He walked across the room and paused beside a third chair as the man behind the desk stood up.
‘Welcome, Mr Elias,’ he said, and gestured to the other two men, who both now stood. ‘To your immediate right is Roger Krywald, and on his right is Richard Stein. This is David Elias.’
Elias shook hands with both men, then sat down and waited expectantly.
‘My name is McCready,’ the dark-haired man continued, accurately anticipating Elias’s unspoken question, ‘and I’m your briefing officer for this operation.’ He scanned the faces of the three men sitting in front of him, then opened a red folder on the desk. ‘As at least two of you know,’ he said, ‘we normally conduct operational briefings at Langley, in one of the secure briefing-rooms there. But the circumstances in which we now find ourselves are not normal, which is why we’re meeting here in this safe house.’
Elias tentatively raised a hand. ‘Sir,’ he began, ‘I’m not really sure I should be here. I’m an analyst. I’m not part of the operational staff.’
Out of the corner of his eye Elias saw a sneer cross Krywald’s face. The antipathy between the operational staff – the coal-face warriors of the Agency – and the analysts, who sat at desks or in front of computer screens evaluating the take from technical intelligence mechanisms, was well known.
Each denigrated the work of the other, and each was to a certain extent justified. Technical intelligence was vital – you simply had to know what weaponry the opposition possessed, but without the humint – human intelligence – gleaned from operatives under cover and on the ground, you would have no idea at whom those weapons were likely to be aimed.
McCready looked at Elias and smiled slightly. ‘That’s right, David. Unlike Roger and Dick here, you’re not. But in one way you’re the most vital member of this team, because of your other skills.’
‘My diving?’ Elias hazarded, after a moment.
‘Exactly, your diving. In the initial stages of this operation, Roger and Dick will be supporting and assisting you, because without you there could be no operation.’ McCready paused and again eyed each of the three men in turn.
‘Before we start, some housekeeping. David, as he’s already mentioned, is not a member of the operational staff, and is essentially a passenger on this mission, along just to carry out one specific task, and therefore we’ve decided that for him to use an alias is an unnecessary complication. He can use his genuine passport and he’ll be issued with a credit card in his real name.
‘You two’ – he gestured towards Krywald and Stein – ‘will travel under assumed surnames, but retaining your real first names, and we’ll have appropriate documentation issued to you. You’ll each have three aliases, but this should be a simple enough operation so I doubt that you’ll be needing more than one. Is that clear?’
McCready got three nods in exchange. ‘Right,’ he continued, ‘the situation the Agency has found itself in is somewhat unusual, for a number of reasons. First, you need to know some history. This operation essentially began,’ he settled himself more comfortably in his chair, ‘over thirty years ago, on the other side of the world.’
That afternoon Richter had made two purchases in a shop in Brindisi: one was a whetstone, and the other was a flick-knife with a five-inch blade. When he’d arrived back at the airfield, he’d spent a couple of hours honing the blade of the knife until it was quite literally razor-sharp. He wanted there to be no mistake because he knew he’d get no second chance.
As Perini leaned forward to study Lomas, Richter took a step closer to the captive and eased his right hand out of his pocket. Behind him, he was dimly aware of Simpson approaching the villa, puffing from the unaccustomed exercise.
Lomas looked at Richter, a faint light of recognition in his eyes, and Richter knew that the Russian was desperately trying to place him.
‘Hullo again, Andrew,’ Richter said. ‘Or should that be Alexei? Remember me?’ And as his mouth formed the last syllable, Richter moved. Moved too fast for Perini or Simpson or the DCPP officers or anyone else to stop him. His right thumb had been resting on the button of the flick-knife while he’d been talking. He depressed it and the lethally sharp blade snapped out and locked into place. In a single fluid movement Richter rotated the knife so that the cutting edge of the blade faced up – the way a professional would hold it – and whipped his right hand forward and upwards.
The entire length of the blade sliced effortlessly through Lomas’s shirt and entered his stomach just above the navel, and before he could do anything but open his mouth and take a huge gulp of air preparatory to a scream, Richter’s left hand was encircling his right and he was lifting the knife, lifting it with all his considerable strength, powering it up through Lomas’s body, almost pulling the Russian off the ground, the knife point seeking out the vital organs located above his diaphragm.
‘Let me remind you then, you bastard,’ Richter hissed, his face close to Lomas’s right ear. ‘Raya Kosov, West London. You and your hoods sliced her to pieces. This is payback.’
And then Lomas finally screamed, his howl of pain echoing off the sides of the valley and the villa walls. Perini began yelling and then grabbed Richter from behind, trying to pull him away, but it was like trying to shift a rock. Simpson, Richter realized, was somewhere over to his left and shouting for him to stop. The two DCPP officers were standing stock-still, stunned into immobility by the sudden and completely unexpected attack, while still detaining Lomas by the arms.
And still Richter pulled the knife upwards, the blade slicing through skin, fat, blood vessels and intestines. Blood poured out of the gaping wound, down over Richter’s hands and forearms, soaking the front of the Kevlar jacket and his jeans, and splattered on to the gravel. Perini moved back, then forward again, and then Richter had no option but to stop, and pull out the knife, because the Italian had placed the muzzle of his Beretta Model 92 coldly against his temple.
Simpson grabbed Richter’s left arm and swung him back and away from Lomas who, finally released by the two DCPP men, tumbled forward to the ground, collapsing clumsily into the dark spreading pool that was his own life blood. ‘You treacherous fucking bastard, Richter,’ Simpson spat. ‘You disobeyed my direct order. I told you we wanted Lomas alive.’
‘Tough,’ Richter snapped back, ‘I wanted him dead. If you’d had your way he’d have been stuck in a comfortable safe house and gently debriefed over a year or so, then handed back to the Russians or whoever he works for now with a note of apology. You probably wouldn’t even have got anything useful out of him. This bastard killed Raya Kosov, who I was protecting, and I believe in an eye for an eye.’
Behind the two men a scene of noisy chaos unfolded. Somebody had found a towel in the house, and the two DCPP men were clamping it down over Lomas’s stomach, trying, without a great deal of success, to staunch the flow of blood. Perini had lost interest in Richter as soon as he’d pulled out the knife, and was barking orders into his headset radio. Simpson turned round to see what was happening, to see if Lomas was still alive and if they could salvage anything from this disaster. When he turned back again, Richter had simply vanished.
Inspector Lavat pulled the paper mask tighter around his mouth, and checked his rubber gloves and overshoes. Dr Gravas looked him up and down critically, and nodded. They were ready, although they both anticipated this would be a very short visit.
Jakob had been considerably less than helpful, but they had finally deduced that the ‘other Greek’ who had visited the bar was probably Nico Aristides, the only other member of Spiros’s family known to reside in Kandira. Finding out where he lived had taken a further two hours, due to the in-built reluctance of all Cretans to divulge any information whatsoever to any police officer, or indeed any other authority figure.
While it would not be true to say that the Cretans hate the police, they certainly dislike and distrust them, and the police, for their part, are cautious and suspicious, not least because of all the Western European nations, the Cretans are by far the best armed. Almost every family possesses at least one gun, and usually these are serious weapons ranging from combat shotguns up to sub-machine-guns, while virtually everyone seems to own a pistol. And the single characteristic of almost all these weapons is that they are completely unlicensed.
When they knocked at Nico’s door there had been no reply, only an echoing silence that both men found ominous, though it could simply mean that Nico was out fishing or drinking or something. Unusually for Kandira, his door was locked. In fact, Nico had acquired that habit long ago, when he’d first started ‘helping out’ his uncle with
