The Phoenix

by Sidney Sheldon

  ‘Nothing,’ said the girl. But she was still holding on to the glass. ‘Nothing’s the matter.’

  ‘In that case … may I?’ Athena looked slowly from the girl to the glass and back again. Those wide eyes were beginning to haunt her.

  Finally, as if released from a trance, the physio released her grip. ‘Of course. It doesn’t taste very nice I’m afraid.’

  Raising the noxious-looking liquid impatiently to her lips, Athena downed it in two swift gulps, grimacing as the last bitter drops descended into her stomach.

  ‘Revolting,’ she muttered. ‘But I think I’m OK to resume now. Shall we go back out to the terrace?’

  Helen had turned away. When she spoke her voice sounded different. Less grating, somehow.

  ‘I’d give it a minute or two if I were you,’ she said softly.

  ‘I don’t want to give it a—’ Athena began, but her words were cut short by a strange, cramping sensation in her stomach. It was swiftly followed by a tingling in the tips of her fingers and toes that was hard to describe but was distinctly unpleasant, like a sort of burning numbness.

  She groaned, clasping her hands to her belly.

  Helen turned around slowly. She made no reaction to her patient’s obvious distress. Instead, removing her baseball cap, she placed it deliberately on the table beside her, and ran a hand over the fuzz covering her shaven skull.

  Athena grimaced. ‘Call Georgiou,’ she hissed, through clenched teeth. ‘Tell him … Dr Farouk …’ She was fighting for breath now, gasping like a stranded fish. The numb heat in her fingers and toes was spreading along her arms and legs, making it difficult to move, and her lungs and chest felt painfully constricted.

  What’s happening? She fought back a surge of panic. Am I having a heart attack? Or a stroke? Am I going to die?

  Wide-eyed and frightened, she stared helplessly at Helen. Why was the stupid girl just standing there doing nothing? Surely she could see something was very wrong? Why hadn’t she gone to fetch Georgiou, the butler, as Athena had requested? Opening her mouth to protest, Athena found her jaw was suddenly clamped shut. A rigor-like tension was setting in to her neck and facial muscles in some awful, painful paralysis. Flailing her arms, she clutched wildly at a side table, missed and landed with a thud on the carpeted floor.

  Immobile, eyes glazed, she watched as dumpy Helen stepped over her, with no more ceremony than if she were a sack of rubbish or a rolled-up rug. Walking slowly over to the door, Helen locked it with an audible click. Then she flipped a switch to darken the windows to blackout and turned on the overhead lights.

  She knows her way around the house, thought Athena, clocking the girl’s sure, confident movements as she glided around the room, straightening a tablecloth here or a framed photograph there, taking her time.

  Finally satisfied, Helen sat down and gazed impassively at Athena, lying motionless on the floor. Athena’s sense of foreboding grew. Something clearly wasn’t right. Why won’t the fat slug help me? A dribble of saliva escaped Athena’s lips as she struggled again to speak. And then, suddenly, through the fog of terror and confusion, it dawned on her.

  The powder. ‘I use it with all my clients.’

  She’s poisoned me. The bitch has poisoned me!

  Even in the throes of panic, Athena’s sharp mind raced. Who was this girl? ‘Helen’ knew where all the switches and systems were inside the villa. She’d clearly been here before. Had she worked for Makis? Was she loyal to him, perhaps, or to someone else within his faction? Dr Farouk had recommended her. Had he been on Makis’s payroll too? Perhaps they were both part of a rebel clique within the organization still plotting to overthrow her, a hardcore Mykonos inner circle? Dimitri had warned her about coming here to Makis’s own lair so soon after her rival’s demise. If only she’d listened!

  Removing her cap, Ella leaned back and shifted forwards in her chair, trying to find a less uncomfortable position. The prosthetic fat rolls she wore under her scrubs chafed everywhere and made every small movement more difficult. But as she’d learned at Camp Hope, changing one’s body language and walk could be two of the most important elements in a successful disguise. Being heavy and ungainly had helped her feel like Helen, and that alone had been enough to pull the wool over Athena’s self-centered, narcissistic eyes.

