by Joseph Badal
“Zoë went out about thirty minutes ago,” Nick yelled. “She asked the desk clerk for directions to a drugstore. She told him she would be right back and asked him to tell Panos here.” He jabbed a thumb at the policeman. “She took off while Panos was taking a piss.”
The young policeman dropped his head and stared at his shoes.
From the look John saw Christo shoot at the policeman, he guessed the cop would pay a heavy price for his bladder’s poor timing.
“I arrived here just a few minutes after Zoë walked out,” Nick continued. “It took me five minutes to find the drugstore. She’d already been there, according to the store’s clerk, and when she left she got into a car with several people. When I asked him if they’d forced her into the car, he told me he hadn’t paid close enough attention to know.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
“You idiot!” Theo Burger shouted from the back seat of the black Mercedes. “I told you to stay below the speed limit.”
“I—”
“Shut up!” she hissed at Peter. “Pull over and get out. Talk to the cop. Try to keep him away from the car.”
The police car’s roof lights flashed through the back window of the Mercedes. Theo ground her teeth at the aggravating, monotonous sound of the siren. She hoped the chloroform they used on the Vangelos woman was enough to keep her quiet for another ten minutes.
Peter stepped out onto the road. He walked back past the rear of the vehicle and intercepted the Greek policeman by the front of his police cruiser.
Theo didn’t want to turn around in the back seat and stare at the cop. It was dark outside, but with the police car’s highlights shining on the Mercedes she knew the cop would see her. She needed to stay calm. It’s just another traffic stop, she told herself.
Theo said to Tomas, seated in the front passenger seat, half-turned toward her, “If the cop moves in our direction, kill him.” She then lowered the right rear window and listened to the conversation between Peter and the policeman. It sounded as though the cop spoke no German. Peter, she knew, spoke no Greek. “What’s going on back there?” she whispered to Tomas.
Tomas shifted further in his seat. He peered at the side view mirror for a moment then turned and met Theo’s gaze. “Peter’s doing a lot of hand waving and talking and the cop seems to be agitated. Peter just pulled out his wallet and tried to hand money to the guy.”
Smart move, Theo thought. She knew that money greased the bureaucratic wheels in Greece. She assumed it would do the same with the cop. “Did he take the money?” she asked.
Suddenly, hammering sounds came from the Mercedes’ trunk, rocking the vehicle.
Tomas twisted around and stared through the rear window. “The cop just put his hand on his pistol and yelled something,” he said.
“Too bad!” Theo said, when the angry sounds of the policeman’s voice carried to her. She cocked her head at Tomas. “Take care of it,” she said. While Tomas opened the passenger door and stepped out, Theo turned. She saw the policeman look at Tomas, who had his hands in his pockets. She saw the bulge Tomas’s pistol made under his jacket where it was wedged in the waistband at the back of his trousers. Tomas removed his hands from his pockets as he walked to the cop’s right side. She saw Peter shift his position more to the cop’s left. The cop glanced from one man to the other as he apparently tried to keep an eye on both men. He shouted, his pistol now halfway out of the holster on his utility belt.
Theo twisted around and faced forward. She reached over the front seat and leaned her hand on the horn. While she did so, she looked back over her shoulder and saw the cop jerk his head toward the Mercedes. In that instant, Tomas removed the pistol from his waistband, aimed it at the policeman, and pulled the trigger. The cop jerked backward and crumpled to the pavement.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
John felt a devastating sense of loss and a profound anger that threatened his self-control.
Christo laid a calming hand on his arm, then did the same to Nick. “All right, let’s approach the situation as unemotionally as possible,” he said. “We won’t do Zoë any good unless we keep our wits about us. Nick, where’s this drugstore?”
They ran a hundred yards down the street to the tiny shop. Christo told them to wait outside while he talked to the clerk. After five minutes of conversation, during which the clerk looked like a Dutch windmill with his arms flying above and around his head, Christo returned.
