keys.
Three young boys blocked his path, playing something akin to street hockey with makeshift boards and a small child’s ball, stamped with the outline of a Mickey Mouse head, the face erased by sun and time. He slowed as he approached; the boys looked up, stopped playing. He walked on, down the cobblestone street and up the small rise at its end, from which one could enjoy a commanding view of the ocean and the high angles of the Temple of Poseidon, poised on the tip of the south-pointing headland to the west.
The tall man carefully selected one of the keys as he approached the only two-story building at the end of the street: a dilapidated duplex with a distinct lack of local charm. He opened the door, looked back. Up the street, the boys turned away quickly as if to deny that they had been watching him the whole time, and hastily resumed their game. The man smiled, shut the door behind him and mounted the stairs with long, even steps.
Entering the sea-facing apartment, he put the keys back in his pocket as he crossed into the kitchenette: cockroaches scurried away to refuges under the cupboards, alarmed at the intrusion. He dumped the bag’s uppermost contents-the bread, the oranges, soda cans and other unnecessary items-into the rust-stained sink as he walked past, not breaking his stride.
He pushed open the balcony door, still cradling the bag carefully, and scanned north. Halfway to the hills which flattened down into the coast, a small rim of concrete rose above the low roofs: the Herakles stadium. He scanned south: the sea. One security delta was slowly angling back in. He noted the vehicle, checked his watch.
Then he scanned west. A clear view of the Sounion headland and the Temple of Poseidon, just over six kilometers away. He reached down into the grocery bag, pulled out a canned ham and a large ceramic bell jar, crookedly adorned with the label of a grinning, buxom farm girl carrying a cornucopia of agricultural riches. He opened the lid; from the dark, glass-lined interior, there rose a sharp tang of high-molarity acid. He replaced the cap, resealed the jar, put it down to his right, behind the balcony’s chest-high weather wall.
He pried back the seal on the canned ham, pulled the covering facade of meat aside, removed the plastic- sealed wide-lens binoculars, the jar of Vaseline, and a small, separately wrapped tripod. Throwing the wrappings aside, he snugged the binoculars into the tripod, which he mounted on the corner of the weather wall. He leaned over, swiveled the binoculars in the direction of the Temple of Poseidon, adjusted the lenses. Beyond the columns, occluded from the waist down, Corcoran’s silhouette swam into focus. He counted the number of columns to Nolan’s left, to his right, checked his watch, pulled out a paper pad, hastily scribbled additions to a growing set of notes.
He began to lean away from the binoculars, halted, then rotated them in the other direction, slowing and adjusting the focus as the roof-topping lip of the Herakles stadium slid sideways into view…
MENTOR
As she sprinted out of view to the right, Downing noted the way Opal pumped her arms from the shoulders, and he thought,
He advanced until he could see the entirety of the track, but remained in the shadows of the entry. As she crossed what would normally be the finish line, she picked up the pace to a near sprint: the last lap, probably.
But her shoulders and her pelvis were square and strong, her legs well-muscled, and she moved with a slight, forward-leaning tension: she was a spring coiled in readiness. It would be easy to miss those hints of an incongruous, even unexpected strength. Her dossier indicated that more than one adversary had underestimated her-either on a battlefield or in a briefing room-and she had been quick to capitalize on those mistakes. Good: that was part of what made her perfect for this assignment.
If only she embraced it. That, so far, had been the sticking point.
As Opal entered the last turn, her sandy bangs were wet at the fringes, her chin tucked down. Still pumping her arms, she leaned into the turn until she emerged onto the straight again, huffing through the last few meters and over her self-imposed finish line. Downing emerged from the archway-
But she had already turned around. “Do you approve of my training, Mr. Downing?”
He had watched her eyes as she ran; she had never looked over in his direction. Impressive peripheral vision. “Captain, I’m sorry if I surprised you-”
“You didn’t.” She was walking toward a towel hung over the spectator railing. “I’ve come to expect your scrutiny. Tell me: do you enjoy watching women exercise?”
“Captain-”
Rubbing her hair briskly, she laughed through the towel. “You fluster pretty easily. Must make it easy for your wife to keep you in line.”
He didn’t like her insolence; he liked the stinging accuracy of her insight even less. “I assume you’re finished with today’s PT.”
“Yep. About twenty minutes ago. Just putting in a little extra work: I need it. And I’ve got nothing better to do, since you won’t give me any reading materials.”
“That changes today.”
“So you’ve said.”
“It’s true.”
“That’ll be a first.”
Downing felt a thin line of heat along his brow. “I have not told you one lie about this assignment. Not one.”
“Okay. You haven’t lied about this assignment. But you’ve evaded. Declined to comment. Makes me feel real welcome here in the fabulous future.”
“I’m sorry its been such a-a disappointing beginning for you, Captain.”
“Yeah, I’m sure your heart is just bleeding for me.” She stopped adjusting her shoes, turned quickly. “I apologize: that was uncalled for.”
“No need for regrets, Captain. May I call you Opal?”
She thought for a second, looking off into the green scrub hills to the north. “No, I don’t think so. Not yet. Maybe never. We’ll have to see.”
“About what?”
She looked directly at him. “About whether you turn out to be someone I can trust. Downing, I might one day come to tolerate, even like you, but I’ll never like what you do. Oh, I know it’s necessary: I’m no idiot. There’s no way to get rid of the need for covert agencies and operatives: I’ve seen enough bad shit to know that well enough. And you might even be one of the good guys, the way you say you are. But you lie for a living. And now you want- you’re ordering-me to do the same.”
“I’m sorry you see it that way. You may find that it’s something you’d want to do anyway.”
“Yes, but I’m not free to find that out for myself.”
“True. You were also not free to choose which of your combat assignments you felt were justified and which weren’t.”
“Look: I volunteered to serve my country as a combat soldier, not a courtesan.”
“But it seemed as though you liked Caine-”
“So you tell me, but now I can’t even remember him. That whole first week is pretty much gone.”
“I’m not surprised. Emergency wake-ups are very hard on the nervous system, on brain chemistries. You can lose a lot-”
“Or it can be taken from me, as well.”
Her eyes were an unblinking challenge. “I mean, if the wake-up memories are fragile, it must be particularly easy to erase them-if you wanted to. Maybe with drugs, or maybe that’s why I seem to recall shock therapy-”
She had not stopped looking at him. “Could be. But I seem to recall something a lot less benign than a few
