Encounters Page 6

  He held up the same necklace I'd had appraised the day before, and I screamed a couple of things I hoped my Silent Partner didn't overhear, and rushed off to Von Horst's hotel. As I was heading to the stairway, the desk clerk looked up and called over to me.

  “Doctor Jones?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I'm afraid your friend has checked out. Something about an illness in the family. He left you this note.”

  I walked over to the desk, opened the envelope, and read as follows: My dear Doctor Jones:

  How very fortuitous it was to meet you once again. Very few people, having been burnt once, will willingly stick their hands in the fire a second time, and yet here you are, after three unfortunate experiences on the Dark Continent, once again attempting to swindle me.

  Still, some people are slower learners than others, and while I was not waiting specifically for you, you can imagine my surprise and delight when you showed up in the bar the other night.

  By now you have doubtless figured out that there never was an Enrico Mazarati. He is one of my, shall we say, business names, and I hereby will him to you, along with the map that took me the better part of an afternoon to draw. (It won't do you much good, alas; I have been assured that the Isadora is the only wreck within fifty miles of here.) Nor are there any sharks in the vicinity; I knew you couldn't switch maps while you were pumping air, so I decided that the sooner I came back to the surface, the sooner you would be free to steal my map and begin bringing this affair to a satisfactory conclusion.

  Still, you might look at the bright side: you are now the commander of your very own fishing fleet. I trust this pleases you, as I am afraid you are stuck with it, since you paid approximately one thousand percent of market value for the boats, and the commissions I handed out this morning have all been earmarked for new boats.

  Oh, and keep the pearls and the tiara: there's always a chance you may run into a young lady who is as greedy and gullible as you yourself are.

  Yr. Obdt. Svt.,

  Erich Von Horst

  Five seconds later I got a case of the bends.

  4. The Lost Continent

  After my unfortunate treasure hunting experience off the coast of Tinos, I decided to head back to Athens. I couldn't see no sense purchasing a first-class compartment that might better go to visiting royalty, assuming any such was in the area and hankering for a night on the town in Athens, so I moseyed up the track about a mile, figuring to hop a lift in a freight car and save the price of a ticket.

  Well, it turns out that I wasn't the only guy with that idea, because I found an old feller sitting next to a small fire, warming up a cup of coffee in an empty tin can.

  “Howdy,” I said. “You mind if I join you?”

  “Help yourself,” he said in perfect American. “You sound like a countryman.”

  “The Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones at your service,” I said, shaking his gnarly old hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “I'm Zachariah MacDonald, from West Allis, Wisconsin.”

  “We're practically neighbors,” I said. “I hail from Moline, Illinois—though I ain't been back there, or even to America, in many a year.”

  “Me neither,” said MacDonald. “What are you doing here in Tinos?”

  “Mostly looking for a way out,” I said.

  “I mean, what are you doing abroad in the first place?” he asked.

  “I heard the siren song of romance, mystery and adventure,” I said. “As well as the footsteps of various biased and misguided prosecuting attorneys coming up behind me.”

  “Where are you off to?” he asked.

  “Oh, it don't make much difference,” I said. “Athens seems as good a place as any.”

  “You don't sound wildly enthused,” said MacDonald.

  “One place is pretty much like another,” I said. “It all depends on the opportunities.”

  “Now there we disagree,” he said. “I find all places absolutely unique and different from each other. For example, have you ever been to Africa?”

  “Yeah, I spent a few years there.”

  “And you've no desire to go back?”

  “Desire ain't got nothing to do with it,” I said. “I been invited to keep off that particular land mass due to a series of innocent misunderstandings by the local authorities.”

  “How about Asia?”

  “Same problem,” I admitted.

  “Can you go back to America?”

  “Well, I think I'm still allowed in Montana and Arkansas,” I said.

  “It sounds like you've led a most interesting life,” he said, backing off just a bit.

