“It wasn’t anything you said. Or maybe everything you didn’t say. I’ve run into men like you before. Living behind a shroud of secrecy. Either very rich or very cautious or both. They’ve learnt a thing or two about disappearing. Some, I suspect, are psychos or sociopaths. Others, professional crooks. I am leery by nature. And I don’t involve myself in other people’s business. I take them at face value, the total of their assets, no more and no less.” She tilted her head like a bird listens for sounds. “But I’ve taken an interest in you. You don’t fit the paradigm. You’re not sleazy or oily or flattering. I still do business with those kinds of men, mind. It costs me nothing. But you? I can’t fit you into a box. Except to say, irrespective of your obvious troubles, you seem adrift. Having said that ....” She lifted her glass. “Shall we drink on it? I’ll handle your financial affairs in complete confidentiality while you go about your business, wherever they may take you.”
He met her glass with his, both taking the moment to study each other.
“Now that our business has concluded on a happy note, we can sit back and enjoy.”
They shared the meal by candlelight. Fresh seafood captured that very day, skipjack for her and yellowfin for him. Fried rice marinated with coconut and cassava on the side. Crusty baked bread straight from the oven. Lettuce greens and tomatoes lightly sprinkled with a tasty vinaigrette and croutons. An assortment of cheeses. To round off the feast, a bowl of cubed mango with papaya sherbet. Each course was simple though ample, and more than satisfying. While eating, they wrapped themselves in a cocoon of trivialities and idle talk that became fused with the mutterings of their fellow diners. They finished off the wine and shared pleasantries. She asked after his private life back in the States. He gave her the highlights. Born in Texas. Mother gone. Father gone too, but who the hell knew where. Raised by his aunt and uncle.
“Wife?” she asked. “Kids?”
“None that I know of.”
“Surely you would know if you had a wife.”
He laughed at that, enjoying her company, and the way she went back and forth between dead seriousness and winking levity.
“I come from a very ordinary family. My father is an electrician by trade. My mother, a schoolteacher. Happily married. One brother, one sister. I’m the middle child. Went to school as my parents expected. Earned a degree in finance and accounting. Worked at a bank for a few years. But ....” She shrugged as if her autobiography were nothing special when clearly it was the essence of who she was. “As a little girl, I yearned for adventure. New places. Interesting people. When this job came along, I jumped at the chance. Especially after the divorce. And here I am. No happier, truth be told. But wiser? I plan to stay on. For a few more years, at least. Does that sound crackers? It’s a good life. And I could be strapped with a passel of whiny brats. The married life is for other women. I’m not that sort. And there you have it,” she said on a whimsical sigh. “I don’t know why I’m blabbering on. I usually don’t. I’m very private.”
A breath of sea air blew past their table. The candlelight danced before stilling. Conversation buzzed around them. Diners at a nearby table laughed. The waiter came by with the bill.
Madelyn reached into her satchel. “No, I must,” she said, heading off Jack’s protest. After sending off the waiter with his bounty, she swept up her wine glass, but seeing that it was empty, said, “Oh well ...,” as if it had brought an end to their evening. She propped her chin on a fist and glanced around the room, purposely avoiding his stare. Her ashen hair glowed in the diffused lighting, imparting to her profile an angelic appearance quite different from the indomitable woman who greeted him at the shack. She met his eyes. “I know why you’re running. But who exactly are you running from?”
Caught off guard by her directness, Jack chortled and shook his head.
“Come now. You can tell me.” She cast her eyes around. “It’s only we two here.”
They stared at each other, an impasse that said much with little. He still didn’t trust her, and she him.
Her mobile buzzed. She tore her eyes away and glanced down, reading the text message. She shrugged apologetically. “I regret I have another engagement. Perhaps tomorrow? I’ll give you a call. We can formalize the paperwork then. You can come to the office. Better yet, we can take care of everything in a less formal setting. Would a pleasure cruise suit you? Since you’ll never pass this way again, you may as well enjoy our little island before you go. Did you know Nauru was originally called Pleasant Island?”
