The Mask of Atreus (19 page)

Deborah, after all, didn't do romance. She didn't do relationships (whatever the hell that odious word was supposed to mean), and she sure as hell didn't do love.
And you don't trust men,
she reminded herself.
Even the cute ones?

Especially the cute ones
.

He would probably run a mile the second he picked up any whiff of interest on her part anyway. Calvin Bowers probably had the pick of a lot of upwardly mobile and generally nubile lawyers and businesswomen all over Atlanta. A long-distance relationship
(odious word)
with a fugitive with legs like stilts probably wasn't high on his to-do list.

As she sat staring at the screen, a new message winked into existence. For a second she thought he was responding to her last mailing, and her heart seemed to catch in her throat as she sensed a sudden and crushing humiliation coming her way. But it was from an address she had never seen before, all numbers and random characters. Frowning, she opened it. It contained seven words, none of which suggested who had sent it.

"Come home now. Your life in danger."

CHAPTER 33

How could she be in any more danger now than she had been in Atlanta? It made no sense. Come to think of it, it probably wasn't even intended for her. No one had her new address except Calvin, and he was unlikely to have shared it with anyone else.
Come home now. Your life in danger
.

It was probably some hacker joke sent out to her and a million other random addresses--not a very funny joke, admittedly, even by hacker standards, but still . . . That was why it was so unspecific in its wording: it was trying to be relevant to everyone who got it. There were probably panicked office workers rushing for the door to get back to their houses even now. More likely, those office workers were probably sharing a good belly laugh at it like they did over the spurious requests for bank account numbers that were supposedly going to lead to millions of dollars being transferred from Africa. It just seemed more real to her because she was far away and knew nobody and had left home
(fled)
because of a murder . . . If there was any danger for her, it was back in Atlanta, not here.

Unless, of course, the killer has tracked you from Atlanta
to Greece . . .

Nonsense
.

Back at her hotel there was a phone message from Marcus. The timing was unfortunate. She had gotten used to the idea that Marcus was an ally, even a friend. The cryptic message on her computer, however rationally she could blame some faceless teenager with a talent for writing code, had up-157

T h e M a s k o f A t r e u s

set that conviction a little or nudged it so that it wobbled precariously. In time it would settle again, but for now she didn't feel like talking much to Marcus.

"Deborah," he said, his voice brittle with urgency, "where the hell are you? I spoke to the shipping operator in Piraeus. There is only one American container ship due to pass through the Corinth Canal in the next month. It was due in three weeks but has apparently been delayed in New Orleans. I'm going to Corinth to see if I can find out why. Call me back."

Corinth was only a stone's throw from Mycenae. At some point, she knew, she would finish up there.

She made a reservation at a midprice place in Corinth through the Achilleus concierge, packed, and called Marcus, privately hoping he would be out. He was, but there was no automated messaging system, only an operator who asked if she wanted to leave a message. She didn't want to wait around for Marcus to get back. She was impatient to be doing something.

"Yes," she said into the phone. "Tell him it's Deborah and that I'm staying at the Ephira in Corinth. We can meet there."

There was one other thing to do before she left. She went down to the concierge with the grave eyes and asked if he could help.

"I want to make an international call, but I don't know the number I'm trying to reach," she told him, "only the name."

"We can try," he said. "Though it may be expensive."

"That's OK."

"What country?"

"Russia," she said. "Moscow. The woman's name is Alexandra Voloshinov."

If her answer surprised him, he didn't show it. He made three calls, scribbling numbers between each and speaking in Greek. On the last call he switched to English and then handed her the phone. The voice on the other end was female and had an accent which Deborah took to be Russian. 158

A. J. Hartley

"There are three Alexandra Voloshinovs living in Moscow. Would you like all three numbers?"

Deborah took them down, hung up, and dialed the first on the list.

The man who answered spoke no English and became irritated as she continued to repeat her inquiry. When he hung up on her, the concierge smiled sardonically and underlined the second number.

"Da,"
said a woman's voice.

