I got a piece of paper, a pen and, knees under me on the bed, began to make a list.

Who was behind this Thessalonica attack? I began to write.

The unknown assassin? Lombar had set him on me to kill me if I failed. Had he slipped across to Greece to do us in?

The Countess Krak? It went without saying that she would murder me most painfully if she really knew I had stolen her yacht and, all the time, had been behind these assaults on Heller. Gods knew, she was capable of anything!

Heller? Did he have connections I didn't know about? Even though he and Babe Corleone were estranged, had he set some Mafioso upon my trail from Palermo on?

Torpedo Fiaccola? No, the diseased necrophile was very dead. Gunsalmo Silva? No. He was dead, also. So that made two I could scratch from my enemy list.

Meeley, my old landlady on Voltar? Ske, my old airbus driver? Bawteh, chief clerk of Section 451? No, I had given them counterfeit money and they would have been caught and executed by now. The two forgers who had falsified the "Royal proclamations" the Countess Krak had somewhere and was counting on? No. They were not only on Voltar, they were also dead at my orders.

The Countess Krak? Had she somehow set in motion this attack upon the yacht?

The ghost of the old man with fleas that I had killed at Limnos? That island was over there not too far away and it was well known that ghosts existed mainly for revenge. When I became a ghost, if I did not get promptly routed to some Hell, I knew I would want revenge. Yes, that old man with fleas was a likely candidate. He had been a Greek with Turkish connections and hadn't he already gotten some revenge by infesting me with fleas? I put a heavy underscore below his name on the enemy list.

Adora Pinch Bey and Candy Licorice Bey, my two bigamous wives in New York? No, they couldn't have organized that demonstration in Thessalonica, for their skill in spectacles was all confined to the sexual sector. Furthermore, they did not speak Greek.

Mudur Zengin, head of the Piastre National Bank of Istanbul? He had been very hostile the last time I saw him and now, with all these yacht expenses, he must be running very short of my funds. His bank had guaranteed the Squeeza credit-card bills and maybe he couldn't pay them anymore. He might be doing it to get revenge. He had the power and the connections to cause a com­motion in Thessalonica.

Aha! Nurse Bildirjin's father! He must have been tearing around for months waving a shotgun, slavering to ventilate the man who had impregnated his daughter!

He was a prominent physician in Turkey. These medical types stick together and he must have Greek connections galore! He must have heard I was in Thessalonica!

And yes! How easy it would be for him to go into a conspiracy with all those women that Ahmed, the taxi driver, and Ters, the old chauffeur, had violated just so they could blame it all on me. These two offenders I had, of course, blown up, but the women were very much alive.

Maybe some of those violated women had become pregnant! Nurse Bildirjin's father, as a medical man renowned and powerful in Afyon, would be in a position to know this.

A thought struck me. I had not looked closely at those Greek demonstrators. Were they really those Turkish women in disguise? Well, I didn't have to know that.

In a sudden surge of enlightenment, I thought I knew what this was all about.

THEY WERE TRYING TO DRIVE ME HOME!

I drew a huge circle around Nurse Bildirjin's father. Certainty congealed. He had connived with the women and the Greeks to drive me out of Thessalonica. He was hoping to get me back to Turkey where he could work his will on me.

THAT WAS IT!

I shuddered. I would not only be shotgunned to death but, by the law of the Qur'an for adultery, I would also be stoned to a pulp!

I stared at the list. My eyes focused on that ringed name. Oh, Gods, I must be very alert indeed!

I spent the rest of the day praying that never again in my life would I set foot in Turkey.

It would be the most painful method of suicide ever devised!

Cowering in my room, I stared hauntedly at the porthole. Darkness had fallen.

The atmosphere was very strange. No one had come down to tell me to go to dinner. No one had come near me with any food. It was just as well. The ship was moving with the slightest hint of a roll under the impact of a following swell.

Rain had begun to fall as we moved into a belt of storm. Black drops glistened on the black pane like tears. I tried to see through it but only got a sheen of porthole light reflection on the surging waves of passage.

I glanced into a mirror. My cheeks were gaunt and gray. It was the first time that I noticed the scar: healed now, it gave me a ferocious frown. I felt very far from ferocious. I felt hunted and forlorn. Out there in that blackness, near to hand now as we passed it, lay Turkey and inevitable doom were I to so much as set a toe upon it. I could almost hear the boom of a shotgun and the lethal thud of agonizing stones. This scar would be nothing if I fell into those hands!

I turned back to the porthole and peered out.

A sound behind me!

I whirled, repressing a scream.

It was Teenie.

She had on an old bridge coat on which stood bright globes of rain. A battered officer's cap hid her ponytail and shadowed her oversized eyes. She was looking at me, saying nothing.

She walked toward me. She put out her hand and pushed my chest slowly. I backed up toward the bed and sat down on it.

"You look awful, Inky."

"I'm worried about Turkey," I said, swallowing hard.

She shook her head. "In a few hours, that will all be over. There's no reason for you to be upset. Everything is being handled. You should learn to trust people, Inky.

And most of all, trust me. I may very well be the only friend you've got."

I flinched. According to the very best Apparatus textbooks, that is what you say just before you slide a Knife Section knife between somebody's ribs. But I showed no sign of what I thought.

She reached into her pocket. "The best thing for you to do is simply go to sleep and awaken to a better day when we're sailing free and clear near Egypt." She was pushing something toward me.

I knew it. Hashish candy!

For some reason, Teenie wanted me helpless!

"Take it," she urged, when I did not.

I stared at it. THREE pieces! It would knock me out like a brutally wielded club.

Oh, I was thankful I had told myself to be alert and wary.

I was wearing a bathrobe with large sleeves which partially covered my hands. I was adept at this sort of thing. I took the first piece and went through the motions of putting it in my mouth. I chewed and swal­lowed. But the candy had simply dropped into my sleeve no matter how my jaw bulged: it's done with the tongue.

I took the second piece. I made the motions of putting it in my mouth and chewing it. "Um, urn," I said. "Delicious." But the second piece was in my sleeve.

The third piece went the same way.

"That's better," said Teenie. "Now, soon you'll simply go to sleep and it will all be over. It's still six hundred miles to Alexandria, but by dawn Turkey will be far astern. So just be a good boy and sleep."

She went to the door. She looked back. "I'm spending the night up on the bridge just to be sure everything gets handled. Don't worry about a thing." She left.

I went to the door. Yes, her footsteps, heard above the engine throbs, were receding.

I went to the bathroom, dropped the three pieces of hashish candy out of my sleeve and flushed them down the electric toilet drain.

I went back and lay upon my bunk. The look in her oversized eyes, the expression on her too-big mouth-yes, she was up to something. Apparatus training tells.