Nightjack by Tom Piccirilli

Author:Tom Piccirilli [Piccirilli, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw
Publisher: Tom Piccirilli
Published: 2011-04-26T18:21:49+00:00

fifteen

Are you ready?

Pace woke at dawn and walked downstairs, expecting Vindi or other men to be standing in the living room. There weren’t any.

Instead, a black leather briefcase sat in the foyer, just inside the front door. It contained their passports, other identification and paperwork, tourist maps of Athens, five thousand Euros, and fifty thousand drachmas. Altogether that was more than fifteen grand Vindi had handed over.

Kaltzas wanted them to be tourists for the afternoon, have a good time, before heading on to Pythos. There were instructions on where to find his private jet, and what to do when arriving in Athens. The best places to eat, the most hospitable tavernas. Where to catch the ferry to Voros and its scheduled departures. Where to rent a boat.

While he was studying the contents of the case he must’ve had another attack of aphasia because when he turned the others were at the kitchen table having breakfast. He didn’t know where Pia had learned to cook so well, but she’d made a full meal of pancakes, eggs, hash browns, orange juice, everything you think about when you imagine having breakfast with your family when you’re a kid. Your brother stealing your bacon, your Dad reading the paper but keeping a watchful eye. Sissy with a doll in her lap, trying to feed it toast.

It had never happened this way, but it was truer than anything that had ever happened to you.

Now you imagined having breakfast with your wife, who swept past you moving from the stove to the sink, the floors shining, the kitchen windowsill filled with sunflowers. Your tow-headed son chattering on about his model cars, his video games, baseball cards. Lovely baby girl with a new doll in her lap, trying to feed it toast. Your dreams were pedestrian but honest. Your anguish common, your insanity only average. Jane asking you how much work you’d done on the book last night.

Six pages, it was going good. They’re already pretty clean, just need another pass to tighten up some dialogue, clear out a couple of fragments.

Pia spun from the oven and told Pace to sit. He ate quickly, listening to Faust and Hayden discussing torture. The Greeks liked to do dramatic things like putting a guy inside a large metal bull and then making a roaring fire under it and roasting him alive. Funky stuff like chaining somebody to a cliff side and letting the birds chew him to death. But besides that, it seemed like the Greeks preferred straightforward murder. Ramming a sword diagonally through a man’s collarbone to chop him almost entirely in half. Plunging a spear through somebody’s guts. No prisoners, no waiting around, clean your blade and get on with your day.

Sitting about a foot too far from the table, Dr. Brandt stared at them, a mixture of loss and shame inscribed across her radiant features. This lady, never one thing on her face, always fifty different emotions working her over.

“If you don’t practice your smile,” Pace said, “you’ll forget how it’s done.

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