Resurrection (The Corruption Series Book 4)

by Charles Brett

  He reflected on this petty victory. It was as good an indicator of his turmoil as he could envisage.

  Airborne and above the clouds, no longer able to distract himself by following the plane's progress over France, he lapsed into a light reverie. His mind ran over what had occurred and what might happen.

  Sixteen months earlier a head-hunter had approached him to apply for a role, one which suited his technical skills to perfection. The offer was timely given that he was without a job due to his resignation from his previous bank employer on a point of principle. It promised a fat salary and generous expenses with a paid-for apartment in Limassol, a place he could barely locate. He'd accepted, not least because he couldn't bear to be without an income. All his working life, he'd enjoyed living well. Too well, his sister remonstrated.

  The reality was he'd failed to save, despite years of way-above-average earnings in his native France, California and then London. His fiftieth birthday was imminent. His finances demanded fast, restorative action to repair their sorry state.

  With perfect hindsight, he understood this was why he hadn't dug deep into what his employer in Cyprus wanted. On the face of it the work would challenge his creativity. With so much paid for, he'd determined he should avoid expensive distractions and aim to convert the initial one-year contract into a second. At the end of that, he had planned to have saved sufficient to purchase outright a decent apartment in Paris and, if there was enough left over, a small house in the south of France near to where his parents had retired.

  Months later he'd managed to extend the contract and saved more than he'd expected, though not quite enough to head back to France. His problem was there was no way he could continue unless he accepted the strong possibility of long-time, no-cost accommodation as an involuntary guest in Nicosia's Central Jail or its equivalent in France or, worst of all, in the US.

  His original interview had set him to develop a system to accept and pay out against bets made on sporting events. Automation was an integral element, to match wagers between sports enthusiasts and pay out winnings. To generate profits this had to occur with the minimum of human interaction. In concept, it wasn't much different to what existed in certain parts of the financial sector, except sports-betting required thousands or tens of thousands of participants. The Far East and the USA possessed the numbers who enjoyed placing many modest-value bets.

  Much of the receipts and payments work was already complete when he'd first arrived in Limassol. His role as a specialist in financial trading systems was to concentrate on the bid matching and calculation of winnings and pay outs. He'd delivered a functional prototype within months.

  His first major surprise had crept up on him when he'd found his prototype in use before its debugging. This had been a clue all was not above-board.

  His second shouldn't have been. It had stared him in the face, however much he tried to ignore the evidence. Dmitriy, his boss, had portrayed himself as a Greek Cypriot with deep experience in the Ukraine. In reality he was Russian with an Armenian heritage. The most overt clue lay in Dmitriy's behaviour, for example his fondness for vodka – which he drank to excess – and his poor Greek.

  With great care Stephane had monitored the deployment of that prototype and its subsequent improved versions. Months had passed before the centime dropped. He was part of a sophisticated money laundering scheme masquerading as legal gambling.

  The ingenuity of the scheme, which he was almost sure his employer did not realise he'd figured out, lay in the ability of Russian clients to place a host of small bets against themselves. Monies would arrive in small amounts from Russia or elsewhere, of no more the twenty-five thousand euros per bet. Once a wager completed, the winnings would transfer through the legal banking system, no doubt to find a final home in a Swiss or Andorran bank account. Each completed bet looked legal and above suspicion.

  It was clever because it was difficult to disentangle the illegal from the host of genuine bettors from the US and Far East. Their activities obscured the money laundering, which was lost in the transaction noise.

  Stephane's risk crystallised if he was identified as a principal in a system to conceal money laundering. As if that was insufficient, he'd discovered there were additional nefarious activities he could not penetrate. One bothered him. His instinct told him the scale of advertising to attract gamblers hid further corruption.

  The decision he must now take was whether he should resign and tiptoe away, leaving a threat hanging over him. The authorities might seek him out at some unknown later date. He disliked any thought of living his next seven to ten years in anticipation of some investigating agency banging on his door.

  The alternative was to turn whistle-blower and attempt to secure his freedom. The drawback was the lack of guarantees. If assessed to be complicit, he might yet occupy a small, nasty cell for a long time.

  For all the last week, throughout his biannual visit to his parents, he'd tried to evaluate which option was best, or least worst. Yet all he'd decided was that it was time to get out. This he planned to do tomorrow or the day after, though it would cost him.

  About one decision he was clear: if he opted to approach the authorities, he would have to remove himself as soon as practical, to prevent them from obliging him to remain working as an inside agent. Given the crooked nature of his employer, Stephane was unlikely to enjoy a long life if he were to be found out. He'd heard threats uttered to others when at work. He did not want to be the next victim.

  Paphos (Cyprus)

  Kjersti inspected the medieval Castle of Paphos. It stood beside the Mediterranean, where a light wind whipped up the occasional seahorse. This was the chosen jump-off point for her latest craziness, a run from the extreme south-west to the north-eastern corner of Cyprus. She jogged on the spot to keep the blood flowing, thinking of the Apostolos Andreas Monastery, 320 kilometres away. She and Costas planned to reach it in a fortnight, including three rest days in Nicosia. She shook her head. She knew she was a masochist, but this was lunacy.

