“So, what’s with the long face?”
Wes Barnes sat in the aisle seat next to me. After he asked the question, he folded his newspaper and laid it in his lap.
We were bound for Rome, our first stop, the Vatican. Cardinal Salvatore Sorrentino, who had learned of the scroll from Dr. Alexios Mikos, had, by letter, invited Barnes to discuss a possible purchase. Barnes, fearing the Vatican might launch its own search for the scroll, hadn’t told Sorrentino that he didn’t have it yet. Barnes’s main interest with Sorrentino was to see what kind of a dollar amount the cardinal was willing to put on the artifact, not with the idea of selling it, but as a way of tapping Sorrentino’s expertise to determine the scroll’s legitimacy.
I’d been staring out the window, lost in that fuzzy line of a horizon dividing the North Atlantic from the pearl-pink and gray splatters of a late-evening sky, thinking about Marion.
“What makes you think I’ve got a long face?” I said, turning to Barnes. I figured he had his nose buried too deep in that paper to notice me.
“Let me guess. It’s a woman, isn’t it?” He grinned softly. The shotgun-toting, tobacco-spitting troll had disappeared. Now clean-shaven, his white hair pulled neatly into a ponytail, he’d taken on an almost dignified appearance. “Usually when a man stares out a window with a face that looks like yours, he’s thinking about a woman—wife, I’m figuring.”
“Girlfriend, actually. But I’m working on it.”
The night before I left for the trip, Marion and I were in bed basking in the afterglow of lovemaking. I was worried about the time away from her, worried what it might do to our relationship. I asked if she’d ever consider getting married.
“I thought you never wanted to get married again,” she said. “I quote, ‘A creatively gifted sadist couldn’t conjure up the kinds of tortures inflicted by a bad marriage,’ unquote. Your words exactly.”
“That’s right. I said a bad marriage. That’s the exact opposite of a good one.”
“What makes you think ours would be a good one?”
“What makes you think it wouldn’t?”
She propped her head in her palm, her eyes suddenly clouded with memories of a very oppressive ex. “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging a bare shoulder. “What’s wrong with the way we’re doing it now?”
“Nothing. But we’ve been doing it this way for over two years. I was just thinking maybe we ought to kick it up a notch or two.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time, a good indication that I’d have been better off keeping my mouth shut.
“Let’s talk about it when you get back, Stuart.”
That was how we left it. Nothing more said. Just a goodbye hug, a kiss, a good-luck-with-your-story kind of farewell. However, there was something different in the way she acted, a distance in her voice that had me worried.
“Don’t tell me. You and your girl fought because she didn’t want you going on this trip?”
“Not exactly. She seems to think the time apart will do us some good. Guess she thinks I’m getting too serious.”
“Are you?”
“She keeps her apartment in Dallas, but she loves the mountains. Her rent was starting to look like wasted money, so I figured she might as well move in with me. She travels a lot; does interior design for residential offices. Doesn’t even know what city she’s in half the time.”
“Business type, huh?” That information seemed to answer a question for him. “Smart, independent, and aggressive, qualities I truly admire in a woman—long as she doesn’t point them at me.” He laughed. “Doesn’t want to be tied down by children, pets, or a man.”
“We’ve never talked about children or pets. I think she knows I won’t tie her down.”
“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, they don’t always say what’s on their mind. Where a woman’s involved, it helps if you take a course in mind reading.”
“Thanks for the advice. I’ll check out the community college when I get back.”
“I figured a man your age would be well past the dating thing. You ever been married?”
“Once.”
“She took you for better or for worse, and you turned out to be a lot worse than she took you for?”
“Something like that.” I had it ready, but just then I wasn’t in the mood to tick off the long list of details as to why things didn’t work out with Alyssa Jackson.
“Been divorced long?”
I’d memorized the math. “Ten years.”
“So, you ought to be pretty rested up by now.”
“Believe I am.”
“This girl of yours. She pretty?”
“Yup.”
“And your ex? She pretty too?”
“Kind of lost my objectivity on that one.”
“But she started out that way.”
“She got my attention.”
“You’re a sucker for the pretty ones.”
“If a woman turns my head, I prefer that it’s not because I’m throwing up, if that’s what you mean.”
He laughed. “Can’t say I blame you. I always figured that if a man is going to get married, he might as well get himself the prettiest woman he can find. More than likely, she’ll be the last thing he sees when he goes to sleep and the first thing he sees when he wakes up in the morning. By god, she might as well be worth looking at. But, I can also tell you this: it’s not all about physical beauty. There’s a hell of a lot more to a good woman than her looks.”
