A Sudden Death in Cyprus

by Michael Grant

  ‘Yeah. Chante and Mustafa, Delia and me. Chante, when you locate Chris Temple, text me. Don’t do anything until I get to you. And we need a spot. Somewhere a bit private and dark.’

  A white party tent had been set up a discreet distance from the bathrooms, with sides raised to reveal an impressive buffet table, stage left if we were watching an Aeschylus play, or whoever his Roman equivalent might have been.

  Right where the second-century versions of Minette and George Selkirk and Chris Temple would have plied their acting craft there stood a low stage and on that stage a reggae band was doing a rendition of ‘No Woman No Cry.’

  I led Delia up the bleachers to get a perspective on the crowd. I pointed. ‘There’s Selkirk if you want to go fling yourself at him, Delia.’

  ‘Let’s do our business first. Flinging comes later.’

  I spotted Minette easily enough. I don’t know what it is about movie stars, but even when objective judgment would suggest there were several equally beautiful women, there was something about Minette that made her stand out as if she was being followed everywhere by a spotlight.

  There were beautiful women and beautiful men; rich women and rich men; famous humanitarians with the kinds of resumes that make less saintly folks feel small and inadequate; important business people who were little tin gods in their own worlds; government types who appeared daily in newspapers and news broadcasts; a whole array of people who had every reason to think highly of themselves. But none of that mattered when a Selkirk or a Minette appeared. They were stars, and as much as I hated to admit it, they shone like stars and their gravity wells turned everyone else into satellites.

  I spotted Dame Stella and hubby Archie. Stella was chatting away amid a small gaggle of people while Archie stood a little apart, perhaps confused, perhaps just bored.

  The band stopped playing and Minette and Selkirk walked on-stage to much applause and hallooing. They shared a standing microphone, like presenters at the Oscars, two stunning freaks of nature reading from cue cards.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention, please,’ Selkirk said in the voice behind so many Infiniti, Nespresso and Ralph Lauren commercials. ‘As you all know, we aren’t just here to eat and drink and enjoy the company. We are here to raise funds for The Least of These and Médecins Sans Frontières and Feed the Forgotten. These are the people who march bravely into some of the most terrible places in this world, bringing food and medicine and comfort to men, women and children who have nowhere else to turn. And of course, more locally, they offer support to war-torn refugees, some of whom are with us here tonight.’

  There followed a bashful woman in a hijab speaking broken English, and then an Irish doctor who clearly wanted to be somewhere else, with the usual heartbreaking stories.

  Then Minette returned. She was wearing a dress that was at once sexy and serious, form-fitting but with no desperate slits or plunging décolletage. Pity.

  ‘Ow-er arts go out to ze childrens,’ Minette said. ‘The innocents who may be hungry or lack medical care. Who may be living in alleyways or overcrowded refugee centers, or who may be in bondage, held as slaves in countries where no law protects them.’

  It was time to squeeze the wallets.

  My first thought was that I should be exempt since I’d given money at Father Fotos’ church. I was prepared to pony up a bit more, but this entire Cyprus adventure was eating way too much cash. I was trying to get to a point where I could leave my secret accounts alone and live off current earnings, which was not going to be possible if I kept having to hand out bribes.

  Delia was nursing a white wine. I met her gaze and raised one eyebrow. She frowned as if she didn’t know why I was looking at her.

  ‘Stupid economics,’ I muttered. ‘If you ransom people, you create a market. Perpetual motion machine.’

  ‘You don’t want to rescue people?’ Delia asked.

  ‘Rescue, sure; ransom no. The winning move in a hostage situation is to shoot the hostage yourself and say, ‘Now what have you got, asshole?’ Shoot the hostage, then shoot the bad guy and you’ve eliminated the incentive. Sends a message.’

  ‘The clean, simple logic of the psychopath,’ Delia said dryly. ‘That’s not what they teach at the academy.’

  ‘Works though. If you’re going to make serious money off kidnapping, you want repeat business. So, you don’t kill the hostage, you take your payoff …’

  ‘What you don’t do if you have any sense is entangle high-risk, low-profit trafficking with high-profit, low-risk money laundering …’

  We both trailed off because the bleedingly obvious suddenly crashed through the layers of stupid in my brain and Delia, despite practically quivering with excitement at the proximity of George Selkirk, reached the same thought at the same moment.

