Pandemic pr-2

by James Barrington

  ‘Hullo again, Andrew,’ Richter said. ‘Or should that be Alexei? Remember me?’ And as his mouth formed the last syllable, Richter moved. Moved too fast for Perini or Simpson or the DCPP officers or anyone else to stop him. His right thumb had been resting on the button of the flick-knife while he’d been talking. He depressed it and the lethally sharp blade snapped out and locked into place. In a single fluid movement Richter rotated the knife so that the cutting edge of the blade faced up – the way a professional would hold it – and whipped his right hand forward and upwards.

  The entire length of the blade sliced effortlessly through Lomas’s shirt and entered his stomach just above the navel, and before he could do anything but open his mouth and take a huge gulp of air preparatory to a scream, Richter’s left hand was encircling his right and he was lifting the knife, lifting it with all his considerable strength, powering it up through Lomas’s body, almost pulling the Russian off the ground, the knife point seeking out the vital organs located above his diaphragm.

  ‘Let me remind you then, you bastard,’ Richter hissed, his face close to Lomas’s right ear. ‘Raya Kosov, West London. You and your hoods sliced her to pieces. This is payback.’

  And then Lomas finally screamed, his howl of pain echoing off the sides of the valley and the villa walls. Perini began yelling and then grabbed Richter from behind, trying to pull him away, but it was like trying to shift a rock. Simpson, Richter realized, was somewhere over to his left and shouting for him to stop. The two DCPP officers were standing stock-still, stunned into immobility by the sudden and completely unexpected attack, while still detaining Lomas by the arms.

  And still Richter pulled the knife upwards, the blade slicing through skin, fat, blood vessels and intestines. Blood poured out of the gaping wound, down over Richter’s hands and forearms, soaking the front of the Kevlar jacket and his jeans, and splattered on to the gravel. Perini moved back, then forward again, and then Richter had no option but to stop, and pull out the knife, because the Italian had placed the muzzle of his Beretta Model 92 coldly against his temple.

  Simpson grabbed Richter’s left arm and swung him back and away from Lomas who, finally released by the two DCPP men, tumbled forward to the ground, collapsing clumsily into the dark spreading pool that was his own life blood. ‘You treacherous fucking bastard, Richter,’ Simpson spat. ‘You disobeyed my direct order. I told you we wanted Lomas alive.’

  ‘Tough,’ Richter snapped back, ‘I wanted him dead. If you’d had your way he’d have been stuck in a comfortable safe house and gently debriefed over a year or so, then handed back to the Russians or whoever he works for now with a note of apology. You probably wouldn’t even have got anything useful out of him. This bastard killed Raya Kosov, who I was protecting, and I believe in an eye for an eye.’

  Behind the two men a scene of noisy chaos unfolded. Somebody had found a towel in the house, and the two DCPP men were clamping it down over Lomas’s stomach, trying, without a great deal of success, to staunch the flow of blood. Perini had lost interest in Richter as soon as he’d pulled out the knife, and was barking orders into his headset radio. Simpson turned round to see what was happening, to see if Lomas was still alive and if they could salvage anything from this disaster. When he turned back again, Richter had simply vanished.

  Kandíra, south-west Crete

  Inspector Lavat pulled the paper mask tighter around his mouth, and checked his rubber gloves and overshoes. Dr Gravas looked him up and down critically, and nodded. They were ready, although they both anticipated this would be a very short visit.

  Jakob had been considerably less than helpful, but they had finally deduced that the ‘other Greek’ who had visited the bar was probably Nico Aristides, the only other member of Spiros’s family known to reside in Kandíra. Finding out where he lived had taken a further two hours, due to the in-built reluctance of all Cretans to divulge any information whatsoever to any police officer, or indeed any other authority figure.

  While it would not be true to say that the Cretans hate the police, they certainly dislike and distrust them, and the police, for their part, are cautious and suspicious, not least because of all the Western European nations, the Cretans are by far the best armed. Almost every family possesses at least one gun, and usually these are serious weapons ranging from combat shotguns up to sub-machine-guns, while virtually everyone seems to own a pistol. And the single characteristic of almost all these weapons is that they are completely unlicensed.

