A Sudden Death in Cyprus

by Michael Grant

  I’ve thought of putting my accumulated criminal tradecraft in a book, but the people who’d read it would probably steal it and there’s no profit in that. Also most burglars are not big readers. Also a low-rent burglar is probably carrying a big-screen TV away, and in that case you don’t want a twenty-minute walk to your car.

  I had a simple dinner of grilled fish, refused the wine and finished with a coffee, using it to wash down two anticipatory ibuprofen because this was likely to be painful. It was dark when I got back to Tatiana’s place, dark but with an annoyingly bright moon.

  A narrow pathway separated Tatiana’s house from her nearest neighbor. Family sounds were coming from the neighbor, and light spilled from their windows, so I hunched over and scuttled fast, praying no one had a dog.

  The neighbors did have a dog and it raised a row only to be angrily hushed by ungrateful humans. Around the back of Tatiana’s house, I hugged the wall, inching toward sliding glass doors that opened onto a yard with a small kidney-bean-shaped pool. I leaned out from the wall just enough to allow my left eye to look into sheer curtains. The gauze-obscured living room beyond was dimly lit, just a single low-wattage bulb. Was it enough to counter my moon shadow against the curtains?

  This thought had the unfortunate side effect of causing the Cat Stevens song ‘Moonshadow’ to start playing on a loop in my head. Any lyric including the phrase, ‘I’m being followed …’ is not helpful when you’re committing a felony.

  I crept forward and tested the sliding door. Locked. And not one of the cheap locks you can get past with a simple shim.

  Above was the overhang of a balcony with a cast-iron railing, facing the sea over the roof line of the next block. Five rubles said she left the balcony door open so that when the wind was right she could hear the waves. I had to climb, and do it with multiple injuries, while remaining silent. With extraordinary care I moved a small patio table to beside the privacy wall. It was nine feet from the ground to the bottom horizontal on the railing above. The table gave me maybe eighteen inches. I added an unused planter. Perched precariously with my arms up I could just reach the iron bar that supported the railing.

  You’re going to pop your stitches and bleed all over.

  I cursed under my breath. Then I reversed course, walking all the way back to my car to retrieve my short crowbar and a roll of duct tape. I sat behind the wheel taping the crowbar to my injured arm, with the crowbar hook extending four inches past my fist. I pulled off a sock and slid it over the hook. To call it jury-rigged would be an insult to juries and their riggers. It might give me half my normal lift.

  I walked back – which was getting tiring, frankly – and crept back down the pathway, and again the neighbor’s dog barked and was again told to knock it off.

  I stood atop the table and planter assembly and ever-so-carefully placed my sock-muffled hook over the horizontal railing bar. Then I grabbed said rail with my good hand and, relying as much as I could on the strong side, pulled. In a movie, I’d have simply yanked myself up and over in one swift, graceful move. Not being the Dread Pirate Roberts, I placed my feet on the wall and did my own version of the 1960s’ Batman TV show, pulling, wall-walking, gasping and slipping until my head rose above the balcony floor.

  What followed was even less graceful, as I hauled myself up and over. The crowbar, lubricated by the blood now seeping from my bandage, caused the duct tape to slip and I very nearly fell. But at last I was on the balcony.

  I squatted there trying not to weep from the pain of reopened wounds on my hand and my armpit, and trying not to focus on the blood I was leaving behind for even the most careless policeman to find.

  The balcony slider was not open but it was unlocked, hallelujah. The room, a bedroom, was lit and empty. I pushed the slider open an inch and listened. A toilet flushed and I went through the door in a hurry, clutching my crowbar-tape-and-bandage hand against my shirt in hopes it would keep blood from falling into the carpet. That sort of thing might be noticed.

  I swiftly crossed the bedroom to the door, went into the hallway beyond, and spotted a man coming up the stairs.

  She’s married?

  She had definitely not worn a wedding ring, I notice things like that.

  I ducked into what I hoped was an unoccupied guest room and listened till the footsteps receded. I breathed.

  The guest room had an en suite and I used it by iPhone light to rinse off some of the blood and unwrap the crowbar, which I hung from my belt. I appropriated a guest towel – powder blue – and wrapped it around my hand.

