I said, ‘Chante, get every life jacket Dabber has and look for blankets below. And put on the kettle.’ Amazingly, she obeyed instantly.
‘You’re assuming I’ll do the right thing this time,’ Delia said and she wasn’t at all sure of it. The predator had leapt, she was in the air her claws outstretched and her prey was right there, right there in front of her. She wanted blood.
On the radar screen the two dots converged, one wallowing slowly, the other moving at flank speed.
‘Got a spotlight, Dabber?’
He did. I left the bridge and climbed up to the roof, which has an official nautical name which I’d forgotten. I gripped the radio mast with my left hand – the ups and downs and sideways lurches were worse up there – and switched the searchlight on with my right. It stabbed into spray and mist as I swept it up and then left and right.
‘I see them. There! At two o’clock.’ I yelled down.
The Marine Police boat’s wake fluoresced drawing a dim green line in the water that arced past the refugee craft, sloshing gallons of water over the side. Then I saw twinkles of orange light and a second later heard the distant gunshots. Pop. Pop. Pop. Six shots. Eight shots. I wondered if they were shooting at the refugees or us, and had that question answered promptly when a lead slug blew out the Fair Dinkum’s windshield.
‘They’ve spotted us!’ Dabber yelled quite unnecessarily and the engine slowed. Five seconds later the engine accelerated again and I suspect Delia had showed Dabber her pistol.
The phony Marine Police boat had been painted gray, and a plausible logo had been stenciled on the side. It moved on, a hundred, two hundred yards as we closed the gap at agonizingly inadequate speed.
I swept the light right onto what looked like a ship’s lifeboat wallowing so low there wasn’t six inches of freeboard. Impossible to tell how many people were crammed on that boat. Impossible to know what had happened to these people to motivate them to flee their homes and take to the sea. Impossible to guess what fragile hopes they’d had, hopes they now knew to be doomed.
Panagopolous was not slowing or veering away.
There was not a single damned thing to do but watch.
The faux Marine Police craft aimed, gunned its engine, picked up speed till it was throwing a bow wave, and smashed into the refugee boat with a glancing blow, port bow against starboard bow. We were close enough now to hear the impact. The screams, too.
I glanced at Delia. She was expressionless, standing rigid, fists clenched. I looked back and up at Dabber and saw the old crook cross himself. Chante was in the bow, drenched by each wave the Fair Dinkum cleaved, holding a boathook at the ready.
Panagopolous’ boat was coming toward us now, but veered away, leaning far over to make a sharp turn. For just a moment I saw him in profile, the Cypriot killer who Delia had chased to this place and time.
He gave us a jaunty wave and sped off north, heading back toward Limassol, job done.
I heard screams, but that word does not do justice to the reality. To my ears those screams were made of terror, but carried also a demand for an answer: why? Why must we suffer? Why must we die? Why was the world doing this to us? For God’s sake, all they wanted to do was reach a place where they could clean hotel rooms and haul trash and drive taxis and not be starved or raped or butchered. For that they were to be punished by watching their spouses, their children, drown before their eyes?
A jaunty wave and their killer was off to a nightcap in some Limassol bar?
Delia was beside me. I couldn’t breathe for the heaviness of my own heart beating. What we did next was Delia’s call and I could not be part of it.
‘Which way, miss?’ Dabber called. ‘I can stop or I can chase, but I can’t do both.’
Delia hesitated. For long seconds. We could not catch Panagopolous’ boat but we could follow it in, track it, identify it, call the local cops, probably have Panagopolous and his crew arrested. And dozens of people would sink below the waves.
Long seconds grew longer, until Dabber must have been just about to repeat the question.
‘Pick up survivors,’ Delia said dully, too low for Dabber to hear.
‘Rescue survivors,’ I repeated at higher volume. It was the right thing. We all knew it. But this was not a rerun for me or Chante or Dabber, we had not vowed to get the bastards responsible for the atrocity in Sicily. We were not Special Agent Delia Delacorte watching her prey motor away.
