The Destroyers

by Christopher Bollen

  I can’t stay on Patmos after last night’s threat. Picturing another encounter with Petros or Gideon puts a spur in my throat. Nor can I wait around for Charlie to appear and fix the chaos his absence has unleashed—or the chaos he unleashed and left to run wild in his absence. Fucking Charlie. Fuck you, Charlie, my rescuer, my friend.

  I’m stuck waiting behind a wrinkled British woman in a straw hat who is committed to arriving in Santorini on Thursday—any Thursday—like she has all the Thursdays in the universe at her disposal. She seems to have cashed out her life savings on the Byzantine gold in the jewelry shops. Outside, the ferry glides against the dock, and crewmen bind the ropes to the moorings. Tourists and locals collect across the sidewalk in nervous states of welcome and farewell.

  Every day the world blows up, quietly, one life at a time, and each life already holds among its clutter the bomb and the switch, the germ that could detonate, the dark secret not yet revealed. When was Charlie going to tell me the true nature of his business? After a week? After I got settled? Next year? I feel the loss of a future that never actually existed. I fold my arm on the counter and press my head into it. Even the loss of unreal futures hurt. And there are other losses too, like telling Louise of my departure after she extended her own ticket. It’s strange comfort that she practically spelled out to me last night that we didn’t owe each other much beyond this trip. Seven more days wouldn’t be enough time to change her mind.

  When I glance up, the British woman is watching me irritably while she fans herself.

  “I waited forever,” she grumbles. “Now it’s your turn.”

  A worker slides into a chair at the next desk, sips on a Diet Coke, and finally beckons to me. I race to her station, clamping my hands on the counter.

  “When’s the next ferry to Piraeus?” I ask.

  She points out the window.

  “That one, now.” Which means the next one isn’t for four more days.

  “Is there a seat?”

  She types and studies the screen.

  “One seat, yes.”

  It isn’t Louise that stops me from booking the ticket. It’s the nine thousand dollars in the nightstand—that and my passport in my suitcase. I’d never get to the cabin and back in time. Everything else I could shed—the clothes, my toiletries, Charlie, even Louise. What is the definition of a tourist but a person who disappears so cleanly and completely they leave no trace? No wonder Louise is so insistent on taking photos—I was here—because no one here would miss you if you weren’t. Does anyone miss the two dead hippies, now that their bodies have been shipped back home? A phrase occurs to me, one from a time or country I can’t pinpoint: to keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss. I don’t remember where that’s from, but it’s the perfect advertising slogan for vacations. All it needs is a palm tree.

  “And the next ferry after that to Piraeus?” I ask.

  She confirms what was written on the chalkboard. “Saturday, but no seats. You could see if there’s a cancellation in a day or two. Or go to Kos and then Kos to Mykonos and hope from there? Kos ferry leaves tonight at six.”

  A young couple is sighing theatrically behind me as I consider my options.

  “Okay. That sounds good. I’ll get my bags and come back.” But before I go, I pull Petros’s letter from my pocket and hold it out in front of her. “Can you tell me what this says?”

  She grabs the paper as she raises the Diet Coke to her lips. But her eyes narrow and she doesn’t sip.

  “It says, well . . . it says you promised.” She pauses. I can hear the carbonation of the soda at her lips.

  “That’s it?”

  “It says to remember your promise. And if you leave without saying good-bye it would hurt the one you care about.” She struggles to make sense of it. “A love letter?”

  “Sort of.” It is Louise, in the end, who keeps me from booking a ticket. And maybe I’m no longer a tourist here, because there is something I can’t afford to risk.

  In the bright air of the port, ripe with jet streams of cheap tobacco smoke, I watch the sun-brown passengers board and the pale passengers disembark. Two hippie backpackers are descending the ferry ramp, the taller one with a horselike face spinning a silver piercing in his cheek. He’s familiar to me, I’ve seen him before, but I can’t place where. Maybe all the hippies do look alike, because he’s clearly a new arrival, ambling down the dock in red-laced hiking boots and a fresh I ♥ ATHENS T-shirt with JESUS WAS A HUSTLER scrawled in rainbow colors across the Greek flag.

