by Jon Land
“I had no choice. A few weeks after I mailed the shipment, men came to my shop. They were well known in the Square as hired hands of Fass. They were very polite, sickeningly polite. They even purchased several items. Then they asked about the crystals. Since I knew there was no way they could know for sure that I had brokered them, of course I denied ever having seen them. They smiled and left peacefully, asking me to please contact them if I heard any talk.”
“But they still spooked you.”
Stadipopolis swallowed hard. “Not then. It was a week later. The men returned to my shop just as polite as the first time. One was holding a box in his hand and I thought they had come just to return the merchandise they had purchased, perhaps even realize a small profit on the deal I would have been all too happy to grant. They told me to open the box.” The Greek stopped, as if he had to force himself to go on. “There was a head in the box, a head belonging to the boy who had robbed Megilido Fass and then sold his booty to me.”
“So you told them about Earnst.”
“No, American, I didn’t. I would have, had they left the box containing the boy’s head with me.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The fact that they took it with them showed me they weren’t sure I was the one who had brokered the crystals. They were showing it all around the city to men like myself, waiting for one of us to break. Fass is an awful man but not prone to making unnecessary enemies in Athens. It would not suit his needs.”
“Then Fass knew nothing about Earnst.”
“He couldn’t have. If he had, Earnst would have been dead months ago and the crystals stolen back.”
“Except they were stolen … by someone else.”
“Yes,” said Stadipopolis knowingly, “and the fact that one of them is in your possession indicates you are working for that party.”
“Working with, not for.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
“Then let me tell you what matters to me, American. You are here searching for more of these crystals because this party has discovered their potential as a power source.”
Stadipopolis’s statement took Blaine totally by surprise. He fought not to show it. How could this man have known?
“Might be a handsome profit involved for the man who helps us locate the reserves.”
“The reserves should be buried forever, along with the rest of the crystals you possess.” The Greek’s voice was strained.
“No more riddles. I’m sick of them. What are these crystals?”
“Death has followed them everywhere, always. I didn’t know. If I had—”
McCracken reached out and grabbed a fistful of Stadipopolis’s shirt. “What are they?”
The Greek’s lips quivered. “Their origins I learned later, too late. They are the product of myth.”
“People don’t get killed for myths.”
“This myth may well turn out to be real.” And he swallowed as much air as McCracken’s squeeze allowed him. “Atlantis,” he said.
It took a few seconds for Stadipopolis’s words to sink in.
“Wait a minute,” Blaine responded, releasing his hold. “Atlantis, as in the island that sank into the sea?”
“The very same.”
“I came here for truth,” McCracken snapped. “Not phony mythology.”
“Truth, American, is a matter of perspective. Mine changed when I found a link I could not dismiss. Many believe that the people of Atlantis harnessed the sun to create a power stronger than atomic energy. They accomplished this by using a ruby-red crystal to store vast amounts of the sun’s energy for later use. Ruby red! You’ve seen it. You possess it!”
“And you’re going to help me find more.”
“No! Atlantis destroyed itself by abusing the power of its crystals. They tried to use them as weapons. I have read about this. And now I hear you tell me in so many words, American, that someone you represent is doing it again. Trying to harness the power of something man was never meant to uncover, never meant to—”
“Wait! Quiet!”
“Why do—”
“I said quiet!” Blaine rasped.
He had heard something, a boot kicking pebbles. Then more sounds, soft thuds of car doors closing gently.
Blaine’s eyes swung about him. The various tombs and monuments blocked his view of the nearby roads.
Where were they, damnit? Where?
The sounds stopped, which wasn’t a good sign, for it meant whoever it was had drawn close enough to be satisfied. Blaine thought of New York. Perhaps the same party was behind the men on 47th Street. Or perhaps they’d been sent by Fass.
Stadipopolis came a little forward. “American, what is it? What’s wrong?”
McCracken yanked his gun free of its holster. “Stay out of the light!”
“I’m not about to—”
“I said stay out—”
It was too late. The gunshots had begun.
Chapter 12
MCCRACKEN HAD ALREADY hit the ground when Kapo Stadipopolis’s face vanished. Blood and bone splattered everywhere, splashing up against a white stone pillar. The Greek’s corpse struck dirt an instant after Blaine plunged to the ground.
More shots echoed through the cemetery air. Footsteps pounded earth, coming closer. McCracken thought fast. The darkness was his ally. All the killers would have seen after firing their burst was two bodies going down; it would have been impossible to tell if they had been hit or not. Blaine hugged the ground and began to crawl away, pushing with his elbows, around the back of Dionysios’s tomb.
Two men in black rushed out of the darkness into the circle of light cast by one of the floodlights. McCracken fired and one gasped and crumbled. The other dove behind the cover of a monument. He called out for help, and Blaine recognized the language.
It was Russian!
Cars screeched forward on the nearby street. More doors pounded solidly. Footsteps smacked cement and then hard ground. If McCracken was going to move, it had to be now.
