by Paul Moomaw
The woman turned, and her eyes seemed to point directly at Homer, who tried to be very still. She tensed, ready to sprint to the hole if the woman showed signs of aggression. The woman turned away again, and Homer settled onto her haunches. The people in this place usually came and went, and Homer’s rat brain expected to see the woman leave.
She did not, moving instead from place to place, coming so close at times that the rat trembled in fear. Then the woman walked directly to the chair Homer hid under, and sat down, her feet inches from the rat’s nose. Homer eased away. The smell of the human, unpleasant enough from a distance, was terrifying this close. Homer hunched up, trying to make herself as small as possible.
The woman shifted in the chair, and the sudden noise was too much. Homer broke and ran, dashing for the safety of her hole. A loud noise, which she recognized distractedly as coming from the human, filled the air, and then Homer felt a sharp pain as the skillet hit the floor, bounced into her side, and clattered against a wall. The force of the blow knocked Homer over, but she scrambled up quickly and scurried the rest of the way to the hole, her right rear leg dragging, useless and numb.
Once through the hole, in the dark safety of the space beyond, Homer turned and peered out into the galley. The woman stood and picked up the skillet. She placed it somewhere out of Homer’s line of vision, and left the room.
Homer crouched there for a while longer, breathing in short, shallow gasps. Then she turned and limped through the passages she had created in the crevices of the boat to her nest, a small triangle of space at the bow, just beneath the deck. She curled up among the oily rags she had scavenged for a bed, and spit the nuts out. She ate one, and tucked the other under the rags. Then she lay quietly, nosing her hip and leg from time to time, and licking at the most painful spot. The acrid smell of the rags made her feel safe, as did the tangle of electrical wires that covered the inside wall of the hull, right next to where she rested her head. She did not recognize them as wires, but only knew that they generated a pleasant warmth, and at unpredictable times made her whole body tingle. Gradually, fatigue overcame pain, and she slept.
Chapter 27
Terry Parker hated whatever he feared, and because he feared the Old Man most of all, every visit to his office, to sit across the massive, scarred desk and expose himself to the moonlike face and hooded, impenetrable eyes, left a residue of rage that had nowhere to go. Some day the Old Man would retire, and Parker would no longer have to be afraid; but the hatred was a constant, and because its object was immune, it could only stay and fester until it found a substitute target. Parker was sure that his superior knew that, and used it.
The Old Man leaned back heavily, the leather swivel chair squeaking under his weight.
“How did it happen?”
“Coincidence. Gotard wanted to buy. The Lybians wanted to sell.”
“An unfortunate coincidence. On your watch, too.” The voice was mild, but Parker knew the Old Man could order a man’s guts carved out, and use the same tone to apologize for the mess. His fingers stroked a gold cufflink while he wondered if this would be the time the Old Man would decide he had reached the end of his usefulness. So many doors to pass through for each promotion up the magic ladder; and any one might slam in his face. Another feather of rage tickled him. He shoved it down.
“I take full responsibility,” he said. No excuses here; you bit the bullet and took your licks.
“Our man in Tripoli says the Lybians are very upset,” the old man said. “He says they are considering terminating the contract.”
“I doubt they would give up their share of the profits over one unfortunate accident. They have their children to support, just as we do.” Parker peered at the Old Man, tried to gauge his reaction, to see if he had struck the right balance, self-assured, not complacent. He couldn’t tell. He never could. The Old Man was unreadable. He wondered if he would play the game as well when he sat at that desk. If he ever did.
“We are pointing that out to them, and offering them a financial consideration for their loss,” the Old Man said. “They reply that the Company has suffered too many unfortunate accidents in the past few years. They want repayment for the craft, and the cargo, and the crew, of course; but they also insist on our assurance that there will be no more accidents. We are giving them that assurance.”
“I’ll see to it.”
“I’m sure you will.” The Old Man leaned farther back in his chair and rubbed his nose. Parker had read somewhere that when you rubbed your nose, it meant you were lying. He wondered what the lie might be, or if the Old Man had finally transcended ordinary deviousness, so that nothing he did or said could be depended on to mean anything.
“How much are we offering them?” Parker asked.
“A quarter of a million dollars.”
“There goes my cost of living raise.”
A weak joke. The Old Man didn’t smile. “They want one other thing,” he said.
“Not me, I hope.”
This time the Old Man smiled, but it didn’t help. “Not immediately,” he said. “They want your Frenchman, Gotard, and they want us to make the delivery.”
“Dead or alive?”
“Alive. I take it they want to play with him.”
Chapter 28
An hour out of Sitia, along the coast highway that clung to the steep sides of the island, Agamemnon Londos pulled off the pavement and stopped.
“I want to show you something,” he said. He pulled himself out of the car and started down a gravel path. Adam Pray watched for a moment as the policeman began to descend, then got out of the car and followed.
The trail fell steeply toward the water, which lay ten or fifteen meters below. Londos stood, hands in his pockets, and watched Pray descend. Then he pulled him closer to the water’s edge and pointed down.
“Seethe dark area?”
