The Poison Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  “He arrives in the morning?” asked the taller of the two in Arabic.

  “In’shalla, Allah willing.”

  “And how do we know both this and the place he will stay?”

  “It is something called a flight plan that all airlines and private planes entering a country must file. Anyone with a computer may find those of American aircraft in the files of the American government’s aviation department, the FAA.”

  The tall man showed teeth the color of old ivory. “Amazing. The Americans make all public for the sheer sake of doing so. It will be their downfall, Allah willing. But you also know his hotel.”

  The other man shrugged, a matter of no consequence. “Such places lack real security of their reservations. A skilled computer person may review the lists of incoming guests. There are a limited number of places in Athens where an extremely wealthy American might stay.”

  The one who had asked the question leaned across the table so that his mouth was only inches from the other’s ear. “And the men, you are sure of them?”

  “The Prophet, may his name be revered, could not have picked more dependable men.”

  The conversation paused as the waiter, eyebrow cocked at the full wine pitcher and nearly full plates, sought permission to remove both. He was dismissed with a gesture.

  “You are certain the man Reilly suspects nothing?”

  “I am sure of nothing. That is the reason I am in need of some of your men.”

  “They have families. They do not work for free.”

  The shorter man nodded and stood. He looked around at those enjoying their dinner before removing a fat envelope from a pocket of the jacket he carried, despite the heat which sunset had done little to dissipate. “This is half. The other when you deliver Reilly.”

  Placing the envelope on the table, he nodded to his companion. Still speaking Arabic, he said, “I would not want men who put no value on their services. May Allah bless our venture.”

  The other man opened a flap of the envelope, surveying its contents. “And you wish this man Reilly taken alive, yes?”

  “He is of no use to me or my friends dead. There will be no further payment for a dead man. Until tomorrow night on the square, then.”

  Turning, he disappeared down a set of narrow steps while his dinner partner opened the envelope and began thumbing a stack of bills.

  CHAPTER 32

  Athens Eleftherios Venizelos

  (International Airport)

  08:36 Local Time

  The Next Day

  Lang’s eyes felt as though someone had tossed sand in them. He was never able to sleep on an airplane despite the Gulfstream 550’s small but comfortable bedroom. He had spent the first several hours finishing the borrowed Mithradates book, a scholarly, rather stiff translation of what was probably rather scholarly, stiff Greek. The treatise was frustrating in that its focus was the constantly shifting alliances and the endless conflicts with Rome. There was annoyingly little material on the aspect of the Hellenistic king’s life in which Lang was interested. He could only hope Dr. Theradoplis knew more on the subject than he had chosen to publish.

  Finally, he put the book down. Lang had enjoyed a bottle of Petrus, vintage 2005, from the aircraft’s well-stocked wine selection to accompany a juicy filet grilled to his specifications in the tiny but efficient galley. Then he downed a couple of single malt scotches while watching the latest Cliff Eastwood movie on the aircraft’s entertainment system.

  Sort of a mushy, getting old type of flick, he thought. The Man with No Name, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Dirty Harry were gone for good.

  And still he could only stare at the ceiling.

  Looking out of the window as the plane began a steep descent, he tried to forget the thumping pulse behind his eyes or how sleepy he was. Arid brown landscape passed below. Even the green of the olive groves seemed lifeless and dusty. The area would receive little rain now until well into the fall.

  The flight attendant, disgustingly cheerful, approached with a tray.

  Lang looked up questioningly.

  “Coffee and an aspirin, Mr. Reilly.”

  He gulped both gratefully. “Do I look that bad?”

  “No, not at all. It’s just that Bordeaux by the bottle tends to bring on a wee bit of discomfort in the morning.”

  Lang grinned in spite of how lousy he felt. “You are as capable a liar as you are pretty.”

  She retrieved the tray with a smile. “Thank you, sir. It’s always nice to start the day with generous flattery. Now, if you’ll fasten your seat belt . . .”

