James Barrington - Pandemic

‘No, I didn’t know him well,’ he said. ‘We exchanged only a few words if we met in the street, you know, or in Jakob’s.’

‘Jakob’s?’

‘The kafeníon in the middle of the village.’

‘And last night?’ the reporter prompted.

‘Just like any other night, really.’ The Cretan indicated his companion and took another mouthful of beer. ‘We were there, in Jakob’s, just talking and drinking, when Aristides came in. He looked tired and a bit irritated. He had a drink at the bar, then came over and sat down by himself at the table next to us.’

‘Did he say anything to you?’

The Cretan shook his head. ‘No, he just sat drinking whisky for a while, until Nico arrived.’

‘Who’s Nico?’

‘Nico Aristides. He’s a nephew or cousin. I think they do business together.’

The reporter made a mental note to talk to this Nico Aristides as soon as possible. ‘And then?’

‘They sat together and talked, you know.’

‘What about?’

The Cretan glanced at his companion, as if for reassurance, before replying. ‘I don’t know if we should tell you,’ he said. ‘You see, Spiros wasn’t talking to us. We just happened to be sitting at the next table. But we did overhear them talking about some aircraft.’

The reporter didn’t even blink. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, lying with the aplomb and confidence that come only after years of newspaper work, ‘I heard something about that, too. What did they say?’

The reporter’s apparent prior knowledge reassured the naturally suspicious old man. ‘Well, you know that Spiros was a diver?’ The reporter nodded encouragement and the Cretan continued. ‘He was a diver, but he hadn’t got a permit – you know, from the Department of Antiquities – so he never said to anyone where he’d gone diving. We couldn’t help hearing him say how he’d found some kind of a small aircraft, but he didn’t say where it was. It had been there a long time, though, so it wasn’t a recent crash.’ The reporter nodded again, and the man continued. ‘The water was quite deep so he’d had to make several dives to search it.’

‘Did he say what he’d found there?’

The Cretan shook his head. ‘No, but he thought the aircraft had been shot down. It hadn’t just crashed, you see.’

‘Did he say anything else you can remember?’

‘No, nothing, really. The only other thing was the piece of paper.’

‘What paper?’

‘Spiros passed Nico a piece of paper with numbers on it. He said it was the registration of the crashed aircraft. Just a short while after that they both left Jakob’s, and Nico dropped the paper when he stood up to go. After they’d left, I picked it up.’

‘Do you still have it?’ the reporter asked eagerly.

The Cretan nodded, fished around in his jacket pocket, pulled out a torn and crumpled slip and handed it over.

‘Can I keep this?’ the reporter asked, looking at the single letter and three numbers written on it in thick pencil.

The Cretan nodded. ‘It’s no use to me,’ he muttered.

The reporter extracted another four cans of beer and handed them over. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Could I take your names for my newspaper?’

‘No, no,’ the Cretan said firmly. ‘I don’t want my name in the paper.’

No matter, the reporter thought to himself. He already had enough to scoop his rivals, and the story about a wrecked aircraft could become central to the mystery of Aristides’s sudden death. Maybe whatever had killed the Greek had been found on that aircraft. The possibilities were endless.

And he could quote the elderly Cretan as being a ‘close friend’ of Spiros Aristides. After all, the Greek himself wasn’t around to dispute it.

HMS Invincible , Ionian Sea

‘Looking forward to getting back to your Secret Squirrel outfit, Spook?’ In the dining room located across the corridor from the Wardroom on Five Deck, Roger Black grinned at Paul Richter over the remains of his dinner.

With the exception of the Captain and Commander (Air), nobody else on the ship actually knew what Richter did or how he was normally employed, but a rumour had quickly spread that he worked for one of the deniable outfits – MI5 or SIS – and the nickname ‘Spook’ had been attributed to him almost as soon as he had arrived on board.

Richter looked back at him, speared a final carrot, then put down his knife and fork and shook his head. ‘You mean, am I looking forward to traffic fumes and miserable weather, and the pointless paper-shuffling that passes for my normal employment in London? Meanwhile you and the rest of the WAFUs can get comprehensively laid in every brothel in Athens and Piraeus, once we’ve finished whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing on Crete.’

‘WAFU’ is a less than complimentary term used by non-naval aviators to describe aircrew officers: it stands for ‘Wanked-out And Fucking Useless’.

Richter paused and looked up and down the long table at the grinning faces of most of 800 Squadron. ‘No, not really,’ he said. ‘The only thing that keeps me going is the thought that at least some of you will get the clap or worse, and have a hell of a time explaining it to your wives when you get back to Yeovilton.’

Black shook his head. ‘I’ll have you know we’re all officers and gentlemen.’

‘And that means what, exactly?’

‘That we never pay for it. The Captain’s Secretary has assured me that there’ll be tons of available crumpet at the cockers-pee in Athens – if we ever get there, that is – and all we’ll have to do is decide what shape and colour we want and take it from there.’

‘Dream on, Blackie,’ Richter replied to the gathering at large. ‘He said the same thing about the cocktail party in Trieste, remember, and the youngest woman there was fifty-five if she was a day, and had a face like a Doberman – all nose, teeth and attitude.’

‘Well, you should know best. Somebody told me you left with her.’

‘That,’ Richter said, ‘is a lie. I retired to bed alone, with an improving book, and well before midnight.’

‘And we believe that, of course.’ Black smiled. ‘Anyway, all kidding aside, when are you off?’

‘The day after we dock at Piraeus, probably. I’ll hop a flight from Athens to London and be back at work the next day, I suppose.’

‘No long weekend, then?’

‘Well, maybe.’ Richter grinned. ‘I’m in no hurry, no hurry at all. And I’ll probably need a day or two to recover from the rigours of about four hours in a 737, enduring that new British Airways crap-class seating.’

‘Well, now that you’ve flown your last sortie with us, and managed to return our Harrier more or less in one piece,’ Lieutenant Commander David Richards, the 800 Squadron Commanding Officer, spoke up, ‘I would just like to say that it’s been good having you here as a temporary squadron member.’

‘Thanks,’ Richter said, sincerely. ‘I’ve really enjoyed being back in the saddle, even for just a few days. Maybe I’ll be able to do it again some time.’

‘Hang on,’ Richards said, frowning. ‘We didn’t enjoy having you here as much as that.’

Arlington, Virginia

Mike Murphy was known to his few friends as ‘The Double M’. His given name was actually George, but ever since high school he’d been called Mike because, apart from anything else, he didn’t really look like a George. And the reason he had few friends, he told anyone who asked, was because of his job.

He’d joined the Central Intelligence Agency straight out of college and immediately gravitated into the Directorate of Operations, more commonly known throughout the Company as Clandestine Services, and he’d spent the next fifteen years working pretty much everywhere except mainland America. Then he’d abruptly retired, ostensibly on the grounds of ill health. In fact, he’d received what amounted to a better offer.