  When they knocked at Nico’s door there had been no reply, only an echoing silence that both men found ominous, though it could simply mean that Nico was out fishing or drinking or something. Unusually for Kandíra, his door was locked. In fact, Nico had acquired that habit long ago, when he’d first started ‘helping out’ his uncle with some of the objects he hauled up illicitly from the seabed.

  Now, with Lavat’s authority, they were going to break into the apartment. The policeman lifted a crowbar and placed the end of it firmly between the door itself and the jamb, directly above the lock. He heaved but for a few seconds nothing happened, then with a sudden crack the lock gave way and the door swung open.

  Lavat peered inside, listening intently. ‘Nico Aristides, this is the police,’ he called out, more in hope than anticipation. He was rewarded only by silence, glanced back at Gravas with a shrug and stepped carefully into the small apartment, keeping well to the centre of the hallway and away from the walls.

  He pushed open the second door he encountered with the tip of his crowbar. It proved to be the bedroom, and one glance was all he needed to realize that Nico Aristides would never go out drinking or fishing or anything else, ever again.

  Outskirts of Matera, Puglia, Italy

  The moment Simpson turned away, Richter had seized his opportunity. He’d taken off down the gravel drive, the crunch of his footsteps lost in the shouting that emanated from the men surrounding the villa. He turned left outside the gateway and ran back up the hill towards the waiting cars. He had to get there as quickly as possible, before Simpson or Perini did something to stop him.

  The Kevlar vest had been a potentially useful protection during the assault on the villa, but now it was just a liability. Richter undid the straps as he ran, then lifted the jacket over his head and tossed it to one side.

  Heart pounding, breath coming in short gasps, Richter ran off the roadway and onto the waste ground. The driver Perini had left to watch over the cars was still standing beside one of them, his head cocked to one side as he listened to some message relayed through his earpiece.

  As Richter came into view, the man’s eyes widened on seeing the massive bloodstains down the front of his jeans. The driver first slid his hand up towards his lapel microphone, then thought better of that and reached into the left side of his jacket. Richter had barely two seconds to act, no more. He accelerated his pace as much as he could, reaching the Italian just as the man pulled the Beretta clear of his shoulder holster.

  This was no time for finesse, and Richter just kept up his momentum, slamming his right shoulder into the Italian’s chest and knocking the breath from his body. The two men tumbled backwards, crashing into the side of the Alfa Romeo.

  The driver was still holding the pistol in his right hand, and Richter knew he must disarm him before he could train the Model 92 and pull the trigger. The Italian chopped Richter in the kidneys with his left hand, but because he was backed up against the car there was little room to swing, and it was thus a weak blow Richter could ignore.

  He turned his body to the left, placing his back towards the man’s chest, and reached up and out with both hands, grabbing his arm just above the wrist. Then Richter continued his turn to the left, bent forward at the hips and pulled downwards. The Italian flew over Richter, hitting the ground hard, to fall flat on his back and losing his grip on the pistol.

  Richter scooped up the Beretta and hurled it as far as he could, right over a low hedge and into the scrubby field beyond,
then turned his attention back to the driver. He was trying to get up, had made it onto his hands and knees. Richter had no quarrel with the man, but he hadn’t got time to mess about.

  He stepped across, kicked the Italian hard in the stomach, the impact virtually lifting him off the ground. He began retching, but he was young and strong, and Richter knew he’d recover in seconds, so he closed in again and hit him with a rabbit-punch, hard on the side of the neck. The driver collapsed in an unconscious heap.

  Pausing for a second to catch his breath, Richter then removed the keys from the ignition switches of three of the Alfas, locked each one carefully and then lobbed the keys in the same general direction that he’d earlier thrown the Beretta. He climbed into the fourth Alfa and started it up, powering it off the waste ground and up the hill, heading away from the villa.

  Richter was off and running, if not for his life then at least for his freedom.

