Gospel (77 page)

Piraeus Station.

The train stopped and she stepped off and noticed her bloodless, clammy hand was shaking as she moved her own luggage.

“Again, nice to meet you. Bye-bye,” she said hopelessly.

“Farewell,” said Abdul, bowing slightly. He reached to kiss her hand and a shiver of revulsion ran through her.

They're actually letting me go, thought Lucy. Or else they're very confident of this woman I'm about to meet. She watched the brothers leave the station and hail a cab to the airport, ten miles outside of Piraeus. Lucy stood in the station amid the late-morning ebb and flow of tourists, commuters, and bored Athenian teenagers just hanging out. She saw booths for tickets, for passes, for reservations … and there in several languages was a stall for lost-and-found. And there was a woman, shorter than she'd imagined but quite beautiful, Arab-looking as well, with a white handbag, wearing a raincoat and sunglasses on this sunny day.

“You have a message,” said Lucy guardedly, “from Dr. O'Hanrahan?”

The woman eyed her seriously, attempting to look sympathetic. “He is in great trouble.”

Yep, figured Lucy. He's probably kidnapped by these Syrians … but then what would they want with me? The woman handed her a Greek newspaper folded to a photo. Today's paper. “You see this?” said the woman, pointing to the photo, which showed an ikon defaced with paint. “Your friend is wanted by the police for this.”

“But,” Lucy mocked, “he would never—”

“But he is wanted for this crime nonetheless. He has contacted us, his friends.”

“Friends,” Lucy repeated.

“We are old friends of Patrick O'Hanrahan.”

No, thought Lucy, if he were to contact anyone it would be the Matsoukises, whom I was too damn pigheadedly stupid to call last night, scared of Stavros.

The woman reached into her raincoat. “I have this for you. We have arranged a flight out on a special chartered flight, which will avoid the customs and police, yes? He has bought a ticket for you both.”

Lucy took the envelope and opened the flap, drawing out two second-class tickets on Iraqi Air to Amman, Jordan. Lucy felt her head grow light, she was breathing so shallowly. One, O'Hanrahan would never fly, even if it meant arrest, capture, imprisonment … or had he just been playing that up for her benefit? Two, the man wouldn't fly second-class … or was there no choice? Maybe the police knew to check the Matsoukis house and he had had to avail himself of these acquaintances. “The flight is in forty minutes,” Lucy noticed.

“Yes, we must hurry.”

Should she go with the woman? If she didn't, she'd never find out what had happened to O'Hanrahan. Perhaps when she saw him at the airport, all would be explained. And if he didn't show, she'd make a run for it, safely in front of video cameras and security officers.

“I have a car,” said the woman.

“I prefer to take my own taxi,” said Lucy.

“Whatever you wish,” she said coolly.

Lucy hopped in a taxi and headed to the main terminal of the Athens International Airport. Well, if it's me they want, thought Lucy, they have missed a number of opportunities to abduct me.

And look, what a coincidence. At the Athens International Airport terminal, in the Iraqi Air check-in line, who should be there but Abdul and Hossein.

“Ah, we meet again,” said Abdul, feigning surprise. “What brings you here?”

Lucy noticed, near the terminal entrance, the Arab woman had reappeared. “Oh, just these tickets,” said Lucy icily. “Where is Dr. O'Hanrahan?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“I suspect you do know, Abdul or whoever you are—”

At that moment, three policemen who had been quickly marching across the lobby, submachine guns at their belt, turned briskly toward the check-in line and tapped her firmly on the shoulder: “Meez Lucille Dantan?” one policeman demanded.

“Yes.” Lucy turned to see the Arab woman hurriedly make her way to the exit.

An officer: “You are wanted by the police. Please to follow.”

Abdul and Hossein stared at the floor, frozen in place.

Lucy was sure
she
was not who they wanted, but took a step forward. “What about my bag?”

“Leave it. INTERPOL wants you,” said the man firmly. “Coom with me immediately.”

