The Phoenix

by Sidney Sheldon

  Pulling an iPad out from the pocket of his capacious evening jacket – his entire suit was more tent than apparel – Nikkos pulled up a map of Sikinos.

  ‘So, this is the island. Very small, as you can see. Not much there except the convent, two farms and a fishing village. Boats can access here and here.’ He jabbed at the screen with a pudgy finger. ‘But you don’t need to worry about that; you will be going in as one of the staff at Maria’s bakery, They’re based on Folegandros, a neighboring island. Sikinos isn’t big enough to support a bakery of its own. The nuns generally bake their own bread, but they occasionally order in cakes or pastries for special occasions. Next Wednesday is the feast of St Spyridon, patron saint of the Cyclades islands. They’ve already put in an order for madeleines and portokalopita, the traditional orange cakes of the region, as well as fifty special loaves. Delivery will be Wednesday morning, early.’

  ‘Do I have a name? A cover story?’ Ella asked, surprised by the strength of her excitement. For the first time since she left Mykonos, this felt real. And once again, she couldn’t help but feel the tug of destiny – being a part of this mission felt strangely like coming home.

  ‘Your name is Marta and you’re from Patras.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Ella looked worried. After all Gabriel’s admonitions about the importance of a detailed cover story and sticking to it – all the endless complications of being Persephone Hamlin – this felt like something of a turnaround.

  ‘No one will question you,’ said Nikkos. ‘You’re delivering cakes. When you arrive, the sisters should still be at Matins. You need to make an excuse and slip out of the kitchens. Find Sister Elena. If you can, you are to take a “mental picture”. Apparently you know what that means?’

  Ella nodded.

  ‘Good. It’s unlikely there’ll be much electronic traffic in the convent itself for you to pick up on, but you never know. If Elena does turn out to be Athena, then she must have had some means of communicating with her network. So. Be prepared. Be aware. But above all, we need eyes on Sister Elena.’

  Ella nodded gravely. ‘How long will I have?’

  ‘Usually, the delivery girls are offered a meal and invited to pray with the community before they take the boat back,’ said Nikkos. ‘We hope that will give you an hour inside, perhaps a little more. Whatever happens, whether you’ve found Elena or not, make sure you rejoin the rest of Maria’s staff before they leave and that you take the boat back to Folegandros with them. Someone will debrief you afterwards.’

  Ella scowled. ‘I can’t leave without finding Athena.’

  ‘Certainly you can,’ Nikkos replied robustly. ‘Don’t forget, Sister Elena may not be Athena.’

  ‘She is,’ muttered Ella. ‘I feel it in my bones.’

  Nikkos rolled his eyes. ‘Bones, schmones, my dear. Your job is to make sure.’

  ‘If it is her, and I get her alone,’ Ella mused, ‘I’d have a chance to strike.’

  ‘Strike?’

  ‘I’d have a chance to kill her.’ Ella’s eyes met his. ‘Shouldn’t I take it?’

  Nikkos gripped her firmly by the shoulders. ‘Absolutely not. No. That’s not your job.’

  ‘But, The Group have been looking for her for twelve years,’ Ella protested. ‘What if this is our chance. Our only chance?’

  ‘It won’t be,’ said Nikkos.

  ‘You don’t know that!’ Ella snapped, frustrated. Why had she gone through all that physical training at Camp Hope if she was never going to be allowed to use it?

  ‘Think it through,’ said Nikkos calmly. ‘If Sister Elena is Athena Petridis, and you kill her, or harm her in any way; and if you’re discovered, which you would be; then you’ll be arrested and charged. Remember, as far as the Greek state is concerned, Athena Petridis was a philanthropist and campaigner for children’s rights. She was never convicted of any crime.’

  ‘Which is ridiculous,’ Ella muttered, outraged. ‘Everybody knew what she did.’

  ‘Not everybody,’ said Nikkos, shaking his head. ‘Had you ever heard of her or her husband before you joined The Group?’

  Ella had to admit that she hadn’t.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Nikkos. ‘And besides, suspecting – even knowing – and proving are not the same thing. If you act rashly, your cover will be blown, The Group’s anonymity will be at risk, and years of hard work undone. You will likely go to jail. We won’t be able to save you. And your gifts, the precious abilities that your parents gave you? Those will be wasted. Lost, to us and to the world. For ever.’

