"Not yet," said Dinah. "Is Alcina in her room?"

"She went down to the farmhouse with Yannis."

"Sergeant Papas wants to speak to me alone. Would you mind waiting in your room?"

"Not at all. I'll leave you grown-ups to do the heavy brain work in private." She smiled and sallied up the stairs.

The jab wasn't lost on Dinah, but she couldn't be sidetracked. She led Papas down the hall to the kitchen and flipped the light switch. "Sit down, Sergeant. I don't have anything to offer you except coffee." She took a bag of Starbucks out of the cabinet. She'd bought it in the Athens airport after seeing TV footage of protesters firebombing a Starbucks store in the heart of the city. "Are you politically averse to American coffee?"

"No, but if you like, I will make Greek coffee."

Dinah had tasted Greek coffee, which had the taste and consistency of coal tar. She said, "I don't think we have any."

"There is always Greek coffee in a Greek house." He opened a canister on the counter and sniffed. "Ah. This is Greek coffee." He looked around. "And here is the briki." He picked up a small metal pot with a handle, measured two cups of water into it, added two spoons of sugar and two heaping spoons of coffee.

Dinah couldn't understand what he was waiting for. "Sergeant, if you've got something to tell me, don't leave me on pins and needles."

"We have found a phone."

She sat down. "Under the car?"

"No. It was found on the road a mile below the lagkadi overlook, crushed by a rock or a boot heel or a passing car. It is being examined by people who can ex-I don't know the English word."

"Extract the data?"

"Yes."

Her pulse quickened. "If someone took his phone, then that proves he was kidnapped."

"We have no proof yet that it is his phone. Even if it is, he could have destroyed it himself. Policemen have backup phones, the same as drug dealers."

"I know he's alive, Sergeant. You have checked all the hospitals and clinics, right?"

"I came to tell you that everything is being done. The Samian police are doing everything the Athens police would do, what any European police force would do. The astynomia of Samos are up to the highest standard." He turned away and went back to making the coffee.

She deduced from his defensiveness that Brakus had conveyed her suspicions. She hadn't told Brakus that she'd seen him with Papas in Pythagorio. Maybe if she played it cool and didn't light into him with accusations, she could extract some data about their connection. "Is there a special technique to making Greek coffee?"

"Each step is important. You must start with very cold water and it should warm up slowly."

Like a good interview, she thought. "I suppose that everyone knows everyone on Samos. You probably know all the residents' names and the names of their children and their pets."

He lit the stove, set the pot on the flame, and began to stir. "A policeman must have, how do you say in English, gnosi?"

"Knowledge."

"Yes, knowledge." He began to stir the coffee. "I have knowledge of all of the people who live on Samos. What happened to your Norwegian friend was not caused by any Samian."

"A stranger then. A refugee?"

"Yes. We are questioning the usual suspects."

She covered her mouth. Did Papas realize he was lifting a line from "Casablanca," or that it was intended ironically in the movie, or that it had become a standard one-liner? She tried to look simple and credulous. "What do you think happened at Pegasus Point, Sergeant?"

"Inspector Ramberg must have seen a boat landing, illegals crossing from Turkey. They followed him and, how do you say? They sampotaz his car."

"Sabotage."

"Yes. The brakes, maybe. Or the steering."

She accepted the idea that someone might have tampered with the brakes and she didn't doubt that illegal immigrants might be involved. But Thor was tracking weapons, not immigrants. Like Brakus, Papas was eager to scapegoat foreigners. "Do you think the Iraqi man who was murdered might have been engaged in weapons smuggling?"

"No. Fathi wore nice clothes, an expensive watch, Italian eyeglasses. He showed his money too proudly. His death was an attempted robbery."

"You've changed your opinion then."

"It is the best explanation. When the robber heard you and the Inspector coming, he fled into the forest without taking anything."

Dinah had the feeling that he had rehearsed the robbery scenario. "Where would an unemployed immigrant like Fathi get two hundred euros?"

"Robbing another man. Who can say?"

"How would an Iraqi arriving in Greece from Turkey get a German identity card?"

He turned back to the coffee pot and his stirring became more vigorous. "I have no knowledge where he entered into Europe or when. He may have arrived first in Germania and migrated to Greece."

She said, "An official ID must be like gold to a refugee. If he were stopped at a border for any reason, it would be like a get-out-of-jail-free card."

"Inspector Ramberg asked us to talk to Fathi's associates and search his apartment. We, the police, did what he asked. We found no guns. There was no evidence of any wrongdoing."

She tried to think of an oblique way to ask her burning question, but she'd run out of patience and subterfuge was getting her nowhere. She said, "I saw you in Pythagorio yesterday."

