He had a simple rule in this regard. Work only for the most ruthless, and never meet them face-to-face in their own backyard. If they wanted to hire him they had to send someone to Athens or Istanbul. Occasionally, he would travel to Cairo, but since the towers had fallen in New York, he no longer felt safe in the Egyptian capital. Their president was too close to the United States, and his security service was far too efficient and brutal to toy with.
Cyprus had been his home now for more than a decade. It was where he went to find the solitude that he needed between jobs. To get in and out of these war-torn countries he’d posed as a reporter, an oil company engineer, even a mercenary from time to time. More often than not, though, he was acting on behalf of international relief organizations. He had a small business in Limassol, Cyprus, called Aid Logistics Inc that specialized in cutting through the red tape in the war-torn areas of Africa. He’d even been recognized by the International Committee of the Red Cross for his services. The business turned a tidy little profit on the side, but more importantly it gave him legitimacy. It helped him build up his contacts and keep track of the ever-changing players in the subcontinent’s continuing saga.
Now, here in America he was simply a tourist. A Greek tourist at that. Somewhere in his family’s history there had to be a few drops of Greek blood, or at a bare minimum, a healthy portion of Macedonian. He’d traveled Greece extensively and knew the language well enough, since it was also the national language of Cyprus. The customs officer at JFK had waved him through with a smile, which seemed to confirm Gazich’s belief that the Greeks were well liked by mostly everyone with the exception of the Turks.