  We looked at each other.

  ‘Duh,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not one op, it’s two. Text your mob accountant.’

  She already had her phone out.

  Minette was acknowledging board members of the various NGOs. Greek name. Greek name. English name. Russian name. Greek name. Jeremy ‘Jez’ Berthold. Greek name.

  One by one they walked on-stage, as fine a bunch of do-gooders with too much money as you’ll be likely to see at any two-thousand-year-old Roman ruin. Seeing him now I recognized Berthold, the honorary mayor of expats. He gave a cheery wave to the crowd and nodded to their applause.

  Minette shook hands with the women and endured hugs from greasy old men while Selkirk reversed that order.

  Then Selkirk held up a piece of paper and waved it happily. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a small contribution to start us off tonight. I have here a check. From Cyprus Expats Inc., and their chairman, Jeremy Berthold. Ladies and gentlemen … I feel like we should have a drumroll … this check is in the amount of …’ Minette did a cute drumroll of her fingers on her mike. ‘… fifty thousand euros!’

  ‘Great, so much for me getting by with a crumpled-up twenty,’ I grumbled. ‘I have to pony up a grand now. I’m starting to think prison would be good for my retirement plan.’

  Delia shook her head. ‘Nah, we’d freeze your accounts and eventually recover all the money.’

  ‘You know, you’re really a horrible person, Delia. Just a horrible, horrible person.’

  She laughed.

  My phone pinged. A text from Chante with her usual loquaciousness: ‘Toilets.’

  I tapped Delia’s elbow. ‘If you’re done with your no-doubt shocking Selkirk-induced sex fantasies …’ I showed her the message.

  We found Mustafa – not hard given his size. He was holding forth before three young women, who, taken all together, did not weigh as much as he did. I gave him a nod and he disengaged, followed by appraising eyes. It would never have occurred to me that the gigantic thug would be attractive to women, but there’s no accounting for taste. We meandered toward the toilets.

  Chante was there. ‘He went in there a minute ago.’

  ‘Number one or number two?’ I asked.

  Chante made a face. ‘Most likely smoking.’

  ‘Cigarettes? Weed?’

  ‘Heroin,’ Chante said.

  I grinned. ‘In that case …’ I looked around. The toilet area was unpopulated with Minette and Handsome George still onstage. Twenty feet further on, well beyond the light glowing from the craft services table, was the low rock wall, and beyond it nothing but weeds and the rocks that didn’t get promoted to fence.

  ‘Mustafa? Shall we invite Mr Temple to join us?’

  Mustafa took his own survey of the surrounding area and nodded at me, liking my plan.

  Chris Temple – one of the up-and-coming Hollywood Chrises – was seated, pants around his ankles, a paper plate balanced on his knees, a glass pipe in his mouth, a couple of square inches of aluminum foil in one hand, and a cigar torch in the other – when Mustafa removed the door to his stall.

  ‘What the fu—’ Temple said, bef
ore Mustafa grabbed him by the neck, hauled him out of the stall and threw him against the sinks. The actor yelped and started to cry out, but by rotating his wrist Mustafa tightened his grip on Temple’s shirt collar and choked off any sound.

  Delia, Chante and I followed like spectators. Temple wasn’t a small man but Mustafa literally tucked him under his arm like a baguette, carried him to the stone wall and tossed him over. Only on climbing over the fence myself did I realize it was a five-foot drop on the other side. Mustafa climbed over the fence, grabbed Temple again and hauled him, now kicking and struggling, and kept going further than we might have thought necessary, but his instincts were good for he came upon one of the many old, overgrown archeological trenches and sort of rolled Temple down into it.

  Temple managed to pull his pants most of the way up and get his phone out but Mustafa hopped down into the trench and relieved him of it. Keeping Temple in a state of near-asphyxiation, Mustafa handed me the phone. It was password protected but had a facial recognition identifier.

  ‘Give me his face,’ I said. Then added, ‘I don’t mean tear it off, just turn his head.’ I pointed the phone at Temple and it opened compliantly.

