Gospel, page 57
“This envelope is for a woman in Room 13, please.”
Lucy’s pulse quickened. “Wait. I’m in Room 13.”
Abdul turned to look at her oddly, and then handed the envelope to her. It was a white letter-length envelope with a return address of Karyes, the Athonite capital, on the back.
Hossein was saying something to Abdul, and Abdul translated for Lucy. “An old man gave him this and said it was very urgent.”
Lucy went over to the light-blue vinyl 1950s lounge chairs in the lobby. Hossein got his key and went up the stairs and Abdul lingered to see if it was bad news.
Lucy,
I seem to be in big trouble. The police are after me and our entire mission is doomed unless I can get out of Greece. I have left Athos by fishing boat. Meet me in Athens tomorrow night, Hercules Hotel near the Plaka.
And “Patrick O’Hanrahan” was scrawled across the bottom. It was his handwriting, thought Lucy, not that she’d seen very much of it. How odd that there was not a mention of Stavros.
“I hope all is well,” said Abdul.
“No, it doesn’t look like it,” she said. “There seems to be some trouble over there. And it looks like I have to go to Athens tomorrow.”
Abdul gave a sympathetic smile. “Perhaps, you could come with us. We leave at nine tomorrow. I will be happy to give you every assistance.”
“How kind,” she said blankly.
JULY 21ST
Stavros said he would drive Lucy back to Athens, and she told him that she had had an offer from the Hassami brothers. Stavros reacted badly, launching into a stream of anti-Turkish invective that, Lucy imagined, Stavros thought applied to all people of the Middle East. On that note, she determined she would ride with the brothers after all, and snippily said good-bye to Stavros, holding out her hand for him to shake. In this final moment she could have abandoned this pretense and kissed him good-bye properly but the half-understood counterthreats between them had made this difficult.
The Hassami brothers were polite hosts and Abdul drove well.
She was quiet and sullen on the six-hour ride down. The trip slowed considerably as the urban sprawl and soot of Athens approached. Lucy was sufficiently jaded and despondent enough that the new views of the Akropolis and passing the ruins of the Temple of Zeus near the downtown park barely interested her.
The Hercules Hotel was not in the Plaka proper but in the modern city leading up to it. Lucy recognized some familiar landmarks around Constitution Square and she briefly revived, imagining that Dr. O’Hanrahan and she might go out that night, with O’Hanrahan telling his undoubtedly exciting story. Abdul and Hossein said the Hercules was too expensive and went elsewhere.
As she lay in her room, contemplating what she should do with her evening, the phone rang. She eagerly scooped it up and discovered it was Abdul: did she want to go to dinner in the Plaka? She decided she shouldn’t, figuring O’Hanrahan would make contact soon. However, at 10:30 P.M. she was starved and bored and determined to go out for a quick bite.
“A message for you,” said the hotelier when she returned twenty minutes later.
Lucy desperately stared at the simple phone message-slip, wanting it to reveal more. Patrick O’Hanrahan called, the note said in a strained Roman alphabet, an occasional Greek letter slipping in, and after that was the unrevealing message that “someone would be in touch again.”
“That’s all?” Lucy asked the deskman, who shrugged yes it was.
She wished she hadn’t declined Abdul’s invitation to the Plaka. It was the brothers’ last night in Greece and tomorrow they flew back to Damascus. Abdul even seemed eager for her company, flirtatious for him. Maybe she should go attempt to find him, make a night of it.
Then the phone rang.
“Halloo?” said a heavily accented female voice on the other end of the line, as Lucy’s heart beat faster. “I am calling for a friend…”
“Who is this?”
“My name is not important. Patrick O’Hanrahan,” she said, mispronouncing his name completely, “is in hiding here and … I cannot talk…”
“Wait. What is going on here?”
“I will meet you tomorrow at the Piraeus metro station. Look for a woman in a black dress, dark hair, I will be carrying a white handbag. Tomorrow, 11:30 A.M.”
And then she hung up.
