A Sudden Death in Cyprus

by Michael Grant

‘How about the Rachel Faber cards?’

  ‘Numerous charges from here on Cyprus, beginning two days ago. Cafés. Shops. A hired car. A tour guide.’

  ‘A tour guide book, or a tour guide of the human variety?’

  ‘Only books, unfortunately.’

  Thus far I approved of Rachel/Amanda’s tradecraft. If she was on the run, she was no fool. Of course, there were other sorts of folks who kept fake passports. ‘How were these credit card accounts settled?’

  ‘Hah. Now there, we see the mystery writer’s mind at work,’ Kiriakou said admiringly. ‘All four cards, in both names, were paid from a bank account in—’

  I held up a hand. ‘Let me guess. Zurich? The Caymans? Luxembourg?’

  ‘Conister Bank,’ he said. ‘The Isle of Man.’

  ‘Interesting choice. Not much to work with, is there?’ I said.

  Kiriakou looked disconsolate. ‘You must excuse me for a moment,’ he said making the face you make when your prostate has squeezed your bladder. He slid the paper back in his document holder and placed the holder back on the floor.

  Ten seconds to get to the bathroom, thirty seconds at least to do what was necessary. Should I or shouldn’t I?

  I had a perfect cover story, Kiriakou had asked me to help. On the other hand, he was known in the restaurant and waiters only pretend not to see what’s going on in the dining room.

  I used my feet to squeeze the document holder and drew it to me. I placed it on my lap as if it was all perfectly natural, and drew out the list while simultaneously opening my iPhone camera. I spread the list on the table and leaned over the paper, frowning in concentration as my hand mostly concealed the phone.

  I shook my head as if I was disappointed, slid the paper back in and pushed it back into place.

  There were a hell of a lot of items on that list that Kiriakou had not mentioned. I wanted to know why. Why give me the banking information? Was it all deliberate? Was I being played? I couldn’t see how or why.

  When Kiriakou came back I said, ‘Listen, Cyril, have you learned anything about the perp? The killer?’

  He grinned. ‘Perp! Hah! That is so very American. The perp! Sadly, we have learned very little.’

  ‘No name or address?’

  A shake of the head.

  Right, you’re running a murder investigation and you can’t find a black African on Cyprus where the black population amounts to a few refugees, some university students and an occasional tourist? I did not say.

  Instead I blew out a frustrated sigh, and said, ‘I’m afraid you have badly overestimated my skills, Cyril.’ I spread my hands. ‘I’m just a writer, not a murder cop. I make things up. It’s much easier that way.’

  We had coffee. We chatted. And we went our separate ways.

  My takeaway from the lunch was not reassuring. I did not like that he dropped the Isle of Man bank into the picture, that felt … off. I did not like that he’d left his briefcase behind when he went for a pee.

  The other takeaway was this: I had repeatedly called him by his first name. But he had not once referred to me by any name, not Mr Mitre, not David.

  SIX

  Normally I’d have spread my influence-buying out over several days or weeks, but the faux beach-waiter Jack the Ripper, and the expressive policeman had motivated me. I suspected or perhaps just feared that I had set off an alarm bell in Kiriakou’s mind. I would have bet serious money that if I legged it straight to the airport I would be stopped.

  I needed an ‘exit visa’ of my own devising.

  I had budgeted fifteen thousand euros for various bribes and gestures of sincere friendship, of which I had thus far dispensed four thousand. The majority of this I hoped would find its way into police hands, one way or another. But I had a very bad feeling about offering Kiriakou an envelope stuffed with currency. A man wearing a ten-year-old Casio watch was either straight … or bent but smart.

  I drove north to Latchi along the excellent EU-financed highway. I had leased a white Mercedes C-class convertible which I drove at autobahn speeds. There are signs indicating speed cameras all over the Cypriot highways, but fortunately they had never actually installed said cameras, and fast driving on a highway is an excellent way of finding out if you’re being tailed.

  I wasn’t. Probably.

  Cyprus is a sere, stony place. The island taken as a whole looks like a massive rock barely covered by lichen. Limestone and sandstone pokes out everywhere, jutting here and there as if determined to mock vegetation’s weak efforts at colonization. In low points, in gullies and washes where topsoil pauses on its way to the sea, the Cypriots hacked out little vegetable gardens, and at the right time of year there are flowers everywhere, rather like you’d see in a good year in the Mojave.

