The Road Least Traveled

by Jerry Cole

  “And how do I get you past security?” asked Greg. “I hate to say it but I’ve gotten into place the best guys I could ask for. Ever since the meeting with Dimitriou we’ve not had a problem.”

  Alex smirked a little and Greg looked at him questioningly. “You’ve had no trouble on site because I’m the one who called everyone off,” he said. “There’s nothing special about Dimitriou’s guys. They don’t have any special training. Dimitriou called Virkakis, and between the two of them they’re splitting your cash and using the same shitty security they always used. Only this time they don’t have any work to do because we’ve been sure to leave the site alone.”

  Greg was quiet. His jaw clenched. He felt humiliated and fooled. It was no wonder that Virkakis had made himself scarce. He’d been paid thousands of euros for the last two weeks, thanks to Greg’s belief that the secretary general had put in place the best security the city had to offer. And all this time, he had simply put back on the door the same lackluster team that had been there before Greg arrived.

  Alex saw the unhappy look etched on Greg’s face and he took him through the room, over the tangle of legs, to the balcony. He muttered some words in Greek and those outside got up off their chairs and went back into the apartment. Alex slid the door shut and he and Greg stood on the balcony, looking out over the town of Vardaris.

  “You’ve played me for a fucking idiot,” Greg began, and Alex shook his head and held his shoulders, the way Greg had held Eddie’s hours earlier.

  “No,” he said, staring into Greg’s eyes. “Not for one moment.”

  “You’ve just cropped up at the right time, every time,” said Greg, putting hazy pieces together in his mind, trying to think clearly in the fog of rising anger. “I have a meeting with Virkakis, and I pay him for his services. And suddenly, there you are. Out of nowhere, like a phantom. I don’t know why I didn’t question it at the time. You’re pals with the secretary general. You must have had this set up between all of you and you just waited for me to come along, the dumb American who doesn’t have a clue what’s happening and walks right into the trap.”

  Alex sighed, and shook his head. He placed his hands on the wall and turned his head away, then back again to Greg. He looked as though he wanted to cry.

  “The truth is, Virkakis has owed me from the very beginning,” he said, “but not for anything you’d know about. He started seeing a friend of mine, in secret.”

  “I’m pretty sure he told me he was married,” said Greg. “Told me he had to get home for his wife’s cooking. He was skipping off home with about a thousand euros of my money in his pocket. And the whole time he was running off to you and telling you about the meeting?”

  “The guy’s gay,” said Alex. “Yes, he’s married. Like most gay men and women in this city. You’ve come to one of the most homophobic places on Earth. Of course, we don’t toss gay people off buildings but we make their life hell in other ways. Virkakis is a gay man who buys silence. He bought mine until tonight, and I would have taken it to my grave if it weren’t for the fact that you have to know I’m not lying to you.”

  “So you know the guy’s gay, so you bribe him with secrets while he bribes me for fake security guards to look after the project?” Greg was incredulous. “I don’t get it.”

  “No, it’s not like that,” said Alex. “All he did was call me and tell me about the meeting with Dimitriou that Monday. That’s it. As for the security, you’d have to talk to Dimitriou about that.”

  He reached out and placed his hand over Greg’s, but Greg pulled it away sharply.

  “Not in front of people,” he hissed. Alex smiled.

  “We’re all friends here,” he said. “These people know about me. I have no secrets from them. And we have so much love and gratitude for you, too. You’ve given us the chance to fulfill a dream tonight. Do you know that some of these guys have left Athens and driven straight here as soon as I called them? They have families, small children. They have jobs. Two guys from Romania have dropped everything to be here tonight. Because of you.”

  “No, not because of me,” said Greg. “Because you’ve fed me a story that I believed.”

  “Grigoris, please listen,” said Alex, and he invited Greg to sit down. When Greg did so, Alex sat opposite him and took Greg’s hands in his long, roughened fingers.