  Then I hid under the bed until I heard no more sounds. It’s times like this, staring up at wooden slats and a muslin dust cover half an inch from the tip of my nose, that I begin to have some doubts about my choices in life.

  It was past midnight when I crawled out, stretched, popping my joints, and eased my way out into the hallway. Everything was dark, but my eyes had long-since adjusted. I made my way down the stairs to the living room. No one. And nothing to see.

  Off the living room a formal dining room had been repurposed as a home office and there, on a glass-topped table, was an open MacBook. An open MacBook with a Cyrillic keyboard. An open MacBook with Cyrillic keyboard and a password prompt.

  I wanted to cry.

  So much trouble and pain and bleeding, all for nothing?

  Then I spotted the pad of yellow Post-It notes. People with Post-It notes use them to write down passwords. A twenty-minute search of her table and briefcase turned up nothing, but she had left her purse by the front door, and in her wallet, folded away where she thought no one would ever find it: a yellow Post-It with five Cyrillic letters, two numbers and an asterisk. A good, solid, hard-to-break password. Unless someone wrote it down for you on a Post-It note.

  I logged in, went to Tatiana’s history and found the AZX Bank interface. This, too, was password protected but bless Tatiana’s laziness she used the same password. I was in! I had penetrated the AZX Bank’s computer system. Not exactly using super-hacker methodology, but it worked. Aside from the fact that tabs and files were all labeled in Russian.

  I sighed, opened a translation app and settled in. It was almost dawn by the time I let myself out through the front door, holding a thumb drive loaded with a terabyte of documents I did not remotely understand.

  TWENTY

  ‘Do you do numbers?’ I asked.

  ‘Do I do numbers?’ Delia asked. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You know, are you a numbers person? Spreadsheets and … other things with lots of numbers? Ah gah gah gah!’

  I called her the morning after my creeping of Tatiana’s home and computer and mentioned that some of my stitches had come out. So, in the morning she came over to check on me, armed with sterile sewing needles and clear thread that looked suspiciously like fishing line. I would really, really have really preferred a hospital, which is where they keep lidocaine. With enough lidocaine I probably wouldn’t have said things like, Ah gah gah gah!

  ‘You know, for a big, strong guy, you are a huge wimp,’ Delia said.

  ‘Yeah? Let me stick needles in your gah! Fuck! In your skin. Jesus! I am not enjoying this!’

  ‘You were asking about numbers before you started crying like a baby.’

  ‘I am not crying, I’m cursing. Like a manly man. And looking away. That is not crying! Just manly cursing.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re Rambo. So?’

  ‘So, I came across some … Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket! Goddammit can’t you use the old holes?’

  ‘Exhale on the pain,’ Delia advised, leaning close and squinting to find just the right place to stab me.

  ‘I came across some files from a bank. Turns out they’re from the AZX Bank’s Limassol branch.’

  For a moment, she left off torturing me. She raised a bare millimeter of brow in curiosity. ‘David? What have you done? Why are half your stitches torn out as if you engaged in strenuous physical activity?’

  ‘I told you, I slip
ped in the shower,’ I muttered. ‘And there, right next to the shower drain, I came across a thumb drive loaded with bank records.’

  She did some stabbing. I did some manly cursing and absolutely no crying.

  When she was done torturing me – about sixteen hours later, by my somewhat subjective tally – she bathed my hand in antiseptic cream and wrapped me up in gauze and tape. Then she said, ‘Show me.’

  ‘You understand that this data just fell into my hands and that no criminal activity was involved. Right?’

  ‘Oh, clearly. That kind of thing happens all the time. That’s how we got Capone – he dropped a thumb drive in his shower.’

  I handed her the thumb drive. She opened her briefcase, took out her laptop, plugged the thumb drive in, and opened the file in the Numbers app.

  ‘This is eight hundred and forty-six megabytes of data,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah. Can you make sense of it?’

  ‘Of eight hundred and forty-six megabytes of data?’

  ‘I thought maybe something would just jump out at you.’

