and pulled him into my car. I drove to the dump out past Livada. It was as far away and as deserted a place as I could think of. But one where the body would definitely be found the next morning.”
“And your reason for writing ‘Revenge or Death’ on my card and sticking it in his mouth was to send me a message?”
“I wanted you to know how quickly and horribly people died who presented a risk to my brother. I wanted to scare you away.”
Meerna seemed to sigh, but Andreas couldn’t be sure.
“But I knew I’d misjudged you when my brother told me of your colleague’s threat to the tsigani clan leader to banish all of my brother’s followers from the island if he did not meet with you.” She nodded toward Kouros. “That was when I decided you would only abandon your efforts to destroy my brother’s destiny if you realized to continue meant your son’s life.”
“That was you in the jewelry store on Mykonos with the doll and Andreas’ card,” said Tassos.
“Yes. I found the card on the Polish girls’ table. It was as if the fates had again intervened knowing I would later need it to deliver my final warning.”
“I’d say they used it to curse you,” said Kouros. “If you hadn’t put the card on the doll we’d never have come back to your brother’s bar to find out how it got there.”
Andreas reached up and rubbed his eyes with his hands. He felt something come off on his face. He looked at his hands. They were still covered in Kouros’ blood. He stared at the mad woman in front of him.
Andreas knelt down in front of her as if to pray. He whispered, “May you rot in hell.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
On the police boat taking Meerna and her brother from Tinos to jail on Syros neither said a word, but as soon as they arrived in Syros Trelos demanded to see his lawyer and the prosecutor. In their presence Trelos said, “I have taken an oath to tell only the truth or speak not at all,” and proceeded to recount every word of his and his sister’s confessions. He then told his sister to do the same. Whether judged mad or sane Meerna would never be free again. Or so Andreas hoped.
Andreas made it back to Mykonos just in time to catch a charter flight to Naples. He couldn’t wait to surprise Lila. He’d never been to Capri, but Lila called it the deep blue Tyrrhenian Sea’s “most famous rock.” At the Naples airport he caught a taxi to the port and made his ferry connection to Capri with plenty of time to spare.
Andreas tried not to think about how close he’d come to being dead, but his aching cracked rib wouldn’t quite let him forget. He wondered what would happen to Trelos. Even if his sister were telling the truth about him having nothing to do with the murders, and Trelos named those who’d helped him convert what he’d stolen into cash, he still faced serious jail time for the robberies. That was if the Foundation were willing to risk publicity and prosecute.
As for the future of Trelos’ brotherhood, Tassos was right about him paying his priests for their loyalty. They were the ones who saw to it that the brothers were paid their proper additional compensation. No money, no priests, no brotherhood. End of story.
In Andreas’ experience, that was the fate of most grandiose plans for changing the world-both good and evil. They ended not with a bang but a whimper.
Andreas smiled. He realized he’d just twisted all out of shape Lila’s favorite line of the English language poet, T.S. Eliot. This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.
I guess we Greeks just see things differently, he thought.
Tinos had harbored no grand conspiracy. Just a whacko Wizard of Oz, and his psychotic sister dutifully paving her brother’s road to good intentions with horrific harm. There had been no massing of bigots seeking to rid the world of those that their intolerance judged unwanted or undeserving, and yet, five human beings still died. Yes, not five thousand or five million, but how many more killings could Meerna have justified if Trelos had found a broader stage?
There was no doubt about it: Andreas definitely preferred the whimper end for world changers.
Andreas shook his head. Anything else on the subject was now officially someone else’s problem. He’d done his job and closed the case. Unless, of course, you believed the Athens media’s headline story: “Minister Spiros Renatis kept his word to the Greek people by spearheading a daring investigation into the Tinos murders and apprehending the craven killer of five innocents.” Buried in the story were congratulations from the Minister of Culture to Spiros for preventing the “attempted” desecration of a national historic site.
I wonder what’s really inside the Vriokastro? Screw it. Screw it all.
“ And fuck you, Spiros. ” Andreas looked to see if anyone heard him curse, but realized he’d sworn in Greek. He was now a stranger in a strange land and liked the feeling.
The boat was underway. It would take an hour to get to Capri but, no matter, soon he’d be with his wife and son. “My wife.” He said the words aloud and smiled. He’d have to buy her a big present. They’d been virtually incommunicado since she left for Capri. He tried calling her that morning to tell her he’d kept his promise to catch the “bastards,” but Marietta answered and said she was out sailing. He looked out the window. Lila might be out there right now.
Andreas tried to nap but couldn’t. He looked across the water toward Capri and saw what seemed to be a necklace strung back and forth across a broad, green-capped tower of stone soaring out of the sea. As the boat drew closer, he could make out beads of different colors and sizes along the necklace. Then he noticed the beads were moving. The necklace was a highway anchored to the face of the cliffs, winding surreally all the way to the top.
The ferry docked at Marina Grande, Capri’s main port. Old homes ran up the hillside from the harbor toward the best-known part of the Island, Capri center, a playground and shopping Mecca for the world’s rich. It was where world-class jewelers and couture fashion shops endured day-trippers from Naples and Sorrento while awaiting the evening’s bounty of strollers from the island’s world-class hotels and anchored yachts.
Andreas asked a cop in English where he could catch a cab to the Capri Palace Hotel. A minute later he was in a Fiat taxi with a stripped canopy for a roof winding its way through narrow streets up toward Capri center. At an intersection where the entrance to the town was off to the left the taxi did a counter-clockwise nearly full circle swing around a monument and headed out onto the necklace. What had seemed surreal from a distance was distinctly real up close.
The road was a narrow two-lane slab clinging to a cliff. Cars, motorcycles and the occasional bus whizzed past them coming down the mountain in the traditional devil-may-care manner of Italian driving. Andreas winced as a bus came by on a turn just a little too close for comfort. He shot a look at the taxi driver but the man seemed unconcerned, so Andreas decided to look out to sea and let the driver worry about the road. It was a good choice. There was the bay of Naples and its islands opening up to Sorrento and the Amalfi coast. Peaceful Italy.
At the top of the mountain of stone he’d seen from the ferry, the island seemed different. More relaxed. This was Anacapri. The road ran past ancient giant trees and mansions overlooking the sea. It ended at a small square by a funicular taking those who wished to an even higher level.
The driver motioned for a bellman to take Andreas’ bag and Andreas followed him through a linen-draped walkway bordering a glass-sided pool. He thought he recognized two pairs of toes dangling in the pool.
At the top of the path Andreas stopped to catch a glimpse of the sea over the treetops of the town. Ahead of him was a row of bushes setting a grassy pool area off from the rest of the hotel. He walked to a break in the bushes and looked for the owners of those toes. But the toe people saw him first, jumped up, and hurried hand in hand across the grass in his direction. Andreas lifted Tassaki the air and kissed him, and holding him in one arm, kissed Lila and hugged her with his other. He accepted the pain from his rib as worth the price.
Lila kissed him again. “I have missed you my darling. Please don’t ever again leave me alone to this sort of life.”
Andreas smiled. “I can imagine how you suffered.”
“No you can’t. Just me and a million Italian men on the hunt.”
“Where are they? I’ll shoot them all.”
“Save your bullets darling. I’m a Greek woman, I’m used to it.”
