The Last Red Death (A Matt Wells Thriller)

by Johnston, Paul

  And now he had sent the younger Mavros brother into the same cauldron. Christ and the Mother of God, what had he been thinking of? Laskaris would sacrifice him just as he had Andonis, sacrifice him to save himself, the old queer. And what of the woman, the American? Did she have any idea what she was letting herself in for by trying to find her father’s assassin? There was a hardness about her, a calculating inner core that reminded him of the most ruthless comrades. Was she taking Alex Mavros for a ride, planning to ditch him too when the time came? The legacy of hatred was still as powerful as ever, whatever side people were on.

  Randos slammed his hands down in a final apocalyptic chord and slumped over the keys, his breath catching in his throat. Then he heard the buzz of the doorbell, brash and insistent. He tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t stop. Cursing, he staggered to the entryphone and pressed the button, not interested in who was there. Maybe his wife had forgotten her key. He opened the apartment door and went back into the saloni, listening to the kittens’ high-pitched cries.

  ‘So, comrade,’ said a soft voice, ‘I hope you will share with me what you told your visitors. Word for word.’

  He looked up to see a figure loom over him and knew instantly that his time had come. The phone calls he had made after Mavros and the woman left, he had known they were a risk. Perhaps, deep down, he had wanted to take that risk. At least someone would pay for what had happened to Andonis Mavros and to all the other victims of Iraklis.

  The composer rose unsteadily to his feet. He was ready to join the army of shades, the fighters who had given everything for their dreams even if those dreams had never been fulfilled. And he didn’t intend to say a word to the bastard in front of him.

  ‘Guess who,’ Mavros said, as soon as Grace Helmer answered her phone. He knew that other ears might be listening. ‘Wait for me outside.’

  In under ten minutes he was at the hotel in a taxi. Grace Helmer was at the head of the hotel driveway, wearing a fleece jacket and carrying her dark brown shoulder bag.

  ‘What gives, Alex?’ she asked, as the taxi driver, a fresh-faced young man with the look of a moonlighting student, accelerated away in the direction of the Megaro Mousikis.

  ‘Let’s see,’ said Mavros, looking over his shoulder. The sun was in the west but the street-lights were not yet on. In the fume-filled gloom he made out a sleek, dark blue Citroën about fifty metres behind them. ‘Don’t turn round. I think we’ve got company again.’ He leaned forward and spoke to the driver in rapid Greek. The conversation ended in mutual laughter.

  ‘I asked you a question,’ Grace said. ‘What the hell gives?’

  Mavros smiled. ‘I just told him that your husband’s on our tail.’ He put his hand on her thigh. ‘Darling.’

  She raised an eyebrow but allowed the hand to remain. ‘And Tom Cruise here is going to shake him off, is he?’

  The taxi swerved in front of a bus and took an unsignalled left turn into the backstreets. Although the traffic was heavy, the driver managed to avoid the numerous blockages caused by cars pulling in and lorries making deliveries.

  ‘All right,’ Mavros said to the grinning young man, ‘well done. Stick to the backstreets and get us to the KTEL at Kifissou.’ He glanced at Grace and changed to English. ‘We’re going to catch the bus to the island of Pelops.’

  ‘How quaint,’ she said drily. ‘Thanks for giving me advance warning. I’d have brought a change of clothes.’

  ‘They have shops down there,’ Mavros countered. ‘I think.’

  Grace looked out of the window at the neighbourhood supermarkets and restaurants. ‘It’s not bad in this quarter. There’s more character than in the rich people’s streets around my hotel.’

  ‘I grew up in this area,’ Mavros said. ‘Our mystery man spent some time here too.’

  ‘Oh, so this is Neapolis, is it?’ She peered out with even more interest. ‘There are some fine old houses.’

  ‘Lawyers and merchants built them in the old days. My father’s family owned one.’ He had flashes of summer evenings kicking a ball around in the narrow streets, and chill winter mornings on the way to school, his breath pluming into the air like a thought bubble in a comic.

