"passagetohell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barton Gary)

PASSAGE TO HELL
by GARY BARTON


It was the lives of Jimmy Vale's wife and baby against his own, and he had no choice.
Suicide, the officials would call it. But he knew it would be murder, too.


He remembered things like the boat leaving St. George Pier and watching the lights fade away
in the distance; the black native boys paddling alongside in their little boats, ringing
"Nassau By The Sea"; and the ship's band playing.

And he remembered the other side of it, too. The hell! The bitter with the sweet.

The man who had stood against the rail beside him last night, as the boat pulled out of
the Tongue. The movie version of a killer. Tall, broad-shouldered, with close-cut blond hair:
his face heavy-jowled and cold, showing no emotion; his eyes piercing, hard, dangerous.

He was Hans Wagner. And Jimmy Vale recalled that he'd been up on illegal-entry charges a
few years ago. Even recently, there'd been talk of deporting him for subversive activities; but
the case had been lost somehow, and the charges had been dropped.

And Wagner was on this boat, sailing from Nassau, though Vale hadn't known he was aboard
till he heard his deep, guttural voice beside him, in the darkness against the rail on the top
deck. But he knew why he was here; he knew Wagner hadn't come along for the ride.

Hans Wagner had come to make sure that Jimmy Vale never reached New York.


A week before, two men had beached on Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas, lone survivors of an
American freighter lost twelve days before. The American freighter. Betsy Black, had been bound
for Trinidad, loaded with supplies for the United States army bases under construction there,
when she went down four hundred miles at sea, a torpedo through her hull, her superstructure
splintered by a submarine deck gun.

The sea had given up a single lifeboat, one of eight, bearing two men. Only they weren't
men any more, but things that draw line between life and death: their bodies emaciated from
days of starvation; their flesh burned by the relentless tropic sun and rain that was like
steam, and torn by rain that was like ice; their throats scorched and their tongues shriveled
--half-dead men who had fought a battle few men have ever won, a battle against the sea.

But they had lived long enough to tell their story: The torpedoing of the neutral Betsy
Black by a treacherous submarine of war.

And Jimmy Vale, government investigator attached to the state department, was returning
with that story. A sealed case containing evidence would determine the United States' action
against a criminal power.

But Vale remembered Wagner's words, now; there'd been a chilling menace even in his whisper