The Doomsday Prophecy

by Scott Mariani

  She walked to another room, where she could speak in private, and dialled the number. It was a long-distance call. The same man’s voice answered.

  ‘We might have another problem,’ she told him. She explained the situation quickly.

  ‘How much does he know?’ the man asked.

  ‘Enough. About the money, and about Cleaver. And about us. And maybe more.’

  There was a long silence. ‘This is already getting messy.’

  ‘We’ll deal with it.’

  ‘You’d better. Get me names. Find out everything he knows. Then take care of him. Do it properly and quietly. Don’t make me have to call Herzog in on this again. He’s too damn expensive.’

  When the call was over, Kaplan went back to the other room. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ben checked out of the hospital still feeling drained and numb. He shambled out of the glass doors and into the hot morning sun, hardly feeling the warmth on his face. His mind was blank as he stood there on the pavement, not knowing what to do next.

  Approaching footsteps made him turn: two men. One had a camera, the other a notebook. Reporters. They were looking right at him.

  ‘You are the man who saved the little boy,’ the one with the notebook said. ‘Can we ask you some questions?’

  ‘Not now,’ Ben replied quietly.

  ‘Later? Here is my card.’ The reporter pressed it in Ben’s hand. Ben just nodded. He felt too weary to say more. The photographer raised his camera and fired off a few snaps. Ben didn’t try to stop him.

  As the reporters were turning to go, a Corfu Police four-wheel drive pulled up with a screech of tyres at the edge of the pavement. The doors opened and two men climbed out, one in uniform and one in plain clothes. The plain-clothes officer was short and dumpy, bald-headed with a trim beard.

  They walked up to him. ‘Mr Hope?’ the plain-clothes officer said in English. He reached into his jacket and took out an ID card. ‘I am Captain Stephanides, Corfu police. I would like you to come with me, please.’

  Ben said nothing. He let them usher him into the back of the four-wheel drive. Stephanides climbed in after him, said something in Greek to the driver and the car sped off. Then he turned to Ben.

  ‘You are leaving hospital early? I was expecting to find you still in bed.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Ben said.

  ‘Last time I saw you, you were lying on a stretcher covered in blood.’

  ‘Just a couple of cuts. Others got it a lot worse.’

  Stephanides nodded gravely.

  In less than ten minutes they had passed through a police security point and were pulling up at the back of a large headquarters building. Stephanides bundled out of the car and asked Ben to follow him. They walked inside the air-conditioned building, into a comfortable office.

  ‘Please take a seat,’ Stephanides said.

  ‘What is it I can help you with, Captain?’

  ‘Just a few questions.’ Stephanides rested his weight on the edge of the desk, one chubby leg swinging. He smiled. ‘People are calling you a hero.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Ben said.

  ‘Before you acted to save young Aris Thanatos, you were with one of the victims on the terrace of the establishment.’

  Ben nodded.

  ‘I must ask you whether you noticed anything strange or suspicious?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Ben said.

  Stephanides nodded, picked up a notepad from the desk beside him. ‘The victim in question. Charles Palmer. Was this man a friend of yours?’

  ‘We were in the army together,’ Ben said. ‘I’m retired now.’

  ‘And what was the nature and purpose of your visit to Corfu?’

  Ben had known men like Stephanides for a long time. He was smiling and working hard to come across as kindly and unthreatening, but he was deadly serious. The questioning was dangerous, and Ben had to focus hard to avoid saying the wrong thing. ‘I was here for Charlie. He needed my advice about something. But I never got to find out what it was. The bomb happened first.’

  Stephanides nodded again and made a note in his pad. ‘And this advice, you have no idea why it could not have been given by phone or email?’

  ‘I prefer to talk face to face,’ Ben said.

  The cop grunted. ‘So you came all this way just to have a conversation, not even knowing what it was going to be about?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That strikes me as being rather extravagant.’

  ‘I enjoy travelling,’ Ben said.

  ‘What is your line of business, Mr Hope?’

  ‘I’m a student. Of theology. Christ Church, Oxford. You can check that.’

  Stephanides raised his eyebrows and made another note on his pad. ‘I suppose that would explain why you were carrying a Bible with you.’ He glanced up. ‘There are things about your friend that concern me. He was here asking questions about an Englishwoman.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Ben said.

  Stephanides raised his eyebrows. The look that flashed through his eyes said gotcha. ‘This is not what his wife, Mrs Palmer, told me last night. She told me Mr Palmer was working for you to find this Miss Bradbury.’

  Ben closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He’d walked right into that one.

  ‘I have seven bodies in the morgue,’ Stephanides said. ‘And another eleven people who have suffered injury. One will never see again. Another will never walk again. Someone planted a bomb in the middle of my town, and I will find out who and why.’

  Ben didn’t reply.

  Stephanides smiled, but it was a cold smile. ‘You have been through a shock. Perhaps you should not have left hospital so early. It may be you need a day or two to recover and clear your mind. When you are feeling more like talking, I would like to run through these questions again. In the meantime, I want you to remain here on Corfu. I must ask for your passport, please. We will retain it until we no longer require your assistance.’