Pray forced his vision beyond the glitter of the wind-whipped waves, and into the depths below. Everything looked dark at first. Then he made out a roughly circular area of deeper shade
“That’s the opening of a cave,” Londos said. “The islands are full of them. The sea works on the island constantly. Sometimes it carves a cave big enough to sail a boat into, but mostly you get little potholes like this one.”
Pray picked up a rock, tossed it toward the cave mouth. “You gave me a ride so you could tell me about caves?”
Londos nodded. “Look what you just did. People have been doing that for thousands of years—throwing things into these caves. Some of them look like town dumps. Tin cans, old tires, used rubbers. You name it. Earlier times, they threw in little statues of gods and goddesses. Your brother Julian has spent a lot of time looking for those. He never seemed to make much of a living at it, though.” Londos fumbled at his pocket for cigarettes and matches, keeping his eyes trained on Pray. “Until just recently.” He looked away, pulled out a cigarette and struck a match. The wind blew it out. He struck another, with the same results.
“Give me the matches,” Pray said. He opened the book, tore off a match, and inserted it, head pointing inward, between the ring and middle fingers of his right hand. He struck the match, and as it flared he cupped his hands together to form a windproof chimney. Londos dipped his head over Pray’s hands, sucked the cigarette into life. “Nice trick,” he said.
“My brother taught me that,” Pray said. He felt a sudden wave of satisfaction, as if he had scored a point on the policeman. Londos sucked at the cigarette and exhaled through his nostrils. He gazed at Pray, an intent, unreadable expression on his face while the wind tore at the smoke.
“Wanna go?” he said finally, and started back up the path.
“The trouble is, it isn’t just tin cans and little statues any more.” They were back in the Fiat, and had turned south, away from the shoreline and into the spine of mountains that ran the length of the island.
“Now it’s radioactive sludge, and arsenic, and mercury. You remember a few years back? When all
those Japanese died and went blind from eating seafood, because it was full of mercury?”
“I don’t see what Julian has to do with it.”
“Your brother finds caves, Mr. Pray. It used to be, he looked for caves that might hold a statue, or a bit of gold. I think now he hunts down caves that Dieter Fugger can use to dump poison into. Special caves, just the right size, with their mouths under water like the one I showed you. Your brother finds them, and Fugger dumps barrels of shit into them. He makes a fat profit, and nobody’s the wiser. The trouble is, a lot of those barrels leak. And they all rust out eventually. Some of those caves are entrances to underground streams. Wells on the islands tap into those streams.” Londos glanced at Pray. “Children drink from those wells.”
Pray stared out the window. He felt tight, angry, and wished he could be somewhere else. Finally he turned to Londos.
“Julian wouldn’t get involved in something like that,” he said. The words emerged flatly, emphatically, with no tinge of doubt. But even as he spoke, Pray knew that it was a much younger Adam who said those words, who knew Julian as a blonde, infallible god. They drove in silence for several minutes, then Pray spoke again.
“When I was seven, Julian caught me throwing rocks at a squirrel. He made me stop. He told me a squirrel’s life was just as important as mine. He told me the world was already full of pain, and that it was evil to cause more for no reason. That was the word he used. Evil. He said it two or three times, as if he wanted me never to forget. I never have.”
“People change,” Londos said. “Sometimes life runs over them, and it twists something inside.”
“They don’t change from good to evil.”
Londos slowed behind a young girl on a bicycle, following her measured pace for a while. She wore her long hair loose, and it blew in the wind. Her brown legs flashed below her skirt, which she had hiked up under her seat, as she pumped steadily up a gentle, curving grade. He nodded toward her. “A rule of life, Mr. Pray. Never turn down a gift of beauty.” They reached a straight stretch of road, and he beeped his horn, then passed as the girl waved them by with a strong, tanned arm. Pray turned to watch her, and found himself thinking of Lydia.
“My father had an older brother, too,” Londos said as they picked up speed again. “My uncle Demitris. He was a good, gentle man. A teacher, and a lover of nature. When I was a little boy, he used to take me and his own son, Christos, into the fields and call birds. He could bring them right down to his hand. And he taught me all the names of the flowers, so well that I still remember them.”
Londos pulled out another cigarette and lit it. He smoked silently for a while, his eyes focused on the road ahead. “That was before the Germans came. The Germans killed my uncle’s wife because he had joined the resistance. He was with EDES, the right wing of the resistance. My father was with the resistance, too, but on the other side of the fence. He was a member of the Peoples Liberation Army. ELAS, they called it, the communists. After the World War ended, and the civil war began, my father stayed on his farm and tended to his own business. Not my uncle. He went around making speeches for the rightists. He always took his son with him, and one day on the highway the ELAS attacked them. My uncle survived, but Christos was killed. My uncle picked up his gun again, after that, and one day he came back to our village, at the head of a squad of soldiers. They wanted names, all the names of the communist sympathizers. My uncle was sure my father had those names. So they took my father to his barn, and there they did to him the falanga.”
Londos stopped talking again for minutes. His knuckles were bloodless on the steering wheel. Finally he glanced at Pray.