  Ella considered this for a moment. When she spoke again it was quietly, but with an unmistakable edge of steel. ‘Athena Petridis stood by and watched while her husband held my mother’s head under the water. While he choked the life out of her. She deserves to die.’

  Nikkos took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Yes she does. No one’s disputing that. And she will. But we are all cogs in the wheel that will crush her, Ella. That’s how The Group works. No single one of us is the wheel. Not even you. Your part is to locate, to identify, to trap. Remember, if it hadn’t been for you, we wouldn’t even have known about Sister Elena. We’d never have looked at the convent.’

  Feeling only slightly mollified, Ella listened as Nikkos outlined the rest of the plan. Tonight marked the end of Persephone Hamlin’s existence. Cameron McKinley’s men would be waiting, but they would never see their quarry again. Instead, like a caterpillar spinning its chrysalis, Ella would sleep here tonight, at Helios’s mansion. In her guest suite she would dye her hair dark brown, add some fake tattoos to her upper arms, and slip into the simple, worn clothes of Marta, the baker’s assistant from Patras. At five a.m. she would be awoken and smuggled out of the estate by van, at the bottom of a hamper of laundry. By six fifteen a.m., Marta would be on a fishing boat on her way to the Cyclades.

  The way Nikkos spoke about it, it sounded so simple. As if it had already happened, and Ella’s transformation were already complete.

  ‘Follow these directions exactly,’ he told her, standing up and taking his leave, ‘and you will be fine. Once I’ve gone, wait ten minutes and then go inside the house through those doors.’ He pointed to a set of French doors opening onto a lawn about fifty yards to their left. ‘Someone will be there to meet you and escort you to your rooms. Everything you need is there. Good luck.’

  Ella watched as he walked away, his burly, bear-like frame looking even bigger than usual in his oversized suit. Signals and voices buzzed in her head – this house was a veritable hive of activity – but she shut them all off, unable to isolate a single, useful channel, or to focus on anything. Exhausted suddenly, she longed to be able to retreat to her room and sleep.

  But first, of course, she must change. Shed her old skin, like the snake she was becoming, and assume her new role, her new identity. Just as her parents had before her.

  It was frightening how much she was looking forward to it.

  Anna Cosmidis looked again at her Pearlmaster 39 Rolex watch, her irritation building. The fabled divorce attorney had already been paid for her time, but she still objected on principle to being kept waiting.

  ‘Renate.’ She buzzed her secretary again. ‘Still no word from Mrs Hamlin?’

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ve tried to reach her but the number I have no longer seems to be working. Should I cancel the appointment?’

  Anna Cosmidis sighed. She’d liked Persephone Hamlin. But she hadn’t gone into this business to make friends, and life was too short and trade too good to put up with unreliable clients.

  ‘Yes. Cancel it,’ she replied brusquely, her razor-sharp mind already moving on to the next challenge. ‘You can show in Mrs Froebbel.’

  Outside in his van, Constantin Pilavos waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  He rubbed his bloodshot eyes, a hideous churning sensation in his stomach creeping down towards his bowels.

  Somehow he must have missed Persephone Hamlin leaving the pa
rty at Stavros Helios’s estate last night. He’d waited back at her hotel, but she’d never showed there either. Not last night. Not this morning.

  Her nine a.m. meeting with her divorce lawyer had been Constantin’s last hope. As the minutes ticked by, then the hours, fear turned to panic.

  He could go back to Cameron McKinley and admit he’d lost the target.

  Or he could run for his life, drive far away from Athens and never return.

  With tears in his eyes, he started the engine.

  Makis watched from the upper deck of the Argo as the tender drew closer. Aboard was Cameron McKinley, his thin, sandy hair blowing unattractively in the wind, like Donald Trump’s on a golf course. He had a briefcase in his hand and an unreadable expression on his pale, watery face.

  He’s come in person. That meant the news was either very good, or very bad. Mak would say this for Cameron McKinley: the man had balls. He didn’t cringe and cower around Mak, the way that everybody else did when they feared his wrath.

