Pace started to answer and Faust cut him off. “There’s no going back, at this point. Don’t you feel that now? The draw forward?”
“We don’t have to go back to New York. We can hide in Athens. Who the hell could find anybody there? You could stick the whole Red Chinese Army behind the stacks of garbage. We could form our own bouzouki band. Pia could dance. Or we could become fishermen. Sponge divers. These people never sleep and never work. I say we fit right in.”
Stroking his beard into a finely-crafted point, Faust said, “I think I’m beginning to look forward to meeting our unseen host.”
“Me too,” Pia said. “It’s time to finish this.”
“But what is this?” Hayden asked. “I’m still unsure what it is.”
“This.”
“Yeah, but what is it?”
“This thing we’re in.”
“Which is?”
“Stop bothering me, Hayden, or I’ll stab you in the nuts and kick you overboard.”
Hayden looked mildly hurt. Faust said, “Pia, your disposition is getting markedly more miserable.”
“Imagine that.”
No one asked Pace’s opinion on anything, so he didn’t offer it.
Faust leaned into the breeze and said, “I enjoy the water. I find it calming. There’s almost a sweetness to the air, isn’t there?”
Swaying her hips as if she might begin dancing again, Pia touched him lightly between the shoulder blades. ”What’s the long green spinach, Faust?”
“Excuse me?”
“The lettuce that got you whatever you wanted. In the clubs, the restaurants, all the joints up and down the strip. Park Avenue. The Gold Mile. Philly’s Main Line. The lettuce that would stick to their sweaty knees. The long green spinach.”
There was apparently no domino effect going on in Faust’s head, one memory toppling forward into another. Her words didn’t mean anything to him, even though they were his own. “I don’t know, Pia.”
They passed fishermen in the harbor, children in brightly painted green and yellow dinghies calling to the tourists and wanting to dive for coins. Pia threw some and the young boys disappeared like dolphins.
The ferry docked at the Voros port and they walked down the beach to an inlet where the charters and sailboats were busily going out.
The guy they chartered the boat from was also a handsome Greek youth. He also had a fishing blade stuck in his belt, and he was also named Stavros. Pia ignored him. This Stavros asked to be paid in drachmas because he had a friend who could still get a very high exchange rate. No wonder Vindi had given Pace the outdated money instead of only euros. He’d known the sailing men would prefer the obsolete notes.
“How long will it take to get to Pythos?” Pace asked.
This Stavros spoke with the same proper diction as the other Stavros. “In my boat, which was also the boat of my father, it is no more than an hour east of us. Not many go there, but I believe I can find it again. I have not visited for almost five years, a time when I went diving beneath the island.”
“Beneath it?”
“Yes. There is a pit at the south end of the village, a large hole that goes directly through Pythos. During the war, the Germans invaded and tried to drive their vehicles down the road around the pit. They’d fall in and vanish. When I was sixteen, friends and I would go diving to salvage in the reefs. Many Nazi weapons and armor are still in the depths. There is good money in such items, even rusted and damaged. Many tourists buy them for their collections.”
“Nazi memorabilia.”
“Yes. We could have been rich but we dealt with a deceptive antiquities dealer.”
Porpoises swam alongside the boat as Stavros confidently handled the large outboard motor. Pia and Faust sat back and laughed like children as the waters frothed. Hayden asked, “Are those marlin?”
“Dolphin,” Pace said.
“Naw, maybe tuna.”
“They are dolphin,” Stavros said. “Do you not know dolphin when you see them? Don’t you visit them in your ocean parks and watch them do flips and pretend to laugh and walk on the water? Did your parents not take you there?”
“My father would lock me in the crawl space when he got drunk,” Hayden said. “And slide me cans under the door like I was a cat. I’d have to smash them open on the concrete and pull back the lids with my teeth. I hate tuna.”
“Me too,” Pace said, surprised that it was true. “Somebody wanted me to go work in a cannery where I would’ve spent the rest of my life jamming tuna into cans while the fucking fish stared back at me.”
