The Forty Column Castle (7 page)

“And this time? What brings you to Cyprus?”

“Antiquities smuggling.”

My heart started to hammer. “As in the Elizabeth Davies case?”

Zach nodded, keeping his eyes on the road.

My stomach clenched, doubled over and turned inside out. “Whose side are you on?”

“I’m working for the New York City Police Department, anti-terrorism unit.”

“Why is NYPD interested in antiquities smuggling on Cyprus?”

“Terrorists deal antiquities to finance their operations.”

My stomach caught fire, and I could feel flames at the back of my throat.

“Where do I come in?”

“I thought maybe you might tell me.”

On two wheels he turned the corner onto the main road out of the east end of Pafos.
I peeked over the seat. The Maruti got caught behind a car at the red light we had
just run.

He checked the rear view mirror. “We may have lost them.”

We were out onto the open road, passing everything in our path.

“Don’t you think speeding might attract the police?”

“On Cyprus? You have to be joking. No one was ever pulled over for speeding on this
island.”

I eased back onto the passenger seat and checked behind. “I don’t see them. You may
have lost them.”

“Maybe, but I don’t intend to let up the pace. When I take the turn off for the Troodos
Mountains on the west side of Limasol, I want to make sure that they aren’t behind
to see where we turned. We need to make it into the mountains without our rear guard.”

“Do you think the guys following us are terrorists?”

“Don’t know.”

We rode in silence, the tension in the air hovering between us like an angry thunderstorm.
I was overwhelmed with the inference in his questions. Did he think I was part of
the smuggling ring? By association with my aunt?

Ridiculous.

Zach broke the awkward silence. “Feel like sharing any information with me?”

“Like what?”

“Like who you’re working for?”

“Me? I work for myself, I told you I own and manage a mutual fund in Boston along
with my partner, Lena.”

“Are you sure that’s all you do?”

“You’re kidding right? What was all the stuff about helping me?”

“I’ll be glad to help you, especially if you can lead me to the leaders of the smuggling
ring on Cyprus.”

“Don’t you hear well? That’s who I’m trying to find. You offered to help me.”

“You and your aunt work together. Am I right?”

The blood drained from my face, out through my fingers, and stained the clear blue
Cyprus sky. Somewhere I had made a big mistake. What had Lonnie been saying about
instinct going haywire?

Zach pulled off the road onto one of the scenic overlooks, one perched on a cliff
with no guard rails. The sea sparkled and danced far below.

He studied the road behind us. “You see anyone?”

I checked again but I had just checked an instant before. “No one.” I wished I did
see another vehicle, a truck, a police car, anyone, anything. But nothing. How could
such a busy road be so deserted?

He got out of the Land Rover, pulled a pair of binoculars from the door pocket and
scanned back over the road we had just traveled. The spot he had picked to stop afforded
a clear view of the road and the cliffs from whence we’d come.

“They seem to have given up. The turn I want is just up ahead. I’m going to take it.
Keep watching our back.”

It was an order, not a request. I nodded but I wasn’t looking at Zach. I was watching
the sea, the way the sun glistened off the clear, turquoise blue water. Small waves
capped in the distance. The sun shone hot, bright, dazzling on the sea. My beloved
Cyprus had become a nightmare.

I tried to think of my life back in Boston, but it seemed light years away. Life right
now boiled down to this spot, a Land Rover and a man I didn’t know but thought I did,
if only a little, if only by instinct. His come on had been a ruse. Nice acting job.
The nightmare was closing in, and I couldn’t escape. Was he kidnapping me? It felt
that way.

Zach started the engine, and I hopped back on the seat which was hot from the sun
beating on it. I didn’t have much choice. How could I get away? Who could I trust?

I had not told Yannis where I was heading for fear the police would force his hand.
I didn’t want to implicate him more than I had already. He could get sucked in by
knowing me. So much of the nightmare was by implication.

“You can’t be cold,” Zach said, as I rubbed my upper arms. He took his eyes off the
road long enough to give me a quick once over. “You are cold.”