“He described Zoë perfectly, so I have no doubt he saw her get into a black car. He said there was at least one person in the car and another two who got in after Zoë. He wasn’t sure if she was forced into the car.”
Christo didn’t wait for a response. He pulled a telephone from a pouch on his hip, dialed a number, and ordered all available police officers to report to John and Zoë’s hotel. He also ordered a search of the entire island for a black car with three Swiss males and a Greek female. After a pause, while he appeared to listen, Christo said, “Make immediate inquiries at every car rental agency on the island about vehicles rented to anyone with a Swiss passport. And set up roadblocks every mile for ten miles on the Samos Highway north and south of Pythagorio.”
The policeman on the other end of the line must have balked because Christo raised his voice for the first time during the entire conversation and yelled something. John caught enough of the diatribe to understand what Christo said: “Then get your fat-assed relatives, your inbred children, and your dead grandfather to do it! They’ve kidnapped a Greek woman and they may kill her.”
Christo set up a command post in the hotel lobby, explaining that the Pythagorio station was too small. If the men who had taken Zoë were to contact anyone, he added, they would probably try to call John. These men wanted the map and, as far as they knew, John was the way to it.
It was no stretch for John, either, to figure that the men who had Zoë wanted the map. He would turn over a thousand maps to get her back.
Nick and John tried to make themselves useful. Nick used the police radio to broadcast a plea on the Greek fishermen’s frequency to boats in the area to keep an eye out for his sister. John ordered meals from the hotel’s kitchen for all of them, including the entire contingent of fifteen policemen and citizen volunteers. But mostly John and Nick sat, paced, cursed, and paced some more.
The sight of so many cops in one location caused quite a stir among the local populace, many of whom stood outside the hotel entrance. It didn’t take long for the word of a kidnapping to work its way through the crowd. The shocked reactions on the locals’ faces—hands over mouths, women crying, men cursing—spoke volumes about how unaccustomed the Samians were to violent crime.
John had conceived a plan to try to trap Leidner. He knew it had been risky—even crazy. He had wanted to lure Leidner to Samos. The sonofabitch had been a step ahead of him, however. He’d been on his way to Samos even before John had used his credit card. But he was desperate now that Zoë had been kidnapped. He went over his entire plan in his head one more time and reviewed it for flaws and danger points. It was full of both. A plan fabricated out of worry and anger and about to be implemented out of desperation.
He had the copy of Petros’s map on him. But Zoë knew its every detail by heart. The only thing that would keep her alive was her value to them as a bargaining chip—Zoë for the map. If she divulged what she knew about the map, they would no longer need to find a copy. Once they proved what she told them, she would become expendable.
But they didn’t know the map was itself an intricate puzzle. Without help from Zoë, Nick, Christo, or him they would never be able to understand the hidden meaning of Petros’s inscription—the rhyme that John felt more and more was the key to the map.
It was time to put the rest of his plan in motion. He crossed the room to the communications table where Nick worked the radio. “Nick,” he asked, “how much do you estimate the Penelope is worth
?”
The look on Nick’s face showed surprise at John’s question. His brow furrowed, eyes narrowed. It was obvious he found the question inappropriate, in bad taste.
John met Nick’s gaze. “This has to do with your sister. I have a good reason for asking.”
Finally he said, “One hundred thousand dollars.”
“Fine! I want to buy it.”
“You wouldn’t make much of a fisherman,” he snorted and turned back to the radio.
“Will you sell it to me?”
“Why?”
“That’s immaterial. Will you sell it to me?”
“Sure!” Nick said, sarcastically. “You have that kind of money?” His tone told John that Nick didn’t believe he could pay his price and that Nick didn’t really want to discuss selling his boat at a time like this.
Nick glanced up, his eyebrows arched in surprise when John said, “I do. But not on me at the moment, of course.”
“You’re serious?” Nick twisted in his chair and now concentrated on John.