  She shook her head and gave me a look full of suspicion that maybe she had overestimated my intelligence. ‘No, David, I am not Rain Man.’ She shrugged, then reluctantly added, ‘But I may know Rain Man.’

  ‘Dustin Hoffman?’

  ‘A guy I sent up a few years ago, a mob accountant. I got him a reduced sentence and now he’s … well, he’s a bit like you, David, a man living under an alias, but in some state with more cows than people.’

  Delia rejected my offer of Wi-Fi, instead insisting on using hard wire and a secure app, typed in an address and a note and began uploading the file.

  ‘It’ll take a while to load,’ Delia said.

  ‘However shall we spend the time?’ I wondered brightly. ‘The cleaning lady changed the sheets just this morning. I mention that only in passing.’

  She didn’t even bother shooting me down. ‘While we’re uploading, let’s do some quick searches.’

  ‘Sure, that’ll be much more fun.’

  She fiddled till she got a Cyrillic keyboard and typed in ‘Nestor Panagopolous.’

  ‘Well, hello there,’ she said, predatory eyes on the laptop. Tap. Tap. ‘No addresses, unfortunately, but look at this. Cash deposits. Six thousand. Six thousand. Five thousand – must have spent a grand before he could deposit it. And it goes back, like, a year. Basically he’s depositing cash at a rate of six grand a week.’

  ‘Three hundred large and change, per year? Damned good pay for a glorified security guard,’ I said. ‘So, your boy is still on Cyprus, and he gets paid in cash which he dumps in a Russian bank. Huh.’ I leaned over her shoulder totally ignoring her graceful neck and her subtle perfume.

  ‘Every deposit is on a Monday.’

  ‘Mmmm. And today’s Saturday. Can you do a real FBI stakeout without real American donuts?’

  ‘Do I look like I live on donuts?’

  You look like you eat a diet of baby gazelles you bring down after a short, desperate chase. Possibly with a sweet, apricot glaze. I did not say.

  ‘I didn’t get a chance to ask you how it went with the cops.’

  Slight eye-roll. ‘Their interview technique left something to be desired. I got more out of them than they got out of me. The guy who was stabbed in the elevator? He survived. And there were two last-minute passengers aboard the two a.m. Aeroflot flight to Moscow.’

  ‘That’s good about the flight. The stabbed guy, too, but especially the flight. They’ll have more muscle available, though. Let’s not get lazy.’

  She nodded agreement.

  ‘You don’t have a …’

  ‘A gun? No, sorry. That’s a lot of paperwork and Kim and I did not anticipate needing weapons. Probably for the best, David, I might well have shot you by now.’

  ‘Cute,’ I said. ‘Hey, speaking of cute. Want to go to a party tonight? It’s the movie people. My downstairs neighbor got me an invite. George Selkirk will be there.’

  ‘George Selkirk? The George Selkirk? As in rugged good looks and easy charm, George Selkirk?’

  This was the most animated I’d ever seen Delia. It hurt my feelings, just a bit. ‘Yeah, that guy, handsome George. You know he’s had work done, right? Eye tuck. Chin tuck. Probably some Botox.’

  ‘I actually met him once.’

  ‘On a case where he was a scumbag you wanted to put away?’

  ‘Not quite. When he did the revival of A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. My friend Sue and I waited outside the stage door to get his autograph. He was very sweet, and even hotter … handsomer … in person. Taller than I thought, too.’

  ‘So, you’ll come?’

  ‘Heh.’ She grinned lasciviously. For another man.

  ‘Really?’ I said with genuine disgust. ‘I’m disappointed in you making vulgar jokes and leering that way. Not at all what I expect from an FBI special agent. Maybe a regular agent, but not a special one.’

  ‘What’s the party for?’

  ‘It’s a fundraiser for some NGO. You know, rich people dressing up in ten-thousand-dollar designer dresses, spending a hundred grand on catering and decorating, then squeezing out fifty cents for the charity. They could just write checks, but no, they have to get together to tell each other what swell humans they are. The whole thing is an exercise in hypocrisy and narcissism, facile virtue-signaling, which is all you can expect from guys like Selkirk.’

  I said all that, at least I thought I did, but Delia heard none of it, as evidenced by her next statement.

