“Or they aren’t loud enough,” one of the men said.
“You have to climb a bunch of stairs to get to your seats now,” the other man said. “Whose brilliant idea was that? I have a hip replacement.”
Kate squelched a grimace. Her life was over. As long as she was here, she might as well see if they had any vacancies.
“You could buy DVDs,” Sharon said. “Or rent downloads.”
“I’m on Social Security, honey,” Janice said. “It barely covers the price of cigarettes.”
“You’re still smoking?” Sharon said. “You’re using an oxygen tank.”
“Oh, relax,” Janice said. “You don’t have to make a federal case out of it.”
“This is the federal case,” Sharon said, holding up a DVD. “What you’re doing is criminal copyright infringement.”
Janice dismissed Sharon with a wave of her bony hand. “That movie sucked.”
The other woman spoke up. “I wish they’d make more musicals.”
Kate’s phone rang. The caller was Jessup.
“Nick Fox escaped on his way to court,” he said.
Thank God, Kate thought.
“Damn,” she said, trying to sound suitably angry, which she knew she should be, instead of joyously relieved. “Un-friggin’-believable. How could that have happened?”
“Smoke and mirrors,” Jessup said. “I’ll fill you in on the details later.”
“I’ll be back in the office in an hour.”
“There’s no rush,” Jessup said. “I just didn’t want you hearing about the escape on the news. Special Agent Ryerson is handling the case.”
“Ryerson? He couldn’t find the fortune in a fortune cookie,” Kate said. “Nobody knows Nick Fox better than I do.”
“The feeling upstairs is that we need a fresh perspective.”
“By the time someone else gets up to speed on Nick Fox, the Mona Lisa will be gone and Donald Trump will be broke, and everybody will be wondering how the heck he did it.”
“You think Fox is going after the Mona Lisa and Donald Trump?”
“I don’t know what he’s going after,” Kate said. “But I know I’m the only one who can catch him.”
“You had your shot,” Jessup said.
“And I got him,” Kate said. “Someone else lost him.”
“I’m sorry,” Jessup said. “But this is the way it’s got to be.”
Kate had several weeks of vacation time banked, so two days after her conversation with Jessup she cashed her days in and showed up at the door of her father’s casita. It was lunchtime, and she’d brought her MacBook, a six-pack of beer, and a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. She knew that her sister would be at a Mommy and Me gym class with her kids and that Roger would be at work.
Her father greeted her in a polo shirt and chinos and immediately relieved her of the bucket and the six-pack.
“You are the perfect daughter,” Jake said, stepping aside and beckoning her in. “But I will deny it if you ever tell Megan.”
His casita was like a large hotel room and just about as clean and impersonal. There was one bedroom, Jake’s bed always made up as tight as a sarcophagus, and a tiny bath and a kitchenette that opened onto a front room barely large enough for a small table, a love seat, and a flat-screen TV. Jake hadn’t kept any mementos from his career and world travels, except for his medals, which included a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star. He kept the medals tucked away in his nightstand drawer with his spare change and antacids. The only personal items on display were pictures of Kate, Megan, and their mother in small frames on the nightstand.
Kate put her laptop on the table. “I’m sure you tell Megan the same thing.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jake said, pulling plates from the cupboard and setting them on the table.
“She says you tell her that she’s the perfect daughter all the time.”
“That’s absolutely not true,” Jake said, opening the bucket and helping himself to the biggest, greasiest piece of chicken he could find.
“That’s a pro forma denial.” Kate got a piece of chicken for herself and cracked open a beer. “I bet she’s never brought you a bucket of chicken.”
“She’s worried about my heart,” Jake said.
“Your heart is fine. It’s cast-iron and wrapped in Kevlar. Just like mine.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good thing for you. Have you heard about the pilot Megan met? He’s traveling half the time, so if you’re worried about some guy clinging to you, then he’s perfect.”
“Please, not you too,” Kate said. “The last thing I need is my family meddling in my love life.”
