“It beats a sharp stick in the eye.”
“Maybe, but not by much.”
l l l l l
On his way to the kitchen, Aryan caught Malik’s wife sitting alone by the fire in the family room staring at the flames.
“A bit chilly tonight.”
The woman jumped.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Her eyes watched him as if he were a wild dog threatening to attack.
“We really haven’t had the chance to properly meet, what with all the excitement surrounding our initial meeting.” He stepped forward extending his hand toward her.
She pulled back in her chair, clutching her hands tightly across her stomach, and staring at his outstretched hand.
He stopped a pace in front of her. “I understand why you are afraid of me. It’s only natural. And, of course, you should be.” He let his hand fall to his side. “But we can still be civil to one other.” He dropped into a crouch, bringing his eyes level with hers. “After all, who better than I to appreciate how you dread the violence surrounding your life…the distractions you create in your mind to justify all of this,” he waved a hand about the room, “and your constant fear at losing your never-ending battle to protect your children from learning the truth about their father.”
She looked away, and he knew he had her.
He lowered his voice but kept his distance. “You carry a great burden as the lone protector of your children’s innocence, fearing every day that they’ll learn about the suffering exploited by your husband, the pain inflicted by him, the children who die at his hands to support your family’s lifestyle…” Aryan’s voice trailed off. “How often do you wish for a better life for your children, the life you once dreamed of for yourself?”
He stood. “We’re not that different from one another. I made choices long ago, and now I regret how I must live my life. But, like you, I had little choice, coming from the desperate background that I did. You and I must live with our choices. I just hope that your children don’t have to live with yours. Or, better yet, that you find a way to bring your life and your children’s closer to your dreams.”
He extended his hand. “I’m…Ari.”
She stared at his hand, inches from her face, then at his eyes.
“Deema. My name is Deema.” She did not take his hand.
l l l l l
Yianni’s drive northwest of Athens to the modern village of Delphi took just over two hours. A further twenty-minute descent along the limestone slopes of Mount Parnassus brought him to the heart the Amfissa-Chrisso-Itea Valley. Tens of thousands of hundred-year-old olive trees spread out in rows across broad expanses of this flat fertile triangle, stretching from the Gulf of Corinth’s harbor town of Itea, northwest to the town of Amfissa, and northeast to the picture-perfect village of Chrisso. Here grew the finest olives in the region.
Here, too, Kharon made his home and ran his olive business in quiet, agrarian anonymity. A life far different from what one might expect of a man still feared as one of Europe’s most subtle, efficient, and highly paid assassins.
How all this had come to pass, Yianni did not know, but the ingredients of Kharon’s life were well known: orphaned on the day he was born, raised on life lessons taught in government orphanages for the unwanted children of the damned and the poor, branded by the media a savage killer at thirteen for defending younger boys from rape, and trained as a military killing machine at eighteen. Now, anonymity and a life at peace with the land were all Kharon desired.
Or so Yianni hoped.
Yianni had left Athens a half hour or so after dawn. By ten a.m., he found what he was looking for. He parked his unmarked police cruiser at the edge of a patch of dirt and gravel directly across from the front door to an olive press facility of weather-beaten stucco and old stone. Growers in the valley came here to convert their olives into oil but, as harvest season had just passed, the lot sat deserted except for a dusty, vintage BMW motorcycle parked next to the front door.
This was Kharon’s place of business, and Yianni gambled on it being a less threatening spot to confront him than his home. Yianni sat in the cruiser facing the windows along the first floor of the building. He made no effort to get out or do anything but sit. Fifteen minutes into his wait, the front door to the building swung open and a man he’d met only once stood in the doorway, gesturing for him to come inside.
Yianni swallowed hard, opened the car door, and stepped out. He felt the gravel crunch beneath his feet as his mind went blank, and he wondered why in the world he’d thought this a good idea.
“Welcome, Officer. Long time no see.”
He remembers me. Yianni cleared his throat. Suck it up, Kouros.
He extended his right hand as he approached Kharon. “It’s detective, and I never had the chance to thank you for that pass you gave me in Thessaloniki.”
The tall, well-built man hesitated slightly before shaking Yianni’s hand. He had a few years of age and a full head of dark hair over Yianni. “Now that we’ve cleared the decks of any pretenses over whom we know each other to be, perhaps you could tell me what you’re doing here.”
Kharon closed the front door and pointed Yianni toward two chairs next to a battered wooden table close by the windows. “I can make us some coffee if you’d like.”
“Thank you, but no need to trouble yourself.” Yianni turned his back to Kharon and walked toward the table.
“I like your style. Suggesting that you trust me by showing me your back.”
“Why shouldn’t I trust you?” said Yianni, turning to face him as he sat on one of the chairs.
Kharon sat on the other. His eyes suggested a smile, but not his face. “Oh, I don’t know, but there must be some reason. I couldn’t help but notice how you kept an eye on me in the reflection in the window.”
