Nine Swords

OOC: Right now the plan is for this story to involve only Katja and Thanasi. If I think of ways to open the story to others, I'll let you know.

Background: Ο Χορός της Ουσίας, Thanasi's Journal - 18/9/12, Dear Diary (Katja) - 20/9/12.

26 September 2012

Thanasi sat on the hard wood in Agartha, tired of banging his head against the latest problem. His heart was not into the task, and he knew that.

It had been just over a week since he had returned to Cyprus. A week since his suspicions had been aroused by Father Pavlos' apparent surprise at his return and offering for a memorial for Eleni. He had known then that he would have to investigate. In a way, he had always known. Eleni's death and his exile to Cyprus had left him with no closure.

Nine months. No closure.

He took out his mobile and read Katja's message. A party in Ealdwic. He typed a message to her about needing to complete this task before he could go. Why does that feel like a lie? This, too, he knew: he would be useless at a party. The text filed away, he opened to the market for what felt like the hundredth time in the past week.

Do you want to install Facebook?

After staring unthinking at the question for a few moments, he closed the market and put the mobile back in his pocket.

This diary entry is relevant also:
http://www.nine-swords.com/viewtopic.ph ... =30#p16370

September 25, 2012.

Dear Diary.

I have decided to try to get the information about Eleni´s death. Thanasi said he have started to question it and that he want to look into it. I look at him and see how he hesitates, I know he is afraid. What if all this months he have been lived a lie? I do not blame him for procrastinating the research. Although I am afraid that the trail will get to cold if he wait to long. I have thought about looking into it myself and last night I told him about it. I would never have done anything if I think he would considering it prying in is personal life, but now he just asked me to tell him anything I found out. I take this as an approval for me to do this.

I have started to check both their names on Facebook. His page was private so I could not find her name there but I found out he was listed as a student at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki. I looked her up, found a few but only two of them was at the appropriate age. Since I do not think that she is lesbian I picked the one who worked at Mr. Jones Café.

Since I do not want to get any problems in the future, I mean what ifshe was alive and started to look me up? So I created a google account as Helena Björklind. It's my middle name and my mother´s last name so I think it´s close enough.

Anyhow I have sent the café an e-mail, said that I tried to find an old friend and I knew she worked at the café. We'll see if they can give me anything.

I also tried to look up the church she belonged to. Thanasi said that they should have had a memorial service so her name should at least be "on their lists" so to speak. I do not want to ask Thanasi for to much information, I do not want to pour salt in the wounds. But this do make things a lot harder, especially since I do not even know what the church is called. But I googled and The Church of Agios (Saint) Dimitrios is close both to the school and to Mr. Jones café so I will try to start there. I have not yet find an e-mail so I am going to try to call them. We'll see how that will work out, I just hope they speak English.


Later.

I actually starting to think there is something that is not quite right with all this with Eleni.

I called the church and of course they spoke in Greek. I asked if there was someone I could speak English with and they put me on the phone of another man. He did not introduce himself. I told him my name was Helena Björklind and that I'm trying to track down an old friend. He told me it is a big diocese and that he don't know if he ever will see her again.

My first though was that he maybe did not knew who I was talking about. I mean, if it's a big diocese it's probably many people who visit the church.

I asked him if he could take my email address and give it to her if he would see her but he said he could not. Then he adviced me to ask the school. I told him this was a great advice. Then I realized I never got his name and that could be a good thing to ask for. He mistook my question for who I would ask at the school and told me "Aristotle University is the largest university in the Balkans", and that the therefore did not know.

This proof that he do know who she is. If not, how could he possible know she went to school there?

I told him I meant his name and he said it was Gregory. (I write the name in bold letters so I will found it if I ever look for it.) He gave me no surname, something I found a bit strange.

That's not the only strangest thing. If Eleni was dead there would be no harm in telling me, and there should have been a memorial on the 18th for her, so even a person working at the church who did not know her personally should at least remember that.

Is she actually alive?

September 25.

To: info@mr-jones.gr
From: helenabjorklind@gmail.com

Hi.
I am writing to ask if Eleni Katramados is still working at your café?
I´m an old friend and I seem to have lost her address. Would be very grateful for any information you have.
Have a nice day
Helena Björklind.

Katja stares at the phone. The bad feeling in her body could not quite disappear, the feeling that have kept her from sleeping to long. She felt like crying but she know it only was the lack of sleep who made her feel that way.

She had the number looked up from before and she even had put in her old phone card in the phone, so she would call from a Swedish number. That moment she praised prepaid phonecard.

She took a deep breath, pressed the phone number and listened at the signals go forth.

Katja sighted deep and hung up the phone. She was perhaps not surprised that it had given her nothing, but she still was deeply disappointed. As it was now the only hope she had to get on in the case was an answer on her e-mail to Mr Jones café.

To: helenabjorklind@gmail.com
From: info@mr-jones.gr

Ms Bjorklind,

Thank you for contacting us. Unfortunately, we cannot provide personal information for any employees. If you are ever in Salonica, please feel free to stop in for a drink.

