‘I was hoping we’d have an opportunity to meet.’
‘Indeed? So, you’re either a wannabe writer, or you’re a messenger.’
His blue eyes twinkled. ‘I’m afraid I have no talent as a writer. But I suppose I do have a message to deliver.’
‘I’m all ears.’
Breen tugged at his shirtsleeves which had ridden up. Then he straightened the hem of his trousers. When he was convinced that all hems and seams were in the right place, he said, ‘We British have an unusual position here on the island. You may be aware that we have a long history together, the UK and Cyprus.’
‘You have a couple of military bases in enclaves with leases extending to the Second Coming.’
‘Exactly. And we have quite a large British expat community. In general, we have an excellent relationship with the locals, and of course we very much wish it to remain that way.’
‘I want to thank you for taking the time to follow me to deliver that important news, Mr Breen.’
Frosty smile. He was amused by my impertinence. And that’s what he thought it was: impertinence. Lèse majesté, the smug prick. He wouldn’t have tried to come off as upper crust around a fellow Brit, but he figured me for an American who thought all British accents were identically cool.
‘Given that we are guests in this country,’ Breen continued, all calm reasonableness. He was explaining, like you might to an idiot or a child. ‘We feel it is very important to avoid drawing attention to ourselves. We don’t like to make waves. We cannot afford to be seen as a problem. So, we do what we can to make sure that no expat becomes a problem.’
I was getting irritated. ‘Jeremy Berthold – I call him Jez because we’re tight – pulled up to the beach last night minutes after a refugee boat came ashore.’
Oh, the improbably-named Thorne Breen was good, this guy: not a flicker. And he didn’t waste time spitting out the bait, instead he swallowed it and chewed the hook. ‘Mr Berthold is very concerned for the plight of refugees.’
‘Uh-huh. Mr Jeremy Berthold, formerly of MI6 …’
The amused smile flickered at that.
‘… and patron of charities, is very concerned with refugee boats. So concerned he got there at record speed. I checked the times. I found out where Berthold lives, and I checked the first tweets about the boat, and guess what? He couldn’t have gotten there from his home, not that fast.’ This was all bluff, I had no idea where Berthold lived.
‘Mr Berthold’s comings and goings are really none of your business.’ We were getting from ‘message’ to ‘threat’ by degrees.
‘I’d counter that my comings and goings are none of Mr Berthold’s business. I’m an American tourist, not a Brit expat. And yet, here you are warning me to fuck off.’
‘Nonsense, no one is telling you to fuck off, Mr Mitre. Enjoy the island. Enjoy the beaches and the sunshine and the food and wine. Stay as long as you like. But perhaps avoid dipping your toes in troubled waters.’
‘You know, Breen, the only reason I give a shit what happens on this little island is that a local cop named Kiriakou dragged me into it.’
I said that to get a reaction. The reaction I got what was not what I expected. ‘Really? And nothing to do with a, ah … vacationing … FBI agent?’
Now it was my turn to gulp and try to look unimpressed. It was also time for me to toss off some quip, some bon mot, some kind of intelligent response. But for once no words came.
Breen leaned forward, invading my space, daring me to back up. In a low voice, he said, ‘I don’t know why you’re helping the FBI, Mr Mitre. I don’t know why you’re sticking your nose into people’s business. Our community has among its number several people who wish only to be left in peace and anonymity, and those people, Mr Mitre, have the power to make life very unpleasant for you, unpleasant even to the point of an early end to same.’
There we go, I thought: now that’s a threat.
‘It’s like I’m being threatened by the chamber of commerce,’ I said.
‘Read between the lines, Mr Mitre. You of all people should be able to do that.’ He nodded at the bartender, made a hand gesture indicating that he was paying for my drink as well and walked out.
I was gratified to see Tail #1 follow Breen out toward the street.
TWENTY-SIX
Chante was in my villa, on my couch, feet up on my coffee table, reading one of my books. She barely looked up as I came in.
‘Huh. I could have sworn this was my house,’ I said, doing a comic mime of confusion.
