Lourdes of Loki part 34 - The oracle

After backtracking through the streets of Chalandri, Athens - and then starting all over again, Fenrir and I soon found us in front of a glass and iron structure which looked like it had taken quite a bit of a beating by some mad frost giant on steroids. Modern architecture in other words.

"So this is it? This is where Cordelia the oracle lives?" I asked my werewolf brother and he was merrily wagging his tail for confirmation. Thus I wormed out of the backpack and retrieved the piece of paper where Sebastian had written down the address, both in Greek and western style lettering. There was a code to the door as well, and I had a suspicion it might not work, after all in certain districts those were changed more often than people changed their underwear. But apparently Chalandri was no such districts because the door buzzed open and Fenrir and I were able to enter. As it fell shut behind us again, we found usselves in a quite large and empty foyer with elevators running on the opposite side. The place was unclean and smelled damply of concrete, sewage and old dust. Obviously the outside was better taken care of than the inside.

Shrugging it off we called down an elevator and when it arrived we went inside and started to reverse our appearance changing process. I pulled out Fenrir's clothes and my bag from his backpack while he transformed back into human form, and after that he jumped into his boxers, jeans, t-skirt and jacket with the swiftness of a fireman on duty call. I simply removed my wig and sunglasses with a relief. It was great to be back to the old Lourdes again, honestly I've never been much for these cloak and dagger games.

The elevator took us up to the sixth floor, the one just below the penthouse one where apparently this oracle lived. Funny, I've always been picturing oracles as living in caves and murky old temples, the image of the Delphian Pythia etched into my mind. But this woman was apparently more found of high and airy places.  

We ascended the last of the staircases and then we found ourselves on top of the well and in front of a sole oak door with a brass handler and with the name Counil etched into a small brass plate next to a door bell. Fenrir pressed his thumb upon the bell and became rewarded with a ding-dong from somewhere inside. Then silence resided in the stairwell for a few moments, the only thing heard being the air conditioner and the sound of traffic from outside. Somewhere a church-bell was jangling. Just when my brother raised his hand to press the button again, there was a sound by the door, soft footfalls and then the rattling sounds of at least two chains being pulled to the side.

"Someone's preoccupied with her privacy I can tell," Fenrir whispered in my ear and I giggled slightly. Then the door was pushed a bit ajar and the face of a balding old man was seen in the small crack.
"Good day," Fenrir addressed the man. "I'm Felix LeGrand. My sister Lourdes and I have come to see Mrs. Cordelia."
"Have you made an appointment ahead?" the comeback was made in garbled however grammatically correct English.
"No," Fenrir admitted and the door began to close, but my brother caught the door with his right hand. "We would very much like to see Mrs. Cordelia. It's a matter of life and death and we believe she's the only one who can really help us."
"So says them all," the Greek responded and I saw that he and my brother were struggling with the door.

"My, uh, client is quite loaded," Fenrir tried.
"Say what?"
"He can pay well."
"They say that also."
"Sir, I know how much an oracle generally charge. My client is ready to double that amount for one session. And then twice the price again if she should be successful. Not to mention a little tip for you, sir."

Finally I saw the small twitch of Fenrir's hand as he relaxed a bit. The old man had apparently stopped pulling at the door handler.
"How much?" came the husky wheeze and Fenrir smirked as his eyes flickered over to mine. Works all the time, his glance was saying and if he still had been in wolf form he'd been wagging his tail right now.
"Perhaps 500 Euros sounds like a deal?" Fenrir said and produced a bill, holding it up for the man to see.

At Fenrir's actions he suddenly had to let go of his hand completely as the door fanned open and the old Greek stepped to the side, admitting us into a narrow hallway filled with clothes, hats, umbrellas and with abstract art hanging on the walls. The place smelled faintly of shoe-polish and marihuana. The Greek quickly snatched the bill from my brother's hand and it disappeared inside of a pocket of his threadbare old tartan-patterned jacket.

A hissing sound made me glance to the left, and there were two cats craning their backs and furring their tails at us, most probably at my canine brother to be true.
"Schaech," the old man snarled and the cats turned and ran off down a corridor. Then he guided us in the other direction and out in a larger room which was sunken three steps beneath the hallway. A living room originally, which had been turned into an art studio with easels, tubes of paint and paintbrushes all over the place. That was obviously the origin of the abstract works filling almost every inch of the walls.

The old man, which I figured was some kind of butler, didn't stop there though but crossed the room and walked over to an open slid glass door, which he pulled a bit more open then making a gesture for us to follow him out on a terrace. There by a pool filled with turquoise water was a woman resting in one of the two deck chairs, beneath a large sunscreen and covering her hair and face with a large, wide-brimmed hat of the kind British royalties would wear. She was reading from an iPad and had phones in her ears, so the butler walked over to her and tapped her gently on her shoulder.

Slightly startled, the woman removed one of her ear buds and gazed trough large sunglasses at the man. She was really tanned and a bit on the pudgy side and she wore a ruby red bikini and had two gold rings pierced into her navel, one above and one below. Her age appeared impossible to tell, she could be anything from 22 to 60 actually.

Her butler said something in Greek to her and she replied in the same language and with an angered voice. A few more exchanges were made, in which I heard the words Euros and Clients being mentioned. Finally the woman shifted in her chair, turning to face us. Then she sat up straight and said something to the man, who dashed off and disappeared inside of the apartment again.

"So," she said. "You're the clients who don't bother booking time, and expect I should see you in spite. Just because you're rich. What is it with rich people always thinking they can get all they want?" She was speaking French, and with a Riviera accent. Antibes or something, I guessed. "Just like Melina Mercoury I don't receive clients on a Sunday, it's my day off." Then she removed her glasses and her hat, and I found myself staring at a snake nest instead of regular hair.