  Uniformed representatives from both customs and immigration met the plane at the satellite terminal, swapping passport stamps for multiple copies of general declarations, the papers each aircraft entering a foreign country must present listing information from the pertinent (names and nationalities of passengers and crew) to the absurd (method of disinfecting the aircraft). Lang suspected an international conspiracy of bureaucrats kept the practice alive to ensure that jobs were readily available to store documents that were neither read nor destroyed. The entire Amazon forest could be restored with the trees cut to make the world’s supply of general declarations.

  From the cab’s window, the Hotel Grand Bretagne appeared to have recently been under siege. Sandbags obscured most of the first-floor windows. That indispensable tool of the modern-day social commentator, the aerosol paint can, had decorated the building’s façade with graffiti.

  Lang did not have to read Greek to get the message: the hotel shared Syntagma Square with the Greek Parliament next door, and, therefore, the rage of a people facing severe cutbacks after decades of government largess. Generous government benefits were on the chopping block due to the government’s serial austerity programs.

  Greece had learned the truth of Margaret Thatcher’s observation that socialism worked fine until you ran out of other people’s money. One of the unforeseen consequences of membership in the European Union was an end to a country’s ability to print its own currency with which to repay its debts with cheap money. Greece’s creditors were pressing for repayment for deficit spending to finance generous pensions, paid vacations, free medical care, and 30-hour work weeks.

  The party was over. Either Greece had to demonstrate some effort to stem the hemorrhaging expenses of social programs, or the country would face the direst of consequences.

  Santa Claus was dead. Faced with the bleak prospect of government workers actually having to work till age sixty-five rather than sixty-one, massive increases in the national sales tax, severe cuts in both subsidized housing and food programs, the ordinary citizenry was displaying displeasure by rioting in full view of their elected representatives. The political demonstrations had included burning any cars unlucky enough to be handy, breaking windows, and generally destroying any private property at hand.

  The law-abiding wealthy had long since departed for the financial asylum on the Costa del Sol, Palm Beach, or the south of France in the face of confiscatory income taxes. Others found it less expensive to pay off tax officials.

  Lang had arrived just in time to see the changing of the guard at the parliament building across the square. Not quite Buckingham Palace, but impressive nonetheless. He handed his single bag to the white-gloved, morning-suited bellhop.

  He nodded toward the military pageant. “Nice, but you really didn’t have to go to the trouble.”

  The man stared at Lang blankly. Either he had little understanding of English, or less, a sense of humor. With Lang trailing, the bellhop trudged up the stairs and into a columned lobby that could have accommodated a football game. No austerity here: shiny marble, genuine Oriental rugs. Gilded mantel clocks adorned multiple fireplaces between oils of landscapes and near life-size portraits, all lit by ranks of crystal chandeliers. Groupings of what he guessed were reproductions of Second Empire furniture were tastefully scattered throughout. Louis-Napoleon would have felt right at home.

  But he wasn’t there. In
stead, two men in business suits sipped coffee in the course of animated conversation. Other than them and the uniformed attendant carefully wiping imaginary dust from the furniture, only one other person occupied the lobby area: a dark-skinned man reading a Greek-language newspaper.

  His jeans were more worn than fashionably faded, and his sneakers were not even an artful copy of a name brand. He would have been more at home in the mobs on the square outside that Lang had seen on the nightly news.

  Years of Agency training set off the alarm in Lang’s head. This scruffy guy in the elegant lobby was a wheel-less car up on bricks in a country club parking lot, a guy in a tuxedo at a square dance, an anomaly. And he was either a very slow reader or his attention was focused elsewhere than on the paper he held. He had not turned a page since Lang first noticed him.

