by L. T. Ryan
I figured Kostas’s men saw us snooping around that old house where we found her blouse. They must’ve known we’d end up there. Why else stage it the way they had? Made it more convincing, that’s for sure. Maybe if we hadn’t gone, they’d have told Esau to go out there. Seeing her torn clothing on the cellar floor would have been enough to get him to step it up and deliver on his debt. At least, they could hope so.
The thing that pissed me off was that Isadora had an idea of who Alik and I were. She knew we were the kind of men who could help her. I felt betrayed that she didn’t bring us in on what was going on.
I understood her position, though. And I couldn’t help but think that there was another reason behind her decision. Something she couldn’t say to me while I stood in Kostas’s office. Maybe she had some crazy idea planned out. Or perhaps it was something simple.
The door rattled and I opened my eyes and stood in place. The wind rushed in through the temporary tunnel. The sound of the waves grew louder. I licked my lips. Tasted the salt.
“You say anything else to him?” I asked.
“No.” Alik crossed the room and stopped next to me. He folded his arms across his chest. He took a few deep breaths, started to speak, stopped.
“What is it?”
“I think I should call Frank.”
“No.”
“What do you propose then, Jack? We go in there armed with pistols and take on an organized crime boss and all his thugs? Hell, you couldn’t stand up to them here in the cafe. Imagine what will happen when we are there and they can use their weapons. We won’t get past the front door.”
“I know where the place is. I’ve got an idea of the layout of the property. We can go in under the cover of night. Or in the middle of day. Doesn’t make much of a difference to me. I just want to get her out of there.”
“And let’s say hypothetically that we pull off this mission. What then? What next for Isadora and Esau? My God, Jack, it’ll never end. They’ll come after them. And they’ll come after us. You can forget about our cover, or whatever it is we’ve got going on here. Kostas will take that security footage and start showing it to his contacts. Won’t be long until the wrong people learn our whereabouts. Have you thought about that?”
I stared at the faint whitecaps streaming toward shore and said nothing.
“Have you? Have you considered what would happen if Ivanov learned of our location? Who do you think can have someone here sooner? Frank, or a Russian General?”
“Frank’s got contacts everywhere. I’ve got contacts from the CIA.”
He shook his head. “Don’t bullshit me. I know all about you. No one in the CIA likes you. You were a pain in the ass when you were attached and you exposed a rogue operative. And even if there was someone out there who thought enough of you to help, all it would take is one look at your file to see all the shit you’ve done the past five years. They’d sell you out in a heartbeat. They’d just as soon see you die at Ivanov’s hand.”
“So why are you here?”
He turned to me, arms still crossed, shaking his head. “Right now, I have no idea. And that’s why I’m calling Frank.”
“And what are you going to tell him?”
“That I’m getting the hell out of here and he can do whatever he wants with you.”
“What do you think he’s gonna say to that?”
“Fuck what he says. This is my decision.”
“You wanna look over your shoulder the rest of your life, waiting for some guy like me to show up?”
Alik said nothing.
“How are you gonna explain this whole mess to him?”
He puffed air out of one side of his mouth in a mock laugh. “That’s easy. I will blame it on you.”
“You think he’s gonna care?”
Alik looked toward the sea and didn’t reply.
“You know what he’ll do, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” He paused a beat. “Same thing Kostas will do if we go after him.”
“Who’d you rather take your chances with?”
“I don’t know, Jack. I just don’t know.”
“There’s another option hiding behind door number three.”
Alik’s head bobbed back a couple inches. “What? Door what?”
“It’s an expression. Just call it option C.”
“OK. What is it?”
“I’ve got the money.”
Chapter 29
THE WIND BLEW IN THROUGH the open window and swirled around the living room and kitchen, stirring up loose papers. Clouds bunched together in the distance. They looked bright against the dark sky. The only sound was the rolling and crashing waves.
“What money?” Alik said.
“I’ve been working as a contractor for a long time,” I said. “With a partner, most of the time. We’ve taken on a lot of high paying jobs. I invested what I made in different opportunities.”
“I don’t get you. This isn’t our problem. It’s theirs. Why are you burdening yourself with Esau’s mess?”
I shook my head at him. “There’s a fundamental difference between us. It’s why you’re stuck as a yes man—“
“Don’t you ever call me that,” he said, stepping toward me and reaching out with his hand. “If I were a yes man I wouldn’t be here helping you. I risked everything for this. I’m a criminal in my country now.”
I hesitated before responding, waiting for him to back off. After a few seconds he did.
“I guess I phrased that wrong,” I said. “Regardless of what you’re doing for me, you’re still acting on orders given by someone else.”
“What were you doing when you got into this mess? When you got yourself sent to Black Dolphin?”
“I…” I turned toward the window, dropped my head back and let the wind wash over me and stir up a recent memory. Before that moment, I hadn’t realized the similarities. “Christ, I did the same thing before.”
“What?”
