Nightjack (24 page)

Ten minutes later a wedge of darkness spread out across the water broke from the horizon, quickly growing larger, wreathed in gulls and mist.

Pythos.

twenty-three

Grottoes opened at either end of the horseshoe-shaped harbor. A swathe of funeral cypress angled along the banks. Limestone caves in the cliffs sparkled above the glittering beaches. Moaning exhalations issued from the great fissures.

At the summit of the island sat Kaltzas’s fortified villa, with gates to the south, east, and west. Guest cottages, stables, and huge garages were plainly in view. Sheep grazed in the grassy hills nearby.

The main house was a rambling four-story white stucco building covered with steep ceramic roofs. Pace could make out towers, patios, balconies, and ornate wrought-iron railings.

“Like Olympus, rising on high,” Faust said. “Can you see it? There’s actually ice up there in the crags of the mountain.”

It was true. The shadowed cliffs had a slight sheen of snow even in this heat. “There must be a completely different air stream that far up.”

A flashing red aircraft warning beacon filled the sky with splashes of crimson. The helicopter had flown toward the flare of color and vanished from view behind the mountain.

Stavros told them that the bay of Pythos was seven miles long and three miles wide. The blue-black waters shifted to a burnished green along the coast. Stavros maneuvered the boat past several fishing vessels, through the cove to a huge stone mooring.

He said, “As I’ve stated, I will not be coming back for you. You will have to find other arrangements if you wish to return to Voros or continue on to one of the other islands.”

Pace paid and thanked him and the kid left without another word. Pace turned to see a steep set of stone stairs leading up from the harbor to the village.

“Holy crap!” Hayden said. “There’s hundreds of them. We’ve got to climb up all those? That’s probably as many steps as they’ve got in Madison Square Garden!”

“But you walked those, didn’t you?” Pace said.

“Yeah, but at least we had big pretzels.”

“Come on.”

“That ref knocked mine onto the court. The prick.”

The steps were so narrow they had to walk single file, huddled close to the ancient cliff wall. Pace led the way wondering how much blood had been shed on these sharp corners. Old men carrying their day’s catch getting almost to the top before a slippery step sent them all the way back down. Pacella was a little frightened of heights the way he was a little frightened of most things.

Pace kept looking back over his shoulder to make sure the others were following. It would be very easy for all of them to go over the side and die on the rocks below. Pace kept waiting to feel Pia’s hand tugging at him, drawing him down. Or maybe Faust’s. Or maybe Hayden’s.

At the top, herds of goats and sheep drifted through the wild golden grasses of the area.

You could feel the antiquity of the land, all the chronicles of mankind witnessed by stone. Rutted dirt roads twined across the countryside. Deep ravines revealed mastic trees and yellow crown daisies. Groves of olive trees receded along the hills.

“It’s so beautiful,” Pia said. “That way is to the village, you can see it from here. The other way...Olympus.”

The village was a primeval myth taken form. You looked at it and you looked at the places where Homer wrote his poems, where Achilles was born. Clusters of buildings were arranged tightly along the hilly streets blasted from rock. Carts raised clouds of chalky dust.

“I need a drink,” Faust said. “I just want a glass of water.”

“The last time you said that we were stuck in a
taverna
for twelve hours and you started your own
bouzouki
band.”

“Now what?” Hayden asked. “We walk?”

“Looks like it,” Pace said.

“Maybe that guy Vindi will be along in another Jag soon.”

“We’re in a land hewn from tradition and legend,” Faust said. “He’s making us walk as part of our trial.”

Pace said, “Like Christ along the Via Dolorosa.” He had to suppress the sudden desire to bolt toward the mountain. The driving need to face Kaltzas at last was upon him all at once. His had to fight to keep his teeth from clenching.

“So the whole town can see us for our sins?” Pia said. “Is that what he wants? All he had to do was ask. He wants a parade, I’ll give him a parade. He thinks we’re afraid of that? He wants me to wave a black flag, I’ll wave a black flag. He wants to see me naked?”

“The village appears empty, or nearly so,” Faust said.

“This isn’t like Athens. The fishermen probably go out at dawn and stay out until dusk.”

“While a billionaire lives in his high castle above them.”

“They must hate his guts,” Pia said. “They must plot his death every waking moment.”

“I doubt it. They live the lives they’ve got. The man shares the same dirt roads, drinks from the same wells.”

The sun had tanned Pia to glistening gold, and when she flashed her grin Pace felt a pang of remorse that they hadn’t made love last night. Maybe it was just another one of his crimes that should be promenaded before the world.

“Let’s go see the bastard and find out what he wants,” Pace said, and the others once again fell in line behind him as he led the way to a minor god on the vast throne of Olympus.

~ * ~

You had to at least chuckle. No matter how guilty or mad you were, when you were walking along a dirt track toward a high castle in the distance, your broken ashtray and pajamas in the bag on your shoulder, your little troupe stomping along behind you humming Greek songs, plumes of dust rising from their heels, the knife you’d thrown away a couple times still tight against the small of your back, another man’s dead wife bright in your mind, wondering if you would have to kill or die before the end of the day, you had to at least let out a chuckle.

They walked along the rutted road and Pace was surprised at how much greenery there was to the landscape. Judas trees and shrubbery dappled the hilly terrain, sparse along the seaside but growing richer toward the center of the island.

Down a separate path, Pace thought he saw a young woman peering at him through branches. Perhaps it was Cassandra. He thought, She wants to get a close look at us. He turned down the path and followed, and the others followed him.

The way grew steadily more steep and rocky until they reached an embankment with a suddenly down-sloped grade. The road they were on had dipped away from Kaltzas’s plateau, and they were now wandering into a craggy bowl canyon.

