Fire on the Island

by Timothy Jay Smith

  The Closed note posted outside the clinic didn’t stop Athina from entering. The doctor’s door was ajar. She heard soft snoring and peeked to see her napping on a couch. Athina quietly retreated and tested the second door. It opened.

  Jura, facing away, rolled onto her back. “Ridi?”

  “It’s not Ridi,” Athina said and approached the bed.

  Jura said something.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Albanian. Do you speak Greek? Or maybe English?”

  “Only English I take from school.”

  “That’s more than I know in Albanian. Do you want me to turn on a light?”

  “What?”

  Athina touched the bedside lamp. “Do you want some light?”

  “It’s okay.”

  Athina took that to mean yes and switched it on. Despite her ordeal at sea, Athina could see the girl was pretty; and she wasn’t so much a girl as a young woman, like herself around eighteen.

  Jura asked, “Where is Ridi?”

  “At work. I am his friend.”

  “His friend?”

  “He works at my mother’s restaurant. He will come again tomorrow.”

  “Not tonight?”

  “It will be too late tonight. You will already be asleep.”

  “I not sleep!”

  “Don’t be silly. You must sleep.”

  Tears welled in Jura’s eyes. “Ridi not come again.”

  “Of course he will! He’s worried about you.”

  “He never come again,” the girl moaned.

  Athina pulled over a chair to sit next to the bed. “Of course he will. He told me that you are friends.”

  “He hate me now!”

  “Hate you? He saved your life this morning!”

  “He not know it is me.”

  “That makes him even more of a hero, doesn’t it?”

  The girl started to weep. “I lose my baby!”

  “You had a baby? Oh, how horrible!” In all the talk around the village about the incident, no one had mentioned a baby.

  “Six months. My baby was six months.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Athina sympathetically touched the girl’s arm.

  “I want to be dead!”

  “No, you don’t. You were meant to live, don’t you see? It’s like a miracle. You come from Ridi’s village, and there he was on the beach to rescue you.”

  “I not make a miracle. I come for finding Ridi.”

  “You came looking for Ridi?”

  “To bring him his baby.”

  Athina was totally mystified. “His baby?”

  “He is my husband.”

  “You are married to Ridi?”

  “When he makes his baby inside me, he must be my husband.”

  “Your baby?”

  “I lose my baby. He was a boy.”

  “You mean you were six months pregnant?”

  Nodding, Jura broke down, barely able to choke out, “He was son of Ridi.”

  “Did Ridi know you were pregnant?”

  “Today I tell him. Today.”

  So Ridi hadn’t known he was going to be a father when he left Albania. Still, that didn’t exonerate him from all responsibility, and he should have stayed in contact to make sure he hadn’t gotten the girl pregnant. And what was this girl to him? A girlfriend? A wife he’d abandoned? Athina was crestfallen. The guy she had told she loved, whom she thought she could count on to be more responsible than most men, was just another feckless dickhead.

  Jura took her hand. “Please, I am scared.”

  “Don’t be scared.”

  “I wanted Ridi to come home for his baby. Now I have no baby. No husband. Only sad heart!”

  “Shh… shh… I’m your friend now.”

  “I’m scared! If Ridi not come see me, what I do?”

  “He will come see you.”

  “He won’t!”

  “I’ll make him help you.”

  “Tell him I am sorry. So sorry.”

  “I will.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “I will tell him.”

  “Thank you. Thank you.”

  The girl squeezed Athina’s hand before rolling onto her side, her whole body crying. Athina stayed next to the bed, waiting for the girl to calm down, and only when she appeared to fall asleep did she turn off the light.

  “Goodnight,” she whispered, and slipped out of the room.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  NICK STOPPED AT HIS ROOM for a quick shower and a change of footwear, glad he had packed extra shoes. He was still puzzled why someone would take his shoes, and especially his boxers, when the thief could have had his wallet and cell phone. He slung his daypack over his shoulder and headed for the port. The mysterious man whom he barely glimpsed fleeing the ruined house—could he be sure it was a man?—and the black worry beads contributed to his sense of an imminent menace. He’d already decided to bring Captain Tsounis into his confidence when he walked into the Coast Guard station.

  It was a cramped space with two desks in a front room where guardsmen filled out paperwork for boat captains wanting to overnight in the port. That evening, all five members of the local crew sat around the desks, resolutely passing a bottle of ouzo between them and knocking back shots. They were definitely off duty after a hard day.

  “Come back in the morning to get your permit,” one of them told him.

  “I’d like to speak with Captain Tsounis.” Through the cracked door to his office, Nick saw him talking on the telephone.

  “It’s too late today.”

  “I have an appointment,” he lied.

  Kyra, the only female among them, consulted her watch. “Was that a table for one at nineteen hundred hours?”

  Nick smiled. “I’m not late, am I?”

  Everyone chuckled. Their gloom briefly lifted.

  “Your name?” she asked.

  “Damigos. Nick.”

  She leaned back from her perch on a desk to call to the captain, “Nick Damigos is here to see you.”

  “Who?”

  “Superman!” a guardsman shouted.

