The Destroyers

by Christopher Bollen

  When he gets to the station wagon, his wrists are tied and a burlap sack is placed over his head. He’s tossed, like collapsible cardboard, into the backseat. Petros grabs my arm to steer me across the lot. It’s like we’re dancing, I don’t even feel the ground on my feet.

  “That’s a nice shirt,” Petros says, touching the silk cuff. “Is it from America?”

  The men in the makeshift balaclavas wait by the open car doors, one of them lifting a sack to cover my head.

  “Please don’t,” I beg as I stare into the brown eyes surrounded by the frayed purple stitches of the scarf’s seam. “I’m afraid—” But the bag slips over me, fit snugly like a cover over a birdcage. My wrists are bound behind my back.

  The coarse fabric fills my mouth when I breathe. I exhale hard and try to spit the itchy twill from my tongue. A hand clamps on my head to prevent my hitting it as I’m placed in the back of the car. The goon slides in next to me, and I’m wedged against Gideon, his body warm and reeking of piss.

  “It will be a short drive,” Petros promises from the front seat as he slams his door. In another second we’re potholing down the dirt road, each divot throwing me onto my hip. My fingers latch onto a seat belt buckle jammed in the leather cushions, my left leg tapping against the rifle that leans from the seat well.

  Gideon tries to knock me away from his shoulder and screams in Greek. The man next to me laughs faintly. Petros utters two syllables in his dog-whistle pitch, which must be a form of “shut up” because Gideon does.

  I feel the smoothness of concrete as we turn on the main road, rising and sinking along the hills. A car Dopplers by us, a liquid whoosh that I follow with my ears until every atom of it evaporates. There are only the sounds of men breathing, a key ring jingling, and the electronic patter of buttons—whizzing, jackpot beeps as if the man next to me is playing a game on a cell phone. Then we are shaken, tires over cobblestone, and for an instant voices crowd around the windows—an Italian man shouting, a young American woman screaming for “Katie!” I wonder if I cried out whether they’d turn in the direction of the backseat and what they could even do if they saw us. “Katieeeee, bring me my bag!” Music erupts suddenly from the car speakers, quickly lowered, tinny percussions slapping against a wailing flute. We speed on.

  However short of a ride was promised, it’s too long to be staring at death. Did Charlie know the danger he put me in? Did he use me to buy time and plan his own escape? Is this what he’s afraid of happening to him if he returns to his house? He’s right to be afraid. I imagine all the freedom of twenty-nine years up until five minutes ago, the wasted freedom, the days of doing nothing, the resentful slog of morning and noon, Louise right now lying in her cabin, New York right now in its flea-like haze nearing sunset, the traffic flowing into oblivion, nasty Panama where an end like this one could have been expected, and again I’m in the backseat of a Mercedes with burlap scratching my cheeks and a rifle butt banging against my ankle. Numbers go berserk on a clock, with every second out of order. And yet the lines between the past and present seem so straight this ride feels like nothing so much as a punishment. The world has been very lenient; now it isn’t.

  We dip down into coolness, into chambered darkness. We brake abruptly, tires squealing on cement. The Mercedes I never wanted to sit in is now the car I don’t want to leave. The doors open, and Gideon flails around, his elbow knocking into my ribs, but they must have pulled him from the seat because he’s no longer next to me.

  I’m treated more delicately. A hand again protects my head as I’m brought to my feet. I don’t know if it’s the tenderness of this hand or what it is bringing me toward, but I begin to weep. A poke to my back informs me to walk.

  “This is a mistake,” I yell.

  “Shhh,” the man behind me hisses.

  I speak more quietly. “This is a mistake. You’ve got the wrong person. I haven’t done anything.”

  “Step.”

  I sample the floor with my foot and locate the step’s edge. There are two more steps before another poke steers me into a rancid-smelling tunnel. I’m gliding through shapeless darkness. When I stop, I’m shoved forward. The floor is slippery, and beating orange light bleeds through the burlap. Fingers grapple at my neck, and my head swims free of the sack.

  I half-expected a chop shop, the kind found in Panama basements with grimy tiles, a table of saws, and a floor drain clotted in blood. Instead, I’m standing inside a cramped, golden shrine lit by electric chandeliers. Frescos cover the walls, steroidal saints and lumps of naked men. Carved wood crosses are gathered in a corner, next to a column of stacked metal chairs. Two linoleum-sided box speakers hang from chains, one swinging from where the gun muzzle struck it, and a microphone is curled up on a marble table. On more uplifting days, this church must be a site of community worship.

