The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller)

by Johnston, Paul

  ‘I told you before,’ Veta said, watching her husband’s face turn red, ‘calm down or you’ll have a heart attack.’ She twitched her lips and her face suddenly looked more youthful. The prominent pair of moles on her right cheek gave it a curiously unbalanced look. She referred to them ironically as her ‘beauty spots’ and they were a gift to the country’s political cartoonists. ‘Come, Nikita, you’re not really frightened of those madmen, are you?’

  She looked around the fortresslike house that old man Palaiologos had renovated in the sixties when the Colonels’ regime had indiscriminately handed out planning permits to its supporters. The main building was like a military blockhouse, the heavy stone walls interspersed with small windows. When they were newly-weds, Veta had tried to get the windows enlarged, but Nikitas’s tame architect had claimed that the structure would be fatally weakened. She had done her best to leaven the heavy atmosphere of the place, adding white pergolas and a swimming pool to the terrace, but still it had the feel of a converted army base. During the Axis occupation and the civil war that ensued, this part of the Palaiologos estate had been used as a prison camp for members of the Communist resistance movement.

  Nikitas stood up and went towards the house, his thin frame bent as if under a great weight. Veta watched him go. When she had first known him, he was a typical rich man’s playboy son with a sports car and a speedboat. That side of him hadn’t attracted her at all. After all, she was rich man’s spawn herself and wouldn’t have been seen in anything other than luxury vehicles. But she was also a bluestocking, the holder of a first-class degree in economics from Cambridge, and her knowledge of sex was limited. Nikitas had never been bright—he had struggled to finish a business-studies degree at a minor Italian university—but he was renowned as a sexual athlete of Olympic prowess. The first time he turned curious eyes on her in a nightclub near Glyfadha, she had felt her knees weaken. The fact that he had even noticed her would have been enough, but then he took her in his arms before he drove her home and she knew she was lost. It didn’t even disturb her when she found out that he had gone after her on his father’s orders.

  Veta sipped her coffee and looked at the briefing notes her office had faxed from the big city. No, there was no need. She already knew what she was going to say to the journalist from the business broadsheet who was coming to interview her the next morning. In fact, she knew more about shipping than most tycoons, her father had made sure of that. Being an only child had been a great advantage to her. If only her own two offspring had shown the same single-mindedness to achieve, but her son was lazy, a fourteen-year-old who had mastered only computer games and self-abuse, and her eleven-year-old daughter showed interest in nothing more than ponies and her doll collection.

  The politician sat back again and ran her eyes over the view beneath the house. Straight down the slope, rising up from the shimmering leaves of the orange groves, were the titanic walls of ancient Tiryns. The place had always fascinated her, even before she became mistress of the Palaiologos weekend retreat. Huge blocks of rough-hewn stone dragged into place by hordes of doomed slaves, spectacular triangular galleries and casemates, a secret stair and, on the top, the foundations of a royal palace. Compared with Athens or Mycenae, the acropolis was small and narrow, but on misty days it floated above the plantations like a looming grey battleship.

  Veta stood up slowly, resting her hands on the table to support her bulk. Before she had the children she had watched her weight, but now she didn’t care. Nikitas found younger flesh to satisfy his demands and she devoted herself to her work. Like the Bronze Age fortress below, her bulk was essential, a guarantee of her strength and probity.

  Then she remembered the mythological figure who had been born in Tiryns and felt a shiver run up her spine beneath her silk gown—Iraklis, great hero-god of the Peloponnese, slayer of monsters and harrower of hell.

  Could his modern counterpart really be back on the trail of the country’s rich after a decade’s absence?

  Mavros pounded on the door of the café. The Fat Man always slept in the afternoon, his body suspended on the springs of an ancient, rusting bed-frame that he had wedged into the storeroom behind the counter. He had a normal-sized room and a substantially more comfortable bed in his mother’s house in Neapolis, but he preferred to keep out of range of Kyra Fedhra’s stinging tongue during the daytime.

  ‘Come on, Yiorgo, let me in!’ Mavros shouted. ‘I’m not a tourist. Or a taxman.’

