The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller)

by Johnston, Paul

  A shot rang out and his eyes sprang wide open, the last of the sun flaring in them for a second. Then his head slumped over the ruin of his chest.

  Dearfield lowered his service revolver slowly. He was aware of Palaiologos’s eyes burning into him as Dhragoumis dropped the woman and stamped through the mud towards him.

  ‘What the hell did you do that for, you stupid bastard?’ he screamed, in coarsely accented English.

  Palaiologos appeared beside him, his face red.

  ‘You were going to kill him anyway,’ Dearfield replied. ‘He wouldn’t have told you anything that we don’t already know. And I would remind you that torture is contrary to the Geneva Convention.’

  ‘What Geneva Convention?’ Palaiologos scoffed. ‘These people are animals, not soldiers. You know how they treat their prisoners.’

  Dhragoumis stepped over to the unconscious male captive on the ground and started to kick him in the chest.

  Dearfield pulled him away. ‘Stop it, Sokrati! This is savagery, not war.’

  ‘They are the same thing, fool,’ the man in the kilt said. He looked at Palaiologos and laughed. ‘We shall take the woman inside. Since we can’t torment her leader any more, we’ll satisfy ourselves with her.’

  The two men went over to the unconscious female guerrilla. Dearfield tried to intervene but a pair of battalionists prevented him following them into the blockhouse.

  So he had listened from outside as they violated Comrade Stamatina; he heard the grunts and groans of two men he had once thought were worthy allies. She made no sound at all. Afterwards they boasted that they had defiled her every orifice, even though the curve of her belly suggested she was carrying a child.

  Geoffrey Dearfield came back to himself, shivering uncontrollably. Suddenly he had a desperate need to see the memoir he had written, to convince himself that at least he had tried to save the woman, that even though he had remained in contact with Palaiologos and Dhragoumis, he had always despised them. Pulling the package from behind the wardrobe, he unwrapped it and ran his fingers shakily through the pages.

  It only took him a short time to realise that the worst of it, the episodes that brought most shame on Veta and Nikitas’s families had been removed. His heart was pounding. Who could have taken them? And where were they now? The idea that his host and hostess might learn how low their fathers had sunk while he was in their house went through him like a bayonet thrust.

  But even worse was the realisation, long suppressed and never substantiated, that his wife had betrayed him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WHEN they got back to the hotel, the last of the sun gone from the waters of the gulf, Mavros headed for his room to get ready for the dinner at the politician’s house. He thought about shaving again—his mother would no doubt appreciate that—but decided that was too much of a capitulation to the standards of the rich and powerful. His jeans weren’t too clean but they were all he had. The best he could do was shower and wash his hair. It was while he was under the lukewarm water that he heard the knock on his door.

  His breath caught in his throat. He grabbed a towel and crossed the tiled floor, water dripping everywhere. He blinked hard and opened the door. ‘Grace,’ he gasped.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry, Alex. You thought I was Iraklis, didn’t you?’ She handed him a plastic bag. ‘I thought you might like a fresh shirt.’ She ran her eyes down his torso. ‘Want me to rub your back?’

  ‘Jesus.’ He grabbed the package and closed the door in her face, then went back to the bathroom. The look on Grace’s face had suggested that she was still interested in getting him into the sack. He was attracted to her, there was no doubt about that—most men would be—but he couldn’t give in to her, and not just because it would complicate their working relationship: he was apprehensive about Grace—beneath the controlled surface, he had seen evidence of strong emotions and he didn’t want to unleash them. Then there was Niki. He couldn’t let her down, even though their relationship wasn’t in good health. Maybe he was letting his imagination run away with him over Grace; maybe she really had severed all connections with the CIA and just fancied him. He’d never had any problem attracting women: he had the good looks he’d inherited to thank for that, but he had trouble responding to their emotions—women seemed to feel things that were beyond him.

  Mavros came out of the bathroom and put on the shirt Grace had bought him. It was a tasteful dark blue number with a button-down collar. At least the top half of his body wouldn’t look too out of place in the Palaiologos house, apart from the length of his hair.