“Do you know what that is, the falanga?”
Pray shook his head.
“You suspend a person by the feet, the bare feet. The soldiers used to do it with their rifles. They snared the ankles between the barrel and the strap, tight, so the feet would begin to swell because the blood couldn’t leave. After you have the feet secured like that, you beat the soles. They say it hurts a lot. I only know that my father never walked without canes after that day. He could never even get real shoes on, right to the day he died.” Londos stubbed the cigarette out.
“That was an evil thing my uncle did. He was a good man, but he saw too much bad, and it twisted him. Now he’s a big shit bureaucrat, in the ministry of culture.” Londos barked a laugh.
When they reached the village of Omalos, Londos parked the car under the shade of a plane tree, and pointed directly ahead.
“From here you have to walk. You can make it an hour or so.” He looked at Pray intently again, then opened the car’s glove compartment and retrieved a small, black case. “Take a look at this,” he said.
Pray opened the case. Inside lay a tiny, jewel-like Minox camera and two diminutive film cartridges.
“Every tourist needs a camera,” Londos said. “Why don’t you take this one along, and if you and your brother should happen to visit Fugger’s boat, snap a few pictures. The cartridge with the red stripe is daylight. The other is super fast stuff. You can shoot by moonlight.”
Pray cocked an eyebrow at Londos. “Why?”
“I know damn well they’re dumping stuff. If I can get pictures, I’ll know how to use them, on or off the job.”
“If Fugger is straight, I’m wasting my time. If he’s a crook, I’m risking my neck.” Pray offered the camera back. “Find somebody else.”
Londos pushed the case away.
“Keep it. Maybe you’ll change your mind.” He reached across and opened Pray’s door. “Have a nice walk.”
Pray shrugged and slipped the camera into his jacket. He climbed out of the car and closed the door.
“One other thing,” Londos said. Pray waited for him to go on.
“If you help me on this, and I can sink Fugger, you have my guarantee that your brother won’t go down with him.”
“And if I don’t?”
Londos shrugged. “What can I say?”
“Not much, I guess,” Pray replied, and started walking.
Chapter 29
Gotard glowered at Terry Parker and waited to see what came next. One minute he had been minding his own business, sitting in a cafe near the Marseilles docks, having a midnight snack and getting ready to look for a woman. The next, he was staring into the muzzle of a pistol which Parker held just visible under his coat. The American had walked in off the street, sat down opposite Gotard, flashed the gun, and said. “Get up. We have talking to do.”
Gotard did not argue with guns. Parker had directed him down back alleys to this cheap hotel. Now he sat uneasily on the edge of the bed. Parker occupied a chair across the room, the gun, a Browning nine millimeter, resting on his thigh. The American had not spoken since leaving the cafe, except to give directions, and the silence was beginning to get on Gotard’s nerves.
“What the hell are we doing here?” the Frenchman asked finally.
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
“You’ll find out.” Parker stretched his legs and shifted in the chair. “You are an imbecile,” he said. Gotard scowled, but said nothing. “You are a goddamn, stupid animal,” Parker went on. “Not to mention being a greedy pig. Do you understand what you have done?”
“How the shit am I supposed to know what you are talking about? You stick a gun in my face and bring me to this smelly room that a broken down whore wouldn’t sleep in. Then you get coy on me. You know something I don’t, obviously. So you tell me.”
“You just fouled up an important operation. My operation. And you stole cocaine from the Libyans, which they are very angry about. And killed three of their people in the process.”
“They were Colombians.”
“They were on the Libyan payroll.”
“Whose payroll are you on?”
“You don’t need to know. But you interfered with my business. I don’t like that.”
“Tough shit. What are you going to do about it?”
Parke
r grinned and shrugged. “Personally? Not a thing. Your worry is that the Libyans want their cocaine back.”
“I already got rid of it.”
“Then they’ll take the money. And if you’re lucky, they’ll leave your testicles.”
“I don’t have any money. That’s why I had to steal the stuff to begin with. And the guys I sold it to cheated me.” It was a lie, but he had better plans for the money than to hand it over to a kinky-haired African.
Someone knocked. Parker stood up. “Great story,” he said. He opened the door. “I’m sure this gentleman will want to hear it.”
Three men walked into the room. The one in front, who wore a striped, Arabic robe, was clearly in charge. He was dark, with Moorish features, and hooded, black eyes that made Gotard flinch. He stood over Gotard, hands on hips, and stared coldly at him.
“Is this the one?” he asked.
Parker nodded. “His name is Emile Gotard. He works for the German, Dieter Fugger.” He turned to Gotard. “Allow me to introduce Rashid al Hamani, of the Libyan People’s Bureau. It’s been interesting knowing you, Gotard. I don’t think I will see you again, so I’ll say good-bye.”
Parker stepped through the door and closed it quietly behind him.
“Bring him,” Hamani said.
The other two men jumped forward and dragged Gotard from the bed. He started to struggle, something sharp pierced the side of his neck, and then he was falling into a bottomless well.
Chapter 30
The wind was sucking her dry.