Shuttered Sky

just their mind trying to make sense of a feeling they can’t understand.”

The Athens airport, notorious for slipshod security, for some mys­tical reason had chosen this, the twilight of time, to detain all suspicious-looking persons. Of course, these days everybody was suspicious looking so they had a wealth to choose from. On the morn­ing of Tuesday, December sixth they chose Winston and Dillon. Had Winston any sense of humor about it, he might have laughed. To think they had survived and triumphed over all they had, only to be harassed by yet another cast of rent-a-cops. The fact was, Athens Airport had become a hot spot of activity, intrigue and violence over the past few months, and so, naturally, two teens arriving in a corporate jet was bound to catch someone’s attention. Security collared them immedi­ately, shunting them to a 10 X 10 windowless room with bad fluores­cent lighting that flickered like a disco strobe.

The walls were peeling institutional green that clashed with the faded maroon linoleum floor that peeled up in the corners. Two guards stood by the door like fixtures, theoretically waiting for someone to come and interrogate Winston and Dillon. The one to the left had given Dillon a black eye, smashing Dillon as soon as they got here. He claimed that Dillon had resisted arrest, but the truth was he hit him because he was American.

“Winston watched the floor for a few minutes waiting for it to renew like everything always did in Dillon’s presence. It took him a moment to realize that Dillon’s field was so well contained that the room remained unchanged. Containing themselves was, Winston re­alized, like holding one’s breath. Saving his own powers for a better purpose was both exhausting and invigorating at once, and just when he thought he couldn’t hold it in anymore there always came that second wind, like a burst of adrenaline giving him the strength to pull back, suck in and keep his own skin the boundary between himself and the world.

“You’re so calm,” Winston commented. “Like you expected this.”

“I didn’t expect it,” he said, “but I understand the pattern. It doesn’t surprise me, that’s all.”

“You have a plan for getting us out?”

“My plan is to watch and listen,” Dillon said.

The two guards in the room with them didn’t speak English. As Greek was one of Winston’s many languages, he thought that by con­versing with them in their native tongue it might make things go more smoothly. But a black kid who was an American, and flew in on a private jet of Israeli registry, became even more suspect when he started spouting perfect Greek.

Finally, the security chief who had been so good as to put them in this comfortable, well-appointed cubicle came back in, smoking a cig­arette, which he held turned in, in a European way. He was gray with thinning hair. His lips were pursed in a perpetual smirk, earned through years of interrogation and professional disbelief.

“Don’t worry,” Dillon whispered to Winston. “Interrogation rooms are my specialty.”

Their interrogator dispensed quickly with any niceties.

“So your plane is owned by Tessitech, as you said.”

“Took you long enough to find out,” Winston said.

Dillon said nothing.

“Your pilot tells us you were coming from Poland.” His smirk broadened. “You must be rock stars on a world tour.” Winston so wanted to punch that smirk away.

“We’re meeting our parents here,” Dillon said. “For a vacation.”

“In a Tessitech jet?”

“My father,” Dillon said patiently, “is Vice-President of Interna­tional Relations for Tessitech.” He nodded toward Winston. “And his mother heads the Greek office.” Then Dillon imitated the man’s smirk. “And they’re going to make sure you lose your job.”

The security chiefs expression took a turn toward sour. He pulled out the fake ID he had confiscated from Winston. “You should know better than to fly without a passport, Mr. Stone,” he said, and turned to Dillon. “And you without any ID whatsoever.”

“Listen,” said Winston. “Our parents are waiting for us on Thira. Let us go and we won’t cause any trouble.”

“Thira,” said the officer. “A popular vacation spot these days. I’m glad to hear you call it by its traditional name. Most just call it Santorini.”

“What is it you want?” Dillon asked.

And the officer dropped something on the table. “What I want,” he said, “is for you to explain this.” It was a plastic bag containing a sizable amount of white powder. Dillon saw it and snickered. Winston just let his jaw drop. “We found this in your jacket,” the officer said to Winston. “The inside pocket.”

“What kind of bullshit is this?”

“The most severe kind,” the officer said. His smirk narrowing into a frown. “Do you know what the penalty is for bringing drugs into this country?” he asked. “It starts with twenty years in prison and goes up from there.”

And still Dillon snickered, but Winston was in no mood to laugh. “You planted that! What, did you see it in some old TV movie? What kind of morons are you?”

The officer snatched up the bag. “You two boys have yourself a problem. I suggest you think of how it might be resolved.” And he left the room, closing the door, leaving with them the mute, Greek guards.

When the door had shut and the silent guards resumed their Green Giant positions, Winston turned to Dillon. “Any more of this and I’m going to start siding with the Vectors,” he said.

To which Dillon responded, “We’ll call our parents; they’ll bail us out.”

Winston looked at him about as dumbfounded as he had been when the bag of white powder had been dropped on the table before them.

“Run that one past me again?”

This time, Dillon stepped on Winston’s foot. Firm pressure on his toes—a signal—and spoke deliberately. “I said, our parents will bail us out.”

Winston looked at the silent guards; they didn’t appear to speak English, but that didn’t matter, did it? The room could have been wired. Hell, there was probably a hidden camera. They were left there to stew and give information.

“Our parents,” said Winston. “Yes, my mom will get us out of this. She’ll get us out easy,” and then he added, “I don’t know which is worse though, a Greek prison or facing your dad.”

Dillon laughed, a fake laugh, but real enough to anyone who might have been listening.

Winston laughed, too. “You do know what you’re doing?”

Dillon nodded, but Winston noticed that he wasn’t laughing any­more.

A few minutes later, their grand inquisitor came back in, conven­iently porting a cellular phone. “It’s an American custom to grant you one phone call, is it not?” he asked. “I think we can do that for you.”

“And what if we wanted to call the American Embassy?” Winston taunted.

“Very busy time of day there,” he answered suavely. “Best if you made a call of a more personal nature.”

Winston wondered if this corruption had always been here or whether this was nouveau sleaze brought on by these crumbling times. Things will fall apart.

Dillon took the phone and dialed something totally random. Then he turned and smiled at the big cop that had given him the black eye. Winston watched as Dillon released the tiniest fraction of his immense power, which he had so successfully contained within himself since Birkenau. The puffiness around Dillon’s eye shrank and the motling faded until it was gone completely, all the while he was smiling at the green giant who suddenly didn’t seem so smug. Dillon then turned to the security chief.

“By the way,” Dillon said, “see that guard over there?”

“He wouldn’t have hit you if you didn’t resist arrest,” the inquisitor said, defensively.

“It’s not what he did to me that I’m worried about,” Dillon said, “it’s what he’s doing to you.” And Dillon leaned forward to the in­quisitor, cutting the distance between them in half—and although they were still about two feet apart Winston could swear that in some way Dillon was closer; pressed against his face, deeper still, into the man’s brain.

“He’s been sticking it to your wife when you’ve been working late,” Dillon said casually.

His eyes were locked on Dillon’s now. He couldn’t move if he wanted to.

Dillon continued. “And you know what,” Dillon said, “she does things with him that she would never do with you.”