  I gave the unlocked phone to Chante. ‘Go through it. See if you can find the video. See if he’s forwarded it anywhere.’

  I hopped down into the chin-high trench and Delia followed. Chris Temple was sputtering and choking and probably turning red though I couldn’t be sure in the minimal illumination.

  Delia took over. She brandished her FBI ID in Temple’s face. ‘See that? I am an FBI special agent. Now, I can’t arrest you here, but I know who you are, I know your home address, the address of your beach house, the address of your so-called ranch in Montana. I have your phone number, your agent’s number, and the phone numbers of Variety, the Hollywood Reporter and Deadline. I can pick up the phone and have your credit-card numbers. I will find everyone who ever supplied you with an illegal substance, and I will tell them you gave them up. Are you hearing me?’

  Mustafa let him breathe just long enough for him to wheeze a ‘Yes. But I—’ The extenuating circumstance Temple wished to explain were choked off.

  ‘Whatever secrets you think you have? Remember: I am the FBI, and if I want to know just how many times you pleasure yourself in the shower, I can find out. You get all that so far?’

  ‘Let him breathe again,’ I suggested to Mustafa, who allowed enough air for Temple to croak, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Extortion is a felony in all fifty states,’ Delia went on like the avenging angel she was. ‘In California, it’s two to four years. They say every year inside ages a man five years, so you need to ask yourself how your career will fare if you’re away for even two years and come back with all your front teeth gone so you could suck some bull con’s dick without biting.’

  I was shocked. That was like something I might say, not something I’d expect to hear from an agent of the law. I was a bit turned on, too, but mostly shocked.

  Temple started to say something, to protest, to explain, to excuse. I nodded at Mustafa and he gave the actor a light tap that snapped his head sideways.

  My turn, and I got to play ‘good cop.’ ‘Here’s how it is, Mr Temple. I don’t think you’re a bad guy. I’m a big fan. I liked you as Cypher. I felt you really captured the character.’

  Bless his needy heart, he managed a raspy, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘But look, Mr Temple, if you do anything – anything at all – to annoy Minette or your director or any of your co-stars in any way … well, if you’re still in Cyprus, Chewbacca here will find you, and come up behind you and wrap a piece of piano wire around your neck and pull until the wire hits spinal cord. Indicate that you hear me by grunting.’

  He grunted.

  ‘If a video of Minette ever shows up on the internet and you are no longer on Cyprus, the FBI will land on you like a ton of bricks. They’ll put you in jail. They’ll destroy your career, everything you worked for. Indicate you hear me by grunting.’

  He grunted.

  ‘So, you have two paths you can go by. You can be an asshole and either Mustafa or the FBI or both will fuck you up. Or you can turn your life around, man. Go straight. Discover virtue. Be a good guy instead of a low-rent extortionist. Follow your talent, man, not your worst instincts.’

  Delia was looking at me with amused disbelief, so just for her benefit I added, ‘A life of crime is no good, dude. Come into the light. Isn’t that right, Special Agent?’

  ‘Profoundly true,’ she said, with only a slight eye-roll.

  ‘Chante?’

  ‘I deleted the native copy and the cloud copy. He emailed the video to one person, an S. Sheppard.’

  I cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at Temple and Mustafa allowed him some air. ‘My lawyer,’ he said.

  Delia said, ‘Your lawyer will soon be in receipt of a letter warning him that he will be disbarred if that video ever escapes his inbox. Attorney–client privilege does not apply to criminal conspiracies, and then we will be free to rummage through all his dealings with you.’

  ‘Say yes for the nice FBI lady,’ I said.

  Temple nodded sullenly.

  ‘Put him on the ground,’ I said, and when he was prone and wetting himself I knelt down close to him, face to face. ‘Just in case neither Mustafa nor Special Agent Vengeance here doesn’t convince you, I want you to look me in the eyes, Mr Temple. I want you to take a good, long look at me and tell me whether, as a professional actor, you think I’m just a sweet guy who’d let it go if you fucked me over.’

  I didn’t do the dead-eye stare, that’s a cliché. I did the opposite, a warm, friendly smile with twinkly eyes.

