INSIDIOUS ASSASSINS

by Jack Ketchum

  “According to legend,” Ariane said, “the original labyrinth—the one the Minotaur was in—wasn’t a maze like you see on the puzzle page of a newspaper, but rather a spiral, with all paths leading into the center. That’s why it’s easy to get in to it, but hard to get out. And the octopus is considered its symbol.”

  He thought, he didn’t know why, of the tangles of her hair on his pillow that morning, then kissed her again. “You know, if we’re going to get to your villa ...”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s not much farther away than Knossos—just down the coast about eight kilometers—and we can get the bus in the same place. In fact, in ancient times, the town was the seaport of Knossos.”

  “More ghosts?” he laughed.

  She looked around her and, seeing the fort was nearly deserted, she pulled a cigarette out of her handbag. “Would you settle for more hash?” she asked. “Just one for the two of us, though, since we do have to get to the bus. To heighten the sunset?”

  “Mm-hmmm,” he said.

  They smoked together for a few minutes and then she said, “May I ask you a favor? Monday—the afternoon plane to Athens. Could you take it for me? Then come back, of course, on Tuesday morning. I want you to take a package for me.”

  He looked at the cigarette they were smoking. “You mean ... ?”

  She laughed. “No. Not drug smuggling—in fact, it’s easier to get on the mainland.” She brought her voice down to a mock whisper. “Actually, it’s something worse.”

  “Oh?” he said. He was curious now.

  “I’ll show you when we get to the villa. It’s a small vase, for an aunt in Paris. Nothing rare either, but you know how they are about artifacts. That’s why I’m sort of persona non grata with the airline myself right now—otherwise I wouldn’t even ask you. But if you could mail it for me on the mainland, it would get to my aunt that much faster.”

  He hesitated a moment, then nodded. She was right about the drugs anyway—although he didn’t consider himself to be part of the culture, he’d seen them practically openly sold on the streets of Athens. And as for artifacts—he laughed—he could just see his father’s face if he were caught. Not that he would be ... or, if he were, he couldn’t claim ignorance on a first offense.

  “Thank you,” she said. She kissed him hard. “Now we’ve got to run.” He followed after her down the jetty and back to the harbor streets, then to the bus where they sat, holding hands, on the trip to Amnissos.

  When they arrived at Ariane’s villa, her brother wasn’t there. “He comes and goes on his own,” she explained as she showed him around. “Perhaps he’ll come later, but first, a swim?”

  He nodded. “I’d like that.”

  She found him a pair of Georges’s swim trunks that fit him well enough, then changed, herself, into a bikini. She led him down to a moonlit beach, her basket filled again from the kitchen, and had him make a driftwood fire. Afterward they made love on the beach, and then, again, later in her bedroom. And after that, when he woke the next morning, Georges was in bed with them.

  “It’s how the Greeks do it,” Georges said when Carey pulled away, shocked.

  “You don’t have to,” Ariane said as she woke too. But then she kissed him, and Georges did as well, and, perhaps because of the hashish he’d smoked the previous night, Carey suddenly thought it was not that unpleasant.

  “I still don’t know, though,” he tried to protest once, even though he made no move to stop Ariane’s brother. Nor did he object when Georges fondled Ariane too.

  “We’re a close family,” Ariane finally said when it was over. Then she giggled. “But, if you wish, it’ll be the last time—I mean with Georges. It’ll just be you and I.”

  Carey shook his head, trying to clear it. Suddenly thinking of his father—what he would say if he knew what had happened.

  “No, Ariane, he’s one of us now,” Georges said. “Isn’t that right? Carey—is that your name?”

  “Yes,” Carey muttered, still clearing his head. It wasn’t unpleasant and—he suddenly laughed at the thought—after all, Georges and Ariane were French.

  The others laughed with him as they got out of bed and got dressed, but then Georges’s voice turned suddenly serious. “Sister,” he said, “I want you to know I’ll be gone for a few days. Something’s come up that I have to attend to.”

