The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller)

by Johnston, Paul

  ‘They wouldn’t have known,’ Laskaris said gently. ‘Andonis might have been young but he knew how to take precautions. He grew up with your father as an example.’

  Mavros faced him. ‘You knew what Iason Kolettis was like, though. You knew that he was capable of anything. Why did you let Andonis have contact with him?’ He stepped closer, then restrained himself. The poet was ailing, his strength gone. It wasn’t right to berate him, even though he couldn’t understand why Laskaris had suddenly admitted this long-held secret. Did he want some kind of absolution?

  ‘I’m sorry, my boy,’ the old man said, his rheumy eyes lowered.

  Mavros touched his shoulder, feeling the bone through the jacket. ‘Won’t you tell me what you know about the assassin?’ he said softly. ‘The American woman Grace is suffering because of what he did to her father.’

  ‘I cannot, Alex,’ Laskaris replied. f‘It’s a question of honour.’

  ‘What honour?’ Mavros said, fighting to keep his tone even. ‘There’s nothing left for you to protect now. The Party’s finished, the struggle is lost, your life’s work has failed.’

  The poet looked at him, his face racked by a terrible sadness. ‘Maybe that’s all true,’ he said. ‘But every man still has the right to act as honour requires. Your father and your brother understood that.’

  Mavros caught his eye, then nodded slowly before walking back to the tower.

  Grace was standing in the doorway, her jacket on. ‘Get anywhere?’ she asked, peering at him through the gloom. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Mavros mumbled, walking past. ‘Nothing I can do anything about.’

  Grace caught up with him. ‘What is it, Alex?’ She glanced over her shoulder and saw Kostas Laskaris leaning on his stick, his eyes on them.

  Mavros stuck out his hand for the car keys. He got into the Fiat and started the engine.

  Grace turned round and raised her arm in a wave. The old man was framed by the heavy walls of his home, the war tower rising up behind him. He returned the gesture, then walked back to the building, his head bowed.

  ‘Want to tell me what you talked about?’ she asked when she got in.

  ‘Family matters,’ Mavros replied, reversing the car and turning with excessive pressure on the accelerator.

  ‘Is that right?’ Grace said. ‘Very appropriate for the Mani.’ She picked up her guidebook. ‘It says in here that vendettas—’

  ‘Never mind what it says in there,’ Mavros interrupted. ‘Just concentrate on finding the road to Kitta.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Grace glanced at the map and let it drop to her lap. ‘Back the way you came and keep going until we hit the main road. Kitta’s on the other side. We saw the towers on the way here, remember?’

  Mavros headed up the track, this time without interference from the cow. After weaving his way down a couple of narrow, stonewalled roads, he reached the highway that led from Areopolis to the Mani’s southernmost settlements. The extended village of Kitta was spread out across the hillside beyond, the upper parts of its towers lost in the mist.

  ‘How are we going to find this Babis Dhimitrakos?’ Grace asked.

  Mavros extended his chin in a gesture of uncertainty. ‘Don’t know. He may not even call himself that any more. But Kitta is as good a place to start as any. I checked in the phone book in the guest house back in Sparta. There are more people with that name than in any other village in the Mani. Including one whose first name is Haralambos—Babis, for short.’

  Grace was looking at him sceptically. ‘And you think he’ll open up to a pair of strangers about the Iraklis group?’

  Mavros took his eyes off the road for a second. ‘Not if you tell him who you are. It might have been him driving the motorbike the night your father was murdered. You aren’t going to be the person he most wants to meet.’

  Grace watched as they passed the first stone buildings and wound up the narrow road to the village square. It was deserted, the shops cflosed and the run-down kafeneion empty. ‘Welcome to Deadsville, Lakonia,’ she murmured.

  ‘If you get a welcome you’ll be doing well,’ Mavros said. An old woman had pulled her head back round a corner the moment his eye landed on her. He took out his notebook and looked at the list of names and telephone numbers he’d copied down, then checked his mobile phone. He’d forgotten to charge it and the battery was almost gone. There was a public phone on the other side of the square.

