Jack Higgins by Night Judgement at Sinos

of course.”
    He held out his hand which I took, for it would have seemed churlish to refuse, then he went over after the other two.
    I turned to Sara Hamilton. “Well, this is it, the long goodbye.”
    She said gravely, “What would you do if I refused to go?”
    â€œYou’ve no choice. Not if you want to come clean out of this business.” I turned to Morgan who was standing at the door of the wheelhouse clutching the Russian sub-machine gun I’d taken from the M.P. “Cover me with that thing. I shan’t be long.”
    I vaulted over the side, waist-deep in water, turned and held up my arms. “All right, let’s be having you.”
    She stood looking at me for a long moment thenreached down and ripped open the skirt of her dress, scattering buttons with the violence of it, freeing her limbs. She moved away from me and jumped over the rail into the water.
    She lost her footing and went under completely and I waded forward and pulled her to her feet. The dress clung to her like a second skin, a nipple blossoming clearly on each full breast. She might as well have had nothing on.
    â€œGet your hands off me,” she said fiercely in a low voice, shoved me away with a stiff right arm and pushed wet hair back from her eyes.
    â€œI’m forty-two years old,” I said. “This year, next year, but not much longer than that, I go Guyon’s way. Over the side with fifty pounds of old chain round my ankles.”
    She stood quite still, water slapping around her thighs, a hand to her face and then, God save us all, she actually smiled.
    I turned from her, heaved myself over the rail, went into the wheelhouse and eased the Gentle Jane off the sandbank. Then I took her round in a great sweeping curve and headed out to sea.
    My hands were trembling, my whole body shaking. Reaction, I suppose, or that’s what I tried to tell myself.
    I engaged the automatic pilot, reached for Morgan’s rum bottle and went on deck, avoiding his worried eye: What was left in the bottle was foul. I tossed it into the sea.
    Two hundred thousand pounds . Everything I’d sweated to build for eight long years, all down the drain for what? Now I had nothing.
    I had kept my head turned one way deliberately, butit was no good. Let me be honest at the end, whatever else might be. I went to the stern rail and looked back towards the beach.
    The three men were on dry ground by now, but she still stood thigh-deep in the silver water, the thin crescent of the moon behind her. If I reached out, I could touch her, or at least that’s what it felt like and I stayed there at the stern until she faded into the darkness.

five
DEAD MEN’S FINGERS
    North from Kyros, I came awake from a deep, dreamless sleep and lay on the bunk staring at the bulkhead, wondering who I was—a bad sign. Then things clicked into place and I yawned and swung my legs to the floor.
    It was warm in the saloon, even with the air conditioning plant in full cry, but when I went up the companionway, the heat almost brought me to a dead halt. I took a deep breath and moved out.
    It was a day to thank God for, a blue sky without a cloud in it reaching to nowhere, the Cyclades fading north into the heat haze, the great bulk of Crete far, far away to the south-west. We floated, motionless in a flat, copper sea, every line of the boat reflected as truly as in a mirror.
    Morgan had rigged an awning in the stern and sprawled beneath it, snoring steadily. I kicked his feet, then dropped a bucket over the side on a line, sluiced myself and gave some thought to the afternoon.
    We had several dozen sponges strung on a line to dry.They didn’t look too good to me. Sponge divers are a dying breed and not only because synthetics have cornered most of the market these days. The youngsters don’t want any part of it. They’ve seen too many men old before their time, crippled by the bends. But for some men, it’s a way of