  ‘What did your father do?’ Grace said, clutching the back of the seat in front as the driver screeched to a halt. ‘Jesus.’ She watched as a skinny black cat scuttled under a car.

  ‘He was a lawyer,’ Mavros said. He decided to open up a bit: perhaps that would encourage her to do the same. ‘Because of his politics he was in various prisons and concentration camps during the forties and fifties. After that he had to keep his activities secret because the Party was banned.’

  ‘Must have made for an interesting childhood.’ Grace turned to him. ‘You realise that my father was working for the other side.’

  ‘Of course. But that’s all in the past now.’

  She registered his sceptical tone. ‘Yeah, it seems that the past is still pretty much in evidence in this country.’

  ‘In all countries, I’d say.’

  ‘Well, if you want to jack the case in, I’ll understand.’ She looked out again as the cab passed the National Museum. ‘We seem to have attracted people’s interest. Have we shaken them off?’

  ‘I think so.’ Mavros realised suddenly that his hand was still on her thigh. As he removed it he said, ‘No, I want to stick with it. I’m in need of stimulation.’

  Grace Helmer frowned, as if he wasn’t taking things seriously enough.

  The taxi driver set them down in a backstreet off Leoforos Kifissou. ‘Go to the good,’ he said. ‘I hope the wanker never finds you.’

  Mavros tipped him well after asking him to erase them from his memory. He was pretty sure that would happen. The driver’s complicity suggested that he might be carrying on an illicit relationship himself.

  In the vast hall of the bus station, the atmosphere heavy with diesel fumes, Mavros went to buy tickets. He left Grace in a secluded corner with instructions to stay put. She greeted those with a mocking smile but squatted down obediently.

  ‘Right,’ he said, on his return, brandishing the tickets. ‘I’ve got us on the Patras bus.’

  Grace stood up and shook the pins and needles from her legs. ‘Patras? That’s the port for Italy, isn’t it?’

  ‘In the north-west of the Peloponnese, yes. Don’t worry, we’re getting off before that. But just in case anyone asks questions…’

  The turquoise and cream bus pulled out at exactly 6:00 p.m., the majority of its seats taken. Mavros and Grace sank down, keeping their heads bowed. Soon the vehicle was surrounded by traffic on the main exit road to the west, the refineries and metal works beyond the ridge pumping gas clouds and flames into the darkness.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what we’re doing now?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Need to know is the standing order in this kind of situation, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’ she asked, looking puzzled.

  ‘Don’t you watch spy movies?’

  ‘There aren’t many cinemas in the jungle.’

  ‘Right. Well, we’re going to talk to Kostas Laskaris, aren’t we? Find out what he knows about the man we’re after. I met the old poet recently—he was a friend of my father’s—so he should grant us an interview. Even though he’s much more of a recluse than Randos.’

  ‘And you’re going to try and trace that other guy, the driver?’

  Mavros nodded. ‘Everything seems to lead to the Mani, and one small part of it.’

  ‘Maybe our man came from there.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Mavros was hoping so, remembering again Laura Helmer’s painting Lament for Kitta. Maybe they’d be lucky—though unexpected breaks in cases often proved to be more trouble than they were worth.

  They fell silent, unwilling to draw attention to themselves by speaking English outside the tourist season. The bus sped along the motorway through tunnels bored into the rock of precipitous cliffs. When another array of flames marking the refinery east of Cor
inth came into view, Mavros gave Grace a nudge. ‘Prepare for disembarkation,’ he whispered. ‘The bus will stop for a quarter of an hour at a café. Wait until everyone else has got off, then follow me.’

  The bus pulled up outside a line of brightly lit establishments selling souvlakia, burgers and other refreshments. As the last of the passengers headed for those attractions, Mavros and Grace stepped down and walked away into the darkness beyond, keeping their pace steady.

  The scent of the Peloponnese came across the isthmus on the wind, its orange and pine breath carrying a promise of spring in the heart of winter.

