Hellenic Immortal by Gene Doucette Read Free Book Online Page A

room with a large supply of cash while I stood naked with nothing to protect me other than a flimsy—and certainly not bullet-proof—shower curtain. Either this meant that something about Mike made me want to trust him, or my low blood-sugar level was affecting my judgment.
    Anyway, it was a pretty quick shower. And when I emerged from the bathroom, I found Mike had indeed let himself out. My money was exactly where it was supposed to be. And on the bed was a small pile of silver disks; he’d left me the electronic bugs.
    The balcony door was open. I stuck my head outside and looked around, but there was nothing to see except a parking lot.
    Of course he couldn’t have actually left that way. It wasn’t possible.

DION. TRULY, I HAVE HAD MANY THINGS. BUT POSSESSIONS ONLY BRING HAPPINESS IF EMPLOYED CORRECTLY. TO HAVE IS NOT A REASON UNTO ITSELF.

    From the dialogues of Silenus the Younger. Text corrected and translated by Ariadne
    The funny thing about knowing you’re being followed because someone thinks you’re suspicious, is that once you know that, you really can’t help but act suspicious.
        I spent the next few days taking little trips out of the hotel, and since I hadn’t been doing that before, it had to have gotten some attention. Likewise, my tendency to break into an occasional sprint probably raised a few eyebrows.
    I know a little bit about surveillance. In the mid-seventeen hundreds, a French duke hired me to find out which of his friends was plotting to kill him. Since he was a high functioning paranoid with a lot of friends and an impressive imagination, this took a long time and plenty of extra staff, and was helped along by the fact that none of his friends were actually plotting anything against him. I think I could have held the position for a few decades had he not been poisoned by his own wife. We never checked her. I almost feel bad about this.
    Anyway, I left the casino because then the people following my movements couldn’t use casino cameras and had to actually walk around with me, and that made my prior experience mildly useful.
    With a little effort, I was able to identify between three and four agents rotating on me. I could shake three or four people if this were still the mid-seventeen hundreds. It wasn’t, so I couldn’t be positive I was accounting for everything.
    Fortunately, I know a better class of criminal than myself.
    *   *   *
    “Please say that again,” Tchekhy urged. The discontent in his voice was palpable. I could have opened with telling him I was on a prepaid cell phone I had just bought and was standing outside the casino, before telling him about the whole government-watching-everything-I-do thing, but I wanted to make him a little nervous because it was his own fault I was in Las Vegas in the first place. An immortal man who hates official attention shouldn’t be anywhere near this many private surveillance cameras, FBI or no. I expected better from him.
    For the record, I have nothing against governments as such. If countries are a logical progression from tribes, government is the tribal council, and I get that. The problem is that while it was much harder to insinuate myself into a tribe—which I had to do quite a lot—once I was in, I was in. Governments tend to require proof of who you are on a regular basis, and they don’t really like it when your reason for not having proof is that you’re older than their country. I can get away with a lot, thanks to Tchekhy’s exceptional forgery skills, but I haven’t invested in the kind of detailed identities that could survive extensive scrutiny. And since governments tend to institutionalize paranoia (this happens with every government once it gets large enough) it wouldn’t take much to get me locked up.
    “The FBI thinks I’m a person of interest,” I explained. “And now I’ve got a surveillance team on me. I could use some advice. I’m using a cell phone I just bought, by the way, so