Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear gh-2

by Gabriel Hunt

  “I’m not. Though I spent a lot of time here growing up. My parents loved it in Greece. They died not too far from here.”

  The bartender nodded. “Then you are Greek enough. If your dead are buried in our soil.”

  Ambrose and Cordelia Hunt, two of the bestselling authors of the last fifty years thanks to a pair of improbably successful books of religious history, weren’t buried anywhere—they’d disappeared at sea during a millennium-themed speaking tour of the Mediterranean and Gabriel’s best efforts had failed to turn up any sign of their bodies. He’d spent eight months searching while, back home, Michael struggled to pick up the pieces of the estate and Lucy—poor Lucy, who’d had a strained relationship with their parents from the day she was born and they’d decided, oblivious classicists that they were, to name their third child after an archangel in the Bible, same as they had their first two, only the choices remaining were Raphael and Lucifer, and you couldn’t name a girl Raphael, could you?—had packed a bag and hopped a plane and severed all contact, taking what had been a family of five down to just Gabriel and Michael. Gabriel, Michael, and a foundation worth one hundred million dollars.

  But Gabriel didn’t tell the bartender any of this, just nodded as though his parents’ graves were right here in Avgonyma, this rump of a village.

  He tossed back the rest of his wine, took an obligatory drag on his cigarette, and dropped the coin on the bar. It spun for a second before landing sphinx-side up.

  “Know anyone around here who could tell me about this?” Gabriel said. “Specifically, any connection between this sphinx of yours and the one in Egypt.”

  He saw the bartender’s face pale. The man shook his head quickly. “You don’t want to ask about this, my friend.”

  “Why not?” Gabriel said, reaching out to pick up the coin again. Another hand came down heavily on top of his, pinning his to the wood.

  Looking to his right, Gabriel saw that the man beside him was standing now, though none too steadily. The other man at the bar got up, too.

  “We don’t talk about the sphinx with nobody, American.” The man pressed down on Gabriel’s hand, grinding it into the bar. “You people just don’t listen, do you?”

  Chapter 11

  “‘You people’?” Gabriel said. “Has someone else been asking?”

  The man turned to his neighbor, barked out a nasty laugh. “Has someone else…?” Turning back, he swung a fist at Gabriel’s head. Gabriel ducked under it and wrenched his hand free. He jammed the coin in his pocket.

  “Don’t start trouble, Niko,” the bartender said, “please. Demetria just cleaned the place—”

  “Quiet,” Niko roared and barreled forward, his arms wrapping around Gabriel’s torso and bearing both of them toward the stone wall. Gabriel snatched a half-full glass off the bar as they passed and smashed it into the back of Niko’s head. It got Niko to release his grappling hold but only momentarily while he raked bits of glass and flecks of foam out of his thick mat of hair.

  Meanwhile, a young man who shared the bartender’s complexion got up from a nearby table. “Who are you to tell my father to be quiet in his own place?” He came forward.

  “Christos, don’t,” the bartender said, patting the air with one hand placatingly.

  “No, Papa, this loudmouth can’t talk to you this way, not in front of me.”

  “You just say that,” Niko said, “because you like the color of the Americans’ money. Show them around the island, take them anywhere they want, tell them anything they want—they feel lonely at night, you get down on your knees for them, too?”

  Christos was at the bar in two strides, swinging wildly, but Niko put up his left arm to block the blow, and the man behind him grabbed hold of Christos’ other arm.

  “Let him go,” Gabriel said.

  “Or what, American?”

  Gabriel’s hand dropped to his holster. But before he could get it open, someone leaped on his back from behind.

  Gabriel didn’t see the free-for-all begin—his face was pressed into the dirt floor. But he could hear it going on above him, the sound of punches landing and glass breaking. He raised one elbow sharply, taking out the man lying on top of him, and rolled over, springing to his feet. He jumped back to get out of the path of one enraged Greek who’d found a cudgel somewhere and was swinging it wildly over his head as he charged the bar. The bartender was nowhere in sight, having either dropped behind the bar for safety or run out into the street for help.

