The Heist

icons. But now I realize he might have just been taking out an insurance policy against his eventual capture and escape.”
    Her father opened another beer. “Or not. He could be anywhere or purposely leading you astray. It’s still a big jump to make that he’s there.”
    “That’s why I scanned hours of surveillance footage of the customs area at the Athens airport, and I spotted Nick in disguise as a priest, the cocky bastard. I pulled up the customs records. ‘Father Dowling’ flew from Athens to Thessaloniki, then took a bus toOuranoupoli, the ramshackle seaside village that happens to be the only spot on the western side of the peninsula where you can pick up the Athos ferry.”
    “And you want to go after him.”
    “Of course.”
    “Well, if you disregard the law banning women—”
    “And I do,” she said.
    “The other big problem is that Athos is virtually inaccessible by land. There aren’t any roads leading to it. But even on foot it’s damn near impossible,” he said, pointing out on the map that the narrow peninsula was dominated by a mountain range, with peaks ranging from 1,600 feet high to 6,600 atop the snowcapped Mount Athos itself.
    The rest of the peninsula’s geography was hardly more hospitable, with impassable gorges and deep ravines, dense forests, and a coastline of jagged cliffs, with imposing medieval monasteries rising from them as if they were natural extensions of the rock. Amid those formidable obstacles, however, were crop fields and olive groves from which the monks sustained themselves nutritionally and economically. They grew their own fruits and vegetables and produced olive oil and wine.
    “The only way in is by boat, but even then, each visitor must be male and obtain a permit, written in Greek and following the Julian calendar, from the leaders of at least four of the monasteries,” Jake said. “That process is complex, tricky, and takes forever. Even if the permit is granted, getting to Athos by ferry from Ouranoupoli can be treacherous. The sea is historically, and notoriously, unpredictable and dangerous.”
    “How do you know so much about Mount Athos?”
    “I’m a student of military history. I try to learn from pastmistakes,” Jake said. “In 492 B.C. , Mardonius, the great Persian general, lost his entire fleet of three hundred ships and twenty thousand men off the storm-tossed coast of Athos. In 411 B.C. , the Spartan admiral Epicleas lost fifty ships.”
    “That’s because they couldn’t fly,” she said. “I’m going to parachute onto Athos at night.”
    “You are,” he said.
    “Athos doesn’t have radar or air defenses, and it certainly doesn’t have security patrols or other perimeter defenses on the ground. So how hard can it be? All I’ve got to do is fly into Athens, catch another flight to Thessaloniki, then charter a small plane from there to take me over Athos.”
    “That’s all? Tell me, how many pilots do you know in Central Macedonia who’d be willing to defy centuries of Byzantine tradition and violate current Greek law to drop you over Athos?”
    “None,” she said. “But I’m sure that you do.”
    “You expect me to use my covert assets in Greece, calling in favors I earned through my blood and sweat during decades of military service, so you can chase a fugitive into a sovereign monastic state that you are forbidden by law, and some would say God, to enter.”
    “Can you think of a better vacation than that?”
    Jake had to use every ounce of his military training, everything he’d learned about withstanding brutal physical and mental torture at the hands of our most ruthless enemies, not to smile. He almost succeeded.
    “Dad, I’m not going to hit the ground, let down my hair, and stroll around the monasteries in a bikini,” she said. “I’m going to pass myself off as a man, one of the pilgrims visiting Athos to study.”
    “You think you can do that?”
    “Barbra Streisand did it in
Yentl
. I’ll cut my hair, tape down my boobs, and belch a lot. Nobody will suspect a thing. It’s not like they have a lot of experience recognizing women.”
    “Even if you’re right about Fox being in Athos, there are twenty monasteries and countless remote huts and caves,” he said. “How are you going to find him?”
    “Because Nick Fox is not a hermit or a monk. There’s no television or radio on Athos, and only limited electricity and phone service. He will want to be in constant contact with the outside