"I'm sorry," said Deborah speaking painstakingly slowly, hating the fact that she could speak no Russian, feeling a sudden sense of futility and idiocy, "I'm trying to reach Alexandra Voloshinov, but I do not speak Russian. I am an American. I am calling about--"

"My father," she said, the tone blank. "I already know."

"I'm so sorry for your loss," said Deborah, meaning it and knowing how flat it sounded.

"Is there some news?" said the woman. She didn't sound hopeful or even curious.

"Not really," said Deborah, feeling traitorous. "I wanted to ask you a couple of questions."

The woman said nothing, so Deborah pressed on.

"Do you know of a person or place connected to your father beginning with the letters
MAGD
?"

The woman didn't hesitate.

"Magdeburg," she said. "In Germany. He lived there for a while."

"Right," said Deborah, encouraged.

Germany again?

"Your father worked for the Ministry of the Interior," she said, playing for time. She wasn't sure what else she wanted to know. "The MVD?"

There was a pause this time, and when the woman spoke, she sounded brusque.

"Yes. Many years ago."

"What did he do?"

"What did he do?" she repeated, quizzically.

159

T h e M a s k o f A t r e u s

"His job," said Deborah.

"I don't know," she said.

Deborah frowned, suddenly sure she was being dodged.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand," she said, trying to sound polite.

"The MVD," said the woman doggedly. "He worked there."

Deborah shifted tack.

"What is the MVD?"

"It does not exist anymore," said Alexandra Voloshinov. There was another long pause, then she added, apparently with great reluctance, "It was originally called the NKVD."

"The NKVD?" Deborah repeated.

The concierge, who had been listening with mild amusement, straightened up. His eyes looked suddenly wide and a little hunted. For a second Deborah thought he was going to take a step backward. She mouthed a
what?
at him, but he just stared. His usual laconic ease was gone. He looked unsettled, almost scared.

"I'm sorry," said Deborah into the phone. "I don't know what that was."

"I do not wish to discuss these things, not on the telephone," said the woman.

"Please," said Deborah. "What were they, the MVD, the NKVD?"

"Kind of police," said the woman, and Deborah could tell that even this inadequate answer was a great effort for her.

"But secret. They watch, in foreign places and at home."

"Like
spies
?" said Deborah, still watching the frozen concierge with a swelling sense of unease that bordered on panic.

How could a few capital letters create such terror?

"NKVD became MVD," said the woman, enunciating carefully, a touch of dread clearly audible in her voice.

"MVD became KGB."

And those letters, Deborah knew.

CHAPTER 34

The bus which idled at the Kiffisou 100 terminal, its windows heavily tinted, was, mercifully, air-conditioned, and was not the rickety affair stuffed half-f of goats and chickens that she had--rather condescendingly--feared. That said, it was still primarily a mode of transport used by locals, and she detected no other foreigners on board. It took a good forty minutes to get out of the city, but then the landscape changed utterly, morphing into open, sandy hills liberally dotted with olive trees, the clear blue of the sea flashing along their left-hand side as they moved from Attica to the Peloponnese, home to the greatest density of ancient sites in Greece: Corinth, Mycenae, Bronze Age Tiryns, Epidaurus with its unparalleled theater, and Argos, after which the region--the Argolid--was named.

The bus stopped briefly at Elefsina, giving the passengers time to buy overpriced snacks and drinks, and Deborah took the opportunity to stretch her legs and breathe the clear, unAthenian air. They proceeded on and eventually over the canal itself, crossing the great slice through the isthmus on a girder bridge which afforded the briefest dizzying view of the cliffs down to the channel carved in the rock where massive ferries moved like toy boats hundreds of yards below. The journey ended on another Ermou Street, walking distance from her hotel. The Ephira was located on busy Ethnikis Andistasis, a few blocks from the seafront. It was small and clean and bright, more a center for business travelers than for tourists, the ancient city of Corinth having nothing like the appeal of Delphi, Epidaurus, or Mycenae for most foreigners already sated 161

T h e M a s k o f A t r e u s

with the spectacular remnants of ancient Athens. Deborah entered through glass sliding doors and waited while the man she assumed to be the proprietor tore himself away from a game of backgammon and what looked like preternaturally strong black coffee in a glass. His rival, a younger man in shirtsleeves, monitored her directly from behind a potted palm.

