Dalton said nothing, looking out at the hills on the western shore, at a pale blue glimmer of glass far to the north.
“Look,” said Levka, a bit nervously, “no offense, I can . . . take care of this . . . for you.”
Dalton looked at him and came to a decision.
“This Dizayn Tower, it’s right by that Diamond up there, isn’t it?”
“Yes, boss.”
“There’s a wharf just ahead here, on the port side. See it?”
Levka shaded his eyes from the glare off the water, squinted.
“Yes, by Dolmabahçe Palace.”
“Put me ashore there.”
Levka looked uneasy.
“You gonna go to Dizayn Tower all by yourself?”
“Yes. I want you to take the boat up to wherever Mandy is, get it out of sight for a while, and go over this boat, see if you can find anything on it that connects to the night this Lujac was supposed to have died. I don’t know what it might be, but Mandy’s done that kind of thing before.”
“We wait there for you?”
“No. I don’t know what I’m gonna find at this building. Maybe nothing. But Kissmyass had a bar bill on him from the Double Eagle. You know it?”
“Yes. Is wharf bar in Kerch. Uncle Gavel and me, we drink there.”
“And Kerch is where you ran into the Gray Man.”
“So we going to Kerch?”
“Yes, but not by chopper. It’s not safe to go back there. The Turks will have found it by now—”
“Is true, boss. On radio just now, they saying no chopper found off Bandirma. Big search now for UN Blackhawk stolen from Santorini.”
“Yeah? Well, that settles it. We’ll take the boat.”
“Boss, is five hundred miles across Black Sea to Kerch! Also icy cold as trout nipples. Lots of open water too. No place to hide.”
“No help for it. Have the boat stocked and fueled and ready to go by midafternoon. I’ll call you and tell you where to pick me up.”
“And if no call?”
“Then Miss Pownall’s in charge. You’re working for her. Do whatever she tells you. And you keep her safe, Levka. Keep her
safe
. You follow?”
Levka met his eyes, held his look without wavering.
“I follow. I keep her safe no matter what. Word of soldier. How about those guys down there?”
Dalton turned and squared up with him.
“You see that little island back there?” he asked, pointing at the Maiden’s Tower, its lights beginning to glow against the twilit coast behind it. Levka nodded, looking puzzled.
“Sure. Nothing there but old tower. Nobody goes there in winter. All shut down.”
“After you drop me off, take them back down there, uncuff them and drop them off. As they are, butt naked. No papers, no ID, no cash. Turks aren’t going to like a couple of naked Russians flitting about one of their tourist sites. It’ll take them a week to sort it all out. By then, we’ll be long gone.”
Levka shook his head, looked uneasy.
“This will be problem, boss. If they talk good, be back in business pretty quick. Know all about us. Should do the smart thing.”
“I didn’t shoot you. Was that a smart thing?”
Levka took that in.
“No. You not shoot Levka. Maybe we gonna hire these guys too?”
Dalton shook his head.
“No. But I’m not gonna kill them either.”
Levka said nothing and had an odd look in his eyes.
“Know what, Levka?”
“Yes, boss,” he said, not making eye contact.
“Maybe we better drop these guys off
first
and then you put me on shore, okay?”
Levka looked hurt.
“You do not trust Levka?”
“I do not trust Levka not to tip these boys over the side as soon as I’m off the boat.”
Levka looked over at Dalton, gave him a sudden smile.
“Okeydokey, boss. No offense taken.”
SANTORINI, THE AEGEAN SEA
SANTORINI FIELD
Until he actually met her, Captain Sofouli had not been very happy about having an American official, especially a
female
American official, dropped smack into the middle of the worst professional embarrassment he’d had since Costa-Gavras had based a character in
Z
on him. But when Nikki Turrin had climbed down the ladder of the Hellenic Air Force Super Puma that had brought her from Athens to Santorini and he had gotten a look at her in the cold light of the winter sun, he had a change of heart.
He had been expecting an angular and bloodless young careerist such as he had seen on American newsreels, striding purposefully down the corridors of power in D.C. in pencil skirts and blouses, firing along on sensible heels, their faces as sharp as Chippewa hatchets. This was not at all what stepped out of the hatchway of the Super Puma.
Sofouli watched with profound masculine appreciation as a supple and shapely young auburn-haired woman wearing a long tan trench coat over a navy skirt, a crisp white blouse, and outrageous blue high heels, emerged from the chopper, assisted by two very attentive young flyers, who escorted her down the steps and walked on either side of her across the windswept tarmac, reluctantly surrendering Miss Nikki Turrin, of the American NSA, to the care of Captain Sofouli, Prefect of Tourist Police, Santorini Division, with crisp salutes.
Nikki, shaking Sofouli’s hand, liked what she saw: a large, weather-beaten older man, trim in a black police uniform, with deep creases around his eyes and mouth, intelligent black eyes with a blue spark deep inside them, and salt-and-pepper mustache setting off strong white teeth, as he smiled down at her and offered his hand, which was strong yet gentle.
“I am Captain Sofouli. Welcome to Santorini, Miss Turrin.”
“Thank you,” said Nikki, pausing to take in the shimmering plain of the Aegean stretched out below the cliffs, dazzling in the setting sun, and the jagged rocks of the islands across the lagoon.
Sofouli turned and indicated the jumble of white buildings scattered across the clifftops to the west, pointing to a low, white Art Deco hotel a few miles distant.
“That is the Porto Fira Suites. We found the body on the rocks below it. Would you like to see the room they stayed in?”
“Yes, I would.”