‘I’m losing the bastard. Again!’ Delia raged. I’d seen Delia in lots of moods by now, but this was the closest she’d come to seeming out of control. She drew her pistol and I think would have started shooting at Panagopolous’ boat but for fear of hitting people in the water.
‘Goddammit!’ she shouted, unable to stand still, moving like she was looking for something to kick. ‘I will get you, you motherfucker! I’ll get you!’
I was with her on that, and if she needed help from a toilet-lid-wielding minion, I was ready. But at the same time, the chilly little reptile that still occupies a part of my brain was beginning to guess at an alternative ending. I wasn’t sure, not by a long shot, but I was beginning to suspect that Panagopolous might not make it to that end-of-shift drink in Limassol. Like I said: cop minds, even smart FBI cop minds, are not criminal minds.
I put a hand on Delia’s shoulder, which she furiously shrugged off.
‘Hey, Inspector Javert—’
‘What? What what what?’ she yelled, eyes blazing.
‘Not entirely sure he’s getting away.’
She stabbed a hand toward the boat now fading from view in the mist. ‘Are you blind? We’ll never catch him!’
‘I’m not sure we need to,’ I said. ‘The Russians are shutting this thing down.’
‘Fuck the Russians, I want Panagopolous!’
I was pretty sure J. Edgar Hoover would not have approved of her language. Then again he was a racist old troll so Delia’s language might not have been his first concern.
‘Yeah, I got that, Delia. But right now we’ve got to rescue these people. Right?’
She nodded tightly, jaw muscles working, nostrils flared, every bit the frustrated predator.
I told Dabber to call the real Marine Police. And I used Delia’s sat phone to call the RAF rescue group.
We reached the first of the refugees, Dabber slowing the boat to a coughing, shuddery crawl, Chante extending the boat hook toward the nearest half-drowned survivor. I joined her and then, after taking another minute to calm down, so did Delia.
We were just hauling the third person over the side when I saw the distant flash of light, way too big to be a gun’s muzzle flash. I gripped Delia’s bicep and pointed. The light flared orange for a few seconds and then guttered out.
The sound reached us, a flat report, like someone dropping a sheet of plywood. A smack without bass notes or echo.
I yelled up to Dabber on the bridge. ‘You still have them on radar?’
He was silent for a minute. Then, ‘I did. Now I can’t see them.’ Then, after another moment, ‘Huh. Bloody strange, that.’
I met Delia’s eye, brow cocked suspiciously at me. ‘I thought, maybe,’ I said, shrugging, ‘the Russians know Berthold’s done, they know Kiriakou’s done, and Panagopolous is the connective tissue. They’re bringing a big meat cleaver down on the chain of evidence. It was the smart move.’
‘Smart.’ It came out as a contemptuous snort. It wasn’t aimed at me, but it drew some blood just the same. I’d guessed what the Russian bosses would do because it’s what I would have done in their place. If I were a killer. If I were one of them.
I drew the mental curtain between them and me, between evil and … whatever shade of gray I was. It was a worn, moth-eaten thing, that curtain, but I needed it.
I raised my voice to be heard by Dabber. ‘Captain, see anything at all?’
‘What might be debris. And it’s not moving.’
The RAF chopper got there before the legitimate Marine Police, but by t
hen we had already taken on sixty-two people, men, women and children. Dabber’s boat was as crammed and top-heavy as the refugee boat had been. Chante pushed between huddled, terrified people handing out cups of tea, shuttling Dabber’s six chipped mugs back and forth to the galley like a waiter working a busy Saturday night shift.
The RAF dropped divers into the sea and saved more people, loading them onto a rich man’s yacht and a working man’s fishing boat that had both responded to our Mayday call. We found out later that eighty-four people were rescued altogether. The best estimate was that nine had died. Of them, seven had drowned.
The other two had been shot full of holes. They were the traffickers and the Russians would have insisted on them being very dead with no possibility of them washing up alive somewhere to give evidence.
