Promethea

by M. M. Abougabal

  “There have been some complications. She is getting worse.” Koufakis rattled in Greek.

  “We may be the biggest pharmacy around here, but this is Tinos, we are on a remote island and are bound by limited supplies. We are even far enough from most major hospitals. You’d need a medical helicopter if things get worse, ferries would not make it on time.”

  “Just get me the stuff on this list.” He ordered.

  The old Greek pharmacist retreated to the back, dragging with heavy steps, and headed to some worn-out medication shelves. He unfolded and inspected the crumbled, torn out piece of paper that his younger client had just given him. Koufakis have always had quite an eccentric appetite for strange, odd compounds, which made this recent list of his seem quite dull by comparison. Painkillers and medications… These were probably just for him, the pharmacist thought.

  Koufakis’ glyph-like handwriting was exceptionally difficult to decipher. It forced the old man to reach and put on his reading glasses that hanged from a long golden chain around his wrinkled neck. His attempts to peek and squint were all to no avail, so he turned to his customer pointing to a scribbly, almost unreadable sentence that he struggled to comprehend. Yet before the old man was even able to do anything, three Greek officers had already breached in.

  “STOP! You’re under arrest!”

  It took Koufakis less than a second to think and react, throwing himself out of a large, one-story high, side window, to which he was leaning to. He dropped to the back alley’s floor face down, landing directly on his freshly grazed palms and knees. His wounds cut deep; his legs shook in trauma as he stood back up slowly, attempting to recover from the disorientation and severe imbalance.

  Yet the time this process took proved to be extremely costly. The sound of the broken glass had alerted all those who intriguingly monitored the situation from inside the police car. We all turned around and saw the skeletal scientist finding his balance and struggling to sprint out of sight.

  “Stay here!” Adam warned me, as he got off the car, slammed its door shut and dashed towards Koufakis.

  “This is NOT our job!” I yelled back at his unmindful, hot-headed self.

  Koufakis limbed hastily deep into one a grey stone-paved alley, bumping into the dazzled bystanders who were blocking his path and leaving a patchy trail of blood behind him. He knew that, even with his temporary disability, he had an advantage over the Interpol officer. Tinos was his island. It was his home turf. Growing up here had given him the opportunity to memorise and map out the complex network of backstreets and narrow alleys in the back of his head. It was one element that no foreigner had simply possessed.

  Yet to his disappointment, the effort to drag his injured exhausted limbs behind him was burdening and overtaxing. Koufakis broke into dismal sweat under the scorching heat, and cursed the heavens for each inclined ramping pathway he struggled to take. He realized that he had to use some of the least known shortcuts in his repertoire. Otherwise, he might just get caught. He started panting as he leaned on the coarse stonewalls around him, and looked back, after every couple of steps, to ensure that he was still ahead of his, once looming, stalker. And to his relief: he was. The path behind him was clear and the Interpol agent was nowhere to be seen.

  Yanis Koufakis released a long sigh of optimism. It was yet another monumental moment for him, one that was worthy of self-veneration. He had always considered himself special, one step, if not a dozen, ahead of his dim-witted enemies. And now, he can even add an Interpol agent to his large collection of outsmarted foes. He carefully fixed his messy clothes and turned around exhibiting a sharp arrogant smile. Yet, his confidence turned to shock, when he found himself on the receiving end of a furious, bone-cracking right hook. Adam had taken a detour of his own.

  The Interpol agent stood defiantly, towering above the struck-down skinny scientist whose mouth spurted blood with each laboured breath he seized. He kept a watchful eye on him and waited for the Greek law enforcement officers to arrive.

  Kanellis men threw the bludgeoned Koufakis inside the only cell they had back at the station. Crime was not exactly thriving in Tinos. The cell reeked under a dim flickering neon light, and its floor amassed tiny pools of water from its dripping ceiling. The water came from a tank that was situated directly above the cell’s roof.

  “Can we interrogate Yanis now?” I asked.

  “Just wait until we soften him up for you, so he’d become more… cooperative.” Kanellis replied devilishly.

  “I think NOW would be just fine.” I exclaimed.

  It would have been impossible for anyone at the station to deny knowing what was happening in Koufakis’ cell. The muffled thuds, pounds and cracking sounds; they all pointed to what he was going through... and exactly what Kanellis meant by softening him up. It took them just below half an hour before he was sent back to us, dragged and bruised. The two police officers, that brought him in, had towed him from underneath his armpits before throwing him onto a plastic chair in the interrogation room.

  I had no doubt in my mind that the suspect was severely beaten, even if he remained completely mute. Koufakis had definitely looked a lot worse when compared to the last time we had seen him. The lenses on his glasses were cracked and his lips were bruised, starting to turn bluish. I also believed that his left shoulder was dislocated and there was no denying the fact that his nose faintly whistled with each breath he had to take.

  I had found it rather odd that Koufakis refused to display any signs of agony or even plead for innocence. He gave the impression that he knew exactly why he was here and found no shame in it. As for Kanellis, it would seem that the massive riots that erupted in 2008, following the murder of fifteen year old Grigoropoulos by the hands of the police, have taught him nothing: Greek police brutality still lingered and remained.