  People will try and tell you the island is named for the Cyprus tree, which would make sense were it not for the fact that the tree is spelled cypress, and no one seems quite certain of the etymology. But they do have cypress trees on Cyprus, as well as palm trees – the two trees least likely to provide shade on a hot day. Up in the mountains they grow some pines and cedars and such, but in the Paphos area the surprise is that there are still plots of land scattered here and there that feature banana trees, which look like stumpy, shabby palm trees.

  Despite the fact that Cyprus seems determined to shed all of its topsoil and become a big, shiny white rock, they grow wine grapes of both familiar and exotic species, along with avocados, oranges, kiwi fruit and pomegranates of the sweet yellow and the bitter red types. The watermelons are excellent.

  You also see carob trees everywhere, brown pods hanging and looking like an infestation of chocolate chrysalises. They make a sweet carob syrup which locals sometimes use to dress salads. And of course there are olive trees; you can’t get your Mediterranean membership card unless you grow olives.

  In the few short weeks I’d been on the island, Cyprus struck me as a place struggling daily to cling to life. Bridges cross what were once rivers, but which are now empty, all the water having been diverted into reservoirs so that local school kids have a reasonable beef with the requirement that they memorize all of the island’s no-longer-there rivers. But at the same time Cyprus is undeniably quite alive, and can point all the way back to the tenth century BC – three millennia – and say, We’re still here; and how long exactly have you people been around, Yank?

  Latchi is outside the usual tourist and expat zones, a small fishing village, or at least the modern European iteration of a small fishing village. The harbor is a ‘U’ lying on its side, open to the east. It’s on the north side of the island, nearest to Turkey. Also nearest to Rhodes and other Greek islands. Convenient.

  I parked and walked down around the marina, past the usual sleek sailboats and bloated cabin cruisers. I even saw a few legitimate commercial fishing boats, compact little wooden craft with one-man superstructures. Maybe there were others out at sea, working to put cuttlefish and grouper and sea bream on tables, but for the most part it was cabin cruisers for hire, for fishing or sightseeing. It was the captain of such a vessel that I needed, but first I had to find my man. I had a type in mind, and I figured a bar was the first place to look.

  It took four hours of nursing beers and striking up conversations at three different bars to find what I was seeking. Four hours of Greek Euro-pop music. There are times when the fugitive life can be tedious.

  ‘I hear you might be looking for a boat.’

  I looked him up and down. Aussie by the accent. Late middle-aged, flabby, sunburned, no wedding ring, translucent greasy gray hair cut by an amateur and not a talented one. He wore a mis-buttoned Filipino cotton shirt, khaki shorts and loafers that would not be carrying him much further before they came apart. That was all the Sherlocking I came up with, but all I really needed to see was the pitted red nose, the sheen of sweat, the rheumy eyes and the tremble in his left hand.

  ‘I may be,’ I admitted.

  ‘I’m Brisby Wilson. Cap’n Brisby Wilson, thoug
h everyone calls me Dabber.’

  ‘Walter Mosely,’ I lied.

  It was a risk. The use of an alias would put a dangerous light in Kiriakou’s eyes if he found out. The flip side was that if cops were looking for me they’d start with the name, David Mitre. You want to confuse the trail wherever and whenever you can.

  We shook hands. His grip was strong but damp, trying to convey authority but undercut by boozehound’s sweat glands.

  ‘Maybe we should take a table?’ I nodded toward a far corner. ‘But first, let me get you a drink, you look like a man with a thirst.’

  He was. He was a man with a thirst for gin and tonics. Make it a double, if you don’t mind, mate. Make it a double in a regular rocks glass so we didn’t have too much tonic water fouling the gin, eh?

  ‘I guess you do mostly sport fishing runs, huh?’ I asked.

  ‘Yih,’ which is the Australian word for ‘yeah,’ which is the Californian word for ‘yes.’ ‘Last week I took a party of Jappos – sorry, Japanese – out and came back with a tuna that weighed in at just over four hundred kilos, which is one hell of a lot of sushi, right?’