“I guess you’ve got a Mrs. Barnes tucked away in that big old house of yours.”
“Nope,” he said, resuming his scan of the Times. “Came close once, but it wasn’t meant to happen.” He popped a wrinkle out of the newspaper and added, “Don’t worry about it, Adams. Things will work out for the best. They always do.”
That was all he said.
Outside, the darkness had erased the view. We’d be in Rome by daybreak. I settled back in my seat to try to get some sleep. I wanted to believe Barnes, believe that everything would work out. I just couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that something in Marion had changed when I brought up the idea of marriage.
Keeping pace with Barnes’s stiff march down the busy corridor of Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport was no easy task. He’d shot through the plane’s door like a steroid-pumped racehorse tearing out of the gate. I scrambled to catch up, yawning, rubbing my eyes, and wishing like hell I’d had another cup of coffee.
“Are we late for something?” I complained. In a near trot, I wrestled with the strap of my backpack that insisted on slipping off every twenty-five steps.
“Partner should be arriving from Athens about now,” Barnes said, glancing at his watch. “She’ll be coming in at terminal B. Gate twelve.”
She? Barnes was in such a big hurry he couldn’t even keep his genders straight. “You mean, he,” I said, correcting him. “Maybe if you’d slow down a little, you could remember that your partner is a man.”
“My partner was a man,” Barnes said through a matter-of-fact glance at me, “but now she’s a woman, and a damn pretty one at that.”
A man that was now a woman? It’d take more than another cup of coffee to sort that one out. Why had I drawn a mental picture of Mikos as a man? Somebody had things a little confused, and I was sure it wasn’t me.
“Barnes, you told me Alexios was your partner, and you either said, or you implied, that he was a he, not a she. That’s what I remember.”
“Well, Alexios was my partner, and he was most definitely a man. But all that changed after the plane crash.”
Plane crash? He said it as if I should know what he was talking about. There was nothing in our conversation about a plane crash. I would have remembered. As a kid, I’d seen a small plane go down in the field behind my house. It hit a fence, clipped off a wing, spun, and burst into flames, killing all four passengers. I was the first to the scene and saw the flaming parts of the plane fall away revealing the blackened outlines that were, moments before, living human beings. It was like watching a horror movie, only there was the added smell of burning fuel and the heat of the flames on my face. It took years for the nightmares to go away. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, strapped with that helpless feeling that I should have been able to do something to save those people. No, if Barnes had mentioned a plane crash, I would have remembered.
“You never said anything about a plane crash.”
Barnes squinted with a thin hint of surprise—a little too thin in my book. “You sure? I could have sworn I told you that.”
“Positive,” I affirmed, and I suspected right then, though I had no idea why, that he’d intentionally withheld that information.
“I could have sworn I mentioned it. Alexios went down at sea a little over a year ago. You sure I didn’t tell you?”
“Why do I suddenly feel like there’s more to your story than you’re saying?”
“We’ve had our problems with the Sarnafi dig. Damned if Athens didn’t pull our permit. We can’t legally excavate the temple ruins, not even with a teaspoon.”
“You can’t what?” I was sure I’d heard him right, but it made no sense.
He just shrugged, a lame gesture that did nothing to clear up my confusion.
“Why are you paying me a hundred grand to write about a dig we can’t do?”
“Who said we can’t do it? I only said our permit for the temple site has been temporarily revoked.”
He was dispensing important information far too slow for my satisfaction. I stopped walking and waited. I wanted his full attention.
He hesitated and then turned to take the few steps back to me.
“Okay, Barnes, I could ask you a lot of questions, but I’d rather you save me the trouble and just tell me the whole story.”
“I was getting around to it, but since you’re in such a big hurry …” He motioned with a head gesture for us to continue. “Do you mind if we keep walking?”
I went along, but I slowed our pace, and I could tell it grated on him.
“Smuggling antiquities is a big business,” Barnes began to explain. “Over the years, artifacts have been mysteriously disappearing from sites all over the islands—the Cyclades in particular. A lot of people in the business think it’s an organized ring, and that the mastermind behind it is a gentleman who operates under the alias of Raphael.”
I sensed that he expected I’d heard the name, as if it’d been splashed all over recent headlines. The name meant nothing to me. “Who’s Raphael?”