‘My toilet is plugged. Dame Stella says the plumber can’t come tonight.’
‘So, you took a dump here, then poured yourself a drink?’
She had gone to my little bar and was pouring me a Talisker. What was I going to do? Stop her?
I sat down opposite Chante, fighting the urge to ask her what she thought of my book, which would have been needy. ‘So how’s Minette?’
‘Gone.’
‘What? Why?’
‘They are done shooting on Cyprus. They are going to California.’
‘Minette didn’t invite you along?’
Chante sighed. ‘I am not welcome in America.’
‘Please tell me it’s because you’re secretly a terrorist.’
She did not smile. Granted, she never smiled, but this non-smile was even less smiley than usual. ‘I once dated a woman. A Pakistani woman. After we broke up, she blew herself up in a Karachi marketplace, killing six people.’
‘Jesus. You didn’t suspect?’
‘That the same woman who would do anything to give me pleasure, and from whom I withheld nothing in return, would become a fanatic? No, I did not suspect that.’
‘Now you’re on the no-fly list.’
‘Now I am unemployed,’ she said, and poured herself some more of what I had to remind myself was my whiskey. My glass, too.
A thought occurred to me. It was a stupid thought, as my brain kept telling me, nevertheless, I persisted and from my mouth came fateful words. ‘I have a one-day gig you could do. If you were up for something … unusual.’
Her look eloquently conveyed what she thought of what she thought I was asking her.
‘No, no. Christ, Chante, give me some credit. For a start, I don’t hit on women young enough to be my daughter. And b) I don’t hit on lesbians.’ I silently added the caveat, unless they’re rich. And I don’t even do that anymore. For a moment, I was distracted by a swelling pride in my own virtue. Then I arrived back in reality, and said, ‘Can you drive a scooter?’
‘I am French.’
‘Okay, well, Agent Delia needs a guy followed. I’m helping her, but we could use another person. I want someone on a scooter.’
‘This would be for Delia?’
The word ‘Delia’ came out sounding like ‘the Pope’ or ‘Ghandi’ or maybe ‘Beyoncé.’
‘Yep,’ I said. ‘But I’d be the one paying you.’
‘I will accept no pay for helping Delia.’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘I am sleeping on this couch tonight,’ Chante announced, patting the cushion beside her. ‘In case I need the toilet. I require a pillow and a blanket.’
Here’s the amazing thing: I fetched her a pillow and a blanket. And put a bottle of water on the coffee table where she could reach it in the night.
In the morning, we had breakfast together. Chante cooked – a frittata with potatoes and spinach and feta cheese. She could cook, and she could make a decent cup of coffee. And she was really good at shutting up until said coffee had osmosed into my brain.
After I cleaned up, because apparently that was my job, I went outside and crawled under my car. I removed the GPS tracker, and was just scooting back out from under, when I spotted a second device. Two GPS trackers? I removed the second one as well and placed both devices on my dining room table.
Chante looked up at that. ‘Those are GPS devices.’
‘So they are. They seem to have become at
tached to my car. Ready?’
We drove to Delia’s hotel – a new place, one where people had not recently engaged in an elevator knife fight. I texted her and she came down. Chante moved to the back seat.
I jerked my head toward Chante. ‘An extra body. I got her a scooter. Like Batgirl.’
‘Hello, Chante,’ Delia said. ‘It’s very good to see you again.’
‘Thank you!’ Chante blurted. ‘I’m happy to … do … whatever it is you, we …’
‘Unbelievable,’ I muttered.
Delia and I did not discuss the case, not with Chante still mostly in the dark. She didn’t need to know what we were up to, nor did she need to know dangerous facts about me, she just needed to know Delia was involved. But Delia did turn around to explain the basics.
‘We are following a man who we expect to arrive at a certain bank. We must find out where he goes when he leaves the bank.’
‘I arranged a rented scooter for her,’ I repeated.
‘Good,’ Delia said. ‘And you really must put the top up, David, we are too obvious.’
