Devil of Delphi: A Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

He dreamed of flowers, streams, and hillside walks with his father. Of his sister tagging along far enough behind to slow them down continually with running descriptions of every plant and bug along the way. Of his mother smiling at their five-year-old unofficial tour guide in golden braids and her impatient, seven-year-old brother pressing his sister to hurry on to wherever their hike might take them. One year later, the father was gone. No more walks, no more smiles from Mother, no more chattering sister.
Poof.
In an instant, all gone.

He tried to drive his dream to a different place. One where the little boy and little girl continued on together in happiness. He saw his son but no little girl yet among the flowers, though he could hear the faint buzz of the bees. The children best be careful of their stings. The buzzing wouldn’t end. He charged forward, waving them away, protecting the children, chasing—

“
Andreas!
Wake up, you’re swatting at me.”

“What? Huh?” Andreas sat up in bed and looked at Lila. In the light from the clock on her nightstand he saw his wife clutching a pillow in front of her. “I was what?”

“Waving, pushing something away.”

“Sorry about that. My dream was so real.” He shook his head, blinking away the remnants of the dream-turned-nightmare. “I could hear the bees buzzing around our children.”

“
Our
children? Any vision of the new one’s gender?”

“
As a matter of fact I saw a—”

BUZZ, BUZZ, BUZZ
.

“There it goes again. It’s my phone. I had it on vibrate.” He looked at the clock. “It’s five in the morning.”

“Middle of the night telephone calls are starting to become a habit around here.”

“Tell me about it.” He swung off the bed and picked up his mobile phone from his nightstand. “It’s Spiros. I’ll take it in the other room.”

“Don’t you dare. Since you batted me awake I want to hear the good stuff firsthand. Turn up the volume so I can hear what he says.”

Andreas smiled, sat on the edge of the bed, and pressed TALK. “Hi, Spiros. Sorry I missed you before, but my phone was on vib—”

“There’ve been two murders in Hosios Loukas Monastery outside of Arachova.”

Andreas felt a chill run down his spine. “Of monks?” He crossed himself as he said the words.

Lila sat up in bed and turned on the light.

“No, thank God. Two men dressed as combat soldiers. No ID on them yet.”

“What the hell were they doing in a monastery?”

“Precisely what I asked the local police chief when he called me.”

“What did he have to say?”

“No idea, but I think we might.”

Andreas detected a tone of relief in Spiros’ voice. “What are you saying?”

“The police chief spoke with the abbot. I understand the abbot’s quite a character. Highly distinguished military career until he decided he preferred saving souls to dispatching them. Anyway, he told the police chief they’d had a guest staying in the monastery who might be able to answer those questions for him.”

“The guest being?”

“Tank.”

“So that’s where he’s been hiding.”

“Yep.”

“Have the police spoken to him yet?”

“He’s not there,” said Spiros. “The abbot told Tank to leave and threw him out in the middle of the night.”

“Why’d he do that? He should have held him until the police got there.”

“That’s what the police chief told him. The abbot replied that they’re monks not cops, and besides, the police shouldn’t have any trouble finding him, since no other monastery will likely take him in after word of this gets around. Those were the abbot’s words.”

“Sounds like he wanted Tank out of there before the monastery’s publicity nightmare got fully underway.”

“I see you’re getting the hang of this political game. Tying Tank’s name into this would turn the monastery into the center ring attraction of a major media circus.”

“It’s still going to be hard to avoid that, if Tank was the target.”

“I don’t think he was.”

“Why’s that?” said Andreas.

“The abbot said there was an explosion, likely some sort of grenade, and right after that some monks came across a man in the middle of the mess, shaking like a leaf. He said he was a pilgrim looking for a place to stay for the night and had been awakened by the explosion. In the confusion after finding the bodies he slipped away. The police found remains of a grenade on a path just beyond where the monks found the bodies and the pilgrim. The path led up to the gate where some of the monks heard a motorcycle drive off less than a minute after the explosion.”

“The pilgrim could be our boy Kharon,” said Andreas.

