占い
knows where it is.
His pulse raced. "What do you want?"
"We need you to answer certain questions. But not here. At a place where it's quieter."
The two men were loitering closer now, only a few feet away, one on each side of the table. The first was over¬weight, with bushy eyebrows and pockmarked cheeks. He could be Ukrainian. The other was medium height, wear¬ing a cheap polyester suit, balding and sallow. Neither looked as though he had smiled in the last decade.
"Where do you want to go?"
"We will take a stroll in the park." She gestured toward Amalias Avenue. On the other side was Ethnikos Kipos, the National Garden. Then she smiled again. "We thought you would like to take the morning air."
She rose, purse in hand, and tossed a wad of drachmas onto the wooden table. The coffee drinkers around them did not look up from their newspapers and tourist maps.
As they made their way past the Olympic Airways office on the corner and across the avenue, she said nothing. Her silence is deliberate, he told himself, part of a trick to unnerve me.
It was working. He was learning something about him¬self he'd never before known. He was learning he was a coward.
That was the reality. He wouldn't hold out. He'd tell them everything he knew, because they would hurt him badly. He couldn't bear pain; they probably knew that. And then they'd kill him anyway because he couldn't tell them the one thing they wanted to know. He didn't know it himself.
Viktor Fedorovich Volodin realized he was about to die. All the years of pointless intrigue in the party, the fudging of production figures, the father-in-law who'd made his existence wretched, it all added up to a lifetime of nothing but misery, with the payoff a bullet. Rasstrel, a KGB execu¬tion.
They were entering the national garden, a mirage of green in the desert of asphalt and cement that is central Athens. Its informal walkways were shady lanes of quiet and cool that seemed miles away from the smoke and glare and heat of the avenues.
Finally she spoke. "We're running out of time, and pa¬tience, Viktor Fedorovich. Let's start with the money. Where have you deposited it? Next, we want to know the names of everyone—"
"It—it's—I don't know where it is now."
"You're lying." She did not break her pace.
His pulse raced. "What do you want?"
"We need you to answer certain questions. But not here. At a place where it's quieter."
The two men were loitering closer now, only a few feet away, one on each side of the table. The first was over¬weight, with bushy eyebrows and pockmarked cheeks. He could be Ukrainian. The other was medium height, wear¬ing a cheap polyester suit, balding and sallow. Neither looked as though he had smiled in the last decade.
"Where do you want to go?"
"We will take a stroll in the park." She gestured toward Amalias Avenue. On the other side was Ethnikos Kipos, the National Garden. Then she smiled again. "We thought you would like to take the morning air."
She rose, purse in hand, and tossed a wad of drachmas onto the wooden table. The coffee drinkers around them did not look up from their newspapers and tourist maps.
As they made their way past the Olympic Airways office on the corner and across the avenue, she said nothing. Her silence is deliberate, he told himself, part of a trick to unnerve me.
It was working. He was learning something about him¬self he'd never before known. He was learning he was a coward.
That was the reality. He wouldn't hold out. He'd tell them everything he knew, because they would hurt him badly. He couldn't bear pain; they probably knew that. And then they'd kill him anyway because he couldn't tell them the one thing they wanted to know. He didn't know it himself.
Viktor Fedorovich Volodin realized he was about to die. All the years of pointless intrigue in the party, the fudging of production figures, the father-in-law who'd made his existence wretched, it all added up to a lifetime of nothing but misery, with the payoff a bullet. Rasstrel, a KGB execu¬tion.
They were entering the national garden, a mirage of green in the desert of asphalt and cement that is central Athens. Its informal walkways were shady lanes of quiet and cool that seemed miles away from the smoke and glare and heat of the avenues.
Finally she spoke. "We're running out of time, and pa¬tience, Viktor Fedorovich. Let's start with the money. Where have you deposited it? Next, we want to know the names of everyone—"
"It—it's—I don't know where it is now."
"You're lying." She did not break her pace.