The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller)

by Johnston, Paul

Mavros had rung Grace Helmer at her hotel and told her he wanted to see her. She didn’t sound too surprised when he declined her invitation to meet in her room, saying that he preferred another location nearby. He didn’t want to be seen at the hotel with her again.

  As he headed up towards Syndagma Square on foot, he tried to make sense of what he was doing. This looked like a seriously dubious proposition. Not only would the authorities regard his involvement in a terrorist case with extreme prejudice, but the party that had been his father’s spiritual home was shaping up to be equally antagonistic. After the Fat Man had clammed up about Iason Kolettis, Mavros decided against making any further enquiries about him among other Communist sources. He reckoned that Yiorgos Pandazopoulos would keep his enquiry to himself if only for reasons of self-protection—Greek Communists had as much of a record for turning against their own as their comrades in other countries. But what was it about Kolettis that had spooked him? Could there have been links between some members of the Party and the Iraklis group?

  After beating the traffic across the road outside the Grand Bretagne Hotel and gaining an approving wink from the policewoman on point duty, Mavros walked up Vasilissis Sofias Avenue with his head humming. The easy option was to reject Grace Helmer’s job offer. That way he would keep himself in the security establishment’s good books and avoid any angst from the Communists. He might also escape the notice of the killer who had done for the investor Vernardhakis, if there turned out to be a connection between him and the man who had assassinated Grace’s father. So what was he doing striding avidly towards the Red Lion pub? He could easily have turned her down by phone. No, he had already decided he was going to take the job. It was too tempting to resist. Maybe the case he had cracked in the Cyclades last October had given him a taste for living dangerously.

  The Red Lion had been in the street near the Hilton since the seventies, a counterfeit English pub that served lager from the barrel, provided a tattered dartboard and played soft rock to junior diplomats and nostalgic expatriates. Mavros wasn’t a regular but he sometimes used it for meetings—the booths gave a degree of privacy and the drinkers, aware that they had committed a sin against good taste just by entering the establishment, kept themselves to themselves. When he got there, he discovered that Grace Helmer had already taken up residence in the far corner. She was smoking a cigarette with an air of abstraction, her loose white blouse setting off the deep tan of her arms and neck even in the subdued lighting of the pub. She had left her blonde hair loose. It gave her face a soft, lustrous frame.

  ‘Hi,’ Mavros said, indicating the half-full wine glass in front of her. ‘Another?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, thanks. This came from the business end of a horse. I’ll have a beer.’

  He gave the order to the waiter who had appeared at his side—self-service, English-pub style was not an option—and sat down opposite her in the booth. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  Grace Helmer glanced at her watch. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve been on my own in worse places.’

  Not for the first time, Mavros caught a glimpse of the steely layer that lay beneath her easy-going urbanity. He wondered if she had been born like that or if her experiences as a child had made her that way.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, raising the frosted glass that had been placed in front of her.

  Mavros followed suit, feeling the cold beer clear the traffic fumes from his throat. ‘That’s better.’ He drank again and saw her watching him with an expectant smile.

  ‘So,’ she said, her voice suddenly throatier, ‘are you going to help me?’

  It didn’t escape him that she was making an appeal rather than simply asking him if he wanted the job. But her words didn’t make him feel that he was being manipulated. On the contrary, they encouraged him. He found it hard to handle cases that didn’t engage him and he’d been concerned that she was too dispassionate.

  ‘I think so,’ he said, pausing to see how she reacted. Although her smile widened, her eyes were still giving off cold glints. ‘But it isn’t going to be easy.’ He’d been considering how much to tell her about the case’s sensitivity. ‘You understand that the authorities, both Greek and American, would be reluctant to countenance a private investigator digging around in a terrorist assassination, even if it is twenty-five years old.’

  Grace gave a brief laugh. ‘Countenance?’ she said, repeating his word ironically. ‘What are you? A poet?’

