The Phoenix

by Sidney Sheldon

  Lying between its more modest neighbors, Tinos, Syros, Paros and Naxos, at eighty-five square kilometers, Mykonos was by far the largest and ‘flashiest’ of the Cyclades, and had attracted the world’s elite, playboy class to its idyllic shores long before Makis Alexiadis became one of their number.

  Classically handsome in the Greek fashion, with thick, tar-black hair, olive skin and gray eyes like sea mist in the morning, Makis was of average height and stockily built, like a bull. Even when he was poor, growing up in a rundown apartment building in the Athenian suburb of Sepolia, women had been drawn to him like flies to honey. But Makis Alexiadis wasn’t poor any more. A career that had begun, aged only fifteen, as Spyros Petridis’s gopher-cum-driver-cum-golf-caddy-cum-all-round-lackey, had flourished twenty years later into wealth and power beyond even Makis’s wildest dreams. Since his boss’s death, ‘Big Mak’ Alexiadis had run the Petridis crime empire day-to-day, simultaneously growing his own ‘front-of-house’ business as a property developer, tycoon, philanthropist and all-round Greek media superstar. By exploiting the ‘synergies’ between his two lives, Makis Alexiadis had amassed a fortune that now rivaled his mentor Petridis’s net worth back in his heyday.

  These were good times.

  In a paradise awash with billionaires, there were naturally numerous contenders for the title of Mykonos’s most luxurious private residence. But Makis’s beloved Villa Mirage must surely have made most people’s top three. Fifteen thousand square feet of glass and marble, perched on the top of a cliff in Agios Lazaros, nestled amid five acres of manicured, formal gardens that glowed emerald green amid the surrounding red rock, Villa Mirage commanded ocean views so beautiful they had been known to make Makis Alexiadis weep. Which was quite an achievement. It would be an understatement to say that ‘Big Mak’ Alexiadis was not a sensitive man. Those who had been unlucky enough to cross him in business, or in life, knew him to be as stone-hearted as the huge boulders scattered around his beloved island, said by legend to be the petrified testicles of the Titans, mythical giants supposedly slain by Hercules on this very spot.

  Makis Alexiadis’s platinum Samsung Galaxy S III buzzed in his jacket pocket. He frowned. He only used this particular cell for his most private and important business, and it never left his side, not even while he slept. Theoretically a text at this time of night might be good news, but in this case he doubted it. He was right.

  Pulling out the phone he read the message. ‘Cargos lost at Lesbos and Chios. Two vessels sunk, one seized. More to follow.’

  ‘Damn it!’ Big Mak cursed aloud. That was the fourth lost shipment this month alone. Four hundred and twenty migrants at an average total profit of three thousand euros each … He totted up the value of the lost human life as if they were so many corn husks or sacks of sugar. Not that it was the money itself that mattered most. In the grand scheme of the Petridis empire that Big Mak presided over, 1.2 million euros was small potatoes. But the growing business of people-trafficking and, in particular, control of the profitable Aegean route, could be worth hundreds of millions to whichever gang gained ultimate supremacy. Losing not one more boat, but two on the same day, was a major setback. We’ll look like a laughing stock, Makis thought bitterly.

  Worse, he would have to explain this to the one person to whom, nominally at least, he still answered. That was not a prospect he relished, quite apart from the fact that any communication with this particular person exposed both Makis personally and the organization to serious risk, not to mention the logistical challenges involved.

  It wasn’t easy, communing with the dead.

  ‘There you are, Angel.’ Tatiana, Makis’s live-in Ukrainian companion, stepped out onto the balcony and coiled her lithe limbs longingly around him, like a hungry snake. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. People are asking for you, baby. Is everything OK?’

  Two inches taller than Makis, with a mane of brunette hair, swollen, bee-stung lips and a cartoonishly sexualized body that she’d barely covered tonight in some sort of woven gold, chainmail attire, Tatiana was every red-blooded male’s fantasy. At that moment, Makis felt simultaneously aroused and so irritated he could have happily wrapped his bare hands around her slender, gazelle’s neck and snapped it like an irksome twig.

