by Glenn Roug
trying to sleep so long as I was in that room, where this phone had rang. I knew I had become paranoid, but I resented the definition. It is one thing to fear that little green men are watching you or that the VC is after you right here in 21st century America, but when someone puts you on a hit list and kills everyone else on that list, you at least have the right to feel unsafe anywhere without being labeled a paranoid.
And so I got up and packed my things and checked out and took a cab to the airport. It may not feel comfortable sleeping on a chair where there was a constant hum and chatter and the sound of footsteps, but there were no phones there to disturb me and no debilitating sense of loneliness, no apprehension that the only people I might meet would be the ones who were planning to kill me. I found a bench comprising of six chairs held together by a metal frame, overlooking a parking lot. I put my bag on one of the chairs and lay on the other five. Sleep was still hard to come by, and served in small doses. But I found it considerably better to wake up in a bustling public place than in an empty hotel room that someone had called by mistake.
Not being able to nap at the airport ensured a good sleep on the plane, and the flight seemed shorter than it actually was. Again they let me through with no problems. No one said a word when I arrived in Heraklion, either. The experience was refreshingly uneventful. Heraklion looked beautiful; lots of small whitewashed houses and majestic mountains in the background, and the deep blue of the Mediterranean sea to one side. There was not a cloud in the sky. The place had a relaxing effect on me, as if I had just arrived on a carefree vacation. I had an overwhelming desire to go to the beach and forget about the world. I fought it. I had important things to do. But the relaxing effect was not wasted, because now I had a calming thought that maybe, if no one ever cracked the case, I would just stay here with my false ID. I would open a shop with the remainder of my money. I would sell antique coins and vases to tourists like me. Maybe some of them would try to sell me forgotten artifacts they had found nearby, and I'd pretend they were worthless and get them for next to nothing and then write a paper about them and publish it. It was one of these spontaneous day dreams that you do not really believe in but that gets you through the day. Some may say it is childish, but I think such things are crucial to keeping your sanity. All I knew was that last night I was a bundle of nerves and now I felt like a newborn baby.
I exchanged some dollars for Euros and then took a cab to the city of Mires, in the Messara Valley, not far from the cave. That place did not lack in beauty, either — another city of small whitewashed houses, much smaller than Heraklion and nestled within a tapestry of deep green farms and olive plantations, shut in by a row of mountains on either side of the plain. There was a smell of herbs in the air, and fertilizer and, I thought, also of figs. I liked the city before I set foot in it. I asked the driver to recommend an inexpensive motel and he brought me to a small inn with white walls and brown window shades and an outdoors sitting area covered by a wooden awning. There were many flower pots in front of the entrance, replicas of ancient reddish vases. The room had a simple wooden desk and chairs, and two very narrow beds. I was concerned that I would fall off if I were to try to roll onto my side. The room was well lit and a little too warm. For forty dollars a night, I could not ask for more.
I took a walk through the town. There was a market nearby, with lots of stands and even more tourists. In fact, few of the people I had seen in Mires were local. It made me feel safe not to stick out too much: no one paid any attention to me. I bought some fruit and peanuts — I don't know why as I usually hate peanuts but here they smelled good — and a few other things I needed for my plan, and then went back to the inn with two bags. I could not waste any more time on touristy pursuits. I had a mission. I sat down on the bed and began to think. I felt safe enough to think out loud.
The first thing I needed to do was change my appearance as much as I could without the aid of a plastic surgeon. They may not be waiting for me by the cave anymore now that I told K I was staying in Tennessee, and they did not know that I was in Crete, but I did not want to take any chances. Someone might still be stationed there to make sure nosey visitors would not be allowed to enter. If these guards had a picture of me, I had to make sure it would prove useless.
