“The men in the Maruti are after you.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“I thought they were after me.”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell me why?”
He looked at me like he was trying to decide what he could and couldn’t say and for good effect looked over his shoulder and around at the people dining near us. Everyone jabbered away in Greek as far as I could hear.
“NYPD had a tip that a terrorist cell was forming on Cyprus. It is my job to find out if that is true. What I saw this morning looks like I might have found it.”
“Do you know who they represent?”
He shrugged. “Not yet. But I will.”
“Where do Max and Irene fit in?”
He blew out a breath, looked out the window into the glare from the parking lot. “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I’m getting closer to the terrorists, they’re getting closer to me. They are well-organized, well-funded, and have sophisticated communications equipment. Cell phones are easily monitored. You don’t see me with one, do you?”
I shook my head no.
“I make calls from public phones when I need to and only when I need to. Max and Irene have been at that house for a while. It was a matter of time until someone figured out who they were. I’m sorry they thought killing Max and Irene would solve anything. But then these are people that blow themselves up to take a lot of other people with them. They use airplanes as weapons. They’re insane.”
Our meal arrived on that cheery note. I was once again famished. Along with our entrees the waiter placed before us a salad of tomatoes, green peppers, black olives and cabbage drizzled with olive oil and feta cheese.
We spent a few moments in silence as we demolished our food. I sighed in contentment.
“Your kebabs okay?” Zach asked.
“Delicious. How about your steak?”
“Perfect.”
I waded in again. “What about my aunt? You can’t possibly believe she fits into this terrorist thing, do you?”
“She might have inadvertently wedged herself into the smuggling shoe along with the terrorists. That’s how they finance a lot of their operations. They’ll smuggle anything from potsherds to F14s. You wouldn’t believe the smuggling market worldwide. It’s probably double the size of the legitimate market.”
“That’s incredible. You don’t think my aunt’s in any danger, do you? The terrorists wouldn’t be interested in an eccentric old lady, would they?”
Zach put down his knife and fork. His eyes met mine.
“Claudie, terrorists don’t stop at eccentric old ladies. They stop at nothing. Your aunt could be anywhere. This is the first time she came up on my radar screen. I have to follow any lead that might help me crack this case.”
I looked out the window and pushed my sunglasses back on, not wanting him to see me tear up. I was surprised myself at my reaction. He still thought of my aunt as a suspect. I had to prove him wrong. In doing that I’d clear myself of the cloud hovering over me. I willed myself to calm down and think level headed.
I guess it was good I had a partner like him to help me find her. Unfortunately, he was into something much deadlier than smuggling a few small statues. I didn’t want to get involved in terrorism. But by association, I already was. I had to depend on him whether I trusted him or not.
Our being lovers complicated things a bit, didn’t it?
He touched my finger tips with his. “Hey, I’ll help your aunt, if I possibly can. I promise. Don’t go crying on me.”
“I’m not crying,” I said, still hiding behind the glasses.
“Yeah, then why is your nose red?” He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and handed it to me. It was clean, white and pressed.
I wiped at my nose and eyes. He paid the bill and stood. “C’mon, we’ll try to find who your aunt was associating with while she was here, including Mr. Bellomo.”
I scooted out of the booth and followed him from the still crowded restaurant, and thanked the ancient gods for another good meal on Cyprus. I don’t think I had ever had a bad one.
Zach eased into traffic and headed for old town Pafos where Mrs. Crawford lived, the same place Yannis and I had visited only two days ago, more like two millennia. I doubted she would be home. More than likely she would be out with her friends having lunch and doing the tourist thing. There were tons of Brits on the island. She was sure to have connections and a multitude of opportunities for socializing.
We decided since I had been there before that I would do the front work. The same Cypriot woman answered my knock and said no, Mrs. Crawford was with her friends and no, she didn’t know where that would be, but she would be home later, if I cared to call again. Would I like to leave a card? I declined since I didn’t have any on me. I thanked her in my hesitant Greek and tried to tell her I would call again. I hope I said it correctly. In Greek inflection is everything.
“Where to now?” I asked, back in the car.
“To see if we can catch up with Escort Tours. Maybe Lonnie is having a tour today, and the widows are with him.”
We wound through old Pafos through narrow streets with brightly painted houses built smack up against the street to an open-sided store with an Escort Tours sign hanging off the building. The interior was painted an amazing green. We had missed the tour, but the old man with grizzled hair and sunken mouth, who served as Lonnie’s assistant of sorts, said that no English widows were on the tour today. Sorry.
We sat in the car and shared a bottle of water.
“Zach, what about the American couple? Are they living in the house with all the communications equipment and the blue Maruti?”
“I couldn’t tell, but they’re on the list of people to see.”
“We could go by the dig where they are supposed to be.” After I thought about it, I said, “But probably they won’t be there. Lonnie said they were dig groupies which means they’re probably on the beach or sightseeing, since they don’t actually work the dig. They came on the trip for the tax break.”
We were at a standstill.
“Mind if I call Lena?”
He shook his head in the negative. “Cells phone can be traced and conversations listened to. Can’t take the chance. The vibrator has been going off all morning so someone is trying to get through to you.”
“Maybe it’s my aunt. She knows my number. Can’t I at least see the caller ID list?”
He pursed his lips and seemed to consider the request. He wore his NY baseball cap and dark glasses so I couldn’t read his eyes. He pulled the cell phone out of his pocket.
“Okay, read the numbers, no calls.”
“Right.”
I studied the numbers. Yannis had called six times. Lena twice. The last number was an unrecognizable jumble, and I told Zach about it.
“Okay if I listen to the messages?”
He nodded once.
All of Yannis’s calls said to call him, it was urgent. Lena said to call her, it was urgent. The last caller, in an accent I couldn’t place, said, “Kill the man with you, if you want to see your aunt again.”
Nine
When Zach heard my gasp, he yanked the phone away and played the message. He swore and said, “That might be our friend in the Maruti.”
I braced my hand on my forehead to still the dizzying spiral in my brain. A level of fear far beyond anything I ever experienced seared through me, destroying all reason and logic. My heart beat staccato time. I was falling apart. It was taking everything I had to hold myself together. Every moment I was sinking deeper and deeper into the quagmire.
“I want out, Zach. I can’t be a player in this game. People are getting killed and talking about killing. I want out.”