*
‘Where?!’
Konstantin Petrov stormed out of the enclosure surrounded by four of his men as he held a cell phone to his ear.
‘They’re on the water, heading north!’
Petrov jogged down to the bottom of the hill and squinted in the sunshine just in time to see the speck of the distant jet ski vanishing as it rounded the headland over a mile away.
‘Move everybody to the east side of the island and track their movements,’ he ordered, and then turned to his senior bodyguard. ‘Wherever they end up, grab them and bring them to me. Don’t let them escape again or I swear you’ll become a permanent resident of this miserable rock.’
The guard turned and hurried away as Petrov turned back and walked up to the enclosure. Warner and Lopez had emerged from an entrance to the site that was perched on top of a hill nearby, which meant that they had to have already been inside the ancient site and therefore may have learned something new before their escape.
Petrov walked back into the enclosure and toward the curator, an elderly man whom he had learned was named Andres. The curator was currently being held inside his office by two of Petrov’s men.
Petrov walked inside the office and closed the door behind him, then turned and closed the blinds on the window so that nobody could see inside. He turned again to look at Andres, who was sitting on a chair with a Russian hand pressed down on each shoulder to keep him in place.
‘Andres,’ he said, not interested in playing games. ‘Do you enjoy your work and your life here?’
Andres nodded but said nothing, watching Petrov with a cautious expression. Given that the Greek man should not have any knowledge of who Petrov was and should not have any real reason to yet be concerned, Petrov could assume that Warner and Lopez had already been in contact with him and warned him of the danger that he faced should the Russians catch up with him. Petrov decided to take maximum advantage of that concern.
‘Andres, the Americans you recently spoke to are fugitives from justice in two countries and may be interested in the work of a missing scientist who we believe is searching for Atlantis. I do not much care for their archaeological cause, but they represent a group of individuals who have stolen several tens of billions of dollars from governments around the world and I am attempting to apprehend them and recover the lost money.’
Petrov squatted down in front of Andres.
‘There is nothing that I will not do to extract whatever information I require from you. Nothing. But I promise that you will leave this office without a scratch upon you.’
Andres frowned in confusion, and Petrov inclined his head toward a framed picture on the wall of the scientist’s wife and children. Andres blanched as he realized what Petrov meant.
‘Now,’ Petrov went on, ‘if you do not want to spend the rest of your life grieving over the unimaginable pain they went through before my men and I finally cut their throats and deposited their bodies far out to sea, I suggest you tell me absolutely everything that I need to know.’
*
Jarvis heard the helicopters long before they reached the yacht as it cruised north through the perfect blue ocean. Out here, apart from the wind and the hum of the yacht’s engines there was almost no sound and the powerful rotors thumped the air and broadcast their approach from literally miles away.
Jarvis had served long enough in the military to know the distinctive sound of the heavier, more powerful blades and engines of military helicopters. When he spotted them, two gray specks flying low over the water, he knew that his time was up.
Although he no longer had access to military data, he knew that American warships were always present in these waters, and finding a luxury yacht in the middle of the Red Sea was not a difficult mission for the United States Navy. Jarvis knew at once that Allison had betrayed them, although she was already on her way to the Meditteranean on Arnie’s Catalina, and although he reached for his cell phone to check he was not surprised to see that its signal was suppressed, probably by electronic jamming from the two helicopters.
Rhys Garrett ran out onto the deck and looked out at the fast approaching helicopters.
‘How did they find you?’ Garrett asked, horrified.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jarvis replied, surprisingly calm considering the fate that probably awaited him. ‘When they land, they will take control of the ship. Do what they say, when they say, and deny all knowledge of my misdoings at the DIA. We are friends, nothing more, understood?’
Garrett nodded.
‘Slow the ship to help them land,’ Jarvis advised, and then reached out and shook Garrett’s hand. ‘Thank you, for all that you’ve done for us.’
‘They’re going to lock you up and toss the key, Doug.’
Jarvis smiled and as the roar of the helicopter’s rotors grew and reverberated through his chest, he replied, his words barely audible.
‘Not everything is as it seems, Rhys.’
Garrett stepped back and then hurried toward the bridge as the helicopters thundered past the yacht, their side doors open and heavily armed soldiers waiting to throw rappel lines out to board and take control of the yacht.
Throughout it all, Jarvis balanced easily on the deck with his hands folded calmly behind his back and a quiet smile on his face.
*
Ethan guided the jet ski into the beach at Agistri, a small resort on the northern coast of the island of Thirasia, on the opposite side of the ancient Thera caldera to Oia. The jet ski thumped up onto the beach and Ethan stepped off with Lopez in perfect unison, abandoning the vehicle and ignoring the bemused glances of tourists as they hurried up the beach.
‘We’ve got no way off this rock that Petrov can’t track,’ Lopez said. ‘He’ll have his men watching us and waiting to intercept us the moment we try to get out of here.’
‘I know.’
Ethan pulled out his cell phone and dialled Doug Jarvis’s number, the old man picking up the line on the second tone.
‘Doug, we’ve found it.’
There was a long pause on the line and then Jarvis answered, speaking in an oddly slow accent as though they were talking over a broken line.
