It would be a novel experience, he thought as he tucked the pistol back under his jacket, to be the prey rather than the hunter. He just had to ensure that it wouldn’t be a terminal experience.
The hospital staff at Chania had been very confused when Roger Krywald stumbled in through their doors. None of them had ever seen a case like this before. The American was bleeding from almost everywhere, but had no apparent external injuries. He was fast becoming delirious, and weakening steadily from loss of blood.
In the absence of any better ideas, they put him in a side-ward, placed a large sign on the door forbidding entry to anyone not directly connected with the patient’s treatment, stationed an orderly outside to ensure this prohibition was enforced, and immediately started barrier nursing procedures. Nobody would go near him who wasn’t wearing theatre scrubs, a waterproof apron, rubber boots, mask, protective goggles and two pairs of surgical gloves, one over the other. And as soon as they emerged from the side-ward they changed out of these garments, which were immediately bagged for disposal by burning. It wasn’t quite as effective as an isolation ward, but the best they could manage in the circumstances.
The first thing the nursing staff did with the patient was cut the clothes off him and double-bag them for destruction by fire. With Krywald lying naked on the bed on a waterproof mattress covered by a thin cotton sheet, one doctor again checked his body for any lesions or other signs of violence, while a second ran his vital signs. What he found was pretty much what he could have predicted: weak pulse, low blood pressure, yet a surprisingly strong heartbeat.
They set up two saline drips, one in each arm, and because Krywald was beginning to thrash about they secured his wrists and ankles to the bed frame with soft fabric straps. He was in this condition, one of the doctors still in attendance, when Hardin and Gravas arrived.
When the orderly barred their access to the sideward, Gravas quickly explained that his companion was an infectious diseases specialist, and needed to talk to the attending doctor immediately. As the orderly turned to rap on the glass window in the door, Hardin unzipped his bag and began pulling out his biological space suit.
As soon as the door opened, Gravas motioned to the orderly to move well clear as the doctor stepped out into the corridor. ‘My name is Gravas,’ he said, ‘and with me here is an American specialist from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. We believe this patient is suffering from the same viral infection that has already killed two men in the village of Kandira.
‘It’s vital that you treat him as if he is highly contagious. I can see that you’ve already started barrier nursing, but you should also ensure there’s no physical contact between the nurses and doctors involved.’
Hardin gestured that he was ready to have his biological suit sealed. ‘Now,’ Gravas said, ‘Mr Hardin will enter the ward and examine the patient. Have you been recording his pulse and respiration?’
The Cretan doctor nodded. ‘Since he arrived, his pulse has grown weaker and his blood pressure has been falling steadily. When I first saw him, he was delirious, and now he’s unconscious.’
Gravas translated for Hardin’s benefit. The American checked that his battery-driven blower was firmly attached to his belt, with the HEPA filter in place, then pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Stein again checked the server for messages, though in view of what he now knew about CAIP he thought it unlikely that McCready would provide him with any way off this island outside a pine box. So he wasn’t particularly surprised when he found nothing waiting for him.
He had to decide what to do now. Krywald was dying, might already be dead, and there was no way Stein was going to go back to the hospital to check on him. He also was going to have to be careful about leaving his hotel. McCready would almost certainly have sent a cleaner, perhaps even a team of them, to Crete, so it was possible that one was already sitting on the opposite side of the street watching the hotel entrance through the telescopic sight of a silenced sniper rifle.
Stein was going to have to use the rear entrance, maybe even wait until after dark before he could leave safely. The only other possibility was to exit in the middle of a large party of tourists, but the hotel currently didn’t seem to have enough guests to make that a viable option.
Even when he got out, he wasn’t sure where he could go: he couldn’t return home without undergoing extensive facial surgery. But, no matter. Stein had always liked Europe, and he had funds salted away in various banks around the world so, while he wasn’t exactly a rich man, he could certainly live fairly comfortably on his assets. And, if things got tight, he could always try peddling his knowledge of the inner workings of the CIA to some of the more anti-American European intelligence services – like the French, for example.
‘They’re based in a hotel in Rethymno,’ Ross explained as soon as Richter answered his mobile. ‘I’m still in Irakleio, but I’m leaving in five minutes. I suggest we meet there in the town. Where are you now?’
‘Right, I’m in Chania at the moment,’ Richter replied, ‘but I’ve got a room booked in Rethymno. How about we meet at my hotel?’
‘Fine,’ Ross said, ‘give me the address.’ Richter’s hire car, he belatedly remembered, was still over at Kandira, so he hailed a taxi. After a short argument over the fare – the driver hadn’t liked the idea of charging it on the meter, but Richter could be very persuasive when he wanted – he was en route to Rethymno along the main north-coast road.
Chapter 21
Friday
Mike Murphy actually passed Richter’s taxi on its way east towards Rethymno, as he himself approached the outskirts of Chania in his Peugeot. He had decided to take care of Krywald first, just in case the American staged some kind of miraculous recovery from whatever bug had attacked him. What he couldn’t do was just wait around until Krywald died: Nicholson had been emphatic that there were to be no loose ends when Murphy left the island.
He left his car in a public parking area outside the hospital, headed in through the double doors and across to the receptionist. After some slight language difficulties, he was given directions to the ward where ‘Mr Curtis’ was confined.
But when he glanced in through the window while walking down the corridor under the suspicious gaze of the orderly standing outside, Murphy realized that his presence was probably both superfluous and pointless. Superfluous, because Krywald was quite obviously, even to untrained eyes, on the point of death, and pointless because there was no easy way he could get anywhere near the patient. At least, not from inside the building.
Ignoring the orderly, Murphy carried on along the corridor without breaking stride. A side-ward two doors down from Krywald’s was empty and, after a swift glance around to check that nobody was watching, he pushed open the door and stepped inside. The room had a small bathroom attached, with just a toilet and a sink, and hanging from a rail was a light blue hand towel. Murphy grabbed it, stepped back into the main room and walked across to the window. He pushed it open, dangled the towel partly outside, then pulled the window closed to hold the towel in place. Now he had a useful marker.
For a few seconds Murphy peered out of the window, staring across the scrubby grass of the small and unused internal quadrangle towards the side of the building opposite, then he exited the side-ward and retraced his steps to the front entrance.
Two minutes later, outside the hospital, he headed quickly over to where he had parked his car. He opened the boot, reached inside and pulled his overnight bag towards him. Quickly checking that he was unobserved, he unzipped it and removed the Daewoo DP51, sliding it into the waistband of his trousers. He’d left the pistol in the boot just in case he’d had to pass through a metal detector to get access to the hospital. He felt around again inside the bag until his fingers touched the smooth cylindrical shape of the silencer: that went into his inside jacket