She gathered up her shoulder bag, and standing, held out her hand. Instead of the stiff businesslike grip she offered before, her hand was pliable and responsive. He lingered over it, fixing his eyes on hers. In the subdued light of the dining room, they appeared nearly translucent with flecks of green and gold. There were two sides of Madelyn Gibbons, he decided. The standoffish version. And this one ... the welcoming version. He gently let go of her hand.
“Tomorrow then.” She headed out of the dining room, her leave-taking nimble.
Few women could measure up to Madelyn Gibbons, with her off-putting graces and her enigmatic personality. Jack never thought himself a Lothario, a man who could sweep ladies off their feet and take them to bed on a whim. Often, probably too often, he settled for what he could get. Liz Langdon was the exception and the ideal. In many ways, Madelyn and Liz were like each other. Not so much in looks as the way they held themselves, kept him at arm’s length, and challenged him. Their inner selves were programmed to precision, tightly wound with intelligence, aloofness, and a kind of beauty far exceeding most of the silly and giggly girls. A place existed deep down inside each woman, which no man could reach or ever hope to capture in his fist as a prize. Kathy Heathland was also cut of the same cloth.
He wandered into the hotel gaming room. Piped-in island music borrowed heavily from Latin and Caribbean rhythms was nearly drowned out by the clank of slot machines, the din of idle conversation, and the occasional shouts of gamblers at the craps table. Left with his beer and his reminiscences, John Harrier found an isolated table.
In the aloneness of being, he had learned how to enter the comfort of darkness, roam around the dimensions until he found a hidden corner, and celebrate his solitude with forlorn thoughts. Pleasant breezes found him. The sound of waves rolling onto shore in rhythmic cadence was hypnotic, lulling him into complacency. Weeks of shedding an old image, acquiring the trappings of a new one, and becoming a man represented by neither was the convoluted path that brought him to this place at this time. John Harrier was a sham, put together with a nickel-and-dime disguise and a counterfeit mindset. If he believed himself to be John Harrier, then he was left-handed and not right-handed. Muscular instead of lean. Of medium stature rather than tall. Farsighted and not near-sighted. Naïve instead of world-weary. But if he believed for the briefest of moments he really was Jack Coyote, then he must be an imposter living under the guise of child who died years ago, a child whose name was imprinted on his passport. Finally, if he was John Finlay, the boy he had been before his aunt and uncle adopted him, he would have looked at the world through a kaleidoscope of changing colors instead of the blacks and whites of evil and good. Put together, the man sitting on this hard chair at this scratched table was a complicated collage of misaligned shapes and colors. Try as he might, John Harrier could not forget that other man, the one who disappeared on a road leading out of Washington D.C., or indeed, the former prisoner of circumstance and bad judgment who had stared vacantly through his impregnable glass enclosure. He chuckled. In more ways than he cared to count, his current situation was more difficult to escape than solitary confinement.
Strangely, he was relieved Madelyn had found him out. It would make their dealings simpler, absent subterfuge and lying. What she would do with the information, he did not know. He would have to trust her. He had no other choice.
14
Near Nicosia, Cyprus
Monday, August 18
ZANDRA KY
RIACOS DROPPED by the villa unannounced. Nick was lounging poolside, sleeping off the previous night, when he drank too much, howled at the moon, stood on one of the house’s terraces, punched his chest like an ape, and pissed into the pool below.
She squeezed intimately beside him, her intensions sinful and her eyes jealous. She delivered several wicked kisses. Beneath the noonday sun, he feigned boredom. Except there was no denying she was a robust woman with considerable talents and delicious curves. Utterly unapologetic. The kind of woman who had more than enough love to lather onto a troupe of randy men, and plenty of flesh to grab hold of and never want to let go.
He reached his arm around her and drew her close. “Won’t your husband mind?”