Smart. That word again.
I wondered how it had been done. Surely Panagopolous must have been nervous, must have at least suspected. When he got the order to make damned sure the traffickers were dead, did he not realize what it meant for him? Had he not searched the boat for the bomb he must have feared would be aboard? Or was he such a fool that he believed himself indispensable? Indispensable to guys dealing in billions of dollars?
He would have radioed in to let his bosses know he’d taken out the traffickers and sunk the boat. And they’d have sent the signal, most likely a simple call placed to a satellite phone wired to dynamite or plastique, or whichever explosive was fashionable among the Russians.
And boom.
The floor of the Mediterranean is littered with the bones of men and women of many nations and races, some who should have lived, and others who needed to die. Panagopolous and his crew would float and bloat, then rot and sink, and add more femurs and skulls to the Mediterranean’s vast underwater collection.
But aboard the Fair Dinkum were sixty-two people whose bones would not be added to that grim exhibit. They were alive. And they were alive in part thanks to me.
I didn’t know quite what to do with that realization. So, I found Dabber on the bridge necking a bottle of gin and bummed a swig off him.
‘One good thing then, eh?’ he said with a curious sidelong glance.
‘Looks like. How do you feel?’
‘A bit off,’ he admitted, and made a worried face of the sort one makes when feeling strange and unfamiliar emotions.
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. We sighed simultaneously. ‘I don’t think either of us needs to make a habit of this kind of thing, though.’
‘Nah, once is more than enough. I do like your woman, though,’ Dabber admitted, nodding down at Delia who was passing through the huddled masses taking information down in a notebook, offering smiles to children, kind words to their fathers and a comforting touch to their mothers.
‘She’s not my woman,’ I said.
‘Nah? All copper then? All, strong arm of the law, is she?’
‘I suppose someone has to be.’
We drank to that. And drank again to the fact that it sure as hell wasn’t either of us.
THIRTY-THREE
Special Agent Delia Delacorte had failed in her mission to arrest, try and imprison Panagopolous, but he would no longer be a problem. He was currently providing affordable new homes for crabs.
We met up at the tiki bar, Delia, Chante, Mustafa and me. And Theodoros who would have paid me back every tip I’d ever given him if I would just tell him what it was all about. I didn’t, but he lurked at the edge of hearing and polished rocks glasses until they were shot glasses, so I imagine he caught the gist.
Kiriakou and the others we’d caught – very much including Berthold – were now in Cypriot custody. The cops were not happy that a gaggle of foreigners had broken up a pedophile trafficking ring and would, I suspected, take that embarrassment out on Kiriakou. I almost felt sorry for him.
Nah. Not really.
We had not arrested the Russian money launderers, never even put a name to any of them. But Delia had more than enough to shut down the use of Feed the Forgotten as a front. The AZX bank records I had, um … found on a thumb drive in my shower … made their way to Cypriot and British police and prosecutors. That, too, would not stop the money laundering, but it would sting.
Thorne Breen was arrested at the hospital – his burned leg had become infected. The blood infection had gotten so bad he was raving to nurses about some American who’d tried to burn out his eyeball.
Crazy bastard. Like anyone would believe that.
Bristle and Baldy were never heard from again. A reasonable guess is that they were back in Moscow or wherever, explaining to some hard men how they’d managed not to kill a guy they had trapped in an elevator.
And according to Deadline Hollywood, Chris Temple had checked into Promises, a lovely rehab center in Malibu where he would join such distinguished alumni as Robert Downey Jr and Ben Affleck, Iron Man and Batman respectively. Also he had tweeted something vaguely Buddhist. So, there was that.
I debated long and hard with myself on whether or not to make good my promise to Joumana, but in the end I just could not be a guy who stiffed sex workers.
The Cypriot authorities had questioned me until someone from the embassy showed up and spoke some discreet words, presumably at Delia’s urging. I was solemnly informed that it would be best for all concerned if I went somewhere else, somewhere that was not Cyprus. Like, soon.
