The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller)

by Johnston, Paul

  The older woman pursed her lips. ‘I’m a historian. I’ve always been fascinated by the interaction between society and myth. As you should know, Veta, politics is no less subject to mythology than any other area of human endeavour.’

  The children shuffled away, bored by the exchange.

  ‘Before we go down to see the wonderful vaults with their beehive ceilings,’ Flora continued, extending an arm and swinging it round, ‘breathe in the atmosphere of the place and see if you can’t summon up the spirit of Iraklis. Over there—’ she pointed to the southwest ‘—is Lerna, where he fought the Hydra.’

  ‘And over there is Nafplion where I’m making shiploads of money,’ Nikitas Palaiologos said from behind them. Nondas Chaniotakis was chewing gum and shaking his head in embarrassment.

  The boys cheered, Prokopis running to his father like a prisoner who had been granted early release.

  ‘There you are,’ Veta said drily to her husband. ‘I didn’t think you were interested in ancient culture.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Nikitas replied, the bald dome of his head glinting in the sun. ‘We saw the cars and thought we’d surprise you.’

  And what a pleasant surprise that was, Flora thought. She ran her eyes over the carpet of bright green leaves interspersed with oranges. Argolidha was one of the most fertile places in Greece, but she knew what her host and hostess’s wealth was really rooted in—as did her husband. What Geoff had written was eating away at his soul. She had a strong feeling that Nikitas and Veta would not be able to stomach it either.

  Mavros folded up the copy of yesterday’s Eleftherotypia that he’d picked up from a kiosk on the way to the church, and set off after the old woman. He didn’t intend to accost her, but he wanted to see if she met anyone—especially any male in his fifties. Although he wasn’t yet sure that she was Stamatina Kastania, there was something about her that made him think so. She must have been in her eighties, her back bent and her legs stiff, and her face was wrinkled, though not enough to disguise the scar on her left cheek—but she exuded a curious vitality, an almost electric presence that carried to other people.

  ‘Kali mera sas,’ she called, in a shrill but steady voice, to passers-by and shopkeepers. They all acknowledged her with wide smiles. She went down a side street, her body swaying from side to side, and into the main square.

  It was wide and airy, the far end taken up by the impressive three-storey building with an arched passage on the ground floor and a red-tiled roof that contained the town museum. Mavros remembered seeing a stunning set of Mycenaean armour there, great hoops of green bronze surmounted by a boar’s-tusk helmet. Any warrior strong enough to wear such a cuirass into combat could have taken on Iraklis himself.

  ‘Mia poly kali mera, Kyra Stamatina,’ a man sweeping the paving stones outside a café shouted.

  Hearing that confirmation of the subject’s identity, Mavros drew closer. She was talking to the man about the weather and the effect it might have on the orange crop. Then she moved on. Over the next hour she worked her way round the town centre, often stopping to converse. She bought fruit and vegetables from a stall near the front, then meat from a grinning, unshaven butcher in a backstreet not far from her home.

  Mavros had almost given up on learning anything significant from the surveillance when the old woman turned left past an establishment on a corner that described itself as a ‘Museum of Worry Beads’. She put her bags down outside a small shop with the appearance of a kiosk built into the wall, took a piece of paper from the pocket of her black coat and went through the narrow door. Mavros got as close as he could, throwing caution to the winds. He had the feeling that something significant was about to happen. Standing by the display of magazines outside, he bent his head to the right and listened.

  ‘…use your own phone, Kyra Stamatina?’ came the voice of an old man.

  ‘It’s not working,’ was the brusque reply. ‘Now, dial me this number. I can’t see in this darkness. Why don’t you turn on the light?’

  ‘It isn’t working,’ the proprietor said with a dry cackle. ‘All right, let me try. Ach, this is a long one. It’s a mobile, isn’t it?’ There was no answer to his question. ‘Here you are, it’s ringing.’

  ‘Yes?’ Stamatina said uncertainly. It seemed to Mavros that she was trying to restrain the inclination that many of her generation had to shout down the phone. ‘Yes, I’m in old Manolis’s, not at home. Are you—’ She broke off and listened for some time. ‘Very well. I’ll be waiting. Go to the good.’ There was a pause. ‘There, take it back, Manoli. I’ve finished. How much do I owe you?’