“You’re damn right I’m serious. Either sell me your boat or I’ll go find another fisherman who wants to make a quick buck.”
Nick shrugged and then stuck out his hand. He and John shook on the deal. John gave him one thousand dollars and signed an IOU on a paper napkin for the rest. Payable within one week. He had absolutely no idea how much the boat was actually worth and didn’t care. Nick seemed to be satisfied with the price, which surely meant John had paid too much. But he needed a boat to make his plan work.
Christo had continually been on either the telephone or the police radio. John assumed his men provided him with status reports. Judging by his reactions, the reports had been routine. But, just as John handed the IOU over to Nick, he happened to look over at Christo—and this time his face had turned red and he excitedly waved his free arm at John, while he spoke into the radio handset.
John and Nick rushed over to Christo and listened while he barked orders into the radio. Christo’s color had gone from red to white. John’s heart thumped in his chest. The look on the inspector’s face told him it was bad news. Please let Zoë be okay, he silently prayed.
“Set up a perimeter around the cars and question everyone in the area,” Christo shouted into the handset. “Find out if anyone saw or heard anything.”
Christo turned the volume down on the radio. “We think we’ve found the car the pharmacist saw Zoë taken away in,” he said. “It’s parked near an out of the way taverna about halfway between Pythagorio and the Heraion. There’s a dock across from the taverna used by fishing boats and small private yachts. One of my men questioned the restaurant owner, who saw three or four people—including two women—leave the car about forty-five minutes ago and board a high powered recreational fishing boat. My man identified the rental car company from a decal on the car’s windshield. The company said the car had been rented to a Helmut Grune.”
“That’s not one of the names of the three people who flew from Athens to Samos with Leidner,” John said.
“No,” Christo said. “But it could be an alias. It makes sense they would try to cover their tracks.”
“Did you say that a witness saw two women?” Nick asked.
“That’s right.”
“I thought the pharmacist saw three men with Zoë.”
“He thought he saw three men. He wasn’t really sure.”
“In other words,” Nick interjected, “we can’t be sure it’s the right car.”
Christo gave Nick a cold-eyed look, then softened his gaze and nodded.
“So, we may be dealing with at least two men and one woman,” John said. “Plus Leidner. Or, the people this witness saw aren’t the same ones who have Zoë.”
Christo just shrugged. Nick stalked off. He looked as though he were ready to explode.
“Did you say ‘cars’ plural?” John said.
Christo’s eyes narrowed and John felt a current of uneasiness run through him. He’d never seen the Greek cop look as he now did. There had been anger in the set of his jaw, the flare of his nostrils, the icy look in his eyes when he’d learned of Zantsos’s death. But this was different. Violent anger showed on his face. His eyes blazed. But, at the same time, there seemed to be an unbearable sadness about him.
“About one kilometer this side of where we found the black Mercedes, on the coast road, my men found the body of a young police officer. He’d been executed. One shot to the temple. His car was parked by the side of the road, its engine and flashers still on. He may have confronted the people who kidnapped Zoë.”
“I’m so sorry, Christo,” John said.
“So am I,” Christo said. “That young man was my sister’s only child.”
Nick fastwalked over to Christo. “They’ve taken my sister out on the water,” he exclaimed. “How the hell will we ever find her? By now, they could be anywhere on any one of a hundred or more islands. They could even be in Turkey.”
“Yeah, but where they are is irrelevant,” John said. “They want the map. They don’t have a chance to get it if we don’t get Zoë back.” John wanted to believe his own words; but he knew if they forced Zoë to talk, they would never see her again.
The desolate look John saw in Nick’s eyes told him that what John had just said offered no consolation.
While Christo took care of various logistical matters, John talked with the hotel desk clerk. He learned the man had already arranged everything John had requested earlier. Then he gave John directions to where the rented boat was docked, gave him an invoice for the cost of the boat, supplies, and equipment, and gratefully took the money.