  Was she nervous? A little. She'd finished one 100-kilometre 'race' in the past five years. That had proven to be more an effort to survive than a competition to win. She'd completed the Saaremaa 50K the previous year, though there'd been a heavy physical price. Albeit by accident, her participation in that had led to a combination of infamy and success.

  Now almost 40, this 'Cyprus Trek' was her last hurrah for a super-length run. Thank goodness it wasn't a race, though it might yet place different demands upon her.

  She'd agreed to take part years back, never believing she would need to deliver. Her challenger was Costas, then her boyfriend. He was a committed long-distance runner who had grown up in Cyprus until offered the opportunity to get his Master's in Oslo, where they'd met and lived together. Costas retained a hazy love for Aphrodite's Island which he had determined he must reveal to her. This 'Trek' was his mechanism. When she had nodded acceptance years back it was to agree in principle; she had thought little more about it, and less when their relationship collapsed as his pursuit of career priorities whisked him off, first to North Carolina and then Southern California. He'd demonstrated where his priorities lay.

  At first heartbroken, she distracted herself by focusing on her career as a journalist. A quasi-order had arrived, with past disorder masked by ever more demanding training schedules and the discovery there were magazines which would pay for stories about running.

  Despite her misery at his disappearance to the US, Costas hadn't completely lost touch. He reminded her of her commitment to the Trek. These interactions were by email or the occasional phone call, though they had tailed off when he'd married.

  By that time, she didn't object. Her professional reputation as an investigative journalist who specialised in uncovering corruption had risen fast. In parallel, she concentrated on the pleasures of extreme running. She had found she could lose herself in the agony of each kilometre accumulated. It was a safer relationship than any long-term boy
friend.

  Out of the blue, Costas had contacted her. After a messy divorce, he had time on his hands and was back in Cyprus. His divorce settlement had obliged him to sell up in the States. Now he insisted he needed an objective to exorcise his pain by returning to training for an extreme effort. Kjersti could relate to this, even more so when he mentioned how he'd found his wife frolicking in their marital bed with the two technicians he'd employed to install new air conditioning. In his view, it was time to resuscitate the Trek

  She'd pushed back at his first invitations. She'd argued she'd neither the time nor the financial resources.

  He'd persisted and offered to pay if she'd agree. She was, he asserted, the only person with the guts, commitment and endurance to make the Trek a success.

  His flattery had piqued her interest. Nevertheless, she'd declined any support and again turned down the offer. The fear chafed that he might have ulterior motives.

  The irony was she now jogged and stretched beside the Castle in Paphos. There would be no starting gun. Instead they awaited a pair of local journalists, harnessed by Costas, who were to witness their departure and then write or broadcast daily progress updates. Though instructed to arrive by nine, they hadn't. What Kjersti wanted, more than anything, was to get on with it. She was ready after months of preparation.

  A taxi drew up. A motorbike followed. An average height but overweight young man, with the sort of woolly under-chin beard Kjersti disliked, headed towards her. A dark, pretty girl of no obvious age made for Costas, after propping up her motorbike. In their discussions beforehand in Nicosia, it was always like this. She preferred Iphi, who knew a little about running and the appeal of disciplined exertion. The hirsute Aris – short for Aristotle, he asserted with pride – seemed not to have heard of exercise. Somehow Kjersti was always second fiddle and had to talk with Aris. No doubt Iphi preferred Costas because he was from an influential local family.

  She and Costas posed for photos against the sea, the castle and Paphos port. The formalities complete, they confirmed they were ready and said as much to their dutiful hacks. It was time to begin before the sun overheated them.

  They shook hands, smiled once more for the cameras and left the Castle to trot along the esplanade of restaurants and bars preparing for their lunchtime tourist hordes. Past these they accelerated to head along Poseidon Avenue and across town towards the airport.

  This part was gentle. Today's first part was moderate, along the sea before turning into the foothills of the Troodos Mountains. Their target was a bed and breakfast near the Monastery of Chrysoroyiatissa. They would cover almost a marathon in distance, sharpened by the bite of a cumulative kilometre of vertical ascent once they left the sea behind.

  Almost five hours later, Kjersti understood the Trek would be far tougher than she'd anticipated. She'd thought she'd prepared. In physical terms, she'd put long hours in, with lengthy hill climbs in her native Norway and at heights well above those in Cyprus. To her mind, she was altitude acclimatised. But she wasn't Cyprus-ready.

  Costas, though not bothered by the sun, was in less good physical shape than he proclaimed. They supported each other by taking it in turns to run in front to create a modest slipstream for the one behind, alternating every 400 or 500 metres.

  The first 20 kilometres had been a doddle over the flat terrain. Their biggest danger had come from Cypriot drivers gawking, unable to believe their eyes. Costas had warned her that his fellow islanders had forgotten how to walk in their desire for a car, and that they barely knew how to drive.

  Shortly after passing over the main road leading to Limassol and Nicosia, they'd turned north to begin their first significant ascent. This was to the village of Amargeti. According to her preparation notes, the distance was only about 14 kilometres. She ran this distance every other day. It should have been easy. In practice, those 14 kilometres had felt like double or triple the distance.

