Read Hellenic Immortal for Free Online Page A
Authors: Gene Doucette
exactly?”
He smiled. “It doesn’t mean anything, Jason. That’s the point. If we called her a homeland security information gatherer, that would just be awkward.”
“ ‘Spy’ is pretty succinct.”
“It is,” he agreed. “But it’s not accurate. Ms. Papos wasn’t a field operative. She was just, well, a systems analyst, like I said. Besides, we’re the FBI. You’re thinking of a different agency.”
“Right.” I got up on my feet and disposed of my own cigarette. “Well this has been fun. Now I think I need a shower, maybe a shave. It was nice talking to you.”
“You never met her before?” he asked.
“Not before that night, no. Now unless you want to tell me why the FBI is so interested in the movements of a retired analyst that breaking and entering is considered a viable option, I think we’re done. Don’t you?”
“What if I told you the last file she accessed from her workstation was yours, Adam?”
That caught me a bit short. “My name is Jason,” I insisted.
“Sure, right now. You’ve had a whole bevy of names, haven’t you?”
Hard to argue with anybody willing to use bevy in a sentence. “What do you mean, ‘my file’?” We were standing nose-to-nose now, or more precisely, my nose to his forehead. He wasn’t all that tall.
“Just what I said. Now you can blow me off if you want, but I’ll have to keep following you until I’ve found out everything I need to know.”
I looked down at him. “What makes you think I can’t shake you?”
He just grinned. “C’mon. We can compare dick size all night.”
“Yeah, all right,” I acquiesced. I was beginning to like Mike, which is a difficult thing to admit, given he was armed and had camped out in my bedroom for goodness knows how many hours. Not to mention the fact he’d been following me before that. But he didn’t remind me of the Romans like most lawmen nowadays do, and I appreciated that.
I didn’t much care for the Romans, if you hadn’t guessed. And I was one.
I paced around to stretch my legs and tried to remind my muscles how to work properly just in case my assessment of Mike was suddenly proven very wrong. “So tell me about my supposed file.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How about what am I doing with a file in the first place?”
“Are you kidding? Your kind of money doesn’t just spring up out of nowhere. Attention-wise, you’re a very popular man.”
“That makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“It’s not supposed to. Let me explain how the world works nowadays. Thanks to 9/11, there are whole sections of the U.S. government that do nothing but follow money. And there is a lot to follow. If you’ve got more than $500,000 in your account somebody somewhere has a file on you.”
That made some sense. And I should have thought of it myself. “Okay, so, it’s not a big deal, this file?”
“Oh no, it’s a very big deal,” he disagreed. “Especially now.”
Mike was giving me a headache on top of my hangover. “Why now?” I asked, rubbing my temple.
“Ariadne,” he stated, as if this had some special meaning. “Once she walked off her job, I was called in to figure out exactly what she had been up to before she decided to disappear. Based on what we were able to reconstruct from her home hard drive, she’s associated with an organization we believe has terrorist intentions.”
“Guess you don’t vet your employees all that well.” I walked over to the sink, which was actually outside of the bathroom, and splashed some water onto my face. The guy in the mirror looked like hell.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “someone dropped the ball on that one. Anyway, near as we can tell, she’s trying to contact you.”
“She already did,” I pointed out, using the hand towel to dry my face.
“But she didn’t say anything. Right?”
“No, but she did send some wine up.”
“Some of the guys think that was a signal. What do you think?”
I dropped the towel on
He smiled. “It doesn’t mean anything, Jason. That’s the point. If we called her a homeland security information gatherer, that would just be awkward.”
“ ‘Spy’ is pretty succinct.”
“It is,” he agreed. “But it’s not accurate. Ms. Papos wasn’t a field operative. She was just, well, a systems analyst, like I said. Besides, we’re the FBI. You’re thinking of a different agency.”
“Right.” I got up on my feet and disposed of my own cigarette. “Well this has been fun. Now I think I need a shower, maybe a shave. It was nice talking to you.”
“You never met her before?” he asked.
“Not before that night, no. Now unless you want to tell me why the FBI is so interested in the movements of a retired analyst that breaking and entering is considered a viable option, I think we’re done. Don’t you?”
“What if I told you the last file she accessed from her workstation was yours, Adam?”
That caught me a bit short. “My name is Jason,” I insisted.
“Sure, right now. You’ve had a whole bevy of names, haven’t you?”
Hard to argue with anybody willing to use bevy in a sentence. “What do you mean, ‘my file’?” We were standing nose-to-nose now, or more precisely, my nose to his forehead. He wasn’t all that tall.
“Just what I said. Now you can blow me off if you want, but I’ll have to keep following you until I’ve found out everything I need to know.”
I looked down at him. “What makes you think I can’t shake you?”
He just grinned. “C’mon. We can compare dick size all night.”
“Yeah, all right,” I acquiesced. I was beginning to like Mike, which is a difficult thing to admit, given he was armed and had camped out in my bedroom for goodness knows how many hours. Not to mention the fact he’d been following me before that. But he didn’t remind me of the Romans like most lawmen nowadays do, and I appreciated that.
I didn’t much care for the Romans, if you hadn’t guessed. And I was one.
I paced around to stretch my legs and tried to remind my muscles how to work properly just in case my assessment of Mike was suddenly proven very wrong. “So tell me about my supposed file.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How about what am I doing with a file in the first place?”
“Are you kidding? Your kind of money doesn’t just spring up out of nowhere. Attention-wise, you’re a very popular man.”
“That makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“It’s not supposed to. Let me explain how the world works nowadays. Thanks to 9/11, there are whole sections of the U.S. government that do nothing but follow money. And there is a lot to follow. If you’ve got more than $500,000 in your account somebody somewhere has a file on you.”
That made some sense. And I should have thought of it myself. “Okay, so, it’s not a big deal, this file?”
“Oh no, it’s a very big deal,” he disagreed. “Especially now.”
Mike was giving me a headache on top of my hangover. “Why now?” I asked, rubbing my temple.
“Ariadne,” he stated, as if this had some special meaning. “Once she walked off her job, I was called in to figure out exactly what she had been up to before she decided to disappear. Based on what we were able to reconstruct from her home hard drive, she’s associated with an organization we believe has terrorist intentions.”
“Guess you don’t vet your employees all that well.” I walked over to the sink, which was actually outside of the bathroom, and splashed some water onto my face. The guy in the mirror looked like hell.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “someone dropped the ball on that one. Anyway, near as we can tell, she’s trying to contact you.”
“She already did,” I pointed out, using the hand towel to dry my face.
“But she didn’t say anything. Right?”
“No, but she did send some wine up.”
“Some of the guys think that was a signal. What do you think?”
I dropped the towel on