“Especially since the two dead weren’t carrying grenades and each died from a bullet to the head.”

“Sounds like a Tank family setup to take out Kharon that went very wrong for someone. Make that two someones.”

“Yeah, ain’t that a shame,” said Spiros.

“We ought to get a photo of Kharon up there for the local police to show the monks.”

“Not sure that will help much. The local chief told me it was so dark and the monks so rattled they’ve already given him three very different descriptions of the same guy.”

“Damn.” Andreas shook his head. “I hate to say this, but don’t you think we should warn Tank’s father?”

“You just said it sounded like an ambush for Kharon set up by Tank’s family. Don’t you think the father will know by now what happened?”

“I’d like to think his son would have told him, but that’s not the point. The man’s life’s in danger and, as big an asshole as he is, we’re cops and have a duty to warn him. It’s what separates us from the bad guys.”

“Sometimes I can’t figure you out, Andreas. Okay, I’ll call him right after breakfast. It’s not the sort of conversation I can have on an empty stomach.”

“Thanks for the update.”

“You’re welcome and…ah…thanks for counseling me to hang in there. Good night, and apologies to Lila for waking her up.”

“It’s okay,” said Lila from her side of the bed.

Andreas shot her a glance as she covered her mouth with her hands.

“What was that?”

“Lila, she talks in her sleep.”

Lila flashed him the thumbs-up sign.

“And snores.”

The thumbs-up morphed into a middle finger.

“I never would have thought that. Good night.”

“Night.”

“Kaldis, you are in such trouble,” said Lila.

Andreas rolled over and slid his hand up under the covers to rest on her bare breasts. “Not as much as I plan to be in momentarily.”

***

At this time of the morning, the drive from the monastery to Tank’s father’s home in Chalkidiki should take a little over six hours. That would get them there around breakfast time, Kharon thought, unless Tank tried something foolish.

He studied Tank’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They darted left and right just as you’d expect from a man desperate for a way to escape.

“Please don’t try ramming the car into a tree or something silly like that. Your air bag won’t save you. That only works in movies. You’ll be dead from a bullet before you hit the tree. Besides, I’m snug in the backseat of this behemoth SUV wearing a seat belt and watching every move you make.” Kharon grinned as Tank bit at his lip.

“How much will it take for you to let us go?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll talk about all that with Teacher.”

“She’s meeting us there?”

“Like I said, we’ll talk about it.”

Kharon had called Teacher shortly after he’d fled the monastery. She wasn’t surprised about the assassins and congratulated him on his resourcefulness. He told her he’d found Tank’s Range Rover in the parking lot and about his idea of reuniting Tank with his father. Teacher liked it. She told him to text her once he’d collected Tank and they were on their way to Chalkidiki.

Kharon almost asked her if she saw his night spent under the stars as some sort of test or trial, but he decided it was probably best not to let her know he’d picked up on some of her ways. Instead he added it to the list of things he’d decided to keep from her.

Like his conversation with Jacobi.

A high anxiety Jacobi had called him yesterday afternoon to say that a cop had pressed him for information on a hit put out “on someone in Greece close enough to Teacher to get her attention.” From what the cop said, Jacobi worried Kharon might be the target.

When Kharon asked why the cop came to Jacobi, he said, “I asked the cop the same question and he told me to go fuck myself. I have no idea how he knew, but he did.”

Kharon knew. The cops probably picked something up off a phone tap or microphone planted in Jacobi’s place. Telling Jacobi to be careful about running off at the mouth was like telling the sun to stop rising. Who knew what the cops had found out about Teacher from Jacobi?
Or about me
.

That’s when Kharon decided to check the BMW and found the tracking device. The question was, who put it there? And when? Based on his conversation with Jacobi, police were the likely suspects. But he couldn’t rule out Tank and his father. Whoever it was, he didn’t want them to know when he moved again. So he left the device in a rosemary bush near where he parked the bike by his home in Delphi.

Kharon hadn’t mentioned anything about his conversation with Jacobi to Teacher. Not out of concern that if she knew he’d been warned she might think him less of a magician in neutralizing his assassins, but he had a nagging suspicion that if she thought Jacobi had talked to cops, she’d want his friend dead. Maybe even order Kharon to do it as another of her tests.

