His eyes met hers, taking in the bright blue irises. For a moment it looked like he was going to tear another strip off her. Then the gym-hardened muscles of his upper body relaxed. ‘Where’s it heading?’ he said, mimicking her drawl. ‘To the capture of the most wanted terrorist in Greece, of course.’
‘Yes, sir, but I’m concerned about accountability here.’ Jane Forster’s voice was suddenly more assured. She stepped closer to him, the fabric of her grey trouser suit making a soft sound as her thighs rubbed together. ‘Is the ambassador aware of what’s going on? And what about the Greek authorities?’ She turned to her desk and picked up a yellow pad. ‘Commander Kriaras called four times today. Shouldn’t we brief him?’
Jaeger regarded her with a mixture of irritation and amusement, his thin lips forming into a cold smile. ‘Getting a bit above yourself, aren’t you, Ms Forster? Listen, fieldwork is different from what you experienced in Langley. In the field you have to allow operatives a free hand.’
‘But, sir, our operative in this case seems to be more of a ghost than someone who fits into the chain of command.’
Jaeger nodded thoughtfully. ‘Very well put, Ms Forster. You’ve read the files on Iraklis. The same word has been used about him. He’s a ghost who only becomes visible when he wants to.’
‘Or a chameleon,’ the female operative put in. ‘He was characterised that way too.’
‘Right.’ He caught her eye again. ‘And how do you catch a ghost or a chameleon?’
Jane Forster’s lips were pursed. ‘By putting another ghost or chameleon on his tail.’
Jaeger clapped his hands, the sardonic expression returning. ‘Very good, Ms Forster. You’re learning.’
She shot him a frustrated glance, then reached for the phone when it buzzed. She listened for a few seconds. ‘Yes,’ she said in a clipped voice, checking the line’s security status. ‘Code Red confirmed. Stand by.’ She handed the receiver to her superior officer, then headed for the door.
Jaeger raised a hand. ‘You can stay.’ He put the phone to his ear. ‘This is Ahab.’ He listened for the correct response. ‘Very well. Proceed.’
Jane Forster studied him as he listened and spoke, her rear against the end of her desk. She was trying to make sense of the words, at the same time affecting the air of nonchalant control affected by senior officers. Fortunately Jaeger was making things easy for her in his conversation with the undercover expert Lance Milroy, code-name Finn.
‘How long were Mavros and Helmer in the house?’ Pause. ‘And now they are where?’ Pause. ‘All right, we’ll put the local man on to them. You stay where you are. Is the location secure?’ Pause. He smiled. ‘Yeah, Ms Forster’s listening in. I’m trying to teach her some fieldcraft.’ Pause. ‘Negative. Do not, repeat do not, engage subject. Observe only and confirm subsequent action with me before undertaking. Understood?’ Pause. ‘Okay. Out.’
Jane Forster took the receiver from him and replaced it. ‘Did I understand that our man is in position? In Nafplion?’
Jaeger nodded.
‘And he wanted to engage Iraklis?’
‘Finn is perfectly capable of such action and is equipped accordingly.’ He looked at her. ‘He also knew my predecessor Trent Helmer—who, you’ll remember, was killed by the Iraklis group—and his wife. Never disregard the power of emotion, Ms Forster. Even in organisations like ours that try to damp it down.’
‘What about Tiresias, sir?’ Forster asked. ‘Shouldn’t we advise Tiresias of these developments?’
‘Don’t you worry, Tiresias can handle things.’ He stood up and held out his hand for his tuxedo. ‘Time I got back to the reception.’ He smiled again, this time more expansively. ‘Maybe when it’s finished you and I could go out for a few drinks, Jane. I think it’s time we got to know each other better.’
She disguised her revulsion, but only just.
Grace stood outside her room in the Nafplion hotel and looked at Mavros. He seemed ill at ease. ‘What is it, Alex? We established a line of communication with the mystery man without endangering ourselves, we had a good dinner. What more do you want?’
‘I want him to make contact. Preferably by phone rather than with his weapon.’
