Janson covered his face. “I can’t. I can’t risk it. I file a report, it could be my ass. Same reason I don’t dare go to the embassy. My company is very conservative. I can’t chance them finding out—we’ve got reps all over. I know I don’t look it, but I’ve got a reputation to protect. And my wife—oh Jesus!” Suddenly his eyes brimmed with tears. “She can’t know, ever!”

“So you’re a big man,” the sailor said, his gaze taking the stranger’s measure.

“And a bigger idiot. What was I thinking?” He drained his glass of Metaxa, filling his cheeks with the sweetened liquor, then swiveled his stool around, agitated, and raised the amber water glass to his lips. Only a trained observer would have noticed that, though Janson’s water glass had not been refilled, its level magically kept rising.

“The big head wasn’t thinking,” the seaman said sagely. “The little head was thinking.”

“If I could just get to our regional headquarters in Izmir, I could take care of everything.”

The seaman drew back with a jerk. “You are a Turk?”

“Turkish? God, no.” Janson wrinkled his nose with disgust. “How could you think that? Are you?”

The seaman spat on the floor in response.

In Piraeus, at least, the old enmities still simmered. “Look, we’re an international company. I’m a Canadian citizen, as it happens, but our clients are everywhere. I’m not going to the police, and I can’t risk turning up at the embassy. The thing could destroy me—you Greeks, you’re worldly, you understand about human nature, but the people I work with aren’t like that. Thing is, if I could just get to Izmir, I could make this whole nightmare disappear. I’ll do the breaststroke to get there if I have to.” He slammed down the thickbottomed glass on the banged-up zinc bar. Then he waved a fifty-thousand-drachma note at the bartender, signaling for another round.

The bartender looked at the note and shook his head. “Ehete mipos pio psila?” A smaller-denomination bill was required.

Janson peered at the note like a drunk with blurred vision. The note was the equivalent of over a hundred U.S. dollars. “Oh, sorry,” he said, putting it away and handing the bartender four thousand-drachma notes.

As Janson intended, the error was not lost on his companion, whose interest in his plight suddenly became livelier.

“A long way to swim,” the seaman said with a mirthless chuckle. “Perhaps there is another way.”

Janson looked at him imploringly. “You think?”

“Special transport,” the man said. “Not comfortable. Not cheap.”

“You get me to Izmir, I’ll pay you twenty-five hundred dollars—U.S., not Canadian.”

The sailor looked at Janson appraisingly. “Others will have to cooperate.”

“That’s twenty-five hundred just for you, for arranging it. If there are other expenses, I’ll cover them, too.”