“So what did he do, the man who owns this place?” Adonia not only chewed with her mouth wide open, but spoke with it full. “You know, why’d he go to prison?”
“He didn’t,” Beryx enlightened her. “Socrates was a teacher who was poisoned in his prison cell a long, long time ago.”
Adonia grimaced. “They name a restaurant after a guy who was poisoned? That doesn’t seem very smart.” It was only once Beryx heard her say a full sentence—without food in her mouth—that he realized she was no girl from a village. Adonia spoke a lower class Greek dialect direct from the Athens tenement slums.
“Ew, poison,” she shuttered, looking down onto her oily chicken.
Beryx smirked and ran his crooked index finger from her elbow to her wrist, tracing it all the way down to the tip of her thumb. “Are you saying you have no craving for dessert?”
Adonia knocked back her glass of Retsina and slammed the empty pewter goblet onto the table with gusto. “Hell, yes I want dessert. I want baklava and strong coffee.”
She laughed and tipped her ear to her shoulder, kicking off her sandal before wedging her foot between his legs and tickling his groin with her big toe. “Oh, and I want that kind of dessert, too. I’ve just got to go take a piss first.”
Eying her ample bottom as she wiggled away from the table, Beryx believed in that moment that if he and Adonia had become acquainted under different circumstances—perhaps at a grocery store or in a doctor’s waiting room—without her madam as a middleman, that she would’ve been with him tonight regardless of whether he was paying her. He could tell by the easy flow of their conversation, and by the way she looked to him for explanations about the simplest things. She wanted him, he was convinced, more than she’d ever wanted any man, and would do to him things she’d never done—even to her best customers.
“Excuse me, sir.” The waiter bowed respectfully and presented Beryx with the key to an airport locker. “The young woman asked me to give this to you. She said not to worry, that a man with a mustache had taken care of her, and that you would know what she meant.”
Beryx sighed, his fantasies shattered like the carafe of red wine he’d smashed against Etor’s bedroom wall. It was time to go back to work, and Nicolai Ceausescu didn’t pay him to have romantic encounters in foreign cities. He knew exactly what he would find in the airport locker: A photograph of his next mark, a schedule of his usual comings and goings, and a deadline. His Beretta was dirty now after the airport incident, so he’d have to procure another gun.
The Hungarian paid the check, leaving a little extra for the waiter, and hailed a cab to the airport. Perhaps on his next visit he could ask for Adonia again, and they could finally consummate their passion.
THE GREAT DETECTIVE
Rodki Semyonov was untroubled about letting the American girl get a few steps ahead of him. Russia, for all of its big cities and vast terrain was as small a place as any other police state. Especially for a first time visitor whose passport had been in the hands of a front desk clerk and now resided in Semyonov’s coat pocket. She was an amateur, anyway. A rich girl who’d gotten in over her head and should’ve stayed on her vacation in Greece, instead of involving herself in situations she had no real imagination for.
General Pushkin would’ve preferred he had an encounter with the girl right away, but Semyonov opted for a more subtle approach. He hated to beat women. It was at times a part of his job, but he went to great lengths to avoid such confrontations. That was work for the secret police and KGB.
“The key sticks,” the woman dressed as a maid told him, as she accompanied him to the tenth floor. She jiggled the lock before it released, letting him into the American woman’s suite.
“She bought a green coat at a textile store near the Kremlin,” the woman testified, “A bowl of sausage and pickle soup in the Red Square cafeteria, a coffee, two creams and no sugar, Kulich bread—though she didn’t eat it—four vodkas, bear cutlets—of which she had only one bite—and stole a pencil from the front desk.” One of ten assistants to the deputy head of hotel security, the woman was intent on distinguishing herself to the man she had always known by only one name—The Great Detective. “I was told she’s a communist.”
The Great Detective nodded. “So was she.”
The woman didn’t understand exactly what he meant, but pretended to, raising her eyebrow as if they were in on a very important clue together. But the Great Detective never returned the gesture and remained in the middle of the living room, his eyes fixed on a painting of a peasant woman in a pale, blue babushka. She reminded him of his mother.
“Comrade Detective,” the woman entreated, “I hope it is not imprudent of me to tell you what an honor it is to meet you. If I can be of any help to you at all, I could go to my death a satisfied woman.”
She hadn’t intended on propositioning him, but his quiet demeanor and general ugliness had emboldened her. Had he appeared conceited, she would’ve never thought that a woman with her pleasant but ordinary features could interest him. Especially since men had often accused her of having a stern manner that lacked sensuality.
The Great Detective, for his part, gave no witty remark or double entendre. He simply buried his face in her hair and took her against a scratched up writing table. It’s delicate, fawn-like legs clashed with the assistant’s upturned thighs and ankles, and the Great Detective thought briefly that the writing table reminded him of his late wife. That thought alone made the encounter worthwhile.
When they finished, Semyonov helped the woman restore her appearance, and with a sufficient amount of respect, asked her to leave while he performed his investigation. She saluted him before she departed—even clicking the heels of her walking shoes.
Semyonov liked being in a room so recently after its inhabitant had left. It allowed him to touch upon what his subject might have been thinking as well as doing. And most importantly, why? He caressed the nub of an open tube of lipstick with his index finger. Revlon, it read. He then wiped the waxy film on his trousers, leaving a crimson smudge. The American girl’s toiletries remained largely untouched, and her bath, though wet, contained a couple of straight, black hairs. The floor in the bathroom had been wiped down, as had the path from the bathroom door to the sofa, and a white bottle containing a clear gel appeared to be the only grooming product she’d used. The detective didn’t have to touch her bedding to see that it was wet.
At the bottom of her make-up case, underneath a disk of powdered rouge, he found a small mirror—the kind that could fit in a pocket book and be used to touch up lipstick. The Great Detective slid the mirror out of its embroidered linen sleeve and noticed that something remained inside the silk lining. Casually, he slipped his finger behind the lining and pulled out a metal card embossed with a plus sign, a star, and the Russian word for tree, derevo.
“Unless you have an urgent message for me, I would prefer to continue my investigation alone,” Semyonov announced. The smell in the air had changed. It was infused with the scent of a man who bathed every day—an uncommon practice in Russia and most of Europe for that matter.
The Hungarian assassin put his gun away quietly.
“Pardon me, Comrade,” the Hungarian said in Russian. “I met a girl at a party downstairs and she gave me her key. I hope something terrible hasn’t happened.”
“Are you from Bucharest?” Semyonov asked in Russian, and then repeated the phrase in Romanian, pocketing the metal card before turning to face the intruder.