Evolution of Fear

by Paul E. Hardisty

  ‘The long sleep,’ said Crowbar as the car toppled off the end of the ramp, bobbed for a moment in the black water and then sank out of sight, trailing a wake of phosphorescent bubbles.

  Part III

  25

  F=GMm/r2

  10th November 1994: Near Kato Pyrgo, north coast of Cyprus

  It was just before sunset when they waded ashore.

  Within moments the landing craft was gone, disappearing behind an iron-oxide headland towards the TRNC side of the border. They left the black shingle beach and moved inland through olive groves and scrub oak. After a while they passed an abandoned farmhouse, a charcoal kiln with a supply of logs stacked ready for pyrolysis. Clay inhaled the rich odours of the island, recent rain on the red soil of the interior plains, charred pine from last summer’s wildfires in the Pentadactylos range in the north, cypress from the Troodos Mountains. Three years he’d lived here, long enough for the place to have attached itself to him somehow, a dormant virus awakened by these chemicals in the wind. He shivered, not from the cold but from something else, a realisation perhaps of what he was here to do.

  They walked into Kato Pyrgo and found a pension for the night. At a local café they agreed on a course of action. Clay would go straight to Nicosia, check into the Holiday Inn near the Green Line as Marcus Edward. Then he’d find Hope Bachmann. Crowbar would head for the south coast, to Limassol. He had contacts there in the Russian ‘community’, as he called it.

  ‘Be in your hotel room at five a.m. the day after tomorrow,’ said Crowbar. ‘I’ll call you. Medved’s people and this dof Todorov are tracking you. It’s only a matter of time until they place you. So keep low.’

  ‘Yes, my luitenant,’ said Clay, running his fingers through his already thickening beard, thinking: I’m sorry I doubted you. It’s a flaw. One of many. Trust, I mean. Trusting. Myself most of all.

  Clay put out his hand.

  Crowbar took it, tightened down hard, pumped Clay’s arm a couple of times and grinned wide. ‘Let’s get these fokken kaffirs,’ he said in Afrikaans, ‘find Rania, and get the hell out of here. I’ve got real work to do.’

  The bus journey to Nicosia was painstakingly slow. Narrow, twisting mountain roads lined with pine, glimpses of the Med in the distance, eventually giving way to flat inland plain, dry still, the summer’s browning edge still lingering, the island’s twenty-year drought now the new normal. Clay leant his head on the window glass, watched ragged roadside trees flash past like years. Thirty-four of them now, gone like Koevoet had said, never coming back. The landscape of his life lay there before him, the ridge line smoking black, the slope strewn with bodies, the mangled wrecks of vehicles, the charred stumps of trees, the ground white with ash, a winter of endings. A solitary set of footprints stretched away into the distance, wandering to some meaningless destination, the stink of death filling the air; more to come. He stopped, ash floating above his boots like fog, turned back from where he’d come, looked back across the ruin. Rania was there, standing in his footmarks as if connected to him by that umbilical of a thousand steps, her hands raised to her mouth, dark clouds massing behind her. She was shouting over the distance, calling to him, her voice thin, miles away, the slant of rain on the horizon. He wasn’t sure if it was her voice he could hear on the wind, or the shapes of the words in her mouth that he could see.

  Clay jerked back, his head rattling against the glass, the bus slowing through a gravel-shouldered village of fruit stands and halfbuilt houses, the dream so clear in that instant, burned there, that he drove each part of it into his consciousness, drawing it out, frame by frame, sound by sound, the colours, the smells, until it was all there, this tableau of his life, the rain coming in the distance, Rania standing in his ashy footmarks, and he thought that maybe there was something there for him in it, and that perhaps he did know what she had been calling to him and that perhaps she was right.

  That afternoon he checked into the hotel, then telephoned the University of Cyprus. He was connected to the oceanography department. One of Doctor Bachmann’s grad students answered, introducing herself as Maria. Hope was running a seminar on evolutionary biostatistics over the next three days, morning to evening, she said. But if he came in early tomorrow morning, he might just catch her before the seminar. Clay thanked the young woman, then organised a rental car for the morning. He sat at the hotel room desk and looked out across the last divided city to the Pentadactylos mountains, black against the northern sky. Rain was coming, thick and cold on the night air.