  ‘Think of Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe,’ Mavros said with a smile. ‘Private investigators soon become poets of the human condition.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘But do you understand, Grace? Do you understand how dirty and how dangerous this could get?’

  The smile had disappeared from her lips. ‘Sure I do, Alex,’ she said. ‘I’ve lived with the consequences of my father’s death for most of my life. You imagine I haven’t thought this through?’

  He looked down at the cigarette-scarred tabletop. ‘I’m not suggesting that. It’s just that in this country things are more complicated than you might imagine. For a start, there’s a chance that the Iraklis group has recommenced operations. A rich investor was—’

  ‘I know about him. I read the international papers.’

  ‘But that isn’t why you’re here.’

  Grace stared at him with what seemed to be incomprehension. ‘No, of course not. I told you. I came because I got my mother’s letter after my Ganma died. And because it’s a quarter of a century since—’ She reached for her cigarettes.

  ‘Okay. I’m sorry. But you have to be aware that the assassin and his friends might realise that I’m digging up things from the past.’ He decided to leave out the Communist angle for the time being.

  Grace blew out a plume of smoke and threw back her head. ‘I don’t care. It’s about time the ice cracked.’ She looked at him. ‘Are you scared by any chance, Alex?’ she asked with a mocking smile.

  ‘Yes, of course I am,’ he replied, without hesitation. ‘I specialise in finding people, not taking on professional killers.’

  She reached for her glass. ‘Good. Fear is the key. Without it, you give your opponent the upper hand.’

  Mavros thought about that as he sipped his beer. It sounded like the gnomic utterance of some eastern philosopher. Or a bullet point from an operational training manual.

  An old Eagles number came over the speakers and Grace Helmer groaned. ‘Shit, I hate this song.’ She ground out her cigarette. ‘“Witchy Woman”, my ass.’

  Mavros grinned. ‘Seems pretty appropriate to me.’

  ‘Back off,’ Grace said. She smiled and waved to the waiter for more drinks. ‘Let’s get down to business. What are your rates?’

  He told her. She didn’t seem too concerned and he almost wished he’d pitched them higher. Then he remembered that she was an aid-agency worker. This trip would be costing a large part of her annual savings.

  ‘And how do you intend to go about finding—’

  Mavros raised his hand swiftly and looked around. ‘No names,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ve got various contacts whose chains I can pull—journalists, Justice and Public Order Ministry staff, policemen.’ He stopped when he saw Grace’s expression. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘You just told me that we had to keep a low profile on this. Can you trust those guys?’

  Mavros was impressed by her grip of the situation. He was about to launch into the list of secondary sources he’d been compiling, people he could approach in a more oblique fashion to minimise suspicion, when she leaned closer and beckoned him to do the same.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said, her breath fanning his ear. ‘I’ve got another lead I didn’t tell you about.’

  ‘What?’ he said, unable to keep his voice down. ‘Sorry.’ He waited for her to bring her head close again. ‘What do you mean another lead?’

  ‘I was waiting to see if you would take the case. Security is essential, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said, registering the echo o
f his earlier warnings. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you really think I’m a witchy woman?’ she asked, putting on a sultry voice.

  ‘Give me a break, Grace. What’s the lead?’

  She leaned even closer, this time briefly touching the upper part of his cheek with her own. He breathed in her scent, something restrained cut with cigarette smoke. The proximity to her made the hairs on his neck rise. ‘Actually, it’s to do with music. After my mother died, my Ganma collected up all her things and put them in crates in the loft. She didn’t want me to be unduly influenced. You can see why, I suppose. Anyway, a couple of years ago I was going through the boxes when I was back on leave. And I found this Greek record, a single. I didn’t play it, but I copied down the writing on the label. You see, it was the only Greek disc my mother had and I figured it must have meant something to her.’ She sat back, took a piece of paper from the pocket of her jeans and slid it across the table.

  Mavros glanced over his shoulder, then unfolded the note. On it were several lines of Greek that had clearly been transcribed by someone unfamiliar with the language. ‘“The Voyage of the Argo”,’ he translated, suppressing the quiver of surprise that had run through him. ‘I know this song. Everyone in Greece knows this song. It was one of the composer Randos’s first big hits.’