  “I'm just a God-fearing man of the cloth who's trying to establish a tabernacle and bring the Word of the Lord to all these depraved Europeans.” I paused. “How about you, Brother Zachariah? What brings a Wisconsin man to this here forsaken little spot in the Greek countryside?”

  “The culmination of my life's work,” he said.

  “You been working all your life just to sit here and hop a freight for Athens?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Of course not.”

  “Well, then?”

  “I was a professor of geology at the University of Wisconsin for close to thirty years,” said MacDonald. “My special field of study was lost continents: Lemuria, Mu, Gondwanaland, and the like.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded. “Most of them are myths, of course—but about twenty years ago I became convinced, from certain hints both in Plato and elsewhere, that Atlantis actually existed, that it was not merely a myth.”

  “And you think it's somewhere near this here railroad track?” I asked.

  “No, of course not. Over the years I pieced together every bit of data I could get my hands on. Then, when I was sure I was right, I quit my job, cashed in my life savings, and went hunting for it.” Suddenly he smiled triumphantly. “And four months ago I found it!”

  “Funny how that little piece of news didn't make the papers,” I said.

  “I haven't made it public yet,” he said. “There are others who are also searching for it, who would gladly kill me if they knew I had found it first. I'm on my way to stake my claim right now.”

  “If you can't afford to buy a ticket on the train,” I said, “how do you figure you to pay for a whole lost continent?”

  “Oh, I've got the money,” he said. “It's safely tucked away in a bank in Athens. But my competitors—no Cretins, they—have finally figured out that I found what I was looking for, and there have been a series of attempts on my life. I'd have been a sitting duck at the Tinos train station.”

  “Well, if they know that Atlantis is near Tinos, ain't they likely to buy it out from under you anyway?” I asked.

  “It's nowhere near here. I've been in Tinos for a month to throw them off the scent.” He frowned. “The problem is, I did too good a job of it. I convinced them so thoroughly that it's near Tinos that they now feel free to kill me.” Suddenly he stared at me. “You seem like a man of action, Doctor Jones. How would you like to hire on as my bodyguard?”

  “Well, the Tabernacle of Saint Luke is a mite short of funds these days,” I allowed. “What's the job pay?”

  “Five thousand dollars, for a week's work.”

  “Brother Zachariah,” I said, “you got yourself a bodyguard.”

  “Excellent!” he said, shaking on it. “By the way, I don't believe I've ever heard of the Tabernacle of Saint Luke.”

  “Well, it ain't real well established around these here parts,” I admitted.

  “In fact,” he continued, “I'm not aware of any church or tabernacle named after Saint Luke.”

  “Well, it seemed more modest than calling it the Tabernacle of Saint Lucifer,” I said, “me not yet having been canonized or nothing.”

  “You're a very enterprising young man,” he said.

  “Well, the Lord teaches us to grab what's there.”

  “He does?”

  “I pra
ctice an exceptionally aggressive form of Christianity,” I explained.

  “Where did you learn it?” he asked.

  “Oh, it's just something me and the Lord worked out betwixt ourselves of a Sunday afternoon back in Moline,” I replied. “So far it's served me pretty well, except for them occasions when it hasn't.”

  Well, we chatted for a few more minutes, and then the train came along, and we hopped into a open cattle car and slid the door shut. The train stopped at Tinos for about five minutes, no one looked into our car, and then we took off again, hitting Athens about six hours later.

  We waited til the station was pretty much deserted, then caught a cab and went straight to the Grande Bretagne Hotel, where MacDonald had an account, and they gave us a pair of connecting rooms on the sixth floor, overlooking Constitution Square. He was afraid to go down to the restaurant, so we had room service deliver us a dinner of dolmades and mousaka and pastitso and saganaki and all kinds of pastries, and by the time we were done I was wondering why I hadn't discovered the bodyguard business a long time ago.

  Then a shot rang out and the window shattered and we both hit the floor, and I realized that there was more to bodyguarding than met the eye.

  “Get out your gun!” he whispered.

