Annika struggled against sleep. The music was soothing and the room warmer than she remembered. Suddenly it hit her; the bastard was piping in heat and music to keep her sleepy.
She smacked at her face with her good hand, but that only worked until the stinging passed; then she felt even sleepier. She thought of her family, but that flooded her with thoughts of how sad they'd be if they couldn't find her.
She needed something to occupy her mind, to keep her awake. She stood up and twisted her head for a few minutes, squatted through a set of deep knee bends, and did some warm-up stretches. Her hand wasn't hurting as much as before. Maybe it isn't broken after all, she thought, or maybe I'm just used to playing through pain. She didn't give a damn that she was naked before an audience. She had to prepare herself.
Her mind was on a brutal, bloody intramural soccer match during her freshman year at Yale. Two older assholes tried knocking her out after her first score. They were relentless but missed their chance; one lost two teeth and the other gained a broken leg while Annika scored two more goals and a 'don't-mess-with-me' reputation. But that was against adversaries she could see, could challenge with her strength. Now there was none to face but time, and the only victory was not to succumb to sleep.
And so she began: over and over she replayed every move, every feint, every pain, every score; she was determined to win again or die trying. He was running out of time.
About thirty feet down the tunnel from her cell was a heap of construction odds and ends. He rummaged through the mess until he found a length of beat-up garden hose and an almost finished roll of duct tape. He carried them back to a World War II-era gasoline generator used for powering light and ventilation. It vented to the outside through an old air shaft. He turned on a flashlight and turned off the generator.
He disconnected the vent pipe from the generator's exhaust and used the duct tape to secure the garden hose in its place. The exhaust connection was about twice the diameter of the hose but the duct tape gave it an airtight fit. Picking up the other end of the hose, he walked back to the cell wall, pulled on his night-vision goggles, and looked through one of the slots. Inside the cell, each slot was faced in the same smooth, painted stone that covered the rest of the inside walls. He'd built them to swing up and into the cell – like mail slots – so fingers pressing from inside would not find them.
She was jumping about naked in a determined little routine. He watched her silently. She kept repeating to herself, 'I can beat you, I can beat you.' He turned away, slid the garden hose into the end of a wider hose used for drawing fresh air into the cell, walked back to the generator and turned it on. The mayor was waiting for them when Tassos and Andreas returned to the police station. He was sitting in Andreas' office and jumped up the moment they walked in. 'Have you heard about the deputy minister's niece?' he blurted, nearly apoplectic.
Andreas shot a worried glance at Tassos and looked back at the mayor. 'What do you mean?'
'She's missing. The deputy minister called and told me he'd asked you to look for her.'
Andreas held up his hand and said, 'Calm down. I know, and we're looking for her.'
'You know what this means?' Mihali didn't sound any calmer.
Andreas sat down in his chair before answering. 'Yes, I'm afraid I do.'
Tassos pointed the mayor to the chair in front of the desk. 'Sit down, Mihali, we have a lot to talk about.'
Uncharacteristically docile, the mayor now did as he was told. Tassos closed the door and went to sit in the other chair.
Andreas ran his fingers through his hair, then rubbed his eyes. 'I figure we have twenty-four to thirty-six hours before she's dead. No more.'
The mayor looked like a deer in the headlights. 'Why? Why do you say that?'
Andreas spoke as if in a trance. 'All of his victims were killed during the tourist season. All the bodies were found in churches with saints having name days in the tourist season. The coroner set Vandrew's time of death to within twenty-four hours of Saint Calliope's name day – and we found her in Saint Calliope.'
'Perhaps you'll recall that the Scandinavian girl supposedly killed by the Irishman' – Tassos paused long enough for the mayor to wince – 'was murdered on the name day for Saint Marina.'
'Another tourist-season saint,' said the mayor.
'And another of Father Paul's churches,' said Andreas.
'Do you think he's the killer?' asked the mayor.
Andreas shrugged. 'All I'm sure of is she'll be dead in a matter of hours if we don't find her.' He leaned forward and picked up a pencil from his desk. 'It could be any of several suspects… or all of them… or none of them… and I don't have a fucking clue where any of them are.' He threw the pencil against a wall.
'But we know where it'll happen,' said Tassos calmly.
Andreas stared at him. 'Do you really think with all this heat – and he has to know we're looking for him – he'll still take her to Saint Kiriake? He'd have to be stupid, or suicidal.'
Tassos nodded no. 'I don't think he'll bring her to Father Paul's Saint Kiriake, but for twenty years something's been driving him to kill in a church on its name day. I think he's going to try again. It's part of his ritual.'