  Finally… the stage was set, under a creaking wobbling white plastic ceiling fan.

  “Speak.” Adam said hesitantly, feeling ashamed for what had happened to Koufakis. I believe it also bothered him that he was the one to throw the first punch.

  Koufakis stares were bland and hollow. He opened his mouth slowly and reached for one of his upper front teeth. It was already twisted outwardly and away from its natural position, looking as if it almost hung by one last single thread. His hands shook and trembled to hold it firmly, until he finally clutched to it with one firm grip… somewhere in between his thumb and index fingers. He then suddenly started pulling and snapping it out of his swollen gums and placed it gently on the table in front of us. Koufakis’ actions, not to mention his unnerving self-control, were just all too unsettling.

  “Agent Mulder, you broke my nose.” He whispered peacefully in his disturbingly rugged voice, referring to the old and popular TV show the X-Files, before releasing a long manic, psychotic giggle.

  I exited the room briefly and called for Kanellis, who was laughing and watching the game’s highlights with his junior officers. My calls alerted him. He looked back at me with such a confident gaze. He was just too sure of himself.

  “I am going to report this. This… savagery is not going to pass unpunished.” I said menacingly.

  The Deputy was such an exotic unique blend of strange characteristics. To the untrained eye, he seemed amicably pleasant. He emitted such an appealing captivating aura of charming human emotions. Superficially, he was cheerful, hospitable and diplomatic, even gullible at times. His flabby chubby physique created this illusion of goodwill and benevolence. Yet those traits were only skin deep. He found no shame in bullying and applying his distorted version of the law just the way he saw fit. The worst part that it all happened, staged, behind his forged phony grins.

  “You should be grateful, Ms Hélène, we’re only trying to help you in the investigations. Besides, your friend threw the first punch. We have over twenty witnesses who all saw this, civilians too… such a brutish course of events.” He added that last part while smacking his lips together, mockingly pretending to have fe
lt sorry for what had happened.

  I felt disgruntled that law was actually insignificant around this part of the world. One would have to possess both wits and diplomacy in order to truly impose it. Not to mention, accept the many compromises that came with the job. Needless to say, I returned defeated to the interrogation room, opting to sit next to Adam who was just about to ready pose the first question to our estranged suspect.

  Chapter sixteen

  It was a long and strange winding path that brought us all here, now and together in this very room. There was no denying the despair inducing nature of our setting. The depressing surrounding dark walls shed its paint like a moulting reptilian. They merely allowed for a single cone of volumetric lighting to penetrate the room from a barricaded slit near the ceiling. Silence prevailed. It became the one defining aspect of our gathering. The theatrical scene was worthy of a hundred lingering questions that only Koufakis might have plausible answers to.

  “Bishop Bauer’s irrational fears, are they well founded? What were you doing with the spear?” Adam asked worryingly.

  Koufakis facial features turned fiendish. His wickedness was real and absolute. Through his stares I saw nothing but the complete darkness that settled in his soul. His looks remained hollow as if his body was a possessed haunted entity. He raised his right hand and dragged his fingers playfully along the table. His unnaturally long, filthy nails generated a cringeworthy screeching sound, brutally cracking in the process. Koufakis looked at us unmindfully, before retorting in his typical jagged voice.

  “Bishop? You think what we are trying to accomplish here has anything to do with religion?” Koufakis’ tone was condescending.

  The bishops were nothing but pawns that fell for a work of fiction. The spear was never sacred to Koufakis or his benefactor. It only represented a meagre step along the way… a necessary tool. Yet the mission’s real purpose could not be further from its promoted objective, even if the end product remained the same.

  “Everyone already knew that the stories around the spear were mere myths and legends, dare I say heresies?” Koufakis giggled. “Of course the Church had known these facts in advance. Yet… for some odd eccentric reason, some of its most devotees have willingly chosen to put their faith on the line. Ironically… they turned to the same science, the one they had battled for centuries, to pave new ways for them in their pursuit of the divine. The legends were right about one thing though… the spear can bring back people from the dead.” He smirked.

  “Then, what are you interested in?” I asked.

  “The consequences of my work, of course. The impact it will have on the ignorant diseased societies. Nothing is bound to remain too sacred. We would be given a green light to try and test everything! We’d find cures for terminal diseases in years instead of decades. We would even have the power to become… immortal. My work is alleviating the crushing weight of taboos… breaking all worn-out shackles of religions. The implications would be… unprecedented.”

  Each outrageous word that burst out of Koufakis’ mouth was just another check in a tick box, a brick in a wall he had built around himself and a witness to his insanity. I could not help but to notice the subtle self-admiring pauses between his sentences and the false sense of grandeur that walked hand in hand with his narcissistic whims.

  Yet to his ignorance, he was actually no different than all those megalomaniacs preceding him, priding himself with incomplete false glories. He was willingly parading his master plan, giving away all the details, in anticipation of awe, admiration and applause. His explicit pleas for attention were overly obnoxious. They made me more than willing to punch through his fabricated pride.