  CHAPTER NINE

  November 1943

  THE resistance fighters stood around the survivors of the battle in an uneven circle. Above them the buzzards were circling, wings spread wide as the gusts from the peaks of Taygetos buffeted them. Outside the ring of rifle-bearers bodies were scattered, some in the tattered clothes worn by ELAS members, but the majority in German field grey and Greek service uniforms. There were also several in the skirts and woollen stockings traditionally worn by the élite evzones. To Kostas Laskaris the plateau smelled of fresh blood and he was having trouble keeping control of his stomach now that the haze of battle had passed from his eyes. He tried to shut out the things he had seen and done—bullets tearing into unprotected flesh, his rifle butt smashing into the face of a youthful blond soldier.

  A pair of scouts came back up the narrow track.

  ‘The rest of them have gone, kapetanie,’ the older man said to Iraklis. ‘The cowards will not be back.’

  ‘I shot one,’ said his young companion, eyes wide and expression joyous. ‘I saw him fall.’

  ‘Bravo, Comrade Dino,’ Iraklis said, from the centre of the circle. ‘Didn’t I tell you that you would become a hero of the people today?’

  There was a murmur of approval from the fighters. The men in the ring, six of them, lay flat, their tunics torn and blood-spattered. Only the movement of their backs, their desperate breathing, revealed that they were alive.

  ‘You are all heroes,’ Iraklis shouted. ‘And heroines,’ he added, glancing at the woman Stamatina. Her face was bruised and the bayonet on her rifle was dark-stained. She gave her leader a broad smile.

  ‘What about these pigs?’ asked a wizened old guerrilla.

  ‘I’m coming to them, Comrade Mano,’ Kapetan Iraklis said, looking down at the Greek prisoners—the German who surrendered had already been despatched. ‘I haven’t forgotten them.’ His voice was less certain now.

  The men on the ground let out a muffled collective groan, their bodies pressing harder to the stony soil. They knew what lay in store for them.

  The iron-willed political commissar Vladhimiros pushed his way to the front. ‘Comrade combatants of ELAS,’ he proclaimed, ‘there can be only one fate for those who conspire with the occupier to exterminate the people’s fighters and their families.’ He ran his eyes around the ring of grim-faced guerrillas. Most had lost relatives to the merciless violence of the occupiers and, more recently, to the collaborationist Security Battalions, and most were from the Mani, where vengeance to restore family honour was bred in the bone.

  ‘I volunteer,’ came a firm female voice.

  All eyes, including those of the prisoners, turned to the woman with the bayonet on her rifle. Kapetan Iraklis shook his head at her, his eyes wide.

  ‘Volunteers are not required,’ Comrade Vladhimiros said dismissively. During the dictatorship of Metaxas before the war he had served time in the prison of Akronafplia, the so-called university of Greek Communism. ‘Execution duty should operate on a rotating basis. Every member of the revolutionary band has the duty to take part when his or her name comes up.’ He gave a cold smile. ‘I believe Comrade Stamatina has already accounted for at least two collaborators.’

  One of the prone soldiers, a young man whose face was disfigured by the marks of smallpox, let out a thin squeal of terror.

  Kapetan Iraklis looked at the commissar with distaste. ‘I am in command here, comrade,’ he said. ‘Consult your list for the next four names.’ He nodded to the stony-faced woman. ‘Comrade Stamatina and I will go first.’ He looked around the circle again. ‘There is no glory in such acts, my friends, no cause for exultation. But our country must be purged of traitors such as these.’

  Vladhimiros was consulting a dog-eared sheet he had taken from his briefcase. He read out four names. Kostas Laskaris was relieved that his turn had not come again—he had served as executioner more than once in the past. Staring across the ring of fighters, he saw young Dinos’s expression of disappointment. Already the boy was becoming a killer. In these conditions it didn’t take long.

  Iraklis bent over the nearest prisoner, the blade of a cutthroat razor glinting in the sun; no bullets were to be wasted. He looked up, his eyes dark as night, and caught Kostas’s gaze, then gave a melancholy smile and whipped the well-honed steel across the traitor’s throat.

  A few seconds later Stamatina’s victim was twitching out his last throes, the earth of the mountain plateau soaking up the crimson flood that had been loosed by her saw-edged bayonet.