“Mandy,” I said. “The little girl.”
“Who?”
“This whole thing started when I stopped to help a girl lost in the city. Turned into this gigantic mess that took me from the States, to Paris, to Italy. I picked up a couple jobs along the way. That’s how the Russians got to me. What they didn’t realize was how much more there was to it.”
“So you see,” Alik said. “Your lack of self control is what gets you into these situations.”
I said nothing as he walked to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and pulled out two beers. He popped the caps and set one on the counter.
“For you,” he said. “Maybe it’ll help you think straight.”
The bottle felt cold and wet in my hand. I took a long pull of the cold beverage. Tasted better than anything I’d had all day, which hadn’t been much. I felt a twinge in my side with each swallow.
“I know we can move on,” I said. “Get Frank to relocate us. Explain how we wound up in the middle of something just because we were in the room. And maybe in time I won’t care about it anymore. But right now, I can’t see it, man. No matter how bad Esau and Isadora screwed up, I have to do this.”
Alik lifted his bottle to his mouth.
I said, “You don’t have to be a part of it. If you want to, great. If not, I’ll be glad to tell Frank that I forced you to stay out of it.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I don’t understand myself. But, you know, these people, they didn’t know us, and it was obvious we had trouble on our heels. Despite that, they put us up. They invited us in, full-well knowing they could get caught in the crosshairs.”
“A cynic would say they did it because then we would owe them a favor.”
“That might be.”
Alik shrugged. “Who knows? And I think there is more to this. I think Esau is into something else that he’s not telling us. Whether with this Kostas fellow, or someone else.”
“That may be, but I don’t know it’s relevant right now.”
“What is then?”
“Isadora. We get her out, then everything falls in line where it needs to.”
Alik stood there, beer at his side, shaking his head. He tried to dissuade me for another half hour. Nothing he said changed my mind.
We’d moved to the table. The wind had picked up something fierce, so we closed the windows. It felt hollow in the apartment. Like we sat in a vacuum.
“How’s this work?” Alik said. “Won’t it give your identity away?”
“It’s a Swiss account,” I said. “One I used all the time while operating under various identities.”
“So you have one specific name you use with the bank?”
“No.” I spun a notebook in front of me and sketched out the flow. “I can initiate the transfer from a computer, if necessary. Then at a local bank, there is an access code that the banker relays to the representative in Switzerland. Then I get on the phone and there’s a series of questions I have to answer.”
“Esau has a computer in the office. Think he’s still down there?”
“I say we go find out.”
My heart rate increased as we left the apartment. As far as I knew, no one could tell when activity occurred on the account, because no one knew about it. But nothing was certain. I’d have to remain alert when I went in to collect the money.
We headed down the stairs and stepped into the dark cafe. The street lamps outside were off. The only light was that which seeped through the cracks and underneath Esau’s office door.
Alik knocked on it.
There was no response.
He reached down and checked the knob. “Locked.”
“Esau?” I said. “We need to talk to you.”
Still no answer.
“Think he left?” Alik said.
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, I guess. What we really need is access to the computer. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to shut down every night. And if he does, I doubt it’s password protected.”
“I can get onto it even if it is.”
“Then let’s get that door open.”
“Wait here.”
Alik went behind the counter, opened up a drawer. Utensils clattered against each other as he searched for something. He returned with a thin metal spatula and a butter knife. It took him about fifteen seconds to get the door open.
“Better than forced entry,” he said, looking back at me with a smile that faded when he saw the look on my face.
“Jesus,” I said.
We tried to enter the room at the same time and collided. I stepped back, let Alik go in first. My hand lingered on the fine grit of painted brick. Blood coated the wall behind where Esau had sat. Lines of it streaked toward the floor. The old guy was slumped forward. His head, at least what remained, rested on top of his desk calendar, surrounded by a pool of blood. The floor must’ve been tilted, because his blood dripped over the edge, landing on the floor where Alik and I had stood earlier. It continued in a narrowing line toward the middle of the room where it pooled again.
I crossed the room, careful to stay out of the fluid. Next to Esau’s head and outstretched arm was his gun. It had chunks of brain and bone and spatters of blood on it. A piece of paper stuck out from under his face. It was handwritten. A pen sat next to it. A note, I supposed. Didn’t bother picking it up. Crimson coated the paper, rendering it unreadable.
“Think he did it himself?” Alik said.
“Check your phone,” I said. “Any missed calls?”
He pulled the cell from his pocket. “No.”
“They’d have said something to us if Kostas arranged this.”
Alik nodded, said nothing.
“You dumb son of a bitch,” I said to Esau’s corpse.
“It had to be the confession,” Alik said.
“That’s a weight off his shoulders,” I said. “Which only made the knowledge that Isadora would die because of him that much more painful. If only he knew, then maybe he’d have made it through the night. But he’d told us his secret.”
“Should we call someone?” Alik said.
