The Forty Column Castle

by Marjorie Thelen

  Our being lovers complicated things a bit, didn’t it?

  He touched my finger tips with his. “Hey, I’ll help your aunt, if I possibly can. I promise. Don’t go crying on me.”

  “I’m not crying,” I said, still hiding behind the glasses.

  “Yeah, then why is your nose red?” He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and handed it to me. It was clean, white and pressed.

  I wiped at my nose and eyes. He paid the bill and stood. “C’mon, we’ll try to find who your aunt was associating with while she was here, including Mr. Bellomo.”

  I scooted out of the booth and followed him from the still crowded restaurant, and thanked the ancient gods for another good meal on Cyprus. I don’t think I had ever had a bad one.

  Zach eased into traffic and headed for old town Pafos where Mrs. Crawford lived, the same place Yannis and I had visited only two days ago, more like two millennia. I doubted she would be home. More than likely she would be out with her friends having lunch and doing the tourist thing. There were tons of Brits on the island. She was sure to have connections and a multitude of opportunities for socializing.

  We decided since I had been there before that I would do the front work. The same Cypriot woman answered my knock and said no, Mrs. Crawford was with her friends and no, she didn’t know where that would be, but she would be home later, if I cared to call again. Would I like to leave a card? I declined since I didn’t have any on me. I thanked her in my hesitant Greek and tried to tell her I would call again. I hope I said it correctly. In Greek inflection is everything.

  “Where to now?” I asked, back in the car.

  “To see if we can catch up with Escort Tours. Maybe Lonnie is having a tour today, and the widows are with him.”

  We wound through old Pafos through narrow streets with brightly painted houses built smack up against the street to an open-sided store with an Escort Tours sign hanging off the building. The interior was painted an amazing green. We had missed the tour, but the old man with grizzled hair and sunken mouth, who served as Lonnie’s assistant of sorts, said that no English widows were on the tour today. Sorry.

  We sat in the car and shared a bottle of water.

  “Zach, what about the American couple? Are they living in the house with all the communications equipment and the blue Maruti?”

  “I couldn’t tell, but they’re on the list of people to see.”

  “We could go by the dig where they are supposed to be.” After I thought about it, I said, “But probably they won’t be there. Lonnie said they were dig groupies which means they’re probably on the beach or sightseeing, since they don’t actually work the dig. They came on the trip for the tax break.”

  We were at a standstill.

  “Mind if I call Lena?”

  He shook his head in the negative. “Cells phone can be traced and conversations listened to. Can’t take the chance. The vibrator has been going off all morning so someone is trying to get through to you.”

  “Maybe it’s my aunt. She knows my number. Can’t I at least see the caller ID list?”

  He pursed his lips and seemed to consider the request. He wore his NY baseball cap and dark glasses so I couldn’t read his eyes. He pulled the cell phone out of his pocket.

  “Okay, read the numbers, no calls.”

  “Right.”

  I studied the numbers. Yannis had called six times. Lena twice. The last number was an unrecognizable jumble, and I told Zach about it.

  “Okay if I listen to the messages?”

  He nodded once.

  All of Yannis’s calls said to call him, it was urgent. Lena said to call her, it was urgent. The last caller, in an accent I couldn’t place, said, “Kill the man with you, if you want to see your aunt again.”

  Nine

  When Zach heard my gasp, he yanked the phone away and played the message. He swore and said, “That might be our friend in the Maruti.”

  I braced my hand on my forehead to still the dizzying spiral in my brain. A level of fear far beyond anything I ever experienced seared through me, destroying all reason and logic. My heart beat staccato time. I was falling apart. It was taking everything I had to hold myself together. Every moment I was sinking deeper and deeper into the quagmire.

  “I want out, Zach. I can’t be a player in this game. People are getting killed and talking about killing. I want out.”

  The Honda inched down the hill from old Pafos toward the harbor area. The street was narrow. The traffic was picking up. People were heading to the evening openings of stores and shops after being closed for the mid-day meal. Everything looked so normal. Zach said nothing. A big lead ball of fear expanded in my belly.

