by Glenn Smith
Without discussion Mary and Flint moved back toward the entrance gate. No police were anywhere to be seen until they were out of view of the damaged front wall. Flint took Mary's arm and they drifted along with two other couples who were headed back down the restored streets to get some food. Flint and Mary did not look bad—no torn clothing or broken skin. Hardly any dust despite their having both fallen. Mary smoothed her hair. Flint's hat covered his short haircut.
By the time they reached the train, Flint and Mary were breathing normally. Back at the Bristol, Flint looked at the passport, called Ava. Then he talked to Harry, filled him in. Stevenson Karbouski from Las Vegas was the man’s name.
By mid afternoon Flint and Mary were out of the taxi, talking through the gate speaker to Gina. They had both showered again. Mary put on a light colored skirt and sweater instead of the dark pant suit she had worn to Pompeii. Flint had a new piece of intelligence from Harry who reported that Zeta had learned that Freddy had visited Athens the day before. She discovered several large deposits in one of his off shore accounts, including $100,000 that morning.
Inside Gina’s house, Flint discovered that Freddy had been gone since breakfast. Could he somehow be connected to Karbouski? Gina and Ava had discussed Freddy. They agreed that his personality did not require him to have a conscience, but he had no record of arrest or even suspicion of being involved with any crime. Since he began treatment with Ava, he had lost weight. He had also lost a mood of pervasive anxiety and he had started sleeping well. Gina said she was sure that his business was legitimate. She also thought that he was making money by collecting ancient coins or ceramics—she wasn’t sure, maybe both—as a hobby. Murphy had no opinion, noting that the CIA did not have a file on Fred.
Flint produced the note that had sent him and Mary to Pompeii, then gave a few more details than he had provided to Ava on the phone an hour earlier. Mary said little. She was feeling withdrawn and depressed. She had killed animals hunting and not had remorse. She had not hesitated to shoot Karbouski, but now she felt a sense of foreboding.
The sound from outside was distant but Flint moved as soon as he heard it. "Hit the deck," he said urgently as he grabbed Murphy and dragged him off the gurney to the floor. Ava and Gina quickly got prone. Mary sat motionless, knowing she should move but not finding the strength to tumble off the sofa. Glass shattered . Mary toppled over bleeding. A ricocheting slug had nicked the artery in her left arm after traveling through part of the bicep muscle.
A man burst through the front door. He was spraying bullets from a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Flint put the red dot at the top of the thirty-round clip where it goes into the rifle, squeezed off one shot. The resulting indentation in the metal side of the magazine stopped bullets from moving up to feed into the chamber. The AK-47 jammed and spun out of its owner's hands.
A second assailant ran into the house, firing randomly as bullets ricocheted nonstop. One of them dropped the first rifleman, hitting him in the stomach. Another round, almost spent from glancing off of a light fixture, stuck Murphy in the shoulder.
Flint put the red dot in the same place on the second shooter's gun and fired. The round bent the top of the magazine, blocked any more cartridges from loading. Sudden silence. Gina raised her hand. The pop from her tiny .25 caliber semi automatic was laughable by contrast with the assault rifles' thundering. But the second shooter wasn't laughing because he was on the floor in a tiny pool of blood, not breathing. Gina's little slug had hit him in the forehead. His colleague wasn't laughing either. He was writhing, clutching at his stomach. Gina identified them as two of the three members of the hit squad.
Ava moved to Mary, improvised a tourniquet from her own silk scarf, asked Gina for clean water and cloth or sponges and a sewing kit. She got the bleeding in Mary's upper arm stopped efficiently. Gina brought water and two sponges still new in their wrappers. She disappeared, shortly came back with a hand sewing kit that had an assortment of needle sizes. Included with the threads she brought was some thin nylon for sewing skirt and pant leg hems.
Ava cleaned the wound gently, threaded a small curved needle with nylon thread, sutured the nick in Mary’s artery. All the while Ava talked nonstop to Mary, using something professional hypnotists call the Dave Elman induction. Trance was induced in less than two minutes. By twenty minutes after the shooting stopped, Ava had finished her emergency repairs and she had Mary in a deep trance. Ava kept repeating soothing suggestions for deep relaxation and healing. Gina cut a four inch wide strip from a clean, cotton sheet which Ava wrapped around Mary’s injured arm.
Meanwhile Flint had scouted the grounds, finding Gina's gate keeper dead where he stopped a burst of automatic rifle fire. Gina located her cook, terrified but physically unhurt, shaking and crying in the wine cellar.
Ava moved her attention to Murphy whose broken leg was hurting. His shoulder wound needed attention, but the bleeding was not life threatening. Flint and Ava helped him back onto the gurney and adjusted him for comfort.
“A surgeon is needed to sew Mary’s injury with a dissolving medical suture," Ava said to Gina. “Also, Murphy needs the bullet removed from his shoulder.”
Gina spoke in rapid Italian to her cook. The cook left, running. Ava told Flint and Murphy that a trustworthy friend of Gina's was a surgeon and that he would come as fast as the cook could fetch him. Meanwhile Ava asked Murphy if he would like some hypnotic help with pain relief and rapid healing.