  From the flapping shade of a taverna, an olive-shirted man with thick glasses hurries toward the ferry, dragging a steel suitcase behind him. It’s Charlie’s boat manager, Ugur, fishing his ticket from his shirt pocket. I race to catch up to him, weaving around bodies, nearly caught in a fishnet of children with their arms interlocked.

  “Ugur,” I call.

  He flinches and speeds faster toward the boat.

  I shoot across the cobblestones, slipping between bumpers of stalled traffic. I reach his side as he’s passing through the gates. He takes no notice of me, as if I’m begging for change with a cup in my hand. Help. Help the homeless.

  “Ugur,” I repeat. “It’s me.”

  “Hello, E-on,” he says dismissively, neither slowing down nor bothering to look up.

  “Where are you going?”

  He scrunches his ticket tightly in his grip.

  “Back.”

  “Back where?”

  Ugur adds himself to the line of passengers waiting for the guard to check their tickets. He rises on his tiptoes and impatiently leans one way and another like a cobra in a basket. His glasses slide down his nose from the sweat that glistens his skin.

  “Ugur, why are you leaving?”

  He glances behind him, and I notice Inspector Martis standing by the bronze-green bust of a military figure in the square. We both step forward in the shrinking line.

  “Charlie should have made that meeting in Bodrum,” Ugur murmurs. “He should have been there, and he should be here now.”

  I tip into him, so close I smell his bitter cologne and the perspiration it’s trying to neutralize.

  “I know about the shells.”

  For the first time, he gazes at me, his eyes giant and lashless behind their lenses.

  “I thought you already knew. Then you know Charlie should have made that meeting. Something went bad.”

  “Is that why you cleaned out the office?” He doesn’t respond.

  We step forward.

  Between my clenched teeth, as if to filter out clarity in case of eavesdroppers, I whisper, “What was he smuggling?” Ugur flaps his hand between us, as if fighting off a mosquito.

  “Do not bring up. It is over. I can’t be here. I already wait too many days. I go back on flight to Izmir. Not safe here for me anymore.”

  “Ugur,” I plead. “Petros needs to be paid. He’s threatening my life and others. Where do I get the money? Please, just stay until the next boat and help me.”

  We’re standing in front of a heavyset guard armed with a red laser gun. Ugur extends his ticket. The guard swipes the laser over the bar code. I reach out to grab onto Ugur, but he snakes past the guard before I can make contact. The guard stares dully at my hands waiting for me to produce my ticket.

  “Ugur,” I yell. “Please!”

  Ugur turns as he collapses the handle of his suitcase.

  “The money is in Bodrum. Why do you think it was so important he be there? And now too many come with their questions.” He lifts his suitcase, climbs the steps, and disappears into the metal innards of the boat.

  I smile at the guard. “Sir, could I go aboard until the ferry leaves? I have to talk to my friend.”

  “Need ticket.”

  “I’ll just be a minute.”

  He thrusts me aside with his arm and accepts the next passenger.

  “Could I buy the ticket on board?” I ask him. If I could have a few minutes trapped with Ugur, he mi
ght confess the entire operation and where and why Charlie needs to remain in hiding. He might know the location of additional money, presuming it isn’t already stuffed in his suitcase. He’s the only person I can think of who can answer how deeply Charlie’s in trouble—or I am—and what to do if he doesn’t reappear.

  “We depart now,” the guard says. “Piraeus sold out.”

  “The woman at the office said there was one seat left.”

  He checks his watch. “You buy ticket at desk on level two of ship. Must hurry.”

