Absolute Proof

by Peter James

  Then a possibility occurred to Ross. Excitedly he returned to Google Earth, pulled up Chalice Well and looked at the hockey-stick shape.

  It fitted!

  He grabbed his wallet, logged out of Google Earth and began a shopping spree on the internet.

  Just as he clicked the final ‘Confirm Purchase’ button, he heard Monty bark downstairs. It was followed by Imogen’s voice calling out.

  ‘Ross, I’m home!’

  ‘Great, I’m starving,’ he shouted back. ‘The chicken should be ready in ten minutes.’

  ‘How was your golf? Did you win?’

  ‘No, but I came second!’

  Monty bounded into the room, soaking wet, shook himself, spattering water everywhere, then trotted over to him, sat on his haunches and raised his front paws.

  ‘Hey, wet boy, had a good walk?’

  He tickled the dog’s tummy.

  Normality.

  Something that was badly missing from his life.

  But he felt incredibly excited – and more than a little scared.

  He emailed Zack Boxx back.

  You’re a genius!

  Boxx replied seconds later.

  I know. Ok if I go back to bed now? It’s still pretty early for me.

  30

  Monday, 27 February

  Monaco worked well for his purposes. The rocky principality, the second smallest country in the world, about two square kilometres. Bordered on three sides by France and on the fourth by the Mediterranean, much of it is jam-packed with shoulder-to-shoulder high-rise apartment blocks. There are no beggars and no homeless people, just conspicuous wealth managing to be quite inconspicuous, wherever you looked.

  The country’s fame as a glamorous tax haven, the sunny climate and the short hop to the international airport of Nice were all attractions to him, but not the main reason he was here. It was the anonymity this place afforded – and which the residents could afford – that suited him most of all.

  Here in Monaco, at the deli counter in a supermarket you could find yourself standing next to an F1 driver or a Russian investment banker or a Brexit exile – or Big Tony. Who was actually small.

  Although you didn’t really want to be standing next to Big Tony if you could help it. Not that he smelled bad or anything. It was just his aura. He wore it like a black cloak.

  Big Tony had a quite unremarkable physical presence and his complexion was pallid. He didn’t go out much, except to ride one of his powerful motorbikes fast around the corniches – the twisting mountainous roads between here and Nice. He’d got used to being indoors, felt more comfortable there. But he liked knowing that these days he at least had a choice – unlike half of his adult years, which he had spent in a supermax prison in Colorado. If he had been small and hunched when he went in aged twenty-six, now at sixty-three he was even smaller, thinner, with a nervous demeanour and bird-of-prey eyes. He had good reason to be nervous; there were a few people with scores to settle, in particular a couple of mobsters in prison who had boasted to him, and then he’d ratted on them, in exchange for a cut in his sentence. He’d be looking over his shoulder – and underneath his car – for the rest of his life.

  Big Tony had carried out seventeen successful hits by the time he was twenty-five. The eighteenth was an expensive screw-up – not for his paymasters, who got their two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of dead shitbag. But for him. Sheer bad luck. A tyre blew out on the 401 in North Toronto in his rental Durango, on the way to the airport. As he’d pulled over to the hard shoulder he’d been side-swiped by a truck driver who’d been playing a game on his cell phone, he learned later. While he was recovering from his injuries in hospital over the next three months, the RCMP had a field day with the gun in the trunk of the car and his laptop data, and some months later he was extradited to face trial in the USA.

  Now twelve years on from his release he was back on his feet, big time. No more random assignments for him, from now on he would pick and choose carefully. And only the richest of pickings. He remembered the words of the US army general, Patton, in a movie he had seen years back: ‘No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.’

  These days he was, mostly, Mr Fixit. He got things back for people. And just occasionally, plain simple, got things for people that they wanted.

  And the arrogant shit of a man with stupid red glasses, wearing a neat suit and carrying a briefcase full of what British criminals like to call folding, who had just entered his twelfth-floor apartment, was someone who needed his services. He had it written all over his face, however hard he was trying to mask it.