Grace’s eyes were on him. ‘He’d better. Otherwise as soon as that deadline of tomorrow midnight that you gave him is up, I’m going back to his mother.’ Her expression was grim. ‘After what he did to my father, he can hardly be surprised if I use his mother as bait.’
‘Not a good idea, Grace.’
‘We’re getting past the stage of good and bad ideas, Alex. I want Iraklis by tomorrow night, you understand?’
‘I reckon he’ll be in touch one way or another.’
‘So do I.’ The tension left her face. ‘Get in here. I’ve got some whisky in my bag. The least you can do is have a nightcap with me.’
Mavros allowed himself to be ushered into the room. The shutters were open and, through the uncurtained French windows, he could see the illuminated shapes of the fortifications on Palamidhi.
‘It’s spectacular, isn’t it?’ Grace said, taking a half-bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label from her bag. ‘This was the best they had in the shop,’ she added. ‘I picked it up when you were on the phone to your Communist archive rat. Want a glass?’
He accepted the bottle. The spirit coursed down his throat and almost immediately he felt less down. ‘Sorry,’ he said, handing it back. ‘I haven’t been very good company tonight.’
‘It’s all right.’ She sat down on one of the beds, beckoning him to join her, then swigging from the bottle. ‘You aren’t required to socialise with your clients.’ She smiled crookedly.
Mavros felt a crackle of sexual tension. ‘Look, Grace, I told you, I’m not comfortable with getting involved during a case.’
She laughed hoarsely. ‘What about the great tradition of private eyes bedding their clients?’ she said, drinking again. ‘I’m thinking Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep, Nicholson and Dunaway in Chinatown.’
‘This is the real world, not Hollywood,’ he said. ‘We’re waiting for a call from a guy who’s killed a whole swathe of people.’ He glanced at her. ‘And who was probably the one heading up the slope with his gun pointed at us yesterday.’
Grace sat up straight. ‘You think I’ve forgotten that, Alex?’
‘You didn’t seem too bothered by it.’
Her eyes dropped. ‘I’ve been threatened often enough in the field.’
Mavros was studying her, his doubts about her motives still plaguing him.
‘Besides,’ Grace went on, ‘I’m not scared of him. He’s good at killing defenceless people.’
‘And we don’t fall into that class?’
She drank and then returned his gaze. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Alex. I’m not in this for revenge, I told you that. But I can look after myself.’
Mavros had noticed how efficiently she handled the old woman. ‘I think it’s time you were straight with me, Grace. What did you do before you were with the aid agency? Did you have some kind of military or police training?’
There was silence for a while. Then she said, ‘You’re a smart guy, Mr Investigator, but it’s possible to be too smart.’
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ he said, shifting away from her. ‘Which service?’ He watched her carefully.
‘It’s not and I’m not,’ Grace said. She let out a long sigh. ‘All right, here it is. I served six years in the CIA.’
Mavros felt his stomach flip. ‘What? Not in Greece?’
‘Uh-uh. At first in Langley. Then in South America.’
‘Field operations?’
‘Yeah.’
He stood up and went towards the windows. ‘You should have told me, Grace. Am I wearing donkey’s ears? You’ve been using me. I suppose that’s why you’ve been trying to get me into the sack.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘What is it you want from me?’ he continued, ignoring her blank look. ‘You w
ant me to find Iraklis so you can nail him for the agency?’
Grace’s cheeks were highlighted in red. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re telling me you’re not with the CIA now?’ Mavros scoffed.
‘No connections whatsoever.’
‘I believe you,’ he said sardonically.
‘Believe what you like,’ she replied coldly. ‘I haven’t lied to you, Alex. You never asked me what I did before Meliorate until now. When you did, I told you.’