  ‘I need to buy a dress.’

  It’s a sad day when a reformed burglar slash con man slash fugitive ends up going over evidence while the FBI goes dress shopping. I reviewed carefully everything I knew.

  Rachel/Amanda (Ramanda?) ex-MI6(?) operative gone bad.

  Knows Panagop. who Delia wants.

  Kim and Delia to Cyprus to ID him.

  R/A knifed.

  Refugee kids kidnapped for $$.

  Panagop. works for ExMil.

  Panagop deposits cash on Mondays.

  Russian assholes tail me from camp.

  Ditto try to kill me.

  And that was it, those were the facts. Then there was a list of disconnected data points that might or might not be facts.

  Kiriakou asks to meet me.

  Fotos makes vague noises.

  Joumana says K’s bent.

  Theo says slow-walk.

  No supporting evidence.

  Brit expats tied in?

  Irish guy tells Calix to stop talking to me.

  Then, more questions:

  Who the fuck did the murder?

  Ditto who ordered same?

  Why?

  Here at least, I had a clue. You kill someone for revenge or to shut them up or because they represent competition or a threat. Fiction loves the idea of revenge killings, but professional killers don’t usually do revenge, it represents a big risk for little or no reward. The murder of Ramanda had to have been a threat-abatement killing – she was a threat. Which meant as long as I was looking into it I was also a threat. To someone.

  So, why the hell would Kiriakou drag me into this?

  Was it because Kiriakou had been there, on the scene, making sure Ramanda ended up nice and dead and just happened to spot me engaging warp drive to get the hell out of there? Or because he’d interviewed Theodoros and knew that visiting American author, David Mitre, was the fast-fleeing witness? The first would be proof that Kiriakou wasn’t just a little dirty but was in mud up to his receding hairline.

  The second answer, the answer Friar Occam would have preferred for its simplicity, did not implicate Kiriakou. The fact was I had behaved in an atypical manner after witnessing a murder. Hell, Joe Burton would have investigated me, too.

  But how about Ramanda? Who did she threaten? The Cypriot Panagopolous? Was he a guy who would arrange a midday beachfront hit? No, if he was with ExMil now and had worked with the boys in Palermo back then, he’d do his own
wet work, and not in broad daylight. No professional criminal …

  I paused to take in the obviousness of the fact that had just occurred to me. It wasn’t a cold, calculated hit on Ramanda. Professional killers don’t commit crimes in the most attention-grabbing way possible. It was either a panic move by someone with no time to arrange anything better, or it was a deliberate show of force – a threat.

  In which case, whoever had ordered the hit was someone who knew he’d be safe from a murder investigation. Like, say, a cop.

  Whoever had called Ramanda’s lottery number had undoubtedly killed the African after the hit. There would have been a meeting for the final payment to the African knifer, and someone had probably brought a gun to that meeting. Pop. Drive the body up into the mountains, or better yet wrap him up in heavy chains and take him for a sea voyage.

  Something was nagging at me. Something I wasn’t quite getting. It’s a very frustrating feeling, very much like what I sometimes have while writing. Like some segment of my brain, some not-exactly-verbal section of my brain, was waving its hands, signaling ‘problem’ but without the ability to explain itself.

  The Russians who’d come after me were hardcore pros. Bristle had not wanted to kill me in so public a way, he’d adapted to the situation. I’d spotted him, he’d figured that meant I’d go to ground, so he’d had no choice but to take me down right then and there.

  What in God’s name motivated someone to send a disposable killer to kill you, Ramanda? Who was that scared? Who was in that much of a hurry? Who was so desperate they would send that kind of bloody public message?

  Human trafficking is a business of thousands, maybe a few million dollars. Money laundering is a business of tens of millions, even billions. The two business models did not fit neatly together. It was as if McDonald’s, in addition to selling billions of burgers, also ran a street-corner lemonade stand. But an illegal lemonade stand that added little to the bottom line while magnifying risk.

  That was part of what bothered me. The disconnect between billions and millions and thousands. Why would a money-laundering operation get involved with a universally-despised side business that brought in relative chump change?