  Inside a wooden cubicle in the far corner, half-hidden behind a velvet curtain, sits a Greek boy of eleven or twelve. He is wearing headphones; his foot taps silently as he folds papers. I wait for him to turn his head to us but he never does. He keeps folding the papers with devotion, once, twice, into panels, and adds the finished missalette to a growing stack. But his presence is comforting: they wouldn’t do anything violent in front of a child.

  Gideon leans, de-hooded, against the marble table, his teeth bared, part maniac smile, part I-will-not-show-fear. His hands, like mine, are still tied behind his back. One of the goons reaches up to steady the speaker.

  “I wish we didn’t have to do this,” Petros says wearily, spinning his Rolex on his wrist. “It’s a waste of time for all of us. If only you would respect deadlines.”

  “Nice god you have,” Gideon retorts, glancing around the church. “For fuck’s sake, wasn’t my finger enough for you?” He stares at the goon without the gun. “Hi, Argus. How are you?” The goon bunches his scarf higher up the bridge of his nose. “All of you look like a joke.” I’m relieved by Gideon’s show of insolence, although there’s still the urine stain running down his leg.

  “You seem to have trouble learning lessons,” Petros responds. “I have my orders and so do you.” He turns to me, the silent, compliant one, as if my hands aren’t tied behind my back but tucked there dutifully. “Ian, we haven’t worked together much, but I’m a stickler for conditions. They must be met.”

  “We haven’t worked together at all,” I correct him.

  His cheeks dimple. “Oh, but we have, all along. As you know, it’s our dock that Konstantinou Charters uses and it’s our protection and permission that you enjoy. Do you not work for Charlie as his number two?”

  So it’s the underlings who take the fall. They wouldn’t treat Charlie this way, wouldn’t dare drive him here at gunpoint or slice off one of his fingers. Or would they? Perhaps the only enterprise impervious to a powerful family is the church. Puke spears up my throat. Do they always take a finger off a new recruit? I’m thankful my hands are tied behind my back; they might look tempting out in the open.

  “We’ve been looking for your boss,” Petros says. “Waiting and looking. Only we haven’t been able to locate him.” Gideon darts his eyes at me. I shrug, I told you. “It’s unlike him to be absent for so long. Unlike him to forget the terms of our arrangement. It reminds me of our first summer, when we had to clarify the importance of meeting the conditions.”

  Gideon lets out a dry laugh.

  Petros turns to him. “Why do you laugh?”

  “You’re funny,” he says. “Clarify.”

  “That’s funny to you?” Petros pierces his lips in a pose of contemplation. “Well, we may have to clarify again. We want our money, fifty thousand euros for August, and Charlie is three days late. That’s three days we have to put off our own commitments. It’s simple accounting: if you keep money past the due date, we’re loaning you funds, and you’re earning on what we’re losing. We require timely payment. Charlie knows there are penalties.” Petros has descended into the logic of the unpaid New York freelancer, which happens to be
the logic of national debts. I suppose his oversimplification of imbursement structures is for my benefit. He steps in front of Gideon, who jerks up straight as if to be measured for a suit. “Gideon, where is Charlie? When will we receive our money?” The boy in the cubicle taps his foot in a slower rhythm, his fingers sliding a crease down the paper.

  Gideon gives a flaunting smile.

  “Sorry. I don’t work for Charlie anymore.” He shoots his smile in my direction. “That’s Ian’s job now. He’s the one you have to deal with. He’s my replacement. Aren’t you, Ian?”

  I didn’t expect loyalty from Gideon, but as Petros eyes me with new appreciation, his deflection feels like a betrayal. Is there such thing as a betrayal when the threat of violence is at stake? For a second, Petros’s handsome eyes hold a glimmer of compassion for me, as if it might pain him to hurt me. It’s so much easier to hurt the one you’ve hurt before.

  “Is that so?” Petros says with a sigh. He turns back to Gideon. “Then what good are you if you can’t help us? There’s no need to keep you.”

  “That’s right,” Gideon agrees. But then his smile drops like a flag without wind. “Wait. What?”

  The priest nods to the goon who may or may not be Argus. Up until this moment, I held out hope that they were merely playing at being thugs. But when the man thrusts the sack over Gideon’s head and reaches around Gideon’s waist to unsnap his pants, I realize the seriousness of the performance.