  He picked up his phone and, after he’d locked his door, went to the adjoining room.

  ‘Hold on,’ Grace called when he knocked.

  Mavros put his ear to the door. He thought he could hear her voice faintly. Was she speaking on the phone? If she was, she was making an effort to keep the volume down.

  After a while she opened up. ‘Sorry,’ she said, her face slightly flushed.

  ‘Keeping in touch with your nearest and dearest?’ Mavros asked, stepping past her and looking round the room. The bathroom door was open, the confined space unoccupied. It had occurred to him that perhaps she was not alone.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

  ‘I thought I heard you talking.’

  ‘Not me. Must have been from another room.’ She turned away, stretching for her jacket.

  Mavros watched her. ‘Look, Grace,’ he said, feeling the worry beads in his pocket and taking them out. ‘This isn’t the time to keep things from me. We’re up against a killer who’s—’

  ‘I know what he’s done,’ Grace said, flashing an angry glare at him. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, put those stupid beads away. What are you? A kid who needs something to play with all the time?’

  He looked at the komboloï distractedly, then slipped it back into his pocket. ‘No, a reformed smoker.’ He stepped towards her. ‘I just meant we need to be straight with each other. There’s a lot at stake.’

  ‘Your brother, you mean,’ Grace said, still aggressive.

  ‘Your case has priority but, yes, my brother’s part of it.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’m being straight with you.’

  ‘All right.’ He moved away. But doubts were still nagging him. He was sure he had heard Grace talking. Why hadn’t she come clean about that? What the hell had happened to the Fat Man? And, worst of all, by going to the Palaiologos house, was he running the risk of bringing not only his client but his mother and the rest of his family into the assassin’s sights?

  Before Mavros got to the door, the ring tone of his mobile phone made him catch his breath once more.

  Veta Palaiologou was sitting on the edge of the bed, her heavy haunches sunk deep into the mattress. Sheets of typescript were on her knees and on the floor before her. The shutters and curtains were still open, though night had fallen and the lights in the garden were on. She could hear the shouts of her husband and Nondas Chaniotakis, interspersed by the shriller tones of the children. Despite the chill, they were playing basketball on the outside court.

  The outside court, Veta thought. That was where the horrors had taken place, concrete laid over the blood-soaked earth and sharp-edged stones that once surrounded the house her father-in-law had built. She’d always known that awful deeds had been committed there, but the details had been spared her. That was no defence. She could easily have found out if she’d wanted to. Prokopis Palaiologos had been proud of his actions during the occupation and the civil war; he would have told her if she’d shown an interest. Her own father had been more reserved, especially later in life when he would often fall into a reverie, his hands shaking and the sallow skin of his face coated in sweat. Had he felt remorse? Veta found that hard to credit. Her father was as hard as a bare-knuckle fighter beneath the layers of fat, his commercial acumen rooted in a contempt for the rest of humanity that had poisoned many members of his family. More likely, as he lost his strength,
he had become afraid. The Iraklis group had been targeting prominent businessmen and Junta supporters throughout the last decade of his life.

  Veta glanced down at the pages with their compact, single-spaced lines of text. They must have come from Geoff Dearfield’s memoir. Reading it would have been terrible for Dorothy Cochrane-Mavrou. No wonder she couldn’t bring herself to face the author. Her husband, Spyros, would have passed through similar blockhouses on his way to the brutal prisons and island camps where he spent so much of his life. At least he had escaped the fate of the ELAS commander Iraklis and the poor, ravaged female fighter. How could her own father and father-in-law have treated a woman, a fellow Greek, like that? She felt defiled, her veins running with tainted blood.

  ‘No,’ she heard Nikitas shout angrily, ‘not like that! Are you a girl? Put your back into him, Prokopi.’