Yianni smiled. “Force of habit.”
“Military?”
“DYK.”
Kharon nodded. “Greece’s special ops brotherhood equivalent to America’s Navy SEALs. I assume you already know my background.”
Yianni nodded. “Impressive.”
“So, why are you here?”
“I think what’s likely most important to you is why I’m not here. I’m not here for anything that has to do with you. You are completely off our radar. Your past is your past. We don’t care about it.”
“That’s hard for me to believe in light of one incontrovertible fact.”
“Which is?”
“You’re here because of my past.”
“I think when you hear why I’m here you’ll understand what I just said is true. This has nothing to do with you.”
Kharon shrugged.
“We need your help with a name. Nothing more. If you can give it to me, great. If you can’t, we’re no worse off than we were before. I’m here unofficially. No one else knows. Whether you can help or not, I’ll be out of here and you’ll never hear from me again.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket and laid it on the table. “Unless you want to reach me.”
“What, no threats of tax or employee benefit audits? Of letting the world know who I am?” Kharon’s voice had taken on a slight edge.
“Like I said. Period, end of story. I’m here because we need the name of a very bad guy. Just how bad I don’t have to say, because if you know him, I’m sure you won’t need any convincing from me.”
“Are you wearing a wire?”
“No. And I’m not taking notes. All I’m hoping for is an ID.”
Kharon stared at Yianni’s eyes. “Show me what you have.”
Yianni slowly pulled a folded photo out of his inside jacket pocket, opened it, and laid it on the table between them.
Kharon stared at the photo. “You took this off a CCTV?”
“Yes.”
Kharon star
ed at it a bit longer. Without looking up he said, “How many children did he kill?”
Yianni felt goosebumps run up the back of his neck. “He sacrificed a baby.”
Kharon turned his head toward a window looking out upon the olive trees. “Is he tied into that Greek family murdered in Turkey?”
Yianni nodded. “We think so.”
“The Turkish police must be moving heaven and earth to find their assassin.”
“We hope so.”
Kharon jerked his head back from the window and fixed a dead cold glare on Yianni’s eyes. “And what about the Greek police. Are you doing the same?”
Yianni felt his stomach tighten. “I don’t follow. I meant it when I said this isn’t about you.”
“You understand me perfectly. This is not about a dead Greek family in Turkey, and it’s not you I’m concerned about. It’s all the other cops, on both sides of the Aegean, stumbling about looking for assassins. Who knows who they might unearth in the process?”
“I can assure you—”
Kharon held up his hand to stop him. “He goes by the name Aryan, but he’s Swiss. Deadly with firearms and hand-to-hand, though he prefers to work with edged weapons. He considers them his trademark. If you ask me, his real trademark is his arrogance. It’s also his primary weakness.”
“Any idea where he lives?”
“No. But he’s in his late-thirties, usually works as a mercenary in conflicts where atrocities are tolerated, even encouraged. He thrives on that, driven by some sort of bloodlust. He and I never saw eye-to-eye on his methods. There’s no love lost between us.” Kharon leaned back in his chair. “If you’re here because of some new assassination he pulled off, let’s say, for example, using a sword on an old man living on a Greek island off the Turkish coast, then I’d say he’s branching out into new territory.”
Yianni blinked. “Why would he be doing that?”
“Perhaps he’s looking to retire. Trying to find himself an easier gig than facing death every day.” His eyes seemed to twinkle for an instant. “Like pressing olives.”
Yianni wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he just nodded.
Kharon continued. “This guy is so twisted it’s hard to imagine him walking away from the rush he gets taking lives. He might just be looking for a somewhat more controlled environment to operate in than a war zone. Too many chances to die in war.”
“What sort of controlled environment?”
Kharon looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, I don’t know, possibly something simpler.” His gaze returned to Yianni. “Like refugee trafficking. After all, those victims don’t shoot back.”
“Do you have a real name for him?”
“Last name Kennel, as in dog. First name Alban or Adrian or something similar. I don’t recall.”
Yianni stood, and extended his hand. “Thank you. I owe you.”
Kharon rose and shook it. “Twice.”
l l l l l
He has guts, thought Kharon as he watched through the windows at Yianni driving away. He knew where to find me. If he’d wanted to arrest me or bust my balls he could have done it without coming at me face-to-face. He looked down at Yianni’s card on the table. This cop’s not the problem. It’s the ones that Swiss madman will attract that worry me.
His eyes moved onto the photo of Aryan that Yianni had left on the table. I’ve spent a lifetime surrounded by crazies. But this one’s a megalomaniac obsessed with killing as the solution to any problem. He sees atrocities as a sign of his absolute power. And now he’s moved into my neighborhood.
That’s not good. Not good at all.
l l l l l
“It’s Yianni,” yelled Maggie through the open door.
Andreas picked up the phone. “How did it go?”
“I’m still breathing.” Yianni told him the details of his meeting with Kharon.