  I glance back at Skala, at the white cubes shining through car exhaust and golden dust. Fresh flowers have been placed once again in front of the bomb site. I try to gauge the seriousness of Petros’s threat. He’s a man who takes fingertips and maybe even the lives of hippies on motorbikes. I could call Louise from the rooftop bar of the Grande Palace and ask her to send my suitcase and passport to the hotel, along with the Ziploc of cash. I’d trust her with the money. I could even explain the danger she might be in and tell her to bring my things herself. I could pay for us to stay in Athens with the nine thousand dollars. Wasn’t that its intended purpose: in case of emergency, from Edward Bledsoe to his disaster-prone children? There was only one child who would ever have needed to use it.

  At first he’s a mirage, a little dream bubbling from the stalls of overpriced swimsuits and souvenir beach towels. I blink and refocus. He’s wearing a black baseball cap and a black T-shirt, the visor shielding his eyes. He’s standing in the center of Skala in the direction of the harbor, like a lion sauntering through the pea-green grasses of the savanna utterly unaware that hunters have been camping out for weeks and shitting in jars just to get a glimpse of him through their rifle scopes. He appears so simply it’s almost a disappointment, no strategic cornering, no shattering trumpet blast. But for a millisecond he lifts his head, and the sun dumps its light, and Charlie squints. He’s staring right at me, the wide, round penny of his face flashing through waves of traffic and strolling sightseers. I feel as if the mere sight of him has touched the most private place in me, that combustive part where love and hate take turns breathing through the same apparatus.

  I break into a run, abandoning the ferry and hurtling straight toward him. I don’t even give myself time to call his name. He already sees me and begins to step back. I barrel through the jaws of the gray port gates. A flatbed truck loaded with watermelons glides into my path, its tires slow over the rutted stone, briefly cutting him from my view. When it passes, I make out the black shirt fleeing deep into the jumble of pre-lunchtime Skala. I dodge a bicycle and sprint across the street. Inspector Martis is holding up a finger, smiling warmly in greeting, his bulky legs marching toward me.

  “Mister Ian,” he calls. “Could we please talk—”

  “Later,” I scream, full propulsion toward the darting fish of black shirt. I won’t lose him. Destroyers wasn’t the only game we played as children in which I had a fighting chance. I beat Charlie seven out of ten at Buckland sprints. His years of smoking can’t have given him the adult advantage.

  I thread beyond the police station with its bright yellow mailbox, through the crowded outdoor tavernas and the aproned waiters leaning against their menu stations, down a paved artery half blocked with motorbikes and fat parked quads for rent. The black shirt gallops thirty feet ahead of me.

  “Charlie!” I shout. “Charlie stop!” But even those few syllables seem to push against my velocity. We’re bolting through a long straight alley of dress shops and jewelry stores and piteously empty lounges blasting techno music to entice or scare off customers with apotropaic drumbeats. The length of the alley gives me hope—if this were Chora I’d lose him instantly in its labyrinth. Up ahead is a wrought iron gate, which Charlie shoves open. It swings back, clicking its pin into the lock. Reaching to unhook it, I watch the black shirt veer wide and glide left beyond a cypress. As I fumble with the lock, my body has time to register its exertion and lack of oxygen. It’s with every last, food- and air-starved cell that I continue the pursuit. I push the gate open, lurching into a run, and tack left.

  A concrete path stretches between two rust-brown apartment buildings. Lines of laundry bow overhead. Corroded toys are embedded in a central strip of grass. The three floors of balconies are barricaded by domestic junk piles, and children peek their heads between the bars like archaic surveillance devices. Radios and televisions bicker from competing corners. Rusted rebar spaghettis from the buildings’ sides. The whole place is like a Soviet housing complex hidden behind the Potemkin facade of an amiable island fishing village. I remember Duck’s words—where the real people live.

