we stick to the old ways. Arranged marriages are still common amongst us. It was my father who refused