The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller)

by Johnston, Paul

  Anna and Veta turned their heads.

  ‘Flora,’ Veta said, her cheeks reddening. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the older woman said. ‘I wasn’t eavesdropping.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Veta said, inclining her head towards the sofa. ‘Where’s Geoff?’

  Flora Petraki-Dearfield sat down and twitched her lips. ‘I think he’s working.’

  ‘What’s troubling him?’ Anna asked. ‘Is it something my mother said?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Flora looked uneasy. ‘He’s been strange ever since he started writing that accursed memoir. Most of the time he’s absent, in his own world, but sometimes he surfaces and accuses me of not paying him enough attention.’

  ‘The older they get, the more like children they become,’ Veta said. ‘Don’t you agree, Anna?’

  The youngest of the women seemed embarrassed. ‘I don’t know. I think it’s amazing that my mother and Geoff still have the energy to work on their various projects.’

  Flora was gazing at her. ‘Yes, Anna,’ she said, and glanced at Veta. ‘But what if those projects are harmful to themselves and those they live with?’

  Veta leaned forward. ‘Harmful? What do you mean?’

  Flora stood up and went to the window. ‘I don’t know about Dorothy, but Geoff is obsessed by the past.’

  ‘That’s normal for old people,’ Anna put in.

  The historian turned, her face suddenly filled with anguish. ‘Yes, but Geoff is haunted by it. I hear him talking in his sleep sometimes, saying terrible things—about killing and bloated corpses, slaughter and revenge.’ Her eyes were bulging. ‘I don’t think he’s got over what he experienced in the war.’

  Veta pulled herself upright and went to her. ‘Come, sit down, Flora,’ she said softly. ‘You’re overwrought.’

  ‘But that’s not all,’ the older woman continued, her voice low. ‘There’s a name he keeps mentioning, a name that frightens me.’ She gave an unconvincing laugh. ‘Maybe I’ve spent too much time studying mythology.’

  ‘What is it?’ Veta asked. ‘What is this name he repeats?’

  Flora looked into the politician’s eyes. ‘Iraklis,’ she said, swallowing a sob.

  ‘What are we going to do when it gets dark?’ Grace asked, rubbing her gloved hands together. There had been no movement on Potamianou apart from a pair of children returning home.

  Mavros glanced at the sky. The sun was over the western mountains, its watery light weakening further. Around them, on the low hill of the old fortress, the birds were chattering to each other as they settled down in the bushes. As the great plug of rock behind them blurred in the twilight, the bastions on Palamidhi hovered in the air like a flight of huge airships tethered to the ground by the zigzag stairway.

  ‘Yeah, we need to rethink,’ he said. ‘It’s getting chilly.’

  ‘Why don’t we just muscle into the old woman’s house and wait for the bastard in the warmth?’ his client asked, her chin up.

  Mavros looked at her. ‘You are joking, I hope.’

  ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘There are two of us and we’ll have the element of surprise.’

  ‘Only if we restrain Kyra Stamatina from crying out. Jesus, Grace, get a grip. The information we have is that she’s the terrorist’s mother. How’s Iraklis going to react if he finds her tied to a chair with a gag in her mouth?’

  She stared at him but didn’t speak.

  ‘The guy’s a consummate professional, for Christ’s sake,’ Mavros continued. ‘He’ll be on his guard and armed. So what if we outnumber him?’

  ‘All right, Mr Investigator,’ Grace said, lowering her eyes. ‘What’s your suggestion?’

  ‘My suggestion is that we get off this grassy knoll and go back to that café. I’m hungry and I’m thirsty. One of us can keep watch in the shadows by the church afterwards.’

  ‘You want to stay up here for ten minutes while I get down there?’ she said, her tone more emollient.

  ‘I thought you wanted us to be inseparable.’

  She gave a brief smile. ‘Just showing you how much I trust you.’

  ‘Charming. Okay, I’ll hold the fort, so to speak.’ He watched Grace head off to the right then swung his gaze back on to the stepped lane. A couple of minutes later his mobile rang.

  ‘Aleko?’