"Medusa!" I backed off in fear, convinced that I would be turned into stone upon meeting this woman's gaze.
"No, not exactly," the snaked-haired said. "I'm Cordelia Counil. I'm a gorgon, that's true, but I don't stone people with my eyes. That's my cousin Medusa. Now, she deserves the shit, that moron. She actually slept with Poseidon inside of Athena's temple. Helloooo!" Cordelia tapped her forehead and rolled her eyes. "Anyone with more than 3 brain cells would label that as a not so smart idea!"

"Poseidon, huh," I echoed, feeling my cheeks blush. I had to admit I was still not really over that man.
"Yeah. OK that man is sex on a stick and all that, but a woman's got to be a bit more selective than that, ain't that right, blonde?" she stared at me – without me becoming any stiffer than regularly when I became slightly annoyed.
"I'm Lourdes," I replied coolly. "And I don't know about what Medusa and Poseidon did and frankly I couldn't care less. Now, my brother Fenrir and I are here for a missing person's case." I chose at that time to use my brother's real name, if she was the real thing, she'd learn it anyhow.
"I know," she said. "Stavros just told me. Tipping him off with what equals his weekly salary, makes me assuming you're ready to spend quite a few euros on little miss Cordelia as well. So out with it. Who's missing?"

"Our dad," Fenrir now came forward. "Loki Laufeyson. He was snatched off from his estate in France by an Abraxas. The beast turned out to be employed by an Italian vampire named Lothario, but Lothario was commissioned by someone else to do the dirty-job. And we wish to know who hired him for that job. Who's taken our father. And where and why?"

"I see," the gorgon slapped at one of her snakes which came too close to her nose and once again I wondered about those beings. Did the snakes have minds of their own or were they just appendixes of their host? "Vampires and Abraxas, that's nothing you go to the regular cops with. Not even in Italy."
"We'll pay you 4000 euros now for information about our father, and then another 4000 when he's safe home again in France," Fenrir said and for emphasis he took out his wallet and counted up four bills, which he handed over to the oracle.

I was expecting Cordelia to start with the same bidding as Fenrir and Sebastian had been involved in earlier, but she simply accepted the bills and fastened them in the string of her bikini panties in a way which made me think of strippers. So much for calling me blond.
"You have a picture of your father," she then said and Fenrir reached for his phone this time and after browsing through the picture gallery he found one of Loki raising a glass of wine towards the photographer. He turned the phone around and handed it to the oracle, who was scrutinizing it for quite some time.
"Handsome," she finally said, followed by a few words in Greek. Then she returned the phone.

"Go home!" she then said and I saw Fenrir making a face at her almost snapping order. Now what? He opened his mouth, preparing to say something, but the oracle was not done. "Go home and search his files for a Russian named Ivan Seratov. Nicknamed Captain Carnage. He and your father had some business going on back in the 00's. Arms deals. The Russian was the middle hand for some freedom fighters down in one of all those 'stan suffixed countries. He and your father had some kind of disagreement, seems like Seratov failed to pay your father. Thus no guns for the old Soviet army thug. And that was not of the liking by the men on the other end of the business chain. The rebels. And they blame Seratov for what happened and are now after him to get either their gun or the money they claim to have invested in the opportunity.

And for Seratov to gets what he wants he has simply taken your father in custody, with the desire to blackmail him into giving up the guns the rebels need. And then a little something for his own good as well."
"But if this Seratov screwed up either those rebels or our father?" I began.
"Or both?" Fenrir added.
"Wouldn't he then think it's stupid to kidnap our father, after all he must know where the money from the rebels are, why not simply returning them and call of the deal?"
"Do you think he see it that way?" the oracle said.
"Probably not," I had to admit.

"So what do we do?" My brother asked.
"Go find Seratov," the oracle said. "All you need to know about his whereabouts are found in your father's files. Then go get your father. And remember to bring the big guns, and the bullet proof west, these men are dangerous. And most of all, you have to hurry, time is dire in this case."
"I understand," Fenrir said, and then we thanked Cordelia, but just as we turned to leave, she called us back.
"Another word of advice," she said. "Actually two, don't flash those money you have, werewolf, some people here in Greece are desperate after the long crisis, and might do anything for a few euros. And then, if you should come across The Goddess on the Harley, make sure to enlist her and her friends in your chase. Their help will be valuable."

"Goddess on a Harley?" I asked.
"You'll know her when you see her, that's all I can say," Cordelia answered in a dismissive voice.

***

Five minutes later Fenrir and I were out in the streets of Athens again.
"Seems like our business here is done," my brother said with a shrug before he brought up his phone. "I'm going to give Igor a call, tell him to start looking through dad's files, to see what there is to be found about this Ivan Seratov. Captain Carnage, huh, sounds like a Marvel Comics badass. And we're taking the first flight home to France."
"Fenrir, do you know who this Goddess on a Harley might be."
"Frankly I have no idea," he sighed. "Both Loki and Thor own HD's but I know of no goddess. But trust an oracle to drop at least one obscure clue."  

"And I wondered who was stalking us," I added.
"Might be just someone who had seen our money and was waiting for his chance to rob us."
"Fenrir! You really believe it's this bad here?" I asked, looking around in this seemingly sleepy neighborhood.
"I'm not sure, however you have nothing to worry about, there's no human being born who have managed to rob a werewolf of something."

The next moment Igor was apparently picking up on the other side, because I heard a voice through the receiver, and then Fenrir told him what we just had learned and that he should start searching dad's files. Five minutes later we were down in the Athenian subway again, on our way back to the airport. If we were lucky we would be home in France again at supper.