  And what about her husband? Veta thought. Did he know what had gone on in the house he inherited? She didn’t have to ask: she was sure he did. There was a harshness about Nikitas, a crude certainty that his family had always acted for the best—old Palaiologos had drummed that into his only son, at the same time as pampering and spoiling him. She was certain that he would have boasted to Nikitas about his deeds in the war when the pair of them drank brandy late into the night. That was what had destroyed the country in the forties—people on both sides, the Right and the Left, knowing without any doubt that they were right. It was the crazed polarisation that had led to the murders and the massacres, the rapes and the mutilations that had gone on until the civil war finished in 1949. But that hadn’t been the end, Veta understood that now. Glib historians said that the fraternal hatred hadn’t run its course until the dictatorship fell in 1974, but the recent terrorist killings showed that the horror was still alive in the twenty-first century. And she was in the middle of it. Two businessmen whom she knew, supporters of her party, had recently been laid in the cold earth. Who would be the next target?

  The knock on the bedroom door made her start.

  ‘A moment,’ she called, leaning forward awkwardly to gather up the pages.

  The door opened before she had finished.

  ‘Veta,’ Dorothy began, ‘I—’ She broke off when she saw what was in her hostess’s hands. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said faintly. ‘How… ? Surely Geoff hasn’t given you his book to read?’

  Veta raised her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I found these pages under the covers when I came to lie down. They—they are about what went on at this house in the spring of 1944.’

  Dorothy stepped forward and took the script from her, running her eyes over the top page. ‘I see,’ she said, her voice growing stronger. ‘Veta, this is ancient history. You mustn’t—you mustn’t let it hurt you and your family.’

  The politician looked up in bewilderment. ‘How can you say that, Dorothy? My father and my thug of a father-in-law weren’t human, they raped, they—’

  The Communist leader’s wife sat down beside her and took her hand. ‘It’s all in the past,’ she said gently. ‘There’s nothing you or anyone else can do to change the course of the last century.’

  Veta gave her an agonised look. ‘But, Dorothy, don’t you understand? That woman was pregnant. What happened to her unborn child? It might have survived, it might still be alive. I might be able to help…’ Her words tailed away in a long sob, her chin sinking on to her chest.

  Dorothy smoothed the fleshy hand and searched for comforting words. She had knocked on Veta’s door because she had managed to come to terms with Dearfield’s soul-destroying script and she wanted to reassure her hostess that she was all right. Thinking of Spyros and Andonis had brought her through. She knew they would have wanted her to see beyond the foulness to the strength of human spirit contained in the memoir—Kapetan Iraklis’s dogged bravery, his concern for his comrades in his agony on the cross, even Geoffrey Dearfield’s brave decision to act as executioner. She wanted to tell him she understood how much that must have cost him, that she knew the decision to betray the ELAS band and to kill its commander had given the Englishman a lifetime of pain for all his good intentions. But he wasn’t in his room or downstairs, and neither was Flora. No one seemed to know where they’d gone.

  ‘You’re a good woman, Veta,’ Dorothy said. ‘You have worked to improve the lot of your fellow men and women.’ She gave a light laugh. ‘Even though your politics are on the wrong side of the great divide, if such a thing exists any more.’ She pressed the younger woman’s hand again. ‘You mustn’t let this knock you from your chosen course. The past can only hurt us if we refuse to let it go. I, of all people, should know that.’

  Veta looked at her quizzically. ‘Your Spyros, your Andonis, you have let them go?’

  Dorothy smiled sadly. ‘Yes, I have. My younger son, Alex, has not. He still searches for his brother. He clutches at the hopeless belief that Andonis might still be alive. But eventually he will learn to forgive and forget, as Anna has done.’

  Veta looked at her, feeling tears well up. ‘You’re an extraordinary woman,’ she said between sobs. ‘Your husband would have been proud of you.’

  Dorothy patted her hand and stood up. ‘You need to get ready,’ she said encouragingly. ‘I gather my son is coming to dinner with a beautiful American woman in tow. How interesting.’ She smiled again and left the room.