Then Lucy again picked up the phone. If O’Hanrahan’s in trouble, he would call Eleni Matsoukis, she was sure. Lucy found the phone directory and looked up the number. She dialed the first four digits. Then hung up. No, she convinced herself. If he was in danger he wouldn’t risk scandalizing the Matsoukises.
And what if Stavros picked up the phone?
Lucy lay back on the bed and felt her stomach tighten. Something was very much wrong.
ΠEIPAIAΣ
JULY 22ND
Lucy assembled her bag, packed her souvenirs, and arranged her makeup kit and clothes for what could be the last time. It seemed that, at last, O’Hanrahan’s luck had finally played out. Would he—or worse, he and she both, end up in the hands of the police? In the middle of her sleepless night she figured that the incorrigible Dr. O’Hanrahan had been caught stealing a scroll, or something like that—some last senescent gesture of bravura. And now he would have to answer to the Greek people and the Minister of Antiquities. And she would get on a plane soon enough and maybe, grimly, she would be in Chicago in forty-eight hours. She had prepared herself for the worst.
Lucy paid the bill with the VISA card and then handed in the key at the front desk. She saw Hossein and Abdul talking, their bags beside them. They had come to say good-bye to her.
“Well, Abdul,” she said, handing him a slip with her Chicago address on it, putting out her hand to shake, “it has been a pleasure. And if you’re ever in Chicago, do call.”
“Likewise, I hope to see you one day in Damascus.”
Hossein smiled broadly and Lucy felt uneasy.
“Have you got a cab to the airport?” she asked.
“No, you know how difficult getting a taxi in Athens is,” he said glumly. “Hossein and I are taking the bus to Piraeus where there are many taxis and take a taxi from there.”
She smiled. “I am going to Piraeus myself, on the subway.”
Abdul was delighted. “There is an underground train to Piraeus?”
She explained and soon they all picked up their bags and began the trek five blocks, through the market and the tourists and the endless array of amphorae and fake red-and-black clay plates to the busy Monastiraki Station.
As they put their metro tickets in the automatic turnstiles, Lucy asked Abdul, “Could you ask your brother one more time for me under what circumstances he saw Dr. O’Hanrahan?” Abdul conferred with Hossein in Arabic. Abdul translated in pieces:
“Hossein says the old man was very unhappy and upset … They met at a monastery, he says … There had been some trouble with the police and … He had to escape Mt. Athos right away, and Greece as well.”
Lucy nodded, convinced the professor had tried to steal a scroll. “Does Hossein,” she asked, “have any idea where Dr. O’Hanrahan wishes to escape to?”
Hossein and Abdul talked some more, as Lucy heard the southbound metro approaching.
“Hossein says very, very far away,” Abdul related. “The professor said he would, however, have to go to an Islamic library.”
“I see,” she said, as the train slowed before the platform. “We both figured we might end up in Egypt.”
Hossein smiled confidently, adding a detail. Abdul translated: “Yes, he said he could hardly wait to get on the airplane, yes?” Then he laughed as the train stopped.
Uh-oh, thought Lucy.
She looked over at Abdul, patiently returning her stare, handsomely groomed to perfection, and Hossein … who, she was now certain, was no relation to him, leering at some woman across the platform.
Lucy: “Oh, here’s the train and I just forgot that—um, I mean, I think I forgot something at the hotel and I’d better run back and get it.”
“We are happy to wait for you,” he said smiling. “Is it important?”
Calm down, she told herself.
The train screeched to a halt and out poured a heavily cologned and perfumed pack of Athenian commuters. Abdul was busy putting her heavy bag inside the train, along with his own. Unfailingly polite, she thought, as she stepped inside and the doors closed behind her.
“No air-conditioning, no?” Abdul remarked, running a finger between his neck and his collar.
He couldn’t name me one word in Aramaic, she remembered. Well, how many American Catholics could spout Latin anymore? She began weaving the facts through the pattern of coincidences. They go to meet the brother, he has the envelope, the announced trip to Athens, which conveniently these brothers had to make … Do you suppose Hossein has done something horrible to Dr. O’Hanrahan over on Athos? The note could be a forgery, the phone message from O’Hanrahan a fake, since I was out, and this woman I’m supposed to meet—God knows who she is.
