The 4 Phase Man Part 2

"Durete!"

Xenos whirled around, almost pushing his gun into the face of an old man, who instantly paled. But the younger man who had called out the name was standing behind and to the side of the first man.

"You going to shoot everyone today?" He laughed. "Or just your old friend?"

"You ain't that good a friend, Franco."

The young man laughed again. "You got that many in this room you can be so picky?"

Xenos shrugged as he lowered his gun, and allowed the old man-the taverna owner-and his sons, who were waiting outside, to round up the surviving soldiers and lock them in the cellar.

"What are you doing here, Franco? Xenos asked as he poured himself a gla.s.s of goat's milk five minutes later."

The young Corsican sniffed at the pitcher, turned up his nose, then grabbed a nearby bottle of ouzo. "You know this is a safe haven for my group." He took a deep drink of the acidic wine. "Just walking the property, like you Americans say."

"No."

"I haven't asked you anything yet."

Xenos turned to the bar's mirror to study Franco's reflection. "The answer's still no."

"There's no trust left in the world, Durete. No trust." He stepped out of the way as one of the soldiers with his throat cut was dragged out of the taverna. "Something I should know about?"

"I thought you knew everything."

"So did I."

They drank in silence for a few minutes as the room was cleaned of all traces of the short-lived battle. The wall and floor were being scrubbed, fresh clay applied to the walls, tablecloths torn for gags.

"Okay," Franco finally said. "I heard some things."

Xenos just poured himself another gla.s.s of milk.

Franco studied the man he'd known for ten years, but knew almost nothing about. "Like I know that half the f.u.c.king Cypriot Army is looking to exterminate Xenos. And that the local Greek militia has orders to stay out of it." He raised his eyebrows. "I must admit, that did pique my interest."

"I killed the Cypriot commander's son," Xenos said simply.

"Yeah, I heard that too." The briefest of pauses. "Any particular reason? If it can be told, of course."

Xenos took his gun from the bar and slid it into its holster. "How long can you hold these guys?"

"How long do you need?"

A deep sigh. "The son, and some of his friends, were running charters for college kids in the islands. Then stranding them here on Naxos, robbing and torturing the men, raping and sodomizing the women. Shooting videos of it and selling it to other tourists."

"So?" Franco seemed completely unaffected, almost bored.

"I found their last charter. Including a nineteen-year-old girl who died naked and b.l.o.o.d.y in my arms."

Franco looked into his a.s.sociate's eyes. "I can hold them as long as it takes to get you off this rock." He smiled broadly. "Of course there's going to be a price, amico mio."

Xenos put his knife in his boot, threw his last roll of bills on the bar, then started for the door. "No, grazie. I can take care of myself."

Franco roared with laughter. "Of that there is little doubt!" He put a hand on the bigger man's shoulder. "But let me do this for you. It'll make it easier for me to ask you for my favor."

Xenos shook his head. "I thought I already said no."

"There are all sorts of no's." He followed Xenos out onto the predawn street. "And the job is in New York. Don't you have family in New York?"

Xenos stopped, with his back to the Corsican. "I don't have any family," he almost whispered, his dream gnawing at his consciousness. "In New York or anywhere else." He started off.

Franco watched him for a few seconds. "But I do, Durete! I came to this G.o.dforsaken rock because of this. To find you! You can at least hear me out. You owe the Brotherhood that much." He immediately regretted saying it.

Xenos turned around, slowly walking back to Franco. His face a frozen nothing mask. A soulless, blank evil.

"Io non devo niente a nessuno! Capito?" His voice was hoa.r.s.e, choked with violence and black possibilities. "I owe no one a f.u.c.king thing. Not anyone."

But Franco never backed down, never took a backward step.

"You owe us at least the courtesy of listening." He paused. "For that we will guarantee your safety off this island and back to Toulon."

Xenos thought about it. The hills of Naxos were impa.s.sable and crowded with blind canyons, caves, and ancient labyrinths. He could easily avoid the army until calmer heads prevailed and the pressure came off.

But how many more young soldiers with an overdeveloped sense of duty would he have to kill between then and now?

"You have a car, Franco? Or we going to have to walk?"

Franco nodded slightly in silent understanding, then held up his hand. A minute later a windowless panel van rattled to a stop. "Do I ever walk, amico mio?"

Five minutes later, after giving explicit instructions to the taverna owner and a.s.suring him of his group's protection against reprisals, Franco climbed into the van beside Xenos.

"I got a boat at Mikolas."

Eighteen hours later, under cover of darkness, Xenos Filotimo sneaked aboard the fishing smack Orphelin and, with the tide, escaped into the warm waters of the Mediterranean for the long voyage to the French port of Toulon.

Once clear of the waters off Naxos, the big man stretched out on the foredeck, his backpack as a pillow, and closed his eyes.

But he didn't allow himself to sleep.

The streets of Georgetown were about as different from the Greek islands as possible. The first frost of the year clung to the barren trees and bushes; the gra.s.s on the rolling hills was browning up, and people frowned with the sure and certain knowledge that winter was in offing.

But the streets of the Washington, D.C., suburb were no less dangerous than those outside the taverna.

The two people saw each other at a distance, walking diagonally toward each other on two of the quaint paths that bordered the university. They both adjusted their pace to ensure coming together at the right point at the right instant. As they both did their sums in their heads.

Do I recognize any faces or cars?

Does anything appear different from how it should be?