“We just want you to be happy.”
“I am.”
“Really?” He studied his enormous chicken breast, as if trying to determine the best angle of attack. “It’s great that you’re here, but it’s the last thing I expected, not with Nick Fox on the loose again.”
Of course Jake knew all about that. Everybody did. Nick’s bold escape from the U.S. Courthouse was all over the news an hour after it happened and had immediately vaulted him to the top of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. That was two days ago. Now he was on Interpol’s global hot list as well.
“They want a fresh perspective on the case,” Kate told Jake as she analyzed her piece of chicken. Was it a thigh? A breast portion? Or a rat that had fallen into the deep fryer? She decided it didn’t matter and took a bite. “So I’m on vacation, which I’ve started by sharing a bucket of chicken and a few beers with my dad.”
“And you expect me to believe that you’re happy.”
“Of course I am,” she said. “I’m with you.”
“I’m touched. And if you were still sixteen, this is where you’d be asking me for the keys to my Jeep and twenty bucks.”
“Trust me, Dad. I couldn’t be happier than I am right now.”
If she’d been a more introspective person, the kind who enjoys exploring her understanding of herself, she’d have wanted to examine that assertion in more depth.
“I’m here because I don’t spend nearly enough time with you,” Kate said. “I’ve got a big trip planned and I want your advice. You’re the world traveler in our family.”
“I’m impressed that you’ve taken being sidelined so well. I don’t mean to rub salt in your wound or anything, but the curiosity is killing me. How did Fox escape from three marshals on his way to court?”
She gave her father the broad-stroke details of Nick’s escape from the men’s room while under guard. “He had one of his cronies build a fake stall with a swiveling center partition right in front of the closet door and then paper over it.”
“How’d they do it without anyone noticing?”
“By being completely out in the open about it. There was a crew in there for a week remodeling the restrooms. People in the courthouse had wanted those restrooms spruced up for years, so they were glad to see it finally getting done and didn’t question it.”
“So Fox slipped out dressed as a woman?”
“Nope, there was a hiding place built in the closet. Once the marshals raised the alarm and went looking for him, he walked out of the men’s room dressed as a judge. We’ve got that much on security camera footage. How he slipped out of the building after that is a mystery.”
Jake looked at Kate skeptically over his beer can as he took a sip. “One that you aren’t the least bit interested in solving.”
“It’s not my problem.”
“That’s the right attitude,” he said. “You caught him, they lost him, let them deal with it. So where are you going on your trip?”
“Greece.” She opened her laptop and hit a few keys, bringing up on the screen a detailed map of the country.
“I’ve been there many times. It’s a breathtaking place. What part are you visiting?”
“Mount Athos,” she said.
He finished his beer and set the can down. “It’s the oldest monastic settlement on
earth, going back to the seventh century A.D., built within a mountainous, inhospitable, rocky peninsula that is thirty miles long, ranging from four to eight miles wide, and pounded by the Aegean Sea on three sides. It’s technically part of Greece, but it’s actually an autonomous state where two thousand devout bearded monks and hermits live in centuries-old fortified monasteries, ancient stone huts, and caves. They abide by the laws of the Byzantine Empire, even though it fell five hundred sixty years ago, and they still mark their days by the Julian liturgical calendar. But you know all about that, right?”
“Of course,” she said. “It sounds charming.”
“Then you also know that females have been forbidden on Athos for nearly a thousand years. That prohibition is so strict that it extends to all female creatures, including cows, horses, and hens. They’d ban female reptiles and birds, too, if they could find a way to do it.”
“And that’s why I think Nick Fox is there,” Kate said. “Because it’s the one place on earth that I can’t go.”
“That’s a big reach, Kate.”
“There’s more. I know that a few months ago he applied for a visa from Athos under the alias ‘Father Dowling,’ and under the guise of doing research on Byzantine monastic architecture. The visa was granted. I’d assumed he did it as part of some larger scheme to steal some of their priceless and poorly protected artifacts, holy relics, ancient manuscripts, and icons. But now I realize he might have just been taking out an insurance policy against his eventual capture and escape.”