Ευχαριστώ,
Mr. Jones Cafe

Katja read the mail and sighted. Once again she had walked right into a wall of "we cannot provide personal information". Why could it not just be easy? She looked at the second sentence; It was at least a little hopeful. She had thought it would come to this. There was only one option left, she would talk to the stationmaster about traveling to Salonica. She only had to talk to Thanasi before...

Katja arrived early in Thessaloniki that day. She had wanted to get an early start on her search, so she had left London just after dawn. At least, that was what she told herself. The truth was she was nervous, unlike she had been in some time. As she stepped out of the building that housed the Agartha portal, she took a few moments to try to orient herself using the map she had acquired before leaving London. The building behind her was a very large white cylindrical tower. Not far in front of her was a large body of water that she needed no map to tell her was the Gulf of Salonica. Likewise the building from which she had emerged could be none but the White Tower of Salonica, the symbol of the city, and the symbol Thanasi had used to identify himself in their relationship.

Stepping closer to the waterfront, she examined her map to orient herself to the four addresses she and Thanasi had noted on the map: the hostel at which she would stay, Eleni’s address in a northern suburb of the city called Stavroupoli, Thanasi’s own address near the St. Demetrios church, and the curiously named Mr. Jones Cafe down near the university. Taking a few minutes to study the nearby cross streets she could make out from her location and steeling herself for the day’s investigation, she put the map away and took another look at the picture Thanasi had given her. The same rush of conflicted emotions—some fear, some anger, some sadness—flooded over her again. Why did Eleni have to be so damn pretty?

After a few minutes breathing in the cool morning air off the gulf, she made her way into town to find her hostel first. The last thing she wanted to do was carry her luggage—largely over-packed for appearance’s sake—around Greece’s second-largest city. The little hostel had been quite a find for her, and Thanasi had made comment to such. The price, the location not far from Thanasi’s old home and the university, and the attractiveness of the building had made it one of the things she actually looked forward to about her visit to her boyfriend’s home city.

With her room secured and with a little morning coffee, she decided first to make her way to Stavroupoli to check the address Thanasi had provided as Eleni’s last residence. If the girl were still alive, she would almost certainly be in classes at this time of day. Katja elected to walk the two and a half kilometers from her hostel to the address. Despite her nerves, she allowed herself to take in some of this ancient and modern city. She passed ancient ruins, Byzantine monuments and churches still in use, as well as seedy pubs and high class hotels. As she entered the area of Stavroupoli, she noted the signs of a city both in transition and in stagnation. Along with older style Mediterranean buildings, white or red with red tiled roofs, there were solid concrete buildings evoking the lack of architectural imagination characteristic of Cold War era Eastern Europe along with newer residential buildings and vacant lots where construction had stalled out as the global economic crisis hit even this most important of economic centers.

In the midst of this, she came to one of the transitional buildings, an apartment building that did not quite have the curves and aesthetic sensibilities of newer structures but looked more angular as though trying to mimic the older Mediterranean style of architecture while still not entirely free of the stoic communist era pragmatism. Checking the back of Eleni’s photograph again, she noted the address.

She had arrived.

Blessedly, the building had a row of mail slots with the names of the occupants and buzzers by each address plate. As she scanned the address plates and found the number Thanasi had told her about, she checked the name: ‘ΚΑΤΡΑΜΑΔΟΣ’ was written below it. Thanasi had mentioned that the girl lived with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. She looked at the nameplate and bit her lip for a moment, again preparing herself. She was doing this for both Thanasi and herself. They both needed to know.

That did not make it any easier.

After a few moments, she pressed the button and waited. Only when no answer came did Katja realize she was holding her breath. She pressed the button a second time and was met with the same sound of silence. Undaunted and unwilling to waste the trip this far, she pressed the button for the apartment one number down. After a brief pause, she heard a voice over the intercom that sounded like an older woman: "Γεια σας?"

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Katja began, uncomfortably aware of how odd her Swedish accented English must sound under the circumstances. “Does Eleni Katramados still lives in this building?”

“Τί?” the woman responded, clearly not understanding her.

Katja sighed and frowned. “I’m sorry...eh...signomi,” she responded in what she felt had to have been horrible Greek. Letting go of the button, she tried another one at random. Receiving no response, she turned to leave the building until she heard steps from the stairs behind her. When she looked back, she saw an elderly woman, probably in her sixties, dressed in all black including a silk shall about her head. Thanasi had told her that this was how widows dressed as they had looked over pictures from Salonica.

The woman looked her over for a moment, as though wondering what this foreigner was doing in this part of town and said, “Ποιος γυρεύεις?”

Katja puzzled at her question for a moment, but responded, “I’m sorry.... I do not speak Greek....” She took out the photo of Eleni and showed it to the widow, pointing at the picture. “Eleni Katramados?” she asked, pointing then at the address plate.

