Pandemic pr-2

by James Barrington

  As always, it was a scene of coordinated chaos as maintainers worked on the Sea Kings, Merlins and Harriers. The helicopters were both parked and serviced at the aft end of the cavernous structure, where there was a little more width available, and the Harriers at the opposite end. With a full complement of aircraft on this ship, the hangar was always noisy and crowded, so Richter took care not to trip over or walk into anything as he made his way forward.

  The squadron Chief Petty Officer who’d headed the team that had flown to Brindisi spotted Richter and immediately walked over to him.

  ‘You made it back, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks to your efforts, Chief, I did,’ Richter replied, shaking the CPO’s slightly grubby hand. ‘If you hadn’t pre-flighted her it would have been rather a close call. As it was, I had to get quite persuasive to leave that airfield.’

  ‘That would be thirty-millimetre persuasion, as supplied by a pair of Aden cannon?’ the Chief asked.

  ‘Got it in one,’ Richter said. ‘Thank you again. Now, a small favour. I need something reasonably heavy that can also be discarded.’

  ‘Discarded as in dropped over the side?’

  ‘Pretty much, yes.’

  Four minutes later Richter was walking back through the hangar, heading aft, clutching a collection of nuts and bolts with stripped threads, and two small pieces of steel plate.

  Back in his cabin he laid out his bloody T-shirt on the floor, put the flick-knife and the metal bits and pieces in the middle of it, and rolled it up. Then he wrapped the jeans around the T-shirt and put the whole bundle into the carrier bag. He put his discarded trainers right on top and then tied the neck of the bag securely. Richter made his way down the stairs to the Quarter Deck, walked over to the starboard side guard rail, and dropped the bag straight down. As it hit the water, it floated for a couple of seconds as the air was expelled from it, then sank swiftly beneath the waves.

  Kandíra, south-west Crete

  It was late afternoon before the first reporters began to arrive at the cordon surrounding the village, but by early evening it seemed to Inspector Lavat that almost every newspaper in Greece had at least one man standing at the police barrier either asking questions or taking pictures. There were even a couple of stringers for the international press hovering at the edge of the group.

  What was unusual was that none of them showed any inclination actually to cross the cordon and enter the village itself. But they did talk persistently to the police officers manning the barriers, and they shouted questions at anybody they saw moving inside the cordon. This story, Lavat knew, was going to be known world-wide within just a few hours.

  About an hour after the first of these pressmen had arrived outside the cordon, an elderly Suzuki jeep rattled down the road towards the village and stopped well short of the barriers. The two elderly Cretan men in the car looked about them in some astonishment and confusion for a few moments, then got out of the vehicle and made their way over to one of the police officers manning the barricade.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘We have a medical emergency here,’ the policeman recited the formula that Gravas had instructed them to memorize. ‘No one is allowed to enter or leave Kandíra until further notice.’

  ‘But we live there,’ the second man spluttered. ‘I want to get home.’

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t. One man is already dead, and the doctors fear an epidemic.’

  ‘Dead? Who? Who’s dead?’

  The policeman shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you that,’ he said.

  A reporter for one of the Irakleío papers who had overheard the exchange came trotting over. ‘It was a Greek,’ he interrupted, ‘by the name of Spiros Aristides. One of the forensic people told me.’

  ‘Aristides? But he was fine last night – we saw him in Jakob’s. What happened to him?’

  Immediately the Cretan said these words, the reporter sensed a story. What he had here was not an eyewitness to the actual death of Spiros Aristides, but almost certainly someone who had seen the Greek just hours before he died. Even if this man had only seen the casualty in the street, he could still use what the Cretan said to embellish the story he was already mentally composing.

  He took the man quietly by the arm and led him and his companion across to his own car. He opened the rear door, took out two cans of beer and offered one to each of the old men, then took another for himself.