I was flying out the next morning.
‘Thanks for everything, Mustafa,’ I said and clinked my beer against his properly-observant fruit juice. ‘Sorry there were no telephone poles.’
‘Something even better,’ he said and raised his glass to Delia. ‘Justice. Also, I have an offer of employment.’
‘No kidding. What’s the gig?’
‘I am to be an Arabic interpreter. For the police in Nicosia.’
Delia barked a surprised laugh at that. ‘Well done, Mustafa. And well done, David, you’ve now contributed in multiple ways to truth, justice and the law.’
‘And got Mustafa laid,’ I said without too much bitterness.
‘What now for you?’ Delia asked me. I liked the way she asked me because it wasn’t tinged with suspicion.
I shrugged and blew out my cheeks. ‘Damned if I know. I’ve been invited to fuck off out of Cyprus at my earliest opportunity.’
‘So …?’
‘So, I’ll find another nice, sunny place where I can write and eat and drink and chase women. Try to write faster and make up for the piles of cash I’ve been bleeding for the FBI. But I’m not telling you where, Special Agent Delacorte, I don’t make a habit of updating the FBI on my travels.’
I didn’t ask her if she would be true to her word and leave my name out of all official reports, it would have been insulting. I thought about making one more pass at her, but we were beyond that. Dammit.
‘That’s okay, David,’ Delia said, her sleepy, mocking smile back again. ‘You don’t have to tell me where you’re going. I’ll know.’
‘Oh, you’re that good, are you?’ I teased.
Delia laughed and said, ‘I am, actually, Mister quote Mitre unquote. But I doubt I’ll need to be. I plan to stay in touch with your assistant.’
‘Assistant? I don’t have an assistant, I’ve never had a …’ I felt the hairs on my arms stand up as the awful truth began to dawn. ‘No, no, no, Delia. No.’
‘You need adult supervision,’ Delia said.
‘She’s not an adult, she’s a harpy! She’s the untamable shrew. She hates me!’
‘I wouldn’t say “hates,”’ Delia said, with a wink at Chante. ‘There’s a certain degree of contempt, maybe …’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I have to go. The rental car counter is slow and I don’t want to miss my flight.’
She gave Chante a long hug and they whispered to each other for a few seconds before Chante broke away, wiping at her eyes.
And suddenly there we were, me and Agent Delia, standing before the sparkling Mediterranean, just feet from where a woman had died and
brought us together. We looked at each other, not knowing quite what to say.
‘Delia, it’s been …’
‘Yes, David, it has been.’
I thought maybe a goodbye hug. Maybe even a brief but tantalizing kiss. But she stuck out her hand and I shook it.
You know, Delia Delacorte, I like the hell out of you. I admire you. I wish I’d grown up to be you instead of me, though if you ever fuck me over, I have plenty of video that will be hard for you to explain. But, that aside, damned if you didn’t budge the trajectory of my life and not in a bad way.
I said none of that, of course.
‘Take care of yourself, Delia.’
‘You too, David,’ she said and headed toward the hotel and the parking lot beyond. She stopped on the terrace, turned, hit me with that dazzling smile and said, ‘Stay out of trouble, huh?’
‘Me? Trouble? I’m redeemed!’
‘Not yet you aren’t. We’ll see.’
And that warning made me happy.
Chante was weeping and for a millisecond I thought of comforting her, but that wasn’t ever going to be a good idea. So, I contented myself with softening some of my sullen resentment when I said, ‘So. You’re working for me.’
‘For you?’ She blinked and looked past me. ‘I work for myself, you only pay me.’
I thought seriously of choking her but I was pretty sure Delia would say that was wrong.
‘Pay you? I’ll feed you, how about that? And let’s get this settled right up front: I fly first class, you fly coach.’
There was, I was certain, nothing Chante could say to that, it was only right, only fair.
And yet, by the time I boarded my flight, damned if the creature wasn’t in the seat next to mine.
A Sudden Death in Cyprus Page 28