Cronos Rising

by Tim Stevens

  ‘The woman?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘For the second time, then, in twenty four hours,’ said Grabasov, ‘Purkiss evades you.’

  ‘Yes, Oracle,’ said Artemis. Again, there was no quaver of emotion in his voice.

  Grabasov went to the window and stared at a plane ascending high above. Leaving Sheremetyevo Airport, probably.

  Grabasov said, ‘Stay where you are, in Athens. Concentrate as many personnel as you can there.’

  ‘Understood.’

  There wasn’t much more to say. Grabasov thumbed the key to end the call and tossed the phone onto the leather surface of his desk.

  He paced his office. The Ferryman had located Purkiss, and, observing that he had others with him, had called Grabasov. It would require several men to take Purkiss down, he said. So Grabasov had notified Artemis, and Artemis had sent four of his people in.

  And they’d failed.

  Grabasov picked up his phone once more and dialled the Ferryman’s number. After six rings, it went to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message. Nobody else called the Ferryman on this number.

  While he looked out over the city, waiting for the ferryman to return his call, Grabasov wondered at the man’s motivation. Had he genuinely thought he’d be unable to capture Purkiss and kill his associates on his own? Or had he, rather, wanted to test the waters, to have other men sent in as cannon fodder, to gauge just how much of a threat Purkiss posed?

  Grabasov suspected the latter. He understood the thinking behind it. Admired it, even. It was what he might have done himself in similar circumstances.

  A full forty minutes passed before the phone rang on the desk. Grabasov snatched it up.

  ‘Oracle,’ said the Ferryman. ‘You’ve heard what happened?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The Ferryman explained. And Grabasov understood.

  Eighteen

  The skipper’s name was Georghios Georghiou, and although he was probably under sixty years old, he was as grizzled as an ancient, his sun burned to the colour of teak.

  ‘Two hour,’ he said as they climbed aboard. It was the last English they heard him speak.

  The boat was a custom-built contraption which, despite its odd appearance, looked solid and hardy. Rebecca and Delatour took their seats on one side, Kendrick and Purkiss on the other. Apart from Georghiou there were no crew.

  The clerk at the tiny office on the wharf had told Rebecca that hers was an unusual request, that most tourists wanted to see the larger and more famous Cycladean islands such as Santorini or Naxos. Rebecca spun a yarn about having seen the islet of Iora in a picture book as a child, and having harboured a longstanding obsession to visit it ever since.

  The clerk admitted he’d never seen the islet. When Rebecca asked if it was inhabited, the clerk waved a hand. ‘Who knows? Sometimes you get these back-to-nature types camping out there, on these far-flung rocks. Most of them get bored eventually and leave.’

  Rebecca had been shown a battered old book, yellowed from years of sun and sea air, which provided the geographical characteristics of the two hundred islands and islets that made up the Cyclades. She couldn’t read Greek but the clerk translated for her. Iora was an outcrop from the sea bed, some three kilometres by one and a half kilometres across, in the western part of the archipelago. There were no known inhabitants apart from gulls, largely because there was no arable land there. It was a rock in the sea.

  The guide offered to loan Rebecca the book but she declined, having memorised the salient details, such as they were.

  Purkiss listened to her account as they boarded. It brought to mind his earlier thoughts about Vale.

  Was this a trap? Was the island indeed uninhabited, a place into which Purkiss was being corralled in preparation for some assault?

  He mentioned nothing of this to Rebecca or the others.

  The captain, Georghiou, steered effortlessly, almost lazily, his hand draped over the tiller, his neck extended to receive the watery sun on his face. The pouches and wrinkles of his skin made his eyes almost disappear, as if he was asleep. But whenever the boat seemed to be approaching unnervingly close to a finger of rock protruding from the surface of the water, the boatman angled it away smoothly.

  The morning was cold, the skein of cloud filtering the sun. A light breeze rippled across the surface of the sea and across the boat, chilling Purkiss. Occasionally they passed another motorboat, or a yacht, or a small fishing trawler, and Georghiou would raise an index finger in acknowledgement. Mostly, though, they were alone.