  I catch the echo of feet driving up interior steps and chase after it. Entering a dim cavern of cement, I hear Charlie’s feet pass onto the second-floor landing. As quietly as I can, I double jump the stairs. So this is where he’s stashed himself, buried in the unscenic slog of the working locals. No one would think to look here—it’s about as accommodating to outsiders as a caliphate on Christmas. When I finally reach the landing, I just have time to see the last door along the exterior corridor shut. I use the distance to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my cheeks, my pulse thrumming like it’s picking up stray radio signals.

  The door is sun-faded to mauve. There’s no eyehole. A bank of windows next to it is covered in plastic-lined curtains.

  I knock.

  “Charlie, open the door. I saw you go in.” I wait. “Come on, dammit. We need to talk.”

  A muscular man in a wifebeater staggers out of the neighboring apartment. He stares at me, summing me up as he balls his hands in his track pants. I smile benignly.

  “My friend’s in here,” I explain. He continues leering from his doorway, fists rolling around in his pockets, his eyes pitted like pistachio shells. In a lighter moment, if I had less to lose, I might suggest he bring out a chair and watch my through-the-door tantrum in comfort. Right now, in this silent showdown, all we can do is estimate each other’s potential for violence.

  I raise my palms, and even though I’m not sure he’ll understand, I say, “I mean no harm.”

  After another minute, he eases himself from the frame and retreats into his cell.

  I knock again. When I hear no advancing footsteps, I try the knob.

  “Please, Charlie. Open the door. Talk to me.”

  Nothing.

  I push my lips against the crevice.

  “I’m not mad at you,” I lie. “I just want to know what’s going on. I can help. Whatever’s wrong, we can fix it together. I’m on your side.”

  Nothing. I pound on the door, my knuckles scalloping the paint.

  “I’m not leaving until you open up. I’ll stay out here all night if I have to. Please, Charlie. I need you.” The honesty of those words brings tears to my eyes, or the mere fact of my being within an inch of compacted vertical sawdust from the person I’m desperate to recover. I press my forehead against the door. I know he’s listening on the other side. And maybe I’m a better Catholic than I thought, because this thin screen between two chambers of silence seems like nothing so much as a confessional box.

  “You were there for me when I needed help,” I whisper into the crevice. “And now I’m here for you. Whatever you’ve done, whatever trouble you’re in, we can work it out. I’ve done terrible things too. Nothing you’ve done is worse than I have. Please, Charlie. I know about your company. I know the truth about Ugur and what you’ve been—”

  The knob jingles. The mauve door swings wide. In the rectangle of darkness, a squat shape hovers indistinguishably. The loss of the barrier between us erases my promises of trust. It takes all my restraint not to perform a Gideon or a Miles by punching him right in the eye.

  He grabs a switch threaded on a glassy cord, and the lamp on the dresser brightens. Charlie’s face gleams momentarily in the shine before it distorts, widening, aging. Stefan. Just the sight of Charlie’s brother is like provoking coldness by remembering previous winters. Our disenchantmen
t with each other couldn’t be more apparent, both of our faces set on identical registers of disgust.

  “For fuck’s sake, why did you run from me?” I blurt out. “Why did you let me think you were Charlie?” I stumble backward and consider making a sprint for the stairs.

  “Wait,” Stefan says. He takes an irritable breath and folds his arms. The years have given his face a lizard-like severity, eyes and lips pinched, and the opaline smoothness of his skin suggests a regime of creams that has the inverse effect of spotlighting an older man’s obsession with wrinkles. There is just enough Charlie in his face that he must be accustomed to unfavorable comparisons, of eyes brightening up for him at a distance before they go dark.

  “What are you even doing here?” I ask.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Stefan replies insolently. That familiar tone in his voice returns me to the kids we were, the ones I thought had been left behind long ago. “I suppose I’ve been doing the same thing you are. Only you seem to have gotten a bit farther along on the question of what my brother’s been up to. Will you please come in and shut the door? Unlike you, I have an aversion to scenes in front of strangers.”