Goose bumps stood out on my flesh.

“It doesn’t have to do with the temperature,” I said.

Zach kept his eyes on the road that climbed into the mountains.

“I’m not a thief,” I said.

“I’d like to believe that,” he said, his face unreadable. “But understand that the
conditions of your aunt’s stay on this island are suspicious. You’re implicated in
the crime by being her niece and coming to help her.”

“What’s my motive?”

“Money, power, excitement, notoriety. Pick any one of those. People do strange things.”

“Have you run a background check on me?”

I grabbed the hand strap above my door window as we lurched over a pothole in the
road.

“Yep.”

“And?”

“Clean.”

“So at my age, having my own successful business with an impressive income, with a
cushy loft at a nice address in Boston, I turn to antiquities smuggling? C’mon.” I
shook my head in disgust. I could have worked myself up into a good raging anger,
if I hadn’t been so scared.

“Maybe for you it’s the excitement.”

I snorted real unladylike, but who cared? “I have all the excitement I can handle.
I don’t need to create international excitement, particularly one that has a prison
term attached to it.”

He was studying the road behind us in the mirror and eased up on the gas, slowing
down as the road got rougher. “I think we lost them.”

I wasn’t sure that was a blessing.

He glanced at me. “What if I told you I know where your aunt is and who sprang her
from jail? Would you be willing to cooperate?”

My eyes widened at the turn of the conversation. “You can’t be serious.”

“Would you cooperate?” He enunciated each word.

I exploded. “I’m telling you I don’t know a thing about smuggling nor does my aunt
so there’s nothing to cooperate.”

“Okay, okay. Calm down.”

We drove on in silence, and the knots in my stomach turned into waves of nausea. I
felt dizzy, and it wasn’t the increase in altitude. I had to get away. I peered over
the side of the car into the chasm we drove along. Rocks and dry brush peppered the
canyon. The area around us looked like the desert country of New Mexico. I considered
jumping from the car but where would that leave me? Dead, probably, or badly broken
and bruised, if I were lucky. My aunt would still be at the mercy of unknown assailants.
She must be terrified, simply terrified. She was the type that screamed at mice and
cockroaches. She’d probably have a heart attack. Then where would we be?

Zach tapped the master lock on the door, and the door locks clicked. “Don’t even think
about it,” he said.

“It wouldn’t work. I’m not much good to my aunt dead.”

“Smart girl.”

I studied his profile. He said he knew where my aunt was and who had taken her. I
could pretend that I knew something and try to negotiate a deal, buy some time.

“What kind of cooperation do you want?” I decided to play along and hope that I wasn’t
digging myself in deeper than I already was.

“Names, places, plans, contacts. Can you supply me with that?” He hadn’t missed a
beat in his response like he knew all along I was a thief and would fess up to save
my skin.

“And if I could?”

“You would get off easier than the rest of your operation. I could try for reduced
jail time for you and your aunt.”

There was that word jail again that made my stomach sick and my head hurt. I couldn’t
believe I was having this conversation. Then again I couldn’t believe where I was,
what I was doing, and who I was doing it with.

I watched Zach, but he kept his eyes on the road, head straight, neck rigid, maybe
refusing to think about the fact that there was a red-blooded woman sitting on the
seat next to him, and he was talking to her about going to jail. The same woman he
had promised to help.

The liar. I wanted to slap him. Instead I said, “You operate in some pretty powerful
circles, if you could pull off a reduced jail sentence.”

“I have good connections.”

“I would have to see my aunt first. I need to know she is okay.” I hoped this crazy
scheme to play along worked.

Zach nodded. “That can be arranged.”

We turned off the rough road onto an even rockier one. Zach kept taking right turns
up the mountain. We climbed in a great circle. Cedar and cypress trees lined the road.
Gray dust sprinkled the ground cover.

My cell phone went off, and I pulled it from my hand bag and glanced at the incoming
number. Yannis. Before I could hit the talk button, Zach reached over, snatched it,
and flipped the case shut.

“You don’t need a phone.”

I was getting the distinct feeling I was a prisoner.