We located the scooter rental place, hooked Chante up with a nice little 125cc scooter, and I put my top up. From there it was a short ride to the AZX Bank.
Chante took up position just in front of the bank in a rank of two dozen nearly identical scooters. She sat astride the bike with earbuds in and occasionally played with her phone, looking like any other random, rude, angry, lock-ignoring, couch-appropriating, toilet-stealing girl on a scooter listening to music and waiting for a date.
Delia and I found a coffee shop half a block west. We stood around until one of the outdoor tables opened up and snatched it out from under a pair of Italian tourists. Delia sat facing the bank – she was the only one who knew the guy we were looking for.
‘We look conspicuous,’ Delia said.
‘You always look conspicuous, Delia, there aren’t a lot of women who look like you.’ I waited. ‘That’s a compliment.’
‘Oh. Thank you. But you know, David, if this was a workplace, that kind of remark would have you up before Human Resources.’
‘One more reason to avoid workplaces.’ We sipped coffee in silence in the shadow of tall buildings. Traffic flowed heavier than I expected and I was glad I had thought to get Chante on a scooter. Then, I said, ‘OK, I can see where it might get irritating. Me hitting on you, I mean.’
‘Welcome to the twenty-first century, David Mitre,’ she said, but not unkindly.
‘So,’ I said, ‘we’ve got time to kill. You know my story, what’s yours? Where are you from? What do your folks do? What’s your favorite movie? What’s your position on putting pineapple on pizza?’
‘Unalterably opposed to pineapple on pizza. Favorite movie?’ She had to think about that, which took some time. I guessed she was sorting possibilities with an eye toward revealing nothing about herself. Then, finally, ‘Okay, I’ve got three movies. Mad Max: Fury Road …’
‘Because Imperator Furiosa,’ I interjected.
‘The Sting—’
‘Because you secretly like grifters?’
‘Sure,’ she drawled. ‘That’s it. Not that I like Paul Newman or Robert Redford. And, well, Moonlight.’
‘Because—’
‘No, not because it’s a black movie,’ she snapped.
‘I was going to say because it’s beautifully shot, and the score is really original, and the acting is great. And there are a couple of moments where your heart just … stops.’
That earned a rare Delia smile. But mockery came on its heels. ‘Much better, David, much better way to hit on a woman.’
‘Cynic. Are you going to tell me where you’re from, or is that Top Secret, Eyes Only?’
‘I was born in Muleshoe, Texas.’
I showed happy teeth. ‘No. I refuse to believe that. First, I refuse to believe that’s a real place, and second, I refuse to believe a place named Muleshoe produces people like you.’
‘Muleshoe born, but raised mostly in Austin. I did my undergrad at UT. Poli Sci.’ She added her graduation year.
‘Austin?’
‘Have you been?’
I nodded. Yeah, I’d been to Austin, Texas. And there, Delia, I had a chance to be a better man, and you know what? I wasn’t a better man. I was just me, and there were jewels to steal and money to scam and some guy blowing his brains out in a Bugatti still in my future. And because life just enjoys fucking with me, you were there, too, Delia, just a few years behind the girl in the window. You’d have been a high school freshman as she was graduating from college, and as I was busy ignoring flashing warning lights the size of the Death Star and hurtling down the path to prison.
I said none of that. Delia already had a low enough opinion of my judgment.
We’d arrived a few minutes before the bank opened its doors and figured we could hold out for an hour before we’d need to relocate both us and Chante or risk being hard to ignore. But just forty-five minutes into our siege, Delia stiffened.
‘Hey.’ She nodded and I did a slow, casual, where-did-I-put-my-bag turn. ‘White male, five eleven, one seventy to one eighty pounds, approximately thirty-eight years of age, blue sports coat and jeans.’
‘That sounded so FBI. Can we do “presumed armed and dangerous,” too?’
I watched as Nestor Panagopolous – white male, five eleven, one seventy to one eighty pounds and approximately thirty-eight years – sauntered nonchalantly in the front door of the bank.
I texted Chante, who texted back, I see him.
Delia and I left the café and walked slowly toward the car, parked illegally around the corner.