The elderly widow walked slowly down the last few steps and took a closer look at the picture. After briefly reviewing it, she exclaimed, “Αχ, Ελένη!” Looking at Katja, she began to say a few things, the clearest bit of which was the words ‘Mr. Jones.’

Katja nodded and smiled to show that she understood. “Thank you,” she began before trying to add in Greek, “Efkaristis.” She suspected she had said something silly as she waved goodbye to the woman and the woman nodded back, a sign she knew actually meant the opposite in Greece that it did in England.

Mr. Jones Cafe it is then. As she stepped away from the building, she took out her mobile and checked the time. It was noon and the temperature was about 20° C. She debated briefly hailing a taxi for the 5-kilometer trip, but decided against it. She wanted to see the city some more.

And give herself time.

It took her almost and hour to make her way from Stavroupoli to the Mr. Jones Cafe. During her walk she was able to observe more of the same architectural diversity she had on her way north, but the walk into Salonica—especially the university area—was much more pleasant. The architecture seemed much more alive if not especially modern. Where she had seen few people on the streets of Stavroupoli once she had left the main road, the crowds of students and businesspeople around Aristotle University and its attendant commercial district gave her a greater sense of the life of this city. She could not help but feel that familiar twinge of sadness for Thanasi’s loss.

Even if, perhaps, it meant her gain.

Mr. Jones Cafe was a glass-fronted sidewalk cafe and pub. The exterior was a not unpleasant shade of green with wood panes between each panel of glass, a number of tables and plants arranged out to the street, and a green and white striped awning overhanging the sidewalk. A college-aged individual busked with a guitar out front, occasional passersby dropping money in his case as he sang American rock songs in heavily accented English. It was not otherwise heavily crowded, the lunch rush having finished not long before and the rush of college students unwinding at the end of the day still to come.

Stepping inside, Katja was thankful it was not crowded. The interior of the restaurant was very narrow. To her left almost immediately was the bar where a middle-aged man in black shirt and blue jeans stood with a red wall and wooden drink racks to his back. Not ten feet across from him was the far white wall. There were no chairs at all inside except for the stools at the bar. Lining the white wall were small stand-up tables. As that wall continued back, it opened on another room, but even so Katja sensed that during this cafe’s busy hours the crush would probably be very intimate.

Sitting on a stool at the bar, Katja greeted the bartender in English and asked to see a menu. He smiled and greeted her back in English, something Thanasi had told her she could expect in this part of town, dominated as it was by a cosmopolitan university. As she looked over the menu, she casually took note of the two other servers making their rounds outside and to some customers in the back of the room. One was male and the other female, both wearing black tops as the bartender did, the man a t-shirt and the woman a long-sleeved shirt, he in grey slacks and she in black tights and skirt. Katja looked twice at the female server, but determined she looked nothing at all like the photo of Eleni.

She returned her attention to the bartender as she ordered a light appetizer. “Are they always this much people this time of day?” she asked him.

He looked around and shrugged, replying in accented English, “It depends on the day. Tomorrow when the university lets out, we get more.”

She smiled. “I’m not surprised. It seems to be a nice place.”

“Thank you, thank you,” he began, smiling. “If you are here tonight, we will have a jazz band performing.”

“Is it yours?” she began in response, but then continued. “Oh, that sounds lovely!” She made a mental note to come back for that if she could. The bartender shook his head affirmatively and introduced himself as Chris. Katja likewise introduced herself and said, “To be honest, I’m not here only to eat. I traveled to Kassandria the other day but I had a friend to asked me to come here. She trying to get in contact with a friend of her and said she works here. Eleni Katramados.” She paused for a moment, scarcely breathing now that the cover story was out. “Does she work today?” she added.

The bartender looked her over as though pondering something. “Your accent. From the North? Did you email us?”

Katja had been prepared for this, but still she felt like she was holding her breath. “I’m from Sweden. I did not, but my friend who I’m helping out told me she did.”

Chris shook his head affirmatively but it was clear he suspected her. He turned at a motion that Katja caught almost at the same time in the corner of her field of vision. A woman entered from the back of the cafe. “Ελένη!” the bartender called to her. “Έχεις μιαν επισκέπτη.”

The world seemed to slow down and blur as Katja turned look at the woman who had just entered the room. Academically she had known this would be a possibility, but as she set her eyes on the girl—living and breathing—the reality of the situation came crashing down on her. Oh god! She is alive!

The girl looked much like the picture Thanasi had given her, if only possibly prettier. Chest-length dark brown hair framed her symmetrical face with naturally pouty lips and brown eyes. Her skin was slightly darker than Thanasi’s, creating an exotic look that reminded her almost of some of the women she had met in Egypt. As with the other staff, she wore a black top, hers a sleeveless low-cut blouse, and black tight pants with practical black sneakers.

Why the hell does she have to be so damn pretty?

Eleni looked at the owner first and then at Katja as she continued to walk up. The look on her face just seemed to be of mild confusion but no particular suspicion.

Katja forced a smile. She was tense and trying the best she could to hide it. “Eleni Katramados?”