  “To us, this isn’t a fairy tale. It’s a dream come true. Who knows whether we will find even a single scrap of pottery down there. But you called us. Because I believe you feel the magic, too. For all we know, Betty herself can smell it. She’s not prepared to go any further until we’ve had a look. That’s all we want.”

  Greg stared into Alex’s eyes, searching them as the man pleaded with him. He thought of the passion of their kisses, the urgency with which they made love. And he knew that Alex was right. Whatever the outcome, Greg wanted to know almost as much as they did whether the tunnel had secrets to be discovered. And he knew that had Betty not malfunctioned all on her own, he would have caused her just the right amount of damage anyway. And he’d done it all for Alex.

  “I’m guessing you’re going to bribe the guys at the gate?” he asked, and the sparkle in Alex’s pupils lit up once more.

  “Leave that to me,” he said. “The less you know about that, the better. But we need to start tonight.”

  “I can’t give you more than a couple of days,” said Greg, and Alex nodded.

  “You have given us more than we could ask for,” he said, and he leaned forward and kissed Greg on the lips. “And you have given me even more than that.”

  Greg blushed, but he needn’t have worried. The team was busy chattering among themselves in the apartment, excited at the prospect of a lifelong dream coming to fruition out of nowhere.

  Alex was a natural leader and he organized the team with skill. They would arrive at the site in groups of three, and no more, in order to ensure as little fuss as possible was made near the site. Alex was to go in first, on his own, for a word in the ear of the security guard. After that, Greg would take them down into the pit via the elevator, along with their gear. They were to walk along Betty and were under strict instructions not to touch a thing as they passed. They were to go through the control room to the other side, jump down in front of the shield and use their equipment to excavate quickly. As they discussed details, Greg began to feel uneasy. He thought about talking to Eddie, confessing to everything. Well, perhaps not everything, of course. He decided to wait. After all, they may find absolutely nothing.

  Alex took Greg with him on the bike, and the others piled into large vans Greg hadn’t even noticed in the parking lot when he’d first arrived at the apartment a short time earlier. They headed towards the site, Greg holding on to Alex’s waist, his heart racing not from the thrill of the ride but the thrill of the night itself. Alex took a different route, leading the team past the open area he’d shown to Greg that hot night, the night it had all begun. He slowed down and pointed to the area for the benefit of those who were following him, and the team in the vans craned their necks to get a better look. Some of them had only heard about the site from shared research and discussion and were seeing it for the first time.

  From intricate studies that Greg had made of the map, he knew they passed over Betty’s exact location. She was sitting patiently underneath them, feet below in the bowels of the earth, as if waiting for them.

  Toward the site, Alex indicated for the team to slow down and pull over. They were to wait for a call on their cells, an all-clear instruction to make their way through the barrier with their heavy bags of tools and geology kits over their shoulders. Greg and Alex dismounted the bike and walked over to the entrance to the site, where a tall man Greg hadn’t seen before stood patiently. Alex spoke to him in low words, although it was unnecessary as Greg couldn’t understand a word. He didn’t see a single cent change hands, but he had no idea what tricks Alex had up his sleeve. He realized that he knew so little about this man, and that in truth, hi
s feelings for him had blinded him to a lot. Greg was not a man who liked to be kept in the dark about anything, but there was little he could do about that now.

  The man at the entrance nodded at everything Alex had to say to him, but kept his dark eyes fixed on Greg. Eventually, Alex beckoned Greg over.

  “Show him your pass,” he said, and Greg produced it from his pocket.

  “I’ve explained we’re here for a tour,” Alex continued. “And that we have experts who have come to check that the tunnel is secure. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” said Greg. “You have my permission to let everyone through tonight.”

  Alex leaned forward and muttered in Greg’s ear.

  “You might need to give him something to sweeten the deal.”