Any windows open, exhaust coming from parked vans, workmen on power poles?

Any reason at all to walk on by?!

As they came to the intersection of their paths, the older of the two checked the time. The younger yawned. A moment later they fell into step alongside each other as they began to meander through the carefully manicured university paths.

"Do you need to come in?" the older asked.

"No," the younger replied. "I'm clean."

"Do you need to deliver anything?"

"No."

"Are you intact?"

The younger one hesitated before answering. "That's what I'm here to find out." The voice was brittle; scared but under tight control.

"Are you intact?" the older one repeated, insisting that this rendezvous go by the numbers, as had countless clandestine meetings before.

Sighing, the younger replied, "I've detected no changes in the flow across my desk, in my a.s.signments. My phone was clean as of 0930 today, and I've detected no surveillance."

"Very well."

They turned into a darker corner of the grounds, to a narrow strip of gra.s.s that wound between two buildings.

"So," the younger one began without further explanation, "am I intact?"

The older one shrugged. "We believe so."

"Thank G.o.d."

The older one smiled. "G.o.d and Canvas."

"Sure." The younger one stopped for a moment.

"Is something wrong?"

"I don't trust him. Where he is, what he's doing for us; he could make us all very, uh, exposed."

"The cost of doing business, I'm afraid," the older one said simply. "But Canvas's loyalty is based on money, and we cannot be outbid for his services, rest a.s.sured of that."

"He knows a lot."

A shrug from the older one. "A necessary evil. Canvas is a consummate professional and must have access to all sorts of information in order to do his part in this."

A long silence.

"Does he know me? The younger one's voice rose with anxiety."

The older one smiled rea.s.suringly. "He no more knows you than he knows anyone with whom he is not directly involved. He has detailed information only as far as his specific a.s.signment goes and no further." The smile vanished. "In any event, the knowledge he does have dies with him at the end of the operation."

"And when is that?"

Now the older one sounded tense. Barely. "Access is not what we had hoped for, there has been resistance to the suggestions. But we hope that the affair can be concluded within six months." The briefest of pauses. "A year at the most."

"A year's a long G.o.dd.a.m.ned time," the younger one whispered as a student moved past on a bicycle. "And it's been getting worse since the, uh, thing."

The older one nodded in agreement. "The incident was unexpected. Unfortunate." It might've even been catastrophic, but Canvas performed admirably on that score. The older one smiled warmly. "I think we can return to the original timeline now."

"I'm not so convinced," the younger one said brusquely. "You only know them academically. I deal with them every day."

An expression of deep disquiet pa.s.sed across the worried face. "They could just be laying low, waiting to be sure of what's what and who's who. These are vicious, cunning, unpredictable b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and I am not about to put myself further at risk until you know! Not think!"

The older one sighed. "Well"-it was said in a carefree tone-"Canvas has removed our source's options. The psychs agree with his a.s.sessment; and I am content." A smile peeked out. "As long as we maintain our leverage, the source will continue to be most compliant. With that in our hands, we cannot be surprised."

"What about the French kid?"

"No longer an issue. He comes from nowhere, has no family, no ties in this country. Was a loner in his. No one will miss him. Canvas has been most thorough." A genuine laugh. "And I understand you have put certain other checks into place, just in case." A light laugh. "Pure overkill. No one will come looking."

The younger one nodded. "You're too d.a.m.ned pleased with yourself."

"I see the big picture, and the pieces falling into place," the older one said simply. "I'm not pleased"-he wheezed out the word-"just confident and encouraged."

"You be confident and encouraged. Me? I'll stay paranoid. And we'll see which of us is left standing."

They continued on, just two more people speaking in quiet abstracts in a city that thrived on them.

Xenos hated abstracts.

Oh, he could think in them, a.n.a.lyze them fairly effortlessly, extrapolate almost infinite conclusions from their colors and shapes. But he had lived in the abstract for too many years, and now longed for solid, immutable definition instead.

Which was largely why he had chosen Toulon as his second home.

The old French naval station, the harbor that sheltered over half of the Mediterranean's smugglers, the modern city built along the edges of the old city, all masked the rock-solid heart of the French town.

Like Naxos, Toulon was carved from the mountains that surrounded the harbor. It could be tough, unyielding, attacking. It required its residents to be equally hard in return. Strong men and women who made their own rules, then lived strictly by them.

And the heart of this stubborn, bullheaded, unyielding population was the fifteen hundred members of the Corsican community.

That they ran the harbor and the bulk of the city beyond was a given. That the token forces of French Naval Sh.o.r.e Patrol, Metropolitan cops, and GIGN thugs would deal only with the non-Corsican community was also a given. Payoffs were made, penetrations were made, arrangements were made. And the Brotherhood-that most violent, most feared, most insular organized crime group in Europe-ran the Corsicans.

From his earliest days in Toulon, Xenos-known to them as Durete ("the hard man")-had known the rules and had made his own arrangements with the Brotherhood. He would leave them alone, not interfere with any operations or plans, would a.s.sist them in those things that they needed a non-Corsican for (they had checked out the tough man's virulent reputation... then apologized for the intrusion).

In exchange they would lend their protection to a small farm on the cliffs above the city.

The Clinic of the Broken Children.

In its forty-five beds lay the shattered remnants of fifteen years of war in Afghanistan. Boys and girls-none over twelve-missing arms, legs; blinded or deafened; ma.s.sacred all.