  ‘That’s big for a tuna? Want to order some food, by the way?’

  ‘Nah, but should another G and T arrive I wouldn’t push it away.’

  He was doing the big, bluff, plainspoken Aussie thing. The big, bluff, plainspoken alcoholic Aussie thing. I’m no prude, but large quantities of gin consumed in the absence of solid food does not scream ‘social drinker.’

  I ordered another round and sipped beer.

  ‘What kind of boat do you have?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, the Fair Dinkum is a fine, fine boat. Not much to look at, but I’m not one of those spit-and-polish types, I’m a blue-water sailor.’

  The Fair Dinkum? Honest to God? Not the Bounding Kangaroo? Not the Shrimp On A Fucking Barbie? I said none of that.

  I adopted the awed face appropriate to a non-sailor upon meeting a real Old Salt, a true Man O’ the Sea. We chatted a bit about fishing and about fish. After a few more G and Ts, he started complaining about the harbormaster, the Cypriot authorities, the damned trigger-happy Turkish navy, and every customer who ever demanded a refund over some bullshit complaint like the boat running out of beer, water and gas. Or partially sinking.

  I fed in hints that while I was a fine, upstanding fellow, I occasionally walked on the wild side. ‘Husbands don’t always like me,’ I said with a knowing leer that I copied from George Selkirk.

  Oh, guffaw, guffaw, he knew just what I was talking about, mate.

  ‘It’s not such a problem, usually, in a regular country, rather than a dinky little island,’ I explained. ‘I mean, if you happen to diddle the wife of a politically-connected man on this island, where the hell do you run?’

  Much manly laughter. Did he believe my story about jealous husbands? Not for a millisecond. He wasn’t meant to believe it, he was meant to understand that I might need to do a wee bit of smuggling of some sort, possibly some fleeing. Bluff and manly gave way by degrees to crafty and greedy.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I wish I had a boat. You know? I don’t want to own one, God forbid, I’m no sailor. But it would be, I don’t know, let’s say reassuring, if I knew there was a boat. With a captain. Someone I could call. Even on short notice.’

  Amazing how fast a man can sober up when the prospect of actual folding money appears. The courtship phase was over, we both knew what we were talking about; we were getting down to hammering out the terms.

  ‘What you want to do is put a captain on retainer, like,’ he said, helpfully, and in no way suggesting that he should be that captain, no, that would be unseemly. Still, he was of the opinion that I would want to reach out to a true blue-water sailor, someone who could steer the boat to Rhodes, say, without ending up docking at Gibraltar. Hah. Hah.

  ‘Is that where most people go? Rhodes?’

  ‘It’s one place,’ he allowed, nodding judiciously. ‘There’s also Turkey, of course, lots of little fishing villages spread out along the coast. They patrol, though, and that can add to the expenses.’ He rubbed thumb and forefinger together, in case I was too dense to grasp that he was talking about bribes. ‘And there’s the Lebanon.’ A shrug. ‘Not Israel, they don’t fuck around looking for a fistful of euros, bloody Jews just start shooting.’

  I did not ask him about Egypt because Egypt was on my mental list as a likely bolthole. It wasn’t my favorite country, but it was disintegrating in slow but relentless fashion, a country where literally anything could be had for a low, low price. Instead I steered the conversation to Lebanon, because there was no way in hell I was going to Lebanon. There was a well-connected Lebanese-American gentleman I knew who might welcome me with open arms and also bullets. But if my bluff, blue-water Aussie sailor decided to rat me out, I wanted all eyes looking in the wrong direction.

  ‘Well, I have to tell you,’ I said, summing up. ‘You’re too humble and too generous to say so, captain, but I think I could not possibly do better than to retain you. Would five hundred euros … I don’t really know …’

  His tongue darted out to lick his lips. If I ever organized a poker game I’d want this guy in the game, only with more money to lose.

  ‘That would, well …’ He made a show of considering. He moved his fingers as if ticking off the expenses he would have to cover. He shook his head. ‘To be perfectly honest, a thousand would be better.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Obviously that’s just a retainer, just so I have a phone number to call. If I end up taking a trip … a sea voyage … I’d pay your standard fee.’