  One of these days, Mak would punish him for it. But not today. Not with the threat of Athena’s return still hanging over his head like a toxic cloud.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked bluntly, as his fixer climbed aboard the yacht. ‘You have pictures?’ he gestured toward the briefcase.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is she sleeping with somebody else?’ Makis braced himself for the answer. If it was ‘yes’, he would kill the man, whoever he was, and then, when the time was right, punish Persephone.

  ‘No,’ said Cameron, handing the case to his boss.

  The rush of relief was instant, but it was also brief. ‘Who’s this?’ Mak asked, pointing to the fat, bearded man standing close to Persephone in numerous different pictures.

  ‘His name is Nikkos Anastas,’ said Cameron. ‘Or so he claims. Ostensibly he runs a clothing business on the outskirts of Athens, but if he does then he’s a very silent partner. We never saw them speaking together directly, but he kept popping up. Either he’s surveilling her and doing a shitty job of it, or they know each other in some capacity. He’s a concern.’

  Mak could see at once in his fixer’s pale blue eyes that something else was wrong.

  ‘What?’ he demanded, angrily, tossing the photographs aside. ‘What is it?’

  Cameron McKinley cleared his throat.

  ‘We’ve lost her.’

  Blood drained from Makis’s face. ‘You’ve what?’

  ‘We haven’t seen her since the night of the fundraiser at Stavros Helios’s estate. I think she’s left Athens—’

  ‘You think?!’ Mak’s voice was a roar. Without thinking, he shot out both hands and clamped them tightly around Cameron’s neck, choking him. ‘You THINK?! Don’t think!’ he bellowed, hurling the Scotsman to the ground in a coughing, spluttering heap. ‘Find her!’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Fatima Ghali – the Turkish girl who had managed all the deliveries from Maria’s bakery for the last six years – eyed her newest assistant with envy as she unloaded the two heavy crates from the boat. With her spindly, tattooed arms and slender body, Marta was half Fatima’s size and at least twice as fit as her superior, showing no signs of fatigue or discomfort at the backbreaking work. In fact, Marta had been oddly wired all morning, full of nervous energy, while Fatima and their other colleague, Helen, yawned and dozed their way through the uncomfortable, pre-dawn boat ride.

  ‘How much coffee have you had?’ Helen had asked her, after they loaded up. ‘You do realize it’s still only four in the morning.’

  ‘I’m excited to see the island,’ Marta replied shyly. She wasn’t much of a talker either. ‘And the convent. This is all still new to me. We have nothing like this in Patras.’

  Helen had scoffed at the idea that anyone could find remote, sleepy Sikinos ‘exciting’, still less that they might look forward to a backbreaking slog up a cliffside to deliver cakes to a bunch of God-bothering weirdoes in habits and veils. Fatima too found it odd that a city girl like Marta would come all the way to these tiny islands to find work. Although, God knew, times were hard in Greece. Many people traveled many miles these days simply to be able to feed themselves, and city rents were notoriously expensive. At least here on Folegandros one could live on very little.

  Now Helen and Fatima carried the heavier crate between the two of them, each resting a corner on one shoulder, while Marta carried the lighter pallet alone as the three women began the long climb from the beach up to the convent walls.

  Ella barely felt the weight of the box in her arms as she made her way up the steep steps. All that physical training at Camp Hope had paid off, although in truth at least half of Ella’s superhuman strength this morning had to be coming from adrenaline. In an hour, or perhaps only in minutes, she might be coming face to face with Athena Petridis. With the woman who had killed her parents and stolen her childhood. Twenty years of waiting in vain, of not knowing, of feeling different and useless and abandoned and impaired – that might all end today. This morning. The dawn sun rising deep red on the eastern horizon, bleeding its color into the pale blue sky, looked more beautiful to Ella than any she had ever seen. It was rising for her, spurring her on, willing her to succeed, to fulfill her destiny—

  ‘Ella. Can you hear me?’

  Ella stopped dead. Setting down her box, she put her hands on her temples.

  The last time she’d heard Gabriel’s voice in her head like this had been on her first ‘date’ with Makis, the day she’d almost blown her entire cover by blurting out nonsense. Back then she’d been furious that Gabriel was second-guessing her. But today it was a relief to hear his signal, quiet but clear. Just to know he was out there. As long as he didn’t start trying to tell her what to do …

  ‘Jesus, Marta! Be careful,’ Fatima snapped, exhaustion making her sharper than usual as she and Helen almost knocked into her. Ella might be finding the climb easy, but the other girls’ labored breathing and flushed faces were a testament to their effort and exertion.