  Purkiss watched the others without making it obvious he was doing so. Delatour rubbed his arm from time to time – he’d bound the cut with a strip from his old shirt – and gazed out over the water, his expression betraying nothing. Rebecca had a distant expression, as if she was deep in contemplation, or remembering something.

  Kendrick fidgeted, occasionally crossing his legs and then uncrossing them in quick order, drumming his fingers on the rail of the boat, his lips moving silently and in apparent amusement. Every now and again his hand stole inside his leather jacket as if to reassure himself that the pistol was still there. For years, he’d used amphetamines, not exactly recreationally but before a mission, to give him an extra bit of oomph, as he put it himself. Purkiss had connived at this because it had never got in the way of Kendrick’s performance. He had the appearance now of someone cranked up, but Purkiss didn’t think he was using. It was as if the brain injury had triggered some natural mechanism in his head which previously had needed speed to set it off.

  An unstable, unpredictable former soldier, and two virtual strangers whose motivations and loyalties Purkiss couldn’t be entirely sure of. It was a hell of a team.

  Georghiou seemed to understand English well enough, even if he didn’t speak it much. On the way, Purkiss told him he could leave once he’d dropped them on the island. The old man nodded as if he hadn’t considered any other possibility.

  Rebecca murmured to Purkiss: ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’

  ‘We may be there some time,’ said Purkiss. ‘If there is anybody on the island, they’ll most likely have a means of transport off, which we can use. And if we’re going into a hazardous situation, we can’t expose Georghiou to it.’

  ‘And if there’s nothing there at all?’

  ‘We’ll do a quick recce when we get there,’ said Purkiss. ‘With an island of that size, it’ll be easy to establish if it’s inhabited. If it’s just barren rock, we’ll ask Georghiou to take us back then and there.’

  The journey took a little under two hours, smoothed by the mild sea and the clear weather. Georghiou slowed the boat and stood up, training a pair of binoculars on a point on the horizon. He nodded.

  The shape appeared on the distant sealine as they approached. At first, Purkiss thought it was a flat expanse, but as they drew nearer he saw it was peaked slightly off-centre, like a shallow hill protruding from the water. The only other island was far larger and off to the left. Purkiss hadn’t seen another vessel for the last quarter of an hour.

  The first prick of adrenaline made its way into his system, along with a creeping tendril of dread.

  *

  Georghiou took the boat slowly along the southern perimeter of the islet, studying the cracked and jagged coastline intently. Purkiss got the impression that the man had never actually landed on Iora before, though he’d navigated there easily enough. The rock was more elevated than Purkiss had initially thought, its sides sheer enough to be called cliffs and rising to a height of perhaps eighty feet in places.

  A cleft in the rocks came into view. Deep within it, and shadowed by its sides, a cove led to a sloping expanse of rock, worn smooth by the sea over the centuries. At the far end of the rock, a rudimentary set of steps, formed by the placing of boulders rather than the carving of a staircase, wound upwards and into the darkness between the sides of the cleft.

  Georghiou pulled up to the cove and cut the engine. He
stood stiffly and extended his hand to Rebecca, his manner gruffly courteous. She allowed him to help her over the side. Kendrick barged past next, his booted feet splashing carelessly in the shallow, impossibly clear water.

  Purkiss said: ‘Rebecca, Tony, wait here a moment.’ To Georghiou: ‘I’m going to climb those steps and see if there’s anything up there. Will you wait a few minutes?’

  The man glared at him through his small, pouched eyes.

  Rebecca stepped forward and peeled a wad of euros from a clip. ‘Mr Georghiou, we really would appreciate it.’

  Without acknowledgement, the captain pocketed the cash and sat on the rail of the boat. He fished a pipe and a packet of tobacco from a pouch around his waist and began packing the bowl.

  Purkiss began to climb the steps, Delatour behind him.

  He’d chosen the pairings deliberately: he and Delatour scouting ahead, while Rebecca and Kendrick stayed behind. His first instinct had been to take Kendrick along, but Rebecca and Delatour were the unknown quantities as far as he was concerned, and he didn’t want to leave them alone together.

