by Alex A King
“You sure about that?”
“About which part?”
“The part about it being money.”
He held up one of the bundles, gave it a little shake, sniffed. “If it looks like money and smells like money, it’s money.”
“New money?”
“Yeah, looks new to me. Must’ve got it straight from the printer.” He chuckled. That wouldn’t last.
“Monopoly money.”
He grin in his voice dried up. He stepped into the dwindling light. “What do you mean?”
“Do you recognize a fake greenback when you see one?”
“Sure. These days nobody’s making a good-enough copy of the US dollar.”
“And the euro?”
He shot a nervous glance at the bundle in his hand. “Looks real enough to me. Feels like freedom.”
“How would you know?”
His mouth hung open stupidly. I really wanted to shove a handful of walnuts in, see if he could make them crack. “Uh ...” He looked at the money, looked at the gun that had appeared in his other hand.
Then he chose one.
Chapter 17
BANG!
I dropped to the ground and rolled. The first bit was voluntary; the rolling happened because of a conspiracy between the incline and my sudden lack of coordination.
Where the hell were Xander and Takis? Would they take my body home to Grandma when I hit the bottom or just throw me under a slab of stone or whatever the Neolithic people used to bury their dead? Rocks bit me. Sticks snapped under my weight, making me regret my newly discovered baklava addiction. On the bright side, maybe the extra flab would cushion my fall and my corpse wouldn’t need too much patching up once the mortician got ahold of me.
Then I stopped. Or rather, something stopped me.
I looked up into Melas’s grinning face.
“I like this thing when you fall at my feet,” he said. “We should do that more often, without the shooting.” I oinked and he laughed. “You okay?” His strong hands pulled me up off the ground.
“Elias,” I said.
A couple more shots fired, then a third.
“Relax,” he said. “Elias can take care of himself. He’s not alone up there anyway.”
There was more gunfire, then the clatter of metal hitting rocks.
“He’s down,” Elias called out.
Now that I knew my bodyguard was safe, I wheeled on Melas. “What the hell is going on?”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, obviously not going to speak. After I’d helped him out he wouldn’t tell me what was going on, and it wasn’t right.
“You owe me,” I said. “I’m up to my neck in this, helping you. The least you can do is share.”
“You should go home, find a nice man, make some babies.”
“Or ... I could tell your mother you won’t help Katerina Makri’s granddaughter.”
“Oooh, playing dirty.” He hooked his hand around the back of my neck, dragged me closer. “What are you prepared to give me if I tell you what I know?”
“Some good advice.”
He laughed. “Advice, huh? Honey, I know more about the world than you do.”
“Probably you do. But I know something you don’t.”
“What?”
I shrugged. “You first.”
He sighed, pushed a hand through his hair. It seemed like I was starting to become his number one source of frustration. “I’m not sure I know. I’ve been watching the compound—”
“Watching me.”
“—Watching you,” he agreed. “Watching the big guy, ever since you said his partner went missing. You know where they’ve been staying?”
“A Holiday Inn?” He looked at me blankly. Guess they didn’t have Holiday Inns here. “Okay, tell me.”
He shook his head. “You’re something else. Lopez and his missing buddy have been crashing as the same hotel as the Germans.”
“Wow, that’s a coincidence,” I said dryly.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so either. So I did some checking and it’s owned by a German company.”
“Is it Shitz?”
He stared at me for a moment. “I can’t tell if you’re asking for the bathroom or swearing.”
I didn’t fill him in—not all the way, anyway. Not now. Maybe I would, if necessary, but over food and coffee, not dirt and stones.
“It’s a name,” I said. “One of the family kids overheard him speaking to someone named Shitz.”
“Not Shitz. The owner is a company called Winkler Enterprises. That mean anything to you?”
“Hm ...” Yes ... yes ... YES. “Not really. Unless you’re talking about the Fonz.”
“Why did you twitch?”