“A lot of people are beginning to suspect Gustavo Giacopetti, the agent in charge of the Cyclades branch of Greece’s Department of Antiquities. On the black market, a single artifact can fetch a couple years’ worth of government pay, and it would appear that Giacopetti is living well beyond his means. Alexios believed he had proof that Giacopetti was skimming artifacts from a whole slew of sites. Probably had enough to get the bastard indicted. Alexios was on his way to Athens to hand over the evidence when his plane went down.”
“You’re saying Mikos was murdered?”
“Nobody’s proved it.”
“What about your site at Sarnafi? I suppose you’re going to tell me that Giacopetti is in charge of that one.”
“Unfortunately he is. He’s the one that got us closed down … pending further investigation. Somehow that son of a bitch convinced the higher-ups that Alexios was the one doing the skimming. When we get Sarnafi reopened, you can bet that Giacopetti will come nosing around.”
Great. A Greek official capable of murder breathing down our necks. Just what I needed. “Does this guy know about the scroll?”
“Scroll? What scroll would that be?” He glanced at me, eyes smiling at his charade of deception.
His levity annoyed me. “But … you told me there was a crew working on the cave.”
“That’s right. And if you’re lucky, we’ll get there before they find it. Give you a chance to gritty up your writing with a little archaeological experience.”
It was a growing effort to control the anger rising through my confusion. “What about permits, all the legal stuff?”
“Permits? You don’t need a permit for wine storage.”
“Wine storage?” That was it. I stopped abruptly. “Barnes, would you tell me what the hell you’re talking about? You’re raising a lot of questions, and if you don’t mind, I’d like some straight answers for a change.”
He stood there with a grin, and then he slipped an arm around my shoulders and urged me on. Speaking in soft, conciliatory tones, he said, “Relax, Adams. Our cave isn’t listed as part of the Sarnafi dig. Government doesn’t even know about it. Even if they see us excavating it, everybody knows that the best way to store wine in the Aegean is in caves. Temperature is constant. It’s a perfect environment. People have been doing it for thousands of years. Giacopetti comes nosing around, and he probably will, that’s the story he gets. Get that memorized and you’ll do just fine.”
I kept walking, but I brushed his hand off my shoulder. “I see. And if we just so happen to uncover an ancient scroll written by this Atlantean prophet of yours, we quietly set it aside and go on with the work of excavating your wine-storing facility?”
“That’s right. Only we set it aside in New York. A friend of mine, Dr. Stanley J. Davis, at the Institute for Minoan Research, will head up the translation process. They’ll scan the scroll into a high-resolution digital format for translation and further study. The institute will then hold the artifact until we can get a proper facility built to house it at the monastery on Pialigos.”
“Your tourist bait,” I said, relaxing a little. There was enough sincerity in his voice to make me believe he’d gotten the point that I was in no mood to be messed with.
“Tourist bait? I prefer to think of it as a future center designed to further the world’s understanding of this ancient culture. Whatever you want to call it, we can’t let a document of this magnitude end up in a private collection, or worse, get buried by some government bureaucracy … wind up rotting in a warehouse. There’ll be a few legal hurtles, but I’ve already got that one covered: Weathersby & Rollins, a firm specializing in international law. These guys are the best. When the time comes, they’ll figure out how to make it happen.”
I liked the sound of involved law firms, and translators connected to credible institutes. I might have breathed a sigh of relief on that note were it not for one small detail that he seemed to pass over a little too quickly.
“You said we’d set the scroll aside in New York?”
“That’s right.”
“With government permission, I presume?”
Barnes scratched the back of his neck as if he was annoyed. “Guess you’re not following what I’ve been saying.”
“Oh, I think I follow it all right. You’re saying we’ve got to get this thing off Greek soil … without the Greeks knowing about it.”
“Well, I suppose that’s one way to put it.”
“Here’s another way,” I said. “It’s called smuggling.”
“Smuggling? You know, I’ve never thought of it quite like that.”
The shifting of his eyes suggested that Barnes was looking for a plausible lie to support the one he’d just told. I glared at him scornfully, shaking my head with one of those save-your-breath kinds of looks. He responded with an audible sigh, undoubtedly the most honest noise he’d made in the last fifteen minutes.
“Adams, you got any idea what an artifact like this would bring on the black market?”
“Ten, maybe fifteen years?”
