Gravas was still looking puzzled when Lavat walked back into the tent. ‘She’s not absolutely certain,’ he began. ‘She thinks he called out “Help me” in Greek, but Aristides’s voice was very distorted, so she might just have interpreted some sounds as speech. She can’t be certain he actually said anything, but she definitely heard him making noises – he was in distress.’
Hardin nodded. ‘OK, so the victim was able to emit sounds, speech or otherwise, up until about ten minutes before he finally died. That’s interesting. What happened next?’
‘I arrived some time after the police,’ Gravas intervened, ‘because I was over in Irakleio when I was alerted. The Inspector here explained what had happened. I usually enter the scene of a crime first by myself to make an initial survey and to confirm that the victim is actually dead – being a medical doctor as well as a forensic scientist – before bringing in any of my team members. In this case, I entered the bedroom and saw the body exactly as Inspector Lavat has described. From my initial inspection I was certain that he had been butchered, probably with a knife or an axe. His corpse appeared almost drained of blood. Once I confirmed that he was dead, I called in my team to begin checking the rest of the house.
‘I remained in the bedroom to carry out a physical examination of the corpse, and that was when I discovered no evidence whatsoever of any kind of physical injury. I had expected at the very least to find one or more puncture wounds in the chest to account for the amount of blood on the body itself, but there was nothing.
‘Normally, we would then remove the corpse to our mortuary without further examination, but this absence of wounds troubled me, so I broke the rules. I cut off the man’s clothing and carried out a detailed examination of his body. I found no fresh wounds of any kind, but I did find indications of severe internal trauma. He appeared to have haemorrhaged blood through every orifice, something I have never encountered before.
‘I was about to finally order his body taken out of the house when I suddenly recalled an article I had read years ago about the disease Ebola. I remembered it describing how the bodies of victims almost liquefied, with blood erupting everywhere, and that seemed to me to be the only explanation that made sense. I ordered my team out of the house, closed the bedroom door and, to use your American expression, called in the cavalry.’
Hardin smiled briefly and looked down at the notes he had been making. ‘As I said before, Dr Gravas, you seem to have done everything exactly as it should be done. I hear what you say about Ebola, and from your description of the dead man here there are certainly some disturbing similarities. But actually I don’t think it’s Ebola we’re dealing with, mainly because of the timescale involved.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Two reasons. First, Ebola takes a lot longer than that to kill its victims. Typically the time between the onset of the infection and the death of the victim is a minimum of four or five days, sometimes a week or even more. You told me that this guy Spiros Aristides was drinking in the bar here in Kandira on Monday evening, but on Tuesday morning he was dead. That’s one reason.
‘The second reason is what the woman heard. Ten minutes or so before his death, the victim moaned or perhaps cried out. In fact, and contrary to anything you may have read, Ebola actually attacks only the circulatory system, causing uncontrollable bleeding within the body and affecting every organ. That includes the brain as the skull fills with blood. Victims may suffer what appear to be epileptic seizures, strokes or convulsions, but they invariably go into a deep coma in the last stages of the infection, as brain functions cease. If Aristides had been suffering an attack by Ebola, he couldn’t possibly have cried out.
‘Instead, I think what we’re dealing with here,’ Hardin looked from Lavat to Gravas, ‘is a brand-new hot agent that could make Ebola look like a mild case of influenza.’
Paul Richter’s cabin was on the starboard side of Two Deck, almost directly below the Harrier tie-down spot, a fact that quickly became obvious to him at a little after eight ten that morning when the 800 Squadron maintainers began slam checks on a Harrier that had just had an engine change. With about half an inch of steel plate and pretty much no sound insulation between him and a Rolls-Royce Pegasus running at full power, Richter woke up fast and stayed awake.
He shaved and showered and decided not to bother with breakfast. He grabbed a cup of coffee in the Wardroom, then walked up to the Harrier briefing-room on Two Deck to be in time for Shareholders. He didn’t actually need to attend, as he was in reality little more than a passenger, and there were no more fixed-wing flying operations planned until after the ship left Piraeus, but Richter made the effort anyway.
Just after nine he wandered up to the bridge and sat down in Commander (Air)’s swivel chair in Flyco, staring out at the Mediterranean.
He had been sitting there ten minutes when somebody spoke from behind him. ‘A penny for them, Spook.’
Richter recognized Roger Black’s voice immediately. ‘Hi, Blackie. Just taking a last look around. Don’t know when – or even if – I’ll ever be aboard this war canoe again.’
‘Oh. I thought you might be bored here: no flying, nobody shooting at you.’
‘Nope.’ Richter grinned. ‘Boredom’s a state of mind, not a state of place. I never get bored, even when nobody’s shooting at me.’ He took a last glance round the horizon, then got up from the seat. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy you a coffee.’
The three men sat in silence for a few minutes, seemingly stunned by the possible implications of what had happened in the quiet village.
‘OK,’ Hardin said, rousing himself. ‘The diagnosis can come later. Before I get suited up to take a look at this man, I’ve got a few more questions. First, you said that both Spiros and Nico Aristides were drinking in a bar last night. Have you traced anybody else that was there? Anyone who saw them, I mean.’
Lavat nodded. ‘Yes, we interviewed the owner, who’s also the bartender. He saw the two men together, but said they were acting normally – no signs of illness or anything else. We spent most of yesterday afternoon locating the other customers from the bar that night, and all those we managed to trace seem fine. No health problems, and none recalled anything unusual about Spiros or Nico.’
‘Apart from finding the aircraft, that is,’ Gravas murmured.
‘Aircraft? What aircraft?’ Hardin demanded.
‘It’s probably unrelated,’ Lavat said, ‘but two drinkers overheard Spiros telling Nico about a crashed aircraft he had found somewhere off the coast. He’s a diver – he was a diver, I mean. To be exact, he was an unlicensed diver. Unfortunately, those two locals turned up outside the cordon and talked to one of our local reporters, with the result that the papers have been splashing a lot of nonsense about some poisonous germ from the seabed all over their front pages.’
Hardin grunted. ‘Another question. Did Spiros and Nico arrive at the bar together or separately?’
‘They met there,’ Lavat said firmly. ‘Apparently Spiros arrived first, in a bad mood, and sat drinking whisky for quite some time before Nico walked in. The barkeeper’s impression – but he’s definitely not the best of witnesses – was that Spiros didn’t expect to see his nephew, and was pleased when he showed up.’
‘Ah,’ Hardin said, ‘that could be important.’
‘I don’t follow you,’ Gravas murmured.
‘I’m trying to work through the timescales involved,’ Hardin replied. ‘We have to assume that we’re dealing with an unknown pathogen that possesses some of the gross characteristics of Ebola, but which is real fast acting. We know that these two men were drinking together in a bar on Monday night, and we also know that less than twelve hours later they were both dead.
‘It seems reasonable to assume that the victim of any pathogen capable of killing that quickly would show signs of illness fairly soon after becoming infected. Now, if Spiros and Nico had been together when they entered the bar on Monday night, they might already have been incubating the agent. The fact that they arrived separately,