Then, as she turned to Abdul and Hossein, she saw them stepping over the cordon for the check-in line and walking briskly toward the exit. Hold it … Now there were several men, some in uniforms, some in suits converging on the two Arab men …

Now everyone was running. Abdul was tackled halfway to the door. A security officer ran over and in the grappling Abdul was hit by the butt of the security man's rifle full across the face. Lucy was being dragged away by the policeman but kept turning to observe. Hossein had made it to the door and one of the policeman had pulled his gun. Screams. Panic. People dove to the floor, some ran, others scooped up their children. Lucy was open-mouthed, not sure where she should be, when the policeman pulled on her roughly: “I said, coom with me,” he barked in bad English.

She was, in no time, led to a customs office with several policemen standing around looking at video monitors of the terminal. They eyed her dourly.

“Uh look,” Lucy tried to explain as she was being shuttled down a hallway, “I'm not with those guys…”

And then horrible thoughts occurred to her: they were going to blow up the plane and they planted a bomb in my suitcase. I'm like those poor English women who marry Arabs and find they're walking time bombs for some Palestinian group. So this is how the adventure ends! In a Greek jail somewhere, shunned by my own embassy, front page of the tabloids—and won't Mom and Dad just love that.

Oh where, where, where is Dr. O'Hanrahan!

Lucy and her escort entered through some double doors to an older part of the airport, then climbed some steps to the second-floor glass-enclosed, unair-conditioned offices with desks piled with papers, wanted posters, customs documents, a Kafkaesque gathering of functionaries and customs rule–violators sitting sheepishly before bureaucrats explaining their crimes. She was told to sit in one cubicle.

A tall, middle-aged man with gray at the temples of his close-cropped hair appeared in the doorway. He wore an olive-drab Army uniform and held a Greek newspaper and a large manila file folder under his arm. It took a moment for Lucy to comprehend that it was an American uniform.

“I'm Colonel Westin,” he said without looking up from the file folder. “I'm with U.S. Customs, attached to the U.S. Embassy in Israel.” Then he looked up. “Lucille Dantan? House at 14320 Kimbark Street, Hyde Park?”

“That's me.”

The colonel asked for her Social Security number, which she recited. Colonel Westin sat down on a spindly folding chair and leaned forward, hands on his knees, one hand clutching the newspaper. “INTERPOL's been looking for you for
weeks,
Miss Dantan. We were beginning to think you'd been taken hostage. Flew up from Jerusalem because of you.”

“I don't understand.”

He didn't understand her confusion. “Where've you been? Chicago last heard from you two weeks ago. Someone checked with your roommate—”

“Judy,” she said automatically.

“Who said you were due to fly home but didn't. This had us worried because…” He glanced back at his data. “… there was also a Gabriel O'Donoghue who traveled with this O'Hanrahan character before you. And he went missing for awhile, too.”

“Someone's mistaken, Colonel, sir,” she protested. “Until this week, I've been faxing reports every few days back to the University of Chicago.”

Colonel Westin didn't seem to hear her as he pored over the sheets of paper in his file folder. He handed her the newspaper. “Seen this?”

She looked at the paper, a different paper from the newspaper the Arab woman had shown her. Lucy scanned the Greek, looked at the photo of some Greek officials, noticed a photo at the bottom of an ikon … a defaced ikon. Beside a mug shot of O'Hanrahan. “My God, Dr. O'Hanrahan!”

“Your companion seems to have found himself in trouble over on Mount Athos, something about defacing priceless ikons.”

“That's completely impossible,” she stammered.

“Yep,” he said, not looking up again, sucking in air through his clenched teeth. “We thought so too. I flew up from Jerusalem because of him.”

She thought he'd come from Jerusalem because of
her.

“I'm trying to put it all together, Miss Dantan. You're on an assignment to England, your college told me, then you're in Ireland, Italy, Greece, then you leave with these Iraqi terrorists…”

He trailed off as another man entered the room. He was in his thirties, very short, with a light blue suit that didn't fit him, the sleeves too long and his pants cuffs a little high. He also had very thin brown hair, which he had tried his best to arrange over his bald head, and round, thick glasses.

“Howdy. Clem Underwood,” he announced, putting out a small, ring-bearing, pudgy hand for Lucy to shake. “I'm with the State Department here in Athens. Hello, Colonel. Here's where you've gone to.”

“Clem,” said the colonel unhappily, closing his file folder.

Underwood showed keen interest in the colonel's file folder. “Oh, is that … is that the material on Miss Dantan, there?”

