James Barrington - Pandemic

Once they had all reported themselves ready, Perini, who had donned a Kevlar vest and was also now carrying a Spectre in his left hand, crossed over to where Richter and Simpson leaned against the bonnet of one of the Alfas. ‘We’re ready to go,’ he announced.

‘Are you sure he’s still in there?’ Simpson asked.

‘Yes,’ Perini replied, ‘we’ve had at least one watcher covering that villa ever since our operative took her photographs. We’ll now be leaving one man here to watch the cars, Mr Simpson, and I suggest you stay well to the back until the target area has been secured. Mr Richter: the same applies to you, but please be ready to come forward as soon as we have captured the suspect.’ As both men nodded their understanding, Perini walked back to the DCPP officers.

Four minutes later the armed men were crouching in a small copse of trees that looked down over a gentle incline towards a shabby white-painted villa about one hundred yards away, nestling in an overgrown and obviously untended garden.

Kandíra, south-west Crete

‘He would have been out in his boat all day,’ Christina Polessos stated definitively, ‘and drinking in the kafeníon all evening.’

‘Boat? What kind of boat?’ Lavat asked, opening his notebook.

‘He was a smuggler, or worse,’ Christina continued, ‘but he claimed he was a diver. He has a boat moored somewhere out there in the bay.’

‘What do you mean “or worse”?’ Lavat demanded.

Christina suddenly seemed to realize that she was talking to a policeman rather than one of her gossiping cronies from the village, and began to clam up. ‘That’s not for me to say,’ was all she murmured.

‘Right, we’ll find his boat later. Which bar did Aristides normally use?’

Maria Coulouris laughed suddenly, the unexpected sound incongruous in the silent street. ‘You obviously don’t know Kandíra, Inspector. There is only one bar – Jakob’s.’

When Lavat and his sergeant reached the kafeníon , Jakob was just opening up.

‘I’m Inspector Lavat,’ the officer announced, keenly aware that he didn’t look much like a policeman in his white overalls. He showed his identity card to the scowling Cretan, who stood peering out from behind his street door. ‘We need to talk to you about last night.’

Jakob looked closely at Lavat’s identification, slowly comparing the man with the photograph, before he answered. ‘What about last night? Nothing happened here.’

‘We know that. We just want to ask about one of your customers.’

For a moment Lavat thought Jakob was going to slam the bar door in his face, but instead he shrugged and opened it wide. ‘Very well, come in. But I have customers to serve, so you must be quick.’

Lavat glanced up and down the street, then into the echoing emptiness of the bar, redolent with the stale odours of coarse tobacco, cheap beer and hard liquor. ‘Yes, obviously,’ he said, the sarcasm lost on Jakob, who had moved behind the counter and was now ostentatiously wiping it with a dirty grey cloth.

‘Which customer?’ Jakob demanded curtly, pointedly not offering either man a drink.

‘Spiros Aristides,’ Lavat replied. ‘He was drinking in here last night?’

‘Don’t know him,’ Jakob muttered.

‘Look,’ Lavat said, tiring of the Cretan’s sullen and stubborn attitude, ‘this is a murder investigation, and you have two choices. You can talk to us here, which means your bar will stay open and you won’t lose any valuable custom.’ Lavat glanced round at the conspicuously empty tables as he said this. ‘Or you can get in the back of a police car and we’ll drive you over to our headquarters in Irakleío, and we’ll talk to you there. Of course, we have a lot of potential witnesses to interview meanwhile, so we can’t guarantee how long all that might take. Could be a day, maybe two or three. Maybe even more. Now, let’s try one more time. Was Spiros Aristides drinking in here last night?’

Jakob stared at Lavat for a long moment, then reached below the counter and brought out three beers. He snapped off the caps, pushed one bottle towards each of the policemen, picked up the third and took a long swallow. ‘You mean the Greek?’ he demanded.

‘Yes,’ Lavat said, picking up the beer, ‘we mean the Greek. Was he in here last night?’

‘Yes,’ Jakob nodded. He pointed at the far corner of the room. ‘He sat over there.’

‘Did anyone speak to him? Did he meet anybody here?’

‘Some of my customers know him,’ Jakob conceded reluctantly, ‘but I don’t think anybody else talked to him until the other Greek arrived.’

‘Other Greek?’ Lavat asked. ‘What other Greek?’

Tuesday

Outskirts of Matera, Puglia, Italy

Richter watched with professional interest as the DCPP officers moved out of the copse and headed down the slope to his left, carefully keeping out of sight of the villa. The house was located a short distance from the road and accessed by a rough gravel track, the property itself bordered by low stone walls and shrubs.

Richter waited until the Italians were almost at the villa, then stood up to follow them.

‘Where are you going?’ Simpson demanded.

‘Down to the villa,’ Richter replied. ‘I’d like to be in at the kill, so to speak.’

Simpson glared at him. ‘Make sure that’s just a figure of speech, Richter,’ he said. ‘We want Andrew Lomas in one piece. I know you have issues with him, but—’

‘I don’t have issues with Lomas, as you put it,’ Richter interrupted. ‘He and his minders tied Raya Kosov down in a chair and sliced bits off her until she died of pain and shock and blood loss, and then they dumped what was left of her body on the bed next to me, so the first thing I’d see when I came round was her mutilated face. I don’t think the word issues actually covers something like that, do you?’

Simpson waggled a warning finger. ‘You just let the law handle Lomas, Richter. I don’t want to see any kind of vigilante action from you when those Eyeties pull him out of that house.’

‘Oh, come on, Simpson, there are ten heavily armed men down there, and all I’ve got is a Kevlar vest. What are you expecting me to do, choke him with it?’

‘Just remember what I’ve said, Richter.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Richter muttered. ‘I’ll take care of it.’

It was five minutes after Richter had slipped from sight behind the stone wall that Simpson finally realized his employee hadn’t actually confirmed that he wouldn’t try to kill Andrew Lomas. ‘Oh, shit,’ he murmured, then got to his feet and began picking his way through the trees, following the path Richter had taken down to the road.

Atlanta, Georgia

Just over three hours after his pager had summoned him from the shower, Tyler Q. Hardin was buckling his seat-belt for the flight north from Atlanta to New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. In his pocket was an onward ticket to London Heathrow first and from there a direct flight to Crete. About four hours behind him would come the other three members of his team, now hastily assembling protective clothing and equipment.

CDC personnel are given automatic priority on all US carriers when responding to a request for assistance, and two disappointed passengers had been bumped from the flight to provide Hardin with a seat. In fact, only one had been bumped for the seat, and the second to ensure sufficient space in the hold of the Boeing 757 for the two large reinforced cases, sealed with tempered-steel padlocks and carrying Customs-exempt labels, which contained everything Hardin hoped he would need for carrying out his initial investigation.