  “What a surprise,” said Greg, wryly, not wishing to think about the cash he’d spent since his arrival in Greece. He was sure there wasn’t a single space on an expense claim form for ‘bribes’. Greg had conceded that he would never see a penny of that cash again. He checked his wallet- two hundred in cash, plus a little change. The man didn’t look too impressed, but took it, pocketed it and simply walked away.

  Greg had believed since his meeting with the secretary general that security on the site had been second to none. He had no idea that the whole time, Alex had simply called off the troublemakers, and all the money that was being wired to the municipality of Thessaloniki was simply being pocketed for the sake of a lone man with nothing better to do but to stand at the entrance to the site to give the appearance of tight security. Greg could kick himself for not checking more thoroughly as to the integrity of those in charge of his project during the darkest hours of the night. The CEO in him was disappointed at having been so readily fooled.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  In the coolness of the tunnel, the team of sixteen, including the uneasy American, walked with purpose along the concreted floor. That night, nobody, including Greg, had bothered to wear a jacket on their descent underground. Instead, it was adrenalin that was keeping them warm.

  Greg was in charge once they reached Betty. Once again he gave them strict instructions: they were not to touch any part of the machinery. They were not to hit a single button in the control room. Now was not the time for them to make any kind of statement and sabotage the project. They were to take great care not to stray out of the boundaries set by the circumference of Betty’s shield. As Greg pointed out, he did not want Betty plowing ahead and pasting concrete tiles on a wall that was no longer there. Dig forward, he said. That’s it.

  It didn’t take long for them to get to work. Greg had no idea what Alex was saying to the team, but whatever it was, they obeyed. As he stood back and observed Alex taking charge, delegating two people over here, three over there, two to stand back and sketch, and others to plot maps and detailed sketches, he felt what he realized was pride. There was something undeniably sexy about the way Alex threw himself into the work. But one thing was very clear after a couple of hours: Greg was going to have to speak with Eddie. The team was already making their own headway into the dirt, and while they weren’t quite so undiscerning as Betty’s neutral blades, their experience and knowledge meant they knew what they were looking for, even before they knew whether it was there or not.

  From small test digs in the soil, they knew the areas that they could knock through without much care. Other places they weren’t too sure of, they let alone until there was more space to work with. From the huge canvas bags they brought down with them they erected tall lamps that beamed bright light at the wall, and they wore helmets with small lamps on them too, just like the lamps Greg and his team wore day after day. They spoke in low voices to each other occasionally, but most of the time they were silent, diligent, as though time spent talking could instead be put into careful brushing and scraping.

  It was four a.m. before Greg yawned and realized he was exhausted. He’d enjoyed watching the team of strangers commit to their work with such diligence, especially Alex, who hadn’t looked up from his area of work for two hours. Occasionally he would sit up, and peer with concentration at something he’d taken from the ground, only to find it was a piece of rock, which he tossed onto the ground behind him.

  If there was one thing he knew about the team, it was that they were going to ensure no harm came to the site when he was gone. He thought about calling out to Alex, but decided not to interrupt him. Instead, he turned and walked back along Betty’s long flanks until he came out the other side, and walked alone back to the shaft, where he ascended to the surface in the elevator, then sent it back down. He walked back to the hotel in the warm night, and he couldn’t decide for himself whether he wanted to come back the next day with word the team had found anything or not.

  At the hotel, he got into clean sheets and lay on his stomach. His mind whirred with all kinds of possibilities that could face him when he awoke, and he decided to turn his cell phone off until morning. It was the only way he could guarantee himself a quiet night. He eventually dozed off, once the sun was already beginning to rise.

  When he opened his eyes again, he knew it was late. The sun, hot and bright, streamed through the window as he’d forgotten to close the drapes a few hours earlier. He moved out of the way of the hot rays, wondering whether it was possible to get sunburn through the thick glass. As he stood over the toilet, peeing, he turned on the cell phone. Alex had texted him to say he presumed Greg had gone back to the hotel. That was at seven. Greg wondered whether he had even noticed he was gone before that time. He doubted it from the look of studious concentration he’d seen etched on Alex’s face from the second they got into the tunnel.

