by Joseph Badal
The thought of the letter in the briefcase made Butros sweat. The humidity of the warmish spring day was made worse by a light, steady drizzle. What if someone tried to steal the briefcase? What if the man in Switzerland is no longer interested in the boat? No! Hadn’t Leidner recently sent him his annual check? Butros balled a fist. “Calm down,” he told himself. “This is your lucky day.”
Butros entered the front door of the Pasha Hotel and wound his way through the lobby to the bank of pay telephones at the far corner. He tried to stop his hand from shaking while he dropped the coins into the phone and dialed the number in Zurich from memory.
“Leave your number at the tone,” a recorded voice said.
Butros inputted the pay telephone number and then hung up. While he waited for a return call, he opened his briefcase on his lap and extracted the letter that had been sent to the Turkish Maritime Bureau by Petros Vangelos on Samos. He read the man’s awkward Turkish: Vangelos had written to claim salvage rights. He wanted to know who the owner was, what cargo was on the boat, and whether there was anything dangerous on board—explosives, chemicals. Vangelos had advised he had a map of the boat’s location and would provide a copy to both the Turkish and Hellenic Maritime Bureaus with formal applications for salvage rights.
When the phone rang, Butros nearly jumped out of his skin. He dropped the letter on top of the file in his open briefcase, snatched the handkerchief from his suitcoat pocket, wiped his forehead, and grabbed the receiver from its cradle.
“He . . . hello.”
“Your name!” the man on the other end of the line demanded.
“Butros Pengali.”
The voice moderated in tone. “Yes, Mister Pengali, what can I do for you?”
Butros rubbed the perspiration from his upper lip with his handkerchief, mopped his brow again, swallowed. “It’s about the boat you are interested in.”
“Of course!” the man said, in a suddenly harder, impatient tone.
“The Sabiya, sir. Someone has found her.”
Butros heard the man gasp.
APRIL 22
CHAPTER TWO
Fritz Leidner passed the large brown envelope to the blond Amazon in front of his desk. Theodora Burger was six feet tall, trim and sinewy. Her perfect face—high forehead, sculpted cheekbones, brilliant-blue eyes, small straight nose—and full-breasted, long-legged body would have been at home on a Versace runway. She was impressive looking and seemingly non-threatening in her ivory silk pants and sleeveless blouse, until one looked into her eyes. They were truly the windows to the blackness inside her. Leidner had used Burger and her people on numerous occasions, as bodyguards when he traveled outside Switzerland, as investigators when he needed confidential information, and once for “muscle” when a jealous husband threatened to kill him. He felt his heart speed up as he thought of his first experience with Theo, when she accompanied him on a business trip to New York fifteen years ago. She worked for another security company at the time and he had been skeptical when she reported for duty. After all, she didn’t look like the typical bodyguard. The trip had been the tensest of his life. All he could think about was finding a way to get her in bed, but was afraid to come onto her out of fear she might kick his ass. It wasn’t until they had returned to Zurich that he generated the nerve to ask her to join him for dinner. Three dinners and his offer to fund her own security operation got him what he wanted: Theodora in bed. Their relationship had grown until his father had discovered the affair.
Leidner felt a chill run up his back. Fifteen years ago. That’s when his life had changed. His father, Friederich, had threatened to disinherit him, to fire him from the bank if he had any more indiscretions. He’d had many mistresses before he’d met Theodora. The old man was a prude who demanded pristine behavior from all of his employees, especially his son. But when his father learned about Theodora, he no longer threatened. He called his lawyer to start the process of terminating his only son’s position with the bank and as his father’s principal heir.
Fritz had explained the problem to Theodora and she had calmly draped an arm around his shoulder and told him she would fix things. On her instructions, he drove her to the street where his father lived and dropped her off. He then parked one hundred feet up the street and watched.
Friederich always walked, good weather or bad, the one mile from his office to his home. He was just a few steps from the gate that accessed the gardens that separated his home from the street, when Fritz saw Theodora step from behind a hedge and lunge at his father. She reversed direction and briskly walked away while Friederich Leidner convulsed on the icy pavement.
Fritz wiped a hand down the car window to remove the condensation that had formed there and stared with fascination at his father’s convulsions. A smile had crossed his face. Theodora had taken care of things as she had promised. He had made her rich in the years since then. After all, she’d made him one of the richest men in Switzerland.
Leidner involuntarily shook his head as he refocused on the woman while she broke the seal on the envelope and pulled out a sheaf of papers. He stared as though mesmerized at the prominent tendons and veins and rock-hard muscles that showed in her hands and arms. She glanced at the cover sheet and read aloud from the typewritten information. “The man’s name is Petros Vangelos? A fisherman on the Island of Samos in the eastern Aegean?”
“Everything you need to know is in that envelope, Theo,” Leidner said. He felt a sudden twinge in his groin while he stared at her classic Nordic features. His face suddenly went hot as he thought about her hard, naked body.
“What do you want of this man?” she asked.
