The Greek Escape

by Karen Swan

  Not that there seemed to be much realistic expectation by either the police or the coastguard that she was still alive; Chloe – watching them – could see it on their downturned faces, the grave shakes of their heads, the flat timbre of their voices. Seemingly, it was only Alexander’s raging grief and wide-reaching political connections that were keeping them going through the motions of exploring these faint hopes.

  She kept looking down at the text that had just come through. It was from Poppy’s phone.

  No Joe.

  The reiteration of those two little words that told her so much. He wasn’t Joe Lincoln, that much she already knew, but now she could add that he had never been lined up as a client; that Poppy had never met him; that he wasn’t supposed to have been there that morning. So what did he want? Who was he, and as Sergeant Mahoney had asked, why had he targeted her?

  A security man came and filled the doorway that led from the stateroom down to the suites. Chloe looked across. ‘Mr Subocheva wants to see you.’

  She rose to follow him, feeling Monsieur Desfils’s cool gaze upon her as she left. He had demanded to know who she was when she’d stepped on board, and discovering that she was the victim’s husband’s lifestyle manager hadn’t endeared her to him. In fact, he had regarded her with outright suspicion, as though already predicting that whatever she was asked to do, it would no doubt be an interference with his job. He was probably right.

  A door was opened for her and she walked into a suite; only, it was more like a war room with generals everywhere. In the centre of the far wall, in front of a TV set to a news channel on mute – Elodie and Alexander’s own faces flashing across it frequently – there was a nautical map on a white screen with several red crosses and one large irregular circle drawn on it, a team of men huddled over a table. It was clear that this was the true nerve centre of the investigation, the hub of the action. The police would be hampered by red tape, bureaucracy and laws, but with Alexander’s unlimited resources, he was going to leverage everything in his power to find his beloved wife. Alexander himself was sitting on his own, staring at the map with a focus that, if concentration alone could bring the solution, would have already yielded the answer.

  ‘Alexander,’ she said quietly, sitting on a chair off to his side, not bothering to wait to be asked. This was no time for pleasantries. ‘I’m so sorry. Tell me how I can help.’

  He looked across at her, his eyes red-rimmed and blank. He looked dead inside, as though his missing wife had snatched his soul with her as she fell from the deck. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words came from someone else.

  One of the men at the table had turned round. ‘We need helicopters.’

  Helicopters? Plural? Chloe glanced between him and Alexander, back to the man again. It was clear he was the war general, dictating strategy, calling the shots.

  She straightened up. ‘Okay. How many?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  Twelve?

  ‘All military. Fully fitted with infrared telescopics – they’ve got the range and the equipment we need. And I want four paras in each – two front, two back.’

  Chloe was quiet for a moment, taking it in – he wanted twelve decommissioned military helicopters and forty-eight former paratroopers to find Alexander’s wife? She knew it could be done. But could it be done in time?

  She glanced back at Alexander again; he was staring at the map – into it, as though seeing into the very sea itself, his wife’s lifeless, beautiful body drifting below the surface. His grief was palpable, he looked completely undone.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do—’

  ‘No. Don’t see, do it,’ the man said harshly. ‘I want them in the air within the hour.’

  Chloe felt a wave of fear wash through her. That simply wasn’t possible. Their contacts didn’t extend to mercenaries, to arms dealers! These things he wanted couldn’t just be pulled from a file.

  A phone rang somewhere in the room; someone else picked it up.

  Chloe couldn’t take her eyes off Alexander; he had barely moved in the time she had been here. She wasn’t even sure he was aware that she was here; he had looked at her but she wasn’t convinced he had seen her. Her eyes fell to his hands – he was holding one in an unnatural fashion, upturned on his lap, inert.

  She reached over and slowly, gently, turned it over. It was grossly swollen, the knuckles purple.