“Ex-husband. Or as good as. As if you need reminding. Hell is where he belongs. It would be my pleasure to send him there personally, provided I could get away with it.” Between her sighing decrees, she ran the tips of her fingers along his jaw and left long, deep, wet kisses using her shapely mouth and talented tongue. “A pity that I shall have to let Nature take Her course. We have a darling son away at school. He’s at that impressionable age. You know which age I mean. Twelve, thirteen. Still a boy and not quite a man.” She showered more kisses onto him, deeper and longer and wetter. “Proprieties and rituals must be observed until he reaches maturity.” Caresses in all the right places were delivered with exquisite cruelty, even while she devoured his mouth along with other appendages. “Civility is the mark of a good mother, no?” Extra tortures of the indecent kind left him breathless. “On his twenty-first birthday, I shall tell him what a rotten scoundrel his father is and always has been.”
Nick slapped the butt of this mature and meaty woman. She was a lady without scruples or modesty, her having already disrobed even while applying various agonies to his receptive body.
Her lips came down on him again, but not onto his lips, instead exploring the warm environs of his groin with greedy hunger. Between licks, she said, “Soon he will remarry. His new woman is a bitch who nags him all day. And all night too, I shouldn’t wonder. She is my cousin. It will make for uncomfortable family reunions.”
Huffing and groaning, he managed to get out, “You’re ... making ... me ... uncomfortable.”
“Isn’t that the idea, lover?”
She reached for his hand and dragged him off the lounge chair. They retired into one of the many rooms where the beds were springy and the breezes sent down by wicker fans cooled the heat of their lovemaking.
The purchase of the villa had gone off swiftly and efficiently. The contract was signed, lawyers and agents in attendance. Permission to buy the property had expeditiously been granted by the Council of Ministers. A thorough inspection followed, carried out with alacrity, especially after gratuitous Euros were deposited into grubby outstretched hands. Transfer fees and taxes were duly paid. The deed was signed over without fanfare but with abundant smiles all around. Because he purchased the property in excess of three million Euros, he could apply for Cypriot citizenship if he chose, but since he was already a natural-born citizen of Greece, itself a member of the Eurozone, there was no need. He was a contented man living the life he had always dreamed of. And yet ....
Ah, yes ... and yet. He was constantly looking over his shoulder. Jack Coyote was still missing in action. Recent reports said he had been in Grand Cayman and linked to the murders of two women. Nick would have considered this and all the other stories about Coyote as tabloid sensationalism and internet gossip. Except for one thing. One of the women who died was rumored to be a CIA agent. He confirmed the fact on a closed internet board populated by conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, national terrorists, and political fanatics. Truth will out since the rumors were substantiated by more than one source.
Nick and Zandra consumed each other on the spacious platform bed, cooled off their ardor in the shimmering pool, and took a tandem shower accompanied by rollicking laughter. Then they drove down to the village and celebrated their afternoon debauchery at a small but elegant restaurant, taking their meal on a terraced balcony that afforded a glorious view of the valley below. They ordered every dish with the propinquity of gourmets, leading off with a horiatiki salad of tomatoes, diced cucumber, black olives, onions, peppers, feta, and a light dusting of olive oil. Then they feasted on the main course. For him, charcoal-grilled souvlaki pork kebabs with onions and peppers. For her, vine leaves stuffed with minced meat and rice. And for both, potatoes drenched in basil and oregano. After that came the baklavas, layered with almonds and walnuts, and sprinkled with cinnamon and lemon juice. A bottle of native Maratheftiko wine topped off the delights while the mountain breezes washed over them, bringing along a mixture of scents and flavors they could savor like they were savoring the delights licked from their forks. Greek coffee followed, strong and unfiltered, the aroma satisfying and the taste powerful.
They walked off their meals and wandered among the sidewalk stalls, Zandra examining the many wares and crafts with her usual frowns. Picking over handmade lace, woven curtains, and table cloths. Studying basketry, pottery, and leather goods. Taking an interest in locally crafted jewelry. After fierce dickering, she purchased a sampling of Lefkara lace sold to her by an old woman with several missing teeth. Afterwards she filled her mesh bags with fresh fish and vegetables, dinner for tonight and breakfast for tomorrow. Having had their fill and walked off their meal, they sat on a bench in the central square, shaded by trees and surrounded by forested mountains, deep gorges, and fertile valleys that rose up from the Troödos Mountains. Not saying much, they were content enough to people watch and soak up the clean mountain air.