  ‘A bad business,’ he said, ‘very bad. Did you know Spiros well?’ The use of the dead man’s first name was quite deliberate. It implied a familiarity and acquaintance where none existed, and was a device this reporter used frequently. As he had hoped, the elderly man took a swallow of lukewarm beer, then began to talk.

  ‘No, I didn’t know him well,’ he said. ‘We exchanged only a few words if we met in the street, you know, or in Jakob’s.’

  ‘Jakob’s?’

  ‘The kafeníon in the middle of the village.’

  ‘And last night?’ the reporter prompted.

  ‘Just like any other night, really.’ The Cretan indicated his companion and took another mouthful of beer. ‘We were there, in Jakob’s, just talking and drinking, when Aristides came in. He looked tired and a bit irritated. He had a drink at the bar, then came over and sat down by himself at the table next to us.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you?’

  The Cretan shook his head. ‘No, he just sat drinking whisky for a while, until Nico arrived.’

  ‘Who’s Nico?’

  ‘Nico Aristides. He’s a nephew or cousin. I think they do business together.’

  The reporter made a mental note to talk to this Nico Aristides as soon as possible. ‘And then?’

  ‘They sat together and talked, you know.’

  ‘What about?’

  The Cretan glanced at his companion, as if for reassurance, before replying. ‘I don’t know if we should tell you,’ he said. ‘You see, Spiros wasn’t talking to us. We just happened to be sitting at the next table. But we did overhear them talking about some aircraft.’

  The reporter didn’t even blink. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, lying with the aplomb and confidence that come only after years of newspaper work, ‘I heard something about that, too. What did they say?’

  The reporter’s apparent prior knowledge reassured the naturally suspicious old man. ‘Well, you know that Spiros was a diver?’ The reporter nodded encouragement and the Cretan continued. ‘He was a diver, but he hadn’t got a permit – you know, from the Department of Antiquities – so he never said to anyone where he’d gone diving. We couldn’t help hearing him say how he’d found some kind of a small aircraft, but he didn’t say where it was. It had been there a long time, though, so it wasn’t a recent crash.’ The reporter nodded again, and the man continued. ‘The water was quite deep so he’d had to make several dives to search it.’

  ‘Did he say what he’d found there?’

  The Cretan shook his head. ‘No, but he thought the aircraft had been shot down. It hadn’t just crashed, you see.’

  ‘Did he say anything else you can remember?’

  ‘No, nothing, really. The only other thing was the piece of paper.’

  ‘What paper?’

  ‘Spiros passed Nico a piece of paper with numbers on it. He said it was the registration of the crashed aircraft. Just a short while after that they both left Jakob’s, and Nico dropped the paper when he stood up to go. After they’d left, I picked it up.’

  ‘Do you still have it?’ the reporter asked eagerly.

  The Cretan nodded, fished around in his jacket pocket, pulled out a torn and crumpled slip and handed it over.

  ‘Can I keep this?’ the reporter asked, looking at the single letter and three numbers written on it in thick pencil.

  The Cretan nodded. ‘It’s no use to me,’ he muttered.

  The reporter extracted another four cans of beer and handed them over. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Could I take your n
ames for my newspaper?’

  ‘No, no,’ the Cretan said firmly. ‘I don’t want my name in the paper.’

  No matter, the reporter thought to himself. He already had enough to scoop his rivals, and the story about a wrecked aircraft could become central to the mystery of Aristides’s sudden death. Maybe whatever had killed the Greek had been found on that aircraft. The possibilities were endless.

  And he could quote the elderly Cretan as being a ‘close friend’ of Spiros Aristides. After all, the Greek himself wasn’t around to dispute it.

  HMS Invincible, Ionian Sea

  ‘Looking forward to getting back to your Secret Squirrel outfit, Spook?’ In the dining room located across the corridor from the Wardroom on Five Deck, Roger Black grinned at Paul Richter over the remains of his dinner.

  With the exception of the Captain and Commander (Air), nobody else on the ship actually knew what Richter did or how he was normally employed, but a rumour had quickly spread that he worked for one of the deniable outfits – MI5 or SIS – and the nickname ‘Spook’ had been attributed to him almost as soon as he had arrived on board.