He ignored the sarcasm. “Millions. Ten, a hundred, maybe two hundred. Why do you think the Vatican wants first crack at it? If word of this thing hits the streets, people are gonna flock to the islands, and I can tell you they’re not gonna be a bunch of UFO buffs in search of the secret vortex that leads to Neverland.”
“No. They could be gentlemen associated with customs, the police, or, better yet, the Greek Mafia. Hell, Barnes, do you know how long I’ve wanted to hook up with an illegal smuggling ring? It’s been a lifelong ambition. I’ve always thought that if I were to ever wind up murdered or in prison, I’d want to make sure I got there smuggling antiquities out of Greece.”
Just then, I turned to see two security guards emerge from the flowing crowd. They were heading straight for me. My heart thumped, and every muscle in my body tensed, as if I’d sped over a rise in the road and suddenly found myself staring down the barrel of a motorcycle cop’s radar gun.
The guards drew near, smiled cordially, and nodded apologies that the busy airport had forced them to pass so close. They hurried on their way, leaving me in quiet relief, laughing inside myself over the fact that I didn’t even need to commit the crime to feel guilty. Some smuggler I’d make.
Barnes must have seen my jaw tighten, heard the breath stop halfway down my throat, and maybe noticed my relieved smile at the guard’s passing. His voice burst with amusement when he said, “The problem with you, Adams, is that you’re too paranoid. You need to lighten up. Then again, I suppose this whole thing would seem a little adventuresome to a guy whose biggest risk in life is the development of carpal tunnel. You need to get out more. You might discover that if a thing’s worth doing, there’s likely gonna be a little danger involved. You want a big story? Then you’ve got to be willing to step out into a bigger arena, take a risk or two.” He opened his arms like a waterlogged cormorant drying its wings, and he said something I didn’t expect. “You ready to give me a farewell hug, is that it? If you want to go, then go. Just write me a nice big refund check, and you can head on back to your mountains.”
I just stood there staring at him for a couple of seconds. His theatrics were juvenile as hell, but the set of his eyes was all business. The choice was mine. Going back and fixing things with Marion was a lot better than doing time in a Greek prison. But the idea of a refund … that was the part that troubled me. I’d already developed a certain feeling of warmth knowing that a hundred thousand dollars was sitting in my bank account.
I took a sobering breath. “I just want you to be up-front with me, that’s all. Is that asking too much?”
“So I left out a few minor details.” He dropped his arms. “You expect a man my age to remember everything?”
We’d started to resume our walk when Barnes suddenly winced and clutched at his stomach. Now what?
“Damn that airline food,” he grumbled. “Always gives me the runs.”
I watched him scan the airport corridor until his eyes locked on the men’s room.
“Adams, if you’re still with me on this deal, get on down to B-12 and pick up Niki. I’ll meet you at the baggage claim.” He started away.
“Niki?” I called out. The name was new to me.
“Alexios’s daughter.” Barnes shot the words over disinterested travelers that were beginning to fill the space between us. “Dr. Niki Mikos.”
“How am I supposed to know what she looks like?” I shouted back.
“For crying out loud, Adams,” Wes Barnes screeched, his pinched face suggesting that he was rapidly losing the battle for muscle control, “she looks like a damn archaeologist.”
Even through the bustling crowd I was sure I could hear the tinkle of his loosened belt buckle as he disappeared through the restroom entrance.
I stood in that busy corridor feeling more hoodwinked than reassured. Write Barnes his refund check, and get out while you can—that’s what my gut was telling me.
I let out a long, tired breath and stared above the passing heads at nothing in the polished granite blocks that formed the walls of the airport.
Then, for reasons that ran counter to all warnings being issued by my intuitive logic, I started shuffling down the corridor toward gate B-12.
At least there was something satisfying in walking at my own pace.
I stood at gate B-12 scanning the group of passengers emerging from the plane. What in the hell is a female archaeologist supposed to look like?
I sized up each of the many types of single women that filed off the plane. One, dressed in a business suit, punched at the keypad of a cell phone as she passed briskly by. Nope.
Another—fair-skinned with long, wavy brown hair, a tank top, cutoffs, and tennis shoes—scanned the waiting crowd, picking her steps as if it was slowly dawning on her that she was in the wrong airport. A possibility, though I figured her skin was too fair for a person who made her living in the sun. I checked her off when a man stepped from the waiting crowd and she fell into his arms.
A college-aged girl with low-slung shorts and a tattoo peeking provocatively from her upper buttocks didn’t fit my archaeologist profile, but she did have me wondering what the whole tattoo might have looked like.