  ‘It’s more expensive to call a mobile, Kyra Stamatina. Three hundred.’

  ‘Pah!’ the old woman exclaimed. ‘You’ve turned into a thief like everyone else in this benighted country.’

  ‘Do I look like I’m living a life of luxury?’ the old man responded bitterly.

  Mavros stepped nonchalantly away down the street as Stamatina Kastania came out, taking the newspaper from his pocket. When she passed him on her way back to the square at the bottom of her street, he leaned against the wall and studied an editorial he’d been reading about the pressure that the terrorist killings was putting on the government in advance of the Olympics. The old woman paid no attention to him, climbing the steps slowly with her shopping bags.

  He walked towards Grace. She’d been keeping her eyes off him while Kyra Stamatina negotiated the steps to a large building that was in a state of severe disrepair. At the sound of a door clicking shut, she leaned back on her crate and looked at him inquisitively.

  Mavros inclined his head away from Potamianou. ‘Pick up your masterpiece and walk,’ he said under his breath, turning at the corner of the church. He waited for her on the other side. ‘Let’s have a look, then,’ he said.

  ‘Was that her?’ She handed over the sketch reluctantly.

  ‘This isn’t bad, Grace,’ Mavros said. ‘Maybe you inherited some of your mother’s talent.’

  ‘Maybe I also inherited her impatience.’ She stared at him in irritation. ‘Was that her, Alex?’

  ‘Calm down, for Christ’s sake,’ he replied. ‘Yes, that was Stamatina Kastania.’ He told her about the phone call he’d overheard.

  ‘You reckon that was her son she was talking to?’ Grace said dubiously.

  Mavros nodded. ‘I don’t think he’s in Nafplion yet. It looks like he told her not to use her own phone in case anyone’s listening in.’

  ‘We still have no idea when he might show up.’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I think we need to reconsider the surveillance plan. There are some fortifications above the street.’

  ‘The old castle?’

  ‘Yes. I wonder if we can secrete ourselves up there to keep watch on Potamianou.’

  ‘Shall we go and look?’

  ‘Tell you what, Grace,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Why don’t you take a walk up there from the other side—over towards Palamidhi—and scout out the ground?’

  ‘And how are you planning on spending your time while I do the investigator’s legwork?’ she asked suspiciously.

  Mavros smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be busy enough. I noticed that there’s a war museum down in the centre. I want to see if they have any archive material about resistance groups in Argolidha during the war.’

  ‘Why?’ Grace asked. ‘Do you think that the old woman fought the Germans here?’

  ‘Could be. Laskaris said she was in ELAS. Did you see that scar on her face? She looks like she went through a lot. Besides, if the guy we’re after was in his early thirties in ’seventy-six when he knew your mother, he’d have been born during or after the war. If she really is his mother, I might get some idea of what motivated him to become a terrorist by identifying her ELAS unit.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, taking the guidebook from her bag. ‘I’ll check out the walls. By the way, the old woman came over and took a look at my drawing. She said something like “ochi poly ka
lo”.’ Grace looked at him quizzically.

  He smiled. ‘It means “very good”. Old Communists are renowned for their aesthetic judgement.’ For some reason he didn’t want Grace to know what Kyra Stamatina really thought.

  ‘Is that right? I’ll meet you at that café down the street in an hour.’ She headed away.

  ‘Okay,’ Mavros called after her. That would give him plenty of time to poke his nose into the museum. As well as to do something else that might be much more fruitful.

  ‘Is it them?’ Peter Jaeger, fair hair slicked down and white shirt pristine, was peering at the screen in the communications room beneath the American embassy. ‘The woman’s face is partially obscured by the guy’s hair.’

  ‘This shot was taken outside the composer Randos’s place,’ Jane Forster said, picking up another photograph and comparing it with the image on the screen. ‘It looks like Mavros.’