  “Oh?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, putting on his shoes. “So it looks like you’ll have your new friend to yourself after all for awhile.”

  Carey waited until he was gone, then asked Ariane, “What was that all about? I mean—you know—and then he suddenly leaves?”

  Ariane laughed. “Probably he’d just come to announce that he’s got a new girlfriend. Maybe somebody from the inland—he rather likes farm girls, although, as you see, he’s not entirely prejudiced that way. But, like I say, he comes and goes.”

  She paused, then kissed him softly on the cheek. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  After that morning he began to see ghosts in earnest, at least in his dreams. That night back in his hotel, he dreamed that he had returned to Knossos, but that the palace he found now was new. An old man guided him, bent and bearded, and somehow he knew that this was Daedelus, even though the man never spoke.

  He led him through workshops, through caves filled with feathers—the rookeries of the nobility’s falcons—and yet other caves that were filled with beehives. Through hallways with walls lined with huge jars of honey. Some of these rooms Carey recognized from the ruins he and Ariane had explored, while others were new to him. Others still, on lower levels, had apparently not yet even been uncovered by the palace’s restorers.

  And, as they walked, he realized their path was a series of spirals, always leading back to the Grand Staircase, yet always lower with each new passage. Always more ancient.

  And, as they walked, his silent guide wept.

  When morning came, he rented a car. Ariane had told him the night before that she, too, would have to leave for a day. That perhaps it would be a good time for him to drive out to the places his father had lived, as his mother had asked him, so that, if he wished, he could be by himself with his family’s memories. Except, on the road outside of Potamies, his car had had a flat—the rental people had warned him the roads were in ill repair—and, after he’d fixed it, it was nearly evening by the time he finally climbed to the Lasithi Plateau just below Mount Dhikti.

  The Valley of Windmills! He gasped at the sight of scores of windmills surrounding a vast field, their sails slowly turning in the mountain breeze. Pink in the sunset. Spirals within spirals, circling the valley, with its tiny villages, up to the base of the mountain itself where, according to local myth, Zeus had his birthplace.

  But also this was where the Germans had landed—the ones his father had met when he was ten. And, as Carey looked to the sky, he heard the ghosts of airplanes approaching, followed by the near-silent swish of the Nazis’ gliders.

  He looked up. He squinted. Now he could see them against the rapidly darkening sky—gliders so huge it took three planes to tow one—disgorging their contents. Parachutes unfolding like snowflakes, blizzarding toward him.

  He looked for his father. He heard the rifle shots of the defenders—so pitifully few. And yet his father was nowhere to be seen.

  Until after. Time slipped. Now it was full dark and the Germans, securing the field, had passed on to towns like Kera and Krasi. And now, one German parachutist lay still half unconscious, his left leg broken from a bad landing. A boy stood over him.

  Carey’s father.

  Time slipped again. They were now in a shed, the boy and the German, the shed Carey’s father had hidden in until the attack of the Germans was over. The boy had brought bread and cheese for his captive and didn’t resist when the soldier reached to him.

  “No!” Carey shouted. He watched them caressing—they didn’t hear him—the boy’s hand finally reaching to his belt. Slowly easing his trousers down
...

  “No!” Carey screamed again as he fled to the field outside, not wanting to know more. He sat for a long time in the darkness, hearing occasional murmurs from inside. He thought of himself and Georges and Ariane. But not like this!

  Except he hadn’t minded when Georges had lain with the two of them, even if it was clear it was Ariane that he still wanted. “When in Rome,” he had thought—or in Crete. And now he thought, too, of the words Ariane had used in the wooded grove outside of Knossos, that he and she were part of the past, bound to the past of the island itself as well as their own lives. Whether they wished it to be so or not. And he hadn’t minded.

  He thought of the present, forced the past from him, on the long drive back to Iraklion. He concentrated on the afternoon after Georges left them—on Ariane in the villa’s kitchen, wearing an apron over her shorts but with her breasts bare.

  She had been cooking octopus.