  Spotting Christos in the swarm of angry men, Gabriel began making his way toward him, pushing the bodies of combatants to either side. If this Christos was favorably disposed toward Americans and inclined to answer their questions, that made him someone Gabriel needed to talk to before a blow from one his fellow countrymen put him into traction, or worse.

  His view was blocked for a moment as someone leapt down from halfway up the staircase to the second floor, the bottom half of of his face smeared with blood. But it wasn’t Gabriel he was interested in, and they both darted left, and then right, and then left again, trying to get out of each other’s way. Finally Gabriel stopped and stood still, his arms at his sides, and the man ran past, shouting his thanks as he went.

  With this gory specter out of his path Gabriel saw Christos again, held between two larger men, each spreading one of his arms wide while Niko lifted a wooden chair and swung it back over one shoulder.

  Gabriel got to Niko just as the man completed his backswing. He plucked the chair out of Niko’s hands as he was about to bring it down. Niko spun, dumbfounded at finding himself empty-handed. Gabriel gave the chair back to him, full in the face, the wood of the chair’s back splintering when it connected with the big man’s jaw. Niko slumped to the ground. Gabriel dropped the remnants of the chair and finally drew his Colt.

  “Let him go,” he told the men holding onto Christos’ arms. “Yes, you.” He gestured with the gun. The men backed away, hands up in the eternal gesture of surrender. He could have had their wallets if he’d wanted them.

  “You,” he said, pointing to the one with smaller feet. “Take those off.”

  “My shoes?” the man said.

  “Off,” Gabriel repeated, and he accepted the soft gum-soled loafers with his other hand. He jammed them into his jacket pocket. They’d do.

  “Thank you—” Christos began, but Gabriel cut him off.

  “Later. What’s the safest way out of here?”

  Christos led him behind the bar, where a wooden panel set into the floor came up when he pulled on the iron ring in its center. A ladder led down to a cellar, and at the bottom they found the bartender, sitting on an empty wine crate, playing solitaire with a filthy, creased deck of cards. “You see what you started, Christos?”

  “I didn’t start it, Papa, Niko did.”

  The old man shrugged. “Nobody ever starts it. But who’s left to clean up when it’s finished? Eh?”

  “I’ll clean up, Papa.”

  “You! That’ll be the day. Go on. Get your American out of here before they take him to pieces.”

  Gabriel reached into his pocket, took out a few of the hundred-dollar bills he had left, laid them down beside the king and queen of spades. “I apologize for the trouble.”

  “Feh,” the bartender said, and spat on the ground, but he kept the money.

  They came up into a rear courtyard behind the tavern building. Christos had a green-and-white papakia—a souped-up moped—leaning against the wall. The long, narrow padded seat had room for two and Gabriel climbed on behind him, holding onto the young man’s waist. He saw a purple knot swelling up on Christos’ neck where one of the bar’s other patrons had landed a blow. It was ugly and looked painful—but things could’ve gotten a lot worse, Gabriel told himself. They were lucky to be leaving when they were.

  Christos revved the engine and they zoomed off. Two sharp right turns brought them to a steeply rising road through the mountains. Christos seemed to know where he was headed, and Gabriel l
eft him alone to concentrate on driving—until he heard the sound of engines coming up behind them.

  “Can this thing go any faster?” he asked. In front of him, Christos shook his head.

  Had they been spotted leaving the tavern? There’d been several more of the mopeds leaning against the wall, and certainly some of the brawlers they’d left behind might have been mad enough to follow if they’d seen their prey getting away. Maybe even the man he’d left standing in his socks.

  But looking back over his shoulder, Gabriel saw not more papakias come into view but a trio of Ducati Multistrada motorcycles, low to the ground and Corvette red. And their helmeted, black-jacketed drivers were a far cry from the rustics who’d bloodied each other for sport back in the bar.

  One of them drew the long barrel of a rifle from a side-mounted holster on his bike’s chassis and fired two shots in their direction.