  “I don't know quite how to tell you this, Brother Zachariah,” I said, “but I ain't got no gun.”

  “What kind of bodyguard are you?” he snapped.

  “Right now I'm concentrating real hard on being a live one,” I said. “Beyond that, I ain't too particular at this here point in time.”

  “Did you at least see where the shot came from?” he asked.

  “Well, if it didn't come from outside, we're in a lot more trouble than I hope we are,” I answered.

  “What use are you?” he demanded.

  “Well, I never claimed to be a bodyguard by trade,” I said. “On the other hand, if they manage to kill you, I'll give you the best send-off any funeral's ever seen.”

  “Let's crawl to the door,” he said. “We'll be safer in the corridor.”

  I didn't necessarily agree with that, since I didn't know who might be waiting in the corridor to greet us, but then another shot came through the window and we high-tailed it to the door and raced out of the room. The corridor was empty, and we decided that trying to leave the hotel wouldn't be the brightest course of action, since someone on the outside already knew we were there, so instead we climbed down to the third floor and found a real small broom closet without no windows.

  “I'll wait here,” said MacDonald. “You go down to the desk and have them phone the police.”

  That didn't have no more appeal to me than returning to the room to finish up the pastries.

  “Maybe you'd better go, Brother Zachariah,” I said. “I don't speak Greek.”

  “The desk clerk speaks English.”

  “He'd probably be more inclined to believe a regular customer of good standing in the community,” I said.

  “Just do it!” he said, shoving me out into the corridor and locking the door behind me.

  Well, I couldn't see no point to standing out there all night, so I walked over to the elevator and pushed the button, and a minute later I was down on the main floor, walking over to the desk, when a couple of well-dressed gentleman walked over and grabbed me by each arm and escorted me out the door and to a black car that was waiting at the curb. Then they frisked me and had me climb into the back seat between them.

  “What is your name?” demanded the taller one, shoving a pistol into my short ribs.

  “The Honorable Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones at your service,” I said.

  “I hope so,” he said.

  “Just check my passport if you doubt me, Brother.”

  “I meant that I hope you will be at our service,” he said. “What is your exact relationship to Professor Zachariah MacDonald?”

  “I'm kind of a paid traveling companion,” I said.

  “Enough talk!” snapped the shorter man. “Has he found it?”

  “Has who found what?” I asked.

  “You know precisely what I'm talking about: has MacDonald found what he's been looking for?”

  “Last I saw of him, he was mostly looking for a place to hide,” I said.

  “Listen to me, Reverend Jones,” said the taller one. “I don't know what your involvement is, but whatever he's paying you, we'll triple it.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “He's paying me five thousand dollars to keep him alive for a week. You're saying that you'll pay me fifteen thousand to keep him alive?”

  “Don't play the fool with me, Reverend Jones!” said the taller man. “We'll pay you fifteen thousand to come over to our side.”

  “You want me to protect you from him?”

  I thunk the tall guy was going to hit me with his gun, but the short one reached over and stopped him.

  “What he means, Reverend Jones,” he said, pronouncing each word real slow and careful-like, “is that we will pay you to keep us informed of Professor MacDonald's plans—and if you can tell us where Atlantis is before he stakes his claim and makes the news public, we'll pay you a bonus of another fifteen thousand.”

  “Well, that seems right generous,” I said. “But you got to promise me that you won't kill him.”

  “Why not?” demanded the tall guy.

  “He's paying me to keep him alive,” I explained. “That would be a breach of faith.”

  “But telling us his plans isn't?” he asked, surprised.

  “He just hired me to guard his body, not his secrets,” I said. “Have we got a deal?”

  The two looked at each other, and then nodded.

  “What are your names, and how do I contact you?” I asked them.

  “You may call us Mr. Tall and Mr. Short, and we'll contact you,” said Mr. Short. “From this moment on, you'll never be out of our sight.”