Hayden appeared perplexed. “Is that how they do it?”
“Forget it.”
“No, seriously, I’d like to know. You just grab it with its head and eyes and everything and just smash it into the can?”
“Forget it.”
The sun burned brightly. Their skin began to redden but no one had thought to bring sunscreen. Faust’s scar was hard and red as a ruby.
Stavros looked over at the porpoises and grinned in the sunlight. The ocean was a cobalt azure with a blazing sheen. There was no land in sight. If the little boat capsized or the motor failed, they’d all go straight to the bottom. Except Stavros who could probably swim for days without tiring.
The kid turned with a seductive smile and leaned toward Pia. “They say that dolphins are the ghosts of drowned sailors. They swim beside the boats because they remember what it was to be fishermen.”
“You sound like you believe it,” she said.
“Because I do. I must. My father and grandfather and two uncles died at sea during storms. They are here to protect me from the same fate. It may only be a delightful legend to outsiders, but to us, this is truth. They know I am of their blood, they show their love and guardianship by swimming beside me.”
“I would’ve thought you’d feel guilty.”
Stavros peered into Pia’s lovely face, still giving her the sexy smile. His curly hair drifted across his exotic features. “Guilt? How do you mean?”
“You know, that they all drowned out there in the ocean trying to make enough money to feed and clothe you and put a roof over your head. If I went down like that, you better believe I’d be pissed at the little shit I had at home who didn’t appreciate a damn thing I’d ever done. Working until my hands were blistered every day, burning from the salt. You know? I mean, can you imagine the last thing your father must’ve thought while he was going under the waves, sinking deeper and deeper while the pressure built in his head and he clawed for the surface, the ocean filling up his throat and his belly, I mean, he was probably wishing he could’ve been a sheepherder instead. All alone on a mountain somewhere, safe with his sheep. But no, he had to fish, just so his whiny, snotty kids could have shoes and crayons. Your whole life knowing your father is dead because of you.”
Stavros held onto the shaft of the motor and blinked rapidly at Pia. His breath came in bites and his chest worked harder and harder.
“Well, it’s true,” she said and turned away.
Pace said, “Stavros, listen to me—”
“I do not wish to talk to you people anymore,” the kid said. “I do not consider this a pleasant conversation. I have met many friendly tourists but you are strange and very unlikeable. I am filled with sorrow that I allowed you to charter this boat, which was also my father’s boat. I will not return for you, you must make other arrangements.”
“All right.”
The next thirty minutes went by in silence. Pace took out the knife and fondled it, running the edge of the blade at an angle over the meaty part of his palm. His hands were so strong that the blade, as sharp as it was, couldn’t easily cut him.
He could feel Jack and many others circling just beneath the surface, like sharks, waiting to chew him to pieces and take him down to the bottom. He realized, the more this knife meant to him, the more purchase it gave Jack.
The dazzling Grecian morning like a flaming cathedral. Are you cured?
&n
bsp; Pace thinking, I’m not stepping aside for anybody else. I’ve got too much left to do. But I need to do it on my own terms. Not Pacella’s, not Jack’s, no one else’s. Just mine, whoever the hell I am.
He took the knife and held it over the starboard rim of the boat and let it go.
Princess Eirrin, ten thousand-year-old sorceress and heir to the Atlantean throne, eased her head back and her gills opened as she breathed above the waves. She slid to Pace and pressed herself against him. He sucked air through his teeth because her chain mail was so cold on his heated skin.
The ten-mile-deep trenches in the ocean depths rumbled with the force of her mystic spells. A dolphin leaped twenty feet out in front of the bow of the boat.
Stavros said, “I have not seen that occur for a long time. They do not venture that close because of the motor.”
“Maybe Dad wanted to say hello,” Hayden said. “Wanted to see how you were making out.”
“Do not mock me, sir.”
“Not me, man. You go to a Knicks game with a bunch of mongoloids and you learn never to mock anybody. You like the Knicks?”
