The Mask of Atreus (12 page)

She didn't go to the park. She came off the interstate long enough to stop by an ATM, where she drew out as much money as it would let her, then she doubled back and left her scraped and wounded car in the parking lot of The Temple, a reform synagogue she had once considered attending. She walked to the Arts Center MARTA station and concluded the journey on the light rail link which took her right into the terminal of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Someone had broken into her apartment, had--worse--

waited there for her. Someone had tried to run her off the 92

A. J. Hartley

road. Someone had killed Richard. Strangest and therefore most distressing of all was the knowledge that the people to whom she most wanted to turn--the police--could not be trusted in this case. She had to get away. Far away. Other than her purse (which was largely stuffed with museum correspondence she hadn't even got round to opening), she had no luggage but, not being especially attached to clothes, that didn't bother her. She would buy what she needed when she arrived.

But arrived
where
?

That, she hadn't decided, and the decision occupied her thoughts as she sat on the sparsely populated train's hard plastic seats which were, for reasons passing understanding, a bilious orange almost guaranteed to induce motion sickness. She could go home to Brookline, to her mother and her sister, she supposed, knowing immediately that she would not. Her visits back to Massachusetts, as her mother was fond of pointing out, were few and far between and, perhaps as a result, they were stressful, difficult spells of negotiation and awkward circling, which was pretty much how things had been since her father died.

Hi, Mom, it's Debbie. Someone's trying to kill me. Mind if
I stop by?

Boy, would that not work.

She got off the train and walked into the airport's south terminal and down through the bustling throngs to the Delta check-in desk. She was glad she hadn't called ahead, and had resolved to try to get her name deliberately misspelled on the ticket, something close enough that it would look like a typo, but wrong enough to delay any police hunt through the airline computers.

No! It's the police! You can trust them. Tell them about the
van. You have to be able to trust them or . . .
Chaos is come again? Exactly.

She checked the monitors, then drifted toward a short line, 93

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dominated by a harassed-looking family with vast suitcases spilling out of two carts. The woman at the desk, her hair rigidly coiffed, her eyes tired, was explaining something about electronic tickets. Deborah looked behind her. Only yards away were doors in the plate glass walls, doors to the loading and unloading zone, the road, the normal, everyday world . . .
Where homicidal drivers try to run you into solid con-
crete, or if you stop, corner you under some deserted under-
pass with a knife that leaves symmetrical bruises around the
entry wound . . .

She turned suddenly and bumped squarely into a middleaged man in an incongruous three-piece suit. He was sweating and, like almost all air travelers, looked anxious.

"Sorry," said Deborah.

The man, who looked more surprised than affronted, said nothing and, out of embarrassment as much as anything else, she turned back toward the desk.

Look for a policeman.

Who would hand her over to Cerniga? No. The only person who seemed to be on her side was a lawyer she had never even heard of two days ago.

"Can I help you?" said the woman, flashing her practiced smile.

The family trundled away, exchanging anxious words and studying their boarding cards as if they were written in code.

"Are there still seats available?" she said.

"For this flight?" said the woman. "Cutting it fine, aren't you?"

Deborah smiled weakly but said nothing. The woman consulted her screen.

"Yep," she said. "You'll have to get a move on. Security's been a bear. One-way or round-trip?"

"Round-trip," said Deborah, "but can I leave the return date open?"

"Sure," said the woman, tapping her keyboard. "There. How would you like to pay?"

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She didn't want to use a credit card, but there seemed no option. Surely they wouldn't be looking just yet? She put her MasterCard on the counter as the woman checked the price.

"Let me see," she said. "One open round-trip to Athens, Greece . . ."

France, 1945

Edward Graves removed his white military policeman's helmet, pushed it under his duffel bag on the passenger side of the Opel truck's cab, and strode purposefully into the village post office. He had been a little concerned about this stage of the plan because he spoke no French, but it turned out that he didn't need any. He showed his carefully doctored military ID to the postmaster and waited while some old woman jabbered on--apparently appreciatively--about the liberation. He nodded and smiled, wishing she'd leave him alone.