  Christos swerved across the opposite lane and back again, tilting the papakia at a precarious angle.

  “Don’t worry,” he shouted back, and then, switching to English, “I drive good—like your Steve McQueen!”

  “Great,” Gabriel said, pulling his gun. Steve McQueen. He twisted in his seat, aimed carefully at the lead driver behind them and pulled the trigger just as Christos swerved wildly again. The shot went wide.

  “Damn it, kid, I’ve only got three bullets left,” Gabriel said.

  The bikes were gaining on them, their engines growling as they accelerated. The driver with the rifle was raising his gun again. Gabriel did the same.

  “Keep steady this time,” Gabriel said, “or I’ll save the last one for you.”

  “But there’s a turn coming up!” Christos said.

  “Fine,” Gabriel said and squeezed the trigger. The driver went off his bike backwards, the faceplate of his helmet shattered. His rifle spun end over end into the brush on the side of the road.

  Christos leaned into the turn, an almost 180-degree switchback zigzagging up the mountainous terrain. Gabriel had to strain to hold on.

  The two remaining cycles stayed with them through the turn. Neither of the drivers had rifles, but as Gabriel watched, they both pulled out semiautomatic pistols.

  “We’ve got to lose these guys,” Gabriel shouted.

  “Hold on,” Christos said and, turning off the road, plowed through a field of scrub. The spiny undergrowth tore at Gabriel’s ankles and every few feet a rock under their tires threatened to overturn them.

  The other bikes were still on their tail.

  A bullet flew past just inches away.

  The field angled upward before them, a sloping incline, hilly but empty, not a boulder to hide behind, not a tree.

  “How’s this helping us?” Gabriel shouted.

  Without warning, Christos braked. Gabriel slid forward, slamming into Christos’ back, and the papakia itself juddered ahead a few feet. The bikes behind them shot past, steering to either side of them to avoid a collision. They began parallel turns that would bring them around again—and then as they passed the crest of the next hill over, they vanished from sight. The sound of metal tearing and twisting and smashing against rock reached them from what sounded like far below. Gabriel jumped off the bike and ran forward, slowing as he got to the place where the other men had disappeared. He stopped at the edge of a crevasse, a sudden rocky sinkhole that bisected the field and plunged at least forty feet straight down. The cycles looked to be very near the bottom. The drivers weren’t moving.

  Gabriel returned to the bike.

  “I grew up just the other side of this field,” Christos said as they got underway again. “Papa, he would tell me, don’t ever drive in there, no matter what. But I didn’t listen. None of us boys did. We all dared each other, who could go the closest. We could find the edge with our eyes closed.”

  “I guess those guys didn’t grow up here,” Gabriel said.

  “I guess not,” Christos said.

  They were back on the road, chugging up the side of the mountain once more.

  “How do you think those guys got on our tail?” Gabriel asked.

  Sitting in front of him, Christos shrugged. “Someone must have called them, told them there was a man asking questions about a sphinx.”

  “They tell you to keep an eye out for that?”

  “Mm-hm,” Christos said. “Said they’d pay, too. Fifty dollars U.S. for any tip, no questions asked.”

  “That’s a pretty good deal,” Gabriel said.

  “It is.”

  “Yet, instead of taking them up on it yourself, you just led them over a cliff.”

  “That’s not a cliff,” Christos said.

  “They’re just as dead,” Gabriel said. “Why’d you do it? Why not turn me in for the money?”

  Christos thought about it for a moment. “You gave my father three hundred dollars when you didn’t have to. I’m not going to turn you in for fifty.”

  “What if they offer four hundred?”

  Christos looked back over his shoulder and grinned. “We’ll see.”

  The miles peeled away beneath their tires and the view the road commanded became more spectacular as their elevation rose.

  “Where are we going?” Gabriel finally asked.

  “Anavatos,” Christos said. “To see a man named Tigranes.”

  “I thought Anavatos was deserted.”

