James Barrington - Pandemic

Toggling the speed trim backwards, Richter slowed the Harrier until he’d exactly matched the ship’s forward speed. He looked over at the Flight Deck, watching for the signals from the FDO, eased the control column over to the right, then almost immediately moved it left to stop the Harrier drifting too far.

Richter established his aircraft in the hover, checked the deck markers to ensure he was positioned correctly over two spot, then reduced thrust to start the Harrier in descent. Immediately the aircraft began losing height, Richter increased thrust again. This was essential to avoid the Pegasus engine pop-surging as it ingested its own hot exhaust gases, that were bounced back from the steel deck below.

The Harrier landed, as usual, fairly hard, bouncing a few inches upwards before settling back on the Flight Deck. Richter hauled the power back to zero, rotated the nozzles to the fully aft position, and wound a little power on again to move the aircraft away towards the parking area. This would avoid the heat from the deck melting or exploding the tyres on the Harrier.

The yellow-jacketed ground marshaller directed Richter forward and to starboard into a parking space, and then gave a balled fist gesture to indicate brakes on. Richter waited, engine running, until the ground crew had finished chaining his aircraft to the deck, then methodically switched off all the Harrier’s electrical systems and shut down the engine.

A detachable red ladder had already been secured to the side of the Harrier when Richter slid the canopy open, replaced the ejection seat and MDC – Miniature Detonating Cord – pins, and climbed out.

Tuesday

HMS Invincible , Ionian Sea

In his cabin Richter peeled off his flying overalls and underwear, wrapped a towel around his waist and headed straight for the Two Deck showers. He ran the water hot and long, washing the blood off his hands and forearms. Fortunately most of it had dried before he’d pulled on his flying overalls at the airfield, and what stains there were on the material he’d easily brushed off.

Back in his cabin he dressed in 5J rig – black trousers, white shirt and black pullover – then looked at the plastic bag containing the clothes he’d worn at Matera. Richter was acutely aware that he had attempted to kill Lomas – and he hoped he had succeeded – in full view of a number of hostile witnesses. He had also, without question, left hairs, fibres and who knew what other trace evidence behind at the villa, in the Alfa Romeo and the Agusta helicopter that he had ‘borrowed’, and in the squadron briefing-room at Brindisi, not to mention the blood-stained Kevlar jacket he’d discarded. And there was absolutely nothing he could do about either the witnesses or this evidence.

But he could at least get rid of the clothes and the knife. What he needed was some kind of a weight that would take that specific evidence straight to the bottom of the Ionian Sea. There was nothing in his cabin that would help, so he locked the door and walked down to Five Deck, opened the bulkhead door and entered the hangar.

As always, it was a scene of coordinated chaos as maintainers worked on the Sea Kings, Merlins and Harriers. The helicopters were both parked and serviced at the aft end of the cavernous structure, where there was a little more width available, and the Harriers at the opposite end. With a full complement of aircraft on this ship, the hangar was always noisy and crowded, so Richter took care not to trip over or walk into anything as he made his way forward.

The squadron Chief Petty Officer who’d headed the team that had flown to Brindisi spotted Richter and immediately walked over to him.

‘You made it back, sir,’ he said.

‘Thanks to your efforts, Chief, I did,’ Richter replied, shaking the CPO’s slightly grubby hand. ‘If you hadn’t pre-flighted her it would have been rather a close call. As it was, I had to get quite persuasive to leave that airfield.’

‘That would be thirty-millimetre persuasion, as supplied by a pair of Aden cannon?’ the Chief asked.

‘Got it in one,’ Richter said. ‘Thank you again. Now, a small favour. I need something reasonably heavy that can also be discarded.’

‘Discarded as in dropped over the side?’

‘Pretty much, yes.’

Four minutes later Richter was walking back through the hangar, heading aft, clutching a collection of nuts and bolts with stripped threads, and two small pieces of steel plate.

Back in his cabin he laid out his bloody T-shirt on the floor, put the flick-knife and the metal bits and pieces in the middle of it, and rolled it up. Then he wrapped the jeans around the T-shirt and put the whole bundle into the carrier bag. He put his discarded trainers right on top and then tied the neck of the bag securely. Richter made his way down the stairs to the Quarter Deck, walked over to the starboard side guard rail, and dropped the bag straight down. As it hit the water, it floated for a couple of seconds as the air was expelled from it, then sank swiftly beneath the waves.

Kandíra, south-west Crete

It was late afternoon before the first reporters began to arrive at the cordon surrounding the village, but by early evening it seemed to Inspector Lavat that almost every newspaper in Greece had at least one man standing at the police barrier either asking questions or taking pictures. There were even a couple of stringers for the international press hovering at the edge of the group.

What was unusual was that none of them showed any inclination actually to cross the cordon and enter the village itself. But they did talk persistently to the police officers manning the barriers, and they shouted questions at anybody they saw moving inside the cordon. This story, Lavat knew, was going to be known world-wide within just a few hours.

About an hour after the first of these pressmen had arrived outside the cordon, an elderly Suzuki jeep rattled down the road towards the village and stopped well short of the barriers. The two elderly Cretan men in the car looked about them in some astonishment and confusion for a few moments, then got out of the vehicle and made their way over to one of the police officers manning the barricade.

‘What’s going on?’

‘We have a medical emergency here,’ the policeman recited the formula that Gravas had instructed them to memorize. ‘No one is allowed to enter or leave Kandíra until further notice.’

‘But we live there,’ the second man spluttered. ‘I want to get home.’

‘I’m afraid you can’t. One man is already dead, and the doctors fear an epidemic.’

‘Dead? Who? Who’s dead?’

The policeman shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you that,’ he said.

A reporter for one of the Irakleío papers who had overheard the exchange came trotting over. ‘It was a Greek,’ he interrupted, ‘by the name of Spiros Aristides. One of the forensic people told me.’

‘Aristides? But he was fine last night – we saw him in Jakob’s. What happened to him?’

Immediately the Cretan said these words, the reporter sensed a story. What he had here was not an eyewitness to the actual death of Spiros Aristides, but almost certainly someone who had seen the Greek just hours before he died. Even if this man had only seen the casualty in the street, he could still use what the Cretan said to embellish the story he was already mentally composing.

He took the man quietly by the arm and led him and his companion across to his own car. He opened the rear door, took out two cans of beer and offered one to each of the old men, then took another for himself.

‘A bad business,’ he said, ‘very bad. Did you know Spiros well?’ The use of the dead man’s first name was quite deliberate. It implied a familiarity and acquaintance where none existed, and was a device this reporter used frequently. As he had hoped, the elderly man took a swallow of lukewarm beer, then began to talk.