  She’d imagined this moment countless times: revealing herself to Athena as she lay dying, so that the monster’s final thought on earth would be that Rachel Praeger’s daughter had outsmarted and destroyed her. That she, Ella Praeger, had fulfilled her life’s destiny and avenged her mother’s murder at last. But now that it was actually happening, the closure she’d dreamed of eluded her. She felt no pity for Athena. She deserved none. But although it pained her to admit it, Ella found herself disappointed, even regretful, that their cat-and-mouse game should be coming to an end. For better or worse, there had been a connection between the two of them. Ella had felt it back at the convent, and she was sure Athena felt it too: a toxic yet magnetic pull towards each other. An intertwining of their lives and fates and purposes, so that only one of them could ultimately survive. Athena’s death would mean that Ella had won. But it would also mean the game was over. It shocked Ella to realize just how desolate that made her feel.

  ‘You!’ Athena gasped, the effort of forming and expelling the word almost more than she could bear. Soon, she knew, speech would be impossible. She must try now.

  ‘You recognize me, then?’ the girl asked, but in English this time, the flawless English of a native-born American. Her eyes bored defiantly into Athena’s own. How could she not have seen it before? The high cheekbones, those wide-set cartoon eyes …

  ‘You’re the girl from the convent,’ she tried to say. ‘The bakery girl!’ But what actually came out was a slurred mass of words, barely comprehensible.

  With an effort, Ella caught the word ‘bakery’.

  ‘That’s right. Very good. I was the girl from the bakery on Folegandros. You saw me at the convent that day.’ Heaving herself out of the chair, Ella kneeled down so that her face was only inches from Athena’s. ‘I ought to have killed you then but I was too inexperienced. I wasn’t prepared, and I was following orders. Not any more, though. I play by my own rules now.’

  She smiled, reflecting for a moment that it was actually she and Gabriel who had set the agenda for today’s strike. The reality was it was their rules now, not just hers. Almost without her noticing, their relationship had shifted from ‘mentor and recruit’, to allies, to true partners. Even so, killing Athena Petridis was personal to Ella Praeger in a way that it could never be for Gabriel, no matter how much he hated her.

  Reaching down, she slipped her hands under Athena’s armpits and dragged her across the room, before pulling her up into a sitting position and propping her back against the base of an armchair. Her paralysis was almost complete now, so it was like moving a dead weight.

  This woman murdered your mother, she reminded herself, determined not to allow any glimmer of compassion to creep in and derail her. Rachel had begged for her life. She had pleaded with Athena – as a woman, as a mother – to spare her. But Athena had just watched while Spyros held her head under the water. While he drowned her like an unwanted cat in a bag.

  Strengthened, Ella began the monologue she’d been rehearsing in her head for days.

  ‘You have between five and fifteen minutes left, in case you were wondering,’ she told Athena. ‘Nobody’s coming. These are your last moments on earth. I’d like you to think about that.’

  The slumped figure made a low, groaning noise, mostly through her nose, but that was all.

  ‘The liquid you just drank contained a nerve agent. It’s similar to Novichok, which I know you’re familiar with,’ Ella went on. ‘It’s fatal, irreversible, and reasonably painful. Although not as painful as you deserve. The cramps are from your stomach starting to hemorrhage, although your lungs or heart are likely to give way before that kills you.’

  Another groan
and the rolling of the eyes triggered a seizure-like spasm, stiff and uncontrolled. Foam had begun to appear at the corners of Athena’s newly perfected lips, a sign that things were progressing more swiftly than Ella had intended. There wasn’t much time.

  ‘My real name is Ella. Ella Praeger,’ she said quickly, scanning Athena’s expression for a reaction. But all she could make out was the generalized fear and dilated pupils of a person anticipating imminent death. Had she left it too late?

  But no. Athena ought to be lucid, right to the end. The poison Ella had administered had no effect on the cognitive function of the brain. Victims were supposed to be able to hear, see and understand perfectly, despite the pain.