“I didn’t twitch.”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Bug.”
His eyes narrowed for a moment. He leaned back against a tree trunk and folded his arms. “You already know the Germans set up camp in Agria so they could shift their freshly made money and drugs. Greece, they figure, is the perfect patsy for what they’re doing. Hard financial times, desperate people, a lot of traffic using Greece as a gateway to the rest of Europe. This Winkler character is a phantom. He doesn’t exist, as far as I can tell. But he’s got his fingerprints all over a bunch of businesses and properties all over the world.”
“Maybe it’s a fake name.”
“No ‘maybe’ about it. There are real Winklers out there, but none of them are our guy—so far, anyway. There’s a limit to how deep I can dig without alerting the wrong people.”
“So are Lopez and Bishop real cops?”
“Yeah. One of the first things I checked. They’re real enough.”
I told him what Lopez had told me, that Bishop and the others were human escrow.
His forehead crumpled up. “So somebody—maybe this Winkler—wants something. And he’s holding them until he gets it.”
“Like what?”
“You tell me. You’re what these missing people have in common.”
I shook my head. “I’m not the only one. Penka and Donk have ties to Baby Dimitri.”
“And the missing cop?”
So much for my theory. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“I think you’re the common thread. Which means it won’t be long before this Winkler character steps out of the shadows and reveals his or herself.”
“Was Lopez trying to infiltrate the compound? He told me it was his job to tail me and squeeze me for information about Dad.”
He laughed. “Is that what he said? Honey, the compound is already infiltrated. Baboulas knows some of the leaks flow both ways. And if I know Baboulas she’s already figured out who the bad guys are and is slowly feeding them rope.”
“Rope?”
“So they can hang themselves, when the time comes.”
Cheery. “So what was he doing?”
“Maybe he really wanted to know about your father, but that seems thin. I guess we’ll find out.” He pushed away from the tree, hollered, “He still alive?”
Takis’ voice floated back. “For now.”
~ ~ ~
Black wasn’t universally flattering. Xander resembled a chunk of obsidian in his painted-on T-shirt, cargo pants, and boots. Takis looked like something that escaped a Crayola box. Together they loaded Lopez into the back of the SUV. The cop wrapped his arms around his metal box of treasure like it was his long-lost teddy, bottom lip jutting out far enough that he could balance a taquito on it if he held still long enough.
“You,” he mouthed through the glass. I raised my middle finger, scratched the tip of my nose.
Melas and Takis spent several minutes arguing over who had jurisdiction, until Takis threatened to put snakes in Melas’s bed. Melas threw him a double moutsa and said, “Take the malakas. But I want to talk to him.”
“Before we kill him or after?” Takis wanted to know. “Heh. Just a little joke.”
Melas stomped back to the Toyota h
e’d requisitioned, and we were off.
Our caravan hadn’t gone far when a white van rolled into place across the trail. Melas stopped first, followed by the SUV, and finally Elias and me in the Fiat. Melas got out; he left his lights on, shining a spotlight on the van’s flank. Seeing as how no one shot him full of holes, the rest of us got out, too, except Takis, who stayed in the SUV with Lopez.
The van’s door slid open and a goddess stepped out of a metal oyster shell. Hera. She was wearing black skinny pants and a black T-shirt that made bigger mountains out of mountains. Why couldn’t she spontaneously combust?
Hera's eyes gobbled up Melas when she spotted him. Her mouth curved up in a satisfied smile. “Well, somebody made a quick recovery. I understand you’ve got something for us.”
“You understand wrong,” Melas said.
“Sorry, lover,” she said. Men in suits exited the van. No sign of guns, but I knew they were there. “This one is ours.”
“Actually, he’s ours,” I said.
Her smile widened. “National intelligence trumps petty hoods, sweetness.”
“Hey, I’m not a hood, I’m a bill collector.”
She laughed. “A bill collector. Perfect. I bet you’re really going places. Now get out of my way.”