Another woman, wearing a baseball hat and dark glasses and pulling a powder gray canvas carry-on, emerged from behind a cluster of gabbling schoolgirls. In her late thirties, she had full, Jagger-like lips, a slender body, and black hair tied in a ponytail and falling halfway down her back. One loose strand escaped the ponytail and dangled at the left side of her face. A sleeveless khaki shirt hung open over a yellow tube top. Khaki shorts fell to just above her knees. She wore a pair of scuffed, lace-up boots with thick socks turned down over the tops of the boots. All her exposed skin—face, neck, upper chest, shoulders, and legs—was deeply tanned. Her plain, tousled appearance suggested that she was a woman more interested in her outdoor career than in making a favorable impression on the public—or a man. An archaeologist if ever I’d seen one.
When she veered from the flow of passengers to an out-of-the-way corner to scan the crowd, I decided it was time to approach.
“Excuse me,” I said, stepping in front of the woman. “Would you happen to be Dr. Mikos?”
She peered up at me from behind her dark glasses, her full lips perfectly straight. “That depends on who is asking.”
Definitely Greek, I thought, noting the accent. Her tone was stiff, even challenging, maybe a little surprised at being confronted by a strange man.
“My name’s Stuart Adams. I’m here with Wesley Barnes.”
Mention of Barnes’s name drew only a slight rise from one thin eyebrow. She removed the sunglasses and let them dangle from the cord around her neck. Something in her large, dark brown eyes gave me the strangest feeling that we’d met, though I couldn’t imagine where.
“It would appear that you are here with no one,” she said, searching the empty space around me.
I glanced halfway over my shoulder and nodded in the general direction of the men’s room. I was still trying to remember where I’d seen her. “Barnes made a personal stop. He’s supposed to meet us at the baggage claim.”
“Oh yes, you are the novelist from Colorado.”
In the next instant, she was off in a stiff gait that would’ve smoked the wheels off a lesser carry-on. I clutched the shoulder strap of my backpack and took off like a late commuter running to catch a rolling bus.
“I understand you’re working at the site in Knossos,” I said, catching up to her and matching her stride as if I was the one who’d set the pace.
“You are familiar with Knossos?”
“Minoan ruins on Crete. Discovered by Sir Arthur Evans. 1900, if my memory serves me right.” That was the extent of information I’d retained from a couple of excursions on the Internet.
“I see you are a scholar of sorts,” she said, the thin sliver of a smile threatening to soften her face. She put it in check by increasing her pace. “Actually, the site was discovered over twenty years earlier … 1878, to be precise. A merchant from Iraklion, Minos Kalokairinos, first uncovered two of the palace storerooms.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about Minos Kalokairinos.”
She ignored my stab at levity.
“Before that, the locals often found ancient artifacts while working in their fields. Evans, of course, is credited for the discovery of Minoan civilization which until that time was, I am sure you already know, mentioned only vaguely through Greek mythology.”
“Exactly,” I said through a lying grin. “I didn’t want to bore you with the finer details.”
“Bore me with details, Mr. Adams? Surely you know that an archaeologist is keen on details, especially the finer ones. I would assume the same would be true of the novelist.”
“Oh, we’re keen on details, all right,” I said with a laugh. “And the great thing about fiction is that if you don’t know it, you just make it up.”
“Make it up? In my work, we sometimes get it wrong, but we do not make it up. Fabrication is a luxury that no archaeologist can afford.”
Where was this woman when they passed out a sense of humor? Something was bothering her, and I had a pretty good idea what it was. With nothing to lose in the popularity department, I decided to test my theory.
“You don’t like the fact that I’m a novelist, do you.”
“Why would I care what you do for a living?”
“Because I’m not a scientist. You don’t want a novelist telling the world about your scroll. You’re afraid all the facts aren’t going to be lined up in a nice straight little row.”
She stopped and turned sharply toward me, her eyes flaring large, burning with a flame that incinerated all traces of familiarity. “In the first place, Mr. Adams, it is not my scroll. Like you, I was commissioned to do a job. Writing fiction is your specialty. Science is mine. I only hope that you do not undermine the plight of the Pialigarian people or smear the face of science beneath the cheap façade of sensationalized Hollywood entertainment. Atlantis has suffered enough at the hands of armchair amateurs bent on doing nothing more than selling books. If we are lucky enough to find it, the scroll could provide us with concrete evidence that Atlantis was a real place, populated by real people, with living descendants who have real feelings about their ancestry. It was my father’s vision to lift this legendary continent from the fantasy realm of science fiction to that of a legitimate archaeological study. But more importantly, we have found a dying people in desperate need of our help. I only hope that when you write your story, you refrain from making up your facts, from displaying these people like … like some kind of a human curiosity in a circus sideshow. The simple truth, I am most certain, will serve us all quite adequately.”