  ‘Sorry,’ mumbled Ella, looking around for any signs that Gabriel might be close by. ‘You two go ahead of me. I need a minute.’

  ‘Finally, Superwoman needs a break!’ Helen panted to Fatima, as the two of them moved slowly up ahead. ‘Perhaps we two old tortoises are going to win this race after all.’

  ‘Old tortoises?’ Fatima grinned. ‘Speak for yourself!’

  Ella waited for Gabriel to speak again. As before, she assumed he was using one of the small fishing boats on the horizon as a transmitter. There seemed to be no other signs of life.

  ‘Don’t alert the others,’ he said, once Helen and Fatima were a good fifty yards ahead. ‘But if you’re receiving this, raise your hands.’

  Ella did as he asked, albeit a little grudgingly. As if she would alert the others!

  ‘Good. I just wanted you to know you’re not alone. We have eyes on you right now. But once you’re inside the convent walls we’ll lose that visual. So please listen carefully now. You already know the parameters of your mission …’

  Exactly. So why the mansplaining? thought Ella, picking up her basket and resuming the climb, her irritation building.

  ‘Try very hard to take a mental snapshot of Sister Elena. You may only have a few seconds but we need a clear picture, transmittable quality.’

  Ten more seconds of this and I’ll start tuning him out, thought Ella, her initial relief at having ‘backup’ rapidly fading. The fact was, Gabriel couldn’t do ‘backup’. He had to push his way to the front. Always.

  ‘The most important thing to remember is, whether you positively ID Athena or not, you need to get out of there with the other girls when they leave. No lingering. No heroics. OK?’

  Ella kept walking.

  ‘Ella, if you can hear me, raise your hands again.’

  She ignored him. A few seconds passed.

  ‘Ella!’ His volume crept up as loud as the frequency would allow. ‘I know damn well you can hear me. Do you understand t
he instructions?’

  Fatima and Helen were trudging up the final flight of steps, their backs still turned towards Ella. Setting down her crate for a final turn, Ella spun around and extended her middle finger in the general direction of the fishing boat.

  ‘ELLA!’ Gabriel roared, so loudly that Ella’s brain started to whistle. Counting backwards from ten as Dix had taught her, she successfully turned him down, then off. I’m getting better at this, she thought delightedly, following the others up to the heavy iron gate set into almost three-foot-thick stone walls.

  ‘There you are,’ panted Fatima. Pausing to catch her breath, she rapped three times on the gate. Moments later, a stooped crone of a nun opened it for them. Without a backward glance, or another thought about Gabriel, Ella slipped inside the fortress and was gone.

  ‘What do you think, Marta?’ Fatima asked, noticing Ella’s fascinated, roving eyes and feeling more conversational now that she’d finally set down her heavy basket of breads. ‘Pretty stunning, isn’t it? Is it what you expected?’

  ‘I don’t know what I expected,’ Ella answered truthfully, gazing up at the mullioned windows set high in the towering walls of the convent kitchens.

  Inside, the Convent of the Sacred Heart felt more like a castle, a fortress of some sort, than a place of worship. The scale of the place was breathtaking, far more so than one might imagine from the outside. Every room, even the kitchens where the girls were now unpacking, seemed to have twenty-foot ceilings, and the long stone corridors that had led them here snaked off into the distance for what felt like miles. Every twenty feet or so, spiral staircases, like something out of a storybook, rose up and up on the right and left into soaring, turreted towers. Presumably there must be some smaller rooms on the upper floors, at the top of these stairs, for the nuns’ cells or other private chambers. But the ground floor, with all the communal rooms, was uniformly palatial, and seemed all the bigger thanks to an almost total lack of furniture or adornments of any kind. No rugs were on the floors, and no paintings, not even religious ones, hung on the walls. In the distance, the soft echo of morning matins being sung added to the overall sense of serenity and peace, as did the scent of incense that hung, albeit faintly, in the air of every room they entered. Even the kitchens, although here it mingled with other smells: Freshly picked tomatoes and basil from the gardens; fried onions, perhaps from last night’s meal; some sort of smoked fish.