Colonel Westin: “This is classified. Involving a procedural communiqué re INTERPOL and, uh, reinterfacement with U.S. Customs access—”

Underwood: “Awww, just a little peek, heh-heh-heh…”

Colonel Westin: “I don't recall a directive issuing clearance for State on our INTERPOL communications, Clem—”

Underwood: “I let you see the papers on Mr. O'Hanrahan downstairs.”

Colonel Westin sucked in air through clenched teeth. “I have seniority, Clem. My clearance access is Code 5, you're what? A 4? You get me the paperwork, buddy, and I'll be happy to let you have a look-see.”

“Excuse me,” said Lucy, “did I understand you to say that papers on Dr. O'Hanrahan were downstairs or that Dr. O'Hanrahan himself was downstairs?”

Underwood smoothed his thin hair toward his widow's peak, making sure that the merest breath of wind hadn't blown his comb-over aside. “Yes, miss, Dr. O'Hanrahan's downstairs.”

The colonel stood, annoyed. “You might have told me, Clem.”

Lucy was joyous. O'Hanrahan! Numbly she was led down another hall and to a lounge with old chairs and sofas, shabby but clean, the final resting place for the 1930s airport office furniture. And there, yes!—she recognized the back of a silver, balding head, which turned and cried out her name:

“Miss Dantan, you are among the living!” cried O'Hanrahan, struggling to his feet to greet her.

They hugged and Lucy sighed with a tremble, not until then realizing how fraught and shaky she was. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “I thought that—I mean, I heard you—”

The colonel interrupted: “So you're Patrick O'Hanrahan?” The colonel was introduced to O'Hanrahan by Mr. Underwood of the State Department. There was a foot in height difference between Underwood and the professor.

“What just happened?” Lucy asked of the assemblage at large, as O'Hanrahan pressed a glass of strong Greek tea into her hand to calm her.

“Tea?” she sneered at the glass. “Got any booze?”

O'Hanrahan gently rolled his eyes at her. “Do I have any booze?” He reached into his sportscoat pocket to his flask. Lucy thought she glimpsed an airline ticket in his inner pocket, of all things. He dumped the tea in a trashcan callously, and poured her some metaxa in a Styrofoam cup.

O'Hanrahan sat down and commenced his tale: “I had to walk back to Ouranopolis, Luce. Ten, twenty miles, it seemed like the whole damn length of the peninsula—in that heat, with no food, no water…” He could see Lucy's eyes widen in amazement and no small portion of admiration. “As the colonel told you, someone framed me for those ikon desecrations. I suspect framing me was part of a larger plan to rob and debilitate me and eventually kidnap
you.
I get back to Ouranopolis, find Stavros packing to leave, and imagine my face when I hear you've gotten a ride to Athens with a bunch of Arabs.”

Lucy defensively recreated the scene. “But … but they had a note from you. It looked like your writing. Your signature and everything…” She reached into her carpetbag to find the note. God, what a disaster her carpetbag was: tanning oil, a little that had spilled, half-finished postcards from Ireland with Italian stamps on them she thought she had mailed. There it was.

“Pretty good forgery,” mused O'Hanrahan. “The guy in Ouranopolis had an accomplice on Athos who was following me and getting me in trouble with this ikon vandalism, and he eventually stole the contents of my satchel.”

“So the photos are gone?”

O'Hanrahan eyed the government men, whom he didn't want informed, and Lucy knew not to ask any question of substance. “Well, Morey has a copy.”

This piqued the colonel's interest. “Copy of what exactly?”

O'Hanrahan lied seamlessly, “Just my notes for my next book, that's all! Of no value to anyone but me.”

Still Colonel Westin was curious. “And this book's about?”

“The shift in Fourth-Century
B.C.
Corinthian script in Greek.”

“Still sounds sort of dull, sir,” Lucy said drily, recognizing her own thesis.

O'Hanrahan handed the supposed note from Athos back to Lucy to see both bureaucrats grab the paper.

Colonel Westin: “This is clearly germane to my files, Clem—”

Underwood: “This is a matter for the Athens Embassy, Colonel. And I got my hand on it first…”

Lucy and O'Hanrahan exchanged glances of mutual exasperation with their saviors and flashed to each other a desire to talk privately.