  “But why Christ? Why would a vermin, such as yourself, want to tamper and test the faith of more than a billion believers worldwide?”

  “HAVEN’T YOU BEEN LISTENING?” Koufakis answered angrily. “If you want to be in a fifth grade science book, go ahead and bring an extinct woolly mammoth back to life! I’m reigniting man’s faith in knowledge, presenting them with the burning torch of science. I am the modern day equivalent of the Greek Titan Prometheus.”

  The weight of Koufakis’ extreme philosophies was exceedingly burdening. It stretched Adam’s weary patience far too thin. He actually began to find peace and reason in how the Greeks have handled the situation: If the scrawny Koufakis had not already been beaten to an inch of his life, Adam would have probably done that himself by now. I saw it in his enraged squints and how he tried so hard to conceal his involuntary twitches. They all pointed to the terrible attempts made to contain his fury.

  “How far are you in your project? Did you extract the DNA? Did you find a willing woman? Someone to bear the child?” Adam threw too many questions in rapid quick succession.

  Yet, it was actually Koufakis’ answer that happened to be quite disturbing. Apparently his abuse of the Church was not limited to obtaining the Vatican’s spear. In fact, the Church’s services also stretched to provide a willing bearer to the holy seed. They thought of no one better than a local Greek young volunteering nun that went by the name Eftychia. She used to serve her Lord at the white church we passed by during our first day in the island. The youthful nun was apparently enthusiastic about the prospect. She was well aware of the superior cause, considering it a great honour and her destiny to bring forth such a blessed offspring.

  To the church, it was all symbolical: who would be more fitting than a virgin nun? Even if all that koufakis wanted was just someone who would not ask too many questions.

  “You people and your lack of argumentative judgement are the reason why those religious lunatics are still in power.” Koufakis said. “They actually think that cloning would bring them rapture, their beloved Christ back.”

  “You just said you could.” Adam interrupted him.

  “Like them, your enthusiasm is preventing you from posing all the right questions. What if we made ten clones? A hundred? Would they all be the same prophet? We are never going to be bringing someone back from the dead. We are merely replicating his physical traits.”

  Adam and I traded looks with the despicable Koufakis. He was just on the verge of yet another diabolical cackle.

  “Would you mind telling us what’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Religious people… they are so blindly devout. They actually get a hard-on with all their vain futile symbolisms: Virgins, light bringers and fallen angels. We actually thought it would funny; throwing them a bone, creating that wordplay with the double identities in the threat letters, a little brainteaser. See if they could figure it out.”

  The mad man found vulgar humour in the strangest and most sickening of things. It was all such a fun game to him, an indulgence in a twisted perverse thrill. The possibility of getting caught for his corrupt degenerate actions was actually the reason behind his insolences. In a way, he had always wanted to get caught. He desired it. Otherwise, how would he claim responsibility for what he considered the most immaculate scientific accomplishment in modern times?

  “We?” Adam interrupted him yet again.

  “My backer… Did you actually think someone like me would be able to fund all this? Keep all these operations running? Sadly, I have never actually met this remarkable visionary man.” Koufakis then paused sorrowfully before comforting himself. “His true identity mattered very little, however, he had already shown the sincerest interest in my cause.”

  The intricate hierarchy of their operation was slowly unfolding. The ground was shrinking rapidly beneath their feet and yet our suspect was still careless and unmindful. He was merely trumpeting the genius of his abhorrent plan rather than worrying about its possible imminent failure. It made me curious to know if he was willing to expose one ultimate and monumental puzzle piece: the location of his hideout, the place where he was conducting all of his foul experiments. But to the disappointment of all those present he did not. He was sure to keep that last and final playing card dead close to his chest.

  “The
plan shall go on, with or without me. I am just here to take all the credit.” He argued.

  The frosted glass door behind us refracted a rather large looming shadow before it gently swung open. Koufakis retreated slowly in his posture when he saw Tinos’ Deputy halfway through the door, barging in uninvitingly to the interrogation room. I wondered if he feared suffering the same feat again. The one he had endured back in his cell by the hands of the ruthless Greek officers. Kanellis would have certainly welcomed it. He seemed to have enjoyed obtaining information in this sluggish sadistic way.

  Only this time, this was not the reason why he was here. Kanellis took a few short steps inside the room then threw a closed police report on the table, looking at us triumphantly. I wondered what kind of mind game was at hand and whether Adam and I were already unwilling participants.

  The Deputy savoured one last deep whiff off his cheap roll-up cigarette, clouding the room with his exhaled cancerous fumes. He then walked quietly behind Koufakis, putting a hand on one of the suspect’s shoulders and carelessly ashing off his cigarette on the other.

  “His cooperation won’t be necessary.” Kanellis’ devilish grin widened. “Their location was actually the only bit of information that old pharmacist witchdoctor had known.” He declared.

  Koufakis looked distressed; his teeth grinded brashly in anguish. “It is already too late!” He shrieked. “You cannot do anything, you cannot force a miscarriage! It is unethical!”

  Chapter seventeen