  As he got out of the Fiat, the rain started to come down at last. He was cold, dispirited and about to get soaked. He could see why, for centuries, the Mani’s inhabitants had been getting out as soon as they could.

  Kostas Laskaris waited until the cleaning woman had finished in the kitchen area of the tower, then spread out his papers across the table again. He wanted to work, he needed to work, to shut out the agonised face of Alex Mavros. The American woman’s expression had been troubling enough—years of pain and incomprehension etched into what were still fine features. But she was different: she was foreign, the daughter of an enemy. And there was something about her, a burning will that tempered the sympathy he felt for a child who had lost her father. From Alex he had no hiding place—son of one of the Party’s most heroic members, a man who had been his own friend for decades and brother of the young resistance leader who could have achieved great things against the dictators. If only he had never encountered the man who called himself Iason Kolettis. Laskaris had always suspected that Andonis Mavros’s still unexplained disappearance was in some way connected with the Iraklis group. Shortly after their meeting down on Tigani, shortly after Andonis went into the dark, Iraklis had started to murder policemen and Junta sympathisers.

  The poet tried to write, to move his work on to the blood-soaked final year of the German occupation, when the resistance had been driven to execute collaborators and Security Battalionists. The story was oppressive and the mythical parallel of Iraklis cleansing the Augean stables hard to make fresh. But that wasn’t what was holding him back. No, it was the guilt he felt, the remorse that was gnawing at him. He should have told Alex Mavros and the woman more about the man who called himself Iason Kolettis. It wasn’t as if he had anything to fear. The pain in his gut was worsening by the day, the pills he took having little effect. Even if the assassin had returned to Greece and was behind the latest killings, he might not find out if Laskaris put Alex Mavros on his trail, and even if he did, it would be a mercy. It was time that the cycle of death ended. But no. The chains of the past, the chains that tied him to his comrades, the woman and the one he had loved more than any other were still secure. Even though what he’d said to Alex about honour was a lie: there could be no honour among murderers, he had finally come to understand that.

  The old man slammed his hand down on the table and felt the shock course through his body. Coward, he mouthed. Traitor. You owed it to the Party to inform on the proscribed group. You still owe that, even though you despise the present leadership. He blinked and felt tears course down his cheeks. Iraklis was a precious link with the past. He hadn’t seen him since that day in 1972 with Andonis Mavros, but he couldn’t betray him. He couldn’t…

  There was a pounding on the door and, before he could get up, the handle turned and it was pushed open. He had forgotten to lock it after the cleaner had left.

  ‘Kyrie Kosta?’ His driver, Savvas, looked shocked, his eyes staring. ‘I just heard on the radio. The composer Randos…Randos is dead. They found him on the ground beneath his apartment. It seems…it seems he fell.’

  Laskaris slumped forward, his mind in turmoil and a foul taste in the back of his throat. Dhimitris Randos dead? An accident? He had visited the flat and seen how tightly closed the shutters were kept. And his old comrade would never have committed suicide, that was impossible—the life force that inspired his music was too great. But who would have killed him? The authorities had hunted him in the past, but not since the end of the dictatorship in the seventies.

&nbs
p; And then a terrible thought struck the poet. Could Iraklis have acted against the old Communist? Randos had sent Mavros and the woman down to the Mani. Was it possible that the assassin had discovered that and seen it as a betrayal? If that was the case, what was in store for him, the writer of the lyrics to the composer’s best-known songs?

  Kostas Laskaris felt the shadows gathering around what remained of his life, and he was glad.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE air-conditioning fans gave off a low hum in the meeting room beneath the American embassy. There were three people sitting at the oval table, none showing any sign of the Christmas spirit.

  Peter Jaeger, his striped tie knotted tight at the neck of his white shirt, looked across the table at his subordinate. ‘So let’s be clear about this, Ms Forster,’ he said, his voice clipped. ‘Your team lost Mavros and Grace Helmer in Athens yesterday afternoon. And you haven’t managed to locate them since.’

  There were points of red on the woman’s cheeks. ‘That’s correct, sir.’ Her southern accent was hard to pick up as she was swallowing her words.

