The Phoenix

by Sidney Sheldon

  ‘Of course,’ said Peter. ‘Stay as long as you need or want. No one will disturb you there.’

  Stepping back into the kitchen, a wonderfully warm, English room with a bright red Aga, flagstone floors, and prints of Irish wolfhounds all over the walls, Athena made herself a mug of coffee, and flipped open her laptop computer. She’d had numerous offers of ‘bolt-holes’, places she could stay and regroup once she’d decided to leave the convent. Konstantinos Papadakis, an old friend who had been Spyros’s best man, had prepared his ultra-private villa in Corsica to be at her disposal. Darling Konsta. She’d seriously considered it, but ultimately she’d decided she needed to be further away from Greece and the forces ranged against her. Besides which, all of Spyros’s old friends would be under suspicion, once people realized she was not only alive, but once again at large.

  Peter was part of another life. Before Spyros. Before all of the madness. Before Apollo, even – although that Peter and that Athena were long gone now. For better or worse. No one will look for me here, Athena thought. More importantly, Peter Hambrecht was one of the very few men on earth that she knew, with certainty, she could trust. Unlike her so-called ‘loyal’ number two and Spyros’s surrogate son, that turncoat snake-in-the-grass Makis.

  He wants me dead, thought Athena. She’d suspected it before, but events on the morning she fled Sikinos had hardened her suspicion into bitter certainty. There was no way that the surprise visitor had found his way to the convent by accident. Someone from inside the Petridis organization must have leaked her whereabouts, no doubt hoping that the damaged soul would find her and do their dirty work for them. As for the ‘village girl’ who’d burst in on the two of them, the way she’d looked at ‘Sister Elena’ – that was more than just shock at her disfigurement. She’d been looking for something, searching Athena’s ruined face for clues. The girl’s own face had been unusual too, in a different way: searching, intelligent, but also hauntingly familiar. Athena still couldn’t place what it was she remembered. But there’d been more to that young lady than met the eye.

  Athena could no longer doubt that someone close to her had deliberately betrayed her. With only a handful of people aware of her existence, let alone her identity as Sister Elena, Makis Alexiadis was the obvious culprit.

  On her computer, Instagram and Facebook images displayed Mak-the-businessman, his legitimate alter ego, living the high life on his yacht.

  Fiddling while our business burns, she thought bitterly. Swanning around the Med while everything Spyros built, everything we gave you, crumbles to dust.

  If they didn’t act soon, their rivals would establish a stranglehold grip on the Aegean migrant route, and a pipeline worth hundreds of millions of dollars would be lost. She would contact Makis today about this. Let him know, by default, that she’d escaped whatever grisly fate he’d had in store for her at the convent, and begun to reassert her authority.

  Her hands twitched with frustration. After so long out of the game, so long in hiding and isolation, she yearned for action. A part of her longed simply to get rid of Makis. She fantasized about a world where he was dead, and she, Athena, could seamlessly take over the reins of the Petridis empire, resuming her role as head of the organization and Spyros’s rightful heir. But that was a fantasy. Athena had her loyal supporters, to be sure. But the reality was, after twelve years in day-to-day command, Makis had henchmen of his own. Not everyone would welcome the return of Spyros’s wife from the grave.

  For the time being, Athena must keep her friends close and her enemies closer. She must approach Makis Alexiadis with both skill and caution, like a male spider perfecting its mating dance, hoping to get close enough to mount the female, but without the risk of being eaten afterwards.

  One step at a time.

  Closing her computer, she took out a pen and paper and began to write.

  She’s got a nerve. My God, she’s got a bloody nerve.

  Like a petulant child, Mak tore Athena’s note into tiny pieces and scattered them over the side of the yacht.

  Who the hell did she think she was, chastising him like a schoolboy for ‘allowing’ the migrant business to slip through his fingers? As if he controlled the tides and storms! As if he weren’t already actively sabotaging his rivals’ boats, bribing their skippers, and generally doing everything in his power to turn things around.