I had no makeup skills, and so knew that transforming myself into someone else would not be easy. But that was one of the reasons I went to the market earlier. I thought I would get some ideas looking at goods I had never been interested in before. I took out a silly mask I had bought there out of the bag. It was a grotesque devil-like face with rosy cheeks and horns. I did not buy if for these things but for the goatee. Rather than being just painted on the mask, the goatee was synthetic hair that was glued on to give it a 3D effect. I took a pair of nail cutters and carefully removed the goatee from the mask, hair by hair. I then glued it to my own face with an all-purpose cement. It held nicely so long as I did not twist my mouth too much.
Next I took out a ping-pong ball from the bag. I cut it in two and put both halves inside my mouth so that they pushed against my cheeks. It rounded up my face a little. The ball edges cut against my gums. I took them out and lined the cut edges with used chewing gum. Then it became more comfortable to hold them in my mouth. I put sunglasses on after this and a bright baseball cap and peeked at the mirror. I looked a little less like me now, but not enough.
I was too thin. I needed to look more paunchy. They would not expect this. I left the room and began to collect magazines from the lobby. When I returned I tore away the pages and crumpled them up individually and shoved them under my shirt. They gave me a weird figure with many bulges, but eventually I managed to work them into a reasonably smooth shape. Now I had a large beer belly. My own shirt and pants barely fit, but as I had lost weight over the past two weeks, they could still contain me.
Nationality was another identifier I wanted to work on. They were waiting for an American. The cap I had on, even with the French flag it bore, still looked hopelessly American. It occurred to me that any baseball-like cap would look American. I needed something else. I stepped out of the inn and into the outside sitting areas. Three groups of people were sitting there. Two looked like tourists, but the third comprised of two old men and a young couple. The old men were dressed too shabbily to be tourists, and they spoke Greek. It was clear to me that they came to visit the young couple, who were staying at the inn. One of the old men was wearing a black fisherman cap. It was worn and dull colored.
I approached the man. "Excuse me. Do you speak English?" I was happy to discover that speaking while holding two half ping-pong balls in my mouth slowed my speech and made me sound older.
The man had a puzzled expression on his face. He did not reply. The young woman translated for him. She had a slight Greek accent but spoke English fluently. "My uncle doesn't speak English. How can I help you?"
"Please tell him I'd like to buy his cap from him."
She looked at me funny, but translated the request. The old man did not seem as surprised as she was. It could be that he thought me a curious tourist desperate to come back home with an authentic souvenir rather than a commercial trinket. He raised five fingers and said something.
"Fifty Euros," the woman translated.
I paid without argument. The man seemed disappointed in himself for not asking for more, but took off the cap and gave it to me nonetheless. I went back to the room to look at the mirror. As I was walking I became aware that the magazine pages underneath my shirt were rustling. I slowed down and the noise was muffled. This gave me an idea. Changing my appearance meant more than changing my physical features. I also had to change the way I moved. I adopted a stoop and a limp and held my jaw unsteadily as if I were looking for a piece of chicken that was lost between my teeth. These things made me look much older. I practiced in front of the mirror and grew more confident in my ability to go unrecognized.
I took with me a small bag with a few energy bars and water and a flashlight and some tools, and
called a cab. "Where to?" the cabbie asked.
I got in. "To the Labyrinth Cave."
He seemed puzzled. "Where?"
"The Labyrinth of the Minotaur."
"Ah, Gortynus Cave. No good go there. Closed."
"I know. I still want to see it. From the outside I mean."
"Not allowed tell where entrance. They say tourist go there no good for them. All people go there no good for them." He brought his hands up above his head and then crashed them down on it symbolically. "Fall. Stone fall."
"I know. I won't go in. I just want to see the entrance and the view from there."
He did not believe me, and made a defensive gesture. "Not allowed tell where entrance. Prefecture say to us no. Tourist die bad newspaper story. Bad newspaper story tourist no come."
I took out a one hundred Euro bill. "I'm not asking you to disobey the prefecture. Suppose I know where it is? Suppose you go there but I'll be the one to tell you exactly where to stop?"
"How you know?"
"You will cough when we've passed it."
He laughed, then took the bill off my hand and hit the gas pedal.
The ride was not long. The view did not change much — green plantations with