  It was the old Communist archivist. After they’d exchanged greetings, Mavros asked, ‘Have you got something for me?’

  ‘Oh, yes, my boy. I’ve got plenty for you.’ Pandelis Pikros’s voice was as throaty as ever, but there was excitement in it. ‘I think you’ll have to come up with a bonus.’

  Mavros pressed the phone closer to his ear. ‘I’ll see. True enough, I’m on expenses.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Pikros said. ‘I owe several people for this. You know what the official archivists are like, let alone the old comrades.’ He paused. ‘Right, then, Aleko. The first point is that I knew Stamatina Kastania.’

  Mavros felt his heart skip a beat. ‘In the war?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I didn’t know her in person, but I heard of her when I was in ELAS. I didn’t realise it when you told me her name because she called herself Artemis towards the end of the occupation. Have you heard of that name?’

  ‘I take it you aren’t talking about the ancient goddess of hunting,’ Mavros replied. ‘No. Should I have?’

  Pandelis Pikros laughed. ‘You owe it to yourself to read more books about those times, my boy. The younger generations are historically illiterate and you’ll pay for it, you can be sure of that. Anyway, Artemis was well known in certain circles. She was initially an ELAS fighter in Lakonia.’

  ‘Did you find out where she was from down there?’

  ‘No, there was no record. She was one of those who took particular care to cover their tracks—to protect her relatives, you understand. I reckon Stamatina wasn’t the name she was christened with. She probably concealed her pre-war identity because she was in the Party. There are few records of her. She was in the prison camps until 1962. She was released once during an amnesty, then rearrested. She managed to escape once in the mid-fifties.’ There was an intake of breath as Pikros pulled on his cigarette. ‘She was a brave woman.’

  ‘There were many of them,’ Mavros said, remembering the stories from the struggle that his brother had passed on when he was a boy—there had been no mention of the civil war and the persecution of the Left in his schoolbooks. ‘What about her ELAS unit? You must have found some records of it?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Her band became famous all over western Lakonia. It was led by a man who called himself Kapetan Iraklis.’

  Mavros heard the name and immediately felt the tightening on his neck that he always experienced when apparently unconnected elements of a case began to come together. ‘Iraklis?’ he repeated.

  ‘I hope you understand it was a real struggle to find all this out,’ Pikros said. ‘People on our side still keep their mouths shut, even though Left and Right are supposed to be reconciled.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Mavros urged.

  ‘And there were dozens of kapetanii across the country who took their campaign names from the mythical hero,’ the old man said, making clear how hard he had worked. ‘Anyway, this one’s real name was Rigas Zaralis,’ Pikros continued. ‘A schoolteacher from Areopolis in the Mani. Apparently he was a born leader and a brilliant tactician. The band was sent to Argolidha in the last winter of the occupation to strengthen the ELAS units there.’ Mavros heard the rustle of papers. ‘Something happened to Iraklis, I haven’t been able to establish exactly what. Various shit-eating Security Battalionists claim in their memoirs that he was killed in battle, but different locations are given so those may just be lies. I tracked down one old comrade who said he was captured and never seen again. Who knows? Iraklis disappears from history and Stamatina becomes Artemis. And listen to this…’ There was another pause.

  ‘Go on, for God’s sake, Pandeli,’ Mavros sa
id, shivering as the cold set in.

  ‘She joined an OPLA unit.’

  Mavros recognised the acronym. ‘Ah.’

  ‘Aware of the Organisation for the Protection of the Popular Struggle, are you?’ Pikros asked.

  ‘I do know something about the occupation, Pandeli,’ he replied, aggrieved. ‘My father was involved, remember?’

  ‘Of course he was, Aleko,’ the old Communist said, his voice softening. ‘Your father set a great example.’

  ‘OPLA was originally set up to police the EAM-controlled territory. But later it degenerated into secret assassination squads insome places.’ Mavros’s stomach clenched ashesaw the direction the conversation was headed. ‘Shit. What else?’

  ‘What else?’ Pikros was suddenly reluctant to carry on. ‘Well…it seems she wasn’t a very typical woman.’