  ‘My mother was Rachel Praeger,’ Ella pushed on, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘You stood by and watched while your husband drowned her on a private beach near Athens. Do you remember?’

  Athena let out a dreadful, guttural sound that might have been a death rattle. Mucus streamed from her nose, but her eyes remained fixed on Ella’s. She couldn’t seem to respond, but she was listening.

  ‘Rachel worked for The Group, back in the 1990s, and her dream was for me to work for them too. So now I do. We’re the ones who brought down your helicopter by the way, in case you never figured it out. We destroyed your evil husband and now I’m here to finish the job. You are about to die, Athena.’ Ella’s voice broke with emotion. ‘Is there anything you want to say to me?’

  Athena’s eyes glistened with tears. Her lips were moving, faintly and apparently silently. Ella brought her ear as close as she could, straining to hear. And at last she did, a single, breathy word.

  ‘Apollo.’

  Rage flowed into Ella’s body like lava. No. No, no, no! The monster’s last word could not be about her dead son. About her loss. She didn’t deserve that! It was Ella’s loss that mattered now. Ella’s pain. Ella’s vengeance.

  Clamping Athena’s face between her hands, she forced her to look at her.

  ‘Do. You. Remember. My. Mother?’ she demanded, stabbing out each word like a switchblade.

  Athena’s lips parted. For the last time, the two women looked at one another, face to face. Then, with a final effort of will, defeating the demands of her collapsing body, Athena’s bony fingers grasped Ella’s collar and she whispered back a single, Greek word. A word that meant that she, Athena Petridis, would not let her killer win. That the last laugh, even in death, would be hers.

  ‘Óχι.’ She breathed defiantly at Ella.

  No.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Six weeks later …

  Ella sat in the back of the UberX, her face pressed to the window as the rain streamed down. Outside, the streets and beaches of East Hampton were deserted, the wet October weather leaving an eerie, glistening sheen on the grand, weather-boarded homes with their drenched gardens, ghostly visions of green and white beneath a brooding, gray sky.

  Once again Ella reflected on the unlikely series of events that had brought her here. How utterly crazy everything had been since Mykonos, and the fateful day of Athena’s death. Not death, she reminded herself, her gaze fixed on a single raindrop snaking its way down the car window. Murder.

  I murdered Athena Petridis.

  One day, Ella imagined, those shocking words would have the effect they were supposed to. They would elicit some profound feeling in her. Not guilt, perhaps, because there was no question that Athena deserved to die. But awe would surely be appropriate? Awe for the magnitude and finality of what she had done, of ending another human life. It worried her that right now she felt nothing at all beyond a nagging discomfort that Athena’s last word on earth – ‘no’ – had been a denial of the admission Ella had so desperately craved.

  No, she didn’t remember Ella’s mother.

  No, Rachel Praeger’s drowning had not been a significant event in her life. Losing Apollo, her own son, that was what she remembered, that was what she cared about. Not Ella’s mother, or any of her myriad other victims.

  ‘Forget her,’ Gabriel had told Ella robustly as they boarded the seaplane back to the mainland, just hours after the murder. Ella had been voicing her disappointment, although she’d wisely omitted the part about already missing the thrill of the chase. ‘She’s dead, and nothing she said or did matters any more,’ said Gabriel. ‘Besides, who knows what she really meant by that one word? People aren’t rational in the moment of death. Or when they’re in pain. Athena was experiencing both.’

  Ella nodded mutely. He was right. It just didn’t make her feel any better. It occurred to her that she might be in shock. Her teeth were chattering, and the heavy wool blanket Gabriel had wrapped around her shoulders was doing nothing to alleviate the chills. Sipping hot, sweet tea from the flask he’d given her, she looked down at the procession of police cars and ambulances making their belated way up the cliff towards Villa Mirage, trying desperately to shake off the feeling of misery that engulfed her.

  What’s done is done and can never be undone.

  Where had she learned that? At school?