  Richter looked back at him, speared a final carrot, then put down his knife and fork and shook his head. ‘You mean, am I looking forward to traffic fumes and miserable weather, and the pointless paper-shuffling that passes for my normal employment in London? Meanwhile you and the rest of the WAFUs can get comprehensively laid in every brothel in Athens and Piraeus, once we’ve finished whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing on Crete.’

  ‘WAFU’ is a less than complimentary term used by non-naval aviators to describe aircrew officers: it stands for ‘Wanked-out And Fucking Useless’.

  Richter paused and looked up and down the long table at the grinning faces of most of 800 Squadron. ‘No, not really,’ he said. ‘The only thing that keeps me going is the thought that at least some of you will get the clap or worse, and have a hell of a time explaining it to your wives when you get back to Yeovilton.’

  Black shook his head. ‘I’ll have you know we’re all officers and gentlemen.’

  ‘And that means what, exactly?’

  ‘That we never pay for it. The Captain’s Secretary has assured me that there’ll be tons of available crumpet at the cockers-pee in Athens – if we ever get there, that is – and all we’ll have to do is decide what shape and colour we want and take it from there.’

  ‘Dream on, Blackie,’ Richter replied to the gathering at large. ‘He said the same thing about the cocktail party in Trieste, remember, and the youngest woman there was fifty-five if she was a day, and had a face like a Doberman – all nose, teeth and attitude.’

  ‘Well, you should know best. Somebody told me you left with her.’

  ‘That,’ Richter said, ‘is a lie. I retired to bed alone, with an improving book, and well before midnight.’

  ‘And we believe that, of course.’ Black smiled. ‘Anyway, all kidding aside, when are you off?’

  ‘The day after we dock at Piraeus, probably. I’ll hop a flight from Athens to London and be back at work the next day, I suppose.’

  ‘No long weekend, then?’

  ‘Well, maybe.’ Richter grinned. ‘I’m in no hurry, no hurry at all. And I’ll probably need a day or two to recover from the rigours of about four hours in a 737, enduring that new British Airways crap-class seating.’

  ‘Well, now that you’ve flown your last sortie with us, and managed to return our Harrier more or less in one piece,’ Lieutenant Commander David Richards, the 800 Squadron Commanding Officer, spoke up, ‘I would just like to say that it’s been good having you here as a temporary squadron member.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Richter said, sincerely. ‘I’ve really enjoyed being back in the saddle, even for just a few days. Maybe I’ll be able to do it again some time.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Richards said, frowning. ‘We didn’t enjoy having you here as much as that.’

  Arlington, Virginia

  Mike Murphy was known to his few friends as ‘The Double M’. His given name was actually George, but ever since high school he’d been called Mike because, apart from anything else, he didn’t really look like a George. And the reason he had few friends, he told anyone who asked, was because of his job.

  He’d joined the Central Intelligence Agency straight out of college and immediately gravitated into the Directorate of Operations, more commonly known throughout the Company as Clandestine Services, and he’d spent the next fifteen years working pretty much everywhere except mainland America. Then he’d abruptly retired, ostensibly on the grounds of ill health. In fact, he’d received what amounted to a better offer.

  Mike Murphy’s personal specialization was cleaning things up – he sometimes even referred to himself as ‘The Cleaner’ – and the offer he’d received was to continue working for the Agency but as a freelance operator under contract, at a substantially increased salary and with a complete absence of the bullshit invariably associated with any organization funded by any government. The downside was that, as a contract employee, the CIA could legitimately disavow him if the manure impacted the air-conditioner. If Murphy made a cock-up, he had to face the consequences without the protecting hand of the US Government to help him. Even so, it hadn’t been a difficult decision.

  The call from John Nicholson had reached him as he was heading out to do some grocery shopping, one of the more boring tasks faced by any bachelor, and he’d happily postponed that one when he heard what Nicholson had to say. Ninety minutes later he was walking down the hallway of the Arlington safe house, instructions memorized.