  Everyone laughed.

  “The writer,” Nick spoke up.

  The captain came to his door. “If you are looking for heroes for your book, you’re in the right place.”

  “Are you going to be in a book, Captain?” Kyra asked.

  “No, you are, and Yiorgos, too.”

  “All in the line of duty, sir,” the young guardsman replied.

  “You didn’t see me jumping into that water, did you?”

  “You have some years on us.”

  “And rank!”

  “Why go in the water?” Nick asked.

  “Kyra rescued the girl this morning,” Captain Tsounis answered, “and Yiorgos jumped in to retrieve a body this afternoon. It was a tricky current with too many swells. Our equipment would have torn the body up. He was naked so there was nothing to protect his skin.”

  “Naked?”

  “Stripped clean without a mark on him. We can’t figure it out either. Come on in.”

  Nick went into his office.

  The captain shut the door behind them. “Take a seat.”

  Nick quickly took in the room. It was a man’s office: spare and to the point. Nothing especially decorative. A couple of photographs of the captain standing with dignitaries he must have admired, but Nick didn’t recognize them. Pressed into a corner was a single bed, its blanket squarely tucked in. Noting the back door he’d seen Vassoula enter two nights earlier, he could imagine the tryst that had transpired.

  “Do you live here?” Nick asked.

  “Sometimes somebody has to be here. It’s for emergencies and it’s usually me. What is this about?”

  Nick showed his ID. “I’m not a writer.”

  “The FBI?”

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “Yes, I know what it is.”

  Nick brought the captain up to speed on his investigation. He described the mayor�
��s letter to the embassy that prompted his arrival, and how the worry beads—especially the black ones left on City Hall’s doorknob—had convinced them that burning down the village was the goal and the threat was imminent. “Fortunately the mayor sent his letter to the embassy. We weren’t aware of the threat, and like I said, you operate an important humanitarian asset here. It’s fair to suspect the arsonist will strike in the next calendar month, and it might be tomorrow to coincide with the pageant. Your fuel tank needs to be secured, Captain. Guarded round the clock.”

  “I’ll volunteer for tomorrow, and then work out a regular schedule with my crew.”

  “Good.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  Yiorgos poked his head inside. “Everybody’s gone home. Do you need anything, Captain?”

  “Yeah, whatever is left in your bottle and two glasses.”

  “You got it.”

  The man returned with two short glasses and a bottle, and set them on the desk.

  The captain, pouring shots, commented, “This looks like a fresh bottle.”

  “You’d be drinking air if you drank what’s left in ours. Anything else, Captain?”

  “Not tonight, Yiorgos. You can leave my door open.”

  The man left and the captain pushed an ouzo in Nick’s direction.

  They tapped glasses, said “Styn eyeia mas” and knocked them back.

  Nick shivered as the fiery alcohol burned its way to his stomach.

  “Another?”

  “Sure.”

  The captain refilled their glasses. “Ten minutes earlier, we could have stopped them from trying to land. Instead, five men are drowned.”

  “Presumed drowned.”

  “They’re drowned. It was rough and the currents are too strong.”

  “How’s the girl?”

  “The doctor says that she’s badly beat up. She lost her child. I thought I’d give her a day to recover before questioning her.”

  “There was a kid?”

  “She was six months pregnant.”

  “Maybe the father drowned.”

  “It’s possible. Styn eyeia.” The captain killed his second ouzo.

  Nick knocked his back, too, but when offered more, he waved the bottle away. “I’m good for now. So tell me about the case of Omar the Turk who went missing about a year ago.”

  “The suicide?”

  “Presumed suicide,” Nick countered. “His body was never found.”

  “In the channel, they almost never are.”

  “Have you ever considered the possibility that Omar didn’t commit suicide? Maybe he just wanted people to think that he did?”

  “If he’s not a ghost, where is he?”

  “Hiding in the mountains and setting fires,” Nick suggested. “Playing out his revenge.”

  Captain Tsounis shook his head. “That’s a crazy idea.”

  “It’s crazy, but what happened to him is enough to make somebody crazy. Did they catch the skinheads?”

  “That was easy. They were from the main town.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They didn’t kill him, so they couldn’t be charged with murder.”

  “They got off with assault?”

  “The one who cut him got five years. The others, three.”

  “And Omar got a life sentence,” Nick remarked. “Did you see him after he was cut?”

  “Too many times. And if your next question is, would I want revenge, of course I would. But Omar is a ghost.”

  At that moment, the public announcement system crackled to life. At City Hall, the mayor blew into the microphone to test it, sending the sound of gale-force winds whipping through the village from the many speakers mounted on electric poles. Then with a phlegmy cough he cleared his throat to say:

  Kali spera, kyries kai kyrioi. In two days, there will be a meeting to decide which project to start: repairing the church’s bell tower or moving the Coast Guard’s petrol tank. We have new information—let me repeat, we have new information—so everyone please attend for the final vote. That is two days from now at eleven in the morning in the church. And remember, the Miss Icon procession begins tomorrow at sunset.

  More crackling, and the PA system went silent.

