ROMANCE: THE SHEIKH'S GAMES: A Sheikh Romance (54 page)

Ex-girlfriend, he amended. He’d sent her off to the mainland with bandbox, birdcage, and parrot as his mother liked to say. Marissa had stood up in the launch, screaming at him in Italian the whole way. She nearly fell overboard at one point but that only made her scream more loudly.

“Philip, will you bring me another bottle of wine? I want to toast the sunrise.”

“Red or white, sir?” the steward asked.

“It doesn’t matter. And bring an extra for Poseidon.”

The steward nodded and went off in search of the wine and Simon slumped back into his chair and stared out at the water. Thank God it was quiet now on the Kallisto. The band had returned to the mainland around four that morning but the partying had gone on until Marissa’s hissy fit had brought it to a crashing halt by throwing a bowl of caviar all over the redhead — what was her name? Gretchen? — Simon had been kissing in the lifeboat. It wasn’t as if it meant anything, and he’d tried to explain that to Marissa. That’s when Gretchen got pissed off and locked herself in her cabin. What the hell was wrong with women anyway?

Philip returned with two bottles of wine. Simon carried them up to the helicopter pad where he waited for the chopper to return from dropping the band in Athens. He had a yen to see the temple again, though he’d been there many times. He loved and the temple there, and visited it on a regular basis. It was where he’d first kissed Marissa after an impromptu drive down the coast from Athens. He’d kissed her as the sun set, he remembered. Or was that some other girl? He’d taken a lot of them there and then to the hotel nearby. Women loved getting kissed at a temple. It made what followed seem like a religious experience. What Simon remembered most, though, were the brilliant streaks of color in the perfect blue sky.

The helicopter returned a little before seven and Simon got aboard and told the pilot he wanted to go to the temple.

“It won’t be open yet,” George said.

“It will for me.”

George grinned whitely. “You’re the boss.”

That he was, and he paid his people to indulge his whims, of which he had many.

It was a short hop, and the noise from the chopper wakened the caretaker who unlocked the gates for Simon for a generous tip.

Simon walked up to the temple and sat down on one of the fallen stones in what would have been the naos, or hall of worship. “Father Poseidon,” he said, “Marissa and I have broken up. I first kissed her here in your sacred place, so I thought you deserved to be the first to know. I brought you a bottle of wine.” He uncorked the bottle and poured it onto the ground. “It’s French. I hope you like it. Thank you for the calm sea.” It wasn’t as if he believed in the old gods, but he did enjoy little rituals.

He sat for a while, just enjoying the early morning breezes and the warmth of the sun. Tourists would be showing up soon, and he wanted to be away by then, but he couldn’t resist lazing there a bit and thinking about what it must have looked like before it had been destroyed, a handsome, open building with an enormous gold-leafed statue of Poseidon at the head of the naos.

When he got up, he went over to the spot where the poet, Lord Byron, had incised his name into the stone. He ran his fingers over it and murmured the words of the poet, Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep... Byron who swam out to sea to watch the funeral pyre of his friend, Shelley, who had drowned.

“Excuse me?” Simon turned to find two young women standing outside the fence. “What time does the temple open?”

He pretended to check his watch. “For you, right now,” he told them, then opened the gate to let them in. The girls thanked him, and he thought about inviting them out to his yacht, but he’d just gotten rid of one woman, what did he want with more?

On the way out, he told the caretaker about the girls, and gave the old man his other bottle of wine. Then he flew off like some modern-day godling, which, if money counted for anything, he probably was. Simon Katsaros probably had more money than any god, if you counted his family’s fortune. He had an allowance, and a little side business to bring in more; not something he would ever have told his mother and father about since it was probably not entirely legal, but nobody had to know.

By the time he got back to the Kallisto, he was tired and ready for sleep. He told the Captain to head for Pireas where most of his guests would have cars waiting for them. They’d spend the night in port where Simon would talk to his business partner, Kosta Papachristos, about whom there was nothing Christlike, and the next morning, head for Halithos, a little island in the Gulf of Corinth, owned by the Katsaros family. He was tired. He wanted to go home.

