The Forty Column Castle (11 page)

It was awfully complicated being in law enforcement, I was beginning to find out.
I waltzed into the restaurant with Zach right behind me.

“Table for two?” the waiter asked.

“Please,” said Zach. “How about the booth in the corner?”

“Certainly, sir. This way, please.”

Our table was private, even intimate. White table cloth, white cloth napkins, bud
vase with single, plastic pink rose. We looked out on the parking lot.

“What will you have?” asked Zach.

“A glass of red wine.”

“Anything beside?” He arched an eyebrow.

I could see his eyes again since he had taken off the sunglasses along with the Panama
hat he laid on the seat beside him. I took off the sunglasses but opted for leaving
on the black, floppy hat with wide brim.

“Want to split a bottle wine?”

He shook his head. “I’m driving. I’m having a beer and steak.”

“This is a seafood restaurant.”

“It says here they have porterhouse steak, and I’m having one.”

The waiter came to our table, looking expectant in crisp white shirt and black trousers.
Zach gave him our drink order.

“You know what you want?” Zach said.

“I’ll have fish kebab and chips.”

He gave the order, and the waiter walked away, humming.

The restaurant was noisy and packed with the mid-day lunch crowd, more Cypriot than
tourist. We stood out, but maybe I was being paranoid.

The waiter came back with our drinks. I held my glass up for a toast.

“To a quick end to the smuggling caper.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Zach. We clinked bottle and glass.

He slouched back against the booth and ran a hand through his hair. He looked smooth
and unruffled. His floral shirt gave him a laid back tourist look. I wish I could
feel like he looked.

“You have anybody back home?” Zach asked.

He caught me off guard. I took a sip of wine. “What do you mean?”

“You married?” he asked.

“No.” I snorted, real unladylike, but I couldn’t help it. “After this morning you
think I’m married?”

“Some women don’t make a distinction.”

“I’m not married.” That gave me pause. He might be. “You married?”

“No.”

“Ever?”

“Yep, didn’t work out. A life in law enforcement is hard on marriage. You have anyone
waiting back home for you?” He certainly was being persistent.

“Not anymore,” I said and left it at that.

I looked away. He was trying to figure our relationship and so was I. I wasn’t real
comfortable with the subject, since I hadn’t figured out if this was a pre-jail fling,
vacation dalliance, seduction of Mata Hari, or what. So I changed the subject.

“The men in the Maruti are after you.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“I thought they were after me.”

“No.”

“Are you going to tell me why?”

He looked at me like he was trying to decide what he could and couldn’t say and for
good effect looked over his shoulder and around at the people dining near us. Everyone
jabbered away in Greek as far as I could hear.

“NYPD had a tip that a terrorist cell was forming on Cyprus. It is my job to find
out if that is true. What I saw this morning looks like I might have found it.”

“Do you know who they represent?”

He shrugged. “Not yet. But I will.”

“Where do Max and Irene fit in?”

He blew out a breath, looked out the window into the glare from the parking lot. “They
were in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I’m getting closer to the terrorists,
they’re getting closer to me. They are well-organized, well-funded, and have sophisticated
communications equipment. Cell phones are easily monitored. You don’t see me with
one, do you?”

I shook my head no.

“I make calls from public phones when I need to and only when I need to. Max and Irene
have been at that house for a while. It was a matter of time until someone figured
out who they were. I’m sorry they thought killing Max and Irene would solve anything.
But then these are people that blow themselves up to take a lot of other people with
them. They use airplanes as weapons. They’re insane.”

Our meal arrived on that cheery note. I was once again famished. Along with our entrees
the waiter placed before us a salad of tomatoes, green peppers, black olives and cabbage
drizzled with olive oil and feta cheese.

We spent a few moments in silence as we demolished our food. I sighed in contentment.

“Your kebabs okay?” Zach asked.

“Delicious. How about your steak?”

“Perfect.”

I waded in again. “What about my aunt? You can’t possibly believe she fits into this
terrorist thing, do you?”