  ‘Yeah, it does. But I can’t be a hundred per cent sure.’ Jaeger stood up straight. ‘What led them to Nafplion?’

  ‘Shall I call Commander Kriaras?’ Forster asked, her hand moving to a phone.

  ‘No!’ her superior said, his hand coming down fast on top of hers. ‘No, I don’t want the Greeks involved. They’re already shitting themselves about Iraklis’s reappearance.’

  ‘Aren’t we supposed to keep them involved, sir?’ The woman’s voice was tentative. ‘Mavros is a Greek citizen.’

  Jaeger glanced at her scathingly. ‘“Aren’t we supposed to keep them involved?”’ he repeated, mimicking her southern drawl. ‘We’re supposed to protect our own interests, Ms Forster,’ he hissed. ‘How did we get this image, anyway?’

  ‘A local freelance operative emailed it via the secure server,’ she said, her eyes down. ‘I spread the word that we were interested in Alex Mavros. He’s quite well known because of the big case he broke on that island in the fall.’

  ‘Well done.’ Jaeger’s tone was little warmer. ‘Is the local still on them?’

  ‘I told him to await further instructions.’

  ‘Good.’ He turned away. ‘I need to think about things.’

  ‘What now, sir?’ she called after him. ‘Are we going down there?’

  He stopped. ‘No, Ms Forster, we are not going down to Nafplion. Not yet, at least.’

  ‘Shall I inform Finn?’

  ‘He knows what to do.’

  ‘What about Tiresias?’

  ‘I’ll handle Tiresias.’ Jaeger moved towards the door. ‘And, Ms Forster?’ He didn’t turn back towards her. ‘Keep all of this to yourself, you understand?’

  She nodded, even though her boss was no longer in the room. She put her lower lip between her bright white teeth and bit, softly at first, then hard enough to draw blood. There was something wrong with this operation. Jaeger was her station chief, but there had been talk about him losing his touch—ever since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington he had been obsessed with making his mark, even though Athens was no longer the major operational centre it had been when Greek governments had been more compliant. As for Lance Milroy—the man she’d been told to refer to as Finn during this mission—he made the hairs on her neck rise, for all his thirty-five years’ experience in Greece.

  Jane Forster desperately wanted to talk to someone, but she was on her first foreign posting and she had already seen the cost of disloyalty. Besides, she was in too deep on the Iraklis operation, even though Jaeger hadn’t told her everything. Back in Langley, they joked that was all your training was good for—how to handle yourself when the shit storm set in. She hadn’t expected to find herself up to her neck in it so quickly.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MAVROS watched Grace walk down the street towards the end of the fortifications, then turned away and went down to the centre. He felt his stomach clutch when he thought about what he was doing—sending her to keep watch on the mother of the most wanted man in Greece, the man who, as likely as not, had almost blown them away in the stony valley yesterday and who, he was certain, was on their trail. It wasn’t exactly responsible. But, then, he was still unsure of her background and motives. Maybe she would do something to move the case forward when he wasn’t present. In the meantime, he had work to do.

  The war museum was in a tall town house, a Greek flag hanging in the still air above the steps that led to the entrance. There was a bored soldier sitting at a small table. He showed little interest in Mavros’s question about the archive, replying that there was only a small collection of records in the building. As far as he knew, they referred primarily to Nafplion’s role as the first capital of Greece after the War of Independence rather than to the Axis occupation. Besides, he said, with a dismissive glance at Mavros’s long hair, access to the archives required written authorisation from the Ministry of Defence in Athens.

  Mavros went up the stairs and made a rapid examination of the collection. There were uniforms and weapons dating from the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth. Vicious Maniate yataghans, the wide-bladed short swords that had done for so many of their fellow Greeks as well as Turks, were well to the fore. There were also many black-and-white photographs on the walls, but few cast much light on what had happened in Argolidha in the 1940s. Mavros gave the surly soldier a smile to help him through the day, then went out into the sunlight. It was warmer now, the snow that had beleaguered them on the drive from the south now a fading memory. In the open square beside a statue of the nineteenth-century King Otto, he took out his notebook and his mobile phone. The reception was good and the number he dialled rang clearly.