‘That’s absolutely fabulous news, very well done. Where is it, Ethan? Where are you now?’
Ethan hesitated, suddenly uncertain. Jarvis never spoke in that way, his inflection altered in a strange way and Ethan could hear what sounded like a helicopter somewhere in the distance…
‘South America,’ Ethan replied. ‘South of Rio. We don’t have an exact location but we’ve narrowed it down to a few square miles. The fresco we found here in Menorca gave us the clue we needed.’
Lopez shot Ethan a confused look but said nothing as Jarvis replied.
‘That’s brilliant Ethan, keep doing what you’re doing and report in when you can. Send Nicola my love.’
‘Will do.’
Ethan cut off the line, switched off the cell and then turned and hurled it into the nearby rollers.
‘What the hell?’ Lopez asked as she saw the phone splash into the waves.
‘Doug’s been compromised,’ he said by way of a reply.
‘How do you know?’
‘He sent you his love.’
Lopez blinked. ‘Okay, I’ll buy that. Garrett?’
‘No idea.’
‘That means we could all be up the river,’ Lopez said. ‘Enhanced interrogation won’t be beyond the current CIA Director and the President won’t blink an eye at extreme rendition.’ Ethan knew that she was right and that there was nothing that they could do for Jarvis. They would also now not be able to approach Garrett for fear of providing any further links to the billionaire who even now might be in the hands of either the American government or, worse, the Russians.
‘Call Arnie, tell him to come get us before Petrov and his men get here. Then trash your cell. We’re on our own.’
Lopez dialled a number and spoke briefly to Arnie, then shut the cell off and tossed it into the waves.
‘We can lose ourselves in the crowd,’ Ethan said, ‘maybe on one of the islands nearby and start hopping across Greece and out of here. Petrov is working under the radar and can’t man every port, he’ll be forced to scatter and hope for the best.’
‘I’d love to share your enthusiasm,’ Lopez said as she squinted across the bay behind them, ‘but I think his men are already on their way.’
***
XXXV
‘Move, now!’
Konstantin Petrov shouted the order as his men tumbled into a speedboat, the owner of which was laying on his back inside the boat with his wrists and ankles bound tightly and his mouth gagged. The pistol pressed to his skull ensured that he complied with Petrov’s men as they fired the engines and the boat surged out of the tiny harbour.
‘They’re on Thirasia!’ one of Petrov’s men yelled above the wind and waves as the boat roared out into open water. ‘There’s no airport and no way out of there!’
Petrov looked across the bay at the island of Thirasia, jutting out of the waves and separated from mainland Santorini by less than a mile. Warner and Lopez must have figured that he would have the airport and major towns covered, including Oia, which irritated him but was hardly surprising. What he couldn’t understand was why they had decided to virtually strand themselves on another island that they must surely know he could surround and swarm with his men in short order.
‘Can you see where they’ve gone?’ he demanded of his men.
Two of them were scanning the bright horizon with binoculars but both men shook their heads.
‘They’ve gone ashore, we can’t see them!’
Petrov cursed under his breath as he tried to figure out where the hell they were going. It was possible that they had an escape boat harbored somewhere on the island but it seemed a far stretch to believe that they would have had time to prepare an escape plan so thoroughly. Petrov’s men were only hours behind the Americans at best, and the Greek in Akrotiri had told them everything without even a hint of deception: they had seen something in the fresco at the site that had led them to hurry out, just like Doctor Lucy Morgan the week before. The old man had believed that it had something to do with an ancient Mariner named Pytheas, which tied in well with what Petrov already knew, but the Greek man had insisted that the Americans had refused to share with him what they knew. When Petrov had asked why, the Greek’s answer had been entirely acceptable to him.
Because they said that you would come here too, and if I knew anything that you would use torture to extract it. Ignorance would be my only shield.
Petrov had considered killing Andres for good measure but had let the man go as soon as his men had reported spotting Warner and Lopez attempting to flee the island. Now, there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide and…
The sound of thundering engines roared overhead and the speedboat bucked and weaved on the waves as the helmsman ducked instinctively. Petrov crouched down as a huge shadow raced over the boat and he looked up to see a massive airplane soar overhead, its broad straight wings high atop a fuselage that had a curved underside like a boat’s hull, marking her out as an amphibious aircraft.
The huge aeroplane turned gently and Petrov could see her flaps deploying as she turned to land alongside Thirasia’s north–west shore.
‘Go faster!’ Petrov yelled at the helmsman.
The man at the wheel threw the throttles open and the speedboat surged at maximum velocity across the crashing waves, Petrov’s men struggling to stay in their seats as the vessel was hurled this way and that. Petrov hung on to a railing for grim life as the speedboat rounded the headland and he saw the flying boat turning away from the shore to face out to sea once again.
‘Take her down!’ Petrov screamed in fury as he stood up and aimed at the aged aircraft and fired his pistol.
The gunshots were snatched away by the buffeting wind and sounded as useless as firecrackers as the airplane’s engines thundered again and the plane accelerated away from them across the waves. Petrov’s men opened up with automatic weapons and pistols, the speedboat tossed violently as it crashed into the airplane’s turbulent wake on the water.
