research purposes.’
‘Or,’ Richter interrupted, ‘to develop as some kind of bioweapon. And the other possibility is that it had already been weaponized. I take it from what you said that you didn’t find this container?’
Hardin shook his head. ‘No, there was no sign of anything like that at either location. And we’ve had a report of unidentified and unauthorized intruders at both hot zones: two men masquerading as CDC employees, one of them carrying a large case. At the second property they killed a police officer and two elderly villagers. We have no idea who these two men are or where they’re from, but the conclusion is fairly obvious.’
Richter raised his eyebrows, then nodded, realizing immediately that his chances of getting back to the
In fact, Elias didn’t get to dive that afternoon, simply because Krywald hadn’t realized quite how long it would take to get where they were going and to get things organized.
Nicholson had spent some time trying to hire a boat for them on the island of Gavdos itself, to minimize the time they would take reaching the dive site. He finally gave up when it became apparent that the island had a population of less than fifty, virtually nothing in the way of infrastructure apart from a couple of tavernas, and the only form of motorized transport available was a handful of tractors used primarily for transporting goods, goats and tourists, but not necessarily in that order. He’d checked on Gavdopoula, too, but as far as he was able to discover it was inhabited entirely by goats, so he had turned his attention to mainland Crete, picking Chora Sfakia as the closest point to the dive site, and started again on the telephone.
Stein had left to make the pick-up at Souda Bay as soon as he finished his breakfast. While they were waiting for him to return, Krywald checked the information ‘McCready’ had sent and then studied his tourist map. He wasn’t pleased with what it showed him.
Chora Sfakia was on the south coast of Crete, not all that far from Kandira, in fact. The problem was the road, or lack of it. Looking again at the map, Krywald realized the distinct advantages of operating in a country like America or France, where the population understood the needs of the car. On Crete, it looked to him as if most of the roads were simply metalled goat-tracks, meandering from place to place as the whim of their original creators had inspired them.
There were only two ways to get to Chora Sfakia, and he didn’t like the look of either of them. The first option was to take the coast road and head west out of Rethymno as far as Vryses and then turn left and follow the narrow and twisting mountain road through Kares and Impros down to the coast. The second route was probably worse: drive south from Rethymno on the main road towards Spili, then turn right through Sellia and follow an even longer twisting road down to, and then along, the south coast of the island.
By the time Stein returned to the hotel, Krywald and Elias had packed overnight bags for the three of them and were waiting for him in a cafe along the street. As soon as Stein drove up they both climbed into the hired Ford. The steel case went with them, still securely locked inside the larger case: Krywald wasn’t prepared to let it out of his sight now that they’d recovered it.
‘Which way?’ Stein asked, sliding the Focus into first gear and pulling away from the kerb.
‘Head for Vryses,’ Krywald said sourly.
‘Jesus,’ Stein muttered. ‘I’ve only just come from there. It’s nearly as far as Souda Bay.’
‘Yeah? Well you should know the way, then,’ Krywald retorted and lapsed into a sullen silence.
‘The big question, of course, is where did an elderly Greek living in a tiny village on a small island in the eastern Mediterranean come across a sealed container filled with an unknown and totally lethal pathogen?’ Richter asked.
Hardin shook his head. ‘I have no idea. My involvement here is purely to identify the infective agent and to put measures in place to contain the epidemic, if there is one. Because this pathogen was apparently stored in some kind of flask, that makes it more a matter for the police. So let me introduce you to Inspector Lavat.’
Lavat wasn’t that much help – not because of being obstructive in any way, but simply because he didn’t know the answer. ‘All I can tell you is that Aristides was a diver all his life, and according to the locals still used to go out diving most days, despite having no permit. He owned a day boat moored in the bay down below Kandira.’
‘Why would he need a permit?’ Richter asked.
‘The seabed round here is littered with wrecks. Some of them date back two or three thousand years and contain archaeological treasures that should be properly recovered by trained professionals. What the Department of Antiquities definitely doesn’t want is a bunch of cowboy divers looting these wrecks indiscriminately and selling off whatever they’ve found. So all scuba divers must obtain a permit before they can legally put on an aqualung.’
‘And this Spiros didn’t bother, I suppose?’
‘No, Spiros didn’t bother. I understand that he frequently hauled up artefacts from the bottom of the sea and gave them to his nephew to sell. Nico’s name came up a few times in police records hereabouts in connection with the unauthorized sale of archaeological relics to tourists who should have known better, but nothing was ever proved.’
‘OK,’ Richter mused, ‘that might tie in with those Greek newspaper reports suggesting that Aristides found some kind of wrecked aircraft. Normally I don’t believe anything I read in the papers but maybe this time there’s a grain of truth in the story. He could have discovered something in a wreck on the seabed, then brought it home and opened it. What that still doesn’t answer is exactly where he found it. Does anybody in the village know where he went diving recently?’
‘No,’ Lavat replied, ‘if anybody knows, they’re not telling – or at least not telling me. These outlying villages have no respect for the law, so the chances of any of the locals confiding in a police officer are virtually nil.
‘I’ve looked at Aristides’s boat,’ Lavat continued, ‘but found nothing of interest. There was nothing on board that shouldn’t be there, apart from his diving gear, of course. I’ve checked his navigation charts, too, but none of them has any positions marked, nothing to indicate where he had been. I suspect he probably knew this area so well that he never bothered about using charts – he just kept them aboard as any other responsible boat owner would do.
‘So if you’re going to go out looking for the source of this pathogen, Mr Richter, I wish you luck. The Mediterranean covers about two and a half million square kilometres. Which bit are you going to start with?’
Richter smiled slightly. ‘It shouldn’t be that difficult. If Aristides found this container while he was diving, the location has to be somewhere fairly close to Crete. You said yourself he only had a day boat, so he had to be able to motor out to his chosen site, carry out his dive and then get back to Kandira that evening. Even if he was spending the night away from home – say at Irakleio – he would still have the same kind of constraint. He would need to get back to port somewhere the same day as he sailed. His boat probably has a maximum speed of about ten or twelve knots, so assuming he motored out to sea for five hours or so, that gives a radius of fifty, maybe sixty, miles maximum from the coast of Crete.’
‘That’s still a huge area – probably fifteen to twenty thousand square kilometres.’
‘Yes,’ Richter nodded, ‘but again I can reduce it. Unless Aristides was using fairly sophisticated diving equipment, he couldn’t have gone below about one hundred or maybe a hundred and fifty feet. A lot of the seabed around Crete is much deeper than that, which eliminates most of the surrounding area. And if he was hauling up archaeological relics from the seabed he’d want to be safe from prying eyes, even when he got back into harbour. He lived in Kandira, and my guess is he used only Kandira as his base. That means I’ll be concentrating on possible sites lying to the south and west of this end of Crete.’
‘You seem to know quite a lot about diving, Mr Richter.’
‘It’s been a hobby,’ Richter said shortly.
Lavat was eyeing him curiously. ‘You’re also raising the kind of questions that I wouldn’t expect from a medical investigator. I believe you told Mr Hardin that you worked for the British Medical Research Council?’
‘I have got another job,’ Richter replied.