  ‘What does that mean, Pandeli?’

  ‘This Artemis, Stamatina, whatever you want to call her—well, you know how the OPLA squads operated, do you?’

  ‘They rounded up collaborators, black-marketeers, suspected informers for interrogation.’

  ‘Correct. She wasn’t involved in that side of it, though.’

  ‘So what was her role?’

  ‘She…she was based in the mountains above the plain of Argos, not far from where I was born actually,’ the old man prevaricated, taking a long drag from his cigarette.

  Mavros sighed. ‘For God’s sake, tell me, before my phone battery runs out, Pandeli.’

  ‘Fuck it,’ Pikros grunted. ‘All right, she was an executioner. Her comrades took the prisoners up to a cave by a ravine and she cut their throats. Then the bodies were pushed over the edge. Satisfied, Aleko?’

  Mavros swallowed hard. ‘What happened to her after she was released from the camps in the sixties?’

  ‘She went back to Argolidha and married Menelaos Kastanias, a trade-union activist. He died during the dictatorship after they were both arrested again. Unlike some, they never gave up the struggle.’

  ‘Thanks, Pandeli,’ Mavros said, belatedly remembering that Grace was waiting for him. ‘I’ll be in touch when I get back about your payment.’

  ‘Aleko?’ Pikros’s voice was low. ‘There’s something else.’

  Mavros bowed his head, fearing the worst. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I found a witness statement from a collaborator who escaped from the clutches of the OPLA unit. This Stamatina, when she was killing those people, she—she was pregnant.’

  ‘Did she have the child?’ Mavros mumbled. ‘Is there a name?’

  The line was quiet, apart from a subdued electronic tone.

  ‘There’s nothing else in the records.’

  Mavros thanked him again and broke the connection, then walked slowly down to join his client. The idea that the terrorist might have been in his mother’s womb when she cut the throats of her victims made his stomach churn. What kind of man would such a child have turned into? Despite Iraklis’s record, Mavros couldn’t help feeling compassion for him. He was sure Grace would see that as unjustified. But if the woman Stamatina—the former assassin Artemis—had spent years after the war in the prison camps, could the traumatised son who had somehow survived be held responsible for the crimes he had committed? Or was he as much a victim of Greece’s violent history as the people he had killed?

  *

  Geoffrey Dearfield rolled over in his bed, flitting between wakefulness and a torrid sleep that was alive with writhing forms and gouts of blood. He struggled to break out of the dream, struggled to bring himself back to present-day Argolidha, but the power of the past was too much for him. He sank away like a drowning sailor, letting out his last breath and spiralling down to the darkest depths, remembering again what he had seen in the war as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.

  It was first light. There was snow on the mountains, the green canopy of the plain spattered with myriad orange dots from the fruit as he swung his binoculars over it. And on the mule-track to the village occupied by the Greek resistance band halfway up the slope to his right there was a scarcely visible line of field grey. The German column, reinforced by collaborationist Greeks, was on its way.

  He had conducted a long debate with the local British liaison officers, but in the end they had had to accede to his orders. He had been promoted to regional commander two months earlier, arriving from Sparta at the same time as Kapetan Iraklis’s unit of fighters. They had been exhausted after the battles at Mystras and locations in northern Lakonia. He had hoped that Iraklis would act as a moderating influence on the increasingly hardline Greek commanders inArgolidha. The leadership of the anti-occupation movement EAM and of its military wing ELAS was becoming more anti-British by the day, accusing him and his colleagues of being monarchist stooges and ignoring their orders. It seemed that Iraklis had also begun to lose the underlying rationality that had characterised his activities before the slaughter in the mountains of the Mani. That had been the start of the trouble and the kapetanios’s shoulder wound had weakened him, though he still retained the devotion of his fighters.