  ‘Alexander, have you seen a doctor?’ she asked him. No answer. She looked back at the general. ‘Someone needs to look him over. His hand looks broken.’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘No. He’s in shock and he needs medical attention.’ She surprised herself with her tone of authority.

  The general hesitated a moment, before nodding to one of his team. ‘Get the doctor.’ He looked back at her. ‘And you – get those choppers.’

  ‘—call you back.’ Another sound entered the fray as someone suddenly turned on the volume on the TV, wheeling the white screen with the map on it out of the way. ‘Mr Subocheva, you need to see this.’

  They all looked up at the screen that was now tuned to a financial news channel, red ticker tape running across the bottom with numbers that made little sense to her. Arrows pointed up. Others down. A silence spread as they all listened to a suited reporter in a bright studio. Chloe took a moment to tune in, wondering why the hell they were listening to this when Alexander’s wife was missing.

  ‘. . . shares in Gelardi Hotels are expected to drop when the markets reopen on Monday as the market weighs the details of this shock bid. The mixed shares and cash offer that was put to the board late last night values Black Pearl at $9.6 billion. It is believed that the bid would push Gelardi’s gearing to 145 per cent, with the credit agency Standard & Poor’s poised to put the company’s rating of A on watch with negative implications. However, many on Wall Street are saying this is only an opening shot and that . . .’

  The TV was turned to mute again, the anchorman continuing to hypothesize and report in comic silence as everyone in the room turned to look at Alexander. He was still sitting, still not speaking, but something had changed – his back had straightened, life was coming back to his eyes. Whatever that reporter had been talking about had got Alexander thinking hard, his breathing beginning to quicken.

  He got up, his right hand still hanging limply at his side as he began to prowl in heavy silence. No one disturbed him. Chloe scarcely dared breathe. It was clear from the tension in the room that this was the first Alexander had heard of the bid and she realized it was probably the cause of Anjelica’s extreme agitation outside; she hadn’t been able to update her boss on this other, lesser, problem.

  Chloe watched him pace. As if he cared about business at a time like this. She knew how much Black Pearl meant to him but compared to the human tragedy unravelling here . . .

  ‘. . . This changes things,’ he said finally, his voice little more than a growl.

  Chloe looked up, baffled. It did?

  ‘In fact, it changes everything.’ He looked around the room with a clear, fresh gaze, beginning to nod slowly as if understanding now.

  ‘What does it change?’ the general asked.

  But Alexander looked instead at her. ‘We will not be needing the helicopters.’

  ‘Uh . . . Okay.’ She wanted to ask why but her voice wouldn’t work; she ought to have felt relieved, but all she really felt was frightened. His physicality had changed. In one movement he seemed to have gone from prey to predator. Gone were the hunched shoulders and dropped head; in their place, a rolling, gathering intensity, as though he had swallowed a thunderstorm.

  ‘Alexander?’ the general prompted.

  It felt like a long time passed before he replied, as though he was running the words through his mind several times over. He tapped his index finger thoughtfully to his lips. ‘My wife is not dead. I do not believe she is even in the water. She never was.’

  What? Chloe looked around the room, everyone else’s expressi
ons as confounded as hers. What on earth had just happened to make him suddenly come to that conclusion? She looked back at the muted television again. Surely that bulletin hadn’t had anything to do with it?

  ‘But how can you know that?’ the general asked, looking concerned.

  ‘Because this –’ he gestured to the room, the boat, them – ‘all this is a decoy. A distraction. Something to keep me busy.’

  There was a confused pause as the general looked from Alexander to the TV screen, back to Alexander again, joining up the dots. ‘You think Lorenzo Gelardi is behind this?’

  ‘I know he is. Do you think it is a coincidence that within hours of my wife’s mysterious disappearance, he makes the move he has been plotting for years?’ Alexander growled. ‘He was the one who torpedoed the initial merger; I know it, and he knows I have been exploring other avenues for refinancing the Black Pearl Group; he also knows that if I am successful in that, he will never be able to get his dirty hands on my company. Ever.’ His eyes blazed with frightening intensity. ‘This is Gelardi’s only shot.’

