04 - Deadspeak by Brian Lumley

Author:Brian Lumley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Horror, Vampires, Fiction
ISBN: 9780812530322
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1990-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

By mid-morning their plans were finalized, and by noon Manolis Papastamos had set them in action. Once he’d known what was to be done, he wasted little time doing it.

Harry Keogh was now the owner of a suitably worn and well-thumbed Greek passport, stamped with a visa for Romania. Ostensibly, its bearer was an “international dealer in antiques” (a cover which had brought a wry smile to Harry’s face), one “Hari Kiokis”, a name which shouldn’t give him too much trouble. Sandra had been fixed up with a flight to Gatwick, London, leaving Rhodes at 9:10 that night, and Darcy would stay here and work with Manolis. E-Branch had been put as completely in the picture as possible, but for now Darcy hadn’t called in any esper help. First he must ascertain the size of the problem, and after that he’d call on help as required and available directly through Sandra.

Harry’s flight to Bucharest via Athens was at 2:30; with an hour to spare he and the others had lunch on the high balcony of a taverna overlooking Mandraki harbour. And it was there that one of the local policemen found them, with information for Papastamos.

The man was fat and sweaty, scarred and bow-legged; if he hadn’t been a policeman then he would’ve had to be a brigand. He arrived in the road below their balcony on a tiny moped which his huge backside almost entirely obscured. “Hey, Papastamos!” he shouted, waving a fat arm. “Hey, Manolis!”

“Come on up,” Manolis called down to him. “Have a beer. Cool down.”

“You won’t feel so cool in a minute, Inspector!” the other called back, entering the taverna and panting his way upstairs.

When he arrived Manolis offered him a chair, said: “What is it?”

The other got his breath back, and in wheezing Greek told his story. “Down at the mortuary, at the hospital,” he began. “We were recording statements about the missing corpse—” He glanced at Manolis’s company and quickly shrugged his apologies in the Greek fashion. “I mean, about the circumstances in the case of your dead English friend. We took statements from everybody, like you said. There was this girl, a receptionist who was on duty the night you saved his life. She said in her statement that someone went to see him in the early hours of the morning. It was her description of this one that I found interesting. Here, read it yourself.”

He took a crumpled, sweat-stained official statement form from his shirt pocket and handed it over. Manolis quickly translated what he’d been told, then read the statement. He read it a second time, more thoroughly, and his forehead creased into a frown. And: “Listen to this,” he said, reading aloud.

“It must have been about six-thirty in the morning when this man came in. He said he was a Captain and one of his crew had gone missing. He’d heard how someone had been rescued from the sea and wondered if it was his man. I took him to see Mr.

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