Seeker's Curse

“So let me guess what came next,” she said. “You joined the army to get out from among the goats.”

“It is a common story, is it not? I did well on their tests. On all their tests—as a boy I also loved to read. Especially tales of far places and adventure. History, of course, mythology, fiction. And mostly anything other than staring at goats and scrub oak all day. I used to get in trouble with my father and uncles for reading on the job. Although goat herding does not exactly demand constant attention.

“So I joined our army when I was sixteen to escape the goats and my uncles with their too-quick fists. I lied about my age. What can I say? I enjoyed it. The training I found easy. The regimentation—well, it beat the goats. I was quickly promoted. And being a strong lad with much more lust for adventure than good sense, after the necessary five years I volunteered for the special forces, and was sent to Afghanistan. I was there for a couple of years until I was shot by a sniper on the Pakistani border. I came home to recover.”

He shrugged. “I left the army. Tried going to school. But I quickly found that unsatisfying. I am afraid I’d become a kind of adrenaline junkie. Since I could not afford to become a mountain climber or amateur parachutist I joined the police force. And there is my story.”

He sat back, lost in thought for a moment.

“I sometimes wonder,” he said, “how well the wise men who rule, the heads of state, really know history. Even Alexander never really tamed that land. Megas Alexandros, history’s greatest conqueror.”

Annja would’ve argued for Ghengis Khan, herself. But somehow getting embroiled in a debate with a Macedonian hillman, a warrior-scholar raised on daydreams of his ancestors’ martial glory, about whether his hero was top of the world-conquest food chain, did not seem like a good idea. Especially a man who could still cause her to vanish into some clammy, reeking cell and never come out.

“Sometimes at night, listening to the winds howl between the terribly high cliffs of the Khyber, it seems you hear the voices of all the soldiers who fell there. Thousands upon thousands of them. But too many of our enlightened modern types cannot hear them.”

He drew in a deep breath and drummed his fingertips decisively on the table. “But I talk out of turn. The soldier should keep from politics. We Greeks know that too well. It is not only the leftists who say it, although perhaps they say it too smugly. And besides, nothing is more boring than an old soldier’s tales.”

Annja smiled. “Boring is one thing you aren’t, Pantheras Katramados,” she said.

She sipped her coffee. He was an intriguing man, no question. He could be a fascinating one. But he was still a potential adversary, and in any event his orbit was one Annja the wandering star would not stay in for long. Fascination was a luxury she couldn’t afford at this stage in her life.

She set her cup down decisively and checked her watch. “Not that it hasn’t been pleasant, but I’ve hung out here long enough. I need to get back to the museum—those moldering old books are calling to me.”

He raised a brow. “Are you still staying in Exarcheia?” he asked.

She guessed that was a rhetorical question. European Union law required hostelries to examine foreign guests’ passports, and to report all foreign guests to police agencies. And EKAM probably had ways to keep track of her anyway. She hadn’t found any GPS tracker-bugs stuck in her clothing or possessions. She was pretty well-seasoned when it came to that sort of thing. But she still suspected that the Hellenic police special forces could lay hands on her if and when they cared to.

“I’m staying at a little pension. It’s convenient to the museum. Cheap, too. But only relative to everything else in Athens. I figured with the National Technical University right nearby there’d be kind of a student-ghetto discount going on.”

They both stood. “Watch yourself,” he said.

“Because of the drug dealers?” she asked. “Or the anarchists?”

“Both pose real problems,” he said. “Most of the anarchists are harmless, really, despite what some of my fellow officers believe. But beware; some of them are violent thrill seekers. But they are not what really concerns me. As you know.”

“Bajraktari,” Annja said.

“Of course. He is relentless and resourceful—a lot of these former guerrilla fighters are. As well as utterly ruthless. And he has…certain resources.”

“I’ll be careful, Pan,” she said. “And I really should be done here in a day or two. I’m just trying to get as much information as I can.”

P OISED LIKE A GAZELLE on the edge of a clearing looking out for cheetahs, Annja waited for a break in the noisy metal jostle of midday traffic. She was returning across the Exarcheia plaza to the museum from the café where she’d had lunch. Pale green leaf buds sprouted from the branches of scrawny trees. Pigeons bobbed and bubbled on the pavement, oblivious to scurrying pedestrian feet. The Aegean sun flashing off glass and chrome was hot on her face and dazzling even through her sunglasses.

Her break came when a white panel truck cut off a faded blue-and-white Citroën. She trotted briskly forward. As she neared the opposite side of the street she heard brakes squeal and horns blaring. It startled her enough that she turned her head to glance over her shoulder.

A boxy little ancient Audi compact, its paint faded to leprous gray and rusting through in big patches like scabs, had cut in to the curb close behind her. The fat round shape of an RPG warhead pointed at her from the rear passenger window. White smoke rushed out around it. Garish yellow flame lit the car’s interior.

