Purkiss considered. If they were stopped by the police for any reason, they’d be immediately arrested when a concealed weapon was found. On the other hand, a new attack could come out of nowhere, and they might not be so lucky this time.
Purkiss nodded at the gun. ‘Put it inside your jacket,’ he said. ‘And keep it there until you have to use it. No admiring it in public.’
They wandered further along the harbour, where the fishing boats were bringing in their latest catches. Beyond the bobbing masts, the Aegean glittered under the morning sunlight. An idyllic, bucolic scene, and one which felt to Purkiss laden with threat.
Seventeen
Kyrill Grabasov gazed through the plate-glass window that filled almost the entire east-facing wall of his office. Beyond were the skyscrapers of the International Business Centre, symbols of the new, resurgent Motherland.
Failure was a word that left a bitter taste in his mouth. His own failure, and that of those working for him. It could not be otherwise. If failure had been easy to accept, he wouldn’t have reached his current position as the Chief Executive Officer of Rosvolgabank, far less held it for the last four years.
The bank was a hybrid, partly state-owned but mostly in the hands of private shareholders, many of whom themselves held high office in the Moscow bureaucracy. Some of them were in the Kremlin itself. The bank had helped fund one of the biggest weapons-development programmes of the Russian military, the Orkotsk Project, to the tune of seventy billion US dollars. In return, the Russian Duma, the parliament, had smoothed the way for the Rosvolgabank to corner the market in Russia’ newest territorial acquisition, the Crimea, since its annexation last spring.
It was fair to say that the Rosvolgabank, and Kyrill Grabasov, had an amicable relationship with the political leadership in Moscow.
Today’s failure — the one Grabasov had learned about just half an hour earlier — wouldn’t directly affect that relationship. But small failures tended to presage larger ones, much as to tolerate a small nick or dent on the bodywork of your new car often meant you became less concerned about the next one, and the next, until before you knew it you found yourself driving a battered old wreck.
He’d taken the call on his cell phone, alone in his office. It was Artemis. The man didn’t sound afraid — his voice never betrayed any emotion — but Grabasov imagined his unease.
‘My men have been neutralised,’ he said without preamble.
Grabasov took it in. ‘Their status?’
‘I’m awaiting confirmation, but I believe they’re all dead.’
Artemis would have sent the men in with at least one of them wired and transmitting a live audio feed back to wherever he was.
Four men, he’d said he was sending in. All of them dead.
‘It was Purkiss,’ said Artemis. ‘My link man confirmed it shortly before he was cut off by a gunshot. He said there were others, number and identities unknown.’
‘The woman?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘For the second time, then, in twenty four hours,’ said Grabasov, ‘Purkiss evades you.’
‘Yes, Oracle,’ said Artemis. Again, there was no quaver of emotion in his voice.
Grabasov went to the window and stared at a plane ascending high above. Leaving Sheremetyevo Airport, probably.
Grabasov said, ‘Stay where you are, in Athens. Concentrate as many personnel as you can there.’
‘Understood.’
There wasn’t much more to say. Grabasov thumbed the key to end the call and tossed the phone onto the leather surface of his desk.
He paced his office. The Ferryman had located Purkiss, and, observing that he had others with him, had called Grabasov. It would require several men to take Purkiss down, he said. So Grabasov had notified Artemis, and Artemis had sent four of his people in.
And they’d failed.
Grabasov picked up his phone once more and dialled the Ferryman’s number. After six rings, it went to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message. Nobody else called the Ferryman on this number.
While he looked out over the city, waiting for the ferryman to return his call, Grabasov wondered at the man’s motivation. Had he genuinely thought he’d be unable to capture Purkiss and kill his associates on his own? Or had he, rather, wanted to test the waters, to have other men sent in as cannon fodder, to gauge just how much of a threat Purkiss posed?
Grabasov suspected the latter. He understood the thinking behind it. Admired it, even. It was what he might have done himself in similar circumstances.
A full forty minutes passed before the phone rang on the desk. Grabasov snatched it up.
‘Oracle,’ said the Ferryman. ‘You’ve heard what happened?’
‘Yes.’
The Ferryman explained. And Grabasov understood.
Eighteen
The skipper’s name was Georghios Georghiou, and although he was probably under sixty years old, he was as grizzled as an ancient, his sun burned to the colour of teak.
‘Two hour,’ he said as they climbed aboard. It was the last English they heard him speak.
The boat was a custom-built contraption which, despite its odd appearance, looked solid and hardy. Rebecca and Delatour took their seats on one side, Kendrick and Purkiss on the other. Apart from Georghiou there were no crew.
The clerk at the tiny office on the wharf had told Rebecca that hers was an unusual request, that most tourists wanted to see the larger and more famous Cycladean islands such as Santorini or Naxos. Rebecca spun a yarn about having seen the islet of Iora in a picture book as a child, and having harboured a longstanding obsession to visit it ever since.
The clerk admitted he’d never seen the islet. When Rebecca asked if it was inhabited, the clerk waved a hand. ‘Who knows? Sometimes you get these back-to-nature types camping out there, on these far-flung rocks. Most of them get bored eventually and leave.’
Rebecca had been shown a battered old book, yellowed from years of sun and sea air, which provided the geographical characteristics of the two hundred islands and islets that made up the Cyclades. She couldn’t read Greek but the clerk translated for her. Iora was an outcrop from the sea bed, some three kilometres by one and a half kilometres across, in the western part of the archipelago. There were no known inhabitants apart from gulls, largely because there was no arable land there. It was a rock in the sea.
The guide offered to loan Rebecca the book but she declined, having memorised the salient details, such as they were.
Purkiss listened to her account as they boarded. It brought to mind his earlier thoughts about Vale.
Was this a trap? Was the island indeed uninhabited, a place into which Purkiss was being corralled in preparation for some assault?
He mentioned nothing of this to Rebecca or the others.
The captain, Georghiou, steered effortlessly, almost lazily, his hand draped over the tiller, his neck extended to receive the watery sun on his face. The pouches and wrinkles of his skin made his eyes almost disappear, as if he was asleep. But whenever the boat seemed to be approaching unnervingly close to a finger of rock protruding from the surface of the water, the boatman angled it away smoothly.
The morning was cold, the skein of cloud filtering the sun. A light breeze rippled across the surface of the sea and across the boat, chilling Purkiss. Occasionally they passed another motorboat, or a yacht, or a small fishing trawler, and Georghiou would raise an index finger in acknowledgement. Mostly, though, they were alone.
Purkiss watched the others without making it obvious he was doing so. Delatour rubbed his arm from time to time — he’d bound the cut with a strip from his old shirt — and gazed out over the water, his expression betraying nothing. Rebecca had a distant expression, as if she was deep in contemplation, or remembering something.