  And just like that, flashes of another life began to come back to her: Mimi, the ranch, high school. How different she’d been. How ‘other’. How unexplainable, even to herself. She remembered her desperation to get away, to leave Paradise Valley and her lonely existence there. The thrill of college at Berkeley, swiftly followed by the misery of her debilitating headaches, the shame and isolation of hearing ‘voices’ in her head and worrying about her mental health.

  Then she thought about her life in San Francisco. Gary Larson, her awful, lecherous boss at Biogen; Bob and his wife Joanie, her first true friends. And Mimi’s death. The funeral, the day that changed everything. The first time she’d laid eyes on Gabriel …

  She turned and looked at him, sitting beside her in the cramped seaplane, her thoughts bringing her full circle. Even in Athena’s dying moments, the most significant event in her life to date, Gabriel had been on Ella’s mind. Almost as if he were a part of her, as if his irritating, transmitted ‘voice’ had become internalized, a permanent fixture of Ella’s inner life. They’d grown closer in the last two months, since breaking away from The Group, that was for sure. They’d both learned to communicate better, their common goal of finding and killing Athena and keeping one step ahead of Redmayne ultimately overcoming their former rivalry and distrust. And yet, despite this closeness, this fragile brotherhood, it struck Ella that she still knew almost nothing about this man who had changed her life so profoundly. This infuriating, yet addictive person who had led her here, introduced her to The Group and encouraged her to use her abilities, her extraordinary gifts, to serve a higher purpose. This man – who had told her the truth about her parents and convinced her it was moral to kill another human being if it were done in the name of justice – remained an enigma.

  Thanks to Gabriel, Ella Praeger had been born again, for better or worse. She had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of her old life. And yet in so many ways, all the important ways, he was a stranger.

  ‘Who are you?’ Ella had wanted to ask him. But she knew that, if she did, she would probably get only half an answer. She consoled herself that maybe that was all he had to give. After all, she barely knew who she was any more: a grieving daughter?

  A cold-blooded killer? A genetically modified freak? Perhaps, imperfect as it was, the bond she and Gabriel had formed would have to be enough.

  When they landed at the same private airstrip in Northern Greece that they’d flown out of together just weeks before, Gabriel handed Ella a fresh weekend bag full of new clothes, papers and cash. Then he helped her into the back seat of the jeep that would take her to Athens’s international airport, and her flight to Stockholm, where they’d agreed Ella would lie low until the mysterious death of ‘Athena Solakis’, Dimitri Mantzaris’s reclusive tenant, died down. Once the news cycle moved on, Ella would be free to return home to San Francisco, if that’s what she wanted. At some point she
would have to decide what she intended to do with the rest of her life. Whether she would return to The Group, rebuilding bridges after her flagrant rule-breaking with Gabriel, and allow her ‘gifts’ to be used on other, future missions. Or whether avenging her mother’s murder already marked a fitting end to the bizarre chapter in her life that had begun with Mimi’s death and ended with that of Athena Petridis.

  Climbing wearily into the car, she turned to Gabriel and asked the unspoken question hovering in the air between them.

  ‘Will I see you again?’

  Reaching into the back seat, he touched her cheek lightly with the back of his hand. It was an unusually intimate gesture for him – loving, even. To Ella’s embarrassment she felt tears welling up in her eyes and a lump forming in the back of her throat.

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He forced a smile. ‘That might depend on our friend Mr Redmayne. But soon I hope. Once it’s safe. Take care of yourself, Ella.’

  Now, reminiscing in the back of a different car, and safely on US soil once again, the finality of Gabriel’s parting words hit Ella forcefully. In his own repressed, stiff-upper-lip way, he’d been saying goodbye.

  Ella hadn’t seen him since that day, and she had no idea where he was.

  From the moment she’d landed in Stockholm, none of Gabriel’s cell phones or email addresses worked. He had simply disappeared, like a ghosting lover, melting out of Ella’s life as swiftly and completely as he had first materialized in it. Walking alone through the cobbled streets of Stockholm’s romantic old town, Gamla Stan to the locals, muffled up against the autumn chill, Ella could almost believe that the entire last six months of her life had never happened. That it had all been a crazy, elaborate dream. Without Gabriel, none of it seemed real.