“It’s nothing to be embarrassed by,” Nikos said. He gave the boy seated beside him a playful shake of the shoulders. “It happens to all of us. We just don’t like to admit it.”
The neatly buttoned shirts of the wait staff were as crisp as the linen tablecloths. It was a soundless ballet as their arms darted between the distinguished guests to retrieve plates and refill glasses.
Everyone seated at the round table was dressed in formal white-and-gold uniforms except for the two Kourakis children and Alexis, who wore a chic gown that matched the indigo sea outside. The diners were a serious group by nature, but the mood during this dinner had been relaxed. Nikos spoke more freely than usual, with some help from the glass of tempranillo in his hand. Alexis laughed at everything that came out her darling husband’s mouth.
The only person at the table who didn’t share the cheer was Giorgos. He had eaten his dinner silently with a distance behind his eyes. The others were becoming accustomed to this withdrawn version of the naturally joyless man.
A shining cart was wheeled beside the table by the maître d’ himself. The glass surface displayed sculpted creations of pastry and icing on multiple tiers of china. “Look at those macarons,” Alexis said, eyeing the immaculate buttons of muted colour.
“I want the chocolate!” Kristo reached out to grab a glass flute filled with layers of mousse and ganache.
Nikos intercepted the boy’s arm. “If you ask the nice man, he’ll give it to you.”
Kostas laughed loudly, drawing curious glances from the guests seated at the tables around them. “Let the boy have his chocolate, Nikos.”
The maître d’ offered Kristo a flute of mousse before describing each dessert with practised showmanship. The Glacier’s dining hall sprawled out behind him in an opulent setting of marble, linen, and gold trim. Two terraces filled with tables of elegant diners overlooked the main floor.
The dramatic room mimicked a theatre much like the Odeon on the opposite end of the ship. There were dining tables instead of rows of cushioned seats. The stage was a wall of glass curved around the Glacier’s stern from floor to ceiling. Every table had a view of the ship’s wake as they sailed away from the island of Mallorca. An orange glow hovered over Palma against the darkening sky.
Nikos had just put a spoonful of mille-feuille into his mouth when he felt a tap on the shoulder. The waiter slid a folded square of paper in front of him before striding away without a word.
Nikos snatched the unexpected delivery as he glanced around the table. He unfolded the paper to reveal a message written by a familiar hand.
Come find me in our House. We need to talk.
The bite of dessert felt lodged in his throat. He hid the note below the table and turned in his seat, searching for its messenger. Dozens of waiters in identical black-vested suits darted throughout the dining hall. It could have been any of them.
The others seated at the table were too preoccupied with Kostas’s describing his favourite café in Cannes to notice the beads of sweat forming on Nikos’s forehead.
“Excuse me,” he said, his voice higher pitched than usual. He cleared his throat with a scratchy cough. “I have something to tend to. I’ll see you before the show tonight.”
The lighthearted expression on Kostas’s face hardened. Even the green facets of his eyes had a way of darkening as quickly as the closing of a curtain. “Is there anything the matter, Nikos?” His tone was sharpened in interrogation. He knew how to read the controlled exterior of the young man.
“It’s nothing.” Nikos placed his napkin on the table and stood, closing the gold buttons of his jacket. He turned to Kristo. “Don’t eat too much chocolate,” he said with a faint smile.
The noise of the dining hall dimmed. The only sound he could hear was the dull clicks of his shoes against the marble floor as he marched toward the exit. Several guests turned their heads as he passed. They wondered why this man blessed with such youth and command appeared so tense.
A part of him felt a nervous tingle of excitement at seeing Sebastien again. It had been difficult turning him in days earlier, apprehending him like a petty thief. He had secluded himself in his office the morning Sebastien was escorted off the ship. He missed him.
His longing was overpowered by logic, though. He knew why Sebastien had returned, and it wasn’t to make amends.