  We both knew if it came down to it I’d be paying multiples of his standard fee. I dug out my wallet, opened it discreetly but not so discreetly that he couldn’t see how much more cash I had, and counted out ten hundred-euro notes.’

  ‘Do you need a receipt?’

  ‘Your handshake will be plenty,’ I said.

  I slapped another hundred on the bar on my way out and said to the barman, ‘Whatever Captain Wilson wants, and you keep the change.’ Let those two fight it out.

  I had various do-gooders on the hook, and a way off the island. Total cost: five thousand euros and the prospect of a tedious session of hearing how Father Fotos thought he should write a novel about a young, Greek Orthodox priest. With a hot wife. And I had survived lunch with Kiriakou.

  So, not a bad day’s work.

  But there was more to be done because the final stop on my high-speed ‘please like me for money’ tour would have to be a house of ill repute, which I knew would not be nearly as much fun as it sounds. But I was tired and I was hungry and just not in the mood. So, I drove back to Paphos, eyes on the rearview mirror, arranged for a ‘thank you for inviting me’ bouquet to be delivered to Dame Stella, dined in town on steak and a bottle of Margaux, because what the hell, if I was going down I’d do it with a belly full of excellent Bordeaux. I returned to my villa around 9:30, feeling pretty pleased with myself. The antidote to fear is action and I’d done what I could for now.

  And then there was a knock at my door.

  SEVEN

  Two people stood on my porch, sallow in the dim glow of the low-wattage porch light. One was a thirty-something Asian man. He was a bit shorter than me, struggling to reach five ten, thick, with muscles bulging at the seams of his clothing.

  The other was a tall, elegant black woman, with a short natural hairstyle, sleepy eyes and full lips permanently quirked into mild amusement.

  He wore green khaki chinos and a pale blue Polo shirt, carefully tucked in, beneath a blue blazer that really did not go with either the shirt or the chinos. Then again, the black brogues didn’t go too well, either. He had the look of a man who wore an invisible necktie at all times, stiff, uncomfortable, maybe even a bit defensive, but nevertheless projecting authority and control.

  She was late thirties, maybe even extremely well-preserved early forties, wore loose natural linen slacks that made her legs look nine miles
long and a blue silk blouse with one more loosened button than was strictly necessary. She also wore a jacket, but hers had not come straight from Brooks Brothers by way of Men’s Wearhouse. She was more J. Jill by way of Filene’s Basement.

  I did not see handcuffs, but there was not the slightest doubt in my mind that they had some.

  ‘Mr Mitre?’ the man asked. ‘Mr David Mitre?’

  Cops. American cops. My least favorite kind.

  One question rose screaming up from the paralyzed depths of my brain: were they here to take me in? Or were they just here to verify my identity prior to pushing through a warrant and having the Cypriots pick me up?

  I glanced over their shoulders. One car aside from my Mercedes: a silver Kia Picanto, standard low-budget issue from Sixt car rental, with the telltale red tourist license plate. There was no Cypriot police vehicle.

  I breathed.

  ‘Yes?’

  And out came the leatherette wallets and the blue-and-white cards with those extremely unwelcome letters, F, B and I, over an official Justice Department seal.

  ‘Special Agent Delia Delacorte,’ the man nodded at the black woman. ‘And I’m Special Agent Frank Kim.’

  I frowned, forced a short laugh and said, ‘Aren’t you two a bit far from your usual stomping grounds?’

  ‘May we come in?’ Kim asked.

  I stepped back and swept them in with a stiff swing of my arm. ‘Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea? Wine?’

  Hemlock?

  Kim did not need any of my beverages, thank you, but Agent Delacorte did. She would have whatever I was having. My first thought was that I was going to guzzle most of a bottle of Talisker, it being likely that I might not see it again for ten years or so. But I walked on wobbly legs into the kitchen, ground some beans, measured some coffee and ran though my options.

  Could I turn right around and find Captain Dabber – probably still at the same bar?

  This was all unfair, that was the thing. Absolutely unfair. No one burns more fiercely at injustice than a criminal, and this was just wrong, this was not in the rulebook. I was nowhere near any job I had pulled, I was pretty sure no one had made me, and I’d been clean(ish) for almost a decade, come on! FBI? Here?