Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear

The streets were largely empty, so Gabriel was a bit surprised when, on walking through the arched doorway of one of the buildings, he saw a crowd of perhaps a dozen and a half men breathlessly clustered around a bar. Then he recognized the sound of a transistor radio behind the bar delivering a sports announcer’s play-by-play. At one exclamation from the device the men all groaned, except for one who went around the circle collecting money from all the others. The bartender, a bald man with prominent eyes and a heavy five-o’clock shadow even at noon, flicked off the radio and the men dispersed to separate tables around the room, all except for two particularly disconsolate-looking souls who remained at the bar.

Gabriel took a seat beside them and ordered a glass of the local Ariousios Oinos. It was said that the city of Chios had been founded by a son of Dionysus himself, and the Chians were accordingly proud of their wine. It was heavy, heady stuff, a red so dark it was almost black. You tasted echoes, Gabriel thought, swallowing, of Homer’s wine-dark seas, on which Odysseus and Agamemnon and so many others came to grief.

“Tourist?” the bartender said, in a thick accent and wearing a cheek-stretching grin. “American?”

“American,” Gabriel answered, in Greek, “but not a tourist.”

He saw the phony smile on the bartender’s face relax into something more like a normal human facial expression. It wasn’t a smile anymore so much as a tired grimace. “Would you look at me,” he said, “look at what I’ve come to, playing the monkey when someone comes in. Feh.” He spat on the floor from the side of his mouth. “No one comes here anymore. This used to be the high season. Now, maybe once every four days, five days, one tourist, one couple, maybe, they order one drink apiece and don’t tip. But I smile, smile, say thank you mister American, thank you for your dollar.” He spat again, then slopped some liquor from a jug into a water glass and sampled his own wares. “Cigarette?”

He held a crumpled pack out toward Gabriel.

“Thanks,” Gabriel said, pulling one cigarette out and letting it dangle between his fingers after the man lit it with a wooden match. He didn’t smoke, but he’d learned over the years that you didn’t make friends anywhere in the world by turning down an offered cigarette.

“So what brings you to this rump of a village?” One of the men next to Gabriel looked up angrily at this insult, but said nothing, perhaps because the bartender took the opportunity to refill his glass. “You’re a magazine writer, a photographer, what?” The bartender eyed Gabriel critically. “You don’t look Greek.”

“I’m not. Though I spent a lot of time here growing up. My parents loved it in Greece. They died not too far from here.”

The bartender nodded. “Then you are Greek enough. If your dead are buried in our soil.”

Ambrose and Cordelia Hunt, two of the bestselling authors of the last fifty years thanks to a pair of improbably successful books of religious history, weren’t buried anywhere—they’d disappeared at sea during a millennium-themed speaking tour of the Mediterranean and Gabriel’s best efforts had failed to turn up any sign of their bodies. He’d spent eight months searching while, back home, Michael struggled to pick up the pieces of the estate and Lucy—poor Lucy, who’d had a strained relationship with their parents from the day she was born and they’d decided, oblivious classicists that they were, to name their third child after an archangel in the Bible, same as they had their first two, only the choices remaining were Raphael and Lucifer, and you couldn’t name a girl Raphael, could you?—had packed a bag and hopped a plane and severed all contact, taking what had been a family of five down to just Gabriel and Michael. Gabriel, Michael, and a foundation worth one hundred million dollars.

But Gabriel didn’t tell the bartender any of this, just nodded as though his parents’ graves were right here in Avgonyma, this rump of a village.

He tossed back the rest of his wine, took an obligatory drag on his cigarette, and dropped the coin on the bar. It spun for a second before landing sphinx-side up.

“Know anyone around here who could tell me about this?” Gabriel said. “Specifically, any connection between this sphinx of yours and the one in Egypt.”

He saw the bartender’s face pale. The man shook his head quickly. “You don’t want to ask about this, my friend.”

“Why not?” Gabriel said, reaching out to pick up the coin again. Another hand came down heavily on top of his, pinning his to the wood.

Looking to his right, Gabriel saw that the man beside him was standing now, though none too steadily. The other man at the bar got up, too.

“We don’t talk about the sphinx with nobody, American.” The man pressed down on Gabriel’s hand, grinding it into the bar. “You people just don’t listen, do you?”

Chapter 11

“‘You people’?” Gabriel said. “Has someone else been asking?”

The man turned to his neighbor, barked out a nasty laugh. “Has someone else…?” Turning back, he swung a fist at Gabriel’s head. Gabriel ducked under it and wrenched his hand free. He jammed the coin in his pocket.

“Don’t start trouble, Niko,” the bartender said, “please. Demetria just cleaned the place—”

“Quiet,” Niko roared and barreled forward, his arms wrapping around Gabriel’s torso and bearing both of them toward the stone wall. Gabriel snatched a half-full glass off the bar as they passed and smashed it into the back of Niko’s head. It got Niko to release his grappling hold but only momentarily while he raked bits of glass and flecks of foam out of his thick mat of hair.

Meanwhile, a young man who shared the bartender’s complexion got up from a nearby table. “Who are you to tell my father to be quiet in his own place?” He came forward.

“Christos, don’t,” the bartender said, patting the air with one hand placatingly.

“No, Papa, this loudmouth can’t talk to you this way, not in front of me.”

“You just say that,” Niko said, “because you like the color of the Americans’ money. Show them around the island, take them anywhere they want, tell them anything they want—they feel lonely at night, you get down on your knees for them, too?”

Christos was at the bar in two strides, swinging wildly, but Niko put up his left arm to block the blow, and the man behind him grabbed hold of Christos’ other arm.

“Let him go,” Gabriel said.

“Or what, American?”

Gabriel’s hand dropped to his holster. But before he could get it open, someone leaped on his back from behind.

Gabriel didn’t see the free-for-all begin—his face was pressed into the dirt floor. But he could hear it going on above him, the sound of punches landing and glass breaking. He raised one elbow sharply, taking out the man lying on top of him, and rolled over, springing to his feet. He jumped back to get out of the path of one enraged Greek who’d found a cudgel somewhere and was swinging it wildly over his head as he charged the bar. The bartender was nowhere in sight, having either dropped behind the bar for safety or run out into the street for help.

Spotting Christos in the swarm of angry men, Gabriel began making his way toward him, pushing the bodies of combatants to either side. If this Christos was favorably disposed toward Americans and inclined to answer their questions, that made him someone Gabriel needed to talk to before a blow from one his fellow countrymen put him into traction, or worse.

His view was blocked for a moment as someone leapt down from halfway up the staircase to the second floor, the bottom half of of his face smeared with blood. But it wasn’t Gabriel he was interested in, and they both darted left, and then right, and then left again, trying to get out of each other’s way. Finally Gabriel stopped and stood still, his arms at his sides, and the man ran past, shouting his thanks as he went.