A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery) (9 page)

C
hristoph Weisskopf, master forger, was not completely nuts. He only thought he was Georges Desmarées (or whomever) on weekdays, and then only until six p.m. At that time the alarm clock he’d set in another room went off, and after a momentary disruption of thought, he turned into Christoph Weisskopf again.

When it rang on this particular Monday in March, it took the usual few seconds to break through his daytime spell, but when it did he immediately stopped work, cleaned up, and put on everyday clothes. He had finished his Desmarées and was just starting on a Franz Marc hard-edged, semi-abstract painting of a tiger, so he was wearing an outfit based on a photograph of the artist: a green-collared, waist-length Bavarian jacket, a shirt and tie, and a gold-buttoned vest complete with watch fob and chain. The photo hadn’t shown Marc below the waist, so Weisskopf, in his desire to be true to the place and time (Bavaria, 1900 to 1910) had opted for knee breeches—it had been either that or lederhosen. Thus, switching to passable everyday clothes required no more than taking off the breeches and putting on a pair of chinos.

In this case, however, he didn’t bother. It would have been hard to find a more diverse piece of New York than this teeming, polyglot little corner of Brooklyn, and among the many religious sects was a population of ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews for whom the men’s traditional costumes included knee breeches worn under a long coat, and high white socks. Thus, the sight of Weisskopf’s pale, skinny calves peeping out from under his own dark overcoat would be nothing out of the ordinary.

He went to a window to check the night’s weather. The twin arcs of blue and white lights on the cables of the bridge twinkled and glittered prettily, which meant there was no mist in the air, no muck, no precipitation. No wind, either, from what he could tell, and judging from what people on the street were wearing, not too cold. All in all, a fine night for March, almost springlike. That was good. What he liked to do, and he did it every night after work if the weather was amenable, was to pick up some carry-out food and take it to Grand Ferry Park, a tiny patch of green, not quite two acres, that sat on the East River a seven-or-eight-block stroll from his loft. It was the most peaceful, un-citified place he knew in Williamsburg, despite its being right up against the hulk of a nineteenth-century Domino Sugar plant, which didn’t bother him very much, because you couldn’t really see it at night anyway.

There were some dilapidated benches in the little park, but these he disdained. Among the big boulders at the water’s edge was a grouping of them that was just right for a remarkably comfortable one-person seating arrangement: backrest, footrest, and even a flat little table-top rock on which you could safely put your drink without spilling it. And the seat angled you so that you looked diagonally across the river at the ever-changing colored lights of the Empire State Building and the midtown skyscrapers. He hated being in Manhattan, but he loved this shimmering, soundless view of it across the water’s black expanse. And at least for the evening it helped cement him a little more firmly in the twenty-first century.

What with the bigger, grander East River Park less than a mile to the north, few others made use of Grand Ferry after dark (few others knew it was there at all), which made it a perfect place to unwind with a cup of Jägermeister, the German liqueur to which he was greatly attached, followed by a tranquil, leisurely dinner and perhaps another cup or two of the spirits and a short after-dinner nap, from which he would awake refreshed and relaxed.

His food-provider choices lasted about a week at a time, and this week it was Khao Sarn on Bedford Avenue, a few blocks from the park, and there he stopped for an order of vegetable spring rolls and a peanut noodle plate with fried red snapper. The white plastic bag that held them went into his shoulder pack along with the usual square green Jägermeister bottle and a mug from Heidelberg University. When he got to Grand Ferry, he was happy to find that “his” rocks were unoccupied, but not so pleased to see that a nearby bench was occupied by a bum in a hooded parka, talking to himself, hunched over and staring at the water. Weisskopf could smell his boozy breath and the moldy odor of his parka from ten feet away as he passed behind the bench, and he very loudly cleared his throat. He carried fifteen dollars in his pocket, a dollar or two of which were to be used if he were approached by a panhandler (which had happened a few times) and the rest to be held in reserve to placate a mugger who might choose him for prey (which had never happened, but this was New York, and you never knew).

The throat clearing was to alert the drunk to his presence so that the money transfer, if there was going to be one, could be gotten over with early and he could eat in peace. The only response, however, was a slight start and a grunt, as if the man had been sleeping, not staring, after which he lay down on the bench with a groaning sigh and settled on his side, facing away from Weisskopf’s rocks. Fine. Even if he himself fell asleep after dinner, he’d be up and gone before this one awakened.

Weisskopf wriggled out of his backpack and arranged himself on the boulders. Out came the Jägermeister and the mug. He settled contentedly back with his feet up, embraced and supported by smooth hollows of rock, and with a sigh of his own, had his first long swallow of the bittersweet liqueur. This was the first night since Panos Papadakis’s raving call four days ago that Weisskopf was truly able to relax. If what he’d been told today was true, and he thought it was, the problem was solved, over. He dipped one of the spring rolls in the tiny tub of sweet, vinegary sauce that had come with them, bit off half of it, and slowly, happily chewed.

An hour later, with his dinner leavings in the plastic bag for proper disposal and his third cup of Jägermeister warming him along with the previous two, he set the cup on the flat rock, turned up his collar and buttoned the coat to the top, stretched out just a little more, folded his hands across his belly, closed his eyes, and let the cool, gentle breeze carry sleep to him.