In the next instant, he was on his feet. The gunman behind the monument fired his automatic rifle at Blaine as he ran, and Blaine returned the fire with random shots to keep the man at bay. Blaine passed behind another tomb, a larger one with DEXILEOS chiseled in huge letters. He emerged on the other side to a new volley of staccato bursts and chips of ancient marble flying into his face. Again Blaine dove, firing at shadows in the darkness. His pistol clicked on an empty chamber and he rolled aside to snap a fresh clip home.
He was under cover now, but the sound of the nearby traffic confused him and made it hard to judge the number and proximity of the whispering voices.
Russians, goddamnit, Russians!
But sent by whom?
Blaine pulled himself through the slick grass, using the floodlit Acropolis above as a landmark to guide him. His problem was not to defend himself but to escape. He could kill plenty of the enemy, but each bullet used would attract more live ones. Eventually they’d have him. It was inevitable. He kept crawling.
The voices around him grew louder as his pursuers grew more impatient. Each second he evaded them would work in his favor. With the increased possibility that their quarry might escape, desperation, and with it carelessness, would set in.
Blaine stopped behind a smaller row of tombs just before Sacred Way, which divides Kerameikos Cemetery in two. Looking up, he saw they housed among others, Pythagoras. Strange, he mused, that the slightest error on his part now and he would die atop the Greek father of precise mathematics. His plan was not yet formed. The point was now to just keep moving.
A little more than a hundred yards ahead lay the remains of the wall erected by Themistokles around Athens following the Persian invasion. If he could scale it, he might get away before the Russians had a chance to react.
Quiet, he urged himself, as footsteps stopped not more than a half-dozen feet away from the tombs that shielded him. Blaine readied his pistol,
determined to avoid using it at all costs because of the attention it would draw.
Fortunately, the gunmen swung across Sacred Way toward the other side of the cemetery. McCracken crawled ten more yards and then slid beneath the raised platform of another monument and rested. It was sixty yards to the walls, and he could never hope to cover the distance on his belly. He had to create a distraction, something that would draw the gunmen away from the direction in which he planned to flee.
Blaine twisted in his confined space, fighting his cramped muscles, and considered his options. First he thought of using the fresh clip in his Heckler and Koch to chip a significant piece of a monument away. He could assume the opposition would converge on it, and then he could escape. But the marble might not splinter sufficiently, and he would have accomplished nothing but to alert the killers to his actual position. No, he had to do something else.
McCracken smiled when his eyes fell upon the Kerameikos Museum, the one modern building within the cemetery. He knew it was packed with the kind of artifacts that would make an advanced alarm system a necessity. A bullet or two through the windows should create the distraction he needed. Blaine aimed toward the largest window he could find. He fired only once.
The shrieking alarm started the instant the glass shattered. Huge floodlights atop the museum blazed suddenly, illuminating irregular patches of the cemetery with an eerie glow. Blaine watched the Russians shy away from the light, dodging and darting, yelling to each other in total confusion.
McCracken pushed himself from beneath the monument and was on his feet instantly. He sprang onto the Sacred Way toward the inner wall that would lead him to the gate and freedom.
The alarm continued to wail, and approaching sirens added to the chaos.
A pair of breathless Russians swung onto the road right before him. He saw them long enough before they saw him to crack one solidly in the throat and launch a kick to the other’s groin. Two blows later, both were unconscious.
“There! There!”
McCracken heard the calls in his wake as he reached the inner wall that stood between him and the Sacred Gate.
He had just reached the top when bullets chewed at the stone near his hands. Dust and chips coughed into the air. Blaine hurdled over and took the impact on both legs equally to save himself from spraining an ankle.
He dashed fifteen yards and reached the Sacred Gate. It was part of a wall at least ten feet high, and because the gate was locked Blaine knew he had no choice but to scale the wall. The gate itself had the most footholds, so he leaped upon it, aiming his hands for a slight ridge just two feet from the top. His legs churned and kicked to keep him from slipping. With the Russians as close as they were, he would get only one chance.
McCracken hoisted himself upward, one hand over the other in a rhythm his feet also fell into. His right hand had just reached over the top when riflemen reached the inner wall behind him and began firing. The Athens police were arriving too and seemed at the outset to be most concerned with taking cover. Blaine’s vulnerability terrified him. A ricocheting bullet grazed his shoulder and the searing pain provided the last burst of adrenalin he needed to throw himself over the wall.
This time his fall was not nearly as graceful. He landed on the ground with a thud and lost his breath on impact. He tried to regain his feet and almost made it, but he fell again onto the knoll that bordered the eastern edge of the cemetery.
A pair of dark Mercedes sedans tore around a corner and headed toward him. With no other choice, Blaine forced himself to his feet and ran along the grass in a daze.
McCracken felt beaten. The cars hadn’t spotted him yet but they would, and there were the many troops left in the cemetery to consider, too. The presence of the Athens police might deter some—but not all. It would only take a few to best him in this condition.
He stumbled on with his head down, but when he looked up he saw an amazing sight. Brilliantly lit by modern floodlights, the Parthenon stood majestically atop the Acropolis, Athens’s ancient hill of state and commerce. The complex, open regularly for tours right up to midnight this time of year, might offer him a means of escape.
