by Dan Latus
Ah, the Algarve! Would they ever see it again? That wasn’t a question for now. Better to concentrate on the moment.
They started to climb. Jake downshifted, and then went down again. Mountains coming up. In fact, he soon realized, the road was cut into the side of a mountain. To their right, there was a sheer drop to the valley, already far below.
He glanced sideways at Magda, who was staring out across the void at the side of the road, and wondered what was going through her head now. Finding Nicci, and perhaps helping to save him? Or something else? Money, perhaps? Or letting Kunda know where they were?
He veered away from where the speculation was taking him, and tried to be positive. Maybe he was misjudging her. There had been times when he would have struggled without her. And that was without even thinking of their life together in the Algarve.
But who was she helping now – him or Kunda? Time would tell.
They were ascending through a series of hairpin bends. Thin coniferous forest swathed the slope above and covered the far side of the valley. One or two very small villages could be seen in the valley that now was far, far below. They passed a parking area where a couple of coaches were standing waiting. A small huddle of buildings cloaked by trees could be seen beyond them.
‘It is a monastery,’ Magda announced.
‘Oh?’
‘I saw a sign earlier.’
‘So you’re keeping your eyes open despite the drop?’ he said with a chuckle. ‘That’s good.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she assured him. ‘Ever since we started our journey my eyes have been wide open.’
What to make of that? It sounded like a gentle rebuke, as if to say she knew he did not trust her.
‘Magda, there’s something I want to tell you.’
‘Yes?’
‘However you happened to get into this, and wherever things stand now, I want you to know that I appreciate the support you’ve given me. I wouldn’t have got as far as this without you. I know that. You have no need to fear being undervalued or unappreciated.’
After a moment she smiled and said, ‘Thank you, Jake.’
He wondered then if she really was on his side, and had been all along. He would soon find out.
As they climbed ever higher, the woodland on the mountain sides thinned out, revealing bare, rocky ground. There was very little vegetation cover now, and most of that looked dead. Grass and associated plants would be seasonal here, Jake supposed, much like in the Algarve. Trees and shrubs could survive the ferocious heat of summer, even on gravel and bare rock, but there weren’t many at this height, and those he could see looked pretty ragged and stunted.
He began to wonder if he had taken the right road. This one seemed like the road to nowhere. It might well take them over the mountains to the far side but it seemed increasingly unlikely that they would find anything like a farm, let alone a village, up here.
The feeling persisted, and grew, as they continued climbing. He began to watch the temperature gauge anxiously. So long in low gears wasn’t good for the engine.
Lasithi Plateau? What plateau? Now they were amongst lofty peaks with craggy summits. No sign at all of anything like flat ground. No scope for any sort of farming, either. Even mountain goats would struggle to survive up here. There might be a bit of forestry, but not much. The trees didn’t look good for anything but firewood.
They were obviously in the wrong place, he decided. On the wrong road. If he could have stopped safely, he would have, but he couldn’t. He kept going, hoping to find somewhere soon where he could pull off the road and turn round. Have a rest, as well. Look at the map, and consider what to do.
Magda sensed his mood, and was thinking along similar lines. ‘Maybe this is not where we should be?’ she suggested.
He nodded. ‘I think you’re right. But we’ll have to keep going until we find somewhere to stop and turn round.’
Then, suddenly, without warning, they crested a low ridge and, astonishingly, the land ahead of them was flat and stretching out further than they could see. In moments, the land was organized into fields, some with ditches or low stone walls as boundaries between them. Tall crops of maize grew in some, and ripening wheat in others. Trees along the margins were weighed down with apples, their branches touching the ground.
Jake pulled off the road and came to a stop on a patch of baked gravel. He pressed the button that opened his window. Then he sat and stared. The dust their passage had stirred slowly settled around them. Water gurgled along a nearby irrigation ditch. The hot metal of the Honda’s engine clicked and creaked, grateful for the chance to rest and recuperate.
‘Well!’ Jake said at last.
‘The Lasithi Plateau,’ Magda said quietly, seemingly as awestruck as he was himself.
He nodded. ‘This must be it.’
‘It is magical.’
That was a good word to use. Magical was how it seemed to Jake, too. They sat there for minutes on end, taking in what they could see, and trying to make sense of a sea of fertile farmland on top of bare and rocky mountains. It made no sense at all. They had entered a hidden world.
A truck passed by, bringing Jake out of his reverie. He re-started the engine and signalled to turn out onto the road. A mile or so along the road he turned off again, and parked outside an information centre.
Then he did what he had been thinking of doing for some time.
Chapter 45
He dumped Magda. He’d been thinking of it for a while. Now he did it.
‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘There’s a guesthouse across the road if you want it. Phone for a hire car if you just want to get out of here. Otherwise, I’ll pick you up when I come back.’
As he got back in the car, she stared at him with a look he hadn’t seen before. It started as bewilderment, and then became pure hatred and contempt.
‘You’re leaving me here?’
He nodded and slammed the door shut. Then he started the engine and drove away, without once looking in the rearview mirror.
