Resurrection (The Corruption Series Book 4)

by Charles Brett

  Contents

  Novel4

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Dramatis Personae

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Also by Charles Brett

  Also by Charles Brett

  Also by Charles Brett

  About the Author

  Resurrection

  By

  Charles Brett

  ISBN-13: 978-1548089146

  ISBN-10: 1548089141

  © 2017 Charles C C Brett

  This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed within are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  First published in 2017

  By

  C3B Consulting Ltd

  registered at:

  Colman House, Station Road, Knowle, Solihull. B93 0HL UK.

  All rights reserved © 2017 Charles C C Brett

  The right of Charles Brett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights, and those responsible may be liable in law.

  www.charlesbrett.net

  To:

  Lourdes

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks for their help with this novel go to too many people to mention. I am especially grateful to all those in Cyprus who have introduced us to a wonderful island, made me welcome and filled many holes in my knowledge and awareness.

  People who do require specific mention include (in no particular order): Maria and David, Andrea, Agathi, Jim and Anna, Aghis, Evangelos, Georgios and Silvia, Carolyn, Salvador, Ian and Craig.

  As in previous novels, all flaws, oddities and errors are of my own making.

  Charles Brett

  Nicosia, 2017

  Dramatis Personae

  Dramatis Personae

  Orthodox Church of Cyprus clergy

  Archbishop Ioannis (head of Cyprus Orthodox Church; born

  Nikolaos Constantinou)

  Metropolitan (Bishop) Alexopoulos

  Father Nikos Spanos (priest and personal assistant to

  Archbishop Ioannis)

  Father Georghios Papandreas (parish priest)

  Cyprus laity

  Alexa Petrou (sister of Evdokia)

  Aris(totle) Metaxas (journalist)

  Efstathios (Tassos) Christodoulou (banker and property

  developer)

  Eleni (Vasilia) Constantinou (architect and daughter of Vasilios

  Constantinou)

  Evdokia Papandreas (wife of Georghios Papandreas)

  Iphi(genia) Hadjikyriakos (journalist)

  Thanos Petrou (husband of Alexa)

  Vasilios Constantinou (architect and younger brother of

  Nikolaos Constantinou, Archbishop Ioannis)

  Xerxes Galanis (soon to be ex-husband of Eleni Constantinou)

  Foreigners

  Alfonso Fajardo (Spanish – librarian)

  Ana Delarosa (Spanish – olive oil grower)

  Cayetano (Alf) Delafuente (Spanish – Ana Delarosa's lawyer)

  Davide Shape (Anglo-Spanish – business consultant)

  Dmitriy Avakian (Russian/Armenian – businessman)

  Inma, Condesa de Arenas de Ávila (Spanish – ex-Opus Dei)

  Kjersti Nordhavn (Norwegian – journalist)

  Stephane Thibault-Trani (French – financial computing

  specialist)

  Prologue

  One year earlier

  Nicosia (Cyprus)

  His Beatitude Ioannis I, Archbishop of Nova Justiniana and All Cyprus, strode into his temporary Palace. He'd moved into Tower 25, the tallest building in Nicosia, over the previous weekend. He'd accomplished this with a ruthlessness most would consider moral blackmail. The lower floor now contained his office and Archiepiscopal administrative staff. The upper floor would be his home and place to entertain for at least the next couple of years, if promises made to him panned out.

  Though he'd never disclosed it, a different reason existed for choosing Tower 25. The modern tower block provided unrivalled views across Nicosia's Old Town surrounded by its sixteenth-century Venetian walls. In addition, a 180-degree vista spanned the jagged Pentadaktylos Mountains which separate Nicosia from Kyrenia and Cyprus's north coast. While these views were sensational, his personal focus was closer and far more important to his reputation.

  Today should crystallise the start of a personal dream and his place in history. He wanted to admire every step of the emergence of an architectural sensation, an addition to Cyprus to last for centuries. It would ensure his name would be revered forever. Or maligned. He didn't care.

  With the spare steps of a slight man, he bypassed Father Nikos Spanos, his long-suffering assistant. He swept out onto the elegant terrace. According to Vasilios, his younger brother, he should see movement within the next fifteen minutes. Eleni, Vasilios's daughter, had warned it might take longer. No matter. His sense of anticipation sharpened with each passing minute.

  "Your Beatitude, may I assist you? Is there anything you want or that I can bring?"

  "No, Spanos. Leave me in peace for the next hour. Ensure I'm not disturbed."

  Ioannis regretted his words as he heard Nikos retreat. He'd been peremptory in his tone and brusque in his brevity. Not a pleasant combination. He shrugged. After a lifetime in a monastery, lately as abbot, this was customary.

  He made himself comfortable to await what would be the first 'most important day of his life'. Better still, there would be others to follow culminating in a momentous dedication in which he would be the centrepiece. That prospect warmed, almost over-heated, his already exaggerated sense of self-worth.