  Kostas Laskaris was thinking of the six mothers who had been deprived of their sons, measuring the implacable hatred of the revolutionary fighters that would be stored up for generations despite the justness of their struggle. In the past, prisoners had been taken. But that was before the Security Battalions started their campaign of ferocity against EAM/ELAS members and their families. He shook away his concerns. Such thoughts were nothing less than treason, and comrades guilty of harbouring them would be treated in the same way as the battalionists. Besides, winter was biting and there was hardly enough food for the fighters themselves. But he knew that Iraklis was pained by what he had to do. That only made Kostas admire and love him more. The true hero cared nothing for his own feelings—he sacrificed them for the cause.

  Not long afterwards the band made its way from the place of slaughter and disappeared into the twilight that was rapidly gathering around them. The corpses of their pursuers—foreign and Greek—were left unburied for the carrion creatures of the night.

  Mavros found a seedy-looking car-rental office on the outskirts of Corinth. He and Grace had set off on foot from the cafés by the bridge over the isthmus, but a garishly painted pick-up soon stopped. The driver, a dark-skinned gypsy with long hair, had cheerfully pointed them to the empty cargo space, the front seats taken up by a trio of grinning children. Mavros didn’t think anyone who was on their trail would catch up with the guy, but he took the precaution of signalling him to let them off well away from the car-rental premises.

  Leaving Grace in the shadows down the potholed street, Mavros concluded the deal. In exchange for a wad of cash, a shifty old man wrote down a false name and address on the hire agreement. He took a note of Mavros’s real name and credit-card details, pointing out to him that he had several male relatives well versed in the arts of extracting money from defaulters. Mavros got the message. He would return the car no later than a week from now or he’d be in need of a surgeon.

  He went down the street to the car bearing the registration number that was on the key.

  ‘You didn’t fancy the executive selection, then?’ Grace said, as she stepped out from an alcove.

  ‘Nah,’ Mavros replied, opening a door that was less than pristine. ‘I reckoned you wouldn’t want to pay any more than you had to.’ He was still unsure how well-off his client was—aid organisations were hardly noted for generosity to their employees.

  ‘Is this thing roadworthy?’ Grace said, as she got in at the far side of the bottom-of-the-range Fiat Panda. It was red, but the paint beneath the scratches on the bodywork suggested that it had originally been another colour. ‘Is it stolen?’

  ‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ Mavros said. ‘It’s insured, it’s safe to drive—supposedly—and it’s cost you rather less than renting from one of the big companies.’

  ‘I presume you’ve taken steps to kee
p us anonymous,’ Grace said, struggling with her seat-belt.

  Now he was in the car, Mavros wasn’t so confident about driving it. Although he had passed his test when he was in his teens, he would rather drink hemlock than drive in Athens so he hadn’t been behind a wheel for some time. He turned the key and managed to engage first gear.

  ‘Check your mirror,’ Grace said, as he pulled out.

  ‘We’re in Greece, not upstate New York,’ he said, his cheeks reddening as a passing car hooted.

  ‘Just as a matter of interest,’ Grace asked, ‘when did you last drive?’ She leaned towards him. ‘Have you ever driven?’

  ‘Very funny.’ Mavros saw the sign to Tripolis and headed for the motorway. ‘I last drove…well, I suppose it’s a couple of years ago now. My brother-in-law’s Jeep was stuck in a beach in northern Attiki and I got it out for him.’ He wasn’t telling the whole story: Nondas Chaniotakis had lost patience with Mavros’s slow progress digging out the rear wheels and had insisted on swapping roles. It was a mistake he wouldn’t make again. Mavros’s heavy foot on the accelerator had almost deposited the vehicle in a deep well he hadn’t noticed behind a line of bushes.

  ‘I last drove a week ago back home,’ Grace said. ‘How about I take over?’

  ‘Later,’ Mavros said stubbornly. ‘You can direct me.’ He handed her the map of the Peloponnese that the rental man had added to the bill.

  ‘You’re right, I can. Where are we going, exactly? Kitta in the Mani?’