"Why not," he replied. Ava could see by his dilated eyes that he was already going into trance from listening to her hypnotize Mary. So she performed an instant induction and soon had Murphy breathing easily and deeply. She used the trance to stop the bleeding in Murphy's shoulder and she got rid of the pain.
The cook arrived back with Gina's friend, the surgeon. He found the two automatic rifle shooters both dead. Flint assumed that the third member of the assassination squad had killed the gate guard and then escaped.
While the surgeon—and a nurse he brought with him—worked on Murphy, Flint talked quickly to Ava. He knew police would arrive momentarily. Even Gina would not be able to prevent that. Not relishing a day or two of repetitive grilling, he suggested a plan. Ava agreed, made appropriate suggestions to Murphy. She told Gina, as Flint wiped his prints from the Sig Sauer, that he was leaving the gun she had loaned him as if Bill Murphy had used it. Flint pressed Murphy's right finger tips on the handle, then let it drop to the floor near the gurney.
Gina said she would hear from them when they could call her. They slipped out the back door as the first car arrived with flashing blue lights and a loud siren.
The back gate to Gina's garden was locked. Flint found a ladder inside a potting shed. He leaned it on the gate, climbed up and saw that he could stand on the wall where the gate was attached. It was a long jump to the ground on the outside, but he was sure he could manage. Ava was suddenly there, on top of the eighteen inch wide wall, hanging on to him.
"You stay here while I drop down," he suggested. "Then I'll catch you when you drop."
"You sure?” she asked. “I weigh nearly 120 pounds.”
"Exactly right for your height," he assured her.
Flint eased himself over the edge of the flat topped wall. Facing the wall, he lowered himself until he was hanging by his fingertips. His feet were still five feet from the ground. He pushed out from the wall as he let go. Ava gasped. But he stayed upright. Then he backed up close to the wall, not quite touching it, both hands extended up.
Ava was in excellent condition. She worked out five days a week. She followed Flint's example, making it look easy. She was wearing a knee length skirt. Her feet and his hands found each other. He eased her down and out from the wall a few inches so she didn't skin her knees. When she let go, she walked her hands down the wall. Flint took his hands from her feet, put his arms around her legs as she slid down his body. Her feet were five inches from the ground when she stopped going down. Her eyes were looking straight into his. Then her
tongue was in his mouth. Her eyes closed.
They would have stayed in the clinch longer, but getting out of that area was essential. Ava reached in her purse for her mobile phone to call a taxi. She gave her full attention to rummaging, suddenly realized she had picked up Mary's purse in the house instead of her own. There was no going back. Mary's phone was locked. Flint put his phone in her hand and she called, spoke quietly. She led Flint for a two block walk and saw the Mercedes taxi. A few minutes later they were back at the Bristol.
Ava unlocked the door to her room, stepped inside expecting Flint to follow given their accidentally erotic yard escape. So he did. Twenty minutes later Ava was asleep, more relaxed than she had ever felt in her life. Flint had a shower, redressed so he could go to his room for clean clothes, stepped out and closed her door, heard it click as it automatically locked. He could see the entrance to his own room. The door opened. An expensively dressed man in his forties came out of the door.
Flint instinctively turned to face Ava's door, pretended to be unlocking it as if it were his room. The man walked past Flint, gave no sign of recognition. Flint waited till the man was about to disappear, then he followed. At the front desk, the man turned in a key, walked out front to a taxi. Flint asked the desk attendant what the immaculate looking man had been doing in Flint's room.
"Oh no, my dear fellow. He could not have been in your room. He is a distinguished guest. He always stays in the same room here. He comes four or five times a year, tips very well. We save the suite on the top floor for him."
"You mean the bridal suite?"
"We use it for that too, but we call it the executive suite. This man will be the next prime minister of Pakistan. He is very brilliant."
Flint thanked the attendant, went to his room. Nothing seemed to be missing, but everything in his suitcase was pushed around. He called Zeta on skype, told her about his surreptitious visitor, asked her to call him back as soon as she could with whatever she could learn. Ten minutes later her voice was on his smartphone.
"Hey man," she began. "You are moving in some fast company. This dude is an anomaly. His name is Mohammed Abida Bahaar. He's a Harvard grad, in divinity no less, and he has a Ph.D. from MIT in nuclear physics. He mixes protons with politics. Seems to be tight with all the world's current anti United States government heads. Doesn't like English speakers much. He has more money in personal bank accounts than ten people could spend in a dozen life times. He keeps that a secret so far as I can tell.”
"Why would he be in my room? I am completely stumped."
"Maybe he is looking for Dr. Ava and thinks she is likely to be where you are."
"Could he have planted some sort of location transmitting device? Maybe I am just not seeing it.”
“Maybe. Look at your luggage again. See if the hinges or handle or rollers or zipper pull look like they might be new,” she suggested.
“I’m looking now,” he replied. “Everything looks absolutely normal.” Then he picked up the small, Mexican leather carryon, looked at every seam, every scratch. “I don’t see a thing different. And he might not need anything more than my phone’s GPS to track me anyhow.”