  Kandíra, south-west Crete

  Nico Aristides was very clearly dead, apparently killed by the same unknown pathogen as his uncle. The policeman and doctor stood side by side in the doorway of his bedroom and looked across the small room at the still and silent body lying collapsed beside the bed.

  Unlike Spiros, who’d become fairly intoxicated, Nico had had little to drink the previous evening, and perhaps as a result his death had not been easy. There was blood everywhere, trailing across the floor, smeared on the walls and doors, a mute testament to the younger man’s desperate and ultimately futile attempts to find relief from the killer that was destroying him from within.

  ‘The same?’ Inspector Lavat asked, his voice slightly muffled by the mask he clutched carefully to his face.

  ‘The same,’ Gravas agreed. ‘We don’t go near him. Seal the door of the apartment, then close all the windows in the rest of this house. Best to put a policeman in the street outside. Nobody should come in here until the American specialists arrive.’

  Outskirts of Matera, Puglia, Italy

  ‘Where is he?’ shouted Perini, his face, contorted with rage, only inches from Simpson’s.

  The Englishman took a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe a trace of spittle off his cheek and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know, but it’s easy enough to guess. He’ll no doubt try and take one of your cars, then either head for the border or make for some airport, so that he can get out of Italy as soon as possible.’

  Perini stepped back and shouted orders to his men. Simpson watched as two of the DCPP officers left their current posts and began running up the hill towards the spot where they’d parked the cars. Then he glared at Simpson. ‘The French border?’ he demanded.

  ‘Maybe. Richter knows France well.’

  Perini shook his head. ‘He’ll never make it. It’s about twelve hundred kilometres up the length of Italy to get to France. I’ll put police checkpoints on the north-bound carriageway of every road in the country, and have a watch on all the airports and ferry terminals within the hour. And, Simpson,’ added Perini, menace in every syllable, ‘he’s your man and that makes his actions your responsibility. Don’t think for a moment that it’s finished here.’

  Simpson said nothing, just stared at Perini. The Italian dropped his eyes first, then glanced over his shoulder. Lomas was still alive but in excruciating pain, and weakening steadily from massive blood loss. The towels pressed against his stomach were sodden with blood but helped contain the bleeding. What everyone knew was that the wound was too big and too deep for any such crude effort to stem the flow. Unless Lomas received medical attention within a matter of minutes he was going to die.

  Seconds after the attack, Perini had called for an air ambulance. The helicopter was on its way from Bari, but there was no way it could get there for at least fifteen minutes. As far as Perini could see, Andrew Lomas was going to bleed to death here in the garden of the villa, and there was nothing any of them could do about it. And if he did die, then Perini wanted to see Paul Richter standing in front of an Italian judge on a charge of wilful murder.

  Simpson walked away a short distance and sat down on a wooden garden seat that was missing two slats. From the moment Richter had run, his priorities had changed. He had been absolutely furious when Richter attacked Lomas, although he could understand the reason for it, and would have done anything to stop him.

  But Simpson was a realist. Nothing he could say or do would alter the fact that Lomas lay dying fifteen feet away, and now the most important thing was to ensure that Richter didn’t fall into the hands of either the Italian police or the SISDE. He was simply too valuable to lose, and the last thing Simpson wanted was to see him banged up for years in some Italian prison.

  And, despite his comments to Perini, Simpson thought he knew precisely where Richter was heading, and exactly what he was going to do when he got there, because he knew one other important thing about Richter that the Italian didn’t.

  Richter was by now nearly two miles down the road, holding the Alfa at a steady hundred and thirty kilometres an hour. But he was heading south, not north.

  He had always possessed a highly developed sense of direction, so he knew precisely where he was and where he was going. He was retracing the route that the four cars had taken earlier that day, and the field where the helicopter had landed was now less than one minute away. And what Simpson knew, but nobody else involved in the incident was aware of, was that Richter was a qualified helicopter pilot.

  He’d joined the Royal Navy as a pilot, training first on fixed-wing aircraft, as was usual, and then cutting his teeth on the Gazelle trainer. He’d had two squadron tours, first flying a Wessex 5 and then a Sea King, before transferring to Sea Harriers. Like riding a bike, piloting a helicopter is a skill that, once mastered, tends to endure.