  To Dearfield’s surprise, it hadn’t been difficult to cooperate with the Security Battalions despite official British disapproval for the anti-Communist units. As regional commander, Dearfield felt fully justified in doing so. Iraklis had only himself to blame—he had failed to prevent one of the peasant boys in his unit shooting the British guide Fivos in the back on a highland track between Sparta and Tripolis. That had made Dearfield realise how hopeless it was to imagine that EAM/ELAS could be trusted. There was no longer any question of British arms being supplied to the leftist guerrilla bands for the fight against the Germans, who would soon be on their way out. What the British had to worry about was the potential loss of Greece to the Communist front organisation EAM after hostilities ended. If the pro-Soviet resistance took over the country, the strategic balance of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East would be in jeopardy. The guerrillas had to be neutralised by any means.

  Dearfield heard gunfire, then saw smoke rising above the village. The ELAS fighters had seen the enemy column and were attacking it. What they were not aware of was the second force that was approaching from their rear, the sentries on the ridges already neutralised. The strategy, masterminded by Dearfield and passed to the collaborationist commanders, was working. The Iraklis band was finished.

  In the bedroom in the Palaiologos house Dearfield lay on his back, his mouth open and his breath short. He was suddenly unable to move, his eyes wide as a figure in tattered Greek battledress, bandoliers criss-crossing his chest, leaned over him and drove a combat knife into his chest. The man was bearded, his eyes unwavering. His tunic was soaked with blood, the smell of it burning the British officer’s nostrils as he felt his heart embrace the blade.

  ‘Traitor,’ whispered his killer.

  Iraklis.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  GRACE looked at Mavros in the dim light. They were standing in the small square behind Ayios Spyridhon, pressing up against the whitewashed wall to allow a young couple carrying packages wrapped in Christmas paper to pass.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘you’ve found out that the old woman was a Communist fighter who turned into an assassin. Now we know where her son got his inspiration.’

  Mavros nodded slowly. ‘It always comes back to family in this country.’ As the words came out, he thought of his brother. If he wasn’t careful, the case would race to its conclusion before he could establish what had resulted from the meeting Andonis had with the terrorist.

  ‘Hello, Alex?’ Grace tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Anyone at home?’

  He blinked. ‘What? Oh, sorry. I was just trying to work out how to proceed.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, her tone sardonic. ‘So was I. How are we going to keep a watch on the lane overnight? We’ll stick out like pole dancers in a cathedral.’

  ‘True. Given that the man we’re after knows his trade, it’s pretty likely he’ll spot us. I’m wondering…�
� He stroked the stubble on his chin. ‘I’m just wondering whether we should go in before Iraklis arrives.’

  ‘To the mother’s place?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a risk, but I think it’s the only way.’

  ‘I’ve been telling you we should do that all day.’

  ‘The situation’s different now. I can use the information I’ve got on her to gain her confidence. She’ll also know who my father was.’

  Grace was staring at him. ‘Gain her confidence?’

  ‘Look, all you want to do is confront the assassin about your father’s death. You aren’t looking for revenge?’

  She wrapped her arms round her chest. ‘No,’ she said. ‘What good would that do? And, anyway, how could I take on an expert like him?’

  Mavros watched her for a few more seconds. ‘Okay.’ And all I want, he said to himself, is to find out if the guy who used to call himself Iason Kolettis knows what happened to my brother after they met at Tigani. ‘If we convince the old woman that we’re not a threat, maybe she’ll let us wait with her for her son to arrive.’ He touched her arm. ‘You haven’t forgotten the man who almost used his gun on us down in the Mani, have you?’

  She shook her head, catching his eye.

  ‘And you’re prepared to give him another chance?’

  ‘Yes.’ Grace smiled at him. ‘Let’s just hope he decides to spare his mother an execution in her house.’

  Mavros grunted. ‘Nothing in her record suggests she’d be too bothered by that.’

  They stepped closer together as a group of small boys came past, triangles in their hands.

  ‘Carol-singers?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Mavros confirmed, feeling her breath on his cheek. ‘They go round the houses singing the kalanda and extracting money for their trouble. The problem is there’s only one tune and it’s a very irritating one.’

  Suddenly Grace pinned him to the wall with her body. ‘Are you sure you want to do this, Mr Investigator? I’m prepared to go in on my own.’