  ‘No,’ he snapped, grabbing her hand and placing it over his rock-hard cock anyway, more from habit than desire. ‘Everything’s not OK. Tell them all to leave.’

  Tatiana laughed nervously. ‘I can hardly do that. The French president is here, my love, and the—’

  She gasped as Makis spun around and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her face so violently towards his own she thought for a moment he was going break her nose with the top of his skull, the way she’d seen him do to other underlings who’d annoyed him.

  ‘Would you defy me?’ He snarled at her like a dog.

  Terrified, she shook her head vehemently. ‘No, Mak. Never! I’ll do whatever you want. I’m sorry.’

  Mollified by her groveling and the unmistakable look of fear in her eyes, he let her go.

  ‘Get me a pencil and paper,’ he growled. ‘And get Frankie up here. Now.’

  He watched the girl scurry away and realized that, despite her physical perfection, he was bored. Time for a new model soon.

  Seconds later, a maid appeared with the pencil and paper he’d asked for, swiftly followed by Frankie Goulakis, a toothless peasant boy whom Makis Alexiadis had picked up at the side of the road one day out of curiosity and amusement, rather as one might a stray dog, and then kept around for the same reasons. Frankie was simple but reliable with straightforward tasks, and fanatically loyal to his master.

  ‘Take this to the caves.’ Scrawling a short note, Makis folded it and handed it to the boy. ‘Leave it in the usual place.’

  Frankie nodded and left.

  Glancing down again at the obscene display of wealth and modernity milling around in the gardens below him, Big Mak Alexiadis reflected once more on the ironies of doing business in modern Greece. Especially illicit business. While he received crucial information via encrypted text to his phone, the only way for him to safely pass on that information was via a piece of paper given to an illiterate boy, who would take it by donkey to the mouth of a cave where he would wedge it into a predetermined crevice. From there, another peasant would retrieve it and begin the long and arduous journey to his master, and from then onwards up an elaborate chain to Makis’s superior. The whole process might take up to two weeks, a frustrating but necessary set of precautions.

  Technology was evolving as rapidly here as everywhere else in the world. But it brought with it a new set of risks. Detection. Interception. Trackability. As a result, the old ways were still very much alive and well in Greece. Makis Alexiadis’s superior insisted on them.

  Sweat ran down the man’s face and back, his skin itching and burning beneath his simple woolen trousers and linen shirt. The sun, always fierce, seemed to burn today with a particularly fevered intensity. Almost as if he were being punished for toiling up the winding, rocky path to the convent. But of course, that couldn’t be. Father Georgiou had told him he was doing the Lord’s work by retrieving these messages from the cave and bringing them to Sister Elena.

  ‘Mother church needs you, Bazyli.’ That’s what Father Georgiou said. ‘Yours is not to reason why. You do your part and let the good sister do hers.’ Deeply pious and devoted, Bazyli would have loved to become a priest himself, but he knew in his heart he was not worthy. Instead he had devoted his life to humbly serving those greater and holier than he. That included Father Georgiou and, of course, Sister Elena herself, although the revered nun was surrounded by an aura of mystique that confused Bazyli, and sometimes frightened him. There was something else about her too: something womanly and of-the-flesh, something that belied the spiritual life she’d chosen and that made the simple man feel simultaneously happy and guilty in her presence. He dismissed these things as symptoms of his own sinful nature, and did his best to put
them aside.

  The journey to Sikinos had been long and arduous, on foot and on horseback along thorny back-roads and, the worst part for Bazyli, the sea crossing that always made him vomit, no matter how calm the waters. Usually, by this point, just a few hundred meters below the appointed meeting spot in an orchard adjoining the convent walls, he would be feeling relief. Soon the journey would be over, the message safely delivered to the first link in the chain, and Bazyli could return to his smallholding on Paros, to his chickens and his sweet peas and his Bible. But today the heat made relief impossible. All he wanted was to stop and rest in the shade, right now; to sink his face into a cool pool of water and to drink and slake his raging thirst, like an animal.

  Shielding his eyes against the blinding light, he looked once more up the hillside. And then, like a miracle, there she was, a black-and-white robed figure gliding down to greet him. Her face was veiled, hidden as always from the lustful eyes of men, and her female form completely covered by her habit. And yet the way she moved; her walk; the small, graceful movement of her hands, all mesmerized the messenger like some rare exotic drug.