In order to put his plan into effect, John needed Christo’s assistance. He pulled him aside. “I want to use the Penelope as a decoy, but I need something from you.”
“What you need to do,” Christo said, “is stay right here where I can protect you.”
John breathed out a heavy sigh. “Look, Christo. Things are out of control. The only way we’ll get Zoë back alive is to give her kidnappers the map. They could care less about me at this point.”
Christo glared at John; but, after a moment, he said, “So, what do you want from me?”
“Explosives.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“Ach, can’t they shut that woman up? Stuff a rag in her mouth.”
Theo Burger rose from the chair opposite Fritz Leidner. “I’ll take care of it, mein Herr.” She walked from the lounge area on the rented yacht’s rear deck, along the rail, descended a staircase, and disappeared below.
Leidner lifted his glass from the table in front of him and sipped the cognac. He reflected on the fortunate turn of events. Theo’s seeing the woman leave the hotel had been purely fortuitous. Theo had recognized her from the photograph Hans had taken from Layla Vangelos’s house and emailed to Zurich. Theo and two of her men had followed Zoë Vangelos to the pharmacy, snatched her off the street, and brought her to where the yacht had been moored. Leidner cocked his head to try to pick up any sounds from below deck. Nothing. Theo had handled the situation.
He thought how much he would enjoy watching what the men did to the woman. But it would be undignified for mere employees to see him display emotion. He would have to be satisfied with the sight of her after the others had finished. If she knew anything, he was confident the two men below would force it out of her.
Leidner watched Theo cross the deck toward him. She was a stunning creature. Tall, blue eyes, high cheek bones, perfect straight, and cropped blonde hair. It amazed him that her mannish haircut only seemed to make her more beautiful, more desirable. A real Nordic beauty. He felt a stirring in his groin—a not so common occurrence over the last few years—and thought how much pleasure he would get from bedding her again after so many years. For the money he paid her, he figured she’d not object. But something made him hold back. He had
a sudden image of a black widow spider. He swallowed, no longer aroused. At least he could take satisfaction from the knowledge that a beautiful woman could still stimulate him. Perhaps when he inspected the Greek woman below deck, when he’d seen Peter and Tomas’s handiwork. The combination of violence and sex had never failed to excite him, even when he was a young man.
Back to business. He raised his glass in salute. “Thank you, my dear. Her screams were quite grating on the nerves.”
Theo tilted her head in acknowledgement. “Perhaps I should make further inquiries about Hans and Josef. It’s not natural that we haven’t heard from them.”
“Don’t bother yourself, Liebchen. We must assume they are either in custody or dead. If the authorities have them, we have nothing to worry about. They will say nothing. They’re professionals. And if they’re dead”—he paused and smiled—“then we truly have nothing to worry about. Ja?”
“Ja wohl, mein Herr.”
Tomas Burkett stepped back from the bed and wiped his face with his shirtsleeve. “Turn up the air conditioner, Peter? I’m sweating like a pig. I thought this Greek bitch would have snapped like a twig the first time I hit her. She’s tougher than she looks.”
“Ah, Tomas, you just don’t know how to deal with the weaker sex,” Peter Muther said. “Your methods are much too brutish. Why not let me try?”
“You think you can do better, have at it,” Tomas said, as he dried his face with a towel.
Peter walked closer to the bed set against the bulkhead in the yacht’s VIP stateroom. He moved almost cat-like, while he checked the ropes that bound the woman’s wrists and ankles to the head and footboards. “Tsk, tsk,” he clucked as he looked down at her face. One eye had swollen completely closed. It was already purple and red. The other eye was unnaturally wide with her fear and pain. The woman’s cheeks were also swollen and had split open from the pummeling Tomas had given her. From the grimace on her face, he could tell she was in great pain. The heavy blows Tomas had administered to her stomach and chest made Peter’s gut hurt—not out of sympathy, but out of empathy. He knew how much agony the beating must have caused.