  The boulders which formed the steps were worn down in the centres, as if feet had traversed them numerous times. Purkiss took them slowly, his feet threatening to slip at times where the surface had been rendered slippery by the spume that had lashed from the sea. Behind him, Delatour was having similar difficulty.

  The path wound through a rough S-shape, and after rounding the second curve Purkiss found he couldn’t see the cove any longer. Up ahead was a ridge.

  His head rose above it. Before him was an expanse of rock, dotted with smaller boulders of different sizes and shapes like an array of sculpture. The rock surface sloped gently away, before reaching the steep verge of a central hillock.

  At the top of the hillock, the unmistakable silhouette of human habitation was dark against the pale sky.

  The structure was ruined, and appeared ancient. Chipped Doric pillars supported a crumbling façade, beyond which were squatter, less decorative buildings, though the extent of them wasn’t discernible from Purkiss’s vantage point.

  He scanned the rocky plain ahead. For an instant, his eye was caught by a swaying movement over to his left.

  Further round the perimeter of the islet, he saw the tip of a mast, just visible over the ridge.

  Purkiss pulled himself up over the lip of the ridge. Behind him, Delatour followed suit.

  Delatour said: ‘This isn’t Ressos.’

  ‘No,’ said Purkiss. He turned to Delatour. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I researched it, after you told me it was where we were going,’ Delatour said. ‘It’s nothing like this.’

  ‘You understand why I lied to you?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Delatour mildly. ‘Insurance. And I suspect even now you’re not going to tell me where we are.’

  ‘I might as well,’ said Purkiss. ‘It’s Iora.’

  Purkiss led the way leftwards along the ridge. Once, he glanced down, and saw the vertiginous drop of the cliff plunging into the rocks and sea at its base. As they approached the western end of the islet, the yacht came into view. It was a fifteen-footer, moored in a small cove alongside a second, smaller vessel, a motorboat.

  ‘We’ve got company, then,’ said Delatour.

  Purkiss took out his phone. As he’d expected, reception was poor this far from the mainland. But he sent a text message to Rebecca, which went through: The island’s inhabited. We’ve found boats. Send Georghiou away and come up.

  Her reply came after a few seconds. Yes.

  While they waited, Purkiss studied the ruins on the distant hillock. From this new angle, further along the perimeter, he could make out something else behind the façade. It was a tall structure, almost as tall as the pillars themselves, and constructed of dull metal with buttresses of wood and stone.

  A tower.

  Rebecca and Kendrick appeared over the lip of the ridge. Purkiss beckoned them over.

  They gazed down at the vessels in the second cove.

  ‘Do we go and check them out?’ said Rebecca.

  Purkiss gazed up at the structure again. ‘Not yet. Let’s walk the perimeter, see if there’s anything else. Then we need to have a look at that ruin.’

  Perhaps it was luck, or fate, or perhaps it was simple physics with no mystical weight behind it. But the flash winked in the side of the tower, sunlight glinting off metal, and triggered a reflex in Purkiss as if he’d been administered an electric shock directly to his central nervous system.

  He dived, cannoning into Rebecca, sending her sprawling against the hard rock surface, even as he swiped his arm backwards and shoved Delatour off his feet.

  A sheaf of sound hissed towards them.

  An instant later, the edge of the ridge behind them exploded.

  The noise was thunderous, bellowing out across the open sea. A shower of rocks spewed upward and outward, black inside a nova of orange flame.

  Nineteen

  The sound in Purkiss’s ears was dual-layered, a low throbbing hum overlain with a relentless high-pitched ringing.

  He shouted, his voice almost inaudible to him: ‘Over there, over there, get behind the rocks.’

  Beneath his belly and his chest the rock was harsh and rough, chips and protrusions digging into his flesh as he crawled, flattening himself as far as he was able while still moving his arms and legs. He saw Rebecca to one side of him, Delatour to the other. Kendrick would be behind, but Purkiss couldn’t afford to stop and turn to confirm it.