  “Almost,” Christos said. “Still a few people live there.”

  “And this Tigranes, he knows something about the history of Chios’ sphinxes?”

  “Oh, yes,” Christos said.

  “Did you take the others to see him,” Gabriel asked, “the other Americans?”

  “I tried,” Christos said. “And the Hungarian they worked for, too.” Gabriel’s hands tensed. “But he wouldn’t talk to them. Just plain refused.”

  “I see. And why do you think he’ll talk to me? Because I pay better?”

  “No—Tigranes doesn’t care about money. He wouldn’t live in Anavatos if he did.”

  “Then why?”

  “For one thing, you speak our language,” Christos said.

  “That means something to him?” Gabriel said.

  “That means everything to him,” Christos said.

  Chapter 12

  Anavatos crowned the mountain they’d been ascending, a cluttered, half-ruined collection of cheek-to-jowl stone buildings that made the buildings of Avgonyma look modern by comparison. The only way in was through a steep and winding road that twisted back on itself several times before arriving. The town’s name meant “unreachable” or “inaccessible,” and never had a place been more appropriately named, Gabriel thought, except maybe Dull, Texas. Built into the mountain, Anavatos was also sometimes called “the invisible city”—if you didn’t know it was there, you’d never see it from below, which is why Chians had used it as a hideout or refuge for centuries. This lasted until 1822, when a siege by the Turks had ended in a mass suicide, with the residents of Anavatos plunging to their deaths off the mountain rather than be taken alive. It had been deserted ever since, a ghost town in the most literal sense.

  The streets, as they entered, were completely empty—not even an old woman, not even a cat. Christos drove through them with the confidence of one who knew where he was going and Gabriel let himself be led. He thought briefly about Christos’ earlier remark when asked if his allegiance could be bought for $400—We’ll see—but decided Christos wouldn’t have joked about it if he were really leading Gabriel into a trap. He was a local kid, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, not someone polished in the art of deceit. And even if Gabriel were wrong about this…well, it was too late to do anything about it now.

  Gabriel held on till Christos pulled up in front of a two-story building whose stones looked scrofulous with age and wear. There were openings in the walls, but it was an exaggeration to call them windows; there was no glass in them, certainly. And in lieu of a door there was only an uneven archway.

  They dismounted and Christos
shouted up, cupping both hands around his mouth. “Sir! It’s Christos Anninos. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  No response was shouted back—but after a moment the silence was broken by the sound of a pair of sandals slapping against stone steps.

  The man who emerged from the doorway brought the word antique to mind, not only because he was elderly—though he was that, his face and hands seamed with countless wrinkles, his hair tumbling gray and untrimmed down to his shoulders, a shaggy white beard resting on his chest—but also because he wore a wool chiton, fastened at the shoulder with a metal clasp and flat sandals held on with straps of knotted leather. He looked like something out of a museum diorama.

  In the crook of one arm, he was carrying a U-shaped wooden frame with four strings threaded from a crossbar down to the base of the U—a sort of miniature harp that was just the touch needed to complete the picture of an ancient Greek bard. They might have interrupted him while he was posing for an illustration for a dictionary, Gabriel thought; or perhaps he was like the men who dress up in plastic gladiator outfits and hang around the Coliseum in Rome, bumming cigarettes from tourists and hoping to score a dollar or two posing for photographs. This was Gabriel’s first impression, and he cursed himself for having hoped that this local youth might bring him to someone with genuine knowledge of the island’s past.

  But looking again in each man’s eyes, Gabriel saw no sign of a put-on; both seemed in earnest, and Christos in particular had assumed an attitude of respect and deference entirely at odds with his earlier manner when racing up here on the bike. And taking another glance at the old man’s attire, Gabriel saw how far from a polished, plastic simulation of antiquity it was; also, how protectively the man cradled his clearly handmade instrument, how worn the bridge was and how calloused were his fingertips. He actually played the thing, apparently. He might well be a lunatic, living out here in an empty town on the top of a mountain—but he did not seem a charlatan.