Her father opened another beer. “Or not. He could be anywhere or purposely leading you astray. It’s still a big jump to make that he’s there.”
“That’s why I scanned hours of surveillance footage of the customs area at the Athens airport, and I spotted Nick in disguise as a priest, the cocky bastard. I pulled up the customs records. ‘Father Dowling’ flew from Athens to Thessaloniki, then took a bus to Ouranoupoli, the ramshackle seaside village that happens to be the only spot on the western side of the peninsula where you can pick up the Athos ferry.”
“And you want to go after him.”
“Of course.”
“Well, if you disregard the law banning women—”
“And I do,” she said.
“The other big problem is that Athos is virtually inaccessible by land. There aren’t any roads leading to it. But even on foot it’s damn near impossible,” he said, pointing out on the map that the narrow peninsula was dominated by a mountain range, with peaks ranging from 1,600 feet high to 6,600 atop the snowcapped Mount Athos itself.
The rest of the peninsula’s geography was hardly more hospitable, with impassable gorges and deep ravines, dense forests, and a coastline of jagged cliffs, with imposing medieval monasteries rising from them as if they were natural extensions of the rock. Amid those formidable obstacles, however, were crop fields and olive groves from which the monks sustained themselves nutritionally and economically. They grew their own fruits and vegetables and produced olive oil and wine.
“The only way in is by boat, but even then, each visitor must be male and obtain a permit, written in Greek and following the Julian calendar, from the leaders of at least four of the monasteries,” Jake said. “That process is complex, tricky, and takes forever. Even if the permit is granted, getting to Athos by ferry from Ouranoupoli can be treacherous. The sea is historically, and notoriously, unpredictable and dangerous.”
“How do you know so much about Mount Athos?”
“I’m a student of military history. I try to learn from past mistakes,” Jake said. “In 492 B.C., Mardonius, the great Persian general, lost his entire fleet of three hundred ships and twenty thousand men off the storm-tossed coast of Athos. In 411 B.C., the Spartan admiral Epicleas lost fifty ships.”
“That’s because they couldn’t fly,” she said. “I’m going to parachute onto Athos at night.”
“You are,” he said.
“Athos doesn’t have radar or air defenses, and it certainly doesn’t have security patrols or other perimeter defenses on the ground. So how hard can it be? All I’ve got to do is fly into Athens, catch another flight to Thessaloniki, then charter a small plane from there to take me over Athos.”
“That’s all? Tell me, how many pilots do you know in Central Macedonia who’d be willing to defy centuries of Byzantine tradition and violate current Greek law to drop you over Athos?”
“None,” she said. “But I’m sure that you do.”
“You expect me to use my covert assets in Greece, calling in favors I earned through my blood and sweat during decades of military service, so you can chase a fugitive into a sovereign monastic state that you are forbidden by law, and some would say God, to enter.”
“Can you think of a better vacation than that?”
Jake had to use every ounce of his military training, everything he’d learned about withstanding brutal physical and mental torture at the hands of our most ruthless enemies, not to smile. He almost succeeded.
“Dad, I’m not going to hit the ground, let down my hair, and stroll around the monasteries in a bikini,” she said. “I’m going to pass myself off as a man, one of the pilgrims visiting Athos to study.”
“You think you can do that?”
“Barbra Streisand did it in Yentl. I’ll cut my hair, tape down my boobs, and belch a lot. Nobody will suspect a thing. It’s not like they have a lot of experience recognizing women.”
“Even if you’re right about Fox being in Athos, there are twenty monasteries and countless remote huts and caves,” he said. “How are you going to find him?”
“Because Nick Fox is not a hermit or a monk. There’s no television or radio on Athos, and only limited electricity and phone service. He will want to be in constant contact with the outside world. So he will have a satellite phone, and I have a device that can pick up its unique electronic signature. Or something like that. I don’t know exactly how it works, just that it will.”