  But Veta Palaiologou stayed on the bed, her head bowed as it had been before Dorothy had tried to comfort her. Alex Mavros and Grace Helmer were coming to the house. Why had she invited them? Grace Helmer, daughter of blind, idealistic Trent who had been slaughtered by the Iraklis group. There really was no end to the torment, whatever the old woman thought. Iraklis was operating again, killing the kind of people who had been in their sights when they started thirty years ago.

  What kind of a Christmas was this going to be in the house that looked down on the citadel of Tiryns, birthplace of the relentless ancient hero?

  ‘Yes,’ Mavros gasped, after he’d fumbled for the phone in his jacket pocket.

  ‘Alex Mavros?’ The male voice was deep and level, the name pronounced by a native Greek speaker.

  ‘Yes,’ Mavros confirmed.

  ‘You have made a mistake,’ his interlocutor said. The tone was neutral, but there was a threatening undercurrent to the words.

  ‘Have I?’ Mavros asked, his mouth dry. He raised a hand to keep Grace at bay. She was staring at him frantically, unable to follow the one-sided exchange in Greek. ‘You mean by going to your mother?’

  ‘Yes. She should not have been brought into this. Her home should not have been invaded.’

  Mavros was trying to work out a way to keep the terrorist on the line for as long as possible. ‘I can explain,’ he said, willing the tension from his voice. ‘We need to meet you. It’s very important.’ If the assassin had been talking to his mother, Kyra Stamatina, that probably meant he was in Nafplion.

  ‘Who is the woman?’ The man sounded close and, without thinking, Mavros went to the window. There was no one in the street below.

  ‘Can we meet?’ he asked, realising that he sounded desperate. ‘I repeat, who is the woman?’

  Mavros gazed at Grace, wondering what the effect of revealing her identity would be. ‘Grace Helmer,’ he said, deciding that openness was the best policy. ‘Daughter of the American diplomat you murdered in ’seventy-six.’

  There was a pause. ‘What does she want with me?’ The voice was less confident.

  ‘To see you,’ Mavros answered. ‘To find out why you killed her father.’

  There was another pause. ‘And you, Alex Mavro?’ the man continued. ‘This isn’t only about her. What do you want with me?’

  Mavros was impressed by his perspicacity. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he admitted. ‘I believe you knew my brother, Andonis Mavros. You met him at—’

  ‘The peninsula of Tigani in the Mani,’ the man said. ‘Yes, I did. In…November 1972. What of it?’

  ‘Help us,’ Mavros pleaded, running out of options.
‘I guarantee there will be no involvement of the authorities.’

  The laugh was tired, even sad. ‘How can you be sure of that? Would you like to know what I did to the last man who was on my tail?’

  Mavros felt his stomach leap as he remembered the tall gunman who had saved him and Grace. ‘Where? In the Mani?’

  ‘Maybe. Why do you want to meet me? You, Alex Mavro, not the woman.’

  ‘Because…because I want to know what you discussed with my brother.’ Mavros could hardly get the words out. ‘For my own purposes. I won’t tell anyone else.’

  ‘What I discussed with him?’ The terrorist sounded puzzled. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Andonis disappeared the following month. He hasn’t been seen since and I—I wondered if you could cast any light on that.’

  The man did not speak for what seemed to Mavros like a very long time. ‘You made a mistake,’ was all that he said. ‘Mistakes are costly in this business. Make sure you don’t make any more. Stay away from my mother.’

  ‘No, wait!’ Mavros shouted. ‘Yiorgos Pandazopoulos, do you know him?’

  The disconnection he had expected didn’t happen: the man’s voice returned with a questioning edge to it. ‘Yiorgos Pandazopoulos?’ he repeated. ‘Now, why would you be interested in that overweight comrade? Did you put him down at Tigani to watch out for me?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ Mavros felt his heart somersault. ‘For Christ’s sake, you haven’t hurt him, have you? Did you visit Kostas Laskaris?’

  This pause was the longest of them all.

  ‘There is nothing more to be said,’ the terrorist said at last. ‘If you or the woman go near my mother again, you will be sorry. Let me be, Alex Mavro.’

  There was a buzzing in his ear. Mavros threw down the phone with a curse.