  Richter saw the lay-by just around the bend and hit the brakes hard, hauling his speed down and looking ahead for any oncoming traffic. There wasn’t any in evidence, so he waited until he was almost at the lay-by, then span the wheel hard left, pulled on the handbrake and executed a perfect bootlegger turn, sliding the Alfa across the road and into the lay-by, the vehicle facing back the way he had come.

  ‘I enjoyed that,’ he muttered to himself, pushing open the car door and running into the field, but it wasn’t obvious whether he was referring to what he’d inflicted on Lomas or to the manoeuvre just performed in the Alfa. Or maybe to both.

  Richter had noticed that Vento had been a passenger in one of the cars, so was presumably still somewhere near the villa. He ran across to the helicopter and seized the door handle, praying that Vento hadn’t locked it before he’d left.

  Aircraft aren’t like cars: any teenager with a modicum of intelligence can learn how to hot-wire a car within a few minutes, and can then get the vehicle moving as long as he’s got some basic knowledge of how it works. Aircraft, both fixed and rotary wing, are different. Typically, to get to one-circuit solo standard – in other words, to be able to taxi, take-off, fly around the airfield and land – in a single-engine, fixed-wing aircraft will take most people about fifteen hours of instruction. To become a competent amateur pilot will take fifty hours at the very least. The upshot of this is that aircraft are very rarely stolen, so pilots don’t usually bother locking them.

  As he had hoped and expected, the door handle turned easily. Richter climbed nimbly into the left-hand seat – the pilot’s. He’d earlier asked Perini if he could travel in the front seat for only one reason: he’d wanted to watch exactly how Vento started the aircraft. As soon as he sat down, Richter ran through precisely the same sequence of actions.

  Within two minutes of opening the pilot’s door, he had both engines running and the rotors starting to turn, and just thirty seconds after that he was ready for lift-off. Muttering a silent prayer to whatever gods looked after the welfare of pilots not qualified on type, Richter eased back on the control column and smoothly lifted the collective lever, increasing both the power of the engines and the angle of attack of the main rotor blades.
The Agusta lifted somewhat jerkily into the air.

  It wasn’t one of Richter’s better take-offs, but he was off the ground and that was all that mattered. He pulled up the collective further, pushed down gently on the left rudder pedal, and moved the control column slightly further back and over to the left. The helicopter banked sharply to port and began increasing speed. As Richter straightened up and the Agusta soared over a clump of poplars at the edge of the field, he knew for sure that he was going to make it.

  Perini had just enjoyed an unexpected piece of good fortune. The air ambulance was still at least ten minutes away when a black BMW saloon slowed down at the end of the drive leading to the villa, where some of Perini’s men were still standing, weapons held loosely in their hands. The driver peered curiously over at the activity outside the house, then braked to a stop and climbed out, clutching a black leather bag. He ran up to where Perini was standing, took one look at Lomas and pushed the DCPP officers aside.

  He pulled off the sodden towel and looked in horror at the gaping wound running from Lomas’s navel almost up to his breastbone. ‘Per l’amore del Dio,’ he muttered, then opened his bag and pulled out a dozen or so self-locking forceps, which he used to clamp all the larger of the severed blood vessels. The doctor then used gauze and adhesive strapping, and quickly contrived a makeshift pad to cover the gaping wound and hold Lomas’s intestines in place.

  Only then did he turn and look up at Perini. ‘This man requires emergency surgery,’ he said. He may have been a doctor, but that clearly didn’t exempt him from stating the blindingly obvious.

  ‘I know,’ Perini said. ‘The air ambulance should be here any minute now.’ And, as he said that, they all heard the distinctive throbbing of rotor blades and a bulky white helicopter with red crosses marked on the side swung into view. After the pilot had carried out a single sweep of the area, it landed in the road just beyond the doctor’s car, and in seconds its two crewmen were running up the drive, carrying a stretcher.