The road leveled off, and Zach turned into a lane that led to a clearing where a solitary
house stood. He pulled in front of the house, switched off the motor and sat looking
around, a perplexed look on his face.

“Something’s wrong,” he said. “It’s too quiet.” He looked at me. “Can I trust you
to wait here?”

“I don’t know where I would go even if I could.”

“I’m going to look around. Can you shoot a gun?”

“My Dad was a hunter. He taught me to shoot a rifle.”

He pulled his bag from the back seat, extracted a heavy, black gun and checked the
ammunition.

I was struck dumb. I thought the bag held his overnight gear, not heavy metal. He
pulled out a second smaller pistol, checked it and handed it to me. The thought crossed
my mind that now was the time to shoot him. Then where would I be? Would killing a
cop get me life or the electric chair? On Cyprus they probably gave life sentences
without possibility of parole. I’d look it up later.

“No, you aren’t going to shoot me,” he said.

The guy was uncanny.

“You need someone on your side. I just might be that person. Remember that. Now I’m
going to look around. Normally, my friends would be out in the yard on a day like
this. Maybe they went into town, but I don’t like the feeling I have.”

So he worked on intuition, too. I’d have to ask him what his intuition was for me.
He trusted me enough to hand me a gun.

He nodded toward a half open window in the front of the house. A lace curtain fluttered
in and out. “They don’t ever leave a window open like that. The wife is too fastidious.”

His eyes locked on mine.

“Don’t leave the Rover. Stay right here and cover me. And please, don’t shoot me in
the back.”

“I couldn’t do that. How would I ever find my way back to town? Besides, you know
where my aunt is.”

He smirked. The first time I saw him come close to a smile since Pafos. “Smart girl.”
He eased open the door of the Land Rover, stepped cautiously out, and headed toward
the front of the house, gradually circling to the back.

I watched from my post in the Rover and studied the yard and the house. To the left
was an open shed that held what looked like wood working tools. A saw, shovels, tools
hung in rows above a workbench. A wash line strung from the house to the shed held
three men’s work shirts, pinned upside down and blowing in the hot breeze. Beyond
the shed and house was a vegetable garden surrounded by a wire fence with a gate.
I could see plump, red tomatoes hanging from the vines. The gate was open.

I froze.

What was that on the ground in the garden beyond the open gate? I reached over and
pulled the binoculars from the side pocket of the driver’s door, sat forward in the
seat and focused on the garden gate. The first thing that came into focus was the
bottom of a pair of shoes. Women’s shoes or maybe sandals. The feet were small. I
felt beads of sweat break out on my upper lip, even though a breeze came in through
the open windows.

“Dear sweet Jesus.”

I looked around for Zach. He must have entered the house through the back door. He
couldn’t have seen the feet from his vantage point because he had circled on the opposite
side of the house from the garden.

I did a 360 degree check on the clearing where the house stood. It was clear only
for about fifty feet on all sides then the forest took over. I couldn’t be sure if
anyone was watching from the forest and was torn between whether stay put or go looking
for Zach. Neither was safe, but I knew action was better for me, as opposed to sitting
here wrapped in sheer terror. I picked up the gun and eased from the Rover.

The air was as tense as my tautly bunched muscles. It was quiet. No birds sang. Was
that because someone was in the forest to disturb their singing? If they were still
around would they try to kill us, rush us, overpower the Rover? Who were they? The
unsettling image of terrorists crept into my mind, the black hooded variety.

What was I doing here?

I ran from the Rover to the shelter of the house and circled to the back on the side
where the garden was. The house was typical construction for the region, stucco with
red tile roof. Giant rose bushes lined the side of the house blooming profusely in
red and yellow.

I saw the body stretched full length in the garden, like taking a nap. But a red stain
on the head of the figure belied the image of a peaceful nap. Nausea welled up in
my throat, but I kept going. I had to find Zach. A Mediterranean style arbor, slats
of wood crossing open beams, covered the patio to the back of the house. The door
to the house stood open. I drew near and peered in.