  ‘Sister.’ Bazyli bowed his head as she came closer, dropping to his arthritic knees in both deference and exhaustion. ‘For you.’

  With trembling hands, he passed her the folded paper, panting like a dog.

  ‘Thank you.’ The soft cadence of her voice flowed over him like oil. Sister Elena rarely spoke. In the three years he’d acted as messenger for Father Georgiou, Bazyli couldn’t have heard her utter more than ten words in total. Yet he knew that, in paradise, that voice would return to him; that he would bask in her words for ever.

  ‘Please.’ From beneath her robes she extracted a large, plastic bottle of water and handed it to him in exchange for the note, which she slipped into a pocket, unread. After he’d drunk about half of it, she produced a slab of cheese wrapped in paper, two large tomatoes and some bread.

  ‘It’s not necessary, Sister,’ he protested, but she insisted, pressing the food into his hands. Then she laid a single palm on the top of his head in blessing, before turning and gliding back up the hill to the convent gate, as smoothly and silently as she’d arrived, like a ghost.

  She is goodness and kindness personified, Bazyli thought. The perfection of womanhood, like Our Lady, her life devoted to Christ.

  He had never been tempted to read any of the messages he delivered, even though, unlike Frankie Goulakis, he knew how to read. He’d already sullied Elena’s spiritual purity with his own base, wanton thoughts – his desires long suppressed but never conquered. This was why he wasn’t a priest. But he wasn’t about to compound his sin by looking at that which was intended for another. For someone so far above Bazyli, he didn’t even know their name. Although he assumed Sister Elena must know it …

  Finishing the water, he tucked the food into his knapsack and hurried back down the hill.

  It took Sister Elena fifteen minutes to reach the glade, a secret, completely secluded spot surrounded by thick pines and with a tiny, spring-fed stream trickling through it with water that was always ice cold, no matter how boiling the sun. Because it belonged to the Order of the Sacred Heart, no locals ever came here – they were a respectful lot, the islanders, as steeped in religious obedience and social propriety as any medieval serf. Being outside the convent walls, the glade was considered ‘off limits’ by Elena’s fellow nuns too. It was her private kingdom, a place where – uniquely – she could be ‘herself’.

  Whatever that meant.

  So many reinventions. So many different identities. Different lives. Each of them ‘real’ in their own way.

  It wasn’t like that for other people, she’d observed. In her fifty years on this earth, Elena had watched others grow and change and mature and evolve in a way that bore no relation to her own experience. Their lives weren’t static, exactly. But they were continuous, moving along in a straight line past recognizable milestones: birth, childhood, adolescence, youth, middle age, old age, death. Through it all you were still you.

  But not for her. Elena had existed as several distinct people, with no continuity at all. There was her childhood self: happy and calm. Her adolescent self: passionate, idealistic, sensual. Then came her longest, most significant role – her adult self, alive with a dark energy that annihilated all that had gone before. It was in this incarnation that she had met someone who was to change not just her own life, but the life of the world. Someone she still served, in a way, to this day, as the brand on her thigh reminded her.

  And yet, that self had died too, the day she arrived at the convent. And from her ashes had risen ‘Sister’ Elena. Quiet, patient, devoted, calm, a blessing to all her sisters and to everybody else whose path she crossed. Separated from the world by choice, no longer an influencer or even an observer, but a recluse, a willing outcast.

  In the beginning, life at the convent had felt like a curse. A punishment. But over the years Elena had come to cherish the deep peace of the nuns’ routine as a blessing. It was a privilege to be free of it all: the striving, the passion, the conflict, and to devote oneself exclusively to God. To work and pray and sleep and leave no space in your heart for anything else.

  She sighed. Such a pity it had to end.

  Nothing lasts for ever.

  Being ‘Sister’ Elena had been wonderful. But the letter in her hand meant that she was needed now for another role. She could no more stop this latest transformation than a caterpillar could refuse to spin its cocoon. It was time to shed her habit.