He didn't look around. The spoon clattered against the pot like rapid gunfire.

"You were with Savas Brakas and a man with a big, black mustache."

If he had an innocent explanation, now was the time to give it, but he didn't say anything.

Her eyes dilated on the gun strapped to his hip. Tread softly, she told herself, but her tongue had a mind of its own. "Did your friend Brakus call and tell you that I was asking questions about the honesty of the police?"

Silence.

She said, "You meet secretly with Mr. Brakus, he gives you a bag of something-and Inspector Ramberg turns up missing. It doesn't feel right to me."

Still without turning, he said, "You are upset and so I understand how you can make an elephant of a fly."

"If I've misinterpreted the purpose of your meeting, please set me straight."

Finally, he turned. "Savas Brakus is my business partner. Nothing to do with Inspector Ramberg. Nothing to do with my job as a police officer. I have children to feed. It is sympliroma." He managed to inject both defiance and self-righteousness into the speech.

"What," she asked, "is sympliroma?"

He went to the sink, filled two glasses with water, and set them on the table. "I don't know how you say it in English. To make ends meet. It is what all Greeks must do in this time. The police do not condone what is not legal, but when the law is too harsh or unnecessary..." He gave an almost imperceptible shrug and resumed his rapid-fire stirring at the stove.

"I have no interest in how you or anyone else pads his income, Sergeant. But I believe that someone disclosed Thor's undercover mission to people with reason to want him neutralized."

"The Widow Stephanadis told everyone on the island that she had let Marilita's house to an astynomikos."

"I'm aware of that. The question is, who would have been the most worried by that?"

"Samos has many policemen. Another would make no difference."

She had expected him to follow Brakus' lead and point the finger at Mentor. She said, "It obviously made a difference to somebody. I mean to find out who."

He didn't turn around. "It's important for the sugar to dissolve completely and after it dissolves, you boil it for a few minutes."

She didn't know about the sugar, but her courage was dissolving fast. "Why did you come here tonight, Sergeant? Are you trying to intimidate me, because if that's your intention, you won't succeed."

He turned around, the briki of hot coffee in one hand, the other resting nonchalantly on the butt of his gun. "I don't know who would have tried to kill or kidnap the Inspector, if that is what happened. Here is what I know. Your friend was sent here by his government. Governments have no care for the feelings of people. You are not his wife or his sister, or even the same nationality. Whatever is done, you do not have the, how do you say, status? Yes, the status to be informed."

Her certainty skated out from under her. The matter of her unofficial status hadn't occurred to her. She went to the cabinet, brought out two mugs, and returned to the table.

Papas poured the coffee and sat down. "The most important thing is the foam."

She blew a wisp of steam and took a sip. It was scalding hot and strong enough to strip enamel. She took a cooling gulp of water and tried to reconcile the Thor she thought she knew with Thor, the secret agent man. I love my country and I have my duty...don't worry. I have an ally on Samos. It crossed her mind that Papas may have come to pass her a message from Thor in a veiled, off-the-record way that circumvented the government ban on informing girlfriends. Was he speaking in code? She tried to elicit a more particular hint. "Did the Inspector say anything of a personal nature to you, Sergeant?"

"Personal, no. But I have brought your lost eyeglasses." He pulled her Wayfarers out of his pocket and set them on the table.

She picked them up, half-expecting a message to be taped to one arm. She looked back at him, imploringly. "Did he not give you a message? Who he trusted? Who he didn't?"

"I will tell you what your Inspector said. He didn't trust the Syrians. Two boats came ashore from Turkey the day he arrived. He said to me, 'Papas, their revolution has turned them into animals. They are greedy for weapons. I will center my investigation on them.'"

"Those were his exact words?"

"Ne, malista. He said, 'They have destroyed their country. They will destroy yours if you let them.' And he was right. The fools at the foreign ministry have promised hospitality to twenty thousand of them, converting the hotels of Crete and Rhodes into barracks. Samos is overrun with prosfyges, but the Syrians are the worst."

She sighed and crossed Papas off the list of potential allies. If Thor had confided in him at all, which she doubted, he totally misrepresented what Thor had said. The Sergeant sounded like a member of the anti-immigrant party Thor had told her about, Golden Dawn.

"You should take your young friend and go to Athens tomorrow. It is not wise for you meddle in police matters. We will continue to search for Inspector Ramberg and when he is found, you will be informed."

She thanked him for the sunglasses and the coffee and he saw himself out. She lingered at the table. Everybody on Samos seemed to be running some scam or other. Even Mentor, if what Brakus said was true. She hated to think that Greece's cultural heritage was being looted by a professor of classical studies, no less. But then, she didn't have children to feed. She didn't care what the citizenry did to make ends meet, so long as they had no part in Thor's disappearance. Papas warning not to meddle scared her, but she had a gun of her own behind the chickpea flour in the cupboard and she would not be bullied into leaving Samos.