At the bottom was an excavation site centering on a set of ruins dappling the mouth of a cave. It had clearly been a very long, ongoing dig. Tons of rubble had been moved aside, the dirt filtered for artifacts. It looked like it hadn’t been worked for a while though.

They approached cautiously, except for Pia, who skipped forward as if across the lawn to grandma’s house, letting out girlish laughter along the way. If she hadn’t been one of the most depressed people Pace knew, she would’ve been one of the happiest.

Shafts of sunlight illuminated the cave entrance, which opened into the first chamber of a temple or a tomb which continued on into a deep passageway, flanked by mortar and lumber.

“It was a trap,” Faust said. Pace looked in his eyes and saw a growing awareness there, a blossoming sense of purpose. “We shouldn’t have come this way. There must be another road around the far side of the slope, leading up to the villa.”

“Who gives a shit?” Pia said. “So let’s just go in.”

“Into those black tunnels?” Hayden asked. He rubbed at his widow’s peak, smoothing it back until it was sharp as a box cutter. “You’re kidding, right? This is what we want to do? I don’t want to go in there. We don’t have enough problems? Seriously, let’s backtrack.”

“I’m not sure we could make it back up the incline,” Pace said. “The grade didn’t mean much coming down here but the rocky terrain is precarious. It’ll be a lot harder getting out of the canyon.”

“You can do it.”

“Maybe.”

“So? Go kick his ass and come back for us in a helicopter. You know how to fly a helicopter, don’t you?”

Sam Smith had flown Hueys in Cambodia toward the end of the war. Pace’s hands could probably work the copter that had flown overhead earlier today.

Faust stepped in closer to inspect the excavation site. Pace followed and saw that several battered bronze, oil-burning lamps sat aflame in niches in the rock just inside the cave mouth. “An underground temple?”

“Built inside a cavern that collapsed. Probably covered over by rockslides centuries ago.”

“Whose temple is this?” Pia asked. “Or is it a tomb? Didn’t they used to sacrifice virgins to Poseidon so their ships would have good fortune?”

“Think virgin blood might still help?” Hayden asked, bullets of sweat streaming down his face. Pace saw a nun with a yardstick waiting in his eyes. “My Sunday School teacher, Sister Lurteen, could prick her finger for us. Of course, she is a lesbian. She’s done some weird things with plastic. You think that counts?”

Faust appeared more and more sure of himself now, growing stronger. He stared into the depths of the chamber. He let out an uncomfortable laugh. “I think you have to walk through the site to gain entrance to his home. The tunnels seem to twist back toward the mountain. Another labor. Moving underground. We’re already part of a fable thousands of years old. Everything in Greece is symbolic.”

Including us, Pace thought. “This is the underworld,” he said. “Our psyches have been driven down by love. Eros is the god behind vulnerability...who exposes all of mankind, through love, betrayal, and cruelty...to the inseparable blend of pain and pleasure.”

“That sounds kind of sexy,” Pia said. “How do you know all that stuff?”

“Sam Smith told me.”

“Who?”

Alongside the sun, the flashing red beacon bore down on them. The ice on the distant cliffs sparkled. Faust studied the layout of the land, the mountain towering overhead with the retreat waiting for them.

“These lamps are filled with oil. They had to be filled within the last day or two. Kaltzas set this up, but did he do it for us or himself?”

“Well, we know he’s got problems,” Hayden said. “And he likes drama.”

Pia peered into the darkness. “Jesus Christ, these Greeks and their trials. We studied this in middle school. Hercules and his twelve labors. Sisyphus and his boulder. Atlas and the pillars of the sky. What the hell is it with these people?”

“They’ve had an unpleasant history,” Faust said.

“Who the fuck hasn’t?” She showed her teeth in a hateful smile that Pace found alluring. He stepped to her and put a hand on her elbow. She wheeled away from him. “The big crazy Kahuna wants us to go through the cave, we’ll go through the cave. Come on.”

Faust actually held his arm out, stopping her. He’d never done anything like that before. Pace wondered where this new change would be leading the man, leading them all.

“Wait.”

Pace said, “It’s the trigger. This is where Kaltzas’s wife died while they were excavating the site. This is where Cassandra watched her mother get crushed to death.”

The start of the fracture
.

He thought about what it must have been like, to watch your mother die beneath tons of rubble, trying to free some speck of the past from the rock. At least as bad as watching your wife burn to death holding her melted hands out to you.

“There should be electric lights.”

“There are,” Faust said. “I can see them in the glow of the burners. They’re strung along the roof of the tunnel, but I can’t see a switch.”

Pace entered the cave and felt his way along the wall. Jack had strange eyes and could see very well in the darkness. He found the switch and hit it, but the lights didn’t go on. “No power. Another scare tactic.”

“Can you see daylight out the other side?”

“No. The cave must be catacombed.”

“We might grow lost and die in some wretched dark corner.”

“We’ve already died in wretched dark corners.”

Pace watched Faust, waiting for Daedalus to reappear. But the masculine solar deity stayed hidden in the shadows. He thought maybe they should use Ariadne’s trick of unfurling string through the maze so they could return safely.

“Fuck it,” he said.

“Fuck what?” Pia asked.

“Nothing. Let’s just get it over with. Everybody grab a lamp. He left them for us, might as well use them.”

“Seriously,” Hayden said. “Wouldn’t you rather just go back up the ridge, walk up to his house, take the big knife out and stab the hell out of everybody, and then bring the copter back for us? I think that’s a much better plan. Isn’t it? Isn’t it the better plan? You’re not listening to me.”

Faust took one of the bronze burners from its nook and stepped ahead of Pace. “Shall we enter?” he asked, already inside, the light from the ancient lamp receding step by step as he proceeded deeper into the underworld. The rest followed.