There were twenty-three villages on the Lasithi Plateau, an area of thirty square miles at an elevation of over 3,000 feet. He had never been before but he had heard about it from Nicci, and now it all came back to mind. This strange, lost world high in the mountains that he was actually seeing for the first time.
As they had just done themselves, Nicci had said you climbed up and up, round the hairpin bends, up above the forest line, and up past the barren, craggy mountain sides where nothing grew until at last you came to the plateau. There, despite the altitude, you came upon a landscape of fields with growing crops – potatoes, wheat and maize, for example – and trees weighed down by their crops of apples. Traditionally, there were little windmills, too, to draw up the water needed for irrigation. Truly, a lovely, picturesque place.
And there people had lived for millennia, and at times had suffered for centuries.
The Venetians had countered rebellion by massacring everyone they could find, and for 200 years banning people, on pain of death, from setting foot there. The Turks had tried the same approach, although their version hadn’t lasted so long. The Germans, too, had exacted a heavy toll of human life during their twentieth century military occupation. In truth, the people were used to it. The plateau had always been a place that nurtured free spirits and fierce thoughts of independence.
So, inevitably, people who chose to live there were used to pain, and perhaps expected it still. As, no doubt, did Nicci, Jake thought. He must be well used to pain and trouble. Always had been. Could he really have believed that here, of all places, he might avoid more of the same?
Jake shook his head. Nicci should be so lucky!
All he had to do now was find him, hopefully still alive and in one piece.
He had dumped Magda for a number of reasons. One was that he still wasn’t sure he could trust her now he was so close to the end of the hunt.
A related reason was that he just didn’t want to risk her telling Kunda where N
icci was. Better, safer anyway, if she simply didn’t know.
Finally, this was the endgame, and for that he had always worked alone.
For all he knew, he wasn’t the only person in Crete seeking Nicci. There were certainly two other strong possibilities: Fogarty and Kunda. Whether they were working alone or in tandem didn’t matter. That they could be out there somewhere was all that mattered, and he knew they probably would be. Twenty million pounds said so, and so did the lure of revenge.
So he would find Nicci and talk to him, and take it from there. It felt better to be doing that alone. A couple of miles down the road, he stopped the car and consulted a map provided by the hire company. It wasn’t much of a map but it had on it the information he needed. The main road on the plateau was a circle that connected all the villages. The village he wanted was on the far side of the loop, perhaps ten miles away. Not far at all.
Something he hadn’t told Magda was that this wasn’t going to be like looking for Fat Freddie. For one thing, he knew where Nicci was likely to be – if he was here in Crete at all. He knew the name of Nicci’s home village. Nicci himself had told him it.
Jake hadn’t told Magda. Keeping the knowledge to himself might upset Magda, and might even end his relationship with her, but he was determined there would be no possibility of leaks. Keeping Nicci alive was more important than Magda’s feelings. Too many other people had died already. He and Nicci were the last ones left on the at-risk list. He didn’t want it to get any shorter.
Tzermiado, the capital of the Lasithi region, was the location he had in mind for Nicci. Capital? It was a village of a thousand people. Still, it counted for a lot at that altitude.
Jake took it all in as he drove along the main street. Quite a few shops and cafés. Even a modern hotel, with lots of tables outside for visitors. He spotted a small café further along the main street that looked promising. Time to park, and walk.
The café seemed to be a family business, with the wife cooking on an open range and the husband serving table. Both were old and slow, seasoned and well used to the ways of the world. Nothing would surprise them, possibly with the exception of waking up again tomorrow.
Two middle-aged men, farmers perhaps, were sitting at a table, drinking glasses of beer when Jake entered the café. Otherwise, the place was empty. He sat down at a table towards the back of the room, well away from the window. The man waiting on tables shuffled across to hand him a menu. Jake thanked him and began to study it.
The menu listed a lot of dishes, Greek dishes, all of them meals that would be freshly cooked. Not a hamburger or hot dog in sight. The menu had English translation in brackets. Jake smiled. He had been placed.
When the waiter returned, Jake ordered chicken souvlaki and a beer. The man wrote it down laboriously on a small pad with a pencil stub. When he was done, Jake asked him if he knew Nikos Antonakis, who used to live in London but was from this village.
The man said nothing. He paused and stared hard.
Jake shrugged. ‘An old friend,’ he said. ‘I call him Nicci. He calls me Jake.’
‘Jake?’
‘My name. Jake Ord. Do you know him?’
But the man had turned away and started shuffling back towards his wife, who had her hand held out for the order. Nothing was said between them. The wife took the written order, studied it and began to reach for what she needed. The man took a bottle from a big cooler, took off the cap, collected a glass and began the long journey back to Jake’s table.
‘Do you know such a man?’ Jake asked.
The waiter shook his head. He could have meant no, or he could have meant he didn’t understand English. He set the bottle and glass down on the table. Jake smiled his thanks and reached for the bottle. The waiter set off back to the counter, where the tomatoes, onions and whatever else went into the meal were being fried noisily by his wife.
Jake poured some of the beer into the glass and took a sip. Time passed slowly, as it often does in such places. But eventually the woman brought over his meal. It smelled delicious, and he was ready for it. He thanked her.