  ‘Yes?’ The male voice was abrupt, roughened by thousands of unfiltered cigarettes.

  ‘Pandeli, it’s Alex Mavros.’

  ‘Aleko, my boy.’ The tone became more lively. ‘Where have you been hiding yourself? Wherever you are, I hope you’ve been skinning the rich.’

  ‘Trying to,’ Mavros replied. Pandelis Pikros was a former Communist who had worked with his father, Spyros, for many years. In the late sixties he’d fallen out with the hardline comrades who supported Moscow and, unimpressed by their opponents who broke away to form the EuroCommunist KKEs, had ended up as a nobody for both parties. ‘Guess where I am. In the Peloponnese.’

  ‘Are you now? North or south?’

  ‘Both.’ Mavros knew that the old man with the tobacco-stained moustache would be interested. He had been an ELAS fighter in the peninsula during and after the Second World War. ‘I’ve been in Lakonia and now I’m in Argolidha,’ he said, having first glanced around to check that he was on his own.

  ‘Lucky you,’ Pandelis Pikros said, his voice suddenly wistful. ‘I was born in Neo Iraio, you know. On the plain near Argos. I haven’t been back for decades.’

  Mavros had heard many such stories from old fighters, unable to return to their villages because they were stigmatised by their wartime activities. The situation was worst in the traditionally monarchist Peloponnese. ‘Listen, Pandeli, are you still working on that archive of ELAS members?’ Pikros had started collecting data when the Party was still banned. After the socialist government’s national reconciliation initiative in the eighties he had started to study the surviving official records—many had been destroyed in an attempt to dissipate the bitterness over controversial issues.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Pikros said. ‘The old woman says it’s the only thing that keeps me alive. She’s probably right.’

  Mavros looked around the square again. People laden with shopping bags and packages in Christmas paper were heading for their cars, paying no attention to him. ‘Pandeli, I need information about a woman who may have been one of yours.’

  Pikros laughed. ‘Careful, my boy. I had plenty of women during the war, even though it was against regulations.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, what do you mean “may have been”? I’ve got enough people who were definitely involved. If you’re talking about going through the records on the off-chance, forget it. The house is full of boxes and files.’ He lowered his voice. ‘That�
��s another thing the old woman can’t stand.’

  ‘Listen, do me this favour,’ Mavros pleaded. ‘It could be very important.’

  ‘There you go again, Aleko.’ Pandelis Pikros had always used the Greek diminutive of Alexandhros, regarding the other as a foreign affectation. ‘“It could be”. I can’t work with vague hypotheses.’

  ‘Please, Pandeli.’ Mavros had one more card to play. ‘I’ll pay you.’

  There was a pause and then the ex-Communist grunted. ‘Oh, well, if you put it that way…give me the woman’s name.’

  Mavros did so, warning him that Kastania was her married name. He also advised him that Kyra Stamatina had served in an ELAS band with Kostas Laskaris.

  ‘That narrows things down a bit,’ Pandelis said. ‘I’ll start looking straight away. Call me in the evening. And, Aleko, how much are you going to pay me?’

  Mavros told him the standard hourly rate he gave researchers and cut the connection. Earlier in his career he had often been amazed at the amounts demanded by avowed socialists. Now he saw it as just another manifestation of the free market. The West had prevailed in the ideological struggle that had dominated the twentieth century and no one cared any more.

  Except Iraklis. Two of the country’s leading capitalists had been executed and Mavros was certain there were more victims to come.

  The terrorist had driven the stolen Suzuki up a backstreet on the outskirts of Argos at two-thirty in the morning and abandoned it, taking his small case and leaving the keys under the seat. The wet snow that was lying on the pavements had soaked his boots, but he was unconcerned. He had left the worst of the cold in the mountains and he was almost in position for the mission he’d returned to Greece to carry out. He found a mediocre hotel in the centre of the town and signed in under a false name, speaking Greek and paying the drowsy clerk in cash to keep him sweet. Then he dropped into a deep sleep, only waking when the grinding of a refuse lorry penetrated his room from the street below.