“She might have inadvertently wedged herself into the smuggling shoe along with the
terrorists. That’s how they finance a lot of their operations. They’ll smuggle anything
from potsherds to F14s. You wouldn’t believe the smuggling market worldwide. It’s
probably double the size of the legitimate market.”

“That’s incredible. You don’t think my aunt’s in any danger, do you? The terrorists
wouldn’t be interested in an eccentric old lady, would they?”

Zach put down his knife and fork. His eyes met mine.

“Claudie, terrorists don’t stop at eccentric old ladies. They stop at nothing. Your
aunt could be anywhere. This is the first time she came up on my radar screen. I have
to follow any lead that might help me crack this case.”

I looked out the window and pushed my sunglasses back on, not wanting him to see me
tear up. I was surprised myself at my reaction. He still thought of my aunt as a suspect.
I had to prove him wrong. In doing that I’d clear myself of the cloud hovering over
me. I willed myself to calm down and think level headed.

I guess it was good I had a partner like him to help me find her. Unfortunately, he
was into something much deadlier than smuggling a few small statues. I didn’t want
to get involved in terrorism. But by association, I already was. I had to depend on
him whether I trusted him or not.

Our being lovers complicated things a bit, didn’t it?

He touched my finger tips with his. “Hey, I’ll help your aunt, if I possibly can.
I promise. Don’t go crying on me.”

“I’m not crying,” I said, still hiding behind the glasses.

“Yeah, then why is your nose red?” He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket
and handed it to me. It was clean, white and pressed.

I wiped at my nose and eyes. He paid the bill and stood. “C’mon, we’ll try to find
who your aunt was associating with while she was here, including Mr. Bellomo.”

I scooted out of the booth and followed him from the still crowded restaurant, and
thanked the ancient gods for another good meal on Cyprus. I don’t think I had ever
had a bad one.

Zach eased into traffic and headed for old town Pafos where Mrs. Crawford lived, the
same place Yannis and I had visited only two days ago, more like two millennia. I
doubted she would be home. More than likely she would be out with her friends having
lunch and doing the tourist thing. There were tons of Brits on the island. She was
sure to have connections and a multitude of opportunities for socializing.

We decided since I had been there before that I would do the front work. The same
Cypriot woman answered my knock and said no, Mrs. Crawford was with her friends and
no, she didn’t know where that would be, but she would be home later, if I cared to
call again. Would I like to leave a card? I declined since I didn’t have any on me.
I thanked her in my hesitant Greek and tried to tell her I would call again. I hope
I said it correctly. In Greek inflection is everything.

“Where to now?” I asked, back in the car.

“To see if we can catch up with Escort Tours. Maybe Lonnie is having a tour today,
and the widows are with him.”

We wound through old Pafos through narrow streets with brightly painted houses built
smack up against the street to an open-sided store with an Escort Tours sign hanging
off the building. The interior was painted an amazing green. We had missed the tour,
but the old man with grizzled hair and sunken mouth, who served as Lonnie’s assistant
of sorts, said that no English widows were on the tour today. Sorry.

We sat in the car and shared a bottle of water.

“Zach, what about the American couple? Are they living in the house with all the communications
equipment and the blue Maruti?”

“I couldn’t tell, but they’re on the list of people to see.”

“We could go by the dig where they are supposed to be.” After I thought about it,
I said, “But probably they won’t be there. Lonnie said they were dig groupies which
means they’re probably on the beach or sightseeing, since they don’t actually work
the dig. They came on the trip for the tax break.”

We were at a standstill.

“Mind if I call Lena?”

He shook his head in the negative. “Cells phone can be traced and conversations listened
to. Can’t take the chance. The vibrator has been going off all morning so someone
is trying to get through to you.”

“Maybe it’s my aunt. She knows my number. Can’t I at least see the caller ID list?”

He pursed his lips and seemed to consider the request. He wore his NY baseball cap
and dark glasses so I couldn’t read his eyes. He pulled the cell phone out of his
pocket.

“Okay, read the numbers, no calls.”

“Right.”