‘Jake Ord?’ she said.
‘That’s me.’
She nodded and turned away. He followed her with his eyes as she hobbled back to her cooking station behind the counter. The man was no longer in sight. It felt as if something was happening.
Chapter 46
A young couple came through the doorway and occupied a table near the window. They began to study the menu. Jake continued eating. Two men sat down at another table near the window. The woman who did the cooking took them a tray containing glasses and bottles of beer. They hadn’t even had to ask. It was getting busy. And there was no sign of the old man. Jake concentrated on enjoying the fried chicken pieces in his meal. They were coated with something spicy and crispy.
Then Nicci appeared, seemingly via a back door. Suddenly he was there. It took a moment or two before Jake registered his arrival. He fitted in so very well, with his old, dusty, nondescript clothes and battered leather cap. Just another working man come in from the fields to quench his thirst and find something to eat. It was the beaming smile that gave him away as he approached.
‘Jake! It is you,’ he said with delight. ‘How are you, my friend?’
‘Very well, thank you,’ Jake said with a grin.
He held out his hand and moved to stand up. Nicci shook his hand but motioned him to stay where he was.
‘I couldn’t believe it when Andros said you were here. I had to come to see for myself, even though I knew it was probably a trap.’
Jake noticed that the old man, Andros presumably, was back in the café.
‘So you’ve heard, have you?’
‘About Fogarty? Yes. I heard.’ Nicci shrugged. ‘For a long time I expected something. Now we will wait and see. But what are you doing here, Jake?’
‘I came to warn you about Fogarty. Inspector Robson – remember him? He asked me to find and warn everyone at risk once Fogarty escaped. Apparently all of you with Witness Protection had dropped out of sight. And I’m in Fogarty’s sights, as well,’ he added.
Nicci shrugged and looked thoughtful. ‘Crete is a long way from London, and Lasithi is even further.’
‘Maybe not far enough, though. He’s moving fast, Nicci. You and I are the only ones left.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just that. The others on the list have been murdered, and he nearly got me as well a couple of times.’
‘Where were you? London?’
Jake shook his head. ‘Portugal. The Algarve, actually. I thought I was safe. If Bob Robson hadn’t warned me, I don’t think I would have survived.’
‘Let’s have another beer,’ Nicci suggested, looking thoughtful.
He turned and gestured to Andros, pointing to the bottle on the table and to them both. Andros nodded.
‘An old friend?’ Jake asked.
‘Cousin. But yes. Andros and his wife are good friends. Here, Jake, I have many friends. It is not like in London for me here. Many, many friends.’
‘And relatives?’
‘Oh, yes!’ Nicci said with a grin. ‘All of them are related to me, even if some of them don’t know it!’
‘Well, you’re looking good, Nicci. I have to say that.’
He was, too. In London Nicci had always seemed a chubby little man. Not now, though. Not here. He looked slimmer and hard as teak. His complexion had darkened, too. He fitted right in, Jake decided.
‘It is the work, Jake. I work very hard.’
‘Oh? Doing what? Not bookkeeping, surely?’
Nicci shook his head. ‘Farming, Jake. I am a farmer now. Perhaps I always was at heart. I like it so much.’
‘You bought a farm?’
Nicci nodded.
‘Well, all I can say is that you look as if it suits you.’
‘Thank you, Jake.’
Farming, eh? His own farm, too. So perhaps he really did have the money. He didn’t look as if
he had spent much of it on himself, though. What about the farm? How much would that have cost? Not twenty-million quid, not here. He should have plenty left – if he did have it.
‘What do you produce, Nicci?’
‘Everything!’ Nicci said, laughing. ‘Everything that will grow here, and that I can grow with a profit. Fruit and vegetables, mostly. Almonds and potatoes, apples and lettuce – and so on. A few sheep and chickens, as well.’
‘It sounds idyllic. You’ve used your time better than me, Nicci. I did nothing in Portugal.’
He had wondered how to raise the subject of money. Now he decided to just come straight out with it. Get it over with.
‘Something else I’m doing with Inspector Robson, Nicci, is looking for the twenty million in sterling that was never recovered from the heist. He’s retired now, and has a deal with the insurance company. And I have a deal with him. If we find it, we get a small percentage of it to split between us.
‘I have to tell you, Fogarty is looking for it as well. And he’s taking no prisoners along the way, if you know what I mean.’
Nicci grimaced. ‘It was to be expected. Twenty million, you say? And what – you think I have it? Is that why you are here?’
‘Nicci, there’s only me and you left – and I certainly don’t have it!’
Chapter 47
Jake pointed out that Nicci now owned a farm, by his own admission. So he had money. Nicci told him it was the old family farm, the one he had spoken of so yearningly in the past. He hadn’t had to pay much for it.
‘So you don’t have the twenty million?’
‘Jake, I ask you,’ Nicci said, his arms open wide in entreaty, ‘do I look like a man with twenty million pounds?’
He pointed through the window at a battered pickup on the other side of the road. ‘See that truck? That’s mine, my only vehicle. Is that the truck of a man with twenty million pounds?’