  He called down to the desk for room service then placed a longdistance call to his Cayman Islands banker. A message was waiting: Flame was in Larnaca marina, a week and a half ahead of schedule. Gonzales must have worked fast, sent Flame overland, to Athens probably. Clay approved the final transfer of funds to Gonzales’ account. By the time the food came it was raining.

  The next morning, Clay stood in the hallway outside Hope Bachmann’s office, brushed the rain from his coat and knocked on the door. The woman who answered was petite, dark-haired, early twenties, with a strong Cypriot nose and big brown eyes. She introduced herself as Maria Stavros, the grad student he’d spoken with the previous day. She ushered him in and closed the door.

  ‘Doctor Bachmann is on the phone at the moment, Mister Edward,’ she said, indicating the closed door at the far end of the office. She glanced at her watch. ‘You’ll have to make it quick. She has to leave for the seminar at ten to eight.’

  Clay removed his coat and saw the young woman glance at his stump, look up quickly to his eyes. ‘Are you a scientist?’ she asked.

  ‘Engineer.’

  Maria glanced down at the phone, the red light blinking. ‘Doctor Bachmann is still on the phone, I’m afraid. You may be out of luck. Perhaps if you tell me the nature of your enquiry, I can help you?’

  ‘It’s personal.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said with a smile, a colouring of the cheeks. ‘Endaxi. No problem.’ She picked up a mug. It was decorated with embossed turtles. ‘Want some coffee?’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Clay, liking this girl already.

  Just then the office door opened.

  Hope was nothing like he had expected. Tall, fine boned, with a square jaw and bright, aquamarine eyes that seemed to change with the light, from clear sandy-bottomed blue to murky ocean green. She looked at him quizzically, the first phase of a smile spreading across her face, a bundle of papers under her arm.

  ‘This is Mister Edward,’ said Maria, beaming at her boss. ‘I told him you didn’t have long. In fact, you have two minutes.’

  ‘Thanks, Maria,’ said Hope. And then, ‘How can I help you, Mister Edward?’

  Clay glanced at Maria. ‘Can we speak alone?’

  ‘Whatever you have to say, you can say to us both.’

  ‘I am a friend of Lise Moulinbecq.’

  Bachmann’s eyes narrowed slightly, then regained their previous, wide-aperture composure. ‘Please contact the seminar, Maria, and tell them that we will start an hour later today. Send my apologies.’

  Maria frowned, nodded and picked up the phone.

  Bachmann opened her office door, motioned Clay to enter and closed the door behind him. They were alone.

  ‘Lise is missing,’ he said.

  Bachmann sat behind her desk, leaned forward. ‘And you are who, exactly, Mister Edward?’

  ‘That’s not important. What matters is that her life is in danger, and I need your help to find her.’

  Bachmann assessed this a moment. If she was worried about Rania, she showed no sign of it. ‘It matters very much to me who you are and what your interest in Lise might be, Mister Edward.’

  Clay stepped over to one of the bookshelves that lined the office walls, floor to ceiling. Here were volumes on genetics, marine biology, compendia of conference proceedings on Mediterranean sea turtles, further along a whole section devoted to political and economic philosophy, neoliberalism, Marxism, Keynesian economics. Clay picked up an illustra
ted volume of the fishes of the Eastern Mediterranean, put it on the corner of her desk and flipped through the pages of colourful, hand-painted drawings, the diversity overwhelming. All of this with his right hand. ‘Does the name Rania LaTour mean anything to you?’ he said, not looking up.

  Bachmann held her hands up to her mouth, a little girl praying. She sat a moment, then stood, looked out of the office window, picked up her purse. ‘Come with me,’ she said.

  Twenty minutes later they were walking among the tall trees of Athalassa Park, a rambling plantation of pines and eucalypts spread over more than a hundred hectares on the eastern edge of Nicosia. They’d taken his car, left it in the gravel car park, and hadn’t spoken a word since leaving the campus. Now they were entirely alone.