  ‘Nod your head “yes” if you think I’ll let you fuck me in the ass, Hollywood. Go ahead.’ Then the sudden eruption of convincing rage. I stuck my face so close to his he was breathing my stale air and I gave it my obscene, spittle-spraying all. ‘Do you think I will let you fuck me in the ass? Do you? Do you, you piece of shit?’

  He shook his head, no, but by then he was shaking in pretty much all of his muscles. Mustafa, playing his part to perfection, had to haul me off him. ‘No more killing,’ Mustafa lectured me firmly. ‘You promised no killing.’

  I had so much more material prepared, I mean, I’ve written this kind of scene many times. But it looked as if we’d made our point.

  ‘Chante? Give Mustafa this gentleman’s phone.’

  She did and Mustafa snapped it in half with one hand. When it was a bent mess of starred glass and popped seams, he tossed it to Temple.

  The four of us walked away in complete silence. The giggling didn’t start until we were well clear.

  ‘That was good, David,’ Delia said, grinning ear to ear.

  ‘Acting!’

  ‘Satisfying,’ Mustafa said.

  Chante led us to the green room tent where we found Minette sitting splay-legged and looking exhausted. But she rose on seeing us.

  ‘The matter has been taken care of,’ Chante reported.

  Minette was very happy, very pleased, wished she could find a way to express her gratitude and gave me a nice, long hug. Then she shook Delia’s hand, hugged Chante and finally hugged Mustafa. Hugged him, and said, ‘Oh!’ as she squeezed his bicep. And ran her hands over his shoulders. And said, ‘My God, your hands!’

  We chatted and toasted and generally congratulated ourselves on our wonderfulness, but it became increasingly clear that Minette felt Mustafa deserved whatever reward might be in the offing. So, after a while we drove back to my villa with more room in the car since it seemed Mustafa did not need a ride. He would be staying behind for a while.

  Delia rode shotgun, and would not wipe the grin from her face.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ I said.

  ‘What is the word in English?’ Chante asked from the back seat. ‘Something to do with impediments to …’

  ‘Cockblock?’ Delia suggested with way too much glee.

  ‘Just so. Cockblocked.’

 
; ‘By a refugee!’

  Gosh they had fun laughing at me. Such fun. And, well, what could I do? It was kind of funny.

  Then Delia checked her phone and said, ‘We have to go to some place called Petra tou Romiou. Right now.’

  ‘Petra? Why?’

  ‘There’s a refugee boat that’s just come ashore.’

  I glanced in the rearview mirror at Chante. ‘I can drop you off here and give you money for a taxi.’

  ‘No,’ she said. And I had by then learned not to argue.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Petra tou Romiou is a rock. A collection of rocks, really, dominated by a massive boulder, a big, bleached-tan monolith the size of a four-story office building, and various darker rocks scattered around the vicinity. This was the place where sea foam and Uranus … Or perhaps more appropriately the place where Botticelli had Venus standing with conveniently-placed blonde hair, rising naked on a scallop shell. His painting lacked the rock and added nonexistent trees, but it was the Renaissance and Botticelli was not a news photographer.

  On either side of the rock are pebble beaches, with those pebbles running from gravel-size, to skipping stones, on up to smooth-worn, fist-sized stones that make a pleasant crunching sound underfoot while making it impossible to walk quickly.

  Normally Petra tou Romiou is reached from a parking lot across the road. There’s a narrow underground walkway, a one-person-wide walkway that I was happy to avoid as I pulled over to the side of the road behind a line of cop cars and ambulances, all with lights flashing, and slid and scrabbled down the steep embankment in inappropriate shoes.

  The boat had not reached either beach but had managed, with extraordinary bad luck, to smack into the rocks and now sat rising and falling sluggishly, trapped and being slowly but relentlessly disassembled.

  Even by the standards of refugee boats, this craft was so astoundingly overloaded with people that even in the spotlight of a Cypriot Marine Police craft a hundred feet beyond it, it was not possible to make out the boat’s color or shape. It was a saltine supporting a quarter-pound burger; it was an unfunny clown car; a twelve-ounce beer poured into a six-ounce glass. People were packed together, standing, holding onto each other, stumbling and wailing as the boat surged and smacked into the rock with an audible sound, splintering by degrees.