The rocky hill contained a set of ancient chiseled steps which provided access to the Acropolis. The majesty of the bright sight, its promise of hope, gave Blaine the energy he needed to run across the street and start up the ancient steps. The going was steep and many of the steps were chipped or rotted away. Blaine slipped regularly but never let himself lose his balance. If he could reach the Acropolis and mingle with the tourists… .
Bullets splintered the silence of the night, echoing against the hill. His thoughts were interrupted. Once again only the next second lay before him.
Now three-quarters of the way up the hill, he moved off the steps onto the grassy slope of the Acropolis. The darkness hid him. He struggled on upward, climbing diagonally toward the Propylaea, which formed the original five-gated entrance to the Acropolis. Tourists normally entered by way of Beule Gate, but that was far too bright a section for McCracken to risk.
His hands scraped against jagged rock as he climbed through a restricted area. Once on level ground, he made for the Temple of Athena. Further on he could see that the bulk of the tour group was now concentrated near the majestic Parthenon itself.
“Recent measures enacted by the Greek government have drastically reduced the damage to these artifacts caused by pollution,” the tour guide, an olive-skinned woman, was explaining in English. “But still the rock surface and marble facing have been damaged beyond repair. Surviving through thousands of years of history only to be … ”
Blaine found himself standing next to a mustachioed man with a camera dangling around his neck. The man turned suddenly, surprised by his sudden appearance.
“Hell taking a piss around here, isn’t it?” Blaine quipped. “Nearly killed myself. Ancient Greece wasn’t much when it came to plumbing, I guess.”
The man smiled and returned his attention to the tour guide.
“The Parthenon was built as a temple to Athena and a statue of her stood in the east end until …”
McCracken heard the footsteps coming and didn’t have to turn to know the Russians were approaching. He had to act fast. But what to do?
When in doubt do nothing, went the humorous teaching, but tonight Blaine found more than humor in it. The killers had never gotten a good look at him in the Kerameikos Cemetery, and he doubted they had been furnished with anything but vague descriptions. Their target was not supposed to be a figure in a crowd.
Blaine’s escape had changed all that. His dusty clothes might have given him away but the night breeze had dusted other men as well. The only feature that could identify him was his wounded shoulder. The flow of blood had stopped, and the patch was drying. A skilled eye, though, might notice something out of the ordinary.
Blaine backed up so he was flanked by two women.
“That concludes our tour, ladies and gentlemen,” the tour guide said, and the group applauded politely. “Now,” she continued, starting to move through them, “if you’ll follow me, we’ll make our way down the east path back to the bus.”
McCracken let himself be absorbed into the crowd. Turning, he saw the Russians for the first time in the light, suits looking out of place and soiled by their climb up the hill. Their eyes swept the tour members anxiously, holding briefly on each of the men as they too struggled to mix with the crowd. They gave Blaine the same visual inspections the others received and then conferred with each other, shrugging. Some of their fellows had drifted back among the relics, perhaps believing their quarry to be lurking somewhere in that area.
Blaine blessed his luck. If they thought he was still hiding, he might be able to slip by them by simply sticking with the tour group. He descended with the group down the well-lit east path of the hill. He did not look ahead to his next move; there was no reason to until he found what awaited the group at the end of his descent. He was aware of a pair of Russians lagging bac
k a bit at the rear of the group. A third walked near the head of the procession. From his position in the center Blaine could easily neutralize all three with bullets if it came down to that.
With forty more yards to go until ground level, McCracken saw the tour bus for the first time. Along with something else.
A pair of black Mercedes sedans, windows lowering as the tour group came into view. The cars were ancient, as much relics of their kind as the structures he had just left at the Acropolis. Oversized monsters from a different age, they sat by the curb, one behind the other, waiting.
Blaine also noticed a number of well-dressed men on the sidewalk near the bus across the street. All wore overcoats on the warm spring night. The enemy’s strategy was obvious: wait until the group reached the bottom of the hill and kill all the tour group patrons if their quarry had not showed himself. The media would call it a terrorist attack, and a half-dozen leftist groups would claim responsibility.
Blaine felt the cold sweat dripping down his face and soaking the skin beneath his shirt. His heart thudded against his rib cage, and his breathing suddenly felt labored. Clearly he had to act. He couldn’t allow the slaughter of innocent people. He drew his right hand slowly inside his belt to feel for his Heckler and Koch P-7, which still had seven shots left. The key questions were when to move and where to move first. The street was coming up fast. Russians lay on all sides of him. He had to act before they did but not in a manner that drew their fire randomly into the crowd.
Think, damnit, think!
The bus was right in front of him now. The shape huddled behind the wheel was obviously the driver. The large vehicle could provide cover for him. It would certainly—No, not cover… . Blaine saw what he had to do, but there was still the crowd to consider.
Ten yards from the bus now… .
He had to make sure the tour patrons were safe before he acted. It was the only alternative.
Near the bus and across the street, the Russians were pulling out their automatic weapons. The windows in the black cars were all the way down. The signal to fire would come from them.