  They sat in the bay window with its southern view overlooking the heliport and the Mediterranean beyond, and a small park to the east, where a woman was walking a dog. The Englishman held a large tumbler of twenty-five-year-old Glenfiddich in his hand. Big Tony, who never drank whilst doing business, held a Virgin Mary. It turned out to be an appropriate drink, from what he was about to hear.

  ‘We have a problem,’ the Englishman said. ‘I’ve been told you are the man who could solve it for me.’

  ‘In that case,’ Big Tony said, with his slow Mississippi drawl, in a voice that was much deeper and stronger than his appearance hinted, ‘guess you’re the one got the problem, mister.’

  The Englishman frowned. ‘Me?’

  ‘I don’t solve problems, mister, I just do things for people.’

  ‘Then we’re on the same page.’

  ‘Depends what you got inside that bag of yours.’

  The Englishman opened it and showed the contents. Bundles of banded five-hundred-dollar notes. ‘Two million, you asked?’

  ‘And the same again on delivery.’

  ‘You’re expensive.’

  ‘I’m expensive?’

  ‘Yes. Very.’

  ‘Close the bag.’

  ‘Close it?’ the Englishman queried.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Why do you want me to do that?’

  ‘Because you’re gonna pick it up and carry it back outta here. I’m not your man.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What part of that did you not understand?’

  The Englishman looked awkward. He took a long pull on his drink. ‘OK, look, I think we just got off on the wrong foot. I’m cool with your price.’

  ‘I’m not. It just went up.’

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry. I’m happy to pay your price.’

  ‘Fine. It’s now eight million.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘It’s doubled.’

  ‘I know who you work for. Money’s no object. Come back with the right amount and we’ll talk again.’

  The Englishman looked like he was chewing a wasp. ‘Look – please – let’s—’

  ‘Let’s what?’ he interrupted. ‘Look, mister, two things you’d better know about me if you want to do business. First is I don’t negotiate. Second is I’m not a good person to have not liking you. Understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘I understand.’ The Englishman looked at his watch. ‘I could come back tomorrow.’

  ‘After eleven. I have my Pilates trainer here first thing.’

  ‘OK – but in the meantime you may want to take a look at this.’ The Englishman handed Big Tony a USB stick.

  ‘I’ll take a look when I see the colour of your money. And no negotiation.’

  ‘No more negotiation. As you say, my boss has very deep pockets.’

  ‘Likes playing pocket billiards, does he?’

  The Englishman chewed another wasp. Then he said, ‘You come very highly recommended.’

  ‘I don’t go for bullshit. Come back tomorrow or go find someone else. You ain’t gonna change my life either which way.’

  ‘I’ll be back tomorrow, after eleven, with the money.’

  ‘Yeah, you will.’

  31

  Monday, 27 February


  Ross had spent the first years of his journalism career as a reporter on the Argus newspaper in Brighton, then had moved to the City desk at the Daily Mail. After a spell there, he’d joined the Sunday Times Insight team, where he had really cut his teeth in investigative journalism, and found that was what he loved doing best. Then three years ago, feeling he’d made enough contacts with major newspaper editorial teams, he made the decision, supported by Imogen, to go it alone.

  He’d never regretted that, although there were days when he missed the camaraderie – and the buzz – of daily office life.

  It had taken Ross a long time to get used to working from home. He enjoyed the luxury of being as scruffy as he liked, and the freedom to pursue any stories he fancied, but there were plenty of days when time dragged and ended being broken down into little highlights.

  One was when the newspapers arrived. Another was the morning post. Another was the sporadic delivery of Amazon and other online orders. And he always made time to take Monty for a long walk in the early afternoon.

  The post used to arrive at 10 a.m. promptly, but recently the postman had retired and his replacement was erratic, with no post arriving some days until well past midday. Today was one of those. But he’d been kept busy most of the morning with three separate Amazon deliveries from orders he had placed yesterday – two of them very bulky packages.