Andreas rubbed his eyes again, then ran his hands down his face until his thumbs were under his chin and his fingers clasped about his nose as if he were praying. He paused for a few seconds, looked at Tassos, and dropped his hands to his desk. 'I think you're right.'
'So, what do we do, guard all the churches named for Saint Kiriake?' asked the mayor.
Andreas said, 'We have to be careful not to scare him off. If we do, it'll be too easy for him just to kill her and drop her in the sea.'
'Or bury her by the side of the road,' said Tassos.
Andreas gave him a 'cool it with the Scandinavian already' look.
Tassos switched to his professional tone. 'Our best chance of catching him with her is at one of the churches.'
'We should check out the mines too,' said Andreas.
Tassos paused. 'I don't think we should be taking men away from the churches.'
Andreas looked at Tassos in surprise and gave him a 'what gives' hand gesture. 'What are you talking about? We've got at least two suspects running around inside the mines. It's our hottest lead; we have to follow it up. Besides, it won't be cops searching mines. We need men who know them.'
Tassos paused again, then nodded. 'I guess that makes sense.'
Andreas looked at the mayor. 'Do you know men we can get to search?'
'At night?' asked Mihali.
'It's always night inside a mine, and we've no time to lose,' said Andreas in a tone sharper than intended.
'Sure, I'll have them within an hour,' the mayor said.
Andreas looked at Tassos. 'Any idea how many men we'll need to put a twenty-four-hour watch on the churches – starting tomorrow at sunset?'
Tassos nodded no. 'Not until I find out how many churches are named for Saint Kiriake. I'll speak to the archbishop. Thank God she's not a popular saint or we'd have to mobilize the army.'
'We still might have to,' said Andreas.
The mayor blanched. 'You're kidding.'
Andreas let out a deep breath. 'Let's see how many churches we're talking about before we cross that bridge. All I can tell you for sure is Mykonos is about to go through twenty-four hours of partying without much police protection.'
'Syros too,' said Tassos, nodding. 'I'll have forty men here by tomorrow afternoon.'
'Thanks,' Andreas said.
'No need to thank me. We're all hanging together on this one.' Tassos turned and stared at the mayor. 'Right, Your Honor?'
The mayor stared blankly back at them. 'Yes.' He nodded. 'We'll all hang together on this one.' Ambassador Vanden Haag arrived home a little before eleven. Catia wasn't downstairs as usual. He found her upstairs sitting on the edge of their bed holding a picture of their daughter.
Her eyes were red. 'Spiros said he'd spoken to the mayor and the chief of police and they promised to find her, but they haven't.'
He sat next to her on the bed. 'Do they have any idea where she is?'
She shook her head. 'Spiros just keeps saying he's certain she's okay. That she's probably off with some boy.' She leaned against him. 'I have to go to Mykonos. I have to find her.'
He put his arm around her. 'I understand. When will you go?'
'Tomorrow morning, I've booked a flight. I should be in Mykonos by the afternoon.'
'I'll go with you.'
She shook her head. 'No, you have that conference tomorrow with the prime minister. Spiros will meet me. Besides, you don't speak Greek well enough to be of much help.' She forced a smile and snuggled closer.
'Okay, but I'll come the day after tomorrow – we'll surprise Annika and turn it into a family island holiday. We haven't done that in years.'
Catia didn't say a word. She knew it was his way of dealing with the fear gnawing away at their hopes. I feel it, I see it… I have the angle, just get the ball back to me. She feinted to the left and moved to the right, then paused for an instant and thrust her body and leg through a vicious kick, followed by a leap in the air that brought her just short of hitting her head on the ceiling. She waved her good hand wildly above her head and yelled, 'Score!' Annika jumped about for a moment, then bent over and rested her hands on her knees. She was breathing deeply. That was when she first noticed the odor. The acrid, unmistakable scent of exhaust fumes.
Fear instinctively shot through her body. 'He's gassing me!' She struggled to stay focused. 'This is just another test, another problem to solve,' she kept repeating aloud while hammering away at her thigh with the heel of her good hand. She forced herself to concentrate on what she remembered from chemistry about carbon monoxide poisoning: a sufficient exposure can reduce the amount of oxygen taken up by the brain to the point that the victim becomes unconscious, and can suffer brain damage or even death without ever noticing anything up to the point of collapse.
In other words, if she continued with what she was doing, she was dead. She needed to find fresh air, but how, in this sealed, pitch-black tomb? In the darkness she'd lost track of where she was standing and stretched out her arms to feel for a wall. When she found one she quickly dropped to her knees and began crawling counterclockwise along its base, probing and scratching frantically with her right hand at each bottom stone. She wasn't moving as quickly as she wanted and felt a slight headache. She knew her body was giving in to the fumes and her mind started drifting. She had no idea how long she'd been breathing them in, but she was sure her little exercise at staying awake had intensified its effects. Her only chance was to find what had to be at the base of one of those walls – and quickly.
