An Aegean Prophecy - Jeffrey Siger [96]
‘Wait until I come around before opening your door. Some idiot on a motorbike might run into it.’ Andreas jumped out and walked around the front of the car. He glanced into the Suburban. The light coming through the windshield allowed him to make out three men inside, two in front, one in the back. The engine was running.
Must be waiting for someone, he thought. Andreas smiled. Cop force of habit, stay alert, stay alive. Live in condition yellow. Green is in your mother’s womb, red is in the heat of an all-out battle, and yellow is every other moment of a cop’s life. He opened Lila’s door and walked her to the curb. He heard a buzz. It was the sound you heard when someone opened a vehicle door with the motor running.
‘I’ll say goodbye here. See you upstairs.’ Andreas kissed her on the cheek, his peripheral vision on the Suburban.
‘Is everything okay?’ Lila asked.
‘Perfect, I just want to put the car away and get back home to you. I don’t like leaving you and junior alone.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.’ She kissed him and walked toward the entrance.
He stood angled by the driver’s door of the car so that he could see Lila and the Suburban. He waited until she was inside the building. Something wasn’t right about the Suburban. Its warning buzzer still was blaring yet no one had stepped out.
Andreas got into the car, turned on the engine, and slowly pulled away from the curb. He inched up alongside the Suburban as if he were planning to stop beside the still partially open door. But just before reaching that door, Andreas floored the gas pedal and his car shot up the street toward the corner. In his rearview mirror he watched as the door yanked shut and the Suburban lurched away from the curb. Definitely not right. He reached for his phone and pressed the code for ‘officer needs assistance.’ Thank God for GPS.
The only question was, what to do until the cavalry arrived? Heading to the garage was a no-no. He’d be cornered there. Being stuck in traffic along the way wasn’t a much better alternative. Only one thing to do. ‘Lila, please forgive me.’ He said the words aloud, as if to give himself courage, then slammed on the brakes, threw the car into reverse and sped backwards straight at the Suburban. The Suburban jerked to a stop. Andreas didn’t. Thank God Lila’s car was built to take a rear-end collision.
Andreas jumped out of the car with his gun drawn. The Suburban’s driver door opened and a man in shirt and tie started yelling in heavily accented Greek, ‘Stop! Stop! Are you crazy?’
‘Damn well fucking better believe I am. Face down, in the street now.’
The driver hesitated and Andreas locked his elbows in the shooting position for a headshot. The man dropped to the pavement instantly. ‘You, in the passenger seat. Slide out this way, keep your hands where I can see them.’
The man slid across the seat slowly, deliberately. Police cars were arriving from both directions, and military types from around the palace were racing toward them with M-16s at the ready. Andreas had pulled his police ID out of his shirt and was yelling loudly, ‘I’M A COP.’ He did not want to go down in friendly fire. As the second man stepped onto the street, Andreas yelled at him to drop to the pavement.
Andreas stared. He knew this man. ‘Sergey?’ Andreas did not lower his gun.
The rear door opened and out stepped a silver-haired man in an impeccably tailored Italian suit. ‘Need I drop to the pavement, too, my son?’
‘Not sure yet. What are you doing here?’
By now, police were everywhere and the military was aiming at everyone. ‘I don’t think this is the appropriate environment for the conversation I’ve come to have with you.’
Andreas realized he still had his gun pointed at the two on the ground. He said to one uniformed cop, ‘Search those two,’ and to another, ‘Check the vehicle.’ He gestured to one of the men with an M-16 to keep it locked on the two on the ground, then holstered his weapon.
He stared at the Protos. ‘I have a place to talk, but just you and me, not your boys.’
‘Chief, this