Instead of taking the elevator to the House of the Heel on Riviera Deck, he turned a corner and pushed open a hidden door that led down to the staff and crew quarters below. His footsteps announced his approach along A Deck. With a swipe of the wrist, he was through the locked door and striding down the carpeted hall of the elite commanders’ wing, his heart pounding in his chest.
His fears were confirmed when he saw the empty chair outside cabin A66. He pushed open the broken door and burst into the room. His fists opened and closed in mechanical motions, asserting control over the wave of distress that rippled through his body.
Athena was nowhere to be seen. The guard he’d appointed was bound at the wrists and ankles by synthetic pink twine. The man was unconscious, but the rhythm of his breathing was evident in his chest and nostrils. What looked like three granola bars lay on his lap. Nikos removed the bindings and laid the sleeping guard on the floor, stretching out his limbs.
His pace was quicker as he bounded down the corridor, the emerald wallpaper creating an illusion of running through the jungle. He raised his radio’s transceiver in his palm, debating how much of a stir he should cause. Calling for backup would be the sensible thing to do for an officer in his position, but he was hesitant to trigger a manhunt if he had a chance of defusing the situation himself.
As the note stated, perhaps Sebastien just wanted to talk. They had something special, didn’t they?
Caught between his head and his heart, he lowered the transceiver with a reluctant jerk of the arm.
Adriatic Deck was an intoxicating swirl of lights and laughter as Nikos marched through the crowds of guests dressed in their finest. After all, it was the premiere of the new show in the Odeon that night. He weaved past tuxedoed servers carrying silver trays and musicians infusing the air with the sounds of strings and cymbals. They looked at him as though they knew exactly where he was headed.
Nikos caught the eye of the boyish photographer with the blond hair who had replaced Sebastien. He looked like he was playing dress-up in his suit, the camera held firmly in his hands.
The constant commotion of the casino assaulted Nikos’s ears. Cheers erupted from the craps table as a woman in a tight pink dress and feathery hat celebrated a lucky roll. Moans came from the next table as a man in a brown suit got snake eyes.
He released a heavy breath as he came out the other side. The bank of elevators between the casino and the entrance to the Odeon was relatively quiet, the noise absorbed by the plush carpet and wood-panelled walls.
A bell chimed softly as a set of bronze doors opened. He stepped inside beside an elderly woman with a sweet face and expensive taste. She turned to him and smiled, revealing more gum than teeth. His lips curved upward reflexively.
His body was as inanimate as stone while the elevator shot upward. The same bell chimed when it reached Riviera Deck. “Good evening,” he said to the lady before darting out of the confined space.
The seafoam carpet and atmospheric lighting were soothing, but his muscles were tight as he crept toward the double doors at the end of the hall. These doors once led to his sanctuary, the only place in the world he could be himself.
You can choose to be honest with yourself.
He cringed, Sebastien’s words streaming through his memory.
Instead of hiding behind locked doors and hidden rooms.
He was right. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to heed the advice.
The skeleton key was pressed between his fingertips while he hesitated outside the door. With a deep, calming breath, he pushed his way into the room.
The House of the Heel was warm and still. Light em
anated from the tinted glass along the curved walls. The flowing white sheets that covered the furniture appeared undisturbed from the last time he was here. He pictured the scene, Sebastien pinned beneath him with surrender in the green pools of his eyes, and shuddered. The shattered fragments of the vase were still strewn across the floor.
His eyes landed on something unusual, and his body went cold. In the middle of the room was a chair covered in a white cloth. A sheet of paper lay there with a handwritten message.
IT WAS YOU ALL ALONG
Next to the note was a tablet propped against the back of the chair. A forty-second video played in a continuous loop. Nikos’s face could be seen clearly. In the foreground was the back of a man’s head, but he could tell by the firm waves of hair that it was Kostas.