  ‘I don’t have it,’ Ben said.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘It was in my jacket pocket when the bomb went off. So were my tickets. My jacket was over the back of the chair. Everything burned.’

  Stephanides stared at him long and hard. ‘I notice you carry your wallet in the back pocket of your trousers. Can I see it, please?’

  Ben handed it over, and the captain searched briskly through it. He scrutinised Ben’s driving licence, put it back and riffled through the thick wad of banknotes. ‘A lot of cash to carry around,’ he noted. ‘Especially for a student.’

  ‘I don’t use credit cards,’ Ben said. ‘And I don’t carry my passport in there either.’

  ‘You are a very unusual man. Someone who would travel over a thousand miles rather than talk on the telephone. Who carries thousands of euros in cash, uses no credit cards. And checks himself out of hospital before his injuries have even begun to heal. It’s my job to notice unusual things like this. And I have to ask myself why you were in such a hurry.’

  ‘You think I’m involved in this?’

  ‘I think you are not telling me everything,’ Stephanides said. ‘And I think you should reflect carefully about what you would like to tell me. We will talk again. You may go now.’

  Ben was heading for the door when Stephanides called him back. He handed Ben a black plastic rubbish sack. ‘Your belongings,’ he said pointedly. ‘Those that did not burn in the fire.’

  Ben took it and left.

  He walked out of the police station in a daze, clutching the plastic bag. He hardly took in his surroundings. He just kept walking, one foot and then the other, staring down at the ground. His thoughts were screaming in his mind. He wasn’t thinking about the conversation with Stephanides, or that he’d let the cop entrap him with his questions, or that he was getting deeper in shit, or that he had no idea what was going on.

  My child will never know its father.

  You’re a fucking
murderer.

  God damn you, if you can live with this on your conscience.

  The words were like knives stabbing into his brain. He kept walking, trying desperately to shut them out. He wandered away from the town and found himself on a quayside, some moored fishing boats drifting lazily on the water below. He made his way down a crumbly flight of steps and walked out onto the soft sand. The deserted cove curved round in an arc, with the rocky shore sloping upwards behind and a thick pine forest edging the shoreline all the way to the horizon.

  He slumped against a rock and tossed the garbage sack down between his feet. He closed his eyes. It felt as though all his strength had left him.

  He gave way to despair. He could see Charlie’s face in front of him. Rhonda’s voice was still screaming in his head. She was right. Charlie was dead because of him. He’d led him right into it, telling him how easy it would be.

  Why did you assume that? When was anything ever that easy? You, of all people, should have known. And now Charlie’s dead.

  He felt sweat prickling his face. He needed a drink, badly. He reached out and untied the knot in the garbage sack. In amongst the charred remains of his duffel bag he found his wrecked phone. He groped around for his flask. His fingers closed on something solid, and he pulled it out.

  It wasn’t the flask, but his old Bible, the leather cover scorched around the edges. He stared at it for a moment, then tossed it down in the sand and reached back into the sack. Finding the battered old flask this time, he unscrewed the top and took a long swig of the warm whisky. It burned his tongue and he felt the glow immediately. It would take some of the edge off. But nothing like enough. He closed his eyes again and sighed.

  When he opened them, the first thing he saw was the Bible lying there in the sand next to him. He picked it up and held it in his lap, gazing at it. He stood up, feeling the pull on his injured neck and his aching muscles. Still turning the Bible in his hands, he walked slowly towards the water’s edge.

  He stared again at the book, and thought about the direction his life had taken. The choices and paths that lay before him now. He’d tried so hard to get away from trouble, and to find peace. It was all he wanted, to be a normal person, to get away from all this, to lead a simple and happy life. That was what the Bible meant to him.

  But trouble had followed him, just as it always did, like a demon treading close behind him everywhere he went.

  Would it ever stop? Was there no escape? He understood, in that moment, that there wouldn’t be. It seemed to be his destiny, somehow.

  The surf hissed in across the sand, caressed the tips of his shoes and then edged away again.

  And where was God? he thought.

  He looked up at the clear sky. ‘Where are you?’ he shouted. His voice echoed off the rocks and across the cove.

  There was no answer. Of course not. There never would be. He was alone.

  Molten rage and frustration suddenly burst through him. He drew back his arm and hurled the Bible out to sea. It arced up high against the blue. For an instant it seemed suspended, as though it would stay up there forever. Then it came tumbling down, pages flapping, and dropped into the waves twenty yards out with a dull splash.

  Ben walked away and took another long swig of whisky. Wandered aimlessly up the shoreline, feeling emotion rising high in his chest. In the distance were some houses clustered at the sea’s edge, with steps leading down the gentle cliffside to the beach. He heard voices on the breeze. A small group of people was ambling down the hill towards him. They were a couple of hundred yards away, but if he kept walking he was going to meet them. He didn’t want to be near people. He turned and walked slowly back the way he’d come, towards the inviting cover of the pine trees. The surf kept hissing softly in and out, as though it was breathing. The tide washed over his shoes and he felt the cold wetness on his feet. Something nudged his toe and he looked down.

