The Two Faces of January Read Online Free PDF Page A

the Texas and Mexico border. It had brought in over a million dollars on stock Chester offered over the counter at eight dollars per share. Chester had certified financial statements showing Unimex’s assets to be worth six million dollars, and he had even had New York brokers sent to inspect certain sites in the Gulf of Mexico, which, however, were owned by other people. Chester had bought a very small abandoned site, but he laid claim to a hundred square miles around it. Unimex and Canadian Star were now Chester’s chief sources of income.
    After a few days in Greece, Chester found that he breathed more easily. He enjoyed the strange meals at tavernas, the little oily dishes of this and that, washed down with ouzo or a bottle of wine that usually neither of them liked, though Chester always finished it. Colette bought five pairs of shoes, and Chester had a suit made of English tweed in a fraction of the time and for less than half what it would have cost him in the States. Still, it was a habit, a nervous habit, for him to glance around the hotel lobby to see if there were anyone who looked like a police agent. He doubted if they would send a man over for him, but the F.B.I. had representatives abroad, he supposed. All they would need was a photograph, the collected testimony of a few swindled people, and, by checking with the passport authorities, they could discover his name.
    In their six days in Athens, Chester and Colette had gone twice to the Acropolis with their Guide Bleu, had taken a bus to see the sunset at Sounion and Byron’s famous signature in one of the marble columns of the ruined temple there, had done the main museums, gone once to the theatre—just to go, because they hadn’t understood a thing about the play—and had made their plans for the rest of the country. The Peloponnesus was next, with Mycenae and Corinth, for which they planned to rent a car, and then Crete and Rhodes. Then back by plane to Paris for another week or so before going home. They were apartmentless in New York now, did not want to live in Manhattan again, and they planned to buy a house either in Connecticut or northern Pennsylvania.
    Around six o’clock of the evening before their departure for Corinth and Mycenae, Chester went out of the hotel for a few minutes to buy a bottle of Dewar’s. When he walked back into the lobby, he noticed a dark man, in a grey overcoat and hat, standing with his hands in his overcoat pockets near one of the cream-colored columns that supported the ceiling. The man had thick black eyebrows, and Chester could not be sure the man looked at him, but he thought so. Chester looked away, glanced around him quickly, and noticed the young man in the dark overcoat he had twice seen before, standing now near the door and smoking a cigarette. Agents, Chester thought. His eyes had been drawn to the man in the grey overcoat as a result of conditioning, he knew; though because he had felt so secure the last couple of days, his habit of glancing around the lobby had left him. He’d suspected that the younger man was an agent, and now he was sure. Chester went casually over to the hotel desk and gave the message he had intended to give when he came in:
    â€œWe’ll be leaving tomorrow pretty early. Can you make up our bill so we can settle it tonight? That’s MacFarland in six twenty-one.” His voice lowered involuntarily, but only a little, on “MacFarland”.
    As Chester walked on to the elevator, the older man moved, following him. The elevator arrived and the door slid open, and, being closest, Chester went into the elevator first. The man followed, removing his hat. Chester kept his on.
    â€œSix, please,” said Chester.
    The boy running the elevator glanced at the man.
    â€œSeex,” said the man.
    A Greek, Chester thought. He felt perhaps one degree better. The man had a thick, somewhat Semitic nose, black and grey hair, and his face was