  Nick stood. “Thanks for your help. By the way, what was Omar’s last name?”

  “Ozturk. I helped search for his body.”

  “Ozturk,” Nick repeated it. “That name is on the map.” He took Lydia’s fire map from his daypack and unfolded it. In cross-checking the fires’ locations with the records in City Hall, when he felt confident he could identify the landowners, past or present, he had jotted down the names. “Here,” he said, pointing to where he had written it. “The Ozturks owned this land.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Why not?”

  “‘Ozturk’ is about as common as ‘Smith’ is in America. You probably can’t find land around here that didn’t at one time belong to an Ozturk.”

  “So no connection with Omar Ozturk?”

  “None was ever mentioned, and at some point, I think it would have been. But that’s not the name you need,” Captain Tsounis reminded him.

  “What is?”

  “I already told you, Takis Vatis, and he’s no ghost. You can find him two doors away.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Nick said, and walked out.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  THE MAYOR’S PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT SENT Father Alexis into a tither. His fate was unexpectedly arriving with less than forty-eight hours’ notice. The mention of new information sounded ominous, and no doubt was to the opposition’s advantage. Father Alexis, as hard as he was waging a campaign to repair the bell tower, in fact more adamantly had decided that he did not want the fuel tank moved for his own venal reasons. He wanted it blown up and the resulting fire to sweep through the village, collecting the church in its path and incinerating the evidence of his forgeries. That had become his plan. It worked in his last village when he manufactured an electrical short that sparked and caught the hay in the Christmas crèche on fire. The flames, fueled by his paints and cleaning fluid, gutted the church, destroying a dozen of his better forgeries, but no icon of real value was lost because the originals were already safely—albeit dishonestly—in the Russian’s collection. Villagers had begun to wonder about Vladimir’s frequent visits, and on a couple of occasions, Father Alexis had caught people sniffing around his paintings a little too diligently. Once he was gone, those icons could easily have been shipped off for carbon dating that would have exposed even his most perfect forgery. He was beginning to feel similarly overexposed in Vourvoulos. That’s why he wanted the fuel tank to remain where it was. Blowing it up would be the simplest solution for him. The steady breeze off the water would blow the flames straight up to the church; and if that failed, Father Alexis was ready to sabotage the church to make it appear that they had.

  So determined was the priest that the fuel tank not be moved, he considered closing the church to the public meeting, but realized that would do no good. It might forestall a decision for a few chaotic minutes, but it would still be made, and it was that vote to repair the bell tower—and thus deplete the resources that might otherwise be used to relocate the fuel tank—that Father Alexis was determined to win. Far too much depended on it. Losing the vote would reveal how bogus his reports had been about successfully bringing the leftist villagers back into the Church’s fold. He could forget leapfrogging over his fellow brethren for a plum position in a civilized town. He’d likely be banished for the rest of his priestly life to hovels like those he had endured with their pigs, slaughterhouses, and sardines—and old sagging women drooling on his ring. He shivered at the tortured prospect, and grew even more determined to prevail in the vote. By good fortune, only the day before he had stumbled across the tool he needed to ensure his success: a full-sized sledgehammer.

  Father Alexis found it propped up in a corner of the dank and web-infested garden s
hed. Not a man of nature, he spent as little time as he could in places where insects lurked, so it wasn’t surprising that he hadn’t noticed it before. He instantly recognized its usefulness and lugged it up the tower’s steep steps where he leaned it in the corner to wait for his first chance to use it. He had come to regret choosing the side of the tower most visible to the village to manufacture his crack. His intention had been for the villagers to live with a real sense of a growing threat, but the longer the crack became, the more difficult for the priest to take discreet swipes at it with his short hammer. He had to hang out the window too far, and strike the wall too many times, to make any significant change. The same effort would require only one or two good blows with the heftier sledgehammer.

  He needed the right moment when he could inflict more damage unnoticed. The mayor’s broadcast alerted him that his chance was coming up soon. Every announcement the tiresome old man made, he repeated precisely ten minutes later, so anyone not catching it the first time would have another chance to hear it. His droning over the crackling PA system would provide sufficient cover for a few hammer blows.

  He hiked up his robe to climb the tower. He thought of its uneven steps as the links in a chain that held an albatross around his neck. He was gambling his future on first saving the tower before ensuring that fire destroyed it. He sensed in that a paradox of biblical proportions.

  Fire and brimstone. Had they not driven him to his calling?

  The crèche fire had not been his first. The refinery fire was.

  His father, always a mean, temperamental man, had grown angrier after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Only in his forties, he felt life had been stolen from him, and when he wasn’t pitying himself with booze, he had brutal words—and sometimes a brutal fist—for everyone else. Father and son had never had a good relationship, and their fights over any subject grew so angry that they verged on spinning out of control. That fatal afternoon, the boy—Manolis at seventeen—returned home from school. His mother told him that his father wanted him to come to the refinery. She didn’t know why. “And don’t let your father smell cigarettes on your breath,” she said, which was almost a joke, since he’d offered his young son a first cigarette at fourteen. It was the only paternal act Manolis could recall.