  It was the Bible. It had come back to him. He stared at it for a moment, stooped down and picked it up. Stood holding the dripping book in his hand. Drew his arm back again to fling it right back out to sea, further this time so the surf wouldn’t wash it back up onto the shore.

  But something made him stop. His arm went limp. He stared at the book again. There was a strand of seaweed hanging from the cover. He wiped it away. Then he walked on, still clutching the soaking wet Bible in his hand.

  Chapter Twenty

  Zoë could see that it was night through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. She leaned back on her bed and stared up at the ceiling.

  Five days now since she’d been flown off the island. She had no idea where she was, but it was a lot colder here. Her captors had given her a heavy sweater to wear, and a pair of woollen trousers and thick socks. She spent most of her time just sitting there, helpless, resigned, trying desperately to remember.

  It was coming back to her, slowly. As the days ground by, fragments of images kept returning to her, like a forgotten dream gradually seeping back into her conscious mind. Things that had been completely out of reach were there again now, little floating islands of memory slowly merging together into coherence. The smiling faces of a man and a woman kept coming back to her. Her parents, she thought. Trying to peer further into the mist, she saw a little white dog. He was hers. What was his name?

  Bringing up these lost memories was like trying to catch a sunbeam in her hand. Sometimes a half-formed impression would dart into focus, she’d try to concentrate on it and it would be gone. But other things were sharp and clear. The villa, for instance. She could picture it clearly. But the name of the island was lost to her. And what had she been doing there?

  In random flashes, she saw herself on a motorbike. Remembered the wind in her hair. Lights in her mirror, and the feeling of fear. She tried to piece it all together. She’d been chased. Then she could vaguely recall the horrible moment of falling. She must have come off the bike and whacked her head on the ground. She rubbed the bump. There was hardly any pain now.

  She tried to piece together what had happened next. She could remember the house she’d been kept in when she’d first been taken, and how she’d tried to escape. She shivered, recalling the fair-haired man. She wondered where he was now. The thought of him coming back, walking into her room, terrified her.

  She thought back to the journey here – wherever here was. The seaplane had carried her over islands and across the blue sea before the bumpy landing somewhere within sight of the mainland. She’d kept asking where they were taking her, but nobody would speak to her. A speedboat had come out to meet them, and taken her to shore with two of the men. They’d dragged her up the rocky beach to a deserted minor road where a van had been waiting. The men had shoved her into the back. She remembered how hard she’d screamed and kicked as they’d held her down, convinced she was about to be gang-raped and then murdered. But instead, they kept a grip on her arms as a third man took out a syringe from a black leather case. He’d stooped down and jabbed the needle into her. She’d cried out.

  The next thing she remembered was waking up on a hard bunk in a cold room with no windows. Bare concrete walls and just a single naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. She’d been kept there for four days – four more days of going slowly insane with frustration and terror.

  There’d been visitors to her cell in that time. One of them was a man who brought her food and water. She drank the water but left most of the food. A couple of times a day he’d let her out and walk with her to a stark, windowless bathroom at the end of a concrete corridor. He never spoke, never smiled.

  Then there was the man in the dark suit. He’d been to see her three times now, and she dreaded his visits. He was tall and lean, about fifty, with slicked-back hair. His face was craggy, and when he smiled that cold smile his teeth were uneven and fanglike. He had the look of a wolf.

  Wolfman just wanted to talk about one thing. Where was it?

  All she could reply was ‘I don’t know.’ It was becoming like a mantra
. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

  Wolfman obviously hated hearing it, even more than she hated saying it. The first time she’d seen the cold rage flash through his eyes, she’d thought he was going to start screaming and shaking her, like the fair-haired man had done. But Wolfman was more controlled. He just smiled and pressed on with the same line of questions. Where was it? What had she done with it? She only had to tell him what she knew, and everything would be OK again. They’d let her go. Take her home and make sure she got back safe.

  But however hard she tried, she just couldn’t remember, just couldn’t give him what he wanted. After hours of it, she’d break down and start sobbing, and he’d sit there staring impassively at her for a while, then leave without a word and lock the door behind him.

  The third regular visitor was the doctor in the white coat. He looked in his late forties, overweight, balding, bearded. From his first visit, he’d been kind to her, though there was something nervous about his smile. He’d checked her temperature and blood pressure, listened to her heart, examined the fading bruise on her head. He seemed sympathetic and genuinely anxious for her to get her memory back. He spent a lot of time asking her questions too, but his were gentle. Some she could answer and some she couldn’t. He noted her responses on a pad.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Zoë Bradbury.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-six.’

  ‘What month are we in?’

  ‘June, I think.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He never pushed harder than that, and never mentioned the things that Wolfman kept asking about. She wanted to open up to him. ‘I’m scared,’ she’d said to him again and again. ‘Where am I? What’s going to happen to me?’