  After a substantial delay—the Fat Man making clear his displeasure at being disturbed—there was the sound of bolts being drawn. Mavros pushed at the door when the figure behind the frosted glass turned away without opening it.

  ‘Very welcoming,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a sketo if you’re making coffee.’

  ‘You’ll have nothing as I’m not,’ the café owner said, glowering over his shoulder. His eyes were puffy and the hair on the sides of his head was sticking out. ‘What the hell do you want at this time, Alex? I was in the middle of undressing Claudia Schiffer.’

  ‘That’s more than I need to know,’ Mavros said, sitting down at an unwiped table and taking out his mobile. ‘Go on, Yiorgo, make me one little coffee. I’ll pay for it, honest.’

  The Fat Man went behind the chill cabinet and lit the flame of his small gas burner. ‘Oh, yes, you’ll pay, all right, comrade,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll amend my earlier question,’ he went on, his tone now that of the fastidious committee secretary. ‘What the fuck do you want, Alex?’

  Mavros was peering at his mobile. ‘I’m trying to make up my mind. Should I call Bitsos and ask him for help or not?’

  Yiorgos Pandazopoulos looked round. ‘Bitsos? That rat-faced journalist?’ The Fat Man had the Communist’s traditional contempt for the drones of the capitalist press. Naturally, workers on the Party organ Rizospastis weren’t subject to that sentiment.

  ‘Lambis Bitsos isn’t your average shit-raker with a laptop,’ Mavros said.

  The café owner guffawed. ‘No—from what you’ve told me, he’s your average shit-raker with a dirty magazine.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Mavros sat thinking for a few moments. Behind the banter lay a serious issue. Bitsos the crime reporter was potentially his best source of information about the Iraklis group and the man known as Iason Kolettis. But anything he got from Bitsos would come at a price. As he’d discovered to his cost in the past, he needed an even longer spoon when dealing with journalists than he would to sup with the devil. They would sometimes part with useful nuggets, but in return they expected exclusive stories and full details; the fact that the latter were subject to client confidentiality rules led the gentlemen and -women of the press to do little more than scratch their groins. So, was it worth it? Mavros decided to stall, at least until he had tapped another source that was substantially closer to hand.

  The Fat Man came over with a tray containing two small cups and two glasses of water. ‘You’re paying for mine as well, in case you were wondering,’ he said.

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Mavros with a wide grin.

  Immediately Yiorgos Pandazopoulos’s face darkened. ‘Oh, I get it. What do you want this time? I’m not lending you my Godfather videos again. Get your own, you Scottish skinflint.’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that.’

  ‘What then?’ The café owner looked as suspicious as a pedestrian accosted by a laughing beggar.

  ‘Lighten up, Yiorgo. I want you to help me in an investigation.’

  The Fat Man’s face took on an exultant expression. ‘Ach, Alex, now you’re talking.’ He sat down heavily and pushed a cup and glass towards his sole customer. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked, more enthusiastic than a boy who’d been dropped into the driving seat of a tank.

  Mavros realised that what he was going to ask probably wouldn’t be enough to satisfy his friend’s appetite for intrigue, but he pressed on: ‘You have to keep this to yourself, Yiorgo, eh?’

  ‘Of course,’ the café owner said impat
iently. ‘I know how the system works. I’ve seen enough detective films.’

  ‘Yes, well, this is the real world, not a gang of Californian playboys pretending to be tough.’ Mavros ran his eye over the bulky figure across the table. ‘Though, come to think of it, you do look a bit like Sidney Greenstreet.’

  ‘Get on with it, Alex,’ the Fat Man threatened, ‘or I really will make you pay for the coffee.’

  ‘Right.’ Mavros had already decided to make no mention of Grace Helmer. Yiorgos Pandazopoulos had messed up the last time he’d dealt with her. He was going to stick to his friend’s background. ‘You grew up in Neapolis, you’ve lived there all your life.’

  ‘Yes, yes. And?’

  ‘And you knew everyone on the Left. The Moscow Communists, the EuroCommunists, the splinter groups and the…and the loose cannons.’