Bingo. Mother Teresa meets Atlantis.
She ended her little sermonette with a sniff and then turned to resume her march, this time at warp speed. I didn’t even try to keep up. Her carry-on roared dangerously over the concrete floor, popped over cracks, and buzzed through patches of inlaid brick. I had the feeling that if we didn’t get to the baggage claim soon, someone was going to get hurt, and it wasn’t going to be me.
We waited in uncomfortable silence for Barnes to arrive. It was with some relief that I finally spotted him coming with the flow of people down the corridor.
The doctor saw him and waved excitedly. “Rufus!”
Rufus? The R of R. Wesley Barnes. He didn’t strike me as a Rufus.
Barnes, arms open, full of smiles, his yellow teeth reflecting a thin spear of Roman sunlight, embraced a very different woman than the one that had just lectured me. In his arms, she was warm and cuddly as a kitten, borderline cute.
“I see you found my girl from Santorini,” Barnes said, as I approached. He patted his purring kitten on the shoulder.
“Yeah,” I said. “Guess I know more about spotting archaeologists than I thought.”
“Oh, do you now?” Dr. Mikos snapped, the lips going straight again. “What, Mr. Adams, is an archaeologist supposed to look like? We come in all shapes and sizes. Like novelists, no?”
“No. I mean yes.” What I meant was, I didn’t know what the hell I meant. I’d never seen a purring kitten turn so quickly into a hissing tigress. “All shapes. Sizes. All those things.”
She gave me a final once-over and then excused herself for the ladies’ room. At that same moment I noticed a humongous powder gray suitcase emerge from the cargo hold and tumble like a bloated cow carcass onto the carousel. Even a lowly novelist could deduce by its color, composition, and style that it matched Dr. Mikos’s carry-on. Barnes saw it but made no move to get it. I stepped over and winched the behemoth to the floor. She must have packed her whole library. Fortunately, the carcass, too, was equipped with tractor tires.
Barnes, oblivious to my feat, fished out a fresh wad of tobacco and watched the doctor make her way toward the ladies’ room. “Ever seen a lovelier woman, Adams?” he asked, stuffing the stringy mass inside his cheek.
I stepped next to him just as the khaki-adorned, boot-clad doctor disappeared through the bathroom door. Seeing no noble reason to dispute the old man’s tastes, I decided to play along. “It’s a ploy, isn’t it, Barnes, using a woman and a hunk of cash to suck me into your little smuggling ring?”
“Worked too, didn’t it?” The way he was grinning, a guy might think Barnes was talking about Miss Greece. “Problem is, this woman seems to be having a slight effect on your IQ.”
I shook my head and countered with a grin of my own. “Whatever you say—Rufus.”
Barnes’s eyes narrowed into a pair of contemptuous slits. “You know, Adams, I’d rather you didn’t call me that. Far as I’m concerned, it could be the name of someone’s pet chicken.”
“Mother give it to you?”
“Having a bad day, I figure.”
“I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that you just showed up.”
He pondered the question long enough for his tongue to work the tobacco into its proper place. “The initial,” he said finally, “has a more distinguished ring. Niki’s the only one that can roll the R off her tongue like it’s supposed to go. So, if you don’t mind …”
“I’ll tell you what, Barnes. You let me know if you’ve got any more little surprises up your sleeve, and I promise I won’t call you … well … you know what.”
The lid of one eye fluttered slightly as he considered the proposition. He carelessly spat an uncooperative flake of tobacco over the concrete floor. “Deal.”
Dr. Mikos rejoined us, and we were off. Tugging at the slipping shoulder strap of my backpack, cow carcass in tow, I felt as gangly as an orangutan in a bipedal amble.
Falling like a third wheel a few steps behind the arm-locked couple, I was already wishing I were back home working on my future with Marion.
Still, this Greek archaeologist had piqued my curiosity. What, in those big brown eyes of hers, could possibly be so familiar?
J Douglas Bottorff 