  The beautiful Mediterranean Sea sparkled in the distance. Diamonds played across her surface. I was paralyzed not by her beauty but by fear. Stark, spine numbing fear. Who were these people who so easily spoke of murder? I did not want to know them.

  “You can’t get out now,” said Zach. He spoke in a soft voice but somehow it sounded sinister, threatening. Fatal.

  “Who are you?” I yanked off my sunglasses. “Look at me and tell me who you are.”

  He kept on driving, eyes fixed on the road.

  “Tell me who you are.” I screamed, hurling all my anger, frustration, and fear into the scream. “Tell me the truth.”

  We were back out on the main drag through Pafos. He pulled over to the sidewalk, cut the engine and turned to face me. He took off his sunglasses and met my frantic, teary, terrified gaze. He didn’t try to touch me and spoke without anger, without any kind of emotion. “I can’t share what I know with you. If you know and they get to you, it might put you in a more danger. I might endanger a lot more people than just you, me and your aunt. I could ask you to trust me, but I know you can’t. All I can say is that I’ll help you.”

  I searched his eyes, those deep brown eyes that hid a thousand secrets. “I am terrified. Don’t you understand? I am terrified.”

  He nodded. “I know, but this is more than you and me.”

  “I’m afraid they’re going to kill my aunt. They want me to kill you. Don’t you understand?”

  Zach blew out a breath and shoved his baseball hat back on his head. “That’s what they want. They want you to be terrified, to make irrational decisions, to run scared. It might be an idle threat. It’s designed to frighten you, and it did. These are terrorists, remember. They create terror to paralyze us all, and they’re doing a good job of it.”

  I kept searching his eyes, kept looking for answers.

  “They know we’re together,” I said. “They know what we are doing. I keep watching my back, like any moment someone will jump out with a gun and do something awful. Do you understand what I have been through in the last two days? You might be used to murder and cloak and dagger stuff, but I’m not. Please believe me. My aunt and I are not criminals. We are not thieves.”

  My voice hit high, piercing decibels. I bit my lip to try to get a grip. I was loosing it, and he was right. I wasn’t holding up well.

  He looked away and seemed to study the street. Then he did that funny little thing again. He turned back toward me, reached out and cupped my neck with his warm hand and caressed my cheek with his thumb.

  “Claudie, I want to believe you. I’ll protect you as best I can. Try not to let them get to your mind. Now I’ve got to make a call.”

  He pulled away from the curb. “There’s a public phone around the block. I’m going to park on the side street and make the call. After that you can call Yannis on that phone and have him call Lena and tell her you are okay, that we’re trying to find your aunt. He’s the only one you will stay in contact with and the call cannot be more than sixty seconds. After that it could be traced to where you are by the police or by our terrorist friends. You understand?”

  “Sixty seconds?”

  “That’s all you have. That’s all if you want to stay alive, and you want to keep me alive.”

  I slumped back
against the seat. I felt forsaken by all the ancient gods of the island.

  He pulled around the block, found the sparse shade of a young mimosa tree and parked.

  “Stay here while I call.”

  I put my sunglasses back on and didn’t reply. What was there to say? I reflected on the irrational world I was in and the rational world I had left. Maybe it wasn’t as rational as I thought it was. Maybe it was crazy, and I was an ostrich with my head in the sand, like millions of other people. Maybe the world had never been rational. I had the unnerving feeling that the glue that held me together was unstuck and small pieces of my sanity were flaking off and blowing away.

  Zach walked back to the car from the telephone booth. He wore the boat shoes, floral shirt, baseball cap, looking for all the world like an American tourist, not a guy on a mission to clear out a terrorist cell on the most beautiful island in the Mediterranean.

  “Your turn,” he said, as he slid behind the wheel. “Remember, sixty seconds. You don’t want to give away our position.”

  “What happens after sixty seconds?”