“Okay, assuming you are able to apprehend him, how are you going to get him off Athos without revealing yourself and causing an international incident that could have devastating consequences for U.S. foreign policy?”
“I’ll alert Interpol by satellite phone that I’ve apprehended a fugitive hiding out in Ouranoupoli, and they’ll send agents there to meet us. In the meantime, we’ll leave Athos for Ouranoupoli on the same ferry that the other authorized visitors do, except that Nick will be doing so at gunpoint and wearing handcuffs under his robes.”
“He’ll be wearing robes?”
“Isn’t that what monks and hermits wear? It’s not like they have a Tommy Bahama outlet up there.”
“This is a terrible plan,” Jake said. “There are a hundred ways it could fail.”
Kate shrugged. “So I’ll have to do it the one way it can go right.”
“We will,” he said.
“No way,” Kate said. “You’re retired and in your sixties.”
“I’m not talking about jumping out of the plane and tracking Fox. I am too old for that. I’ll go to Greece with you and coordinate the op.”
“I can do this on my own,” she said.
“No, you can’t.”
“I’m an ex–Navy SEAL, a crack FBI special agent, and Jake O’Hare’s daughter. I can handle myself.”
“I’m sure you can. But that’s only one small part of the mission. Logistics and resources are the key. The people you’ll need to pull this off are mercenaries and criminals who will participate because they owe me something. They won’t help you without me. Besides, I know a few things about extraordinary rendition.”
“You mean kidnapping,” she said.
He ignored the comment. “You’ll parachute in on a moonlit night, and if you succeed in capturing Fox, instead of calling Interpol or taking the ferry, you’ll call me and make your way to a prearranged extraction point on Athos, where I will pick you up by chopper. We’ll go back to Thessaloniki, where we will stash Fox someplace remote and aband
oned. That’s when you will call Interpol with an anonymous tip that will lead them to Fox, who will be gift-wrapped for them.”
“But I won’t get any credit for the arrest that way.”
“Oh, forgive me. I was working under the assumption that you wanted to keep your job and stay out of prison yourself.”
He had a good point. Her bosses at the FBI were unlikely to be pleased that she’d captured Nick Fox after she’d been thrown off the case, or that she’d engaged in an unsanctioned apprehension on foreign soil where she had absolutely no jurisdiction, or that she’d failed to notify the FBI or local law enforcement of her intentions. And there was the little matter of kidnapping Nick, which was technically a criminal offense in Greece, whether he was a fugitive or not.
Kate sighed with resignation. “Okay, fine, I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied knowing that I was the one that got him.”
“Welcome to my life. Most of my career was made up of missions like that. To this day, very few people know what I’ve done.”
She opened a beer and took a sip. “You’d really go all the way to Greece, and run a covert operation again, just so I can have the satisfaction of capturing Nick Fox?”
“Sure,” he said. “We don’t get nearly enough quality father-daughter time.”
The Greek smuggler’s 1978 Cessna 182 Skylane had three seats salvaged from an old Volvo, an instrument panel held together with duct tape, and a single propeller on its rusty nose. The smuggler’s name was Spiro. No last name given. He was a crusty old man in a moth-eaten sweater, a worn-out leather bomber jacket, and stained cargo shorts. Jake and Kate kept him company at dinner, during which time Spiro had barely touched the platter of salted fish, olives, hard-boiled eggs, feta cheese, and pita that he’d laid out in his drafty hangar. The hangar doubled as Spiro’s home and barn and was located on a private airfield outside of Thessaloniki. Jake had enlisted Spiro to fly them to Mount Athos, and in preparation for the hundred-mile flight, Spiro had chosen to forsake the food and instead guzzle an entire bottle of ouzo.
“We have to scrub the mission,” Kate said to her father when Spiro stepped out to relieve himself on the side of the hangar. “Spiro’s too drunk to fly.”