Hera and her army of men in black crunched over to the SUV and helped themselves to the American cop.
“Hey, you fuckers, who are you?” Lopez bucked and kicked, but four is greater than one, even when that one is built like a walrus. They stowed him in the back of the van, then Hera climbed back in.
“I hate her,” I said.
She glanced over her shoulder, clearly unoffended. “I heard that.”
“Good,” I said. “You were supposed to.”
“I don’t hate you,” she said. “You don’t exist to me.”
The men were standing there watching us, brows raised.
“Good luck with that one,” I told her, “if it’s intelligence you’re looking for. He’s dumber than a stump.”
She smiled. “The dumber they are, the more they talk. You should come in sometime. I bet you could tell us a lot.”
It took me a moment. “Hey ...”
She shifted that smile to Melas, where it turned real. “See you soon,” she said. “They’ve transferred me to Volos. Now we’ll have time to kiss and make up.”
He stood there, mouth a tight, white seam, fists balled at his sides. Was he happy he was getting a second shot at a goddess? I couldn’t tell. He wasn’t happy she was making off with our prisoner, I knew that much.
She slammed the door shut and the van rumbled away. Melas jumped back in the car and punched the gas.
We did the same thing, only I did it slower on account of how the road was bumpy and rocky and I didn’t want to crack the windshield.
None of us were happy. I expressed it through the medium of blistering rock music, funneled through a rusted tin can. Radio stations around here were mostly amateur and often only played one album on replay. The quality wasn’t great, but then neither was my mood. We drove back to the family compound.
I wondered about Xander. If he was real NIS either Hera didn’t know or she was an accomplished actress. That didn’t seem likely. She was as subtle as menstrual blood on white shorts. Maybe his fake NIS ID was the real fake deal.
By the time Elias and I pulled up, Melas was already outside the gates, pacing.
“I thought you were undercover,” I called out the window.
“Not anymore,” he said.
“Did you find the third German?”
Chin up, down. “Not yet. But I will.”
“Don’t forget to tell your girlfriend so she can grab him, too.”
“Wait—you think I told her we had Lopez?”
“I think her timing was suspicious and convenient.”
He popped the car door open, hauled me out. “Park the car,” he told Elias. “Katerina is coming with me for a moment.” Elias looked at me. I shrugged, and then nodded. Xander wandered over. He nodded to Elias, who took that as a sign that I’d be safe with Melas. Obviously my word wasn’t enough. My bodyguard scrambled across the seat and parked the Fiat outside the garage. When he was done he jogged back to the guardhouse, where he could keep his eyes on me.
I assumed the defensive, pissed-off harpy position: legs slightly apart, hands on my hips. “Bring on your excuses, lame explanations, and your wild guesses.”
“I don’t know how Hera knew we’d be there, or that we’d bagged Lopez. I haven’t spoken to her. We don’t talk. There’s no reason to.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you talk to exes, call them up to see how they’re doing?”
I didn’t—ever. Once a relationship was over I moved them into one of two piles: You Die—You Die and You Go to Hell, or Meh. There wasn’t a pile of old dates and boyfriends I checked up on, unless stalking them on social media counted. And everyone did that, so in my estimation it didn’t count.
“No.”
“Well neither do I. You missed the part last night where I told you Hera wasn’t special to me. Maybe there was potential at one point, but it never happened. Never would have happened either, no matter how much more time we had.”
“Looks like you better tell her that, and soon.”
“Whatever she’s got planned, it’s all in her head. There is no me and Hera.”
I relaxed. Why did I care anyway? Melas wasn’t mine and never would or could be. “So what do you think she’s up to? With the German thing, I mean.”
“With the NIS you never know. They do what they do, and they do it in secret. Our paths don’t cross, unless they need something from us.”
“And if you need something from them?”