  “Electronic positioning equipment will trace the call to the exact location from which it is placed. Please do not try anything funny, like calling anyone else. I need to trust you.” His eyes held mine. “And you need to trust me.”

  I nodded, got out of the car and hurried over to the phone. I would have to trust him. I would make one call to Yannis. I called his office, but the phone rang and rang and rang. He wasn’t going to pick up. I tried his home. No answer.

  I hung up and walked back, no spring in my step. I got into the car and closed the door and sat there staring straight ahead. “He wasn’t there. What do we do now?”

  Zach passed me a bottle of water. “Let’s go to the beach near the Forty Column Castle. We could rest on the beach for a while, walk around, look at the dig, ask a few questions.”

  I remembered our beach time this morning and looked at him.

  One side of his mouth twitched up. “This time we really will rest and catch some rays.”

  I smiled. “Sure, why not?”

  The beach Zach had in mind was on the west side of Pafos north of the Agora, castle and mosaics sites. We bounced along an unpaved road we accessed from a residential side street and pulled into a sandy parking lot that sat far back from the water’s edge. The site wasn’t great for swimming because of the rocks in the water along the beach. The shore was peppered with only a few European bathers, taking the sun. Cypriots didn’t swim this time of year, the water was too cold and most of them would be working or keeping house this time of day.

  I hopped out and stood by the open door, checking out the scene. There were two other cars in the parking lot. I had put on my back up pair of bikinis when I dressed at the beach this morning after that incredible swim. I wasn’t sure what Zach would do, since he’d have to wear a suit at this beach.

  He opened both car doors to serve as a dressing room, pulled out a pair of Speedos, and started to undress. I watched from across the front seat. It was a welcome diversion from the nightmare. He glanced at me and saw that I was watching. He flipped off his hat, unbuttoned his shirt one button at a time, pausing a mini-beat between buttons, shrugged it off and threw it on the seat. His muscles flexed and bunched, his chest and back a rich tan. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on him.

  Fear heightened sensibilities still gripped my insides. But the promise in his eyes soothed my frazzled nerves and diverted my attention away from the nightmare.

  He slipped off his shorts. His long, bare legs were heavily muscled. He turned full frontal toward me, knowing I was watching him. And grinned.

  I could feel the steam rise in me from far down in my toes. Bracing his arms on the car door frame, he leaned his head against it, looking into my eyes. He was something else. How I would ever survive the extremes of emotion I was living through today, added to the sexual juices that this man stirred up in me, I didn’t know.

  My tongue slid over my lower lip. His eyes fixed on my face and what I was doing with my lips and tongue. I pulled my pants down, dropped them to the ground. Taking my time, I unbuttoned the shirt and let it drop on the ground. He watched, no longer grinning, with a light in his eyes that said unguarded, all out sex. I was ready.

  He straightened and looked around the parking lot. Not a soul in sight. He waved his head toward the back seat. We got in and shut the doors. No kissing for openers this time. Our bodies molded together like spoons stacked in a drawer. This time it was like he was trying to calm me, caress me into thinking this was the most important happening in the world, and it would go on forever. There was nothing else.

  And I wanted it to go on forever.

  After, we slumped in the seat, draped over each other in a protective cocoon. The heat, the climax, the extremes of the day overtook me, and I fell into a delicious half-doze with Zach wrapped around me.

  “Claudie.” He whispered in my ear. “You okay?”

  “More than okay. Can’t you hear me purring?”

  He kissed my ear. I turned over to face him. We smiled lazy smiles at each other. He cupped by neck and caressed my cheek with his thumb. I sighed many unsighed sighs. A sea breeze from the open windows flicked over my hot skin, cooling some of the slick sweat that covered us both.

  “Want more?” he said to me, his face a whisper from mine.

  I nodded.

  Cramped as we were in that back seat, the thought that someone might find us at any time and the shear wantonness of what we were doing added to the thrill. We took our time and used our mouths and bodies to work out the seductive chemistry between us until we were both spent once more.