Princess Eirrin’s lidless eyes turned on Pace and tears dripped across her blue cheeks. She placed her webbed hand against the side of his face and said, “If you ever need your fetish returned, then my knights of the deep shall retrieve it for you.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he told her.
“If your trials ever become too great and you need your weapon, call on me and it shall be yours once more.”
“Thank you, but I still have it.” He lifted his hand and showed her.
He’d tried to drop the blade and it looked like it had gone into the water, but here he was still holding it.
Faust said, “In the sky, toward the west. There’s something coming this way. Is that a plane?”
It took a minute to make out the sound of the propeller over the boat motor. A black shape dropped lower and lower, as if it might buzz close enough to knock them into the water. It was a helicopter. It swept by maybe a hundred feet directly overhead and continued on in the direction they were heading.
Ten minutes later a wedge of darkness spread out across the water broke from the horizon, quickly growing larger, wreathed in gulls and mist.
Pythos.
twenty-three
Grottoes opened at either end of the horseshoe-shaped harbor. A swathe of funeral cypress angled along the banks. Limestone caves in the cliffs sparkled above the glittering beaches. Moaning exhalations issued from the great fissures.
At the summit of the island sat Kaltzas’s fortified villa, with gates to the south, east, and west. Guest cottages, stables, and huge garages were plainly in view. Sheep grazed in the grassy hills nearby.
The main house was a rambling four-story white stucco building covered with steep ceramic roofs. Pace could make out towers, patios, balconies, and ornate wrought-iron railings.
“Like Olympus, rising on high,” Faust said. “Can you see it? There’s actually ice up there in the crags of the mountain.”
It was true. The shadowed cliffs had a slight sheen of snow even in this heat. “There must be a completely different air stream that far up.”
A flashing red aircraft warning beacon filled the sky with splashes of crimson. The helicopter had flown toward the flare of color and vanished from view behind the mountain.
Stavros told them that the bay of Pythos was seven miles long and three miles wide. The blue-black waters shifted to a burnished green along the coast. Stavros maneuvered the boat past several fishing vessels, through the cove to a huge stone mooring.
He said, “As I’ve stated, I will not be coming back for you. You will have to find other arrangements if you wish to return to Voros or continue on to one of the other islands.”
Pace paid and thanked him and the kid left without another word. Pace turned to see a steep set of stone stairs leading up from the harbor to the village.
“Holy crap!” Hayden said. “There’s hundreds of them. We’ve got to climb up all those? That’s probably as many steps as they’ve got in Madison Square Garden!”
“But you walked those, didn’t you?” Pace said.
“Yeah, but at least we had big pretzels.”
“Come on.”
“That ref knocked mine onto the court. The prick.”
The steps were so narrow they had to walk single file, huddled close to the ancient cliff wall. Pace led the way wondering how much blood had been shed on these sharp corners. Old men carrying their day’s catch getting almost to the top before a slippery step sent them all the way back down. Pacella was a little frightened of heights the way he was a little frightened of most things.
Pace kept looking back over his shoulder to make sure the others were following. It would be very easy for all of them to go over the side and die on the rocks below. Pace kept waiting to feel Pia’s hand tugging at him, drawing him down. Or maybe Faust’s. Or maybe Hayden’s.
At the top, herds of goats and sheep drifted through the wild golden grasses of the area.
You could feel the antiquity of the land, all the chronicles of mankind witnessed by stone. Rutted dirt roads twined across the countryside. Deep ravines revealed mastic trees and yellow crown daisies. Groves of olive trees receded along the hills.
“It’s so beautiful,” Pia said. “That way is to the village, you can see it from here. The other way...Olympus.”
The village was a primeval myth taken form. You looked at it and you looked at the places where Homer wrote his poems, where Achilles was born. Clusters of buildings were arranged tightly along the hilly streets blasted from rock. Carts raised clouds of chalky dust.
