‘Because no one can ever save another person from themselves,’ Paolo said simply. ‘Besides, from everything you’ve told me, salvation isn’t what this lady wants.’
He was right. Absolutely right. The other things Paolo had said had been right too. About Athena being toxic to Peter’s happiness, about her dragging him back to the past, about his need to focus on his present life, his glittering career, their relationship.
But Athena’s latest betrayal still hurt.
She’d gone. Disappeared like a thief in the night from the house in Burgundy, just as Peter had helped her to disappear from Antonio’s flat, and just as Athena had promised, sworn, that she wouldn’t do to him.
Poor Mary was convinced that she was to blame. ‘I don’t know what happened, Mr H. Truly I don’t. It was a day like any other. She seemed well. Calm. When I found her gone at six the next morning, I assumed she’d gone for an early morning walk in the grounds, but there was no trace of her.’
‘It’s quite all right, Mary,’ Peter had reassured her. ‘I’m afraid Athena is a master at this. Her life has always been rather … complicated. She’ll show up eventually.’
‘Yes, sir, I daresay, but she still needs medical attention, that’s the thing! She thinks she’s well but she isn’t. Her operation scars aren’t healed yet. Without proper nursing they could easily get infected. And she’s supposed to have physio for her walking as well, that limp she has on the left side? We’d only just started the exercises. But she’s so stubborn.’
‘That she is,’ Peter had agreed with a light laugh. But inside, his own feeling of dread was building, and it only grew greater as the days passed. Slowly it dawned on him that Athena had never had any intention of recuperating in private. The new identity he’d helped her to forge – the new face, new name, new papers he’d spent so much money and effort procuring for her – had never been so that she could live out the remainder of her days in peace and safety, as Peter had hoped.
The surgery wasn’t her ticket out of her old life of crime with Spyros. It was her ticket back into it.
She used me.
Spyros Petridis might be dead and gone, but the changes he’d wrought in Athena’s psyche were not so easily reversed. The Athena Peter had grown up with in Organi was still there, deep inside. But she’d long since been subsumed by this other Athena, this dangerous, vengeful, duplicitous Athena, who had learned to love power for its own sake and to wield it without mercy or compassion.
Lowering his baton as the dying notes of the Handel subsided into a breathless silence, Peter closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable eruption of the audience.
‘Bravo, maestro!’ They yelled and whistled from the pews. ‘Encore!’
Tears coursed down Peter Hambrecht’s cheeks. Only one member of the audience surmised that they weren’t brought on by the sublime music.
Ella waited outside the vestry that served as the conductor’s dressing room, poised to intercept any signals from Peter Hambrecht’s phone. She didn’t have to wait long.
‘Mary?’
‘I’m sorry to ring you again, Mr H.’ The nurse’s voice rang out as clearly in Ella’s head as if she were standing in the same, cold stone cloister. ‘But something came back to me. I don’t know if it’s relevant.’
‘What is it?’ asked Peter, unable to keep the hope out of his voice entirely.
‘I overheard her talking on the phone. Not the day before she left but earlier in the week. I don’t know what she said, I’m afraid. I only remembered it at all because she was speaking Greek. But she was talking to someone called “Jimmy”. I wondered if that might mean anything to you?’
‘Thank you,’ said Peter, his heart sinking. He had no idea who ‘Jimmy’ might be, and with no further clues he had no way of finding out. ‘I appreciate the call. I’ll give it some thought.’
There were no other calls. Ella waited till Peter Hambrecht left the college and followed him back to the Randolph, but after a single lonely brandy at the bar, he turned his phone off and turned in for the night.
Depressed, Ella pulled on her jacket and summer scarf and headed back towards her own room, a tiny Airbnb above a bookshop on the other side of Christchurch Meadows. Gabriel was right. It had been a wild-goose chase coming to Oxford, a foolish exercise of hope over experience. Clearly Athena had used her ex-husband and moved on, just as she’d done with all her other old lovers. Trust and loyalty were either qualities she didn’t understand, or luxuries she couldn’t afford. With Makis Alexiadis dead, there was nothing to stop her coming back to reclaim her rightful place as mistress of her late husband’s empire. Nothing except the terrible facial burns that would make her instantly recognizable to her many enemies lurking in the shadows.