I studied the numbers. Yannis had called six times. Lena twice. The last number was
an unrecognizable jumble, and I told Zach about it.

“Okay if I listen to the messages?”

He nodded once.

All of Yannis’s calls said to call him, it was urgent. Lena said to call her, it was
urgent. The last caller, in an accent I couldn’t place, said, “Kill the man with you,
if you want to see your aunt again.”

When Zach heard my gasp, he yanked the phone away and played the message. He swore
and said, “That might be our friend in the Maruti.”

I braced my hand on my forehead to still the dizzying spiral in my brain. A level
of fear far beyond anything I ever experienced seared through me, destroying all reason
and logic. My heart beat staccato time. I was falling apart. It was taking everything
I had to hold myself together. Every moment I was sinking deeper and deeper into the
quagmire.

“I want out, Zach. I can’t be a player in this game. People are getting killed and
talking about killing. I want out.”

The Honda inched down the hill from old Pafos toward the harbor area. The street was
narrow. The traffic was picking up. People were heading to the evening openings of
stores and shops after being closed for the mid-day meal. Everything looked so normal.
Zach said nothing. A big lead ball of fear expanded in my belly.

The beautiful Mediterranean Sea sparkled in the distance. Diamonds played across her
surface. I was paralyzed not by her beauty but by fear. Stark, spine numbing fear.
Who were these people who so easily spoke of murder? I did not want to know them.

“You can’t get out now,” said Zach. He spoke in a soft voice but somehow it sounded
sinister, threatening. Fatal.

“Who are you?” I yanked off my sunglasses. “Look at me and tell me who you are.”

He kept on driving, eyes fixed on the road.

“Tell me who you are.” I screamed, hurling all my anger, frustration, and fear into
the scream. “Tell me the truth.”

We were back out on the main drag through Pafos. He pulled over to the sidewalk, cut
the engine and turned to face me. He took off his sunglasses and met my frantic, teary,
terrified gaze. He didn’t try to touch me and spoke without anger, without any kind
of emotion. “I can’t share what I know with you. If you know and they get to you,
it might put you in a more danger. I might endanger a lot more people than just you,
me and your aunt. I could ask you to trust me, but I know you can’t. All I can say
is that I’ll help you.”

I searched his eyes, those deep brown eyes that hid a thousand secrets. “I am terrified.
Don’t you understand? I am terrified.”

He nodded. “I know, but this is more than you and me.”

“I’m afraid they’re going to kill my aunt. They want me to kill you. Don’t you understand?”

Zach blew out a breath and shoved his baseball hat back on his head. “That’s what
they want. They want you to be terrified, to make irrational decisions, to run scared.
It might be an idle threat. It’s designed to frighten you, and it did. These are terrorists,
remember. They create terror to paralyze us all, and they’re doing a good job of it.”

I kept searching his eyes, kept looking for answers.

“They know we’re together,” I said. “They know what we are doing. I keep watching
my back, like any moment someone will jump out with a gun and do something awful.
Do you understand what I have been through in the last two days? You might be used
to murder and cloak and dagger stuff, but I’m not. Please believe me. My aunt and
I are not criminals. We are not thieves.”

My voice hit high, piercing decibels. I bit my lip to try to get a grip. I was loosing
it, and he was right. I wasn’t holding up well.

He looked away and seemed to study the street. Then he did that funny little thing
again. He turned back toward me, reached out and cupped my neck with his warm hand
and caressed my cheek with his thumb.

“Claudie, I want to believe you. I’ll protect you as best I can. Try not to let them
get to your mind. Now I’ve got to make a call.”

He pulled away from the curb. “There’s a public phone around the block. I’m going
to park on the side street and make the call. After that you can call Yannis on that
phone and have him call Lena and tell her you are okay, that we’re trying to find
your aunt. He’s the only one you will stay in contact with and the call cannot be
more than sixty seconds. After that it could be traced to where you are by the police
or by our terrorist friends. You understand?”

“Sixty seconds?”

“That’s all you have. That’s all if you want to stay alive, and you want to keep me
alive.”