  If that had not been bad enough, the final 13 kilometres up to Chrysoroyiatissa were an agony for both of them. She and Costas had almost walked, a refuge they'd insisted to each other beforehand they must never sink to.

  This was Day 1. Days 2 and 3 promised worse. The Troodos was a formidable mountain range, almost 2000 metres high. They had to cross its highest point and descend before they could take advantage of the flat Mesaoria plain beyond.

  Yuste (Spain)

  Inma had ducked a personal reckoning for more than two years. To start with she'd deemed it unnecessary. She'd told herself she'd cruised with ease past both her personal Scylla and Charybdis and emerged as a late-blooming chrysalis into her current successful persona. This should have been a normal teenage progression, but she had had her expected normalcy ripped from her without comprehension or agreement.

  Over the past two years, however, her uncertainties had multiplied and coalesced. At the outset these had involved selfish doubts about what she should, or should not, expect for herself. What disconcerted was these doubts could disappear as fast as they reappeared. There was no obvious common theme or rhythm around which to arrange her life. Suppression became her coping mechanism.

  More recently she'd experienced short, acute shocks. Of these, one was not her own fault. No responsible adult could have anticipated the scale of interference by a person like the wretched Kjersti. She'd blown everything out of the water when she'd published revelations she'd had no right to unveil.

  From the moment Inma found out what Kjersti had done, she'd formed a bitterness against the journalist. This deepened when Kjersti's follow up articles fomented situations in which Inma always lost out.

  No, Inma was certain she couldn't blame herself for Kjersti's unexpected appearance and consequences, nor for the later distress and its side effects.

  What irritated was the realisation Kjersti must have made a financial killing while she herself had lost a small fortune and almost her business. Rubbing salt deeper into Inma's open wound, Kjersti had not only pumped up her own reputation, but promoted the self-serving and annoying María with the description of the latter's wretched automated olive inspection machines.

  As if these were not enough, what Inma resented most was the casual way Kjersti had robbed Inma of her cousin Ana. She'd lost Ana, both as a business partner and friend. The price oppressed. Summed up, Kjersti represented a roll call of disasters. That was enough to warrant eternal enmity.

  As the final bitter blow, Inma's hope for a relationship with Lili had had to be sacrificed on the altar of Lili's lack of self-esteem and need for recognition. To this day Inma remained uncomfortable about her attraction to Lili. The sole compensation was the financial rewards which rolled in after Lili's rebuff.

  Inma swung the steering wheel to traverse the long approach to the finca and her restored farmhouse. This lay at the western end of the Sierra de Gredos, the 300-kilometre granite massif which stretches from northeast of Madrid far to the south-west.

  The finca was close to Yuste, the tranquil resting place of Carlos I of Spain, otherwise known as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. He'd retired here when he'd abdicated both thrones in his fifties. In this he was unusual for his times.

  The closeness of his monastic retreat wasn't why she treasured the finca's location, though it was true the two sites shared common aspects: fabulous views south over the Tiétar and Tajo river basins and a climate cold but sunny in winter, unless the snows crashed in, yet high enough to deliver coolness in summer compared to the punishing heat of Madrid or most of Extremadura below.

  For her the finca was more than her bolt hole. It was a labour of love, her spiritual refuge, the place she returned to time and again. Except this time anguish ruled. She was disturbed and perturbed.

  She forced herself to change mental gears, to remember how she'd discovered the finca when she'd sorted through the family inheritance after the demise of first her mother and then her father. They had succumbed in short succession to the grief of losing their two sons in the same fiery car smash.

&
nbsp; On first sight, the finca's house had been a ruin, overgrown and hidden deep in the trees. The main building had retained little more than its stout stone walls. There was neither a roof nor the floor to separate the animals from their owners living above. Nothing suggested the place had received any attention in a century or more. She doubted her grandfather, never mind her father, had set eyes on it.

  Perhaps because of this she'd fallen for the opportunity in an instant. When she had sufficient money, after years spent sorting out her parents' estates, she began the lengthy process of restoration. With only the walls intact, she'd used these as the scaffolding to create a dream, one incorporating a secret.

  From ten years of slow accelerating progress, a substantial three-bedroom country retreat emerged. A further five years added two guest chalets, a swimming pool for exercise and the blossoming of a mature garden surrounded by a semi-planned wilderness.

  The finca became her sanctuary.

  She adored it to the point where she invited fewer and fewer to enjoy it: her sisters and their families plus an occasional Opus colleague. It was all hers, not a place to share – except for one brief awakening.

  Inma parked her ageing X5. She'd bought the car second-hand on a whim, but knew it was replacement time. The reason she hadn't was her desire to switch to an electric vehicle. But to do this, she insisted it must be able to travel the 200-kilometre distance between here and Madrid on a single charge.

  Inma knew she was a classic victim of 'range anxiety', the paralysing fear of owning a magnificent eco-vehicle possessed of useless flat batteries with nowhere to recharge them. Whenever she eventually bought an electric car, she'd promised herself, she would install fast charger points both here and in Madrid to eliminate the risk of beginning a journey with low-charge batteries.