The elder issued Deborah an electronic key card and then fished a slip of paper out of a numbered cubbyhole.

"Miss Miller?" he said, double-checking. "This came for you."

It was written in long, loopy pencil scrawl, probably his. It read, "Meet me at the Acrocorinth at five this afternoon. Marcus."

Deborah frowned. She didn't like being told what to do. Still, it saved her the bother of sitting around waiting for his call.

She napped for an hour, went out into the street, ate a spinach pie hot from a bakery oven, and walked down to the pebbly seashore. Everyone on the crowded beach was Greek. She gazed out over the blue water and watched the constant parade of oil tankers and container ships, funneled, she supposed, through the canal. At a little before four o'clock she hailed a cab and directed it to the Acrocorinth. She would be early, but that would give her time to browse around the remains before Marcus arrived.

Ancient Corinth (the modern city is properly named Korinthos) was an extremely wealthy site in the days of classical Greece and, after a brief hiatus, became so again under Roman rule. It was perfectly situated to control trade between the Ionian and Aegean Seas, effectively serving as the gateway between the eastern and western Mediterranean. It had been home to an important temple to Apollo under the Greeks, and under Roman rule its religious importance was coupled with fabulous wealth, so that the city became synonymous 162

A. J. Hartley

with luxury, excess, and the "sins of the flesh." Corinth was home to a Roman shrine to Venus (whom the Greeks called Aphrodite) which was served by a thousand sacred prostitutes. Saint Paul had stayed there for over a year, and the city housed an important early Christian community, but the new Church struggled to keep its head above such hedonistic waters. Paul wouldn't stem the pagan culture of the city, leaving that task to a pair of powerful sixth-century earthquakes
(the
wrath of God, no doubt)
which led Corinth to be abandoned. Deborah was excited to see the city not despite its lack of great monuments but because of it. Apart from some of the temple to Apollo and the large expanse of the Roman forum, most of the city was under-excavated and overgrown, something which made the place sound oddly domestic and real in ways the marvels of Athens couldn't be. In America she was a cultural anthropologist as much as an archaeologist, a scholar of ancient peoples, not their architectural marvels. All this business about Schliemann and his gold had distracted her from what had always driven her interest in the past: the opportunity to glimpse something of the lives of the ordinary people who had populated it. In the books about Troy and Mycenae she was stuck in legends, in tales of epic deeds and treasure. Such things, however much they dazzled the eyes of the general public--and it was a sign of their dilettante status that the likes of Richard and Marcus were similarly dazzled--were ultimately fairly incidental to serious archaeologists. Even in Athens the sheer elegance of the remains had been overwhelming, and had made the past remote, heroic, and aestheticized in ways that actual human lives never really were. In the humbler remains of Corinth's bustling and prosperous city, she might catch the echo of long-absent feet about the business of everyday life. The taxi made good time along the Skoutela road and was soon slowing into a side street suddenly lined with cafes and tourist shops, their windows stuffed with reproduction ceramics and plaster statuettes. Along the sidewalks, crammed with rickety postcard racks, coaches with heavily shaded windows 163

T h e M a s k o f A t r e u s

were parked, their engines running. Gates in the wall beyond them gave glimpses into the white expanse of the forum, dotted with elaborately carved column capitals: Corinthian columns, Deborah remembered. The old Doric simplicity and Ionic elegance were supplanted under the Romans by more ornate "Corinthian" columns, their capitals carved with patterns derived from acanthus leaves. She craned her neck to see more, but then the cab was moving again, and she lost it all.

For a moment she thought he was just looking for a better parking space, but as the entrance to the site proper went by and they negotiated another narrow street without stopping, she tapped him on the shoulder.