Gretchen, or whatever her name was, was waiting for him in his bed. He thought about throwing her out of his cabin, but she looked like an angel with her snow-blonde hair spread out across his pillows. How could Simon resist?

“Hello, beautiful,” he said as he began to undress.

Later that afternoon, Simon said farewell to the last of his guests at the Pireas harbor, and walked over to a little espresso bar nearby. He read the newspaper and drank coffee until Kosta showed up.

Kosta always looked, as Simon’s rather colorful mother would have said, like he tried to and couldn’t. There was always something a bit off. Too flashy and yet too tailored, too much the fake-looking tough guy in over-priced clothing. He was reasonably nice looking, and attracted women right and left. If he dressed better, Simon might have occasionally included him in one of his cruises, but as it was, he wouldn’t have fit in at all. That was just as well. He didn’t want to mix business with pleasure.

“Why on earth did you want to meet here?” Kosta asked as he sat down.

“I like their coffee. You said you had something to discuss.”

Kosta waved the waitress over and ordered an espresso and “something sweet, I don’t care what; two of them.” Then he pulled out his phone. “I have a line on some merchandise from Egypt,” he told Simon. “Some art glass, pottery, that sort of thing.” He flashed a photo at Simon of a crate with a half-wrapped blue bowl sitting on top of it.

“Are you asking for my permission to move on the deal?” Simon asked.

“It’s your money.”

Simon understood what that meant. The shipments were likely to be carrying something more than art glass and pottery, something more expensive, but with the potential to earn a great deal of money. “I don’t know, Kosta. I’m not sure we want to get into that.”

“This is a sure thing, man.” The waitress brought his espresso and a plate filled with loukoumades swimming in syrup. “That looks great,” Kosta said and swatted the waitress on her ass. “Thanks.”

She was not pleased, but said nothing. Probably worried about keeping her job.

“You shouldn’t do that to strange women, Kosta.”

“Why not? They love being told they’re desirable.”

“I don’t think that’s what you’re saying, but remember, she’s quite capable of spitting in your coffee next time you come in here.”

Kosta’s eyebrows shot up. “You think she’d do that over a simple little pat?”

“I think if you did that to my sister I’d do worse than that to you.”

“Okay, okay, calm down.”

“I am calm. Let’s talk.” Simon hadn’t been averse to importing objets d’art from Russia, pre-revolutionary things that netted a lot of money on the black market. But antiquities? That was something else. He had a healthy respect for the ancient. “What exactly are you going to ship?”

Kosta assured him it was minor league stuff. “Nothing like out of Tut’s tomb!” he insisted as he licked the syrup from his fingers. “These are terrific. You sure you don’t want some?”

“I’m good. Let me think about this, all right?”

“Don’t think too long or someone else will snatch it up. The Russians are looking at it even as we speak. Hey honey!” he yelled at the waitress and lifted his cup in the air. “Let’s have another round here.”

No, Simon would never have invited Kosta onto the Kallisto, no matter how well he dressed.

They drank a bit more coffee, Kosta asked the waitress if she had any galaktoboureko. “It’s this damn sweet tooth of mine,” he told her. “I guess that’s why you look so good to me.”

“Kosta!”

“What? I’m just complimenting a beautiful woman. You get that, don’t you honey?”

“We don’t carry galaktoboureko,” she said. “Would you like some more loukoumades?” She was clearly not amused by Kosta.

“No that’s all right. But if you wanted to slip me your phone number…”

She turned and walked away, her back rigid.

“I think I’m in there.”

“So there’s nothing really important in the shipment?”

“No, no, it’s all the sort of junk that collectors love, but it has no real historical value. A lot of ninth dynasty stuff. Pottery and a couple of statues.”

Simon wondered if Kosta had any clue what the ninth dynasty was, or if he was just throwing stuff out to try to muddy the waters a bit.

“Yeah, all right,” Simon told him. “Go on ahead. But let’s not make this a regular thing, all right?”

“If you don’t play, you can’t win, man,” Kosta told him.

He supposed that was true, but the idea made him uneasy. Much of what Kosta moved was simple contraband. There was a market for these things, and government interference kept people from having what they wanted. It was like bringing Cuban cigars into the United States had been, harmless, really, and giving people what they wanted.