He started to laugh. “Good luck. They’re like dragons. They hoard information like it’s gold. Whatever Hera is up to, you’ll never get it out of her, and you’ll probably never see Lopez again. He’ll just ... vanish.”
“If you had to guess, what would you say is going on?”
“I’d say he knows more than he admitted about a certain German operation—or they suspect he knows more.”
“Damn it,” I said. “He’s gone, and now we’ve still got three missing people—one of them his partner.”
I did a half turn toward the gates. Elias was chatting to the guard but his attention was still aimed in my direction. As far as bodyguards went, he was shaping up to be a diligent one. Marika ... not so much. She was a better sidekick, even if it wasn’t a paying position. Maybe I could have a word with Grandma about the situation.
“I’ve got to go,” I said. “I need sugar, preferably in the form of baklava. But I’d settle for directly out of the bag with a spoon if there’s no baklava.”
“You never said what you were doing in Sesklo.”
“Looking for Lopez. We knew he was meeting someone there.”
“Someone who never showed up,” Melas said.
“Lopez said the plans changed. He was happy to collect the money and go.”
“Smooth move telling him it was counterfeit.” He sounded mildly dazed. “I can’t believe Baboulas let you go.” He looked at me. “She did let you go, right?”
“I didn’t give her a choice. One minute she wants me involved, the next minute she wants me to stand back. Some consistency would be nice.”
“I wish she’d lock you in your room until this is over.”
“Or the dungeon?”
His eyes darkened. “Or the dungeon.” He let out a shaky sigh. “Lopez could have shot you.”
“Good thing my reflexes are lightning.”
“What happens when the next Lopez comes along and he’s faster than you?”
“My plan is to be immortal and live forever,” I said, borrowing Grandma’s plan.
“You’re giving me an ulcer.”
“Probably that’s your mother’s cooking.”
His grin came on slowly, steadily, like a submarine surfacing. “You’re still bitte
r I ate her moussaka in front of you.”
“No. Not me. Uh-uh.”
“Yes—” he moved closer “—you are.”
Elias jogged over. “Sorry,” he said to the detective, hangdog look on his face. “Baboulas said to let you know she’d cut off your arm if you touch Katerina. But to be fair, she said she would let you choose which arm to keep.”
Melas grinned. “And they say Baboulas isn’t reasonable.”
“From what I hear that’s a good offer,” Elias said. “She must like you.”
~ ~ ~
Aunt Rita was going as I was coming.
“Takis already briefed Mama,” she said. “She is not happy.”
“I don’t blame her. We’ll never get Lopez back, according to Melas.”
“Not that—she knows how the NIS is. The fat policeman shot at you. She’s angry because no one put a bullet in him before he pulled the trigger. Xander and Takis should have done better.”
“It’s not their fault. I was egging him on.”
She rested her hand on my shoulder. “You should tell her that.”
Tears bubbled up to the surface. Not so much sadness as bone-deep frustration. I was a rat running in circles, hunting for cheese. And cheese was really awesome.
“My life is a disaster zone. The whole thing should be condemned.”
“It’s not so bad,” Aunt Rita said. “You have us—your family.”
Laughter burbled out of me.
“I know,” she said. “The Family is part of the reason my own life is ... let us go with complicated.”
“Complicated is a good word for it.”
“But I believe there is a reason for all of this. A plan.”
I squinted at her. “Is this one of those conversation about God?”
“No—gods. A life this fucked up? Even God cannot do that. This level of fuckery is the work of those bastards on Mount Olympus. Between us, I am starting to wonder if maybe Zeus slipped Baboulas the salami.” She winked. “That is a joke, but not too much of one. But there is a plan. You were meant to come to us, to know your family. And whatever the plan or the reason, I am glad you are here.”
Things got girly after that. We hugged, cheek-kissed, and complimented each other’s perfume. Then I waited until she teetered away on her man-killer heels, and I plopped my backside in one of the outside chairs, closed my eyes, and let the night swirl around me.