  And meanwhile she, Athena, had inexplicably chosen this crucial moment to upset the apple cart. What did she think she was doing, having the Arab children’s feet branded like that? Had she hoped that one of them would drown? That by hijacking this very public human tragedy, her coded message would make its way into the media in a suitably macabre fashion, announcing both her glorious return to the Petridis organization, and her willingness to maim and kill to secure her place at the top table?

  If so, then her plan had been a resounding success. But at what cost? Thanks to Athena’s flare for the dramatic gesture, Makis now had half the world’s intelligence agencies sniffing around him, not to mention Interpol, making it exponentially harder to ‘lock up’ the migrant route, as she claimed to want him to. And she had the nerve to lecture him about neglecting ‘our’ business?

  Mak had never warmed to Athena, even back when Spyros was alive. He was used to the old man patronizing him, and he accepted it, but his much younger wife’s disdain was a different matter. Like every other red-blooded male, Mak had wanted Athena back then. He would have walked over hot coals to take her to bed, as he knew many other men did besides her husband. But the bitch had looked through him as if he didn’t exist. Athena was only interested in powerful men.

  Spyros seemed to tolerate his wife’s infidelities with a sort of resigned regret, liberally mingled with adoration. As if Athena were a superior being, a superannuated sexual goddess who could no more be expected to remain faithful to one man than to go without food or water. For such a macho, controlling Greek, it was a strange attitude. But then all men changed the rules for Athena.

  Not any more, Makis thought, with a warm, cruel glow of satisfaction. He hadn’t seen her in person since the accident. Nobody had, except the nuns and priests who – as was proved on Sikinos – had obviously saved and protected her. (The Petridis family had done a lot for the Catholic Church over the years; enough to ensure that they repaid their debts.) But Mak knew that she was hideous now, her once legendary beauty utterly destroyed by the flames that had consumed Spyros, burning him alive. With the resources at her disposal, Athena could easily have undergone reconstructive surgery if she’d chosen to. But instead she had opted to keep her ravaged face, wearing it as a mask, perhaps, something to hide behind? Or as a penance for her many sins?

  She wasn’t stupid enough to agree to a face-to-face meeting with Makis now, and had deftly avoided all his requests for information on her whereabouts. ‘It’s safer for us all to keep our distance.’ Safer for you, you mean. But eventually the time would come. She’d slipped through his fingers at Sikinos, which was irritating, and the person responsible would pay for that. But in the end she would make a misstep. And when she did, Mak would be waiting.

  One of the yacht stewards approached him.

  ‘Your drink is waiting for you in the study, sir. Would you prefer me to bring it out to you here?’

  ‘No, John, thank you,’ said Mak. ‘I’m coming inside.’

  Pushing thoughts of Athena out of his mind for now, Mak made his way to his study, a small but perfectly formed wood-paneled room crammed with prints of the great Greek shipping era and models of Aristotle Onassis’s most famous yachts. Taking a sip of his perfectly prepared old-fashioned, he turned on his private cell and began skimming through pictures of Persephone Hamlin from earlier in the summer.

  Instantly, he felt his mood lifting. What Athena had done to Spyros Petridis, himself a committed playboy when they met, Persephone had done to Makis. They hadn’t even slept together yet. Had only once kissed! And yet the feelings he had for her, his need, his longing … He
hesitated to call it love. But perhaps that was what it was? This strange compulsion to possess. This desperation to be near her.

  Tomorrow night she would be here. In his arms. She had returned to him, not because of anything he had done, but of her own free will. Just the thought of it made his heart race and the hairs on his neck and forearms stand on end.

  The irony was, she wasn’t even classically beautiful. Not in the accepted, marketable way that a girl like Jenna was, or even Miriam or Arabella. Mesmerized by the pictures, he zoomed in on her quirky, off-kilter face with the wide-set eyes and the jutting cheekbones. She was standing on the shore of the tiny island he’d taken her to on their first ‘date’, when she’d cast her line so elegantly and he’d actually taken up the oars of a boat for her. She’d reminded him of somebody that day, although he never had figured out exactly who it was. I was too intoxicated, he reminisced, fondly. The things that girl does to me. And she doesn’t even have to try.