His remark about her inferior status rankled. She might not be Thor's wife or his sister, but she had a right to know if he was alive. If she showed up at the Norwegian embassy in Athens and threatened to sic her U.S. senator friends on them, perhaps somebody would deign to tell her the truth. She polished off the last of her coffee and spat a mouthful of sludge into her napkin. She felt fluttery from the caffeine and the tension. She walked out onto the veranda for a dose of fresh air.

The cicadas and tree frogs were shrilling and the smell of thyme enveloped her.

"Isn't it just the most gorgeous night?" K.D. lay across one of the new chairs with her legs dangling over the arm. "Just look at those stars. It's better than the Fernbank Planetarium."

"I don't feel like talking right now, K.D."

"I found something that might change your mind." She swung her long legs around, bounced out of the chair and strode across the veranda. "Looky here." She handed Dinah a laminated card, about the size of a credit card, with the photo of a black-haired man next to the multi-color holograph of an eagle and lots of greenish-brown curlicues. The name on the card was Mohammed Al Masri and the place of issue was Bundesrepublik Duetschland.

"Where did you get this?"

"Trooper Papas had a stack of fifty of these thingummies in his glove compartment. I took one out of the middle of the stack. They didn't look kosher for a Greek cop. What d'ya think?"

Dinah turned the card over. The back showed the Brandenburg Gate and gave the man's eye color, height, weight, and place of residence-Berlin. This must be the same kind of identity card that Fathi had, a card that would allow him to move about the continent at will. "Did you notice any of the other names?"

"There were a lot of Abdullahs and Mohammeds."

Day 4.

Chapter Twenty-four.

Dinah woke up at nine and hugged the empty pillow beside her. She breathed in the ferny scent of Fitjar soap, the Norwegian brand that Thor liked, and brooded. Love was such a hackneyed little verb with an infinite variety of meanings and applications. She loved her brother, she loved mythology and folktales and tomato sandwiches and fried okra and fountains, almost everything French, and the music of John Barry and George Gershwin. She sprinkled the word like confetti and yet she'd never told Thor that she loved him. Did she, or did the fact that he'd been spirited away in such a shocking way make her think that she did, or should, or might someday?

She had lain awake rehashing the interlocking mysteries until three. Murder, betrayal, vandals, a bloody shoe, an anonymous wolf, a missing lover, an unknown ally, and a cop with a deck of German identity cards. The potter's wheel in her head kept spinning, but no unifying theory took shape. The one thing she'd decided, and this was instinctive and absolute and contrary to all efforts to convince her otherwise: Thor had not gone missing of his own volition.

Sunshine flooded the room with a cheery warmth, as if Apollo were mocking her, and the smell of cinnamon made her mouth water. She didn't think that baking breakfast treats was in Alcina's repertoire. K.D. must be showing off an unexpected skill. If her knack for pastry was half as impressive as her knack for larceny, she'd be a shoo-in for a job in a prison kitchen somewhere.

Not that Dinah wasn't glad that she'd filched that card. It gave the potter's wheel a wicked spin. The fact that the cards had been issued by Germany argued against a Greek police sergeant having a stack of fifty in his car for any legitimate reason. Was he stealing or forging them and retailing them to illegal immigrants? That must be the business he and Brakus had going and now that she thought about it, it explained why Brakus was so nervous when he saw Fathi lying dead in the lane. He knew he'd sold him a bogus card and he was afraid it could be traced back to him. When he phoned to report the murder, he must have made damn sure that Papas would be the responding officer. Thor had looked at the card, but obviously not carefully because he thought Fathi was in Greece legally.

A devil's advocate for Papas would argue that the cards were, in fact, authentic. Stolen, perhaps, and Papas was on his way to surrender them to the proper authorities when K.D. boosted that sample. If the cards were forgeries, he might have confiscated them from the forgers or intercepted them at the post office. Dinah bridled her tendency to jump to conclusions, but fifty German ID cards with Arab names in a Greek cop's glove box did not add up to a favorable defense.

The smell of cinnamon was irresistible. She showered and dressed and followed her nose to the kitchen. Alcina sat at the end of the table unbraiding a fat, gooey bun and dropping ropes of dough into her upturned mouth.

Dinah took out a plate and helped herself to a bun from a baking tray on the stove. "Did you bake these?"

"Katarina," said Alcina, her mouth full. "They are nostimmos, better than baklava."

"Where is Katarina?"

"Gone for a walk."

"Did she say where?"

"To the village."

"Did she say what for?"

"For the beauty."