  Without slowing the registration process at the front desk, Lang made a natural-looking movement so he was facing the news reader, enabling him to keep the man in sight without being obvious. From this angle, he got a partial look at the man’s face. Early twenties, a scraggly, goat-like chin beard. With the heat outside at 90 degrees, a concealed weapon was the only reason Lang could think of why he would be wearing the light windbreaker.

  As soon as the desk clerk had finished making a photocopy of his passport, Lang returned it to its case in his suitcase and, declining assistance from the bellhop, made his way to the bank of elevators.

  If anything, the presidential suite was more elegant than the lobby: 200 square meters of inlaid floors, panel molding, first-cast bronzes, and a fully stocked real, adult, not-mini-sized bar in addition to more elegant furniture and paintings.

  None of these were why Lang had chosen this suite.

  Not even the much heralded view of the Acropolis, visible and nearly unrecognizable as a tiny white speck in the distance.

  He stepped outside onto the wide, brick-paved deck from which one might take in that view. Lang was used to the hot, muggy Atlanta summers, but the heat of Athens was overpowering, like that experienced in Las Vegas, but more so. Dry and oven-like, it clung to the skin like a burning ointment.

  Still, the deck was near perfect for his purposes. He measured off its meets and bounds, its proximity to other decks on this floor, satisfying himself that, if needed, he had another exit than the conventional one.

  Returning to the oasis of his room’s air conditioning, he placed his bag on the king-sized bed and unpacked the scant contents until he reached the bottom, that strip where the roller board is attached to the wheels. He pressed on one end and a section came up. From the shallow cavity, he removed his Glock 40 and held it in his hand for a moment before taking his belt clip holster from the suitcase.

  Arrival by private aircraft negated the security procedures suffered by airline passengers. It also made secreting the weapon from prying eyes easy, even in the unlikely event the host country’s customs chose to search the plane. The problem was the severe prohibitions against private ownership and possession of handguns in most European countries. It was pure luck his not being armed in Turkey the first time, though, had not been fatal. He would not make that error again.

  He checked the clip in the pistol before slamming it back into the butt and pocketing two more fully loaded magazines. Dealing with the local authorities over a gun violation beat the possible consequences of being unarmed.

  CHAPTER 33

  King of Pontus, Foe of Rome,

  Story of a Hellenistic Empire

  by Abiron Theradoplis, PhD

  National Museum of Archeology

  Athens

  Translation by Chara Georopoulos

  University of Iowa Press

  (Excerpt)

  When Mithradates returned to Pontus, he promptly visited his mother and his brother, (Mithradates the Good) at her villa. After an intimate dinner of just the three, they adjourned outside to admire the sunset. Within half an hour, both Laodice and Mithradates the Good complained of a metallic taste on the backs of their tongues. They began to sweat as nausea and stomach cramps bent them double. Their mouths filled with saliva but they could not force it back down throats too swollen to swallow. Later, servants would comment on the strange red tint to their masters’ eyes. Drooling and moaning, they clawed at their throats. After an hour of vomiting and diarrhea, the queen and Mithradates’ brother and only rival writhed in convulsions. By midnight, both were dead.

  But how was this done? All three ate the same dishes. With vigilant servants present, the guest had no opportunity to add poison to the food, and had he somehow managed to bribe a cook or otherwise inject toxic substances into the food before the meal, would he not have died also?

  CHAPTER 34

  Athens Archeological Museum

  28 is Oktovriou 44

  Athens

  An Hour Later

  In a neighborhood running from nondescript to shabby, the Parthenon look-alike sat behind perhaps an acre of green space fronted on the street side by an open air taverna. Ignoring the urge to make a dash from the taxi to the presumably air-conditioned museum, Lang took a seat at an empty table in the little restaurant with a view of the street. He was surprised to see the place was half filled until he remembered it was slightly past noon here. A gap-toothed woman of indeterminable age handed him a greasy menu, waiting, hands akimbo, as he studied, deciding between a Santorini Crazy Donkey pale ale and the Mythos lager. Despite the former’s imaginative name, he chose the latter.