Piraeus Station.
The train stopped and she stepped off and noticed her bloodless, clammy hand was shaking as she moved her own luggage.
“Again, nice to meet you. Bye-bye,” she said hopelessly.
“Farewell,” said Abdul, bowing slightly. He reached to kiss her hand and a shiver of revulsion ran through her.
They’re actually letting me go, thought Lucy. Or else they’re very confident of this woman I’m about to meet. She watched the brothers leave the station and hail a cab to the airport, ten miles outside of Piraeus. Lucy stood in the station amid the late-morning ebb and flow of tourists, commuters, and bored Athenian teenagers just hanging out. She saw booths for tickets, for passes, for reservations … and there in several languages was a stall for lost-and-found. And there was a woman, shorter than she’d imagined but quite beautiful, Arab-looking as well, with a white handbag, wearing a raincoat and sunglasses on this sunny day.
“You have a message,” said Lucy guardedly, “from Dr. O’Hanrahan?”
The woman eyed her seriously, attempting to look sympathetic. “He is in great trouble.”
Yep, figured Lucy. He’s probably kidnapped by these Syrians … but then what would they want with me? The woman handed her a Greek newspaper folded to a photo. Today’s paper. “You see this?” said the woman, pointing to the photo, which showed an ikon defaced with paint. “Your friend is wanted by the police for this.”
“But,” Lucy mocked, “he would never—”
“But he is wanted for this crime nonetheless. He has contacted us, his friends.”
“Friends,” Lucy repeated.
“We are old friends of Patrick O’Hanrahan.”
No, thought Lucy, if he were to contact anyone it would be the Matsoukises, whom I was too damn pigheadedly stupid to call last night, scared of Stavros.
The woman reached into her raincoat. “I have this for you. We have arranged a flight out on a special chartered flight, which will avoid the customs and police, yes? He has bought a ticket for you both.”
Lucy took the envelope and opened the flap, drawing out two second-class tickets on Iraqi Air to Amman, Jordan. Lucy felt her head grow light, she was breathing so shallowly. One, O’Hanrahan would never fly, even if it meant arrest, capture, imprisonment … or had he just been playing that up for her benefit? Two, the man wouldn’t fly second-class … or was there no choice? Maybe the police knew to check the Matsoukis house and he had had to avail himself of these acquaintances. “The flight is in forty minutes,” Lucy noticed.
“Yes, we must hurry.”
Should she go with the woman? If she didn’t, she’d never find out what had happened to O’Hanrahan. Perhaps when she saw him at the airport, all would be explained. And if he didn’t show, she’d make a run for it, safely in front of video cameras and security officers.
“I have a car,” said the woman.
“I prefer to take my own taxi,” said Lucy.
“Whatever you wish,” she said coolly.
Lucy hopped in a taxi and headed to the main terminal of the Athens International Airport. Well, if it’s me they want, thought Lucy, they have missed a number of opportunities to abduct me.
And look, what a coincidence. At the Athens International Airport terminal, in the Iraqi Air check-in line, who should be there but Abdul and Hossein.
“Ah, we meet again,” said Abdul, feigning surprise. “What brings you here?”
Lucy noticed, near the terminal entrance, the Arab woman had reappeared. “Oh, just these tickets,” said Lucy icily. “Where is Dr. O’Hanrahan?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“I suspect you do know, Abdul or whoever you are—”
At that moment, three policemen who had been quickly marching across the lobby, submachine guns at their belt, turned briskly toward the check-in line and tapped her firmly on the shoulder: “Meez Lucille Dantan?” one policeman demanded.
“Yes.” Lucy turned to see the Arab woman hurriedly make her way to the exit.
An officer: “You are wanted by the police. Please to follow.”
Abdul and Hossein stared at the floor, frozen in place.
Lucy was sure she was not who they wanted, but took a step forward. “What about my bag?”
“Leave it. INTERPOL wants you,” said the man firmly. “Coom with me immediately.”