  Someone who was greater than Sister Elena could ever be was soon to rise, Lazarus-like, from the dead.

  The letter in her hands was from Makis Alexiadis. An important man, certainly, and yet not fit to kiss the feet of the one who was coming.

  Athena Petridis.

  Athena!

  Just the name sent chills like an electrical current through Sister Elena’s veins.

  Pulling out the note that Makis Alexiadis had taken such pains to get to her, Sister Elena unfolded it and read it slowly. Her stomach soured, and she felt a tension in her body, her arms and hands and neck, that was at once alien and yet distantly familiar. This was bad news. Very bad. Two more lost shipments, the boats gone down with scores of lives lost. It was almost as if someone were trying to sabotage Athena’s glorious return, her reclaiming of her birthright from Makis Alexiadis.

  Makis.

  Big Mak. That was what people called him now, the eager, scrawny little lad whom Spyros Petridis used to take everywhere with him, like a dog. He was, he claimed, still loyal to the couple who had plucked him from obscurity and thrust him into a world of inconceivable power, influence and wealth. But was he really? What if Makis was the one setting Athena up to fail? Allowing the lucrative Aegean migrant route to slip through her fingers? Laying the groundwork for a plot to usurp her?

  What if Makis Alexiadis couldn’t be trusted?

  Of course there were many others to be feared. Old enemies. In particular ‘The Group’. They were the ones who had sabotaged the Petridises’ helicopter that day. The day they died.

  Only of course, Athena hadn’t died. Somehow she’d survived the terrible flames of the wreckage, defied the searing heat like a witch. ‘Someone’ must have helped her.

  Sister Elena chuckled to herself.

  The drowned, branded boy would have let The Group know they’d failed. If Elena’s memory served, they didn’t take kindly to failure. Like all fanatics, they would fight on to the death. Till the job was done. They wouldn’t stop until they’d driven a stake through Athena’s heart.

  Through the tall pines, Sister Elena glimpsed the walls of the convent that had been her home, her sanctuary, for so many long years. She would have preferred to delay her departure, just for a few more months. To prepare, emotionally. To ready herself for her duty, for what was to come. But the branded child washed up on the shore meant that time had run out. Today’s note from Makis Alexiadis merely confirmed it.

>   The second coming was nigh.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The assassin crouched in the darkness, curled under the overhanging bay bushes that surrounded the bastide. His legs ached and his fingers had grown numb with cold. He felt as if he’d been waiting here forever. But these things mustn’t be rushed. The guardians of Andreas Kouvlaki’s estate, Monsieur and Madame Jamet, had only retired to bed half an hour ago. He must wait until both were deeply asleep before he made his move.

  Andreas Kouvlaki’s holiday villa in the south of France was a surprisingly tasteful property. Not for him the flashy, modern, glass and steel mansions overlooking Pampelonne beach or one of the grand gated estates in town. Instead the wealthy people-trafficker had chosen a converted seventeenth-century farmhouse in the hills above Ramatuelle, its secluded grounds ringed by woodland and completely hidden from the prying eyes of the locals. Perhaps he felt that the bastide’s isolation was security enough? Was that why he’d hired only the elderly Jamets, a single, bored night watchman and two Doberman pinschers as protection? Or perhaps he was simply too arrogant to believe that his enemies would dare risk a strike against him?

  His brother, Perry Kouvlaki, had been much more careful, installing elaborate alarm systems and trip wires and surrounding himself with a small army of bodyguards. Not that it had mattered in the end. The assassin had successfully dispatched Perry last month in Paris, beating him to death with a claw hammer in the back room of a deserted former nightclub, before branding his mangled body with a letter: ‘A’. Once he’d discovered the older Kouvlaki’s penchant for Arab boys, the younger the better, it had been easy to lure the revolting pedophile away from his various layers of protection to his death. He’d considered branding Perry while he was still alive. God knew the bastard deserved it. But once the hammer was in his hand, it was as if a red curtain descended and righteous, murderous rage took over. Perry was dead in seconds. In the end, he’d struggled to find enough unbroken skin on the corpse to leave his mark successfully, eventually opting for what had once been Perry Kouvlaki’s shoulder blade.