  ‘You must be Claymore,’ she said.

  So this was her, the woman Rania had fallen in love with. She’d taken off her sandals, was walking barefoot over the gravel of the pathway, her boyish hips swaying just enough under her long, cotton dress. Rania had good taste, in women at least.

  ‘Clay.’

  She smiled up at him with strong, even teeth. A flash of black at the edge of her smile. A missing tooth? ‘Hope.’

  ‘Why here?’

  ‘I don’t know how much Rania told you, but I’m under surveillance.’

  ‘She told me enough.’ Clay tried to imagine what she’d look like naked, what she and Rania would look like together. Good, probably. He pushed it away.

  ‘My office is bugged. The government is watching me. So, it appears, are others: certain wealthy Cypriot businessmen, for instance, and of course the Russians. I’m not very popular, you see.’

  Clay stopped and faced her. ‘Russians?’

  ‘They have huge interests on the island, as you probably know. Billions in offshore accounts funnelled out since Perestroika. A lot of that money is being invested in development projects, buildings, hotels, resorts, anything to clean it up. It’s a travesty what’s going on in Russia right now – the plunder of a nation. It’s a classic case of socialism for the rich, free-market discipline for the poor.’ She stopped, smoothed down her dress. ‘Sorry. I get a little carried away.’

  Clay nodded, allowed her to continue.

  ‘So, yes, Russians. I know Rania was particularly interested in one group’s interests here: the Medved family.’

  Of course. Clay could feel the gravitational pull (F), two bodies (M and m) drawing each other in, the force of attraction proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance between them (r). The closer you get, the stronger the pull: F=GMm/r2. A lot simpler to express mathematically than say, and more powerful. While he’d been hiding in the UK, Rania had been here, trying to uncover whatever she could about Medved’s operations, continue the fight they’d started in Yemen, the one he’d tried to end in that hotel room in London, the best way she knew how.

  ‘Rania was convinced that Regina Medved was the prime buyer of religious artefacts being plundered north of the border, and Erkan the chief supplier. She also had reason to believe that Medved was investing heavily in Erkan’s Star Crown Resorts, the ones being developed near the turtle beaches in Karpasia. She was working on unearthing proof of these connections when she left for Istanbul.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘You look surprised.’

  ‘I met her in Istanbul a few days ago. She never mentioned any of this,’ said Clay, thinking back. ‘I guess I never gave her much of chance.’

  Hope smiled, took his hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world and kept walking. They crossed the top of an earthen dam, the upstream side choked with bull rushes, a patch of green, swampy water visible near the inlet end.

  ‘She loves you, you know,’ said Hope.

  The words hit him like a straight-arm to the solar plexus. Clay kept walking. After a while he said, ‘Then we have something in common.’

  Hope tipped her head back, opened her mouth and laughed up to the sky. ‘Fairly said. I’ve never met anyone like her.’

  There was a big gap where her left upper bicuspid should have been.

  ‘We have to find her, Hope.’

  They walked along as the sky cleared and the sun burst through the clouds. The ground steamed.

  ‘What about you?’ said Clay. ‘What brought you here?’

  ‘It’s a rather banal story, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’m not judging anyone.’

  ‘The turtles brought me,’ she said, smiling. ‘I came to Cyprus to do research for a PhD in marine biology, studying the endangered green and leatherback turtles here. As so often happens, I met someone, a Cypriot, a banker of all people, fell in love, or what I thought at the time was love. After my doctorate, we moved back to California, where I continued with post-doc research. I had a son, Alexi. But my husband didn’t cope well in America. So many Cypriots are like that, you know, they pine so for this little island. I can understand why. So we came back. I got a job lecturing at the university, kept my post at the University of California, continued my research.’ She paused, walked a while, still holding Clay’s hand. ‘And then the cliché. My husband left me for a younger woman. There was the typical nasty custody battle. Being foreign, and being female, the outcome was inevitable. Now, because of the laws in Cyprus, I am stuck here. If I leave the country, I do it alone. They will not let me take Alexi. If I want to be with my son, to retain the right to the once-a-week visits, I have to stay. Ten years it’s been like that. This is my home now.’

