Horns—from behind and in the cross-street he had just blocked—registered local reactions to his driving abilities. As Caine eased into the next gear—the car shuddering forward against the still-locked brakes—locals turned to look. They were joined by a few tourists, distinctive in their sundresses, sports jackets, sunglasses. One man, very tall, smiled a little.
Caine grimaced a smile back at him, advanced the gear switch, realized he still had his foot on the brake, and lifted it. The car seemed to hop forward, rushing him swiftly away from the scene of embarrassment.
In the rearview mirror, the tall tourist with the sunglasses was still looking after him. And was still smiling . . .
CIRCE
Still smiling, the tall man turned to resume his journey, found his way blocked by a squat and rather hirsute local who was shaking a half-hearted fist after the fleeing vehicle. “Tourist,” the local snorted, and then, noticing the attention of the tall—and obviously foreign—man, looked up with apologetic eyes.
The tall man kept looking, kept smiling, the wraparound sunglasses a bar of black opacity. The local smiled, shrugged an apology, and moved off, with one backward glance at the tall man—who had not moved, but who kept watching him. The squat local disappeared quickly into a cluster of oncoming pedestrians.
Turning on his heel, the tall man resumed his measured walk to the corner, turning into the narrow side street. Genuine cobblestones—older than the mostly repro buildings that flanked them—wobbled down toward the sea, some buildings tilting inward over them, some away. He shifted the bag of groceries he was carrying to his left arm, reached into his right pocket, produced a keyring festooned with real keys: toothed, mechanical, archaic keys.
Three young boys blocked his path, playing something akin to street hockey with makeshift boards and a small child’s ball, stamped with the outline of a Mickey Mouse head, the face erased by sun and time. He slowed as he approached; the boys looked up, stopped playing. He walked on, down the cobblestone street and up the small rise at its end, from which one could enjoy a commanding view of the ocean and the high angles of the Temple of Poseidon, poised on the tip of the south-pointing headland to the west.
The tall man carefully selected one of the keys as he approached the only two-story building at the end of the street: a dilapidated duplex with a distinct lack of local charm. He opened the door, looked back. Up the street, the boys turned away quickly as if to deny that they had been watching him the whole time, and hastily resumed their game. The man smiled, shut the door behind him and mounted the stairs with long, even steps.
Entering the sea-facing apartment, he put the keys back in his pocket as he crossed into the kitchenette: cockroaches scurried away to refuges under the cupboards, alarmed at the intrusion. He dumped the bag’s uppermost contents—the bread, the oranges, soda cans and other unnecessary items—into the rust-stained sink as he walked past, not breaking his stride.
He pushed open the balcony door, still cradling the bag carefully, and scanned north. Halfway to the hills which flattened down into the coast, a small rim of concrete rose above the low roofs: the Herakles stadium. He scanned south: the sea. One security delta was slowly angling back in. He noted the vehicle, checked his watch.
Then he scanned west. A clear view of the Sounion headland and the Temple of Poseidon, just over six kilometers away. He reached down into the grocery bag, pulled out a canned ham and a large ceramic bell jar, crookedly adorned with the label of a grinning, buxom farm girl carrying a cornucopia of agricultural riches. He opened the lid; from the dark, glass-lined interior, there rose a sharp tang of high-molarity acid. He replaced the cap, resealed the jar, put it down to his right, behind the balcony’s chest-high weather wall.
He pried back the seal on the canned ham, pulled the covering façade of meat aside, removed the plastic-sealed wide-lens binoculars, the jar of Vaseline, and a small, separately wrapped tripod. Throwing the wrappings aside, he snugged the binoculars into the tripod, which he mounted on the corner of the weather wall. He leaned over, swiveled the binoculars in the direction of the Temple of Poseidon, adjusted the lenses. Beyond the columns, occluded from the waist down, Corcoran’s silhouette swam into focus. He counted the number of columns to Nolan’s left, to his right, checked his watch, pulled out a paper pad, hastily scribbled additions to a growing set of notes.
He began to lean away from the binoculars, halted, then rotated them in the other direction, slowing and adjusting the focus as the roof-topping lip of the Herakles stadium slid sideways into view . . .
MENTOR
As she sprinted out of view to the right, Downing noted the way Opal pumped her arms from the shoulders, and he thought, she runs like a man.