Peter Hambrecht had helped his former wife and childhood playmate overcome that problem. Having set up an effective decoy in London, he had spirited her away for reconstructive surgery somewhere else. Unfortunately for Peter, now that she had a new face and name, Athena didn’t need him any more. Evidently she’d moved on to ‘Jimmy’ as her confidant of choice, the next pawn in her endless game of chess, staying one step ahead of her pursuers. No doubt he was another former lover …
Walking past the Radcliffe Camera, its domed roof dream-like in the misty moonlight, it came to Ella suddenly, staring her in the face like the answer to a crossword clue, insultingly obvious now that she’d seen it.
Another former lover. And what had Mary said? ‘I only remembered because they were speaking Greek’?
There weren’t any Greeks named Jimmy. Dimi, on the other hand, short for Dimitri, had to be one of the most common Greek names of all. No doubt in her sexual heyday, Athena Petridis had bedded more than one Dimitri. But if Ella remembered correctly from Athena’s file, there was one in particular who would have both the financial means and the contacts to be able to help her, even now. One who’d been deeply enough embroiled in the Petridises’ criminal dealings to be afraid of Athena’s Lazarus-like resurrection, and what it might mean for his own reputation and legacy.
Quickening her pace, she ran up the High Street to Carfax, turning left past Tom Tower and left again along Christchurch Meadows until she reached the tiny cobbled lane where she was staying. Once safely in her room above the bookshop, she locked the door, drew the curtains, and flipped open her laptop, messaging Gabriel on their private, encrypted service. She could see at once that he was already online. Gabriel was always online. Like a low-tech version of me.
‘Is Dimitri Mantzaris still alive?’ Ella typed.
The reply came back within seconds. A thumb’s-up sign. Then, ‘He’s eighty.’
‘Where does he live?’ Ella followed up.
A few more seconds. ‘Vouliagmeni. Near Athens. Why?’
Would Athena return to Athens? She might. It was the sort of move she was ballsy enough to pull off, although Ella still felt it was more likely she would pick somewhere quieter and more remote, especially if she were going to base herself in Greece. She also couldn’t imagine her living as the houseguest of a figure as famous as Dimitri Mantzaris, the former prime minister.
‘Any other property?’ she asked Gabriel.
This time a full three minutes went by before he answered.
‘No. Goodnight.’
Ella shut down the computer, irritated. Her elation of earlier had evaporated now, her balloon pricked by both Gabriel’s monosyllabic lack of enthusiasm and by the difficulties involved in following up Dimitri Mantzaris as a lead. For one thing she would have to tread carefully if she returned to Athens or anywhere in Greece, knowing that Redmayne had agents from The Group swarming like maddened ants, hunting for her and Gabriel. For another, as a former premier, Mantzaris was bound to have extensive security, making it harder to get close enough to him to pick up any communications he might be having with Athena. All this assuming, of course, that Mantzaris was ‘Jimmy’. She’d felt so certain about it all on her way home from the Randolph. But now, just like P
eter Hambrecht, she could sense her hopes fading.
I’ll sleep on it, she thought, undressing and dropping her clothes mindlessly in a heap on the floor, before removing her make-up, cleaning her teeth and climbing into the creaky single bed. Turning her phone to silent, she plugged it in to charge in the alcove next to her pillow when it suddenly buzzed in her hand.
‘Why are you calling me?’ She mimicked Gabriel’s tone from their last call. ‘I thought we agreed the phone was only for emergencies.’
‘You turned off your computer,’ he answered matter-of-factly. ‘And you didn’t answer my question. Why are you interested in Mantzaris? Is she in contact with him?’
‘Maybe,’ said Ella, too tired to explain everything tonight. ‘I’ll message you in the morning.’
‘Don’t message,’ said Gabriel. ‘Come back to London. I did some more digging just now. Turns out he does own other real estate, through an offshore trust in Cayman. He’s actually a remarkably active investor for an eighty-year-old. And you’ll never guess which property he picked up in private sale just this week, for twice its listed value?’
