Page 10 of Aleko
“No idea. She spoke for some of the refugees I hired,” Pellos said, still lifting papers. “Their dialect and my Arabic weren’t quite on the same page. It wasn’t a long conversation. Yeah, I can find her. Not right this second. But give me a day.”
“Thanks,” said Alex, running his hand through his hair. “And then, of course, we will need to try again on the warlocks. I can’t believe everything got so weird last night.” He felt embarrassed to admit to Pellos how sideways he’d let everything go.
“I don’t like that they’re even in Greece,” said Pellos grumpily. “I thought the message Killian and I sent last time would have stuck a bit longer. What the fuck are they doing here?”
“When I find them,” growled Alex, “I will ask.”
Pellos grinned. “And I expect they will answer.”
The phone rang, and Pellos grabbed it before Alex could reply. With a shrug, Alex returned to the warehouse to find Sebastian. He would make the calls he’d promised to the pilots, just as he knew Pellos would work his angles to find the girl. He still felt unsettled about her, but at least he could count on Pellos to help him.
Chapter 8
Jail Time
Eliandra
Eizo Bakritzis was a very grumpy, mostly honest policeman. He was the one who had gotten her out from under the dirty cop. She’d promised him four weeks of free translating services in exchange for getting the man reassigned. It had been a risk, and she’d nearly cried afterward out of sheer relief that he’d taken the deal instead of arresting her.
“OK,” said Ezio, adding the distinctly American tag to the front of what would surely be a stream of Greek, “we have eight refugees, some lost Russians, and two drunk-ass Australians. No one can understand what the fuck they’re saying. I mean, is that even English?”
Lia nodded. Australians could be like that.
“We also have a special visit from the area commandant coming at some point today, so if you see him, keep your mouth shut and exit as quickly as possible.”
Lia nodded again.
He fumbled in the glove box and handed her the visitor badge that proclaimed she had been appropriately vetted and was a legal employee of the government of Greece. She wasn’t, but there weren’t enough translators, and the cops had decided that paying one translator in cash was better than watching a backlog of cases stack up while they waited for someone to be issued to them. Lia had leaned heavily on that fact when she’d made her deal with Ezio. And once the officers at his precinct had realized that she could speak all the languages they needed, she had been told to block out her Tuesday mornings. One off-the-books translator saved them months of paperwork and hoursof frustration, not to mention preventing potential diplomatic incidences.
Ezio parked, and Lia exited the vehicle, smoothing her black button-up shirt dress. On more than one occasion, she had thanked her lucky stars that she’d picked it to wear the day her parents had abandoned her. It looked professional and was wrinkle-resistant. When she pinned her hair up in a bun, like it was today, she could pass for someone who wasn’t homeless. She checked her mask and eye makeup in the van’s side mirror and joined Ezio as he walked into the back of the police station.
When she’d first worked with Ezio, they had insisted on a temperature check, gloves, mask, and face shield every time she entered the building. But she had spent the money to get a test from a doctor they trusted that showed she was negative and had antibodies. They hadn’t requested the test, but she thought it was one of the reasons they continued to work with her. It had been money well spent. She always carried the test results with her and periodically spent a few euros to get them reprinted. Stress levels dropped, and leniency increased when she could show documentation of her immunity.
Ezio took her through to the holding cells. If the arrested individual had a lawyer, Eizo would take her to an interview room. But if, like today, it was just a random grab bag of arrestees, she would stand in holding and try to answer everyone’s questions and help the officer of the day fill out the paperwork. Since the walkway between the cells was six feet across, she could drop her mask as long as the arrested individual stood on the taped line as instructed. She was surprised by how often they didn’t. Today it was the usual batch of refugees who hadn’t run fast enough, and foreigners picked up on drunk and disorderly charges. Sometimes, she got women or someone who had been arrested for an actual crime, but mostly it was men who hadn’t been able, for various reasons, to keepthemselves out of trouble.
The refugees were easy. Heartbreaking but easy. Like her, they had no papers. Unlike her, they would get sent to government camps. Lia knew she had avoided the same fate because she was white, female, and had a marketable skill. It didn’t occur to most people to think that she didn’t have a passport or work visa. Or if it did, well… an American extending summer vacation wasn’t the same as a horde of immigrants, was it? From where Lia was sitting, she couldn’t see the difference. Most of the refugees she talked to had professions—from teachers to bus drivers to shopkeepers—they had just been minding their own business when life kicked them in the nuts and blew up their world, sometimes literally.
Lia also handed out fliers in Arabic for the various aid organizations. She had written her phone number on all the fliers. Refugees paid the least, but she felt the best about the work. Most of the men and boys in the cells took the fliers. The worst part for them was that getting arrested usually meant they lost the few belongings they’d managed to hold onto. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t applied for aid. That and the rape statistics in the camps frightened her.
The police cleared out the refugees, moving them to new cells according to the information provided, and Lia turned to the next person in the cell, only to find herself face-to-face with the block-headed Russian from the previous night.
“You’re the translator?” he demanded incredulously in Russian.
Lia swallowed hard.
“I’m the translator,” she replied in Russian as well. “Keep your mouth shut, and we’ll all get out of here.”
“How about I get out of here, and I fuck your skull,” he snarled and reached through the bars and tried to grab her. She lashed out, slamming her palm into his ear. She’d read about gettingyour ears boxedin a British novel as a child and discovered that it was an effective response to most unwanted overtures. She could break someone’s eardrum if she hit the ear just right.
The Australians waiting their turn at the back of the cell laughed heartily as the Russian stumbled back. Not liking the pain or getting laughed at, the Russian charged back, but by then, Ezio had trundled across the floor and yelled at them, banging his nightstick on the bars. The Russian subsided as his friend hauled him back.
“I will tell them that you will pay the drunk and disorderly fine,” said Lia. “You will give me names for them to put on their forms.”
Reluctantly, the Russian nodded. The clerk, whose eyes looked big at the aggressive exchange, tip-toed forward, and Lia and the Russian filled in the blanks on the forms for him. Lia thought the names were fake, but she didn’t care as long as it got them away from her.
That left her with the Australians, and they stood up politely and presented themselves to her as the Russians were escorted out.
“G’day,” said one. He had a thatch of blonde hair and a gap between his front teeth. He was cute in that way the grown men sometimes are when they retain a little of the roundness of youth, but Lia frowned. There was something off about him, although she couldn’t put her finger on what. The other looked enough like the first that she thought they must be brothers. She couldn’t decide if it was a slight sheen to their skin or a buzz in her inner ear, but something wasn’t quite right.