"One package, monsieur," said the postmaster, holding it up triumphantly as if he had personally swum the damned thing across the Channel himself.

Graves took the package without a word and marched out, noting only its U.K. postmark until he was safely back in the truck. He opened it quickly, tearing the edge with his teeth when the tape wouldn't give. He had long, quick fingers, and they trembled slightly as they pulled out the letter and the wad of British pounds. He counted them quickly and then glanced at the note, which contained nothing more than a shipping address in London and the name of the sender: Randolph Fitz-Stephens. He balled it up and tossed it out of the window, then turned the keys and waited for the engine to catch.

Three hours later he was watching at the quayside as the transport ship
St. Lo
pulled away from Cherbourg harbor, loaded with demobbed soldiers and a cargo hold full of personal effects, French produce (mainly wine), and a few crates, their passage specifically paid by private citizens such as himself. It had taken the dockers no more than ten minutes 96

A. J. Hartley

to unload the box from the back of the Opel and move it into the hold, and he had stood by, trying not to watch too closely, trying not to look anxious in case it prompted the sailors to start nosing for valuables. You couldn't trust sailors any more than blacks.

In two weeks he would be following it back to the States, by which time Randolph Fitz-Stephens would have no way of finding him, even if he knew who he was looking for, which he didn't. Were all Brits this gullible? A few photographs of the goods had left the guy foaming at the mouth. Graves had initially thought he'd ask for ten thousand pounds up front, but when he'd got wind of the Brit's excitement, he had doubled it, and the guy hadn't batted an eyelid. Rich and dumb, thought Graves: just how he liked them. Still, he probably could have gotten more out of him, and that was a pity. It was funny though, to think of the guy sitting by the docks in Southampton or wherever the hell he had been supposed to send the box, waiting week after week for it to arrive, then writing anxious, polite letters to a man who didn't exist in some poky little French crap heap of a town!

It couldn't have gone better. He might still have to deal with questions about that Sherman commander if his buddies talked, but no one would take the likes of those tankers seriously, and there was nothing to link Edward Graves, sergeant in the military police, to the name on that shipping invoice. All things considered, it had turned out to be a pretty good summer. The war--a war he had always been ambivalent about at best--was over, and he had laid the ground for one hell of a future Stateside.

The war in Europe was indeed over, but only by a couple of weeks, and there were scattered pockets of German troops who either didn't know or had chosen to fight on regardless. One hundred twenty miles northwest of Cherbourg, a solitary, crippled U-boat, its conning tower and radio equipment damaged weeks ago by a stray mine, was one of the former. 97

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U 146, a type VII B German submarine out of Saint-Nazaire, had been virtually adrift, with only minimal helm control, for almost two weeks, during which time heavy seas had torn off what remained of her radio antennae, making contact with the Fatherland or its agents impossible. The captain knew the war was going badly and that the forces of the Third Reich were probably in their death throes, but he was career military and loath to abandon his hobbled vessel if there was still work to be done. Unsure of which submarine pens were still in German hands, he had opted to wait one more day before trying to send an SOS. The rescuers, if they made it before the submarine sank utterly, would probably be Americans. He would wait until they were close enough to get the men out of the water before scuppering the ship.

It was the great misfortune of the transport vessel
St. Lo
that it hove into sight of the U-boat with three hours remaining on the clock and two torpedoes still in their tubes and ready to fire.

Over the Wine-Dark

Sea . . .

Because the Kaddish voices the spirit of the imperishable in man, because it refuses to acknowledge death as triumphant, because it permits the withered blossom, fallen from the tree of mankind, to flower and develop again in the human heart, it possesses sanctifying power. To know that when you die there will remain those who, wherever they may be on this wide earth, whether they be poor or rich, will send this prayer after you, to know that they will cherish your memory as their dearest inheritance--what more satisfying or sanctifying knowledge can you ever hope for? And such is the knowledge bequeathed to us by the Kaddish.