The high-explosives-stuffed metal onion sprang toward Annja’s face.

5

Annja hurled herself to the right. Thirty feet to her left the rocket grenade cracked off against the corner of a building. The floor-level window, almost totally obscured with hand bills, exploded in big shards of glass and scraps of colorful flaming paper.

She hit the pavement, skinned the palms of her hands, got a shoulder down, and rolled over and over.

Demonic shrieking rose over the plaza, which had abruptly gone so quiet Annja momentarily thought the blast’s vicious crack had deafened her. She rolled on her side into the gutter and looked back.

Yellow flames completely filled the little car and rolled out the windows in big gushes. The front passenger’s door was open. A blazing figure had staggered out into the street, waving wings of flame. A man threw a jacket over his head and bodychecked him to the ground.

Picking herself up to a crouch Annja looked quickly around. People were standing and gaping. Some were screaming, while others ran in various directions. People thronged around the unfortunate victims of the blast’s overkill, trying to tend to them.

The Audi’s gas tank exploded and a gout of orange flame shot out from beneath it in all directions, driving back would-be rescuers. At least two people were still inside the car, the driver and the shooter. Annja wasn’t sure it would be any favor to extract them—if they were even still alive in that crematory.

The crew in the Audi must be newbies, Annja thought, looking to make their bones with Bajraktari’s gang. She figured they’d decided to show initiative and really impress their bosses by making a splashy hit on her. No doubt the survivors would find they had succeeded. Their bosses would have the unbreakable impression they were idiots.

Even aside from the little problem of the flaming rocket’s backblast—which never caused a bit of problem in the movies—the RPG was a pretty goofy weapon for a targeted hit on an individual anyway. Scanning her surroundings for signs of attack from a different direction, Annja felt a flash of bemusement. Where along the way did I become an expert in the specs and subtleties of deployment of the rocket-propelled grenade launcher?

Nobody was paying Annja any attention as she got upright, a little creakily. She was going to have a nasty bruise on her hip, and her skin almost crawled with the need to pick out the grit and wash the foul gutter goo off her skinned hands. There was no way for anyone to see she had been the rocket’s target. She was just another unfortunate passerby who was lucky enough to possess good reflexes.

But the comforting anonymity didn’t last. Through the shouting, milling throng she spotted two men in long black greatcoats, open and flapping about their trouser legs, hard faces scruffily unshaved even by the standards of Greek anarchists. The none-too-subtle way they held their hands in their coats and swiveled their heads before their burning crow-dark eyes fixed on Annja showed that, as she feared, the hapless crew in the car had backup. And more seasoned backup, by the looks of it.

She headed down the street that led away from the plaza, toward the Acropolis hill and downtown Athens. She made herself walk, though at a good pace with her long legs. She wasn’t concerned about attracting the gangsters’ attention—they had spotted their prey already. She just didn’t want anyone else to associate her with them, nor to have any reason to remember her at all.

Fortunately the crowd had plenty of distractions. Pedestrians wounded by the rocket blast were being tended. The Audi was wholly engulfed in flames and burning with a noise like a gale blowing down a narrow street, attracting a lot of gawkers. A knot of men surrounded the would-be assassin who had escaped the inferno. They had completely covered him in coats, smothering the flames. Now they jostled each other to kick the unmoving figure, leaving open the question of whether they had saved him from burning to death out of Samaritanism or simply the desire to kill him themselves.

The only people paying attention to Annja, it seemed, were her personal hunters.

The few other people Annja saw were hurrying toward the plaza to see what the excitement was about. She broke into a run. An alley opened to her left. She turned into it.

Once off the street she accelerated into a full-on sprint.

The alley reeked of fish, vegetables and coffee grounds decomposing into the black greasy muck that slimed its floor and made footing tricky.

She reached the end of the short block and dodged left again. This street was narrow and deserted.

She waited. In a moment she heard the footsteps pounding along the alley.

She knew the very last thing on their minds was that their quarry, a mere woman, a soft, weak, Western infidel at that, would do anything but flee like a frightened rabbit until she collapsed of exhaustion.

As the footfalls grew louder she closed her eyes and summoned her sword from the other where. A tall dark figure flashed into view. She swung for the fences.

The edge of the sword was extremely sharp. Annja twisted with her hips and put everything she had into the cut. Subtle technique was not an issue here.

The blade caught the running man at the Adam’s apple. In a flash he was tumbling into a loose-limbed sprawl.

His partner came a few steps behind. He tried to brake himself. Annja pivoted around the rough stone corner of the wall and, still grasping the hilt with both hands, plunged the sword into his belly to the cross-shaped hilt.

Her pursuer’s mouth and eyes flew wide.