  Chloe watched him, she could see how his mind was working, tarring his rival with his own brush: ‘Adversity is simply Opportunity turned inside out,’ he had once told her. She glanced out of the window – the night was flashing blue and red as police boats and the coastguard came to and from the yacht like it was a hive. Everyone was working to find her, a fragile slip of a woman in fathoms of water. And now Alexander was saying she wasn’t there after all?

  ‘I know Lorenzo,’ he continued, talking to everyone and no one. ‘I know how his mind works. I know what he wants and I know he will stop at nothing – nothing – to get it.’ He stared at them all with trembling anger. ‘Elodie is not dead. She is collateral.’

  Collateral. The very word had a transactional connotation.

  ‘But . . . but to take your wife hostage?’ Even the general sounded incredulous.

  ‘Not hostage; there will be no ransom demand. She is quite safe. Whoever took her for him will be under orders to treat her very well. Gelardi is not a monster, after all. Just a businessman.’

  His jaw clenched as the words left him; the calmness in his face was terrifying, unnatural. The worse the situation became – and surely this was a turn for the worse? – the more he seemed to rise up. Didn’t it occur to him that his wife could be in as much peril at the hands of his bitterest enemy – her long-forsaken fiancé – as she was in the water?

  ‘Yes, that is the game here. Gelardi knows she is the only reason I would drop the ball. She matters above everything, even Black Pearl. He is forcing me to make a choice: find her or fight him.’ Alexander’s words came slowly, purposefully. He was still calculating the plot.

  Chloe tried to keep up. She couldn’t believe this was actually being posited as a scenario – creating this mayhem simply to distract from a business move happening halfway across the world?

  Alexander was still pacing but there was an energy in him that hadn’t been there five minutes ago. He had come alive, now that he felt his wife wasn’t dead. ‘That is it. That is exactly it,’ he murmured, agreeing with himself. ‘Gelardi is banking upon me being here, blinded with grief; he thinks I will not leave until she is found. He thinks I will think of nothing else.’ He looked over at his men. ‘But he thought wrong – that is not what I am thinking.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ the general asked dutifully, watching his boss’s face like a dog does his master.

  Alexander’s eyes narrowed. ‘I am thinking about how it was that he came to know my wife was on the yacht. Without me. This was no mere coincidence – it would have needed planning. And that means he would have needed help.’

  The room fell silent, everyone asking themselves the same question: if this was true, how had Gelardi known?

  Slowly, like a cannon being wheeled into position, Alexander turned – coming to a stop as he looked at Chloe. His eyes were narrowed and hard. Chloe’s mouth parted in fright. There was threat in his demeanour, his hackles up. She felt the sweat prickle the palms of her hands.

  ‘What did you tell him, Chloe?’

  She blinked, feeling afraid. He couldn’t . . . he couldn’t be serious? He couldn’t honestly think . . . ? But everyone was staring at her with cold, expressionless eyes.

  ‘How did Lorenzo Gelardi know my wife would be on the yacht, alone?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know,’ she stammered, feeling the cortisol spike.

  ‘I think you do.’

  She blinked, scarcely able to breathe. This couldn’t be happening. ‘Alexander, no. I didn’t tell him. I would never do that,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve never even met the man. I don’t know him.’

  He walked towards her, all the more menacing for the dead arm at his side. ‘But you know me. And you knew my wife would be here alone – you, me and Anjelica were the only ones who knew. This is the perfect place for an ambush: they could come in at any angle, silent, in the dark. There are no cameras. No dogs – no trace left in water. Security is limited.’

  ‘Alexander . . .’ She was beginning to tremble. He couldn’t seriously think . . .

  ‘You knew about the investors; you knew I was close to putting together a deal to shore up operations.’

