The Greek didn’t seem to hear him. “Who you work for?” he demanded fearfully. “Who send you?”
“I told you no more questions. Tell me about the crystals.”
“Nothing to tell.”
“Earnst said you shipped them to him by accident, men requested their return after they had been stolen.”
“Earnst is still alive?”
“He wouldn’t have been, if not for me.”
Another couple, this one older than the last, came through the door. The sound of windchimes followed them.
“Go away!” Stadipopolis roared. “Closed!”
The couple exited as quickly as they had entered.
“I kept Earnst alive,” McCracken said, “and I’ll keep you alive too — if you cooperate.”
“What makes you think I am in danger?”
“Mostly that if you don’t cooperate, I’ll make it known on the streets that you sold these crystals to me this day. It’s not hard to figure that you’re scared of somebody. How long do you think it’ll be before word filters from Monastiraki Square to them about what you sold me?”
“No!” Stadipopolis pleaded, hands clutching for his face. “You can’t!”
“For reasons you can’t begin to understand, I can. And I will unless we talk.”
“Not here,” the Greek said, eyes darting. “I might be watched. Is possible.”
“Where? When?”
“Tonight. Ten o’clock at Kerameikos Cemetery. You know it?”
“I’ll find it.”
The Greek started to move away. Blaine grasped his arm in an iron grip. “Set me up, Kapo, and I’ll know it. The man you’re frightened of might be a match for me but then again he might not. I’m betting not. I’d hate to have to make Monastiraki Square poorer by losing you. Place just wouldn’t be the same again.” Then, in words spoken like ice, “Don’t call him, Kapo.”
“I wouldn’t! I couldn’t!”
Blaine nodded at him, satisfied, and started to turn for the door, pocketing his crystal again.
“No,” Stadipopolis said. “You must leave with something. Money must change hands. If I’m being watched, it would look strange if it didn’t.”
“Might look stranger if it did.”
“Please! Just to be safe.”
McCracken handed over a twenty-dollar bill and grabbed the much-disputed vase. “Got just the place for this….”
“But—”
Blaine was on his way for the door. “Ten o’clock tonight, Kapo, in that cemetery. You set the rules. Just don’t break them.”
And the windchimes tumbled against each other once more.
Outside, across the street from Kapo’s, a legless beggar who had been pushing himself along on a skate-wheel platform stopped suddenly. His eyes had to be deceiving him. He had to get a closer look. He tried to better his view of the man who had just stepped out of the antique store, but the flow of pedestrian traffic was too thick, forcing the beggar to risk a quick slide through moving traffic in the street.
Pedestrians lurched aside and cars were brought to grinding halts. He reached the other side of the street and caught one glimpse of the shrinking figure, then pushed himself through the door of a fruit market. A customer and his bag went reeling. A basket of oranges toppled to the floor.
The beggar didn’t stop.
“Your phone, Andros!” he screamed when he was halfway across the floor. “Hand it to me quick!”
The befuddled proprietor pried the receiver from its hook and lowered it to the beggar.
“Now, dial this number! Come on, get ready!”
Andros dialed the number the beggar recited. The ringing started, stopped.
“I must speak with Vasquez,” the beggar told the man who answered.
Chapter 11
Kapo Stadipopolis hummed to himself for distraction as a second minute ticked past ten o’clock. He’d been waiting as planned by the Tomb of Dionysios of Kollytos since five minutes of, and there was no sign of the American. Good. Maybe he wouldn’t show up. Stadipopolis wouldn’t be surprised if he was dead.
The Greek tried to light a cigarette but the stiff night breeze thwarted him. After a half dozen tries he gave up, returned to his humming, and wrapped his jacketed arms about himself to ward off the chill. Behind him the white stone bull, symbol of Dionysios, perched atop twin pillars. It seemed ready to pounce.
Stadipopolis kept humming, the only sound in the Kerameikos Cemetery.
“Boo,” whispered a voice in his ear as an iron finger poked him like a gun in the back.
Stadipopolis swung around in utter surprise. “You want to give me heart attack, American?”
“You were making enough noise to wake the dead.” Blaine glanced around him. “Literally.”
“You’re late,” the Greek managed, steadying himself.
“Hardly. Been here since just after eight. Had to make sure you weren’t planning anything.”
“You don’t trust me?” Stadipopolis seemed offended.
“I don’t trust anyone until they give me a reason to.”
“We must be quick.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Blaine thought Kerameikos Cemetery a good choice for the meeting. It was more a testament to the past than the dead and was popular among tourists for good reason. The cemetery contained the excavated remains of the old Kerameikos quarter of Athens, along with monuments to great figures dating from the sub-Mycenean period to late antiquity. Within the excavated portions no two tombs were alike.
The cemetery was cut into sections by serpentine walkways which made it seem larger than it was. Just enough excavation had been performed to avoid clutter and promote atmosphere among the testaments to Greek history. The tomb of Dionysios was located due north from the Kerameikos Museum on the Pireos Street side. Just south of the gate through which McCracken had entered lay the Agora, the old market at the foot of the steep grassy hillside which led up to the famed Acropolis.
“You understand my meeting you might mean my death,” Stadipopolis said fearfully.
“And not meeting me would have assured it.”
The night was lit by a half moon, and the Greek moved back into the shadow cast by the ceramic bull atop the tomb.
“I want to know everything you do about the crystals,” Blaine told him. “And I want it from the beginning.”
“The beginning in this case is difficult to pin down. Before the dawn of civilization as we know it.”
“Spare me the history lesson, and let’s start with how you came to be in possession of the crystals.”
“They were stolen from a man of great power. He is called the Lion of Crete. He is mad, but nobody dares cross him.”
“What’s his name?”
“He goes by many. The closest to the truth is Megilido Fass.”
“So you stole the crystals from him and then shipped them to Earnst….”
“No!” Stadipopolis insisted, drawing back against a pillar. “This I tell you, American, for the sake of my children, I would never dare cross a man like Megilido Fass. He has his own villa in the southwest of Crete, big as a town they say. People have been known to go there and never return. Boys mostly.”
“Boys?”
The Greek nodded reluctantly. “Wealth has its luxuries, among them being the ability to indulge in whatever … pleasure suits you at the time. Fass is free to do as he wishes. As I said, no one ever crosses him, and that includes the authorities.” He made a spitting motion. “Worthless pigs that they are. Corruption is their middle name in these parts.”
“Not just in these parts, Greek. All right, so it was Fass who was originally in possession of these crystals. Then he was robbed.”
Stadipopolis nodded. “On a dare, a foolish one. A young man whose family had been wronged by the heathen vowed revenge and was coaxed on by his friends. He intercepted a shipment from Fass bound for Morocco. The crystals were among it.”