  Rebecca reached one of the boulders first and pressed herself against it face-first, clasping it like an infant animal seeking solace from its mother. Purkiss deliberately angled away so that he put distance between him and Rebecca, and he gestured with his hand for Delatour to do the same.

  It had been a rocket-propelled grenade. As such, they were better off spaced apart rather than bunched together.

  The rock Purkiss reached was smaller than Rebecca’s, which meant he had to crouch lower in order to keep his head down. Beyond her, he saw Kendrick pressed against a whole cluster of boulders. To Purkiss’s left, Delatour had taken similar cover.

  The sonic effect of the blast continued, a terrible, overwhelming noise that threatened to drown out all thought, all ability even to move one’s limbs. Purkiss had been close to explosions before, and he knew the dread the after-effects engendered, the horrible fear that one would never be able to hear properly again, that this droning, unrelenting ringing would torment one’s days and nights forever.

  The immediate problem was that with his hearing impaired, Purkiss couldn’t rely on auditory data to assess the threat ahead. Which meant he’d need to use his eyes, and that meant risking exposure.

  He signalled to the others on either side – keep down – and gripped the rock in front of him to steady himself, noting the tremor that was starting up in his fingers. By sidling along to one side, he found a crack in the boulder through which he could peer.

  The tower behind the ruined façade was just as before. There was no movement there. No further sign of life.

  Purkiss angled his vision to take in the foot of the hillock on which the ruins and the tower stood. He looked up at the tower again. The distance to the hillock was perhaps three hundred yards. The elevation of the top of the tower he estimated at sixty or seventy feet.

  They could, he supposed, make a run for the hillock. Once they got there, they’d be out of view of whoever was in the tower. The rocky ground between them and the hillock was only slightly sloping, with minor obstacles in the way in the form of boulders and outcroppings.

  But they’d be open targets.

  If they made their advance spaced well apart, one or more of them could make it. An RPG launcher was a devastating weapon against a stationary or relatively slowly moving target such as a tank. It wasn’t particularly versatile as a weapon when the enemy was a collection of individual human beings following separate paths.

  But the RPG co
uld take out two of them, easily. And that would leave just two others, unarmed except in Kendrick’s case. Even if two of them made it to the point of immediate safety at the foot of the hillock, whoever was in the tower could simply wander down at their leisure and pick them off with ease.

  Besides, the RPG might be just one of several weapons at their unseen opponents’ disposal. If the hidden enemy in the tower had a sniper’s rifle, all four of them could be dispatched in short order.

  No: a direct, frontal approach was too hazardous to consider. Tactics were needed.

  He looked again to either side of him. On the left, Delatour remained flat against his rock. To the right, Rebecca crouched, looking back at Purkiss, awaiting guidance.

  He couldn’t communicate with either of them meaningfully. The aftershock of the grenade blast continued to hamper their hearing, as it did his.

  Instead, Purkiss nodded past Rebecca at Kendrick.

  She understood and turned, beckoning. Purkiss saw Kendrick’s face beyond her, caught his eye.

  Kendrick was military. He knew the hand signals for the different approaches, and had taught them to Purkiss. They’d used them on more than one operation together.

  Purkiss pointed at his own chest, jabbed his curved fingers forward. Then he indicated to his left and right, and pointed straight ahead.

  Kendrick gave him the thumbs up. He was grinning.

  It was a basic move. One person – Purkiss – approaching round the side, circling the enemy to mount a rear attack. The others providing a distraction by stealing forwards in increments, risking exposure in the process.

  Purkiss knew he had the easier task.

  He turned to his left, caught Delatour’s attention. Keeping eye contact, he gestured repeatedly to his right, towards Rebecca and Kendrick beyond her.

  Purkiss drew a deep breath. He readied himself, feeling the adrenaline surge in his blood, and rode the crest and explode out from behind his rock to sprint towards Delatour.

  He dropped beside the man within five seconds, his heart hammering. There’d been no gunfire. No hiss and blast of a second RPG round.