  His purpose was not refreshment, but to observe. It had not been possible to determine if the cab had been followed in the traffic of Athens — second only to Rome in its suicidal nature. He had taken one cab from the hotel to the Acropolis, entered the museum there only to exit by a side door, and take another taxi here. Still, the appearance of the newspaper reader in the hotel lobby suggested caution was needed.

  The beer came, sweating in its green bottle. Lang declined a room-temperature glass and ordered souflaki, a Greek kebab, in a pita sandwich with a cucumber-yogurt dressing. By the time he had finished, he had seen no one suspicious and was within minutes of his appointment.

  The gray-haired docent at the museum’s door invited him in broken English to have a look around while she summoned Dr. Theradoplis. Although Lang could not see any ascertainable historical order to the exhibits of weapons, armor, sculpture, and pottery, two exhibits caught his attention.

  One, a golden death mask in a Lucite case, was an artifact he recognized as inspiring part-charlatan, part-amateur-archeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, to claim it to be that of Agamemnon of Homer’s Iliad. Whether Schliemann actually found the object during his excavation of Mycenae, Agamemnon’s capital, or it was one of his many “seedings” of archeological sites with artifacts from elsewhere, has never been decided with certainty.

  The other was a life-size bronze of a small boy, an infant, astride a galloping horse. The multi-language caption noted the latter had been retrieved from an ancient shipwreck.

  The lady from the front door returned, motioning Lang to follow her to a staircase closed off with a rope. Moments later, they stood in a hallway crowded on both sides with crates, boxes, and odd-shaped figures under canvas. It appeared the Archeological Museum had more exhibits than space.

  His guide stopped in front of an open door and motioned him inside before hurrying back toward the stairs.

  In front of Lang was quite possibly the first marble-floored office he had ever seen. Like a ship upon a serene sea, a post-modern ebony desk floated on a fluffy, off-white flokati rug that reminded Lang of the fleece lining of a leather flight jacket. Behind the desk rose a short man with a haircut Lang thought had been patented by Albert Einstein. As he approached to take the extended hand, he realized the man was barely five feet tall.

  “Mr. Reilly?”

  The grip was firm, the shake energetic. “Dr. Theradoplis.”

  The museum director indicated one of several chairs, each upholstered in either black or white. Only at the last second
did Lang realize how heavily the thing was stuffed, designed to swallow, rather than seat, its occupant. The ultra-modern design contrasted sharply with the half-dozen reproductions of scale models of classic Greek statuary lining the walls — Lang recognized the discus thrower, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory — and the large black-and-white photographs of what Lang guessed were archaeological digs.

  From somewhere behind the desk, Dr. Theradoplis produced a thermos and two glasses. “Refrigerated coffee is more refreshing than tea or soda, including your own Coca-Cola.”

  The man had done his homework. How many Europeans knew Atlanta was the home of Coke? The accent was heavy, but, as is often the case, intelligible in person if not on the phone. It had been a pronunciation, not a language, problem.

  Lang accepted the glass and took a long sip of the unsweetened brew, thankful for its coolness, if not its bitterness. It was chilled, but had no ice in it. With some effort, he managed to lean forward in the all-encompassing chair. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”

  The museum director nodded his acknowledgement. “A pleasure. Not daily does someone come from Atlanta to conference with me. What is your interest in Mithradates, King of Pontus?”

  Lang guessed the preliminaries were now over and plunged right in. “I understand he developed a tolerance to poisons.”

  Theradoplis made no effort to hide his disappointment. “Ah! The man was a major threat to the Roman Republic, the most since Hannibal 150 years before. Yet most histories . . . Make small . . .”

  “Minimize?”

  “Yes, most histories minimize Mithradates’ role in fighting the Romans. He was maybe greatest Hellenistic military figure since Alexander.” He paused, looking over the top of his glass. “You know Alexander, the Macedonian?”