She ended up in Sofouli’s black Benz, the middle car in a convoy that followed the switchback highway as it climbed up toward the western edge of the caldera wall. As they bounced over the rocky terrain, Sofouli, sitting beside Nikki and enjoying her scent immensely, managed to stay professional, filling her in on what had taken place so far.
“It seems that one of my men, a Sergeant Keraklis, was corrupt. I make no excuse for myself. I made the mistake of thinking myself in an easy posting, and I have paid for my lack of attention. The man in the water—you may see the body if you wish, although I do not recommend it—was a man named Gavel Kuldic. He was identified by Interpol as a Croatian criminal, born in Legrad, near the Hungarian border. There was another man with him, named Dobri Levka, also from Legrad. They were what you could call ‘soldiers of fortune, ’ I guess, taking whatever work they could find. For reasons I do not yet know, my sergeant—”
“Keraklis?”
“Yes, Zeno Keraklis. For some reason, he brought these men to my island, telling me they were cousins. To my shame, I did not check this. The night in question, after my interview with the two Americans . . . I am right that they were with your Central Intelligence Agency?”
“I can’t confirm that at all, Captain Sofouli. Our two agencies are not on good terms with each other lately—”
“Yet here you are, from the National Security Agency yourself. You will admit that there is a connection at least with American intelligence. I was a part of that world myself, Miss Turrin, many years ago. I know how these things work. I know you would not be here at all if this did not touch upon American interests at the highest level. Please do not . . . condescend.”
Nikki considered the man for a while, thinking this through.
“Okay, I won’t condescend. Personally, I think these two individuals, whose names I cannot confirm—”
“Certainly not Pearson, at least.”
“Yes, certainly not Pearson. I think they were acting as private citizens—they showed you no official ID, never implied that they were American intelligence officers?”
Sofouli nodded.
“I think—my Agency thinks—that they were acting as private citizens, and that they were trying to confirm the death of a man named Kirik Lujac and that you confirmed this for them. Is that correct?”
Sofouli looked out the window for a time. They were rolling down the main street of Fira now, the convoy making a left turn toward the Porto Fira Suites, far out on a promontory overlooking the Aegean.
“I think first we will look at the evidence and then we will talk. Come, let me show you the room where they stayed.”
Although the suite was now the domain of a Greek forensic unit—an area by an overturned table in the front room had been marked off with blue plastic tape—Nikki thought the room itself was quite beautiful, clean and spare and very Zen, with a wonderful view over the glittering blue basin to the dark islands in the western seas. The room smelled of disinfectant and cigarette smoke and the salt-and-seaweed bite of the Aegean. A chilly wind ruffled the gauzy curtains, bringing with it the smell of garlic and flowers.
“Here,” said Sofouli, indicating the area marked off by blue tape,
“we found traces of blood and brain matter. The victim, Gavel Kuldic, was killed here—three shots into the back of his head as he lay facedown on the floor—and these marks of shoe heels here . . . and here . . . indicate that the man was then picked up and carried out here . . .”
Sofouli led her onto a broad stone terrace jutting out over the cliffs that sloped away steeply to the white ribbon of surf far below them. The air was full of clear evening light, and Nikki felt that she was standing on the edge of the ancient world, like Penelope scanning the sea for Ulysses year after endless year. Sofouli let her take it in, and then gently caught her attention.
“Down there, where you see the blue tape, we found his body, much broken and battered. There was a storm yesterday, as you may have heard—”
“Who killed him? Sergeant Keraklis?”
Sofouli shook his head slowly.
“No. We believe that Sergeant Keraklis was killed before this man. We found his body this morning, in the swimming pool at the side of the hotel. His neck had been broken.”
Nikki fell silent, thinking that this kind of senseless killing did not fit with her impressions of either Micah Dalton or Mandy Pownall. If she was right, then neither Dalton nor Mandy Pownall did these killings, or the killings were not senseless.
“Why do you think Sergeant Keraklis was killed, Captain?”
Sofouli stood beside her at the railing, staring down into the surging breakers, listening to the eternal roar of the sea and the wind.
“I think Keraklis may have started something he could not deal with. I think it had to do with this Kirik Lujac fellow. I knew that man—”
“Lujac?”
“Yes. He came here often, in the high season mainly, but sometimes, as he did last month, in the off-season. He owned a large Riva motor cruiser, one of the most beautiful boats ever to moor off Santorini, but he was not a beautiful man. Physically, he was perfection itself, a Greek god, but he was . . . not liked by the people of the town even though he spent a great deal of money here. He was . . . He gave the impression of being, inside, a spider and not a man. When it seemed that he had been killed by one of his own kind, no one in Santorini was very unhappy. Not even the boys who go all over the Aegean trading their bodies for the high life, not even these parasites missed him. Lujac was a predator, I think, and although he did nothing in Santorini to which I could object, I have reports of him from places like Kotor and Budva and Venice that are not so good to hear.”
He was silent then, still looking out over the water.
“Captain?”
“Yes, Miss Turrin?”
“You found a body in the water a month or so ago?”
“Yes. Well, not I. A fisherman saw him, and we sent one of our boats across the lagoon to investigate.”
“Who did you send?”
Sofouli gave her a sideways look.
“Sergeant Keraklis.”
“I see. These stories about Lujac, from Kotor and Budva, did they involve possible murders?”
“Yes. And they had other . . . elements.”
“‘Elements’?”
“Yes. I will not tell a young woman these stories.”
“I understand. May I tell you one?”
Sofouli looked at her.
“Should we sit?”