Eventually Zandra spoke. “Tomorrow and the next day and the next, we can take a drive into the mountains and visit the Byzantine churches. The Royal Tombs. The Agios Irakleidios Monastery at Tamassos. The church of Panagia Forviotissa in Asinou near Nikitari. Not to be missed, that one. Twelfth century. The church of Stavros tou Agiasmati in Platanistassa. The Agios Ioannis Lampadistis in Kalopanayiotis. The Panagia tou Araka Monastery in Lagoudera. And the Machairas Monastery near Lazanias. The mosque in Peristerona. Much to see, but plenty of time. It’s all we have is time, no? All the time in the world,” she said on a heavy sigh.
He looked at her curiously, seeing her in a different way. “I never took you for a religious woman.”
She looked at him severely, almost shocked, probably thinking him a heathen. “Are you not a religious man?”
“My mother wanted me to be.”
“Ah, then you turned your back on your heritage. I can see I have my work cut out.”
“Don’t try to change me.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “It is nothing to me if you go to Hell.”
“Sure, it is.” He nearly smiled, but it would have been a sacrilege. To her and to him.
Above the walkways, manicured lawns, and pruned shrubbery, pigeons swooped and pecked and cooed, hopping from shade tree to shade tree. Nick could have sat here forever, losing himself in the tranquility. Except for one thing. He was always looking over his shoulder, on his guard for a tall, good-looking man with vengeance on his mind.
“Should it be to your liking,” she said after some time had passed, “we can also visit the pagan shrines where the ancients worshipped their gods. On our way back, we can stop for a while and watch the almond and walnut trees grow beneath the sky while making love to the chirping of birds and fluttering of butterfly wings.” To which she winked before remarking, “You are a good lover. Zandra can make you a better one.”
Beads of perspiration formed on her cheeks, imparting youth to a well-used face that had seen younger days. Zandra was past forty. The years were beginning to creep up, particularly in the crags beneath her eyes and the gray strands running through waves of brunette hair.
“You will like our village. Our people. I will introduce you. Mostly the men. I wouldn’t want you to meet any of the women.”
“You’re jealous?”
“When it c
omes to her lover of the moment, any woman with pride is jealous.”
“Is that all I am to you, a lover of the moment?”
“Unless you become long-term. Don’t laugh. It can happen.”
“What about your agency? Don’t you have clients?”
“Who needs clients when I have you? As to that, my clients are few. When they get around to using my services, like you have used mine, the transactions are lucrative enough to support every one of my bad habits.” She elbowed him in the side. “Just so you know, just so you don’t think I’m a loose woman, I do not make a habit of sleeping with my clients. But don’t tell anybody. I like to keep up appearances. An actress’s reputation is all in the staging.” To which she laughed heartily while examining her polished fingernails.
Tourists mingled with villagers. Nick picked out the Americans by their athletic shoes, Bermuda-length shorts, zoom cameras, and pale complexions. Native men wore short sleeves and tan slacks, women cotton dresses, and younger people shorts and midriffs, everybody toasted bronze by heritage and the Mediterranean Sea, moving like flocks of birds, chittering and chattering and casting around animated glances. Several hundred years ago, they were an invaded people, their unwelcome overloads casting shadows on the land. Now they were a carefree people who didn’t give a damn who wanted to carve out their country for their own, even while resenting being divided through the center, Greek Cypriots on one side and Turkish Cypriots on the other, and further divided by the Euro currency and Turkish lira. In the end, the land and the sea were all that mattered. And their history, of course, going back millennia. Who cared who was who, when they were all the same people, intermixed over the generations until now no one really knew where the bloodlines came from, only how they identified themselves. The majority spoke Greek, a few Turkish, others English, French, and German. The dialect of the Greek Cypriots was markedly different from the Greek nationals. Wanting to disappear into the waxworks, Nick was trying to lose his Americanized accent.
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