A Deadly Twist by Jeffrey Siger (free novel reading sites .txt) 📕

into a lane opening on to a square in front of the island’s eighteenth-century Greek Orthodox cathedral. It was built on the remains of ancient temples and faced the ancient city’s agora, or meeting place, but she did not pause, and two minutes later she was at the north end of the harbor.

She strolled by what seemed an endless line of tavernas, bars, and tourist shops, many trying to look more modern and chic than the next but not quite pulling it off. If they were examples of the sort of modern development tourism advocates had in mind for the rest of the island, she could understand why the island’s traditionalists were so adamantly opposed.

She paused beside a wide marble harbor-front square and watched as local children rode their bikes and scooters helter-skelter among the passing tourists. It was as if all the world were their playground. She smiled. This was Nikoletta’s idea of a Greek island experience.

Her eye caught a flagstone stairway tucked away between a jewelry shop and a kafenio, and she headed straight for it. A sign above the stairs read TO THE CASTLE & THE MUSEUM.

She wound her way up the hill along archway-covered lanes lined with stone and stucco buildings, all plainly laid out without any plan other than to confuse marauding pirates. She kept climbing through a residential area randomly trimmed in geraniums and bougainvillea, determined to make it to where signs promised she’d find the Kastro and the seventeenth-century Naxos Archaeological Museum.

As expected, given the hour, the museum was closed.

Nikoletta stood in front of the museum, looking back on to the square, and wondered what to do now. To her right sat a well-tended garden of oleander, geraniums, bougainvillea, and a host of flowers she could not identify; to her left stood the Naxos Cultural Center. She sat on the wall outside the cultural center and watched an amber-colored queen lead her onyx and amber kittens scampering into the garden. This seemed to be the right place to contemplate the direction of her life. After all, she now sat before what once had been the Ursuline School for Girls, representing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century efforts at educating them.

She shut her eyes and listened to children playing nearby. She imagined what life must have been like here so many centuries before and wondered whether the sounds of children at play would have been any different back then.

Amid this unexpected tranquility, Nikoletta decided her editor had been right in asking her to do a piece on tradition versus tourism. She’d made her reputation reporting on the basest of human propensities, stories in which brute force was the currency of choice. It was time to write about humankind’s better nature, how those of goodwill could battle over a contentious issue without violence and reach a balanced result acceptable to all sides. Or so she’d like to believe.

She didn’t move from her perch until well past sunset, listening all the while to the birds and children. She felt at ease as she backtracked down the hill, but before the harbor a waiter called out to her to please come try his tiny bar. She hadn’t noticed the place on the way up, but it had a certain charm reminiscent of the sort of Bohemian café you’d expect to find on a Paris backstreet.

Why not? she thought and made her way to an empty table by an open window, ordered a glass of red wine, and sat staring out at people passing by.

She didn’t notice the tall, fit man until he stood next to her table. He wore the stylized haircut and week-old black beard of men in their late twenties but struck her as considerably older. At first she thought he was another waiter.

“Excuse me, miss, are you Nikoletta Elia?”

She stared at him. “Do I know you?”

“May I sit down?”

“Not until you tell me who you are.”

“Someone with a story to tell that I know you’ll be interested in hearing.”

He’d said the magic words.

She nodded for him to sit. “This better be good.”

“I’m a big fan of your work. We must have arrived on the same boat, because I saw a man holding up a sign with your name on it. I waited to see what you looked like but didn’t want to bother you. Later, I saw you walking along the harbor front and decided to follow in hopes of getting the chance to speak with you.”

“If you’ve been following me, how come I didn’t notice you up in the Kastro? I was virtually alone up there.”

He smiled. “Precisely. Which is why when you went into the Kastro, I waited until you came out. I didn’t want to spook you.”

“How did you know I’d come out the same way I went in?”

He smiled again. “I see you’re not familiar with the town. There are only two gates into the Kastro, the Paraporti to the south, and the Trani to the north. You went in through Trani, and I guessed you’d come out the same way.”

She stared at him. “Okay, so you guessed right, and now you have your chance to tell me your story. So, tell me.”

“If I expect you to believe me, I first better demonstrate my bona fides.” He waved to a waiter. “Bring us a bottle of whatever the lady’s drinking and a glass for me. Then leave us alone unless I call for you.” He turned to Nikoletta. “The wine’s on me, and I’m pretty sure that what I have to say will take at least a bottle.”

Whatever’s on his mind, he has a unique way of getting to the point.

“I’m going to tell you facts about stories you’ve covered that I could only know if I’m who you’ll think I am after you’ve heard me out.”

“Uh, okay?” She picked up her wineglass and leaned back in her chair. “I’m listening.”

Over hours of conversation, and just as many bottles of wine, he delved into a half dozen sophisticated ransomware attacks, three embarrassing government