The airport was six miles from his destination in downtown Athens; seated uncomfortably in a backseat without room for his long legs, Janson wearily glanced around him. The highway that led from the suburb of Glyfada, where Ellinikón was situated, to the hilly sprawl that was Athens was like a conveyor belt of cars, their pooled exhaust replenishing the low-hanging fug of sulfur dioxide.

He noticed the small “2” in a little window on the meter, and his eyes met those of the driver, a squat man whose chin was darkly shadowed with an incipient beard, the kind that could never quite be shaved away.

“Is there somebody in the trunk?” Janson asked.

“Somebody in the trunk?” the driver repeated, mirthful. He was proud of his English. “Ha! Not when I last checked, mister! How come you ask?”

“Because I don’t see anybody else in the backseat. So I was trying to figure out why you have the meter set for a double fare.”

“My mistake,” the driver said after a beat, his beaming countenance disappearing. Sullenly, he adjusted the meter, which meant not only shifting to a lower rate but wiping out the drachmas he had already accumulated.

Janson shrugged. It was an old trick of Athenian cabdrivers. Its only significance, in this case, was that the driver must have gauged him to be exhausted and inattentive even to have tried out the petty scam.

Athenian traffic meant that the last mile of the trip took longer than the previous five. The streets of the Mets area were built on a steep hillside, and the houses, which dated before the war—and before the city’s population had mushroomed—harked to an earlier and pleasanter era. They were mostly the color of sand, with tiled roofs and red-shuttered windows. Courtyards with potted plants and spiral outdoor staircases sheltered behind them. Katsaris’s house was on a narrow street off Voulgareos, just half a dozen blocks from the Olympic Stadium.

Janson sent the driver on his way with 2,500 drachmas, rang the doorbell, and waited, half hoping there would be no answer.

The door opened after only a few moments, and there stood Marina, just as he had remembered her—if anything, she was even more beautiful. Janson took in her high cheekbones, honeyed complexion, steady brown eyes, her straight and silky black hair. The swelling of her belly was barely detectable, another voluptuous curve that was merely hinted at beneath her loose, raw-silk frock.

“Paul!” she exclaimed, delighted. The delight evaporated as she read his expression; the color drained from her face. “No,” she said in a low voice.

Janson did not reply, but his haggard countenance held nothing back.

“No,” she breathed.