  The following morning when Ariane met him she gave him a package. “The vase,” she said. “For you to mail in Athens on Monday. You can open it if you want, as long as you promise to wrap it back neatly.”

  He took the shoebox-sized package from her and placed it on his hotel room desk. “Perhaps it’s best that I don’t,” he said, his voice still tired from the previous night.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “That way, if you should be stopped for any reason—and you shouldn’t be if it’s packed in your checked-through luggage—all you’ll need to say is it’s a present. But, in the meantime ...”

  She stopped and gazed in his eyes, then kissed him.

  He kissed her back as they sank to his bed, fumbling with each other’s clothing. Afterward they slept for a time—she was tired too, she told him later—then went sightseeing most of the afternoon. When the sun went down, they found themselves in an alley off Odos 1866 where, in front of them, stood the taverna. Their taverna.

  “Shall we?” Ariane asked, pointing toward the open entrance. “I have some friends who may be here too—I’d like you to meet them. In any event, it’s time we ate something.”

  Carey kissed her. “I’d like to,” he said. He let her lead him to a large table surrounded by drinking men, one of whom stood and pulled out chairs for them. He helped her sit, then was about to sit down himself when, through the taverna’s plate glass window, he saw an old man beckoning to him.

  He squinted. The man outside was Daedelus.

  “Are you all right, Carey?” Ariane asked as he hesitated, then squeezed her hand.

  “I think so,” he said. “Uh ... just a moment, though. I thought I saw something in the alley. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  Ariane nodded as he threaded his way out through the crowded restaurant into the street. He looked up and down—the old man had vanished. Then, as he was about to turn to go back inside, he felt a force lift him and thrust him forward.

  The taverna exploded. Behind him fire swirled through its shattered front window, engulfing the building. He stood up, unhurt himself, tried to rush back in to find Ariane, in spite of the searing flames, to save her somehow. When hands gripped his shoulders.

  “You are an American tourist?” a voice asked.

  Numbly he answered, “Yes,” then looked up to see a policeman, surrounded by others. Some had their guns out.

  “There is nothing in there for you,” the first, English-speaking policeman said. Shadows danced in the alley around them, tinged with orange, as fire sirens sounded. As other men rushed up.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “Bastards,” the policeman muttered, then went on more loudly. “There’s no one left in there. No one alive, anyway. You wouldn’t understand—you are a tourist—but there’s a group called the Free Crete Movement. This was one of their meeting places. Fortunately, though, they have their own traitors.”

  Carey twisted out of the man’s grasp and ran to the lighted street beyond. Odos 1866—the street itself named for a revolution. He ran through light and dark, through squares and alleys, out of the city until, half staggering from exhaustion, he found himself climbing the hill of Knossos.

  He entered the West Porch, pushing past guards staring out at the night sky. Almost touching their stiff leather armor. He threaded his way through the Procession Corridor, meeting few people—by this time most of the palace was sleeping—and knowing, somehow, that even those few who were up couldn’t see him either. He crossed the Central Court to the Grand Staircase and counted the steps he went down in the darkness. Fours and threes. One story, two stories, deeper than he had gone even in his dream, until he came to a torchlit landing.

  “This way,” a voice whispered. Daedelus led him now, no longer silent, through rough stone passages spiraling inward, taking the weight of the palace above them. Until they came to a simple well.

  “The Center,” the ghost of Daedelus said. “This is where all the labyrinths lead to.” He bent behind the well’s raised lip and brought out a pair of wings, shimmering with wax and the feathers of hunting birds. Ospreys and sea eagles.

  “These are for you,” he said, holding them out for Carey to see them.

  “I-I don’t understand,” Carey said.

  “Ariadne,” the old man said. “She never seduced me. It was you, Icarus. I only did what I did to help her for love of you, my son. But she betrayed us.”

  “I know,” he answered. “But she was betrayed too—after, by Theseus.” It started to make sense. Icarus. Carey. A kind of a sense, in its own bizarre way. He hesitated, then reached to take the wings, thinking of Ariane.