Then, as she turned to Abdul and Hossein, she saw them stepping over the cordon for the check-in line and walking briskly toward the exit. Hold it … Now there were several men, some in uniforms, some in suits converging on the two Arab men …
Now everyone was running. Abdul was tackled halfway to the door. A security officer ran over and in the grappling Abdul was hit by the butt of the security man’s rifle full across the face. Lucy was being dragged away by the policeman but kept turning to observe. Hossein had made it to the door and one of the policeman had pulled his gun. Screams. Panic. People dove to the floor, some ran, others scooped up their children. Lucy was open-mouthed, not sure where she should be, when the policeman pulled on her roughly: “I said, coom with me,” he barked in bad English.
She was, in no time, led to a customs office with several policemen standing around looking at video monitors of the terminal. They eyed her dourly.
“Uh look,” Lucy tried to explain as she was being shuttled down a hallway, “I’m not with those guys…”
And then horrible thoughts occurred to her: they were going to blow up the plane and they planted a bomb in my suitcase. I’m like those poor English women who marry Arabs and find they’re walking time bombs for some Palestinian group. So this is how the adventure ends! In a Greek jail somewhere, shunned by my own embassy, front page of the tabloids—and won’t Mom and Dad just love that.
Oh where, where, where is Dr. O’Hanrahan!
Lucy and her escort entered through some double doors to an older part of the airport, then climbed some steps to the second-floor glass-enclosed, unair-conditioned offices with desks piled with papers, wanted posters, customs documents, a Kafkaesque gathering of functionaries and customs rule–violators sitting sheepishly before bureaucrats explaining their crimes. She was told to sit in one cubicle.
A tall, middle-aged man with gray at the temples of his close-cropped hair appeared in the doorway. He wore an olive-drab Army uniform and held a Greek newspaper and a large manila file folder under his arm. It took a moment for Lucy to comprehend that it was an American uniform.
“I’m Colonel Westin,” he said without looking up from the file folder. “I’m with U.S. Customs, attached to the U.S. Embassy in Israel.” Then he looked up. “Lucille Dantan? House at 14320 Kimbark Street, Hyde Park?”
“That’s me.”
The colonel asked for her Social Security number, which she recited. Colonel Westin sat down on a spindly folding chair and leaned forward, hands on his knees, one hand clutching the newspaper. “INTERPOL’s been looking for you for weeks, Miss Dantan. We were beginning to think you’d been taken hostage. Flew up from Jerusalem because of you.”
“I don’t understand.”
He didn’t understand her confusion. “Where’ve you been? Chicago last heard from you two weeks ago. Someone checked with your roommate—”
“Judy,” she said automatically.
“Who said you were due to fly home but didn’t. This had us worried because…” He glanced back at his data. “… there was also a Gabriel O’Donoghue who traveled with this O’Hanrahan character before you. And he went missing for awhile, too.”
“Someone’s mistaken, Colonel, sir,” she protested. “Until this week, I’ve been faxing reports every few days back to the University of Chicago.”
Colonel Westin didn’t seem to hear her as he pored over the sheets of paper in his file folder. He handed her the newspaper. “Seen this?”
She looked at the paper, a different paper from the newspaper the Arab woman had shown her. Lucy scanned the Greek, looked at the photo of some Greek officials, noticed a photo at the bottom of an ikon … a defaced ikon. Beside a mug shot of O’Hanrahan. “My God, Dr. O’Hanrahan!”
“Your companion seems to have found himself in trouble over on Mount Athos, something about defacing priceless ikons.”
“That’s completely impossible,” she stammered.
“Yep,” he said, not looking up again, sucking in air through his clenched teeth. “We thought so too. I flew up from Jerusalem because of him.”
She thought he’d come from Jerusalem because of her.
“I’m trying to put it all together, Miss Dantan. You’re on an assignment to England, your college told me, then you’re in Ireland, Italy, Greece, then you leave with these Iraqi terrorists…”
He trailed off as another man entered the room. He was in his thirties, very short, with a light blue suit that didn’t fit him, the sleeves too long and his pants cuffs a little high. He also had very thin brown hair, which he had tried his best to arrange over his bald head, and round, thick glasses.
