Pandemic (18 page)

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.

‘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.

Mike Murphy’s personal specialization was cleaning things up – he sometimes even referred to himself as ‘The Cleaner’ – and the offer he’d received was to
continue working for the Agency but as a freelance operator under contract, at a substantially increased salary and with a complete absence of the bullshit invariably associated with any
organization funded by any government. The downside was that, as a contract employee, the CIA could legitimately disavow him if the manure impacted the air-conditioner. If Murphy made a cock-up, he
had to face the consequences without the protecting hand of the US Government to help him. Even so, it hadn’t been a difficult decision.

The call from John Nicholson had reached him as he was heading out to do some grocery shopping, one of the more boring tasks faced by any bachelor, and he’d happily postponed that one when
he heard what Nicholson had to say. Ninety minutes later he was walking down the hallway of the Arlington safe house, instructions memorized.

He was going to return to his apartment in Falls Church to pack what he needed before getting a cab to Baltimore to catch a transatlantic flight. Nicholson had calculated that Murphy would
arrive in Crete about twelve hours after Krywald, Stein and Elias, which was just about right.

But before he went home, he had an extra job to do for Nicholson, immediately.

Number Two Briefing-Room, HMS
Invincible
, Sea of Crete

The Operations Officer stood waiting for them at the front of the room, a clipboard of notes in his hand. Before him, in tiered seating that ascended towards the rear, sat
most of 814 Naval Air Squadron. Some looked interested, some looked bored, but most just looked irritated. Their run ashore in Athens had been keenly anticipated.

‘Commander (Air),’ the Operations Officer announced as the heavily built, bearded officer walked into the briefing-room and down the steps to the front row. Everyone not already
standing stood up, then relaxed back into their seats as the Commander himself sat down.

‘Carry on, please.’

‘Thank you, sir. Gentlemen, this will be an outline briefing only, as we have yet to receive detailed tasking instructions, and we have no confirmed start time for any flying operations.
For this reason I have dispensed for the moment with the meteorological briefing and other detailed information on the area. You will be briefed on terrain, high ground, safety altitudes, inbound
and outbound routes, operational frequencies and so on, before your individual sorties.

‘This briefing will cover five topics: ship’s position, other forces present in the area, operational background, anticipated tasking and forecast operation timing.’ He picked
up a pointer and turned to the bulkhead behind him, where a large map of the island of Crete was displayed.

‘
First
: ship’s position.
Invincible
is currently here,’ he said, pointing to a location about ten miles to the northeast of Andikíthira, ‘and
we’re making our way to here,’ he pointed again, ‘just north of Réthymno, which is more or less the mid-point of the island. The ship will be holding clear of the civilian
ferry routes into and out of Irakleío and Chaniá, but we will only be about thirty miles from the Nikos Kazantzakis International Airport here at Irakleío and around the same
distance from the island’s second airport on the Akrotíri Peninsula. We will remain in the same general area until further notice.

‘
Second
: other forces. As some of you will be aware, the airport at Akrotíri has three different functions. First, it’s the civilian airport serving Chaniá and
the western end of the island of Crete. Second, it’s the home of the Hellenic Air Force’s 115th Combat Wing, which operates two squadrons of A-7H Corsairs. It’s also home to the
US Naval Support Facility of Soúda Bay, with quite a large presence – over one thousand people altogether. The primary function of the base is to provide support to US and allied ships
and aircraft operating in the eastern Mediterranean.