Nikos knew exactly how the footage had been captured. He’d noticed the conspicuous silver frame on the shelf in Kostas’s office the previous week. It boasted a portrait of the Kourakis family standing in front of the atrium. “It was a gift,” Kostas said when asked, “from that young photographer, Mr. Goh.” It had made Nikos uneasy. He remembered Sebastien holding the frame in his hands when they walked to the office together, but he would never have guessed there was a camera hidden inside. Now he knew the purpose this gift was meant to serve.
Nikos found it difficult to recognize himself in the video. The face he saw was beautiful but empty. Even as the Greek words blew past his lips, giving up Sebastien as the leader of the rebellion, knowing he’d be banished from the ship, Nikos detected no emotion in his own voice. It was flat, factual. The only hint of what was brewing behind the tightly controlled exterior were his eyes. There was regret etched into the amber.
“Put up your hands, Nikos.” The voice from behind was sharp like a spear. “Turn around slowly.”
He did as he was told. Standing by the door was the sandy-haired fitness trainer with a grave look on his face. He was accompanied by six men from the crew dressed entirely in black. They were armed with stun guns.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” Ilya said, “so listen carefully.”
The warmly lit halls leading into the Odeon were packed with guests eager to find their seats inside. The premiere of a new show was a glamorous event even by the Glacier’s standards. It was also the perfect finale for the two-week Mediterranean sailing from Athens. It promised one last night of excitement before the final destination — the ritzy French seaside town of Cannes — where these guests would disembark to make room for a fresh set of vacationers.
The ebullience had diminished in Kostas’s manner when Nikos pardoned himself at dinner an hour earlier. There had obviously been something troubling the young man. Kostas had tried calling, but there was no answer.
Alexis held him stiffly by the arm as they followed the river of people slowly passing through the doors of the theatre.
“I heard there’s magic in this show,” Kristo said.
The boy had been withdrawn after the vandalism of their suite, but smiles were beginning to come more easily to him again. Alexis was relieved that her son was returning to his normal self, but she couldn’t shake the ominous feeling that had settled in her bones. She’d discovered a new poem in her son’s notebook a few days earlier. It was about a man possessed by anger. He had wild hair and green eyes. The last line had sent a cold ripple of static over her skin: “I am the man and the man is me.”
“There will even be aerialists who fly over the stage,” Alexis said with a smile, her hand clamped around his.
Beside the entrance was a large poster framed by the kinds of lights you’d see on a marquee. A man and woman dressed in sexualized versions of Grecian attire were trapped inside what looked like a giant snow globe. The woman’s dress billowed in the bitter wind that swirled around them while the golden belt of the man’s tunic was frosted with ice. The poster promised a “spectacle of ancient legend and modern magic” above the show’s name: Odyssey of Ice.
Kostas grunted with disapproval. He wondered how a show in such poor taste had been cleared for performance. “This should be interesting,” he said with an artificial smile.
Giorgos trailed behind the Kourakis family as they made their way down the aisle of the theatre. Their seats were in the exclusive box reserved for commanding officers and their families, a raised platform in the back of the orchestra level’s centre section that could fit twenty-four. Behind their seats was the mezzanine where Sebastien and Kostas had first seen each other during the captain’s cocktail party. The encounter felt buried in the past when in reality it was little more than a month ago. Tonight, the mezzanine was dark and empty.
The sweeping balcony hovered above them, evening gowns and dinner jackets obscuring the rich turquoise colour of the seats.
A hush spread through the audience as the lights dimmed. Little Kristo sat upright on the edge of his seat. The silence was heavy. Strings began to play, quietly at first, a gentle melody that eased its way into the darkness of the theatre. Then the horns countered with blasts of urgency. Soon the symphonic sounds filled the cavernous space.
Without warning, the black curtains parted from the middle of the stage like two lovers pulled away by opposing swells in the ocean. The show had begun.
TWENTY-TWO
Finale
Thunder rumbled from within the orchestra pit until the Odeon was engulfed by the storm. Flowing sheets of blue satin created turbulent waves across the stage underneath an angry sky. The figurehead of a wooden ship pierced the fog, a bronze sculpture of the goddess Athena, protector of Odysseus. Her bare breasts were thrust forward as the ship rocked amid the waves while her hair was cast behind her in golden zephyrs.