“He has information about a ship that sank years ago. I want to know where it is. My information tells me he has a map that shows the boat’s location. And then I want him eliminated. If you handle this matter in your usual competent fashion—quickly and confidentially—there will be a five hundred thousand franc bonus.”
“Forgive the presumption,” Theo said, “but why not pay the man for the information. Everyone has his price.”
Leidner had considered this option, but decided that if the Greek fisherman opened his mouth about the boat, the results could be catastrophic. He couldn’t afford to let the man live. “I want this matter handled within twenty-four hours, Theo. I assume you can do that.”
Theo Burger shrugged, then stood. “Of course, Herr Leidner.”
Leidner followed Theo Burger’s tight ass with his eyes when she exited his office. After she closed the door, he swiveled in his chair and stared out at the Zurich skyline, as his long dead father used to do, and his grandfather before that. The power and wealth that three generations of Leidners had accumulated was in terrible jeopardy.
He picked up the telephone receiver and called a number in Athens from memory. The man at the Greek Ministry of Public Affairs was an additional insurance policy.
CHAPTER THREE
Theo Burger had an uneasy feeling about this assignment. It wasn’t killing that bothered her; it was the fact she felt it was unnecessary. She again went over the file that Leidner had given her and wondered what his interest was in this Greek fisherman and a sunken ship. She had known the banker in intimate terms and knew that with Leidner what you saw was not always what you got.
But she had no real choice in the matter. She owed Leidner. He had enabled her to live a life that was well beyond anything she had ever imagined. She knew things would be different today if she had saved some of the money he had paid her. But she liked spending more than she liked saving; so her relationship with Leidner was one of co-dependency. She needed his money like a junkie needed narcotics. Although the sexual side of their relationship had ended years earlier, they were still close. But they weren’t equals. He demanded that she address him formally: Herr Leidner. He was the boss and she the employee.
Theo typed a list of instructions on her
computer and then hit the print icon. She walked to the printer and retrieved the single sheet of paper. After she returned to her chair behind her desk, she buzzed her secretary on the intercom and ordered her to send in the two men in the waiting area.
The men knocked and walked to Theo’s desk. They came to parade rest, their legs apart and their hands braced behind their backs.
She passed the paper and Leidner’s file to one of the men and said, “That explains your assignment. Have Lisle draw funds for your trip.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Flight attendants, please prepare for landing.”
The announcement over the airplane’s intercom startled John Hammond out of a fitful, dream-filled sleep. He checked his watch: 9:00 a.m., Athens time. He looked out the window. Except for the smog-distorted view of the Parthenon, he could be over Los Angeles. Automobiles inched along like merging ant armies on inexorable food gathering marches.
April was John’s favorite time in Greece—the weather was warm, but not hot. And the tourists were sparse.
John found his way to the baggage claim area and noticed once again how every city had its own peculiar sounds and smells. The rat-a-tat of Greek spoken at a furious pace, backed up by the sounds of car engines and horns in the street outside the terminal seemed almost mellifluous. The odors of a city without vehicle smog devices and unleaded gas, mixed with the fragrance of meat cooking somewhere in the airport, seemed, in some way, pleasantly aromatic.
There was something about Athens, despite the smog and noise, which put him at ease. As though he’d only been gone a day, rather than fifteen years. It always amazed him that it had only taken eighteen months in Greece so many years ago for him to fall in love with the country and its people. He’d studied the language and the country’s customs. When the Army transferred him to Iraq at the beginning of the war there, memories of the country helped to balance his perspective of the world and to ease some of the stress associated with being in a war zone.
And, now that his divorce from Sonya was final and the pain still occupied parts of his heart and mind, he had come back to Greece to find peace. Sonya had told him he was “unexciting.” That he had changed, shut down when he returned from Iraq. He felt at the time that it was a bullshit excuse for her to rationalize her infidelity. His marriage over, his business sold, and plenty of cash in the bank, he was now ready for the next phase of his life. He had no way of knowing what role Greece might play in that next phase, but he did know that it felt good to put ten time zones between him and Sonya.
John turned and caught the eye of an attractive, early thirty-something woman who stood on the far side of the luggage carousel. She was maybe a couple years younger than he was. She’d been on his flight. Probably American, he thought, based on her clothes, the way she carried herself—with brash confidence. He returned her smile, but then looked away. She reminded him too much of Sonya—tall, long-legged, reddish-brown hair, a Dentyne smile. He happened to see his reflection in a kiosk window and thought about the difference between the thirty-eight-year-old John Hammond today and the twenty-one-year-old John Hammond who landed in this airport so many years ago. It pleased him to know he was as trim now as then. There were lines in his face now; but he’d been told they lent character to his features. His hair was peppered with gray, except at the temples, where it had gone totally gray.
At six foot one, with a complexion that made him appear to have a perpetual mild tan, John knew he was attractive, if not outright handsome. Between his looks and his money, he received plenty of female attention back home in California. But, since Sonya had dumped him, he’d really not shown much interest in the opposite sex. He looked back at the woman and read the invitation on her face, but nothing sparked inside him.