  “What are you doing?” Gideon shrieks. “Stop touching me!” A punch to his back knocks the wind out of him. His pants are pulled to his ankles, uncovering fragile white briefs, the cotton in the front soaked to gray. These too are tugged to his knees. The tiny walnut of testicles is covered in brown moss, a skeletal ass blooming as he squats to hide his nakedness. The goon shoves Gideon against the table, where the two worming inches of his penis flap onto the marble. The goon presses against him to keep the shriveled, circumcised head fixed there.

  Petros looks away in disgust and finds my eyes. “Ian, where is Charlie?”

  “I don’t know,” I wheeze. “He’s on the island, but I haven’t seen him for days.”

  “Don’t give me more excuses,” he yells. “Charlie isn’t that irresponsible. Are you saying he’s having trouble making the payment?”

  When I don’t answer, the goon unfastens a sheath on his belt buckle and extracts a steel hunting knife. Gideon’s burlap head rotates at the sound of its release from the leather. The goon steadies the blade directly over Gideon’s penis.

  “What is he doing?” I scream. The question is contagious.

  “What is he doing?” Gideon cries. “What’s happening?” The burlap oscillates between deep intakes and exhalations.

  “Don’t do this,” I plead. I wrench forward as if my own penis is on the table.

  “Then tell me when we will get our money.”

  “I don’t know! I only just arrived! I don’t know where Charlie is!”

  Petros nods to the goon. I turn my gaze to the boy who is tapping his foot and folding papers, his face buried behind the curtain. Then I shut my eyes, tight as fists.

  “Open your eyes,” Petros orders.

  But I can’t. I can’t watch the mutilation. I listen for the sickening sound of the knife striking the marble. My breath is failing to clear my throat, and light-headed, I feel my knees begin to buckle.

  “I said, open your eyes.”

  When I don’t, footsteps race toward me and the cold coin of the gun tip is pressed against my temple. I force my eyes open, as if in salt water. The whole room is swirling, pieces of Petros and saints and electric bulbs and a marble table. The puke climbs to my tongue. Some of it leaks on my lips.

  “Ian, please help me!” Gideon begs. Yesterday’s criminal is today’s victim, but I’m the one who has to watch.

  “See!” Petros holds my chin, so I can’t look away. “See what we are forced to do when our conditions aren’t met!”

  “I will get you the money. I will find Charlie. I promise.” The goon raises the knife in a hacking motion, and the world crashes down so softly it’s like I’m floating. I slowly sink into my heartbeat. The trap snaps. The connection is lost. The goats are grazing in a distant country.

  CHAPTER 12

  The pleated shade over the window bleeds apricot. It rattles against the frame when a breeze hits it. A wooden door is built crookedly into the wall, and from its handle, a goat bell hangs by a rope knot. I must have fallen back asleep because the apricot has deepened to peach, and the goat bell clangs as the door swings open. Before I have time to do much more than register that I’m lying on a cot, a woman enters carrying a tray. Her mustard slippers whisk across the brick floor, which sends two birds perched on the window ledge flying—one hitting its wing against the shade. The woman is older, with white tissue-paper hair around her ears. The rest is stapled back in a metal barrette. Her shy, hesitant smile, affection set low on a dimmer, fights the panic gathering its forces in my head. I quickly frisk my body, patting for injuries or gross violations incurred while I was out. Except for the film of sweat on my skin, I’m all right.

  “Do you still have fever?” the woman asks, her voice soft and hoarse. “You were very sick last night.” She settles the tray on the mattress.

  My pants are on, but my silk shirt is folded next to my shoes on the dresser. One of my shoes cups my phone and wallet.

  “Where am I? What’s going on?”

  The woman reaches in slow motion for a wet rag on the tray and swabs my forehead. “You pass out, you faint, in our church, and we bring you into our son’s room to rest. I am Petros’s wife.” I’m not sure which revelation surprises me more: that Greek Orthodox priests can take wives, or that a man like Petros could find one. What’s more, he’s a father. The only indication of a boy inhabiting this whitewashed room is a badly glued model of a ship on the dresser. Was it the same boy who folded the papers in the confessional box last night? She eases the warm rag around my eyes. “We were so worried. Petros checked on you often in the night. He will be happy you are better. We like when vacationers take the time to visit our church.”