  “God, you are incredible,” he said in a husky voice.

  I traced the outline of his lips. “So are you.”

  The crunch of footsteps going by outside the car gave us pause. Zach looked up over the seat. The footsteps kept going, unaware of two lovers in the backseat of a Honda SUV.

  “Want to sit up?” he asked.

  “Okay, sure. I don’t know how the two of us managed all that in this back seat, being the size we are.”

  “We didn’t think once we got started.”

  He helped me into a sitting position, and I pushed my hair from my eyes. My top knot had come undone, and my hair fell around my face and shoulders. He swept his hand through my hair, pulling it off my shoulders and planted a kiss on my neck.

  “Maybe,” I said, “we should rent a hotel room and get this out of our systems.”

  “I don’t know if that’s possible. You have the most luscious body I have ever had the pleasure of lusting after.” He passed my shirt. “Not that I want to stop, but there’s a couple coming up from the beach, and it looks like they might be headed for that car.” He nodded in the direction of one of the two other cars in the lot and passed me a bottle of water, warm but thirst quenching.

  The sunburned couple got in the car and left, never noticing us, intent upon their own life, their own pleasures. The few bathers still on the beach were packing to leave.

  We sat, sharing the bottle of water, looking out to sea. Zach placed his arm around my shoulder, and we watched in silence together. The steam in the back seat of the rented Honda SUV gradually dissipated.

  “Doesn’t it look like diamonds,” I said, “the way the sun catches the light on the water?”

  “Yes, millions of them.”

  “That has always been Cyprus for me, the diamonds, the breathtaking blue of the sea, the gentle waves. The endlessness of it. Always changing, always the same.”

  “You waxing poetic on me?”

  I laughed. “It’s a state of mind I escape to sometimes.”

  “You are more breathtaking than the sea,” he said and kissed my temple through my hair.

  “You want to go for a swim?” he asked after we sat for a while longer enjoying the silence and the sea and each other.

  “Sure. The beach here is rocky. We’ll need to be careful.”
r />   “I know.”

  My bikini was wedged under the front passenger’s seat, and I wiggled into it. Zach found his Speedo suit and slipped it on.

  We walked barefoot to the beach, treading carefully on the pebbles. I spotted a clear path through the seaweed and rocks out to open water, and we swam out together. The shock of the cold water cooled my body and my brain.

  Rolling over onto my back, I looked at the beach. The tops of the buildings in the distance marked where the main street ran parallel to the beach. Above the roofs of the houses and stores the dim outline of mountains rose like a mirage. The lighthouse near the Forty Column Castle loomed on the south horizon. The sun moved lower in the sky in its never ending cycle, the shoreline remained unchanging, the rocks and waves coupled in an eternal dance with the sea. The beautiful scenery hadn’t changed, but I had.

  Ten

  “Where to now?” I asked after we had dried off and dressed by the car. We were the last to leave the beach.

  “Let’s walk over to the ruins and get a drink at the harbor. We still need to kill some time before we make our round of calls. We can blend into the tourist crowd. You hungry?”

  I smiled. “Starved. You kidding? After all that exercise?”

  He smiled back, and the glow in his eyes told me he had had as much fun as I had.

  We could see the tops of the arches in the Forty Column Castle from where we stood. The walk was short. The evening, lovely. We could watch the sun set. I was putting a romantic spin on the whole affair, wasn’t I?

  He held out his hand, and I took it, still glowing from the intimacy we had shared. Don’t overdo this I warned myself. Enjoy this for what it is. Let it go when it’s over.

  We walked south along the goat path that wound through rocks and over the beach to the ruins of the Odeon, an amphitheater that dated back to the 2nd century AD. We stopped, so I could show Zach how the acoustics worked. I stood center stage. He sat halfway up the amphitheater. I talked in a normal voice and gave a blow by blow description of our lovemaking session in the car. He heard every word and clapped in appreciation. Those Romans knew how to build a theater.