Seeker's Curse. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ distinguished himself he was elevated to Alexander’s personal bodyguard, the Argyraspids, or Silver Shields. Eventually he rose to the rank of general of the Agema, the Royal Foot Guards.”

      He broke off. Annja was leaning forward, entranced.

      “So how does the story end?” she asked.

      Pan sighed and shook his head. “That I never saw,” he said.

      “I hope he lived happily ever after.”

      Pan chuckled softly. “I do, too.”

      “So what happened next?” she said. “To you, I mean. Modern Pan.”

      “I grew up strong and agile,” he said. “Constantly climbing rocks in pursuit of straying goats may have had something to do with that. Also I loved to wrestle with the other boys, even though I was smaller.”

      Annja blinked at him. While he wasn’t abnormally large, no one would ever describe him as small. “They must have raised them big in your village,” she said, laughing.

      He shrugged. “It’s a Balkan thing. Some of us grow to be quite large indeed. I am still considered somewhat undersized by my family and old neighbors.” He grinned. “But I did have a growth spurt in adolescence.”

      “So let me guess what came next,” she said. “You joined the army to get out from among the goats.”

      “It is a common story, is it not? I did well on their tests. On all their tests—as a boy I also loved to read. Especially tales of far places and adventure. History, of course, mythology, fiction. And mostly anything other than staring at goats and scrub oak all day. I used to get in trouble with my father and uncles for reading on the job. Although goat herding does not exactly demand constant attention.

      “So I joined our army when I was sixteen to escape the goats and my uncles with their too-quick fists. I lied about my age. What can I say? I enjoyed it. The training I found easy. The regimentation—well, it beat the goats. I was quickly promoted. And being a strong lad with much more lust for adventure than good sense, after the necessary five years I volunteered for the special forces, and was sent to Afghanistan. I was there for a couple of years until I was shot by a sniper on the Pakistani border. I came home to recover.”

      He shrugged. “I left the army. Tried going to school. But I quickly found that unsatisfying. I am afraid I’d become a kind of adrenaline junkie. Since I could not afford to become a mountain climber or amateur parachutist I joined the police force. And there is my story.”

      He sat back, lost in thought for a moment.

      “I sometimes wonder,” he said, “how well the wise men who rule, the heads of state, really know history. Even Alexander never really tamed that land. Megas Alexandros, history’s greatest conqueror.”

      Annja would’ve argued for Ghengis Khan, herself. But somehow getting embroiled in a debate with a Macedonian hillman, a warrior-scholar raised on daydreams of his ancestors’ martial glory, about whether his hero was top of the world-conquest food chain, did not seem like a good idea. Especially a man who could still cause her to vanish into some clammy, reeking cell and never come out.

      “Sometimes at night, listening to the winds howl between the terribly high cliffs of the Khyber, it seems you hear the voices of all the soldiers who fell there. Thousands upon thousands of them. But too many of our enlightened modern types cannot hear them.”

      He drew in a deep breath and drummed his fingertips decisively on the table. “But I talk out of turn. The soldier should keep from politics. We Greeks know that too well. It is not only the leftists who say it, although perhaps they say it too smugly. And besides, nothing is more boring than an old soldier’s tales.”

      Annja smiled. “Boring is one thing you aren’t, Pantheras Katramados,” she said.

      She sipped her coffee. He was an intriguing man, no question. He could be a fascinating one. But he was still a potential adversary, and in any event his orbit was one Annja the wandering star would not stay in for long. Fascination was a luxury she couldn’t afford at this stage in her life.

      She set her cup down decisively and checked her watch. “Not that it hasn’t been pleasant, but I’ve hung out here long enough. I need to get back to the museum—those moldering old books are calling to me.”

      He raised a brow. “Are you still staying in Exarcheia?” he asked.

      She guessed that was a rhetorical question. European Union law required hostelries to examine foreign guests’ passports, and to report all foreign guests to police agencies. And EKAM probably had ways to keep track of her anyway. She hadn’t found any GPS tracker-bugs stuck in her clothing or possessions. She was pretty well-seasoned when it came to that sort of thing. But she still suspected that the Hellenic police special forces could lay hands on her if and when they cared to.

      “I’m staying at a little pension. It’s convenient to the museum. Cheap, too. But only relative to everything else in Athens. I figured with the National Technical University right nearby there’d be kind of a student-ghetto discount going on.”

      They both stood. “Watch yourself,” he said.

      “Because of the drug dealers?” she asked. “Or the anarchists?”

      “Both pose real problems,” he said. “Most of the anarchists are harmless, really, despite what some of my fellow officers believe. But beware; some of them are violent thrill seekers. But they are not what really concerns me. As you know.”

      “Bajraktari,” Annja said.

      “Of course. He is relentless and resourceful—a lot of these former guerrilla fighters are. As well as utterly ruthless. And he has…certain resources.”

      “I’ll be careful, Pan,” she said. “And I really should be done here in a day or two. I’m just trying to get as much information as I can.”

      P OISED LIKE A GAZELLE on the edge of a clearing looking out for cheetahs, Annja waited for a break in the noisy metal jostle of midday traffic. She was returning across the Exarcheia plaza to the museum from the café where she’d had lunch. Pale green leaf buds sprouted from the branches of scrawny trees. Pigeons bobbed and bubbled on the pavement, oblivious to scurrying pedestrian feet. The Aegean sun flashing off glass and chrome was hot on her face and dazzling even through her sunglasses.

      Her break came when a white panel truck cut off a faded blue-and-white Citroën. She trotted briskly forward. As she neared the opposite side of the street she heard brakes squeal and horns blaring. It startled her enough that she turned her head to glance over her shoulder.

      A boxy little ancient Audi compact, its paint faded to leprous gray and rusting through in big patches like scabs, had cut in to the curb close behind her. The fat round shape of an RPG warhead pointed at her from the rear passenger window. White smoke rushed out around it. Garish yellow flame lit the car’s interior.

      The high-explosives-stuffed metal onion sprang toward Annja’s face.

       5

      Annja hurled herself to the right. Thirty feet to her left the rocket grenade cracked off against the corner of a building. The floor-level window, almost totally obscured with hand bills, exploded in big shards СКАЧАТЬ