“I saw the Kallisto in the harbor,” Kosta observed. “You sail all the way from Halithos?”

“I was entertaining a few friends.” He didn’t feel like saying too much.

“You ever going to invite me onto your boat?” Simon sipped his coffee and didn’t answer. It made Kosta laugh. “Yeah, I’m the guy you don’t want you friends or family to know about, aren’t I? The one who knows your secrets.”

“Let’s leave it as business, Kosta. It’s not good to mix the two.”

“If you say so.”

“I’ll transfer the money to you tomorrow. Is that soon enough?”

“Perfect. I’ll be going down there myself to inspect the goods. I hear Egyptian girls are beautiful,” he added with what amounted to a verbal leer that made Simon want to shower. If the “import-export business” he ran wasn’t important to him on a number of levels — it not only brought in extra money, but the fact of it had made his parents proud – he’d have dropped Kosta in a heartbeat. Of course his parents had no idea that he sidelined in contraband; they thought it was on the up-and-up. They’d encouraged him, and now he was in too deep and didn’t know how to get out.

“Let me know when the cargo is sold,” he said. He folded the paper and set it on the table.

“Have a nice trip home,” Kosta said as Simon strode out of the cafe.

Kosta sat for a while, staring out at the crowds traveling up and down the street in front of the cafe. He didn’t have a lot of use for most people. If women were attractive, that was fine, if men did what he needed them to do, that was also fine. He didn’t much like children of any age. He liked animals. His mother had often said how odd it was that Kosta was so horrible to other people but so nice to animals that he wouldn’t even eat meat. He told her that animals were easy, they weren’t complicated and sly the way people were, but she didn’t understand. He supposed that as long as he continued to send money to her she didn’t have to understand.

He liked being around animals, he didn’t have to pretend around them. The cafe cat sensed that and settled itself in the chair Simon had vacated. They regarded each other cautiously, Kosta and the cat, then the cat closed his eyes, and Kosta smiled. A nap would be nice, he decided. Somewhere in the shade.

Simon had already paid the bill, but Kosta wasn’t ready to leave. It wasn’t the waitress, he’d lost interest in her even before Simon left. He liked the smell of the place, the aroma of coffee and under it, spices and honey, and the flowers on the tables. It was a nice cafe. He’d have to come back.

“Can I get you anything else?”

He looked up and smiled at the waitress. “How about a small coffee with honey?”

She stood there for a moment as if she was expecting a punchline or an insult, but he was finished with her. “And a bit of milk and honey for the cat?”

“He doesn’t drink milk. He does like a bit of apple.”

“Then a piece of the apple tart I saw earlier. He and I can share it.”

He could tell that she was confused by this turn of events, and that was fine with him. He preferred that people not know who he was. It was simpler to get on in the world that way. Simon took him for a thug because that’s what Kosta wanted him to think. It made it easier to lie to Simon. What Kosta was bringing in from Egypt was not ninth dynasty trash, but some very fine pre-Islamic artifacts obtained from the Taliban, who were not averse to taking money for the things they were supposed to be destroying. They were as corrupt as their secular counterparts; you just had to make sure that you didn’t point that out to them.

Kosta kept a close watch on the political and social developments in the Middle East. There were opportunities to be had out there if you were in the right place at the right time, with the right amount of money. And Simon was good for providing the right amount of money. As long as he got what he felt was a fair return on his money, Simon didn’t ask a lot of questions, and that’s why Kosta liked working with him. Simon was a smart guy, but he didn’t give a lot of thought to the things Kosta thought of as important. And that was fine with Kosta.

One of the things Kosta was thinking about, quite seriously, was his relationship with Simon. It seemed to him that it was tenuous at best, and he had been wondering if it wasn’t time to change that, to improve it with a little legal cement. With Simon, there was no way in, but with Simon’s sister, Athena, who was in school in London, it was another thing entirely. He’d already done his homework and knew that Athena might be easy to woo. She was nineteen and on her own for the first time in her life, having transferred to the London School of Economics from the Athens University of Economics and Business.