Kharon knew that would be the sensible thing to do. Jacobi wasn’t the sharpest blade in the drawer and that, coupled with his loose lips, made him a risk. Then again, if Jacobi hadn’t done something to attract the cops, they wouldn’t have known to come to Jacobi with information that helped save Kharon’s life. As Kharon scored it, one canceled out the other. Teacher wouldn’t see it that way. She always favored elimination.

Besides, Jacobi was the closest thing Kharon had to anything resembling family, and when it came down to family, one must learn to live with their faults.

Perhaps my moral center isn’t yet lost?

He watched Tank’s frantic face looking back at him in the mirror.

For sure he hopes not.

Kharon kept his gun aimed at Tank’s head with his right hand as he pecked out a message with his left on his phone, ON OUR WAY, and hit send.

Thirty seconds later came the reply announced by a ping:

GOOD. IT IS TIME TO SEND THE OTHER MESSAGE.

And so he did.

***

Tank’s father loved his early mornings in Sithonia. The birds sounded more alive, the sky a bit rosier, the sea air fresher. His home didn’t offer a good view of the sun rising out of the Aegean, gilding sapphire blue in gold, but that never mattered much to him for he thought of early mornings as more like nine o’clock anyway.

And this was a fine morning. Word from his son had put his mind at ease after a most restless night.

Now he sat on his bougainvillea-covered veranda, staring out above the pines and olive trees across the bright blue bay toward Mount Athos fifteen miles away. Artists and architects had struggled for centuries to capture the essence of the Church’s spiritual power in temporal expression. For him, only Mount Athos achieved that goal, perhaps because it represented God’s own handiwork on earth, his gift to the Virgin Mary as her Garden of the Mother of God, a place forbidden to any other woman. Or so went the legend.

Living so close to a place of such reverential holy power, Tank’s father thought of himself as the first to touch the same sea as edged upon that holy land, the first to breathe the same air as passed over from that blessed place, the first to see eagles, kestrels and gulls stray across the sky from their holy mountain roosts, the first to hear what sounds might carry from so far across the sea. He built a little church down by the edge of the water in honor of the Virgin Mary to honor the spiritual markings of such holy power on earth.

To his way of thinking, all of that could not but help cleanse him of his sins, bring redemption to his soul. A lot of his neighbors along the shoreline must have thought the same way if the prices they’d paid for the opportunity of such proximity were any measure.

The father was on his second cup of coffee when the phone rang inside the house. He yelled for his assistant to answer it.

“It’s the minister of public order calling, sir.”

The
malaka
must be calling to beg me to let up on him
. “Tell him to go fuck himself.”

“Sir?”

“You heard what I said, tell him precisely that.” He smiled and went back to staring at Mount Athos.

“Sir.”

The father jumped slightly in his chair. He hadn’t noticed his assistant coming up behind him. “What is it?”

“The minister told me to give you a message.”

“What? Did he threaten me? Did he beg for me to call him back?”

“No, as a matter of fact he laughed.”

“Laughed?”

“Yes, and said to please tell you, ‘Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.’”

“Warn me? Warn me of what?”

“He didn’t say.”

He waved his assistant away and went back to sipping his coffee.

A few minutes later he heard the sound of a helicopter coming in from the east. For a country supposedly in crisis, an awful lot of people had their own helicopters. This one was a two-engine job, though. Very fast, very expensive. It hovered out to sea about two hundred yards from shore, then made toward his Russian neighbor’s helicopter pad.
Just what we need, more Russian visitors.

He looked at his watch. It was after ten. His son should be here any minute. Things hadn’t gone quite as planned, what with two of the assassins getting killed and the third fleeing from the police, but their goal was achieved. The killer of his daughter had been eliminated and Teacher had agreed to accept twenty million euros as compensation.

He’d tried calling Tank for more details but he didn’t answer. At least his son had the presence of mind to send that text message telling him what happened and that he was on his way here.