  They opened the door and sent me back into the hotel. I didn't see much sense stopping at the broom closet to tell MacDonald that the coast was clear, since he was bound to ask why, and I figured he wouldn't see the situation quite the same way I did, so I went up to his room, finished off the baklava and a bottle of ouzo, and then sacked out in my own room right next door.

  When I woke up I checked the clock and saw it was about noontime, so I opened the connecting door to MacDonald's room to see if he was ready to go to the bank yet, but he wasn't nowhere to be seen. I went down to the lobby looking for him, but although Mr. Tall and Mr. Short were there waiting for us, the desk clerk told me that MacDonald hadn't come down yet.

  I figured the only place left that he could possibly be was the broom closet on the third floor, so I went up there to open it, and found it was still locked.

  “Come on, Brother Zachariah!” I shouted, pounding away on the door. “It's almost noon. You can't stay in there forever.”

  Well, I must have kept it up for a good ten minutes with no answer, and suddenly Mr. Tall and Mr. Short were standing beside me, and finally Mr. Tall pulled out a little piece of wire and picked the lock and opened the door, and there was poor Zachariah MacDonald, sprawled out on the floor.

  “Dead?” asked Mr. Short.

  Mr. Tall felt for a pulse. “Definitely. It must have been all these ammonia fumes in a closed room.”

  Which brought my one and only attempt at bodyguarding to a sorry end.

  “Well, Doctor Jones,” said Mr. Short, “you're working exclusively for us now. We won't pay you the fifteen thousand for telling us the dear departed's plans, of course, but we'll pay you the other fifteen if you can figure out where Atlantis is.”

  “In the meantime,” said Mr. Long, “let's carry poor Professor MacDonald up to his room so that he doesn't disturb the hotel guests, and we can go over his pockets and such without any untimely interruptions.”

  Well, the three of us didn't have much trouble carting Brother Zachariah, who wasn't all that big or tall, up to his room, where Mr. Tall and Mr. Short
stripped him down to the buff looking for clues.

  “Damn!” said Mr. Tall when they were done. “There's nothing but his bank book—and now that he's dead, that won't do us any good.”

  “Did he have any luggage, Reverend Jones?” asked Mr. Short.

  “Not a thing,” I said. “He was traveling just as light as I was.”

  “Think, Reverend Jones!” said Mr. Tall. “Did he say anything, anything at all, that might give you a hint as to where Atlantis is?”

  “Nothing. Just that it wasn't nowhere near Tinos, that he'd wasted a month there to throw you off the trail.”

  “Did he tell you where he'd been before going to Tinos?”

  “Not as I recall.”

  “Then that son of a dog died with the secret intact!” said Mr. Tall.

  “Hey, that's no way to speak of the dead,” I said. “Especially since he always spoke kindly of you.”

  “He did?” said Mr. Short sharply. “I thought he held all competitors in complete contempt. What did he say?”

  “He allowed as to how you were pretty bright fellers.”

  “That hardly sounds like MacDonald,” said Mr. Short.

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But he kept saying that you weren't no Cretins.”

  “That's it!” screamed Mr. Short.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “He didn't say Cretin!” said Mr. Short. “He said Cretan! It was his way of having a little joke!”

  “I don't follow you,” I said.

  “He found Atlantis off the coast of Crete!” exclaimed Mr. Short excitedly. “And when he said that we were not Cretans, he meant that we could never be expected to find it!”

  “It makes sense,” agreed Mr. Tall, studying the bank book. “His bank has a branch on Crete, and that's where he made his last two transactions.”

  “So all we have to do is buy the submerged land around Crete and we'll be rich beyond our wildest dreams!” said Mr. Short.

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” I said, “but getting rich beyond my wildest dreams is one of my favorite conversational subjects. What has Atlantis got that makes it so valuable?”

  “Artifacts from a civilization that existed a millennium before Christ!” said Mr. Tall. “Artifacts that no one has ever seen before. By the time we finish selling them to museums and collectors, we can practically buy our own country!”