  He’d opened them and stashed their contents at the back of the integral garage, part of which they used as storage, not wanting to have to explain them to Imogen.

  As he sat back at his desk, responding to a suggestion from an editor that he might like to take a look into the personal wealth and tax affairs of a recently knighted retail tycoon, he heard a clatter from downstairs, accompanied by several loud barks from Monty.

  The signal that the post had finally arrived. He glanced at his watch – it was 12.35 p.m. – and went downstairs. The post had indeed arrived, a thin stack bound by an elastic band, lying on the doormat.

  He carried it through to the kitchen and flicked through it. A large envelope from his accountant (probably not going to make good reading, he thought), a typed envelope addressed to Imogen, a buff envelope from HMRC that looked suspiciously like a tax demand and, at the bottom, a small, handwritten envelope addressed to him, with a Birmingham postmark.

  The writing was old-fashioned and he recognized it at once.

  Putting Imogen’s post on the hall table, he went back upstairs with the rest of his, sat down and opened the handwritten envelope.

  Inside was a letter.

  Dear Mr Hunter

  I am worried about what I have been told – and passed on to you. As a safeguard, because it is so important, if anything should happen to me, I have entrusted the two remaining sets of coordinates to the care of my solicitor, Mr Robert Anholt-Sperry at Anholt-Sperry Brine, in Birmingham, who has them safe. He is instructed to hand them to you, alone, on proof of identity and no one else – should the first set, at Chalice Well, convince you, which I sincerely hope it will, of my bona fides. In the event anything should happen to me, sole responsibility for saving the world will rest with you.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Dr Harry F. Cook

  Ross read the letter through again. ‘Well, that’s a big ticket, Harry!’ he said aloud. He smiled, but inside he was shaking. Then he jumped as the doorbell rang.

  Peering out of the window, he saw a UPS van. He hurried downstairs and opened the front door.

  It was another delivery of stuff he had ordered yesterday.

  He signed for it, then took Monty for a long walk. He crossed the footbridge over the A27 carriageway, and then on up the sloping, open fields towards the Chattri, the beautiful temple-like memorial built on the site where Sikh soldiers, who had died in Brighton from injuries they had sustained in the First World War, had been cremated.

  It was an area where Monty loved to roam off his lead and where Ross could do his best thinking.

  And, despite being filled with misgivings about the strange old man, he had one overriding thought.

  What if, just what if – however improbably – Harry Cook was for real?

  Nine metres south turn left.

  He was going to give the man one last shot, he felt he owed him that. If that came to nothing then finito. End of.

  Tomorrow night, Tuesday, was Imogen’s book club night. A good time to be out, too. Maybe if it all went well, he’d be home before her. Although in his heart he doubted that. He was nervous at the thought of what lay ahead. But he knew that unless he went through with it he would forever be wondering – for the rest of his life.

  But the disturbed earth on the Chalice Well hillside bothered him. If Cook had been telling him the truth, had someone else attempted to excavate in the same spot? Someone ahead of the game?

  Had they found the Holy Grail already?

  He didn’t think so. And if they hadn’t, then they would still be looking, too.

  Was it possible they could be watching him? Waiting for him to lead them to it?

  As soon as he got home he picked up his wallet and keys, went out to his car and drove the ten miles to the county town of Lewes. The Lewes Flea Market, sited in a historic building, was partly supplied by house-clearance companies. The two hundred stalls-within-a-shop contained everything from old furniture and paintings to pre- and post-war artefacts and bric-a-brac, much of little value, but too collectable to be considered junk.

  Ross found what he needed there after only a few minutes.

  32

  Monday, 27 February

  The tall, forty-eight-year-old American was perspiring in his heavy, hooded black habit as he lugged an armful of fresh bedding up the stone steps from the monastery’s basement laundry. The knuckles of his right hand were raw, the skin scraped off, and hurting. He was feeling terrible today, but he was trying to carry on as normal, as if nothing had happened.