‘Which?’ asked Ella grumpily. She’d never enjoyed guessing games.
‘Number 24 Liasti Beach Road.’
Ella’s heart leaped into her mouth.
‘Otherwise known as Villa Mirage. Now who do we know who’d pay twice what it’s worth to get hold of Makis Alexiadis’s former center of operations and take it over, lock stock and barrel?’ Gabriel chuckled. ‘Nice work, Miss Praeger. It looks like we’ve come full circle. And now you and I have some travel plans to arrange.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Athena Petridis tightened her silk kimono robe around her slender waist and opened the sliding glass doors to the deck, taking her coffee with her. It was her favorite time of day: early morning, an hour or two after sunrise, when the warm promise of the day to come hung soft and sweet in the air, but the ocean breeze made the heat comfortable rather than cloying. And this morning was even lovelier than usual, with one of those spectacular, pina-colada skies that only the Greek islands could produce, an almost tacky riot of azure blue and soft pink and burnt-sienna orange bleeding out from a lazily rising sun.
All the tourists and villa owners were still in their beds, sleeping off the excesses of the prior night’s drinking and dancing and general indulgence. But the army of workers on whose backs the island was run – the garbage collectors and delivery men and fishermen and boutique owners – they were all awake and buzzing around in the streets below Villa Mirage, their mingled shouts and idling engines and clattering crates of produce providing a background soundtrack of life and vibrancy to the otherwise tranquil scene.
It’s good to be alive, Athena thought. And even better to be waking up here, in the house that Makis Alexiadis built. She felt like a conquering empress, or a goddess atop Mount Olympus. Powerful. Protected. Reborn.
Leaning back on one of Makis’s ultra-modern sun loungers (some of the furniture would have to go; she would speak to Dimitri Mantzaris later, have one of her people send through a list of changes), Athena gazed down at the glorious manicured gardens that spilled in terraces down the cliffside until they seemed to merge with the tranquil blue of the sea. There was no doubt about it, this was an incredible house, and a fitting center of operations for the rebirth of an empire.
It pleased her that Dimitri had bought it for her. That, despite her new face, new life and new identity – Athena Solakis, as she would henceforth be known – she would still maintain some links with the past. Her affair with Dimitri felt so preposterously long ago now. And of course, it was. Dimi had been president then, a powerful, virile man in his mid-fifties. Now he was old and fat and walked with a cane, crippled by an arthritic knee, sustained only by memories of past glories.
His race is run. But mine isn’t. The fates have not yet finished paying for what they did, for taking Apollo from me.
The ancient Egyptians believed that ‘true’ death came only after your name was forgotten, no longer written or spoken out loud. By branding the letters of her son’s name onto the bodies of her victims (P on the Japanese woman who’d followed her to London, L on the migrant child, As and Os on countless others’), Athena had made sure Apollo lived on. She had vented her anger, hit back at the fates, and created a memorial to her darling baby, engraved not in stone but in the flesh of her enemies. Spyros’s old calling card had inspired her, helping to obfuscate the true meaning of Athena’s coded message. But the longer it took the world to figure it out, the longer Apollo’s soul would live on. Athena would keep writing his name until she, too, had left this world. Until her son’s spirit and her own were finally reunited, never again to be torn apart.
Sipping her coffee, the strong, black Turkish blend that Spyros had got her hooked on twenty years ago, Athena contemplated the day ahead. This morning she must talk to all her South American suppliers about the unconscionable hikes in cocaine prices, and pay bonuses to two of her top enforcers in the Czech Republic for securing a valuable piece of commercial real estate from a ‘reluctant’ seller. After that she had two hours of physiotherapy with the local girl she’d hired to take over where the indomitable Nurse Mary had left off in Burgundy. Sweet Mary. Athena had far preferred Peter’s English nurse to Helen, the sullen, shaven-headed Mykonos girl that her private doctor, Farouk, had recommended to help her combat the limp in her left leg, a hangover from the helicopter crash that remained the last, telltale giveaway to Athena’s old identity. To Athena’s eyes, Helen seemed deeply distasteful, all puppy fat and attitude. But apparently she had a stellar reputation as a physio, renowned for fast and lasting results. And now, at the moment of her rebirth, that was all that mattered.