  “But I still love her.”

  “Then do what you must,” the old man said. They knelt side by side, rolling the wings up into a package small enough to fit under Carey’s arm. Then the old man led him back through the passages, back through the Court and the workrooms and corridors, into the night air beyond the palace.

  There Daedelus kissed him, clasping him in his arms not as a lover, but, rather, a father.

  “Beware the sun, Icarus.”

  Carey never knew how he got back to his hotel that night, nor how he got through the following Sunday. He just packed his luggage. He took the whole day. He had his ticket for Monday afternoon’s flight off the island, but, rather than just his overnight bag as he had planned, he packed everything to leave for good.

  He packed in a daze, placing Ariane’s vase in his largest suitcase along with his best clothes. It was the least he could do for her memory. Then he saw the wings.

  He stuffed them in too, as a kind of padding. He didn’t know why he did—he’d half expected to find them melted away in the sunlight, as ghost wings should be. But, straining, he got the suitcase closed, and his other bags packed, and, as soon as he could the following morning, he took a taxi out to the airport.

  “You’re lucky you bought your ticket early,” the man at the counter said when he’d checked in.

  “Oh?” Carey asked. He didn’t really care, but, since he had hours before his plane took off, he might as well find out why.

  “Yes,” the man said. “Didn’t you know? The Prime Minister’s speech? He’s in Iraklion this morning. He’s scheduled to go back to Athens on the same flight you’re on, so it’s bound to be crowded.”

  “I guess I haven’t been reading the papers,” Carey said. He glanced around him, seeing now the men in dark business suits who could only be Government Service, keeping an eye on things. Then, squinting slightly, he saw from the corner of his own eye—a flash of long, blonde hair.

  And then he understood, part of it anyway. Why Ariane had died. “Uh, just a minute,” he said. He looked again. This time what he saw was Ariane’s brother across the waiting room, flight bag in hand, heading toward the departure gate.

  “Just a minute,” he said again. He was curious now. “I, uh, really don’t care much for crowds myself. You don’t suppose there might be a seat on an earlier flight?”

  The counterman shuffled through his schedules. “There is one,” he said. “On the nex
t flight out—it’s starting to board now. If you want, there’s just enough time to transfer your luggage ...”

  Carey nodded and had his ticket stamped for the new flight. At the last moment he boarded himself—the plane, in fact, was practically empty—and sat in the back. Then, once it had taken off and started its climb, he moved forward and sat next to Georges.

  “What are you doing here?” Georges demanded. “I—you’re supposed to be on the afternoon flight.”

  “I know,” Carey said. “But there’s nothing to hold me here. Not anymore. So I came to the airport early, and then when I saw you ...”

  Georges suddenly looked ill. “You idiot!” he whispered. He lunged for the flight bag under his seat and clutched it to him. The plane was still climbing.

  And Carey stared at Ariane’s brother, long and hard, as one more piece of the puzzle fell in place.

  “Theseus?” he asked.

  “What?” Georges answered. Then Georges’s eyes widened as he slowly realized. Slowly understood.

  Theseus.

  Betrayer.

  As, in Carey’s luggage, the pressure-sensitive molded plastique that was Ariane’s vase exploded into a miniature sun. As it ripped the plane in a shower of feathers. Feathers and boiling wax. Shredded drachma notes, mixed with bone and flesh.

  Whirlwinding downward ...

  ... until Carey/Icarus opened his arms wide, no longer needing the wings of a Daedelus to glide out over the blood-dark ocean, searching in ever increasing spirals for his Ariadne.

  BLENDERS

  BY J. GREGORY SMITH

  GenenHealth Office Building, Southern California

  Carson Brooks rechecked the bug sweeper and confirmed the small conference room was clean while he awaited the signal from the guard downstairs. He stared at the wireless commbox that appeared to hover in space atop the near-invisible Lexan table. The white walls and floor of the egg-shaped room gave no place to hide for any listening device, no matter how small.