  After morning prayers, Brother Pete had stripped the beds of the overnight guests, then washed their towels, sheets and pillowcases and hung them out to dry. Here at Simonopetra, perched high up on a rock promontory overlooking the Aegean, the monastic tradition of food and overnight accommodation to visitors was upheld rigorously. But guests were only permitted to stay for one night, before moving on to another monastery, several kilometres’ hike away.

  He made his way along the network of dark passageways, towards the guest dormitory, and entered the room. It had an austere, prison-like feel, with rows of metal bunk beds, bare walls and a view from the tiny casement windows of the blue sea, several hundred metres below. Water that, on stifling Greek summer days, he sometimes longed – sinfully – to jump into, but swimming was considered pleasure, and all pleasures were forbidden here in this ascetic community that was his home, and which he could never see himself leaving.

  There was limited electricity. Radios and televisions were forbidden and communication with the outside world was severely restricted. A monk, once admitted to permanent residence, could never leave without the consent of the Abbot.

  Only one woman had set foot here in Mount Athos since 800 AD, when the first of the twenty monasteries on this long, narrow and mountainous peninsula in Northern Greece was founded. The Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy Mountain, ruled by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, had been Christian Orthodox for eighteen hundred years. Seventeen of the monasteries were Greek Orthodox, one was Russian Orthodox, one Serbian Orthodox and one Albanian Orthodox. None of the monks spoke to each other, except when it was vital, and then only with the consent of their Abbot.

  Sealed off from the mainland by an impenetrable mountainous barrier, there was no road in. The only way to reach Mount Athos was by ferry from Thessaloniki, where access was permitted to only twelve non-Greek Orthodox males at any one time, and all visitors had to present themselves to the Monk Bureau in Thessaloniki to be inspected to ensure they were not females in disguise. Boats carrying females were not permitted closer than one kilometre
to the shores, and the highest female life forms allowed on the peninsula were hens. Not even female dogs or cats were permitted.

  All of this suited Brother Pete fine. The tall, gangly, heavily bearded and shaven-headed monk had spent many peaceful years as the Guest Master in this monastery. But when he had first arrived, the dwindling population had been a worry to all the monks here, as well as to all the other monasteries.

  When the previous Abbot had died, a few years before Pete’s arrival, there had been too few monks in residence to carry his coffin. Fortunately God had intervened, and during the past decade the numbers here in this monastery had increased from two to twenty-five – people like him escaping for whatever reason from the wider, materialistic world to devote their lives to serving God. And the numbers had similarly increased throughout the peninsula.

  Mount Athos had no means to recruit monks. To replace those who died, the community relied entirely on visitors deciding to stay. Just as he had done, himself. Pete Stellos had visited at the suggestion of his cousin, and understood the Lord’s calling when he arrived.

  His days were filled peacefully with work and prayer, and his devotion enabled him to ignore the privations – which included the sticky heat of the summer and the freezing cold of the winters. His routine was to rise at 2 a.m., enter the chapel and pray until 6.30 a.m. when the morning meal was served, six days a week. The seventh day was fasting. The meal, of cheese, salad, fish and white wine, was eaten rapidly, in silence, whilst the Abbot or a deputy intoned the day’s reading from the lectern in the refectory.

  After the meal he would pray again until 9 a.m., and then he would make the beds in the visitors’ dormitory, do the laundry and afterwards pray again until the evening meal of salad, cheese and white wine once more. After that he would pray until 10 p.m. when he would retire to bed.

  If any visitors wanted to talk to him, they had to request consent from the Abbot, and usually would be granted this for fifteen minutes after the evening meal. Brother Pete preferred not to have to speak to anyone, but he knew that these rare occasions when an audience with him was requested was an opportunity to perhaps convince someone to consider a calling here. Most of those who visited were devout men of faith paying respects or those desperately seeking God’s help in curing a dying loved one, or the recently bereaved seeking understanding and solace, or those seeking restoration.