seemed to Janson, like an open manacle—or one that was closing. Necessity had
drawn him here all the same. He had no intention of signaling his movements to
anyone with a professional interest in them.
For the past couple of hours, he had considered and rejected a dozen other ways
of leaving the country. Watchers would surely be swarming in and around the
Athens airport by now; quite likely agents would soon be mobilized at the major
airports at Thessaloniki and elsewhere. In any case, traveling on his own
passport was out of the question: given the involvement of the embassy, the
chances were too great that a U.S. advisory had been issued to international
points of embarkation and arrival. But when he made his way to the one local he
knew who specialized in forging official documents—a man who owned a stationery
shop near Omonia—he found surveillance agents in position: a visit would have
compromised either his contact or him. Hence his recourse to those whose
livelihoods taught them the formalities of international transit—and when the
formalities might be overlooked.
Janson wore a suit, which make him an incongruous sight in the Perigaili Bar,
but his tie hung unknotted around his collar, and he looked adrift, almost
despondent. He stepped forward with a weaving gait. Decide on a part and then
dress for it. He was a prosperous businessman in dire straits. If the air of
desperation didn’t achieve the intended results, two minutes in the rest room
and a square-shouldered shift in demeanor could erase that impression entirely.
He took the stool next to the sailor and gave him a sidewise glance. He was
solidly built, with the kind of soft, fleshy build that spoke of a large
appetite but often hid considerable muscular strength. Did he speak English?
“Goddamn Albanian whore,” Janson muttered under his breath, just loud enough to
be heard. Imprecations directed at ethnic minorities—especially Gypsies and
Albanians—were, he knew, a reliable conversation-starter in Greece, where the
ancient notion of purity of bloodlines still ruled.
The sailor turned to him and grunted. His bloodshot eyes were wary, however.
What was a man dressed like him doing in a such a dive?
“She took everything,” Janson went on. “She cleaned me out.” He signaled for a
drink.
“A shqiptar whore stole your cash?” The sailor’s expression was devoid of
sympathy, but amused. It was a start.
“Cash is about the only thing I’ve got left. You want to hear this?” He saw the
insignia on the sailor’s uniform: u.c.s. united container services. Janson
called to the bartender. “Get my friend here a beer.”
“Why not some Metaxa?” the sailor said, testing his luck.
“That’s a plan—Metaxa!” he called out. “A double! For both of us.” Something
about the sailor suggested a man who knew the docks and waterfronts of the
Aegean, and the unsavory enterprises that took root there.
Two glasses of Metaxa arrived, the colorless variety, flavored with anise.
Janson asked for a glass of water on the side. With a disapproving scowl, the
bartender slid an amber-colored glass toward him, with a few inches of lukewarm
tap water. A bar didn’t stay in business by filling its customers’ bellies with
water, unless you counted the water with which it topped off its bottles of
liquor.
Janson began to tell his companion a tale of wandering into an ouzeri while
waiting for the Minoan Lines ferry at the Zea Marina. “I’d just gotten out of a
five-hour meeting, you see. We’d wrapped up a deal that had been dragging on for
months—that’s why they sent me here personally, you see. The local reps, you
can’t trust them. You never know who they’re really working for.”
“And what does your company do, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Janson’s eyes darted around, settling on the glazed ceramic ashtray. “Ceramics,”
he said. “High-fired nonconductive ceramic struts for electrical appliances.” He
laughed. “You’re sorry you asked, huh? Well, it’s a filthy job, but somebody’s
got to do it.”
“And the whore—” prompted the sailor, gulping the brandy like water.
“So I’m totally stressed—you know ‘stressed’?—and this girl, she’s all over me,
and I’m thinking, what the hell. You know, I’m talking about release, right? And
she leads me to some shithole, a few doors down, I don’t even know where, and …
”
“And you wake up and she’s robbed you blind.”