  ‘Fortunately, we came to your rescue, Jane,’ the police commander Nikos Kriaras said with a brief smile. He tried to control the shivering that had seized him after Jaeger turned down the heating on their arrival. ‘We have confirmed a sighting of them at the Peloponnese bus station in the evening. They got on the bus to Patra.’

  ‘But you don’t have any idea where they are now,’ Jaeger said, looking at the open file. His tone was neutral, but he managed to imply that, despite his own operatives’ failure, the Greek authorities were out of their depth.

  ‘We are checking in Patra and in Corinth,’ Kriaras said, frowning at the American. ‘They may have got off the bus at the Isthmus. The driver doesn’t remember them being on board after the stop there.’

  Jaeger stood up and strode over to the large map of Greece on the wall behind him. ‘They could be anywhere, for Christ’s sake.’ He turned and glared at the woman until she raised her eyes to his. ‘What are you doing to find them, Ms Forster? I hope you haven’t done anything as foolish as to call his cellphone.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Jane Forster replied hurriedly. She glanced down at her yellow pad. ‘Our contacts in all the main towns are on the lookout, especially those in the Peloponnese. And—’ She broke off and looked at Jaeger, making a sideways movement of her head towards the Greek.

  ‘We’re all friends here, aren’t we?’ her superior said, smiling coldly at Kriaras.

  Jane Forster turned to Kriaras, her bunched auburn hair flicking like a horse’s tail, and took in a smile that was meant to be encouraging but made her feel like a little girl. ‘And we’re expecting a report from our own field operative any minute now.’

  The police commander stiffened, remembering the man with the vacant stare who had been sitting across the table from him at their last meeting. ‘You think we can rely on that individual, do you?’ he said, staring at Jaeger. ‘Lance Milroy should not be involved in this operation. He is compromised by his past.’

  Jaeger smoothed a hand over his already flattened blond hair. ‘I decide on the personnel, Niko,’ he said. ‘If you have any complaints, take them to your minister.’

  ‘I already have,’ Kriaras said dispiritedly. ‘He has been told by his superiors that you are to have full authority and that’s all that matters to him.’

  Jaeger smiled. ‘He’s worried that he will lose his job if the terrorist isn’t caught.’

  ‘We will all lose our jobs,’ Kriaras countered. ‘Or worse.’

  Jane Forster’s head was moving like that of a spectator at a tennis match as she followed the exchange.

  ‘Keep calm, Niko,’ Jaeger said, sitting down at the table. ‘I know what I’m doing. Besides, Lance Milroy’s past is relevant here. He knew Trent Helmer and he was involved in the operation that led to the dissolution of the Iraklis group.’

  Kriaras nodded. ‘It was unfortunate that the safe house he chose turned out to be particularly unsafe.’

  ‘You can’t blame Milroy for the fact that Greek security personnel accepted bribes and allowed the prisoner to escape.’ Jaeger glanced at Jane Forster, whose eyes were wide. ‘Not all of what you’re hearing is in the files,’ he said sharply. ‘Make sure you keep it to yourself.’ He gave her a look that made her blink, then turned back to Kriaras. ‘I understand that your people found several witnesses who have described the beggar outside the Megaro Mousikis.’

  The policeman nodded. ‘We got him on closed-circuit television too, but the images are blurred. The beard obscured his features.’

  ‘But it could be the assassin Iraklis,’ Jaeger said.

  Kriaras raised his shoulders. ‘It could be anyone. The olivewood and the proclamation that appeared at the newspaper office suggest that it is.’ His head dropped. ‘This is a nightmare. We have to catch him before the text is leaked, despite the minister’s heavy pressure on the editor it was addressed to. If that happens we’ll have a full-scale panic on our hands. God knows who’s the next target on the list.’

  Jaeger closed his file. ‘In my experience God is no help in this kind of operation. I would advise that your government comes clean and releases the terrorist statement.’ He gave a dry laugh. ‘But what do I know? I’m just a humble embassy official.’