  The Fat Man was peering at him suspiciously now. ‘Where’s this heading, Alex?’ He’d been hauled in by the Junta’s security forces often enough to know when a sensitive subject was about to be broached.

  Mavros gave up trying to sweet-talk his old friend. ‘All right, here it is. Did you ever hear of a guy called Iason Kolettis back in the seventies?’

  There was a long pause, during which the only sounds came from the motorbikes passing on the road outside and from the birds settling down for the night in the worm-infested pergola to the rear of the café.

  Eventually Yiorgos leaned over, his weight almost making the flimsy table buckle. ‘Why do you want to know about him?’ he asked, in a low voice.

  ‘Can’t tell you,’ Mavros replied.

  ‘Oh, I see. You can’t tell me anything but you expect me to spill my guts?’ The Fat Man sat back, his expression serious. ‘This isn’t a joke, Alex. Unlike you, I’m a member of the Party. By rights I should report your interest to the central committee.’

  Mavros was trying to conceal his excitement. It looked like Yiorgos knew something about the mystery man. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘I’m not a policeman and you know I’m not going to do anything that would be bad for the Party. I might not be committed but my father was a leading light.’

  The Fat Man puffed out his cheeks, then bit his lower lip. ‘I know, Alex, I know. It’s just…there are some things that are still restricted. I’m going to have to talk to the comrades about this. I mean it.’

  Mavros stretched out a hand and put it on his friend’s forearm. ‘Don’t, Yiorgo. That would be a very bad idea. I only asked out of curiosity. The name came up in a line of enquiry I’m pursuing.’ He felt guilty about putting Yiorgos in a difficult position, but he wanted to know more about Kolettis. ‘What’s the big deal? Who was the guy?’

  The café owner stood up and backed away. ‘Lay off me on this, Alex,’ he said, his face pale. ‘I mean it. You’ll get into all kinds of shit if you dig any further.’ He started collecting the cups and glasses, beads of sweat on his bald head.

  ‘Shit?’ Mavros said, realising that he wasn’t going to continue. ‘For God’s sake, Yiorgo, I only wanted to know if you’d heard of him.’

  The Fat Man bent forward and let the tray crash on to the table. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him. In fact, I met him a couple of times. But I won’t admit as much to anyone else, you understand?’

  ‘Why not?’ Mavros demanded, playing dumb about what Grace Helmer had told him. ‘What’s so special about Iason Kolettis?’

  Yiorgos Pandazopoulos backed away. ‘What’s so special about him?’ he repeated, in a hoarse whisper. ‘He’s the most dangerous bastard I’ve ever come across in my life.’

  And that was all the Fat Man would say.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE POET KOSTAS Laskaris felt the familiar knifing pain in his belly as he got up from his bed. Until recently he had slept in the topmost room, three levels above the ground, but now the steep staircases were too much for him so he confined himself to the long living space, the tower rising out of it like the forefinger from a clenched fist. He staggered over to the nearest of the compact windows and unbolted the solid wooden shutter. It swung open easily enough, Savvas having oiled the hinges at the old man’s request so that he didn’t have to rely on anyone else to let in the daylight every morning.

  He breathed in deeply and looked out over the rocks to the peninsula below. It was an overcast winter’s day, the clouds low over the gulf that separated the Mani from the western prong of the Peloponnese. The air was damp, suffused with the scent of dew-soaked vegetation, and the clang of a goat-bell rang out across the water from the slopes to the south. Only one herdsman kept a few beasts now; the other families had given up livestock to direct their energies towards servicing the tourists.

  Laskaris took in the rough circle-shape of the Tigani peninsula, which lay beneath the settlement of Ayia Kyriaki. The low acropolis was separated from the mainland by a handle of rough ground, giving it the look of the frying pan that the Greek name indicated. He could just make out the crumbling walls of Castle Maïna, built by the Franks on more ancient foundations. It had been one of the three most important fortified strongpoints in the southern Peloponnese, and now it was nothing more than a shambolic array of collapsing cisterns and shattered tombs, some open to the elements. It was a tourist attraction if ever there was one, but few travellers made the difficult trek across the racks of sharp stone, past the salt pans where the locals scrape a paltry harvest every summer. He had seen a couple of men pick their way across it a few weeks earlier, stopping frequently as if the desolation of the place had disoriented them.