  As he waited he indulged himself. His life had been turned upside down over the past eighteen months following his startling appointment. It didn't matter. He was certain he owed it to himself to take full advantage of his unexpected bounty. It was his due as the newly elected head of the Orthodox Church in Cyprus, the autocephalous member of the Orthodox Communion which included such peers as the much larger Russian and Greek Orthodox Churches and other, smaller gatherings of the Orthodox faithful.

  As an elderly, decrepit, abbot hidden away in one of the more important Cypriot monasteries, he hadn't anticipated his election. He was even not an elector.

  By tradition, the head of the Cypriot Orthodox Church was one of the serving Bishops or Metropolitans. On this occasion, a widely-predicted schism had proven impossible to surmount. The only two candidates were an ultra-conservative and a liberal who had fostered improved relations with the Roman Catholic Communion. They opposed each other with vehement bitterness.

  After weeks, the electors couldn't agree. Split down the mi
ddle, and in desperation, they'd compromised. Both candidates, who were relatively young for their Metropolitan responsibilities, agreed to withdraw their candidatures – for the time being – if they elected an infirm, enfeebled worthy whose reign would be short-lived and uneventful.

  The compromise candidate was Ioannis, himself.

  He knew full well they'd chosen him because of his age and physical frailty. In his early seventies, he was small, slight and stooped. He possessed a fragile constitution which had declined during his years secreted away among his brother monks.

  To his own astonishment, and to the horror of almost everyone else, his elevation to the Archiepiscopal throne had restored his strength. Power had revived a robustness not known since his forties. He possessed twice the energy and commitment after his enthronement.

  His amusement expanded as he visibly frustrated the expectation he would slide to an early grave. It could only be God's will.

  Nothing gave Ioannis more pleasure than realising his pet dream, the one he'd accepted decades before as being unattainable. Only his brother and niece had never disparaged this ambition.

  He raised his wrist to check the time. He'd mused for a full half hour. As usual, Eleni possessed the better sense of time.

  To this day, he found it difficult to believe she was her father's daughter. While they shared physical traits, in temperament they possessed little in common. She might almost be his own daughter, except that he'd chosen celibacy, by becoming a monk. He had never 'lain with a woman'.

  A distant crack penetrated his reflections. He looked towards his old Archiepiscopal Palace. Situated in Nicosia's Old Town, it was the erstwhile headquarters of the Cypriot Orthodox Church. Yes! There was the movement he expected. Dust began to rise. When, after some minutes, it cleared there was no south-western corner of the Palace complex.

  The demolition had started. It was the first step to everlasting fame. How he anticipated what was to come.

  Abruptly, his wave of pleasure evaporated. The cry of the muezzin from the Turkish-Cypriot mosques across the Green Line dividing Nicosia intruded. They assaulted his ears five times a day. He hated the sound with a rancour which had only increased with his return to Nicosia from his remote, muezzin-free monastery. He would give anything to cancel their sour wailing.

  Strovolos (Cyprus)

  "Vasilia! Where are you?" squawked Vasilios. He was impatient and fretful. Age was catching up with him in quite the opposite way to his older brother, now the latter was Archbishop.

  His daughter had been a handful from birth. These days, she was worse. That her third marriage was on the brink of collapse didn't help. Not that he objected. Why had she married the wastrel? She could have lived with Xerxes until she tired of his feeble assets. Comprehension eluded Vasilios.

  Now she was about to throw his good money at a messy divorce to dispense with his services. Vasilios winced. 'Services' wasn't the most polished description of what was an accurate summary.

  I'm here," she responded. "Why? Do you need something?"

  Named by her mother to appease her husband, Vasilia's name hadn't stuck. On the day they interred his wife, in blatant teenage revenge, Vasilia had adopted her mother's name: Eleni. Almost everyone conformed. Except Vasilios. He persisted in perpetuating his dead wife's flattery, to his daughter's quiet fury.

  Eleni sashayed into her father's study, with a truculence he'd grown to resent. He regarded her, trying to be objective.

  She was of medium height, with a mannish figure which could, when she bothered, emanate an arresting femininity. Her most striking features were her mother's fleshy lips, thick blue-black eyebrows and a dark, sallow skin topped by short, blue-black hair cut like a helmet moulded to her head. Wearing informal sandals, shorts and a t-shirt, she might be going to the gym or the beach, for she possessed a well-exercised figure. This was no surprise, given how much time she devoted to honing her fitness in various gyms and swimming pools – her favoured pick-up points. When she dressed up and used the high heels adored by Cypriot women, she stunned, as her mother had done in her youth.

  Vasilios wished he could complain. It was far too late. He'd dallied too often when younger, which had driven his wife to distraction and possibly to her early demise. Only when Vasilios buried her did he alter; he'd adopted a guilt-induced virtue, akin to his older brother's holy celibacy.

