His parting with Natalya had been stiff and wholly professional. He admired her ability to distance herself from her mission. She had come to Greece only to save Blaine’s life and set him straight on what they were facing. This done, she could leave knowing they would in all probability never meet again. Blaine couldn’t accept that, though he sorely wished he could. After the pain of finding T.C. in New York, he felt certain he would never be able to feel close to a woman again. And yet, strangely, Natalya reminded him of T.C. so much that he couldn’t help but be attracted to her. She was strong, independent, and mysterious in the same ways that Blaine had always thought of T.C. He tried to probe Natalya’s mystery by comparing her to himself. While he wore his emotions like an old suit, tattered but open to view, she held hers within, her stoic seriousness as much a survival mechanism as his often misplaced sense of humor. Blaine didn’t doubt she was hiding a hurt so deep that it powered her single-mindedness.
Blaine started down the street, doing his best to blend with the large number of people out on a beautiful Athens Thursday morning. He had plenty of time before catching his flight across the Mediterranean and figured his best use of it would be to phone Sundowner. The best means to do so was to make his way to a top-rated hotel with a smooth-working long-distance service. Twenty minutes later, he had checked into the Athens Hilton. It was another twenty minutes before a long-distance line was available.
“Good morning, Blaine,” Sundowner said cheerfully from halfway around the world.
“Hope I didn’t wake you.”
“The Toy Factory never sleeps. How goes your search for Atragon?”
“Not in hand yet, but drawing closer. Actually I’m calling about some complications I’ve encountered along a different line.”
“Such as?”
“Suffice it to say I’ve linked up with a foreign operative with as big a stake in this as ours. She told me an interesting story about a Farmer Boy the Soviets placed in America and have been running ever since.”
“A child spy?”
“Now all grown up with the ear of the President.”
“Christ….”
“I think we can safely rule him out for the time being. But the existence of a mole would explain our problems in New York, Sundance. In fact, it would explain a hell of a lot. Go over the members of the crisis committee for me again.”
“William Wyler Stamp, CIA director. George Kappel, Secretary of Defense. And Edmund Mercheson, Secretary of State.”
“Eliminate Stamp. He fell into this position by accident and no one goes anywhere after running the Company these days. Tell me about Kappel.”
“Very hawkish. His philosophy’s a bit archaic in view of the proposed treaties, or maybe it isn’t since the whole peace process has fallen on its ass. In Washington they call Kappel a survivor. Administrations come and go, but he always manages to hang on.”
“And Mercheson?”
“A dove. Next to the President, he’s the most unpopular man in the country, according to polls, since the disarmament treaties collapsed. People feel he cheated them, made the country give up too much only to be taken in by the Soviets who didn’t want peace to begin with. I guess people look at him and expect him to work the same magic Kissinger did. No chance.”
“I assume Mercheson is career Washington as well.”
“Not as openly as Kappel but, yes, that would be an understatement. He’s been around forever and promises to be around a while longer. I’m pretty good with a computer, Blaine,” Sundowner added after a pause. “I can quietly go over their full files with the proverbial fine-tooth CRT screen.”
“Don’t bother. The truth’s been buried too deep for anyone to ever find. This is the Soviet version of the deep-cover plant. They wouldn’t have made any mistakes with their Farmer Boy.”
Something occurred to Sundowner.
“They may have made one,” he said. “Mercheson grew up on a farm in Michigan.”
Manolokis was sweating inside the steaming white van as the ferry rolled over the waves of the Mediterranean. The port of Khania had finally come into sharp view. Manolokis dreaded these Thursday voyages, but he kept making them because the pay was impossible to refuse. So much for so little work. Every week a new shipment and another cash payment. He sometimes wondered what happened to the previous week’s shipment, but he tried to think about it as little as possible. Part of his job was to ask no questions.
Manolokis gave in to temptation and rolled down the window on the driver’s side of the van.
“Stay silent,” he commanded the young passengers behind him, “or I’ll cut off your balls.”
He would round them up from various Mediterranean cities over the course of the week for delivery on Thursday. They were beggar boys willing to do anything for a decent meal and a few pennies. Manolokis promised them much more. A home. A life. For a time anyway, though he never elaborated on that. Four or five every week between the ages of eleven and fifteen. Since they were homeless or runaways, no one noticed when they disappeared.
Manolokis did his best never to consider the ramifications of what he had become involved in; it was too late to pull out in any event. His employer was not a man to cross, nor were the men Manolokis dealt with directly. Megilido Fass kept a tight net over the goings on in his Sfakia villa. News that came in never went out.
The same could be said for the merchandise Manolokis was charged with delivering.
He dozed briefly in the heat, until he was awakened by the bump of the ferry grazing the dock of the port. At last, he thought. Manolokis stretched, his sweat-soaked pants and white linen jacket clinging to the seat. He rolled up the window, turned on the engine, and switched the blessed air-conditioning back on.
There were never any questions when Manolokis drove off the ferry. The authorities who might have raised them were almost certainly on Fass’s payroll as well. This was Crete, after all. Fass owned it.
The van bucked slightly as it passed from dock to roadway. Manolokis would be in Khania proper only briefly, soon swinging east to Vryses and then toward the south coast to the region of Sfakia and Fass’s villa. At the end of the port district a shepherd was driving his goats across the road. Manolokis sat back to wait for the herd to pass.
A knocking came on the window. Manolokis turned to see a beggar wielding a tin cup. He shooed the man away without paying further heed. The knocking came again. Manolokis looked longer. The darkened windows made seeing out almost as difficult as seeing in and he decided it would be best to deal with the beggar through an open window anyway. Bastard deserved a good smack in the face for bothering him. He should report him to Fass’s people. Bastard would probably lose his hands for the effort.
“Look,” Manolokis started, “I don’t know who—”
And stopped, just like that. Because the man outside the van was no beggar. It was … him, could have been a twin. The same face he saw regularly in the mirror except when it smiled no gold tooth flashed. Manolokis saw the twin’s hand lash forward through the open window. He remembered trying to recoil and nothing else.
An instant later Blaine McCracken opened the door and climbed inside. Swiftly he pushed the unconscious Greek’s body from the seat and took his place behind the wheel.
Blaine checked the rearview mirror. Five frightened faces glared back at him, teenage boys cowering in their seats. A few began to spit words out quickly in Greek, too quick for Blaine to follow them.