herself, 'I can beat you, I can beat you.' He turned away, slid the garden hose into the end of a wider hose used for drawing fresh air into the cell, walked back to the generator and turned it on. The mayor was waiting for them when Tassos and Andreas returned to the police station. He was sitting in Andreas' office and jumped up the moment they walked in. 'Have you heard about the deputy minister's niece?' he blurted, nearly apoplectic.
Andreas shot a worried glance at Tassos and looked back at the mayor. 'What do you mean?'
'She's missing. The deputy minister called and told me he'd asked you to look for her.'
Andreas held up his hand and said, 'Calm down. I know, and we're looking for her.'
'You know what this means?' Mihali didn't sound any calmer.
Andreas sat down in his chair before answering. 'Yes, I'm afraid I do.'
Tassos pointed the mayor to the chair in front of the desk. 'Sit down, Mihali, we have a lot to talk about.'
Uncharacteristically docile, the mayor now did as he was told. Tassos closed the door and went to sit in the other chair.
Andreas ran his fingers through his hair, then rubbed his eyes. 'I figure we have twenty-four to thirty-six hours before she's dead. No more.'
The mayor looked like a deer in the headlights. 'Why? Why do you say that?'
Andreas spoke as if in a trance. 'All of his victims were killed during the tourist season. All the bodies were found in churches with saints having name days in the tourist season. The coroner set Vandrew's time of death to within twenty-four hours of Saint Calliope's name day — and we found her in Saint Calliope.'
'Perhaps you'll recall that the Scandinavian girl supposedly killed by the Irishman' — Tassos paused long enough for the mayor to wince — 'was murdered on the name day for Saint Marina.'
'Another tourist-season saint,' said the mayor.
'And another of Father Paul's churches,' said Andreas.
'Do you think he's the killer?' asked the mayor.
Andreas shrugged. 'All I'm sure of is she'll be dead in a matter of hours if we don't find her.' He leaned forward and picked up a pencil from his desk. 'It could be any of several suspects… or all of them… or none of them… and I don't have a fucking clue where any of them are.' He threw the pencil against a wall.
'But we know where it'll happen,' said Tassos calmly.
Andreas stared at him. 'Do you really think with all this heat — and he has to know we're looking for him — he'll still take her to Saint Kiriake? He'd have to be stupid, or suicidal.'
Tassos nodded no. 'I don't think he'll bring her to Father Paul's Saint Kiriake, but for twenty years something's been driving him to kill in a church on its name day. I think he's going to try again. It's part of his ritual.'
Andreas rubbed his eyes again, then ran his hands down his face until his thumbs were under his chin and his fingers clasped about his nose as if he were praying. He paused for a few seconds, looked at Tassos, and dropped his hands to his desk. 'I think you're right.'
'So, what do we do, guard all the churches named for Saint Kiriake?' asked the mayor.
Andreas said, 'We have to be careful not to scare him off. If we do, it'll be too easy for him just to kill her and drop her in the sea.'
'Or bury her by the side of the road,' said Tassos.
Andreas gave him a 'cool it with the Scandinavian already' look.
Tassos switched to his professional tone. 'Our best chance of catching him with her is at one of the churches.'
'We should check out the mines too,' said Andreas.
Tassos paused. 'I don't think we should be taking men away from the churches.'
Andreas looked at Tassos in surprise and gave him a 'what gives' hand gesture. 'What are you talking about? We've got at least two suspects running around inside the mines. It's our hottest lead; we have to follow it up. Besides, it won't be cops searching mines. We need men who know them.'
Tassos paused again, then nodded. 'I guess that makes sense.'
Andreas looked at the mayor. 'Do you know men we can get to search?'
'At night?' asked Mihali.
'It's always night inside a mine, and we've no time to lose,' said Andreas in a tone sharper than intended.
'Sure, I'll have them within an hour,' the mayor said.
Andreas looked at Tassos. 'Any idea how many men we'll need to put a twenty-four-hour watch on the churches — starting tomorrow at sunset?'
Tassos nodded no. 'Not until I find out how many churches are named for Saint Kiriake. I'll speak to the archbishop. Thank God she's not a popular saint or we'd have to mobilize the army.'
'We still might have to,' said Andreas.
The mayor blanched. 'You're kidding.'
Andreas let out a deep breath. 'Let's see how many churches we're talking about before we cross that bridge. All I can tell you for sure is Mykonos is about to go through twenty-four hours of partying without much police protection.'
'Syros too,' said Tassos, nodding. 'I'll have forty men here by tomorrow afternoon.'
'Thanks,' Andreas said.
'No need to thank me. We're all hanging together on this one.' Tassos turned and stared at the mayor. 'Right, Your Honor?'
The mayor stared blankly back at them. 'Yes.' He nodded. 'We'll all hang together on this one.' Ambassador Vanden Haag arrived home a little before eleven. Catia wasn't downstairs as usual. He found her upstairs sitting on the edge of their bed holding a picture of their daughter.
Her eyes were red. 'Spiros said he'd spoken to the mayor and the chief of police and they promised to find her, but they haven't.'
He sat next to her on the bed. 'Do they have any idea where she is?'
She shook her head. 'Spiros just keeps saying he's certain she's okay. That she's probably off with some boy.' She leaned against him. 'I have to go to Mykonos. I have to find her.'
He put his arm around her. 'I understand. When will you go?'
'Tomorrow morning, I've booked a flight. I should be in Mykonos by the afternoon.'
'I'll go with you.'
She shook her head. 'No, you have that conference tomorrow with the prime minister. Spiros will meet me. Besides, you don't speak Greek well enough to be of much help.' She forced a smile and snuggled closer.
'Okay, but I'll come the day after tomorrow — we'll surprise Annika and turn it into a family island holiday. We haven't done that in years.'
Catia didn't say a word. She knew it was his way of dealing with the fear gnawing away at their hopes. I feel it, I see it… I have the angle, just get the ball back to me. She feinted to the left and moved to the right, then paused for an instant and thrust her body and leg through a vicious kick, followed by a leap in the air that brought her just short of hitting her head on the ceiling. She waved her good hand wildly above her head and yelled, 'Score!' Annika jumped about for a moment, then bent over and rested her hands on her knees. She was breathing deeply. That was when she first noticed the odor. The acrid, unmistakable scent of exhaust fumes.
Fear instinctively shot through her body. 'He's gassing me!' She struggled to stay focused. 'This is just another test, another problem to solve,' she kept repeating aloud while hammering away at her thigh with the heel of her good hand. She forced herself to concentrate on what she remembered from chemistry about carbon monoxide poisoning: a sufficient exposure can reduce the amount of oxygen taken up by the brain to the point that the victim becomes unconscious, and can suffer brain damage or even death without ever noticing anything up to the point of collapse.
In other words, if she continued with what she was doing, she was dead. She needed to find fresh air, but how, in this sealed, pitch-black tomb? In the darkness she'd lost track of where she was standing and stretched out her arms to feel for a wall. When she found one she quickly dropped to her knees and began crawling counterclockwise along its base, probing and scratching frantically with her right hand at each bottom stone. She wasn't moving as quickly as she wanted and felt a slight headache. She knew her body was giving in to the fumes