  At lunch, Makis joined the last of his guests for fresh poached lobster and salad. He enjoyed playing host on his beloved Argo, and typically had up to ten people staying on board at any one time, partaking of his hospitality, separate from whatever girls he brought on board for his own enjoyment. But with Persephone coming, he wanted rid of them all – the men as well as the women. He wanted to be free to make love to her everywhere – on deck, in the hot tub, the movie theater and in every bed. His guests would all be shuttled by speedboat tender to Portofino tomorrow morning, and would have to continue their summer adventures from there.

  ‘Great night last night, Mak.’ Andrew Simon, a producer from LA and regular summer visitor to Mykonos, raised a glass to his host. ‘Could you believe Jorge’s girlfriend went home with that guy? The Englishman?’

  Mak grinned. That had been a funny moment.

  Jorge Colomar, a Spanish billionaire and mutual friend, had joined Mak’s group at the restaurant last night, and afterwards at Covo di Nord-Est, where his young Venezuelan date had embarrassingly deserted him for a handsome English polo player half Jorge’s age.

  ‘I can believe it,’ Andrew’s wife, Carmen, piped up. ‘The guy was so good looking.’

  ‘Are you saying Jorge isn’t?’ Mak teased. Everyone knew that in his spare time Jorge Colomar lived under a bridge and ate billy goats.

  ‘What was his name … William something,’ said Carmen, who was still reminiscing about the polo hunk. ‘Was it William Ponsonby?’

  ‘No,’ said Andrew. ‘You’re thinking of Rachel’s husband. He’s a Ponsonby. This guy was from another one of those old English families. Coutts!’ It came to him suddenly. ‘William Coutts, that was it. Like the bank. Although I doubt he’s richer than Jorge.’

  Everyone else at the table smiled and nodded their assent, but Mak had fallen deathly silent. All the blood had drained from his face suddenly, and his upper body froze, as though he was in some sort of trance.

  Andrew Simon put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Makis? Are you OK, man?’

  But Mak didn’t answer.

  William. Rachel.

  ‘You’re thinking of Rachel’s husband.’

  He stood up abruptly. ‘I’m sorry. I have to go.’

  Back in the study, it took him thirty minutes to find the images, saved on a backup hard drive from fifteen years ago. But there he was: William Praeger, young and blond and preppily handsome, except for his oddly wide-set eyes. Next to him on one side was his wife, Rachel, a raving beauty with her flowing hair and high, sculpted cheekbones. And on the other side, also looking preposterously young, was that bastard Mark Redmayne.

  The Group. That’s what they used to call themselves. Spyros used to make fun of them in the beginning. No one took them seriously, a ragtag bunch of vigilantes, naïve American rich kids who thought they could succeed where the CIA and MI6 had failed. But Spyros had been wrong.

  Staring transfixed at William and Rachel Praeger’s faces, Mak realized he’d been wrong too. There could be no mistaking the resemblance.

  Cameron McKinley had just finished playing squash when his phone rang.

  ‘Yes?’ he panted.

  ‘Praeger. William and Rachel Praeger. I need you to find out everything you can about them.’ Mak sounded tense. ‘I’ve just sent you some pictures.’

  ‘OK,’ said Cameron. ‘Am I looking for anything specific?’

  ‘Yes. I need to know whether they ever had a daughter.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was already almost dusk when Ella arrived in Portofino. Lights twinkled in the harbor, and the pretty hillside town was bathed in the rich, early evening glow. A warm breeze still lingered in the air, the remnants of the blazing heat of a few hours earlier, and everything smelled of summer: the rich, cloying scent of jasmine mingling with coconut oil and perfume on the women’s skin, and the pungent tang of garlic and truffles wafting out from various restaurant kitchens. Underneath it all, the familiar, salt-scent of the sea and the gentle, rhythmic swish of the waves completed the picture of the vacation idyll. This was a place to relax. To exhale. To allow one’s senses free rein. To be without constraints.

  But not for Ella. Stepping back into the role of Persephone Hamlin so suddenly had been jarring, to say the least. Resurrecting not just Persephone’s voice and mannerisms, but her feelings – and in particular her complicated relationship with Mak – was a daunting prospect. And there was no room for error. But it had to be done. I owe it to Nikkos. And my parents. And myself. Gabriel had made it clear that the alternative was for Ella to return to the States empty-handed, with nothing concrete to show for any of this but poor Nikkos’s death. Ella couldn’t allow that.