My phone pinged. Coming out. Walking west.
‘Do we follow?’ I asked, as we climbed into the Mercedes.
‘Not yet. Let’s see if he goes for a car.’
The phone pinged. Yellow Porsche.
‘Douche,’ I muttered. I started the engine and drove around the corner. Two cars were between us and Chante’s scooter. Two cars beyond that we saw the Porsche. The yellow Porsche, which, first of all, is an ostentatiously obnoxious color to paint an obnoxious car, and second, was definitely not the car to choose if you don’t want to be tailed.
Panagopolous drove northeast along the wide ocean front that looked like a down-at-the-heels Nice. But he did not go far, just cleared downtown before heading inland and came to a small, nondescript office building of four floors.
We parked in the lot of the next building over and Chante pulled up beside us.
‘There will be a plaque or something listing the occupants,’ Delia said to Chante. ‘Are you comfortable wandering in and taking a quick pic with your phone?’
‘Of course, Delia.’
I said, ‘Keep your helmet on. They may have cameras. Make it look like you’re a messenger in the wrong building.’
I did not receive an of course, David, but Chante did leave her helmet on as she marched off.
‘She’s got a crush on you,’ I said.
‘I’m flattered,’ Delia said. ‘That young woman has depth. Layers.’
Chante came back and climbed in the back seat. She leaned forward to show us her photo.
‘Heh,’ I said.
‘Yes!’ Delia hissed. ‘ExMil.’
We were parked on the street, half a block away from the office building’s parking lot, so I didn’t worry too much about cameras, but we still had to be very careful. ExMil was nothing but suspicious guys who noticed details and liked guns.
We waited. And waited. And I really had to pee. Using text we arranged the matter, who would pee first, and where. The only spot was a small grocery store, which would not have a public restroom. It would take some talking and possibly some bribing. And since it was a pretty good bet that the store owner knew about ExMil, and had regular customers from there, we couldn’t be too obvious.
We managed the peeing and bought food and coffee. As the day grew hotter Chante and I switched places and I went and straddled her scoote
r leaving her with Delia running the air conditioning. Is it pathetic that I was jealous? The question answers itself.
Naturally Panagopolous chose that point to emerge. He went quickly to his car and burned rubber out of the parking lot. I cursed, started the scooter, and with one hand on the handlebar and the other on my phone I texted eating north, which, fortunately, Delia understood to mean heading north.
I manhandled my earbuds into place and told Siri to call Delia. Much better than texting.
‘Hey. We need to switch places. Pass me and I’ll drop back.’
We did that. And repeated the move again in a few more miles as we left urban areas and headed inland on narrow roads. Narrow was not good if Panagopolous was the wary sort.
Panagopolous slowed to turn onto a barely-paved road. We pulled past and braked into a turn-off. Panagopolous had gone up a private road, not a road we could take, certainly not without being spotted. I hopped in the car – the back seat because Delia was driving and Chante did not seem inclined to make room for me.
‘Mapping it,’ Delia said tersely. The three of us peered at the satellite view. The road only went on for another few hundred yards before it ended at what looked like a small compound of three buildings.
‘What do we do?’ Chante asked Delia.
‘We’ll have to sit here and hope Panagopolous eventually leads us to wherever he’s living.’
There followed another two hours of playing games on our phones and chatting. Chante started telling Delia her story, and I learned various useful facts. Chante was twenty-three, had left university before getting an art degree. Had worked for a while in a bookstore where, no, they did not stock my books (the snobs), before a friend hooked her up with Minette, who had just lost her personal assistant to pregnancy.
So, not really useful at all, but it passed the time.
Chante’s favorite movies were Hiroshima Mon Amour, Bound and Entre Les Murs, of which I had seen none and Delia had seen all but the last one.
It’s cramped in the back seat of a C-Class convertible. It’s no place for a six-foot-two man still recovering from serious wounds, that was certain. It’s even less comfortable when it’s your car, and the other two people in the car are ignoring you.
A Sudden Death in Cyprus Page 22