She found nothing on the first wall and began to struggle as she moved along the second one. Again, nothing but rock. At the third wall she dropped to her elbows and scratched away at its base. She hadn't slept for what seemed days. She was exhausted and wanted to rest, wanted to sleep. The thought of giving in passed through her mind, but she pushed it away, by pressing her toes against the floor to drive her body forward. By the fourth wall the rest of her body was drifting to the floor. Now she scratched out with both hands, grateful for the pain in her injured hand helping to keep her conscious. She had little energy left when she felt what she'd been looking for. She pressed and clawed at the rock until it flipped up into the room. It was the slot in the base of the wall she'd remembered hearing when he'd shoved in the beribboned gift box of chocolates. It was her last and only hope for fresh air.
Annika forced her face into the opening. She sensed a breeze and gulped at what she prayed was fresh air. But was it imagined, was it enough… was it in time? Those were her last thoughts as she fell off into a deep, long-resisted sleep. He pressed a switch hidden under a camouflaged plate to the right of the cell door, and a single fluorescent ceiling light slowly flickered on inside the cell. The door was two and a half feet wide and five feet high, made of steel. Three massive industrial hinges anchored it to the stone wall on its left side, and three equally massive sliding bolts along its right side held it firmly to the floor, the adjacent mine wall and the ceiling. It was the sort of door one would expect to see securing the shop of a jeweler, but this one he'd hidden beneath the textures and colors of the tunnel walls.
He slid out the bolt from the wall and pulled at the top one. He had trouble with that one, always had. He hadn't aligned it quite right when he installed it. He thought he might need a hammer to move it but decided to slide the bottom one out first and try the top one again. That did the trick. When he pulled on the door it slid open effortlessly. Not only did it carry the weight of the stone fitted to its inside face, it blended seamlessly into the inside cell walls when closed.
He looked at the girl stretched out along the far end of the wall separating the cell from the tunnel. Her face was pressed into the corner. He remembered his sister as rosy red when he crept into her bedroom that late-winter night to remove the hose from the broken pane by her bed, having just disconnected the other end from their miserable father's truck. Her death was blamed on a faulty space heater. She had been the first of his tributes, though he hadn't thought of it that way at the time.
He still smelled the fumes in the cell, even though he'd disconnected the garden hose and restarted the ventilation system ten minutes earlier. He stood in the doorway and studied her body. Not a flinch. Still, he waited a few more minutes before moving toward her cautiously.
When he felt her pulse he realized there was no need for concern. It was weak. No telling how much longer she might last. That meant he had to work fast. Death must come in a place of his saints of the living, not among his gods of the dead. He rolled her over onto her back and dragged her by the ankles to directly under the light. He straddled her above her waist and stared at her face for a moment before dropping to his knees and easing his naked buttocks onto her breasts. She wasn't rosy like his sister.
Slowly, he leaned forward and stroked her cheek with his left hand, while with his right he pulled a straight razor from behind his ear, snapped it open, and tenderly began slicing away. He was quite skilled with the razor and worked more swiftly as he moved along her body. When he was through there wasn't a hair to be found anywhere.
He made her as bare and smooth as the forty-five-hundred-year-old Cycladic marble figurines of elongated, naked females – arms folded beneath their chests – the ancients of these islands sacrificed in place of humans. They'd taken great care to make the sculptures beautiful, a timeless beauty that inspired Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore, then ritually destroyed them in ceremonies honoring their gods. He had little patience for tourists who brought copies into their homes without having any idea of their purpose. Some Mykonians who kept them probably knew, because sacrifice was still among their traditions – the blood of a live rooster must run fresh at the site of a new home to protect all who enter from harm.
He, too, sought to gain the protection of his gods through sacrifice, but he knew that from him they required far more than mere stone or fowl.
His practice was to bind each tribute in symbolic honor to the ancient way before going on to the next step, but this one was so close to death she couldn't possibly put up resistance. Besides, with what he had in mind there was a chance they might be seen before reaching the church. If she seemed drunk or drugged, they weren't likely to attract any more attention than the hundreds of other revelers partying on a panegyri night, but if she were bound head to foot, they'd definitely be noticed. It was far too great a risk to take. He'd undertake that part of the rite later.
He left her lying on the floor while he went to do what else was required to complete the preparation. He didn't bother to lock the door. He didn't need to.