  Still, she wished she could have spent at least one night here in a hotel, going over Persephone’s backstory for the hundredth time, easing herself back into the identity before she joined Makis on his yacht. As it was, his eagerness to see her meant he would brook no more delays. ‘Call the second you arrive,’ he instructed her. ‘I’ll send someone to come and pick you up in the tender right away.’

  ‘Your check, Ms Hamlin. Can I get you anything else?’

  An elderly waiter, with the sort of ancient face that looked as if it had been etched in stone, approached Ella’s table. She’d chosen a café near the harbor so that she could tune in easily to transmissions between the various boats while she enjoyed a last meal of branzino on the safety of dry land. Once aboard the Argo, she would be trapped. Makis’s prisoner, albeit a willing one.

  ‘No, thank you. That was delicious.’ She reached into her pocketbook for Persephone’s credit card, praying suddenly that The Group hadn’t already cancelled it. Luckily it seemed to go through the old man’s little machine with no problems.

  She’d already texted Mak and was expecting one of the Argo’s state-of-the-art speedboats to arrive in the harbor for her at any minute. She was to wait for them at jetty five. Pulling her suitcase along behind her, she rattled and rumbled over the creaky wooden boards of the pier, all the while focusing on isolating the Argo’s call signal from the rest of the deafening radio chatter in her head.

  ‘Argonaut II, are you there yet?’ she heard the yacht’s skipper signal the tender.

  ‘Almost,’ came the reply. ‘I think I can see her coming down the jetty.’

  Don’t look up, Ella reminded herself, fighting the urge to search out the speedboat in the growing darkness. Remember, Persephone can’t hear them.

  Her heart hammered in her chest, powered by a familiar feeling of excitement mingled with fear. Tonight she would be on the yacht with Mak. Though nothing had been spelled out between them, she understood that the time for separate bedrooms had passed. That ‘Persephone’ was returning to him not as a friend, but as a lover.

  Two uniformed men waved as a sleek, sky-blue Wajer 55 tender arrived at jetty 5, with the word ARGONAUT II embossed on the side in shiny black lettering.

  ‘Ms Hamlin?’ A young, handsome boat-hand climbed up to the jetty, reaching for Ella’s bag.
r />   Ella nodded.

  ‘We saw you walking over from the harbor. Perfect timing.’ He smiled, helping her down into the boat.

  ‘Thank you for coming to get me,’ said Ella.

  The second man, who was older and more heavily set, introduced himself with a shake of his hairy, bear-like hand.

  ‘It’s our pleasure, ma’am. Mr Alexiadis is looking forward to welcoming you aboard the Argo. We’re a little further out of the harbor than we’d hoped to be, but we should have you at the yacht in fifteen minutes. In the meantime, please just relax.’

  Relax.

  Sitting back on the rich velvet-cushioned bench, Ella smiled to herself.

  The excitement of her new life was becoming addictive. She wondered if she would ever truly relax again.

  The little boat took off with alarming speed. Both men remained at the helm while Ella sat at the back, a thick cashmere blanket covering her knees. Turning back, she watched the lights of Portofino harbor recede behind them, like stars in the wake of a warp-speeding Millennium Falcon. As they rounded the headland, the last lights to go were those of the sparkling Hotel Splendido Mare. And then there was nothing but open water, the pitch darkness softened only slightly by the light of a pale half-moon.

  The roar of the speedboat’s engine quickly faded out to become background noise, and the buzzing signals from the harbor traffic also quietened in Ella’s brain into more of a low purr, like a contented cat about to fall asleep. In the relative peace, she was able to tune into the Argo much more clearly, her mind flipping through the various frequencies like songs on a jukebox, until she stumbled across Makis’s own voice – low, gravelly and crystal clear. He was using a satellite phone of some sort, and from Ella’s position on the boat the sound quality was perfect. Her stomach gave a little flip when she realized he was talking to Cameron McKinley, the fixer whose goons had followed her, and possibly Nikkos too, in Athens.