Draining the last of her coffee, Athena turned to go back inside. Catching sight of her reflection in Makis’s gleaming glass doors, she stopped and did a double take. This last week at Villa Mirage had helped not just to heal her bruises but to tan her face a light nut-brown. Her newly dyed dark hair, cut in a feathered bob, framed her face beautifully, and though she would never again boast the radiance of youth, her green eyes shone with hope and the promise of great things to come. Her figure, of course, had always been excellent, slim and toned and with none of the middle-aged spread that other women her age succumbed to so meekly, relinquishing their last vestiges of attraction or claims to male sexual interest without so much as a fight.
Not Athena. You’re beautiful again, she told her reflection. Her legendary allure, in hibernation for twelve long years, was coming back to life like a delicate snowdrop tentatively unfurling its petals in the first thaw of spring after a long, hard winter. Perhaps, once the hard work of regaining her iron grip on Spyros’s empire was complete, she would consider finding a lover? Someone younger, perhaps, but not so young that they couldn’t challenge her. A world of possibilities awaited.
The physiotherapist walked into the kitchen, her sneakers squeaking and squelching in an irritating rhythm with each step.
They were only halfway through the physio session, but already Athena felt drained, not so much by the monotony of the repeated exercises and stretches, but by the young therapist’s almost comical lack of personality. Helen wasn’t rude, or at least not to a point where one could reasonably object to her manner. When Athena asked her a question, she answered politely. And if Athena exhibited any pain or exhaustion with a certain exercise, the physio instinctively paused, waiting uncomplainingly for her patient to regain strength. Yet despite this, almost everything about Helen irked Athena, from her butch hairstyle and gait, to her ugly, shapeless clothes – loose green scrubs hid what Athena could only assume were fat legs, if the blubber rolls around the girl’s belly were anything to go by. Her face might have been pretty, even though most of the time it was half hidden beneath a mannish baseball cap. The only really striking feature was her oddly wide-set eyes – familiar eyes, Athena thought, on the rare occasions they made direct contact with her own. But Helen was nothin
g if not professional, and made a point of focusing most of her attention on the motion of Athena’s left knee and ankle, rather than on her newly beautiful features.
Perhaps that was what irked Athena the most: the fact that this uniquely un-compelling young woman should find her, the legendary Athena, uncompelling too. No more noteworthy or interesting than any of her other charges.
‘What are you doing in there?’ Athena demanded now. Perched on the edge of one of Makis’s ornate, silk-covered footstools, she gingerly stretched her aching leg out in front of her.
‘I’m getting you something for the pain,’ replied Helen, in her grating island accent.
‘Don’t bother. I don’t do painkillers,’ Athena called out bluntly from the other room. ‘I need a short break, that’s all.’
‘No need to worry,’ said Helen. As if she, this young nobody, possessed the ability to worry Athena Solakis. ‘This isn’t an opiate or anything addictive. It’s a homeopathic powder I use with all my clients. I mix it with fish oils for overall joint health and a custom blend of multivitamins for energy. It works.’
Athena grunted gracelessly, still unsure why she felt so annoyed. This was the most she’d heard Helen speak during their time together, and if her magic powder really did work, it might escalate her recovery. The pain in Athena’s leg was mild but it was persistent, no doubt a contributor to her present bad mood.
‘All right, but hurry up,’ she commanded. ‘I have a busy schedule this afternoon and we need to get these stretches finished.’
‘Of course, Ms Solakis,’ the girl said obediently. ‘I won’t be long.’
A few moments later, she emerged, waddling in with a glass of unappetizing-looking sludge-brown liquid fizzing in her hand.
Frowning, Athena reached for it.
‘What? What’s the matter?’ she snapped. As her long, bony fingers wrapped themselves around the glass, the girl’s pudgier ones refused to let go. Almost as if she didn’t want Athena to drink it. Their eyes locked, and for a moment Athena could have sworn she saw something searching in Helen’s gaze. An unspoken question. A hesitation, but with a hint of something deeper. Fear? Pleading?
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