A metallic clang announced a bolt of lightning. The entire stage flooded with blinding light. Applause rippled through the audience while the brightness died to reveal that the stormy sea had vanished. In its place were the terraces and turrets of a palace. The stone walls and pillars were tinted blue, covered by a glaze similar to that on the statues that stood in the halls of the Glacier. The backdrop didn’t depict the sun-bleached cliffs and sparkling waters of the Aegean Sea but a frozen valley surrounded by mountainous crags of ice.
A young man with ashen hair coiled beneath a crown of white laurels appeared on the stage with a striking woman in an elaborate gown. They were Telemachus and Penelope, the noble son and devoted wife of Odysseus. Their voices flew above the rows of turquoise seats. The song conveyed their longing to be reunited with the man who had abandoned them to chase glory across the sea. Ten long years had passed while mother and son waited. The Trojan War had finally come to an end, but they couldn’t be certain that Odysseus would return to them one day. Still, their love never waned, even if their hope did.
High above stage level, behind the last rows of the balcony, Diya paced across the black floor of the Odeon’s control booth. The wide panel of dials and screens commanded the lights, sounds, and effects of the production playing out on the stage below.
“You’re sure everything is ready?” There was an edge to her voice.
“Everything is set,” said one of the technicians seated in front of the panel, a bearded Swede named Jonas. “You have nothing to worry about, my dear.”
“I’m not your dear.”
He laughed. “I know. Wishful thoughts escaped my mouth.”
A faint smile pulled at her lips as she shook her head, her curly black hair tied back in a serpent-like braid. “We can’t afford to have anything go wrong.”
The Swede swivelled in his chair to face her. “I can tell you this, Ms. Sharma. We will not let you down. Isn’t that right, boys?”
The two other technicians raised their fists in the air.
“We are all powerless,” Jonas said, “just like you.”
Far below the control booth, in the commanding officers’ box on the orchestra level, Kostas squirmed in his seat. His family sat motionless, engrossed in the show unfolding before them, but he found it difficult to stay in one positio
n for long. Inertia was his enemy. He was designed to move.
The first act was better than he’d anticipated. He didn’t see the need for all the frivolous magic and fake snow, but so far nothing had been overtly offensive.
The stage by now was transformed into a frozen cave on the island of Aeaea. Giant icicles hung from the rafters above. The minimally clothed man and woman from the show’s poster held each other — the hero Odysseus and the tantalizing sorceress Circe. Her long bronzed legs slipped through the generous slit in her gown while she sang a seductive song to the weak-willed man. A delighted murmur drifted from the audience as a massive snow globe rose from beneath the stage through wisps of fog.
With a sweep of the arm, Circe tore the white gown from her body to reveal golden armour that resembled metallic lingerie. She whipped the fabric above their heads. It drifted to the ground, and they were gone.
A flash illuminated the icy cave. Both Circe and Odysseus were suddenly inside the snow globe. Flecks of white swirled around them as their hands caressed each other’s bodies. The music from the orchestra intensified, its crescendo gathering momentum for the inevitable climax. Circe tossed her head back in ecstasy as the snow obliterated their bodies. The white particles fell to the bottom of the globe as the music died. Odysseus and Circe had vanished.
Applause erupted throughout the Odeon. Kostas’s clapping hands froze when he noticed someone new had appeared onstage. He squinted, uncertain of what he was seeing. Kristo made a choking sound beside him. He turned and saw his son was shaking. There was fear in his eyes.
The man on stage was the young photographer with the tangled hair and hateful eyes. The man whom Nikos exposed as the leader of the rebellion. The man who attacked his family, who destroyed his wife’s cabin in a disturbing display of rage. The man he evicted from the Glacier four days earlier in Palermo.
The Rebellious Tide Page 24