Petrov let out a howl of frustration as he saw the aircraft lift up off the waves, veils of sparkling water spilling like clouds of diamond chips from her shining white hull as she climbed away from them and turned gently toward the west.
Petrov stamped his boot on the boat’s deck as the speedboat slowed and his men ceased firing.
‘Get us back to Oia and contact the airport!’ he roared in fury. ‘Find out where that plane is going and then get our pilot to prepare to leave immediately!’
The speedboat turned back toward the distant shore of Santorini as Petrov sat down on a damp seat and cursed silently to himself over and over again. The aged aircraft Warner and Lopez had departed in looked to be a Catalina, an aircraft with great range but low airspeed. He knew that by law such an aircraft could not fly far without either a flight plan or contacting an arrival airport with their details and expected time of arrival, therefore it would be only a matter of time before they were able to figure out its destination and then take off and beat them to it.
The speedboat reached Oia’s small harbor within a few minutes, although to Petrov it seemed to take an age. As soon as he was ashore his men clubbed the speedboat owner unconscious and then removed his restraints before hurrying up the beach and heading for their vehicles, as the rest of Petrov’s men descended on the small town.
Petrov felt his cell phone vibrate in his pants pocket and he yanked it out angrily and answered. ‘Petrov?’
‘Konstantin,’ came the calm reply, ‘an update.’
Petrov recognized the voice of his superior, General Sergei Olatov, instantly and he forced himself to remain calm as he replied.
‘We are closing in, comrade,’ he said. ‘They have just left Santorini, we watched them go and decided to hang back.’
There was a long silence on the phone. ‘That would suggest that you remain behind them, comrade. That is not where I would expect you to be after so long.’
Petrov clenched his jaw before he replied.
‘The Americans are leading us where we need them to,’ he said. ‘Right now if they keep going we will be able to simply follow them all the way to their destination. We will have in our sights the means to ensure the Americans don’t double cross us.’
‘Then you had best be certain that they cannot slip away from you again, Petrov,’ came the reply. ‘Your diplomatic immunity relies on your success, or your failure…’
The line went dead and Petrov slipped the cell into his pocket, and wondered if his superior officer would be so bold with his threats were he standing before Petrov here and now on the beach.
He turned as one of his men hurried up to him.
‘They’re flying to a small airport called Naxos, on an island eighty miles north of here. The airport is too small for our jet to land on.’
‘Hire something smaller from the airport at Santorini!’ Petrov snapped. ‘Anything, at any price, and get us there ahead of that plane!’
*
Allison Pierce crouched alongside the harbor behind a low, white wall as she watched the Russians disembark from the speedboat while she filmed all of it. She zoomed in carefully and was able to capture footage of Petrov’s henchmen clubbing the unfortunate speedboat owner into a stupor before abandoning the vessel and marching up the beach.
She tucked her camera away and stayed out of sight as she watched Konstantin Petrov stalk up the beach to a pair of vehicles that hurried down to meet them. There was no doubt who he was, Petrov a known figure in the KGB and later the Russian Defense Ministry, renowned for a fearsome temper and a near–fanatical devotion to his mother country, but this was something different. Even armed only wi
th the footage she had now, she knew that at the very least she could raise hell across the world and likely have Petrov arrested on any number of charges regardless of his diplomatic immunity. However, her gut instinct told her to hold back and wait. There was no telling what he would do next and it was patently clear that whatever Petrov wanted, it was worth maiming and perhaps killing for.
She waited out of sight until Petrov and his men were gone and then pulled out her cell phone and dialled a number. The line picked up almost instantly, Mitchell’s voice calm but uncompromising.
‘What do you have?’
‘Petrov, he’s here and he’s in company. Mostly goons, no other faces I recognize but sooner or later he’ll have to tip his hand. He can’t keep hopping from country to country like this without somebody’s palms being greased and he’s not beyond violence and intimidation to get what he wants. This guy’s virtually sleepwalking into an international incident.’
‘Stay on him,’ Mitchell advised. ‘He’ll follow Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez out of Greece and he’ll try to apprehend them the first chance he gets. You need to be there when he does.’
‘How do you know where he’s headed if….’
The line cut dead in her ear and Allison shoved the cell angrily in her pocket as she watched the vehicles heading off into the distance. She got up and hurried across to her hire car, fumbling with the keys and trying to shrug off the suspicion that she was still nothing more than a pawn in a game played by men of immense power.
*
‘How long?!’
Petrov was crammed into the rear seats of a Beech Baron 58 twin–engine light aircraft as it soared four thousand feet above the sparkling waters of the Aegean Sea.
‘Ten minutes,’ came the response from the pilot through the headphones Petrov wore. ‘We’re on final approach now.’
Petrov sat alongside his guard, facing forward toward the cockpit. Opposite him sat two more of his most trusted men, both of them staring into the middle distance in an attempt to avoid his attention. The small aeroplane bucked and weaved on the wind currents as the pilot gently weaved between fluffy white cumulus clouds the size of small towns that cast deep azure shadows over the ocean far below.
The Atlantis Codex (Warner & Lopez Book 7) Page 23