“Do you think he’ll warn Aryan that we’re on to him?”
“I don’t think so. He had no reason to tell me what he did. And he clearly didn’t like this Kennel guy at all.”
“What you say makes sense, but who knows what sort of thinking motivates these kinds of guys?”
“That’s why I got out of there as soon as I could. Calm, cool, logical-sounding killer types all have way too many parts missing.”
“And a lot of what remains is seriously defective.”
“But from the way he reacted to that photo, I’d say he considers Kennel a different species. One he wants us to catch.”
“That’s reassuring,” said Andreas. “We’ve got one of the world’s top assassins considering the guy we’re after sick and twisted.”
Yianni grunted agreement.
“As for Kharon’s motive, I’d say he’s given us that. Whenever cops are searching for a professional assassin in Greece, Kharon retired or not, is a potential target. This isn’t about any altruistic desire on his part to better society. It’s all tied into Kharon’s primal instinct for self-preservation. He wants us to find Kennel in order to take the heat off himself.”
“Either way, we’ve got an ID.”
“I’ll get Maggie working on Mister Kennel. If Kharon’s right about Kennel working his way into the refugee trade, I think we’re going to see a lot more bodies turning up, of both good guys and bad.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I don’t know. I just feel it. Perhaps I’ll have a better idea after I see what Maggie comes up with.”
“And if not?”
“We’ll just have to wait and see what Kennel does next.”
“If he returns to Greece, we can arrest him at the border,” said Yianni.
“For what? Having his photo taken at a crime scene in Turkey? We have no reason to hold him, and every reason not to alert him that we’re onto him. If we’re lucky enough to catch him entering Greece, let’s just hope it’s someplace where we have people who can follow him.”
“Good luck on that in these days of budget cuts.”
“I’m more concerned with sword cuts.”
Chapter Eleven
Malik’s home sat inland, above an agrarian landscape that drew no crowds for its beauty. For scenery, you wandered down by the sea. Here, you came to work the land, to earn a living off it, to survive. Aryan chose to avoid it all. The outdoors made him too convenient a target for a sniper.
He remained inside the house biding his time, waiting for the opportunity he knew would come to make his move on the right people, and drawing Deema into conversations she’d never dare have with him in public.
Their first conversation lasted close to an hour, in hushed tones, as the children played videogames in their playroom. She told him how her parents immigrated to this area from the north when she was three and her brother, Jamal, nine. Her parents never spoke of why they’d moved, or of any of the family they’d left behind. She asked them once, and their reply was sharp and immediate: they had no life before the one they now lived, and she should always look forward, never back.
Aryan said each of his parents had been the only child of couples who’d fled Germany to Switzerland at the end of World War II and, as with Deema’s family, neither his parents nor grandparents talked about their pasts. Aryan had no siblings, and not until his parents died in an automobile accident when he was seventeen did he have even an inkling of his family’s past. That’s when he learned he was heir to a vast fortune of artwork and gems, but of a sort he could not sell, except to special buyers who cared not for their provenance and paid only pennies on the dollar of their value.
He told Deema that she should be happy not knowing what her parents had kept from her, for once he realized his roots ran deep into a brutal Nazi past, his anger at the lies on which he’d been raised drove him nearly mad. He fled his fortune in search of wars to fight, wars where he could hopefully die fighting bravely for a
just cause.
But he survived and only grew angrier each time he dodged death. He took greater chances, acted more brutally to draw retaliation, and gave up caring on which side he fought, as long as it promised the risk of dying in battle.
He paused at that point in his story to catch Deema’s eyes. “That’s when I realized I’d become more brutal than the worst of what I’d imagined of my own family’s shameful past, and yet I felt strangely at peace. I’d found an answer offering me redemption: Our world runs on no single moral code of right and wrong. Only survival matters. You do what you must to protect your family, yourself.”
He could tell his words were reaching her. He’d worked hard at telling his story, watching her eyes and measuring her breathing as he did, and in the process, almost believing it all himself.
l l l l l
Dana picked what she thought a dramatic venue for her press conference, then began wondering whether she’d be arrested. Arrests of international aid workers in Western countries had once attracted media attention, but with all the terrorist attacks these days, and her nation’s wildly tweeting President, it took a hell of a story to break in on the news cycle, and a simple arrest wouldn’t likely cut it.
But who knew? Perhaps one of Greece’s National Inquirer clones would run a “Refugee Aid Worker Pleads for Her Murdering Man” sort of story, though that wasn’t the angle she was hoping for. No, she needed serious attention. Which was why she picked the front entrance to the Mytilini police station.
She’d teased the press conference with the various news services by announcing a “major international development in the Mihalis Volandes murder case,” and kept interest building into the early afternoon by responding to all requests pressing her for a hint of what she’d be saying with the comment, “For the safety of my staff and myself, we can only reveal details in the presence of the police.”
An Aegean April Page 13