  The meeting broke up shortly after Kriaras asked that he be advised immediately if Mavros and Grace Helmer were located—his bitter expression suggesting he had little hope that the Americans would keep him in the loop.

  Peter Jaeger strode to his office, Jane Forster almost running to keep up with him.

  ‘You didn’t mention our operative Tiresias, sir,’ she said, her southern drawl extending the vowels and making the name almost incomprehensible.

  ‘Ti-re-si-as,’ her superior said, mocking her pronunciation. ‘Did you think I was going to tell the Greeks about our most precious resource, Ms Forster? You’ve got a lot to learn.’

  The auburn-haired woman bit her lip and headed for the communications room.

  Mavros got back into the car, having dashed across the square in Kitta through drizzle that was getting colder and denser by the minute. ‘Shit!’ he gasped. ‘Don’t you want the heating on?’

  Grace had moved into the driver’s seat while he used the public phone, but the engine wasn’t running. ‘This is nothing,’ she said. ‘You won’t believe how cold it gets back home at this time of year. Ice, snow, frozen car locks…’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Mavros said, wringing water from his hair. ‘Everything including the winters is bigger and better over there.’

  Grace looked at him. ‘I don’t think this is the time or the place for a debate about American supremacy.’ She gave him a frosty smile. ‘Ideological, strategic or meteorological.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Mavros agreed. ‘Sorry.’ He wiped raindrops off the cover of his notebook.

  ‘So, what did you find out about Babis Dhimitrakos?’

  ‘His phone’s been cut off.’ He glanced at her. ‘And he isn’t here.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  Mavros nodded. ‘Just about. Most people called Dhimitrakos wouldn’t talk about him, even when I said I was trying to find him because he’d won a holiday to the Seychelles.’

  ‘Very smart.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You said “just about” and “most people”, Alex. Do I have to squeeze what you discovered out of you with my bare hands?’ She grabbed his wrist and exerted pressure.

  ‘Ow!’ he yelled. ‘Let go, will you? Christ, how often do you work out?’

  ‘Often enough, apparently,’ she replied, loosening her grip. ‘Talk to your client like a good little private eye, huh?’

  Mavros looked out of the windshield. Through the thick sheen of rain he could just make out an old man in a hooded cape leading a bedraggled donkey across the paving stones. The beast was weighed down with a load of firewood that would need a lot of drying before it could be used. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I spoke to one of the g
uy’s cousins. She told me he’s been very ill. He had a heart attack a couple of months ago. He came back from hospital in Kalamata last week and the old fool—her words—insisted on going back to his house in a village up in the hills to the south. Apparently he’s very independent, won’t accept help from any of his relatives. He doesn’t have a phone any more. The number in the directory is years out of date.’

  ‘And you have the name of this village?’ Grace said, reaching for the map.

  ‘Of course. I’m a professional.’

  ‘I’m waiting, Alex.’

  ‘Yeah, well, anyway. The place is called Kainourgia Chora, that is “New Village”. Apparently it’s about fifteen kilometres to the south.’

  Grace ran her finger down the map. ‘Here it is. The road weaves all over the place to get to it.’

  Mavros peered through the windscreen again. ‘It’s getting pretty late in the day. By the time we’ve got down there and talked to the guy, it’ll be hard to find a place to stay. There aren’t many hotels at the end of the peninsula.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘You want to put it off till the morning? This wouldn’t be your way of adding an extra day to the job, would it? How professional is that?’

  ‘Jesus, Grace,’ he said, raising his hands in surrender. ‘Give me a break. The roads in the mountains probably aren’t up to much, especially not in this weather.’

  She kept looking at him and then relented, her face creasing into a smile. ‘All right. Let’s call it a day. I could do with a decent room after last night’s shared bliss.’

  ‘What does your guide say? Areopolis seems to me to be the best bet.’

  She turned on the ignition and switched on the interior light, smiling as Mavros immediately ratcheted up the temperature. ‘Yeah, let’s see. There are four places open all year, a couple of them restored tower houses. They sound interesting. Let’s go.’ She doused the light and turned the car round, then headed back down towards the main road.