  Tigani, the frying pan. Laskaris preferred to see the peninsula as a mirror, another manifestation of the stone and metal objects from different periods that had been found in excavations all over Greece. That metaphor was multi-dimensional; as a craftsman of words, it appealed to him. The small mass of rock in the southern Peloponnese was a mirror of history, reflecting the glory and the violence that had marked this land, the bloodshed and waste, from ancient times, when the Spartans had ruled the region with a will of iron that extended no rights to its native people; to the Middle Ages, the Franks and the Venetians, their shiny leather jerkins and brightly coloured banners now rotten in the earth and leaving only dust motes in the confines of the ruined castle; to the savage Maniates during the War of Independence in the 1820s who had cut the Turks to pieces with the honed blades of their yataghans; to the wars he himself had fought in—the Axis occupation and the desperate horror of the civil war that had followed between 1947 and 1949. The mirror of history.

  The poet went over to the kitchen, which Savvas’s mother kept gleaming, and made himself a cup of camomile tea. He eyed with distaste the packet of oatmeal that was supposed to form the major part of his diet and left it untouched. Better to work hungry, better to let his accursed gut wrench and clutch at his very being. That way he would recreate the horror more authentically; that way his poem would be imbued with the agony of the times he and his ancestors had lived through.

  Yesterday he had made a good start. He had been surprised by how many pages of the leather-bound notebook he had filled with his spidery script. ‘The Fire Shirt’ was under way at last, the hero Iraklis having left his home fort of Tiryns to meet the cowardly King Eurystheus of Mycenae who would assign him his labours: the feeble king sending his strongest young man into battle against inhuman forces. It hadn’t been difficult to expand the imagery with elements of his own century: the dictator Metaxas and the puppet King George despatching the youth of Greece to die against the Italians and the Germans in 1940–1: Stalin and Tito using the Greek Communists as standard-bearers of the revolution, then abandoning them in the final stages of the civil war—though it had taken him many years to accept that reading of history. There was no shortage of relevance in the old myth.

  Suddenly Kostas Laskaris felt the years slip away from him. His mind seemed to float away from the present day in the tower and he found himself on the other side of the Mani as he had been in 1943, his face turning towards the sun, which was risi
ng in a blast of crimson over the eastern mountains beyond Sparta. His legs were strong again, the muscles under the torn battledress trousers knotted after months of clambering up the slopes with heavy loads. He was twenty-one, his beard shiny and long, his hands scarred and pitted by frontal attacks and close exchanges. He’d been a volunteer in the snows of Albania when the Greeks had defeated the Italians by raw passion; he had stood against the German tanks near Thermopylae and only retreated when the rifle was blown from his hands; and now he was a soldier of ELAS, the army of the liberation movement EAM, which had captured the hearts of the Greek people.

  ‘The world is ours to win, comrade,’ said the man with the burning eyes beside him, his unwashed face split by a broad smile. ‘We will clear the forces of oppression from our mountains and from the rest of Greece. Then we will establish a government that respects all citizens.’

  Laskaris had heard the speech often enough before, but he never tired of hearing it from this man. He was the band’s leader, the most resourceful of the guerrilla fighters, their inspiration, as well as his friend from childhood. He nodded, feeling the pack lighten on his shoulders. ‘Yes, we will do that,’ he said, as he reached the spine of the ridge. ‘And you will show us the way.’

  Kapetan Iraklis nodded and stepped quickly ahead.

  The old poet Kostas Laskaris came back to himself in the tower above the windswept peninsula of Tigani, his body racked with the cancer’s assault. The clock told him he had been lost in the past for hours. But now he was being nagged by another thought: who would the terrorist group set up by the son of his wartime leader target next? He shivered and gripped the table as another wave of stabbing pain washed over him.