  He thought of the poet Kostas Laskaris, whom he’d met at his mother’s. He had written the words to what had subsequently become one of the most popular songs of resistance to the Colonels’ regime in the late sixties. What was it the gaunt old man had said? That the lyrics meant more than the music suggested?

  ‘We had this in my home when I was a kid, even though it was banned by the dictatorship. My brother Andonis used to play it in the evenings, at a volume that was much higher than was sensible, until my mother intervened.’

  Grace was watching him thoughtfully. ‘So is it any help?’

  Mavros blinked and came back to himself. ‘What? Is it any help?’ He raised his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. The song was generally taken as a metaphor for political change. The voyage of Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece was an exhortation to Greeks to strive for a more just government.’ He smacked a hand to his forehead. ‘Shit. Jason and the Argonauts.’ He leaned close again. ‘Jason is Iason in Greek. As in Iason—’

  ‘Kolettis,’ Grace murmured. ‘You think the song was written about the man who killed my father?’

  Mavros stared at the transcription. ‘But this record was first released in the mid-sixties.’

  ‘More than ten years before my father was killed.’

  Mavros’s expression was troubled. ‘And Kolettis was in his early thirties when your mother knew him, so he would have been a very young man back then.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘There’s something else. It’s a long time since I studied Greek mythology, but I can remember some of the crew members of the Argo. Jason chose the bravest, most skilled men he could find.’ He looked across at Grace. ‘One of whom was the greatest hero of his time.’

  She returned his gaze blankly.

  ‘Whose name was Hercules,’ Mavros said. ‘Or in this country, Iraklis.’ He wondered if Kostas Laskaris, former leading Communist, knew more about the terrorists than he’d ever publicly admitted.

  Neither Mavros nor Grace noticed that the music in the Red Lion had changed. Now The Who were playing ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.

  *

  The beggar had been opposite the Megaro Mousikis all afternoon. Although there were often policemen around the nation’s major concert hall, not least because the American embassy was the next building down the broad avenue, they didn’t pay him much attention. He had taken care to work the grime well into his face, hands and lower legs in the hotel room. He had put on the ragged clothes he had picked up from the barrows in the backstreets around Omonia and slipped out of the building when no one was around. As soon as he took up his position on the pavement, he had rolled up his trousers and twisted his feet into unsightly angles, the toenails uneven and discoloured with earth from a park picked up on his way. He had spent hours in the pose over the last week and knew he could keep it up without getting cramp—his regime of physical training was almost as rigorous now as it had been all those years ago in the training camps. And the pose had been convincing. He had been given several thousand drachmas’ worth of coins throughout the afternoon by sympathetic passers-by, most of them elderly women.

  The sun had made him sweat earlier on, but now it had gone and there was a chill wind blowing down Vasilissis Sophias. He wasn’t concerned. He had grown up in the country and nothing Athens could throw at him caused any problems. The straggly beard he had obtained from a theatrical outfitter was irritating the skin of his face and neck, and the rough workman’s shirt was also a penance, but there wasn’t long to go now. He wasn’t wearing his watch, considering that no self-respecting beggar would make the mistake of displaying such a possession, but he had it in his pocket and cast surreptitious glances at it from time to time. Three-quarters of an hour to go—the VIPs’ cars would soon be arriving. Less exalted ticket holders were already streaming into the rectangular concrete and glass box that had been erected on a piece of parkland a few years before. Fur coats and evening suits were in evidence, though many of the audience were in casual clothes. The production they were to see was of Verdi’s Macbeth, in modern dress. ‘Death to all tyrants,’ the beggar muttered to himself with a cracked smile.

