In Turkish Waters by Charles Whiting

Author:Charles Whiting
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Six

The soft grating of the surf on the shingle along the beach drowned any sound their paddles made as they came ever closer to the Swordfish. They spoke not a word. They didn’t even grunt with the exertion. Why should they? They spoke little at the monasteries clinging to the steep sides of Mount Athos; and they were all physically very strong. They were used to hard work.

The Russian Orthodox monks that Achmet Khan had recruited for the task were not the skinny, bearded old men who painted their monasteries’ famed icons or produced the wonderful illustrated books in Church Slavonic. They were peasant sons, barely literate, sold to the monasteries before the Revolution of 1917, to provide the muscle that the elderly, highly educated Russian monks – many of them minor aristocrats – needed. They tended the grapes in the vineyards that ran down the steep slopes hundreds of metres right to the sea. They provided the religious police, whose duty it was to ensure that nothing female, including all animals belonging to their farms, ever crossed the border into Mount Athos. And to a man they were all homosexual, despite their hairy appearance with dark bearded faces and great rippling muscles. There were no women on the mountains. So their sex had to be between themselves.

Now they paddled ever closer to the dark outline of the Swordfish, riding at anchor, just off the shore, in boats provided by the frightened local fishermen. They were armed with a variety of weapons – spears, homemade coshes, hunting rifles and in one case, a carved Turkish scimitar dating back to the Middle Ages. But they had been ordered by their Russian paymaster to ‘avoid force, if you can. Take them by surprise. If you can capture them alive, it will make splendid trouble for the British. Bozhe moi,’ he had exclaimed, which had caused some frowns at the mention of God in that holy place, which had been replaced by looks of delight, when he had added, ‘There will be plentiful gold for all of you if you succeed!’

Dmitri, the biggest of the monks and their natural leader, for he was the powerful lover of at least six of the raiding party, whispered, ‘We shall now go round the other side of the ship. You,’ he indicated the other two, ‘stay at this side. Once you hear the signal, board – and board quickly. Understood?’

His listeners nodded their heads under their tall square hats and allowed their craft to drift towards the silent Swordfish, carried forwards by the current, while Dmitri’s crew rowed softly a little further out to sea with the intention of coming in on the lee side of the ship. Dmitri smiled his approval and fingered his black chest-length beard. All was going well. The communists were godless, but they did pay well. When they got back to the Mountain, he would buy ouzo, much ouzo from the villagers and then there would be an orgy. A fresh bunch of novices had arrived recently.

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