‘Fucking hell,’ he said, his fists clenching. ‘We’re careering about the country looking for a guy who’s killed two major entrepreneurs, and as likely as not a leading composer, not to mention the former terrorist he drove to his death down in the Mani. He was responsible for your own father’s death. Didn’t it occur to you to favour me with that scrap of information about your background?’ He raised a hand to the stubble on his chin, fingers moving quickly across it. He had remembered the tall man with the plastered-down fair hair and the immaculate suit he had seen outside the concert hall back in Athens following the explosion—Lambis Bitsos had hinted he was CIA. ‘You saw Peter Jaeger at the embassy as well as the consular people, didn’t you? Christ, now it all makes sense. The surveillance in Athens, your people were behind that. They’ve been on to us from the start.’ He glared at her. ‘Have you been giving them regular reports on our progress? Was that an American operative up on the battlements above Potamianou?’
‘Jesus, don’t be so paranoid, Alex,’ she said, turning away. ‘I told you, I have no links with Langley any more—or with anyone else in authority. I don’t know any Peter Jaeger.’
Mavros dropped his hand from his face. She might have been telling the truth, but either way it didn’t make much difference. He’d spent four days working for a client who had formerly worked for the agency that had supported the Greek Right throughout the post-war period and had backed the dictatorship to the hilt. His father had suffered under the regimes it had approved, he had died worn out by the struggle, and his brother had disappeared when the Colonels held power. He gave her a bitter smile.
‘What?’ Grace asked.
‘I suppose it’s the ultimate irony. The closest I’ve ever managed to get to Andonis has been while I’ve been working for an ex-CIA agent.’
She came close and punched him lightly on the chest. ‘Well, be happy, Alex. I’m paying you to find my father’s killer, but use the case to find out what you can about your brother. Then we’ll say goodbye. Okay?’
Mavros stood motionless for a while. Then, his head angled away from her, he headed for his room.
Dorothy Cochrane-Mavrou was lying on her bed in the Palaiologos house, two pillows behind her back. Although there was a book open on her lap, she hadn’t looked at it for a long time. She peered into the lines of light that were coming through the shutters from the security fence outside and shivered. A feeling of paralysing dread had gripped her since the previous night, making her heart beat irregularly. Geoff Dearfield’s memoir was the cause of it. She’d been unable to go downstairs and talk to the others since she finished the typescript. If only she had read it in Athens; then she would never have agreed to come to Argolidha.
She forced herself to take deep breaths and gradually regained control over the rest of her body. But she didn’t want to get up, even though she had missed dinner and had eaten little from the tray that Anna had brought. Her daughter had been as impatient as ever, chivvying her along and trying to make her come down. She could see that her mother was troubled, but she put it down to the wilfulness that she herself had inherited.
‘Honestly, Mother,’ Anna had said, ‘what will Veta and Nikitas think? The children are wondering what’s the matter too.’
Dorothy had given her a pained stare and turned away. It was a shame she was casting a pall over the party, but that wasn’t her fault. It all came back to what Dearfield had written. Never mind what the host and hostess would think of Dorothy missing meals—they would be appalled if they ever read what Geoff had written about their fathers. Clearly Flora knew nothing of it. She said she hadn’t read the script and Dorothy believed her. If she’d known anything about the contents, she would never have accepted the invitation from the Palaiologi.
‘Oh, God,’ Dorothy murmured. ‘I’m too old to deal with this. Spyro, where are you when I need you most? Andoni, you would know how to act now.’
She closed her eyes and instantly the scenes from the Second World War that the old British officer had described closed round her like a shroud. She could do nothing to brush them away, could only lie still and suffer the horror. If she went through it one more time, would there be some relief?
Those desperate people, the battered, bleeding men and women who’d been penned up in the wire compound round this very house. Even if they hadn’t been ELAS fighters and EAM cadres like her husband, she would have felt sympathy for them. No one deserved such treatment, not even the worst collaborators. But normal human standards had been abandoned. The Metaxas dictatorship before the war, the years of repression and imprisonment, had soured the country even before the Axis forces occupied it. Spyros had seen terrible things that he would not tell her about, but they couldn’t have been worse than those described by Dearfield. He had been present as British regional commander, he had watched the survivors of a joint German and Security Battalion raid on a village called Loutsa being brought into the makeshift holding camp. He admitted that he had tipped off the local collaborationist commanders Prokopis Palaiologos and Sokratis Dhragoumis, fathers of her host and hostess, about the ELAS band’s location. They were a particularly renowned unit, responsible for many successful actions in Lakonia, and the anti-Communist forces were keen to make an example of them.