  He stayed on the opposite side of the road, biding his time. He knew from the briefing he had memorised that the target always arrived close to curtain-up, leaving his office as late as possible. No rest for the tycoon, at least not until tonight. He would have eternal rest soon enough. He touched the thin object in his breast pocket, hoping that the metal casing and the timing device he had set earlier was as infallible as he’d been assured. It was the best on the global market. Who said capitalism was a worthless system? It produced weapons you could rely on—if you had the funds to obtain them.

  There was a constant stream of cars pulling up, armoured Mercedes with smoked-glass windows dropping off politicians, even a Rolls-Royce with the British flag depositing a harassed-looking ambassador with his wan, pearl-bedecked wife and granite-faced bodyguard at the foot of the steps. Soon the target would be here.

  Then there was a flash of headlights and bodywork to his right. That was it—a silver Jaguar with an old-style radiator grille. The beggar cut across the traffic with unexpected speed, arriving on the opposite pavement before the police had caught sight of him. As the Jaguar’s nearside doors opened, the security man out first to usher his employer into the building, the dishevelled man started up his incantation in a high, cracked voice.

  ‘Sir, spare a few coins for an invalid.’ He pointed to his twisted legs. ‘I cannot work, I have a sick wife and three helpless children. Sir, spare a few coins…’ He broke off as the bodyguard raised a fist, then let out an ear-piercing shriek. ‘Don’t hurt an invalid. I’m incapable, I’m weak…’ He was making his voice as heart-rending as possible, blinking tears on to his filthy cheeks. That way the target would be shamed into approaching him, fearful that if he didn’t the watching police and late-arriving ticket-holders would comment on his stinginess.

  The tactic worked. The rich man tapped his bodyguard’s shoulder and stepped close to the beggar, a sheaf of thousand-drachma notes extended.

  ‘Oh, sir,’ the beggar said, ‘thank you, sir, you are a good man, may God bless you, sir.’ And he stumbled towards the target, his hand slipping the narrow metal tube into the inside pocket of the silk-lined tuxedo before the gorilla manhandled him away.

  The beggar limped away down the street, an expression of beatific joy on his face. As he got further away, he let the smile fade but kept up the awkward gait. The target was doomed. Even if he discovered the extra pen in his pocket and removed it, the motion sensor would detonate the concentrated explosive. The amount had been reduced as much as was feasibl
e so that people in the close vicinity wouldn’t suffer serious injury. The man playing the beggar had suggested slipping the weapon into the target’s pocket after the performance so that the explosion would take place in the car, but his boss had been adamant: the death had to occur in the concert hall for maximum public effect. That was why he had to risk a close encounter. And the piece of olivewood was to be dropped into a leading newspaper’s mailbox later that night along with the statement claiming responsibility.

  The second labour had been designed to raise the stakes considerably.

  In her hotel room Grace Helmer lay back on the wide bed and blew smoke into the temperature-controlled air. Glancing around at the characterless furniture and the neutral reproductions on the pale yellow walls, she felt that she could be anywhere. She should have booked herself into a smaller, family-run hotel, maybe on the slopes of the Acropolis, rather than this soulless dump—there, she might have been able to shut herself off from the past, if only for a few moments each day. Her work had taken her to so many of the world’s hellholes, the nights spent in plush hotels in big cities framing tours of duty on the front line where nobody had any luxuries, free time or even a single breath that wasn’t tainted by the stink of physical corruption. She wondered why she had let her career rule her life, wondered if there really was a chance that her work could unlock the emotions she had kept in check for so long.

  She stretched across to the bedside table and emptied the miniature of whisky that she’d taken from the mini-bar. Why was she tormenting herself with pointless questions? She knew why her work was so important to her. Ever since she’d left home at eighteen, she’d felt the need to make her own life: her father was long dead, her mother had floated in her own distant dimension, her grandmother was strong-willed and restrictive. She’d also wanted to put as much space as she could between herself and the world in which she’d been raised. Service abroad was perfect, and she was good at it. The only reason she hadn’t been promoted further was that she refused to give up foreign postings: otherwise she’d have been sitting in some air-conditioned block in the U.S., her spirit shrinking as her prospects improved. To hell with that.