--A meditation on the Kaddish from
The Sabbath and Festival
Prayer Book
by the Rabbinical Assembly of America and the United Synagogue of America

CHAPTER 21

The decision to go to Greece had been automatic. That was where it had all started. That was where the treasure had originated. It was where Richard's mystery guests at the party had come from, where Richard had been telephoning in secret. It was a place for her to begin, since the police at home couldn't be trusted, and it was far away from the museum and whoever had been driving that van. Somehow, she was sure, these things were all connected. With each mile they flew, she got closer to their origins and farther from their murderous ends. Deborah never slept on planes. They were too cramped for her sprawling, wiry frame, and she disliked the idea of sleeping among strangers. It was bad enough that they were sharing this metal tube in the sky with her; she had no intention of losing consciousness into the bargain. Yet today more than any other, she wished she could snore her way across the Atlantic, down through the Mediterranean, to the sparkling blue waters of the Aegean.

But she couldn't sleep, however much she tried to trick her body into thinking it was night. She was exhausted, and the prospect of flying for ten hours or more only to disembark into the dawn of an Athenian morning suddenly seemed beyond depressing. But her brain undercut all efforts to sleep with its own stream of subtext, the words flicking up on the inside of her eyes like contradictory subtitles to a foreign film. This was no time to relax, they said. She had to plan. She had no currency
(Was Greece still on drachma or had
they switched to the euro?)
, no hotel, no sense of why she had come on this fool's errand or what she intended to do now that she was committed to it. Sleep was out of the question. 102

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She stared at the movie, ate whatever forgettable stuff was put in front of her, and spent half the "night" (the shades were down, and three-quarters of the cabin were snoozing like babies) walking up and down, knowing that those whose eyes strayed toward her found her gawky and irritating. She saw the man in the three-piece suit who she had bumped into in the check-in line, but he was reading and didn't seem to notice her.

Two hours went by. Then three. For a while she thought she might have actually dropped off, but when she checked her watch the hour had not advanced at all. She sat, and thought, and waited, and wondered what in the hell she was going to do when they touched down. Well, at least it would be safe. The man in the three-piece suit laid down his book, then twisted at the waist as if stretching out muscles that were stiff from the long flight. As he did so he managed a nonchalant glance backward to where the tall American woman was peering round her companion to see the morning sun through the half-lowered blind. She hadn't recognized him, he was sure, and that was all to the good. He would have to stay close to her once they landed, but not too close. There was, after all, no particular rush, and timing would be everything. CHAPTER 22

It was hot in Athens, a dry and dusty heat that clung unpleasantly to her skin as she started to sweat. Some of the dust felt gritty, like powdered concrete which, given her first look at the city as she headed in on the shuttle bus from the airport, was more than possible. During the Olympic coverage, Athens and its environs had seemed all ancient ruins and idyllic whitewashed villages on cliffs set against blue water and bluer sky. She hadn't been ready for these miles of faceless gray blocks, many either half finished or half demolished, it was hard to say which.

The man opposite her was at least fifty, slim and well muscled and too carefully groomed. He was gripping the arm of a girl half his age, a curvy beauty with a petulant face, who should have been his daughter except for the proprietary way he nuzzled her neck. Deborah looked away, but there was nowhere to look except out of the window into the smoggy, concrete-faced streets.

What the hell are you doing here?

"Looking for some answers, and keeping my head down,"

she muttered to herself. "Not necessarily in that order."

She had found a tourist information kiosk and bookshop in the airport and had bought
The Rough Guide to Greece,
discovering belatedly that it had been published in 1995 and its prices were all in drachmas. Greece was, it turned out, on the euro now. How much of the rest of the book was also out of date, she didn't know, and since she found it hard to summon more than a dull irritation, didn't much care. She selected one of the hotels--the Achilleus--which the guidebook listed in central Athens, and called it from the information kiosk, 104