  The decision he’d taken upon falling asleep had not changed in a few hours of slumber. After showering and drinking coffee though it was nearly midday, he called Eddie. They arranged to meet at Eddie’s hotel, where he and the guys were by the pool. Greg wore pale jeans and a white shirt and strode over, not entirely sure what he would say to his foreman. On arrival at the hotel, he was taken to the rooftop, where there was a large pool.

  “Would you like a drink?” asked the waiter.

  “Just a beer, thank you,” said Greg. The waiter’s accent was very much like Alex. His English was excellent, as though he had spent his education in another country, perhaps the UK. He brought the beer over and Greg sat and sipped at it as Eddie emerged from the pool after doing a few laps. He wrapped a towel around his waist and dripped as he walked over to the table where Greg was sitting, lifting up his hand to the waiter and pointing to Greg’s beer in a silent request for the same to be brought over.

  “What can I do for you, Chief?” Eddie asked. His skin was bronzed by the sun and he seemed a lot more cheerful than he had the previous night.

  “Has Howard managed to source a part?” asked Greg, and Eddie nodded.

  “London was the nearest place. It’s a perfect fit, too. They deal with the same company in Japan that we do. They’ve totally inflated the price, of course, but they’re putting it on a plane tomorrow morning. I’ll go pick it up from the airport, and Howard’s guys can have it fitted by tomorrow night. We pick up where we left off on Monday morning, and the rest is history. This time next week, we could be on our way out of here.”

  “I’d like to delay things for a couple of days,” said Greg, and Eddie looked confused.

  “We’re making good time, boss,” he insisted. “This fault, it’s natural wear and tear. If anything we should have expected it. We should have brought an extra part with us. We’ve got a couple more on order and they’ll be shipped by truck. Don’t worry about it.”

  The waiter brought over Eddie’s beer and set it on the table in front of the foreman.

  “That’s not what I mean,” said Greg. He drained his beer and looked at Eddie.

  “Remember the guys who were making our lives hell?”

  “What, the hippies?”

  “Yeah. The archaeologists who were concerned about Betty and damage she could be do
ing.”

  “Of course I remember,” said Eddie. “Bunch of assholes hell bent on causing trouble. Well, we won that battle.”

  “We did,” said Greg. “It took a lot of cash and a couple of meetings with the right people, but we’ve been working without any interruptions for the last couple of weeks. I’m really proud of the work we’ve done, and a lot of that is thanks to you, Eddie.”

  “It’s a team effort,” Eddie replied modestly, but Greg could tell that he was proud.

  “The only thing is, the agreement to let us carry on came with a clause,” said Greg, and he proceeded to tell Eddie about the meeting with Dimitriou and Alex. He was careful not to tell the whole story, but explained that he’d been encouraged by the secretary general at the municipality building that he was better off making a friend of the local archaeologist and not an enemy.

  “What that meant,” said Greg, “was that we would continue to push Betty the way we planned. Only, if we came across anything of interest, it was only fair that we let them know.”

  Eddie frowned.

  “What, like gold?” he asked.

  “Not just gold,” said Greg. “Anything that could be considered historically important to the people of Greece.”

  “Well how do we get to decide what’s historically important to the people of Greece?” asked Eddie.

  “We don’t,” replied Greg, and the confusion on Eddie’s face was clear. He rubbed his chin.

  “I’ve allowed for Alexander Petrou and a small team to dig over the next few days. Where Betty is now, is possibly the site of a very important ancient palace. If the team is correct, then it could mean the greatest historical discovery in the country’s history. Perhaps the world.”

  Eddie’s face had lost some of its confusion, and had been replaced by a serious expression that Greg translated as anger.

  “You’ve allowed them onto the site?” he asked. “Without any of us there? Without my knowledge?”

  “I knew you’d never go for it.”