  “That’s what he told you? That I was visiting?”

  She steers the rag down my nose and wipes my mouth, like a mother cleaning baby food off a toddler. A needlepoint of cysts and freckles line her neck.

  “You don’t remember? He open Saint Sofia for you to see. It is small church. There are many on island. Three hundred, three hundred—” She can’t find the right numbers in English. “One for each day. I hope you like ours. I take much care to make it nice. Inside the—”

  But inside the reminds me of Gideon and where and how I left him.

  “What about the guy I was with?” I ask urgently, pulling back from the rag. She balls it on the tray. “My friend with the shaved head? Did you see him?”

  “Gideon.” Troughs form around her lips. “I think he is not such a friend. He leave you last night. Run off.”

  “Was he hurt?” By reflex, I clutch my groin.

  She’s either confused by the question or by the grab at my crotch. “No. He only leave. Not even help to carry you.” She wipes her wet hands in the folds of her skirt. “I think he not so good for Patmos. Petros say he is trouble. Apateonas,” she exhales in insult. So it was only a fear tactic after all, a demo of terror, a lesson that body parts are only slightly more permanent than luggage if you aren’t careful to keep watch over them.

  “Is Petros here?” I demand, swinging my legs off the bed. How could I have slept for hours in his house?

  She lifts the tray, mistaking my question for the desire to see her husband again. “I am sorry, no. He very busy. He do much work for the monastery. He is good man. We do not have it easy here. We lose our son last year. He drown.” Their boy wasn’t the one folding papers. It explains why this bedroom is so empty. Maybe it also explains Petros’s cruelty, but I’m not looking for reasons to forgive him.

  I place my shoes on the flo
or and wrestle my feet into them.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It is hard, losing son. All we have now is church. Our Saint Sofia. Please tell your friends to visit.”

  “I will,” I lie. I whisk my arms through my shirt. She watches me as if she enjoyed even a poor substitute filling her son’s bed for a night. “Thank you,” I say. “For taking care of me.”

  “Petros tells me to. I promise to be sure you are okay. He was very worried. Are you hungry? I make—” She’s disappointed when I shake my head. I get the feeling she’d appreciate the company. “Your motosiklete, it is outside,” she says. “Argus brings it.” As I follow her out of the room, she scurries down a ceramic-tiled hall. “Wait,” she calls. “I have for you.” The hallway is decorated with family portraits, many of a small child I make an effort not to study. I want to leave him, forgotten, in this hallway.

  She returns waving a white, sealed envelope.

  “From Petros,” she says. She seems curious for me to open it, but I slip it in my back pocket. I thank her again and step out into the sunlight. The fringed, yellow sun is already high over the domed white church of St. Sofia, its tin roof glowing pharmaceutical orange in the light. Attached to the house is a pen of chickens sticking their warty beaks through the mesh. Two roosters crow, as if promising new sunrises, better ones, so late in the morning. When is the next ferry to Athens? Patmos to Athens. Athens to anywhere. All my fingers and organs scanned through the metal detector and carried on board.

  The real question, though, is why Petros has let me escape so easily—with just my word that I’d get him his money.

  Sitting on my bike, I rip open the envelope and unfold the paper. Greek letters are littered across the white like matchsticks dropped randomly in the snow.

  A CHALKBOARD OUTSIDE of the Blue Star office in Skala lists the weekly ferry departure times to every port: SYROS, LIPSOS, LEROS, KALYMNOS, KOS, SYMI, RHODES, AGATHONISI, SAMOS, PIRAEUS. Surprisingly, ferries to Piraeus only run twice a week—and in high season, they’re probably booked. The smaller islands offer daily departures, and quick escapes to the capital require a cat’s cradle of connections, winding east to slip toward the west. I wish a developer had succeeded in building an airport. Right now, a smog-eaten ferry is trembling into the harbor. Ticketed travelers begin to make their pilgrimage toward the metal gates. I pass into the Blue Star office, which seems to have shared the interior decorator who did the police station: a man whose death is recorded in the microfiche of the last century, content that his wood veneers, atomic-green filing cabinets, and plastic crenulated ashtrays would persevere for several bankrupt generations. The office radiates an unremitting atmosphere of frustration. Time is eternal on Greek islands, but in here it is a finger pressing at the rate of one computer key every thirty seconds. I feel the sweat climbing on my skin, last night’s imaginary fever yielding to a real one.