He collected his bags, cleared Customs, and took a courtesy bus to the Olympic Airlines Terminal.
The plane to Samos seated twenty, had ineffective air conditioning, no legroom, and smelled like bad coffee. John calculated he’d been in the air from California, or waiting for connections, more than eighteen hours. He could not have cared less about the plane’s ambiance. All he wanted was sleep.
John’s tongue clung to the roof of his mouth, which seemed to have an aftertaste that, for some reason, made him think of cold chipped beef on toast. He shook his head; his mind befuddled by sleep and fatigue. He couldn’t remember the plane taking off. Was he still at the gate in Athens? He was puzzled until he looked out the plane’s window and saw crystal-clear blue skies had replaced the polluted Athens air. He saw dark blue water etched by white caps in the distance.
The walk down the center of the plane and down the stairs to the tarmac seemed like an Olympic event. He was beat. Still, he marveled at the azure sky, the brilliant sunshine, and the clean air. A strong breeze caressed his face and he detected a slight trace of salt from the sea. While he walked toward the Samos terminal and deeply breathed in the slightly cool air that swirled around him, an errant thought picked at a recessed corner of his brain. Premonition or omen, he suddenly felt as though he’d stepped through a time warp, as though he’d left his old life behind.
John took a cab to the Soula Hotel in Vathi, Samos’ principal town. Most of the large hotels wouldn’t open until late May, so he’d settled for this out-of-the-way twelve-room pensionne, on a narrow paved road that lead down to the sea, one kilometer from the center of town. The room had a low-slung double bed, an end table on either side of the headboard, a wide and shallow two-drawer chest, a small desk and chair, and a tiny balcony. The bathroom was just inside the entry door and held a cramped shower, a small sink, and a toilet.
He stripped down to his shorts and stretched out on the bed. The Aegean breezes that wafted through the balcony’s open French doors made the sheer, floor-length muslin curtains seem to dance while they reached out for him.
John slept comatose for seven hours and would have slept longer except for a braying burro tethered below his second floor balcony. After a shower and shave, he put on a fresh change of clothes and hiked down the road to the center of town. It was just a few minutes past 10:00 p.m. Cool air that floated off the sea made him glad he’d draped a sweater over his shoulders. An enormous white cruise ship lay anchored in the harbor—probably the first of the season. It was a reminder that this was a place people visited to relax. So relax, he told himself.
The shops and restaurants along the quay appeared relatively quiet—only a few couples took late night walks or sat in some of the restaurants.
John selected a taverna with a dozen white-tableclothed tables on a covered patio and took a seat at the rear. The cooking odors that drifted from the kitchen behind him had penetrated his brain and caused his stomach to secrete juices. He didn’t need a menu; he knew exactly what he would order: Horiatiki salata of lettuce, tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, and feta cheese; grilled octopodi; dolmades—stuffed grape leaves; and baklava for dessert. He’d waited twenty-five years for this meal.
CHAPTER FIVE
“You think Vangelos will ever leave?” Josef asked Hans. “It’s almost eleven o’clock.”
“You’re too impatient, my friend,” Hans replied. He glanced over at the old man seated two tables over and saw him take a few bills from his wallet and drop them on the table. “See,” Hans whispered, “he’s about to leave.”
The two men followed the old man and waited for the perfect opportunity. They tracked him through the funereal darkness and quiet of Vathi’s streets and alleys. With the locals and most tourists already tucked into their beds, Hans and Josef had the streets to themselves. Hans watched Vangelos walk into a narrow, cobblestoned lane. There were no streetlights here; no lights came from any of the houses.
Like two lions after prey, they pounced on the old man and dragged him into an alley between two buildings.
While Josef pinned the old man’s arms behind his back, Hans held a knife to the man’s throat and spoke slowly
in German. The briefing paper they’d received from Theo Burger had told them Vangelos spoke some German.
“You have been very troublesome, Herr Vangelos,” Hans said.
Due to the intermittent cloud cover, there was only a little moon light. But there was enough for Hans to detect confusion in the old Greek’s eyes.
“You found something of interest to our client. I suggest you tell us about it. Things will go much easier for you if you do.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Vangelos said.
Hans drove his fist into the old man’s mid-section. Air burst from the man’s lungs. Vangelos sagged toward the ground, but Josef jerked up on his arms, forcing the old man to remain erect.
“The Sabiya,” Hans rasped. “Do you know what I’m talking about now?” He pricked at the man’s neck with his knife and knew without seeing that he’d drawn a bead of blood.
The old man groaned, straightened, then surprised Hans when he kicked his shin, and at the same time tried to free his arms from Josef’s grip.
Hans absorbed Vangelos’s kick; Josef released his arms and punched the old Greek in the side of the head. Vangelos dropped to the alley floor as though he’d been poleaxed. They lifted him and placed him on a wooden bench, propped against a wall, and stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth. Hans slapped the old man’s face to try to rouse him, but Vangelos just moaned and sat there. His head hung limply to one side.