“Exactly!” Janson signaled the bartender to bring another round of drinks. “I
must have passed out or something, and she went through my pockets. Lucky for me
she didn’t find my cash belt. Guess that would have meant turning me over, and
she was afraid I’d wake up. But she took my passport, my credit cards …”
Janson grabbed at his ring finger, holding it close to the sailor’s face,
drunkenly demonstrating the final indignity of having a wedding band removed. He
breathed hard, a senior sales exec revisiting a nightmare.
“Why not tell the astynomia? The harbor police here in Piraeus know the whores.”
Janson covered his face. “I can’t. I can’t risk it. I file a report, it could be
my ass. Same reason I don’t dare go to the embassy. My company is very
conservative. I can’t chance them finding out—we’ve got reps all over. I know I
don’t look it, but I’ve got a reputation to protect. And my wife—oh Jesus!”
Suddenly his eyes brimmed with tears. “She can’t know, ever!”
“So you’re a big man,” the sailor said, his gaze taking the stranger’s measure.
“And a bigger idiot. What was I thinking?” He drained his glass of Metaxa,
filling his cheeks with the sweetened liquor, then swiveled his stool around,
agitated, and raised the amber water glass to his lips. Only a trained observer
would have noticed that, though Janson’s water glass had not been refilled, its
level magically kept rising.
“The big head wasn’t thinking,” the seaman said sagely. “The little head was
thinking.”
“If I could just get to our regional headquarters in Izmir, I could take care of
everything.”
The seaman drew back with a jerk. “You are a Turk?”
“Turkish? God, no.” Janson wrinkled his nose with disgust. “How could you think
that? Are you?”
The seaman spat on the floor in response.
In Piraeus, at least, the old enmities still simmered. “Look, we’re an
international company. I’m a Canadian citizen, as it happens, but our clients
are everywhere. I’m not going to the police, and I can’t risk turning up at the
embassy. The thing could destroy me—you Greeks, you’re worldly, you understand
about human nature, but the people I work with aren’t like that. Thing is, if I
could just get to Izmir, I could make this whole nightmare disappear. I’ll do
the breaststroke to get there if I have to.” He slammed down the thick-bottomed
glass on the banged-up zinc bar. Then he waved a fifty-thousand-drachma note at
the bartender, signaling for another round.
The bartender looked at the note and shook his head. “Ehete mipos pio psila?” A
smaller-denomination bill was required.
Janson peered at the note like a drunk with blurred vision. The note was the
equivalent of over a hundred U.S. dollars. “Oh, sorry,” he said, putting it away
and handing the bartender four thousand-drachma notes.
As Janson intended, the error was not lost on his companion, whose interest in
his plight suddenly became livelier.
“A long way to swim,” the seaman said with a mirthless chuckle. “Perhaps there
is another way.”
Janson looked at him imploringly. “You think?”
“Special transport,” the man said. “Not comfortable. Not cheap.”
“You get me to Izmir, I’ll pay you twenty-five hundred dollars—U.S., not
Canadian.”
The sailor looked at Janson appraisingly. “Others will have to cooperate.”
“That’s twenty-five hundred just for you, for arranging it. If there are other
expenses, I’ll cover them, too.”
“You wait here,” the sailor said, a flush of greed sobering him slightly. “I
make a phone call.”
Janson drummed his fingers on the bar as he waited; if his drunkenness was
feigned, his display of agitation required little acting. After a few long
minutes, the seaman returned.
“I speak to a captain I know. He says if you come aboard with drugs, he will
throw you into the Aegean without a life jacket.”
“Absolutely not!” Janson said, aghast. “No drugs!”
“So the Albanian whore took those, too?” the man returned wryly.
“What?” Janson’s tone rose in indignation, a humorless businessman whose dignity
had been insulted. “What are you saying?”
“I joke with you,” the seaman said, mindful of his fee. “But I promised the
captain I’d give you the warning.” He paused. “It’s a containerized cargo ship.
U.C.S.-licensed, like mine. And it leaves at four in the morning. Gets in at
berth number six port of Izmir, four hours later, OK? What happens at Izmir is
on you—you don’t tell anyone how you got there.” He made a neck-slicing gesture.
“Very important. Also very important: you pay him a thousand dollars at Pier