was a very, very small consolation.
Stein had no clear idea where he was heading, except away from Rethymno. He’d swung the rented Seat out of the hotel car park as quickly as he dared, just in case the dead man’s colleagues might guess where he was heading. He hadn’t seen anyone as he’d accelerated away, but that didn’t mean that somebody hadn’t spotted him leave.
Within minutes of driving away from the hotel he’d joined the main north-coast road and headed west towards Chania. If he was going to take a chance on the pick-up McCready claimed to have arranged, at least Chania, or even somewhere further west, meant a shorter distance to drive the following afternoon. The email had specified a pick-up point north of the road heading to the coastal area, beyond Platanos, on the extreme west side of the island.
Martin Fitzpatrick, the SIS officer Richter had been told to expect, turned up within twenty minutes and sat himself down heavily next to Richter at the cafe. He’d been out on the road when he’d been briefed by the duty officer over a secure radio circuit, and had broken every speed limit ever imposed to get to Rethymno.
Richter explained briefly what had happened, and that Ross was dead. Just as he finished, they heard the whine of police sirens getting closer. Richter guessed that somebody passing had peered into room 306 and seen Ross’s body lying on the floor.
‘I think the shit’s about to hit the fan,’ Fitzpatrick murmured. ‘I’d better get over there and try to calm things down. I think I can assure the local fuzz that this is an entirely external matter, not involving anyone local, apart from poor old Charles Ross, and he’s in no position to make a fuss.’
‘One thing before you go.’ Richter pulled out his notebook. ‘I’m fairly sure the guy we’re looking for is driving a blue Seat saloon, and I’ve got a partial plate number. It’s almost certainly a hire car, rented within the last three or four days. Can you ask your police friends to get me the whole plate number and then issue a watch order for both the vehicle and occupant. I don’t want this man approached, however. He’s running and he’s likely to shoot first, and second, and not bother asking any questions. What I want to know is where he’s located now. He’s almost certainly left Rethymno, but he’s likely to have checked in to a hotel somewhere else. If they can find out where he is, even where his car’s parked, I’ll handle it from there.’
Though it was a bright sunny day, something about the way Richter uttered those last few words sent a chill up Fitzpatrick’s spine. ‘When you say “handle it”, can I assume this renegade American won’t be bothering us here any more?’
‘You assume correctly,’ Richter said, his face hard and unsmiling. ‘I brought Charles Ross into this mess, and now he’s dead because he was doing his job. That makes his death my responsibility, at least by implication. The man who killed him won’t just walk away from this, that I can promise you.’
Just then two police cars arrived outside the hotel opposite and squealed to a halt, their sirens dying away in a discordant duet. Four officers scrambled out and ran into the hotel entrance. Murder’s a fairly rare crime on Crete, and Richter assumed they were all eager to take a good first look at the victim.
‘Right,’ Fitzpatrick concluded, ‘I’ll see what I can do. Can you hang on here until I’ve got things sorted out across the road?’
Richter nodded. ‘Until you find me this bastard’s location, I’ve got nowhere else to go.’ As Fitzpatrick crossed the street towards the hotel, he heard Richter summon a waiter and order another cup of coffee and a
Mike Murphy had just passed the north-bound turning for Georgioupoli, heading back towards Rethymno, when he spotted the light blue Seat Cordoba travelling in the opposite direction. Murphy had extremely good eyesight and immediately recognized the Seat’s registration number. It helped that he’d been expecting to see the car, having been copied Stein’s pick-up instructions by Nicholson.
He did nothing until the Seat had got about a quarter of a mile behind him, then he hauled the Peugeot round in a U-turn and floored the accelerator pedal. He didn’t know exactly where Stein was going, but he figured that the target was on his way to a new location somewhere on the western end of the island, and closer to where the helicopter would land the following day. Murphy guessed that Stein had the case and file with him, and the easiest option was to follow his target and find out where he was going next. Then he could choose his moment for eliminating the man and completing the job.
But Stein was a fellow professional, and would certainly be constantly watching his mirrors. The traffic was light, which didn’t help, so once Murphy had got close enough to double-check the Seat’s registration number, he dropped back steadily until he was about five hundred yards behind. There he hovered, close enough to keep visual contact with the Cordoba but hopefully too far behind for Stein to become aware of his presence.
The problem came when the Seat approached the turning for Maleme, in now thickening traffic. Murphy found himself sandwiched between two tour buses and the lorry that they were slowly overtaking, and by the time he could clearly see the road ahead of him again, the blue Seat was no longer in sight.
Murphy accelerated hard, just in case Stein had increased his speed, but by the time he reached the junction for Kolymvari he knew that his quarry must have pulled off the road earlier, probably heading into Maleme.
He cursed, swung the Peugeot off into Kolymvari and then back onto the main road, heading east. He’d just have to check every possible turning and hope that he spotted the Seat again before Stein dumped it.
John Westwood had been shelving the vast majority of his regular work ever since the briefing he’d attended in Walter Hicks’s office, but he’d now reached the point where he had to stop trying to track down the shadowy figure lurking behind the deaths of James Richards, the Hawkins couple and now Henry Butcher, and do some real work.
The killing of Butcher had to some extent brought the current phase of the investigation to an end. Butcher had been the last CIA officer known to be involved in Operation CAIP. It was a reasonable assumption that there would be no more killings, simply because nobody else currently or previously employed by the Company knew about CAIP. Apart from the killer, of course, and Westwood was still determined to find him, one way or the other.
But there was simply too much other important stuff piling up in his in-tray for him to ignore it any longer. Some of it he could pass on to his deputies and assistants, but most of it he couldn’t: he was a head of department here and he had greater responsibilities than just tracking down Mr X.
Once he had the personnel files on the remaining fifty-seven possible suspects delivered to his office, he put them straight into his wall safe and locked it. He’d start reading through them the following morning, hopefully with a clearer pair of eyes after a good night’s sleep – and with less subconscious pressure if he could manage to clear some of the routine stuff that was awaiting his attention.
So he pulled his in-tray towards him and got to work.
Murphy’s deduction had been correct: Stein had pulled off the main north-coast road and headed into Maleme. He drove around for a few minutes, getting a feel for the layout of the town, located on the south coast of Chania Bay, then stopped on the western outskirts.
He found a tiny hotel well away from any of the usual tourist areas and paid in cash, in advance, which avoided him having to use any personal documentation. He booked two nights’ bed and breakfast, though he knew he would be leaving early the following afternoon. He wasn’t prepared to wait around in the hotel’s tiny lobby after being forced to vacate his room in the morning.
As a precaution, he parked the Seat in a car park a couple of hundred yards down the road and carried his two bags the short distance back to the hotel. The room he chose was on the first floor at the rear, right next to a circular metal fire escape that ran down from the top floor to the ground, in case he needed another way out in a hurry.