  Clay walked on in silence for some time, debating how much to share with Hope. After a while he told her about their meeting with Erkan in Istanbul, about Rania’s note.

  ‘Rania was getting close,’ said Hope. ‘You’ve seen what she’s written on this, I assume.’

  Clay nodded.

  ‘If Rania’s been kidnapped – if that’s what you’re telling me – then one of the people she’s close to exposing must be responsible. That means, in order: Mohamed Erkan, who you’ve met, a real bastard; Chrisostomedes, my favourite – we’ve had a number of run-ins, he and I; Dimitriou, a government minister here, well known for venality and his favourable leanings towards big business; and finally, Regina Medved – Rania told me about your running feud with that particular family. You two know how to pick your enemies, Clay, I must say.’

  They were climbing a sparsely treed limestone ridge now. At the top they looked back over the park, the city beyond, a town really, barely a hundred thousand souls, split along the middle by a snaking line of barbed wire, bunkers and crumbling, sandbagged houses.

  ‘The common theme in all of this, Clay, is land. Coastal tourism development in particular. That’s how Rania and I met. She heard me speaking at a hearing on development in the Paphos area, including Lara Beach, the last and most important turtle-nesting beach east of Akamas. Any one of the unprincipled bastards I just mentioned would have a big reason to want to keep her quiet; and me for that matter.’

  Clay nodded.

  ‘Maria, too,’ said Hope. ‘It’s even harder for her. She’s Cypriot. It’s a hell of a lot easier to stand up to something you think is wrong when you’re an outsider. But when you’re from here, when it’s your country, a place where everyone knows everyone, it’s a very different proposition. She’s a very brave girl.’

  Clay didn’t doubt it. ‘Rania told me you’d been threatened,’ he said.

  ‘On several occasions. Maria, too. One gets used to it, in our line of work. The turtles are a great inconvenience to these people. A hundred years ago, the turtles nested on beaches all around the island, from Polis to Ayia Napa, up the east coast to Karpasia. Now, only the most remote beaches still support viable populations, at the two opposite ends of the island. Not surprisingly, they’re also the most beautiful places in Cyprus.’

  ‘But those beaches are protected,’ said Clay.

  Hope laughed. ‘Not for long, if these assholes have their way. They won’t stop until they’ve taken everything there is to take. And proba
bly not even then.’

  They began walking again, down through a stand of pine. Hope stopped, turned to face him. Her eyes were the colour of the trees. He noticed for the first time that her nose was slightly displaced, pushed to the left. It made one eye look slightly smaller than the other.

  ‘It’s all about money,’ she said. ‘These beaches are worth a fortune, quite literally. The marketing morons can use their favourite words – “pristine” and “unspoiled” – in their advertising campaigns, and not have to lie about it too much. And then they can bring well-intentioned but shockingly ignorant tourists to see what they are destroying.’

  ‘Great if you’re tourist number one.’

  Hope smiled. ‘Or even one thousand. But not so good if you come later on, because by then the things you wanted to see have been destroyed by the people who got there before you.’ She reached for his left arm.

  Clay pulled back.

  ‘Please,’ she said.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Rania told me a lot about you.’

  Clay allowed her to pull his arm to her. She pushed back his sleeve, examined his stump, ran her fingers over the mangled tissue, the ferocious scarring. She glanced up at him a moment, then pulled his sleeve back down.

  ‘You probably know more about her than I do,’ he said, looking down at the ground.

  ‘Well,’ she said, as they turned back towards the car, ‘you’re going to have a wonderful opportunity to get to know her much better.’ She smiled, squeezed his hand.

  Clay said nothing, hoped she was right.

  ‘Have you thought about where you’ll live, names, things like that?’

  Clay stopped. ‘Names?’

  ‘Come on, silly. You were just with her. She looks great, doesn’t she?’

  Clay said nothing, stared at her.

  ‘You really didn’t notice?’

  ‘Notice what?’

  Hope shook her head. ‘Men,’ she said.