I shook my head. “We do that, Kostas will find out. Once he does, he’s got no more use for Isadora. How long you think he keeps her around?”
Shrugging, he said, “So what do we do?”
“Find a towel. Wipe the door down so your prints aren’t on it. There’s more plywood in the dining room. We’ll cover the front door and the other window with it. People will assume the place is closed for repairs. Once we’ve finished with Kostas, we’ll phone in an anonymous tip.”
A few minutes later we exited the cafe through the side door, behind the stairwell. The wind whipped around the buildings, hammering everything in its path.
“Storm coming,” Alik said, looking south where the gathering clouds approached. “Might make getting across to the mainland difficult.”
I glanced at my watch. It was four a.m. Too early for the ferry. No commercial airport close by was large enough to have flights running at this time. And even if they did, we wouldn’t be able to get tickets without proper ID.
So we got in Esau’s car and Alik drove until we were out of town. He pulled to the side of the road and retrieved his cell phone.
“What’re you doing?” I said.
“I know someone who can get us off the island,” he said.
Chapter 30
AN HOUR LATER I SAT in the cramped backseat of a small Cessna, staring east at the orange horizon. The glow of a sunrise an hour away. I’d never met the man piloting the craft. He didn’t offer his name. Neither did Alik. And I didn’t ask. He was getting us from point A to B and that was all that mattered.
He said the flight would take about half an hour, so I settled in for the cramped ride and thought through the day. Problem was, I could only envision a small portion of it. We’d find a bank. I’d go in and speak with a banker to initiate the transfer. The process would take thirty minutes max. Then we’d make the call. What happened then was anyone’s guess. And there was nothing I could do about it while up in the air, so I closed my eyes and leaned my head back and pretended to sleep.
The small plane bounced on the rough wind currents. I leaned over and looked out the window. Nothing but dark sea below that the morning hue hadn’t colored yet.
The pilot smoothed the plane out again. I closed my eyes once more and managed to drift off.
The sky was a bit brighter when the sound of the landing gear scratching the runway woke me. The pilot hit the brakes and the little Cessna jerked to a stop, whipping my head forward.
Alik looked back and pointed at a waiting taxi and then stuck his thumb in the air. I grabbed the pilot’s shoulder and squeezed a thank you.
I swept the tiny airport with my gaze before I stepped foot on the ground. It didn’t look like the place I’d been the day before.
Before leaving, we consulted a map. I pointed at the location of the house. The pilot pointed at a nearby town with a bank large enough to accommodate my request. So I assumed the airstrip was somewhere in between.
Alik rushed ahead to the taxi. He climbed in front, perhaps vetting the driver. Our plans were unknown to anyone. We hoped. It’d crossed my mind a couple times that perhaps Kostas had managed to hack the phone and turn it into a microphone. I know I’d gone into a room with a cell set up like that before. But even if they had, they wouldn’t know where we were. It would be a waste of manpower to put a man in every cab in the area, or to try and locate every cab.
I opened the rear passenger door and slid in on the vinyl bench seat. Stretched my leg out across it. Leaned against the door. Up front, Alik and the driver were speaking in Greek. Alik twisted in his seat and told me we had a half hour drive, and another hour after that for the bank to open.
So I closed my eyes and drifted off again as the cab bounced along old country roads.
When I awakened this time we were in a parking lot behind a three story industrial looking building. Smoke stacks rose and the win
d blew the wisps until they disappeared amid the grey sky. Men of varying ages and sizes, but all dressed the same, strolled down the sidewalk carrying backpacks or lunch bags. Most veered off at some point along the way. Only a few continued on past the building.
“This the bank?” I said.
“No,” Alik said. “He agreed to wait with us until it opens. Then he’s going to stick with us after.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said.
The guy looked up at the rearview and met my stare. The sparse grey hairs on his lip spread as he smiled. He said something in Greek, which sounded like a greeting I’d heard one of the old guys who frequented the cafe use. I nodded and tried to return the smile. Probably looked more like a snarl.
“It’s OK,” Alik said.
“I’d feel better if we mixed it up afterward,” I said.
“I agree. That’s why we will get him to take us to a car rental place after.”
“Why don’t you do that while I’m inside?”
“Even better,” Alik said. “That way we waste no more time.”
I glanced down at my watch. “Speaking of time. The bank open yet?”
Alik looked at the dash clock and nodded. He reached out, tapped the driver on the shoulder. They had a short exchange. The cabbie twisted the key in the ignition and crossed the lot. He stopped and waited while a group of homogeneous men passed by. Then we were on the road again.
Turned out we were more than five minutes from the bank. Maybe Alik felt better further away from downtown. Could he have the same concerns over the phone as me?
The driver pulled into the parking lot and stopped in front of the square concrete building. A line of four people waited at the front door. I could see a banker on the other side of the smoky glass. She was slim and dressed in a dark dress. She reached out and twisted the lock. The door opened. The woman was smiling as she stepped aside and greeted each person in line as they walked inside.