“That’s true. I track you that way if I need to help you."
They hung up. Flint opened his door to Ava's soft knock. She was in a different skirt and sweater, looking stunning. He motioned her in, told her about his visit from Mohammed Abida Bahaar. "You ever heard of him?" he asked.
"I have," Ava replied.
Flint waited for more.
"The year I spent in India, I heard whispers of several kinds. That he is a messiah and that he is Satan and that he is a strategically smart opportunist.
"Would that be the same thing as Satanic?"
"I suppose it might be. Depends on what force he is an opportunist on behalf of."
"Ever meet him?"
"Once at my teacher's house. At a reception. He watched me for an hour, but I spoke only superficially with him and always in the presence of others. Then about a month ago, one of his emissaries called to invite me to Houston for a party in his honor. I had a full slate of patients scheduled so I declined."
"Nothing since?"
"I had an email from the assistant who called me about the Houston party. I assumed that it was a pro forma follow up. I replied courteously."
Flint thought about it. "We have unfinished business to take care of before we get involved with Mohammed Bahaar," he said. "There is the third assassin still at large. Do you think it is safe for you to call Gina and ask if she has any suggestions about where to find him?"
"I can try," Ava replied. She took Flint's phone from him and dialed using skype. She spoke briefly in Italian, then listened, then said "ciao."
Ava looked at Flint. "She said that Freddy has already taken care of the problem."
As she handed Flint's phone back, it signaled a call.
"Hello," Flint said.
"I want to speak with Dr. Ava Milan."
The accent was different, very cultured but not the intonation of a western native English speaker.
"May I tell her who is calling?" Flint said it as a reflex. He already knew who was calling.
"My friends call me Mo Bahaar," the carefully articulated voice replied.
"You may speak with her after you tell me why you were in my room," Flint replied still holding the smart phone to his ear.
"I beg your pardon old boy. You have me confused with someone else. Why don't you be a good chap and hand her the phone. She is just to your left."
Flint considered more repartee but he simply passed the handset to Ava. She answered, looked surprised, listened, then pressed the off button.
"Mr. Bahaar informs me that my best interest will be served by my immediate presence in Athens. He will call when I am there and give me further directions." Ava stood motionless. "Shall I go?'
Flint was looking around carefully as he wondered from what place they were being observed. It was dusk and fog was already forming. He could feel Ava looking scared.
"Do you think Mary might lend us her Sabreliner?" he asked.
Because his question assumed he would go as well, Ava regained her confidence and said, "I can ask." She called, explained briefly to Mary, then looked at Flint and smiled. "You must have really impressed her. She says she has not let anyone else fly it, but it's okay with her for you to take it. She said to tell you Semper Fi.”
Forty-five minutes later, Ava and Flint had paid for their rooms at the Bristol, quickly packed and grabbed a taxi, made the drive to the Naples airport. While he scanned the panel as both engines fired up, Flint asked Ava to phone Zeta and tell her that he was filing an instrument flight plan to Athens. An hour and twenty minutes later, Sabreliner Four Six Texas Tango was on short final for runway Three Left, Eleftherios Venizrlos International Airport, Athens, Greece.
Chapter 10
Flint landed Mary's Sabreliner in Athens eight and a quarter hours after a slender, attractive man wearing a turban stood up in the first class cabin of an Emirates Airlines Airbus 330 on the ramp at the same airport. He had left Hyderabad, India at 4:10 A.M. local time, changed planes four hours later at Dubai. An elegantly lettered name tag on his high quality carryon read "Abdu Koriem."
Koriem slipped his tablet computer into its snug protective jacket as he stepped out of the plane into the jet way. An hour later he was installed in a room at the Grand Bretagne Hotel, on Constitution Square, next to the parliament building, in downtown Athens.
After fourteen hours of traveling, Koriem took a long nap. He awakened at 5:00 P.M. Athens time, showered, then spent over two hours sitting tailor style on the floor meditating silently. He repeated five holy names for over an hour, then silently chanted a specific mantra over and over. He stood up at a minute before 8:00, glanced out of the window of his room, saw the acropolis and the Parthénon. They looked a short distance away on a hill soaring above and commanding the whole city.
Koriem dressed, wound a fresh
turban onto his head, made his way to the rooftop dining room for a pre ordered vegetarian meal. He shared the elevator with a bronzed woman wearing a piece of casually draped white cloth almost large enough for Koriem to use as a turban. As it barely hung on her body, the hem was radically uneven, A rope like slice of the material made a strap over her right shoulder. She met a handsome young man at the door to the rooftop restaurant. They made their way to a small group in the far corner at a round table. Champagne was their beverage. A surreal view of the acropolis not far distant created an unforgettable impression.
As Abdu Koriem waited for the first course to be presented, his compact tablet computer signaled a phone call. He spoke into the microphone on the ear bud cord that plugged into the side of his device. He listened for nearly a minute, then hung up. He caught the eye of his waiter, told him there would be two more for dinner. The waiter nodded, went directly to the kitchen, returned shortly with sparkling water for Koriem. He stood at a correct distance and stared discreetly away from anyone in the room. He and Koriem waited.