  ‘But I didn’t . . . I would never . . .’ The words wouldn’t come. Panic was blinding her brain.

  ‘Did I not make myself clear in New York, my need for absolute trust?’ Ice threaded every word and she saw the whirling wilderness behind his eyes. It wasn’t trust he wanted, it was control.

  ‘I’ve never done anything to betray you, Alexander. I wouldn’t.’ Her voice was quiet and thin. But she was holding up. She wouldn’t cry in front of them all. She wouldn’t beg; she sensed it wouldn’t help her anyway. ‘I don’t know anything about what’s happened to your wife, or the history between you and Gelardi. I don’t know anything about it. I came out here to help you.’ She was shaking. Was the truth enough? Did he believe her?

  He shook his head slowly, tutting quietly. It was more frightening than if he’d pointed a gun at her. Possibly.

  ‘The thing is – I know there is a mole, Chloe.’ His voice was quiet, calm, studied.

  Mole?

  ‘This is not the first leak but I thought it had been . . . sealed.’ Alexander gave a tiny shrug, as though that was inconsequential now, beside the point. ‘I see I must have been wrong.’

  Chloe stared at him, her jaw slack but her body rigid with terror and confusion. He thought there was a mole? And what did he mean by ‘sealed’?

  Mole.

  Mol-? With an almost violent shock through her body, she remembered what Poppy had been trying to write at the hospital, when they’d been interrupted by the nurse. Her stomach swirled acidically. Had Poppy been trying to tell her there was a mole? That Alexander suspected there was a mole? Oh God – her stomach dropped as she was hit by a terrifying thought. Had Poppy been trying to tell her that Alexander had thought she was the mole?

  There was a horrible logic to it: Alexander was right. Poppy had had access to his diary and movements in a way that almost no one else did – always knowing where he was in the world and with whom: which hotel and room he was staying in, what he’d ordered for dinner, the name of his driver . . .

  But it prompted a question so terrifying, she wanted to throw up. Because if Alexander had thought that, then what had he done to silence her?

  She gasped, looking at Alexander in horror. ‘Oh my God, it was you,’ she whispered, clasping her hand over her mouth, tears rushing to her eyes. He had been behind Poppy’s accident? Chloe began to tremble. Afraid. Angry. He wasn’t a businessman, he was a monster – she’d seen in Poppy’s hospital room exactly what he was capable of when crossed, when given a motive.

  He stared back at her – a slow blink, unhurried, and she felt time spool out as they watched and assessed one another, both looking for the truth in the other’s eyes. The police were in the next room, buzzing around outside these very windows
– but they were still too far to help her. These walls were soundproofed – she had read the yacht’s spec in Poppy’s files – and the world had contracted down to the walls of this suite; she was surrounded by men who could hurt her without even having to try, to think. Because if he’d thought Poppy had betrayed him, then he was suspecting her of the same now.

  Whatever Alexander might have believed before, he knew Poppy couldn’t have done this; she wasn’t the one to betray him this time, under police guard in a hospital bedroom, more broken than alive under wires and casts and tubes. Gelardi had taken his wife in pursuit of breaking up his empire and someone else had to have helped him; someone on the inside.

  Someone like her.

  Standing not a foot away from him, she could see the violence in his eyes and she realized with utmost clarity that he would show her no mercy – take away the silk-cashmere suits and the expensive toys and all that was left was the brute. She had flattered him in assuming that he had become someone greater, more noble than his past; she had chosen to believe he had evolved from the embittered young businessman who had bought a company purely to destroy his own father, that his philanthropy came from purer motives than vaingloriousness. But why should she have made those assumptions? Simply because Poppy was fond of him? He was a man shaped from abject poverty, grown from a boy starved almost to death. In the ashes of communist collapse, whilst others burned, he had risen like a phoenix from the flames. He had not just survived his childhood, he had thrived from it, and all it had cost him was his humanity. He was a gangster, capable of anything.