The journey from Cyprus took an hour and a half. Once the plane reached the Bay of Marathon in Greece, it flew low, the back hatch was opened in mid-air and the submarine with Vasilis and Katerina and eight of the crew, in addition to the controller of the submarine, was dropped into the sea and quickly submerged.
Just outside the city limits everyone aboard, apart from the controller, put on diving suits and equipment and left the submarine for the final leg into the city. They expected the doors at a particular spot to be opened by Vasilis’ insiders.
Somehow, whether betrayed by a double spy or by accident, they tripped the alert systems upon entering the city. Intruder alert sirens broke the city’s routine and every citizen scuppered from their daily activities to go to their allocated posts and duties.
Vasilis cursed. This meant they would need to move faster than planned. They at least still had the element of surprise on their side. The city’s occupiers wouldn’t know what hit them.
By the time the Ruinands realised what was going on and got organised into a real threat capable of scuppering Vasilis’ plans, Vasilis and his team would have what they came for and would be out of the city at a safe distance and out of their firing range. That was the plan anyway.
Vasilis knew the city’s weaknesses and had arranged for the defence and tracking systems to be neutralised, or so he believed. As he discovered with the alarm they triggered, there were secret back-up systems he was not aware of. Before launching themselves into mingling with the locals, they donned disguises that would allow them to blend in.
Vasilis, through his surveillance systems, had been monitoring everything that had been taking place inside the city. Combined with intelligence from his spies he knew the exact location of the cells and of the Marcquesa herself.
Vasilis and Katerina would head straight to the Marcquesa’s strong room to get the items she had stolen and that they needed for their ultimate act in the last Emperor’s tomb.
The rest of the team would go straight for the cells and they would meet up later at one of the escape pods. They would use the escape pod to send the rescued out while Vasilis, Katerina and the team would go back out the way they came. The pod would be lifted into the plane once it reached the surface.
When the eight men reached the cells they split into two. They knew already that the captives were located in two cells close to each other. Vasilis hoped that his information was accurate and that nothing had changed.
As the alarms were triggered, panic and furious activity spread throughout the city. Nobody had heard this sound before. At the beginning they didn’t know what to make of it. But the realisation slowly dawned on them that it was not a drill. There were intruders actually inside the city. It had never happened before. The only ones who were not allowed to move were the guards in the cells.
Elli and the others had only two hours earlier been deposited in their cells. At least they were thankful that their captors were, in their arrogance and complacency, not concerned enough or had simply not thought of them as a threat to put them in isolation, into separate cells, to prevent them from planning anything.
Elli, Aristo, Giorgos and John were furiously weighing their options and different plans for an escape when they heard the deafening sound of the alarms that caused the whole place to vibrate violently. They could feel their bodies vibrate like a piano chord. But they knew what it meant. Elli put it into words. ‘It’s a rescue. And I bet you it’s Vasilis.’
Aristo turned surprised. ‘Vasilis? But how?’
‘That was a pet project of mine. Haven’t you wondered why you had not seen him for a while? You didn’t seriously believe those stories about trips to farflung mines and operations with tricky communications, did you? Those stories were deliberately spread. I had him installed as a spy within the Ruinands.
‘We managed to have them believe that he was the victim of serious displeasure at my hands and had been banished and blacklisted and forbidden from having any contact with the family. For a while he became one of them, lived, breathed, ate as one of them and had the run of this city that he got to know very well.
‘They were happy to have one of my sons at their beck and call and to boss around. Little did they know that he had been subverting them from the inside. He did the groundwork and put down the foundations for a rescue, if necessary, and more. The whole place is bugged. We’ve known everything that has been going on. It’s all been monitored from my house in Limassol.’
‘But why didn’t you…?’
‘… didn’t I tell you, you mean? Because I couldn’t risk the slightest leak. I could not risk the Ruinands getting wind of it.’
Aristo played out the following scenario in his mind of a hypothetical conversation with his mother about this matter, a scenario he very well knew he could not enact in that place, at that time, as they were not alone.
As the moment was not appropriate then, that would be the end of any discussion on it. Aristo’s thoughts on the matter would not be raised at a later time as such an act would be childish then as it would in essence be childish, if raised, now.
His hypothetical scenario went something like this:
“Aristo knew the right thing to say would be ‘you must have had your reasons’ and leave it at that. But that’s not what came out before he could stop himself. ‘Didn’t you trust me?’
‘Of course I did. And I do. How could you doubt that? But the Ruinands have eyes and ears everywhere and they would have picked up on the slightest nuance of any difference in your behaviour. It did not matter whether you knew or not, because you would not have been expected to be hostile to your brother irrespective of his falling out of favour with me. You behaved as I expected you to. But if you had known, it might have been a bit difficult to carry out the perfect pretence.
‘The risk was simply too great. In addition, it was possible that you may have been captured and tortured to reveal our secrets. And you were. You are here a prisoner after all. That you have not been tortured and may now be rescued is lucky.’
Aristo was not entirely convinced with his mother’s explanation. And even though their rescue was probably imminent, he wanted to further question his mother on why she had kept this project a secret from him.
He waited for her, as she alluded to the possibility of his capture, to concede that the same could happen to her, which it did, but as she did not admit her own vulnerable position in the same situation, he would throw the same argument that his mother used back at her.
‘What about if you were captured and tortured? And you were. And here we are together, unless I’m mistaken and you are an honoured and pampered guest here and free to walk out of here at any time or you are just a hologram and the real Elli Symitzis is at this very moment sitting at home.’
Aristo could see he was taking this too far and that his behaviour was bordering on rude and in front of other people. This was getting out of control. He had to soften his stance and release the tense tones of his argument with his mother.
But he had to ask one final thing that bothered him even though he half-knew the answer to his question before he let it free. ‘Wasn’t the risk higher by not telling me?’
Elli ignored Aristo’s challenge, though his arguments were valid, and decided to end this conversation.
‘Well, you knew Vasilis had been on the lookout for Ruinands wherever they hid around us. That mission was an extension of those duties. Vasilis was assigned with infiltrating the Ruinands’ lair. You had other important things to do. You couldn’t be distracted. If you had known, you might have faced a conflict of loyalties that might have become apparent.