  Despite this reform, Eleni never let him escape her condemnation. She knew how he'd treated her mother when the latter was alive. Redemption and forgiveness, long sought, were impossible. Instead he'd had to wade through the past three decades knowing she damned him.

  Despite this, she behaved ever more as a copy of himself before his wife's death. It was incredible, an injustice she sustained with deliberation.

  He changed the subject.

  "How did the demolition go? Did it start on time?"

  "Where do you think we are, father? In Germany? Of course, not. Our good Cypriot contractors were late starting at the beginning of the week and persisted in being late today."

  Vasilios winced. Vasilia was in one of her meanest moods.

  "Have you heard anything from your uncle?"

  "How could I not? He'd called within a minute of the first section of that awful complex crashing down to congratulate us on delivering part one of his dream."

  Eleni pulled a sour face. She found it hard to reconcile her distaste for her sanctimonious Archbishop uncle with her appreciation of what his improbable promotion would mean to her professional prestige. All too aware of how past missteps had sullied her reputation, she knew his project would re-establish her name for all time.

  There was but one fly in the milk: the refusal of her father to step aside as senior partner of their architectural practice. It was her luck that he refused to retire, though he was years past the time when most normal people took possession of their slippers and paint brushes, or whatever else would help while away their dwindling years.

  She'd hinted and hinted and demanded. To no avail. On the firm's letterhead, she remained second fiddle.

  "What about the steel? Is that on schedule?"

  The one aspect she respected about Vasilios was his eye for logistics. More than once, he'd pulled her fat from what promised to be an expensive fire.

  "Yes, Father. I rechecked today. The ship offloads the first components in Limassol tomorrow night. Discreet, nameless trucks will deliver the metalwork over the next weeks to our staging site for pre-assembly. It means, if anything, we're ahead of schedule."

  "And your wretched CLT and pozzolana?"

  Eleni flinched. Her father knew her one verifiable weakness was an over-enthusiasm for experimental building technologies and materials. On occasion, this had left her exposed to ridicule. This time, she had determined, all would be different. They would acclaim her.

  Her father was unpersuadable. Her decision to use Cross Laminated Timber and pozzolana, or Roman concrete, was a constant contention point.

  In contrast, her uncle supported her. In one part, his delight emanated from the cost reduction. In another, it provided him with the opportunity to polish his green credentials. Already he crowed about how his innovations would consume carbon for far less than any equal structure.

  Yet Vasilios persisted in his disbelief. He ignored her facts, that wood weighs less than half of an equivalent modern reinforced concrete structure. It is easier to shape and far faster to install. Nor would he accept that multiple layers of timber, glued with the grains at right angles, delivered both fire-proof strength and a rigidity similar to the carbon-fibre composites exploited in aero-engines, wind turbines and whole planes. However often she repeated her arguments, she failed to convince him.

  Worse, what pleased Eleni and annoyed him was wood's inherent sustainability. A natural 'sink', trees converted carbon dioxide into the biomass from which the CLT derived. Her choice of CLT, she had argued, reduced the carbon footprint of her uncle's dream by as much as 70 percent. Add the use of pozzola
na, instead of conventional concrete, and the carbon savings became ever greater.

  Her father detested her innovations. To him, conventional Portland cement to make concrete was the material of choice. It was how he'd trained, even if he acknowledged the island used it to excess.

  Always he reproached her. Why couldn't she use what worked? Why must she run risks? In her mind's ear she heard her own reply. 'You always doubt me, father.'

  Instead she replied to him.

  "You will no doubt be displeased that CLT manufacturing is well under way and, because it is being made outside Cyprus, our secrecy continues. The same applies for the pozzolana."

  Vasilios grumped a reluctant acknowledgement. Just as she wouldn't forgive him for her mother's death, he couldn't forget her intransigence about building materials. Would she never learn? Were they destined to fight until one of them was dead?

  Chapter One

  Charles de Gaulle Airport (France)

  Foreboding enveloped Stephane as he boarded his flight. Indecision racked him. Despite his holiday with his ageing parents, he was no closer to resolving his dilemma. Should he 'escape' or come clean?

  He was not looking forward to the three-hour layover in Athens. His eventual arrival in Limassol that evening turned his stomach. He now knew he'd made a massive misjudgement when he'd started work in Cyprus fifteen months earlier. He'd accepted the job offer based on what had then seemed a reasonable premise. The question now was: what price might he have to pay?

  Having fought his fellow passengers for space for his carry-on luggage, he plonked himself into his economy window seat. Almost as soon as he'd sat down, the elbow of his neighbour sought control of their shared armrest. On most flights, he ignored such petty irritations. Today, tense with worry, he fought back. He uttered no words and, after some minutes, took possession of the armrest's whole length.