“I need a drink,” Faust said. “I just want a glass of water.”
“The last time you said that we were stuck in a taverna for twelve hours and you started your own bouzouki band.”
“Now what?” Hayden asked. “We walk?”
“Looks like it,” Pace said.
“Maybe that guy Vindi will be along in another Jag soon.”
“We’re in a land hewn from tradition and legend,” Faust said. “He’s making us walk as part of our trial.”
Pace said, “Like Christ along the Via Dolorosa.” He had to suppress the sudden desire to bolt toward the mountain. The driving need to face Kaltzas at last was upon him all at once. His had to fight to keep his teeth from clenching.
“So the whole town can see us for our sins?” Pia said. “Is that what he wants? All he had to do was ask. He wants a parade, I’ll give him a parade. He thinks we’re afraid of that? He wants me to wave a black flag, I’ll wave a black flag. He wants to see me naked?”
“The village appears empty, or nearly so,” Faust said.
“This isn’t like Athens. The fishermen probably go out at dawn and stay out until dusk.”
“While a billionaire lives in his high castle above them.”
“They must hate his guts,” Pia said. “They must plot his death every waking moment.”
“I doubt it. They live the lives they’ve got. The man shares the same dirt roads, drinks from the same wells.”
The sun had tanned Pia to glistening gold, and when she flashed her grin Pace felt a pang of remorse that they hadn’t made love last night. Maybe it was just another one of his crimes that should be promenaded before the world.
“Let’s go see the bastard and find out what he wants,” Pace said, and the others once again fell in line behind him as he led the way to a minor god on the vast throne of Olympus.
~ * ~
You had to at least chuckle. No matter how guilty or mad you were, when you were walking along a dirt track toward a high castle in the distance, your broken ashtray and pajamas in the bag on your shoulder, your little troupe stomping along behind you humming Greek songs, plumes of dust rising from their heels, the knife you’d thrown away a couple times still tight against the small of your back, another man’s dead wife bright in your mind, wondering if you would have t
o kill or die before the end of the day, you had to at least let out a chuckle.
They walked along the rutted road and Pace was surprised at how much greenery there was to the landscape. Judas trees and shrubbery dappled the hilly terrain, sparse along the seaside but growing richer toward the center of the island.
Down a separate path, Pace thought he saw a young woman peering at him through branches. Perhaps it was Cassandra. He thought, She wants to get a close look at us. He turned down the path and followed, and the others followed him.
The way grew steadily more steep and rocky until they reached an embankment with a suddenly down-sloped grade. The road they were on had dipped away from Kaltzas’s plateau, and they were now wandering into a craggy bowl canyon.
At the bottom was an excavation site centering on a set of ruins dappling the mouth of a cave. It had clearly been a very long, ongoing dig. Tons of rubble had been moved aside, the dirt filtered for artifacts. It looked like it hadn’t been worked for a while though.
They approached cautiously, except for Pia, who skipped forward as if across the lawn to grandma’s house, letting out girlish laughter along the way. If she hadn’t been one of the most depressed people Pace knew, she would’ve been one of the happiest.
Shafts of sunlight illuminated the cave entrance, which opened into the first chamber of a temple or a tomb which continued on into a deep passageway, flanked by mortar and lumber.
“It was a trap,” Faust said. Pace looked in his eyes and saw a growing awareness there, a blossoming sense of purpose. “We shouldn’t have come this way. There must be another road around the far side of the slope, leading up to the villa.”
“Who gives a shit?” Pia said. “So let’s just go in.”
“Into those black tunnels?” Hayden asked. He rubbed at his widow’s peak, smoothing it back until it was sharp as a box cutter. “You’re kidding, right? This is what we want to do? I don’t want to go in there. We don’t have enough problems? Seriously, let’s backtrack.”
“I’m not sure we could make it back up the incline,” Pace said. “The grade didn’t mean much coming down here but the rocky terrain is precarious. It’ll be a lot harder getting out of the canyon.”
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