Five minutes passed. Ten. By the time the slumping figure on the bench unhunched and arose to move noiselessly toward him, Weisskopf was gently snoring. At one point, as if sensing something through the wall of sleep, he stirred. His eyelids fluttered but didn’t part. He never saw the first flash, let alone the second and third, never heard the
pop pop pop
.

B
y hour nine of a sixteen-hour journey, unless one is lucky enough to be able to sleep on airplanes, one’s mind more or less comes loose from its moorings and begins to wander. Thus, at a little past the halfway point between Seattle and Athens, Alix suddenly realized that she had no idea what was going on in the forgettable movie—the second forgettable movie—she’d been watching on the back of the seat in front of her, and very little idea where her mind had been for the last hour. Maybe she’d dozed without knowing it, but she was wide-awake now. She looked at her watch. It was 1:30 a.m. Seattle time, not a great time to be wide-awake, a little queasy, and restless, but with no place to go. The bright midmorning European sunlight that was streaming in under the drawn shades only made things seem weirder, made her stomach more unsettled.

She turned off the video, tucked her earphones into the seat pocket, thought about pressing the button that would extend her seat into a reasonable approximation of a bed but, having tried it earlier, decided against it and turned on the call button. The French attendant was at her side in seconds.

“Madame?”

“Could I have some coffee, please? And perhaps a croissant?”

“At once, madame.”

Alix stretched her arms and then her legs and then wiggled the kinks out of her torso before settling comfortably back. In Air France’s business class she had room to do it without either poking her neighbors or getting poked, which was a blessing. Whatever else there was to be said about Panos Papadakis, no one could call him tight-fisted. He was treating her
like royalty, providing her with a limo at each end of the flight, and with business-class seats every inch of the way. She’d checked the cost on the web: a whopping six thousand dollars. VIP treatment wasn’t something she’d expected, and it was very much appreciated: Sixteen hours squeezed into a coach seat would have been a nightmare. Of course, a return to the lavish lifestyle she’d grown up with was hardly something she longed for, but, what the heck, there wasn’t anything wrong with an occasional dose as long as you didn’t let yourself get used to it.

When the pastry and the little pot of coffee came, she ate and drank slowly, mulling over some disturbing thoughts that had been on her mind since reading a book that Ted had sent her. The author was Robert Wittman, the man who’d founded the FBI’s art crime team. Most of the book was given over to describing his many adventures, but every now and then there was a bit of introspection about undercover work, and it was one of those bits that was troubling her. Undercover work involved two basic steps, Wittman said. First you befriend, then you betray. And you either have the natural instincts and skills to do both… or you don’t.

Did she or didn’t she? It hadn’t occurred to her to think about it until she’d been hit between the eyes with that brutal, honest word—
betray
. Could she “betray” someone whose hospitality and generosity she’d so readily accepted? He could have sent her coach tickets instead of business-class ones, and he could have skipped the limousines he’d arranged, but he’d done neither. He’d gone above and beyond what was required, and all the while she was planning to betray him in the end, if she could. But was what she was doing truly “betrayal”? She wasn’t lying to him, she wasn’t pretending to be somebody she wasn’t, she was just… just… She grimaced. Yeah, “betrayal” was a good word for it. Watching him when he didn’t know it, spying on him, informing on him when and if he had too much trust in her.

Still, she was helping the good guys, wasn’t she? And Papadakis was one of the bad guys, wasn’t he? Didn’t he deserve whatever he got? Of course he did… and still her doubts nagged at her. She wondered how a
truly decent guy like Ted handled this. She made up her mind to talk to him about it before she ever accepted another assignment. Until then, the best thing would be to put it out of her mind and do what she’d committed herself to doing. Besides, two o’clock in the morning was no time to ponder problems of morality.

She turned on the video again and scanned the movie offerings: ah, the latest installment of
Mission: Impossible
. Just what she needed. Something in which Tom Cruise and the good guys were a hundred percent good and the bad guys were thoroughly despicable nasties. Something completely unrelated to the real world.

If you’d asked her yesterday or last week or last year what the Greek isles smelled like, you would have gotten a shake of the head and a blank stare. What they
smelled
like? It had been thirteen years; why would she remember something like that? And at sixteen, why would she have noticed it in the first place?

Yet the instant she stepped out onto the portable stairs that had been rolled up to Olympic Air Flight 374, the last leg of the long trip, it came back in a rush. She would have known where she was if she’d had her eyes closed. Indeed, she did close them now, standing motionless at the top of the steps to breathe in the spicy, pungent air of the Aegean, a bouquet garni of juniper, oleander, sage, and sun-parched earth, and always underlying everything, never far away, the tang of the sea.

It was only when a woman behind her pointedly cleared her throat that she realized she was holding up the stream of exiting passengers. Quickly moving down the steps she went looking for the limo driver who would take her on the ten-minute drive to town.

At her request, he let her out at Mykonos’s busy town center, Mando Mavrogenous Square, and continued with her luggage another few blocks to the small-boat pier, where the tender that would take her to the
Artemis
was waiting. The
Artemis
itself was too big to moor there and was anchored
somewhere beyond the breakwater with the other larger vessels. She peered out at the ocean, but the only ships she could see were three cruise liners: two giant floating cities that carried two thousand passengers and more, and one relatively small one, the striking, upscale kind that held only a few hundred. No sign of the
Artemis
, which was probably hidden by one of the hulking leviathans.