  He was going to return to his apartment in Falls Church to pack what he needed before getting a cab to Baltimore to catch a transatlantic flight. Nicholson had calculated that Murphy would arrive in Crete about twelve hours after Krywald, Stein and Elias, which was just about right.

  But before he went home, he had an extra job to do for Nicholson, immediately.

  Number Two Briefing-Room, HMS Invincible, Sea of Crete

  The Operations Officer stood waiting for them at the front of the room, a clipboard of notes in his hand. Before him, in tiered seating that ascended towards the rear, sat most of 814 Naval Air Squadron. Some looked interested, some looked bored, but most just looked irritated. Their run ashore in Athens had been keenly anticipated.

  ‘Commander (Air),’ the Operations Officer announced as the heavily built, bearded officer walked into the briefing-room and down the steps to the front row. Everyone not already standing stood up, then relaxed back into their seats as the Commander himself sat down.

  ‘Carry on, please.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Gentlemen, this will be an outline briefing only, as we have yet to receive detailed tasking instructions, and we have no confirmed start time for any flying operations. For this reason I have dispensed for the moment with the meteorological briefing and other detailed information on the area. You will be briefed on terrain, high ground, safety altitudes, inbound and outbound routes, operational frequencies and so on, before your individual sorties.

  ‘This briefing will cover five topics: ship’s position, other forces present in the area, operational background, anticipated tasking and forecast operation timing.’ He picked up a pointer and turned to the bulkhead behind him, where a large map of the island of Crete was displayed.

  ‘First: ship’s position. Invincible is currently here,’ he said, pointing to a location about ten miles to the northeast of Andikíthira, ‘and we’re making our way to here,’ he pointed again, ‘just north of Réthymno, which is more or less the mid-point of the island. The ship will be holding clear of the civilian ferry routes into and out of Irakleío and Chaniá, but we will only be about thirty miles from the Nikos Kazantzakis International Airport here at Irakleío and around the same distance from the island’s second airport on the Akrotíri Peninsula. We will remain in the same general area until further notice.

  ‘Second: other forces. As some of you will be aware, the airport at A
krotíri has three different functions. First, it’s the civilian airport serving Chaniá and the western end of the island of Crete. Second, it’s the home of the Hellenic Air Force’s 115th Combat Wing, which operates two squadrons of A-7H Corsairs. It’s also home to the US Naval Support Facility of Soúda Bay, with quite a large presence – over one thousand people altogether. The primary function of the base is to provide support to US and allied ships and aircraft operating in the eastern Mediterranean.

  ‘We’re not concerned about the surface vessels they may have, because we are unlikely to become involved with them, but you should be aware of the range of air assets they can deploy. Currently, the Americans have based their Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron Two Detachment at Soúda, flying two EP-3E Aries II aircraft. Their Patrol and Reconnaissance Squadron Five, operating P-3C Orions, and Detachment One of the 95th Reconnaissance Squadron, flying RC-135s, are also based there. Additionally, there’s an Air Mobility Command weekly trooping flight from the Naval Air Station at Norfolk, Virginia, to Soúda Bay and back again for personnel and light stores. What you will have noticed immediately is that neither the Greeks nor the Americans operate a dedicated helicopter squadron out of Soúda, which is where we come in.

  ‘Third: operational background. We now have some further information about the medical emergency on the island. Apparently the disease broke out in a small village called Kandíra, which is here on the south-west coast of Crete.’ He pointed to a location on the coast about halfway between the small town of Soúgia and the equally small settlement of Agía Rouméli, and south of the peak of Psiláfi, then turned back to face his audience.

  ‘The latest information we have is that one person is confirmed as having died, and we now have unsubstantiated reports of a second death. What worries the Cretans is that the man whose death began this emergency was reported as being alive and apparently healthy late on Monday evening, yet dead by the following morning.