The images hardened before her eyes again, staying clear even when she shut them. Oh, God. There was the leader, his shoulder hanging and his face covered in blood beneath the wispy beard. Kapetan Iraklis, they called him. And there was his comrade, the man who had saved his own life and his commander’s by throwing a grenade back at the Germans, killing three of them. They had been captured all the same, beaten mercilessly. The comrade, whose nom de guerre was Iolaos, was unconscious, his motionless body dropped like a sack in a corner of the compound. Worst of all, there was a woman, a brave fighter, her face scarred and her uniform impregnated with filth so that she looked like she had recently been dug up from the ground. She was screaming defiance at her captors, calling them jackals and traitorous scum, shouting the name of her commander shrilly until a battalionist in traditional evzone garb had clubbed her to the ground.
At least that meant the ELAS woman didn’t see what happened to Kapetan Iraklis. Along with Palaiologos and Dhragoumis, Major Geoffrey Dearfield of the Special Operations Executive had watched as the guerrilla commander was brought to a vertical wooden frame and tied to it with barbed wire.
Then the torture had started.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MAVROS woke early, before the light began to creep through the slats in the shutters. He got up and squinted outside, seeing little more than the dull glow of a street-lamp. The walls on Palamidhi were no longer illuminated. The great fortress had disappeared into the night like a besieging army that had suddenly given up the struggle. For some reason that thought raised his spirits, but only momentarily. There had been no call from the man they were seeking. Resisting the temptation to go straight back to Kyra Stamatina’s house, he shaved and had a shower. Before he went under the lukewarm water, he put his mobile, which had been charging overnight, on a stool by the door. It still didn’t ring.
Stopping by Grace’s door, Mavros considered knocking. He put his ear to it and heard no sound so he decided to leave her. She wouldn’t be pleased that he’d gone off on his own, but he needed to think about the case and he didn’t think she’d be in too much danger while she was in the hotel. The birds in the cage behind the reception desk were quiet, the cover still over them. He gave hi
s key to the half-awake night clerk and went out into the street. The early-morning sun was struggling to break through the clouds, but the air was dry and not too cold. There wasn’t much traffic on the wide streets around the park, Nafplion being a town that serviced the tourists for half of the year and spent the other half recovering. He went into a café and ordered a sketo from a smiling bottle-blonde, whose accent suggested she had recently arrived from the former Soviet Union. He looked through yesterday’s copy of an Athenian newspaper as he sipped the unsweetened coffee. The government was still in crisis, harried by the opposition and by most of the media for its failure to catch Iraklis. The composer Randos had been buried in the First Cemetery, his cortège followed by thousands of admirers. Mavros would have liked to be there to send off the man whose music he had lived with from childhood. The report said that the crowd had sung verses of ‘Love Burns’ and ‘The Voyage of the Argo’ after the committal, many of them weeping.
He leaned back in the chair and thought about the cat-loving recluse. There were still unresolved issues about his death. If Kostas Laskaris was right about the unlikelihood of his long-standing friend killing himself, that left only accident or murder as the explanation. Despite the authorities’ insistence that the latter was out of the question, Mavros inclined towards it—the fact that the kittens had been found beside their owner’s body almost clinched the argument for him. But if Randos had been murdered, who was responsible? Could it have been the terrorist group? There had been no miniature olive branch or proclamation from Iraklis, though the government might have suppressed those. And why would an assassin who had started out as a Communist have targeted a comrade when his last two victims had been exemplars of capitalism? Unlike many former believers, Randos had retained his political faith, despite his holiday homes. But if the terrorist hadn’t murdered the composer, then who had? It all came down to the two armed men in the ravine—after Babis Dhimitrakos had fallen, one of them had come for him and Grace with what looked like evil intent, and the other had saved them. In both cases, why? And who were the men?
The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller) Page 33