I looked beyond the woman and saw Peter Wachter and a small group of comrades approach across the open ground. She tried to headbutt me again and I finally lost patience, landing a right that Max Schmeling, former world heavyweight champion and now also a paratrooper somewhere in Crete, would have been proud of. She hit the dirt and lay still.
‘Fuck’s sake, Rudi,’ Peter said, as he crouched down beside me. ‘You take out a section of Maoris and then get your nose crushed by a woman?’
‘Defensive positions, boys,’ Lieutenant Schmidt ordered. ‘Well done, Kersten, at least with the New Zealanders.’ He smiled grimly. ‘But that wasn’t all of them.’
A 109 shrieked past overhead, its machine guns blasting, and then we heard an unknown sound that got all our hackles up. It was a chant, voiced loudly and in perfect unison, by numerous voices in a language none of us had ever heard. But we got the message clearly enough. It was a more terrifying war cry than anything our instructors had come up with, a challenge that made clear mercy would not be forthcoming. When it stopped, there was the sound of heavy men crashing through the trees.
Schmidt looked at the five of us and shook his head. ‘Screw this, we need to get back across the open ground. On your feet.’
We got up, Wachter fitting a drum and handing the MG34 to me. The rest of them loaded up with as many weapons and as much ammo as they could carry.
‘What about her?’ I asked the lieutenant. The woman was rolling her head from side to side, her jaw already swelling.
He shrugged. ‘She attacked a Fallschirmjager. Shoot her.’
The Maoris were still shouting and we could see their shapes approaching.
I aimed the machine gun at her, waiting till the others were looking in the opposite direction. Then I let off a blast, tearing up grass and stones from the soil. Some of the debris hit her face, but she was alive when I followed my comrades into the open.
Only Peter Wachter and I made it, the others picked off by the Maoris as their jump boots kicked up pollen from the yellow and white flowers. I never expected to see the woman again but in that, as in so many things, I was completely wrong.
There was a security guard outside 501, so he got the benefit of Mavros’s heavy breathing rather than the actress. He wasn’t a clown in Cretan costume, but a heavy-duty steroid-cruncher — shaved head nearly reaching the top of the door and biceps flexing beneath the sleeves of a black suit.
‘ID,’ he demanded, in English.
Mavros decided against saying, ‘It speaks’, and handed over his card. Then he froze as hands with home-made sausage fingers patted him down without any attempt at delicacy. Then the gorilla knocked twice on the door.
Things got no better. Mavros was confronted by a short but heavily built woman in her thirties, her bottle-blonde hair cut short. She was wearing something akin to an ancient Greek chiton. It wasn’t flattering.
‘Rosie Yellenberg,’ she said, not offering her hand. ‘Producer. Follow me, Mr Mavros.’
The hall was about the size of a cricket pitch, leading on to a living area that could have accommodated two teams and their extended families comfortably. It was sparsely furnished but, to Mavros’s untutored eye, every piece looked top of the range. Sitting in the corner of a red leather sofa was an unexpectedly small figure in jeans, her hair in a turban. To his surprise, Cara Parks got up and extended a hand. Close up, her famously curvaceous figure was unavoidable, even though the presence she had on the screen was diminished.
‘Sit down here, won’t you?’ she said, patting the sofa about a metre away from her. ‘Can we offer you some refreshment?’ The actress’s voice was soft and her dark eyes were on his.
‘No, thanks.’ Mavros looked across at Rosie Yellenberg, who was hovering by the large glass coffee table. ‘Do you think I could talk to Ms Parks alone?’ he asked, in a tone he hoped would brook no opposition.
The producer’s jaw jutted forward but, before she could speak, the actress cut in.
‘Sure, I’d prefer that too. Close the door after you, Rosie dear.’
The look that passed between the two women would have melted an asteroid.
‘You always do that?’ Cara Parks asked, when they were alone. ‘I mean, lay down the law at the start of meetings.’
Mavros smiled. ‘Only when I get the feeling people are surplus to requirements.’
The actress laughed, but he noticed there were lines round her unmade-up eyes. ‘Well, you got that right. Ms Yellenberg’s taken it upon herself to be my nursemaid since Maria. . Maria left. Every five minutes I’ve been getting a lecture about how important it is not to delay the schedule, how much money’s at stake, you can guess the kind of thing.’
Mavros nodded. ‘Why’s she dressed up like an ancient Greek goddess?’
‘Who knows? She certainly isn’t Aphrodite.’
He noted the familiarity with Greek myth, which seemed unlikely to be a standard feature of major movie actors. ‘So, Ms Parks-’
‘Call me Cara.’ She gave him a tight smile. ‘Until I tell you different. And I’ll call you?’
‘Alex.’
‘Your English is perfect.’
He gave her a rundown of his background.
‘You certainly sound like the man for the job. So what do you think’s happened to my Maria?’ The actress frowned. ‘That didn’t come across right. Just to be perfectly clear about this — no matter what anyone tells you, I haven’t got the hots for her. She has for me, but she doesn’t let that get in the way of being an excellent assistant.’
‘To be honest, since that’s what we’re being here, it’s a bit early to say.’
‘What have they told you? That she’s a rude bitch with plenty of enemies in the crew?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, it’s true enough. You’ve got to understand, people like me need protection. Not just the man-mountain on the door, but people with brains — people who take the heat and let you get on with your job.’ She gave him a penetrating look. ‘Which, whatever you might think, Mr Private Eye, isn’t just a question of looking sexy in front of the cameras.’
Mavros raised his hands. ‘Not guilty. I saw Spring Surprise. You needed to be much more than sexy in that film. Though you were that too, of course.’ He put a brake on the babbling that the star’s powerful presence was causing. ‘Tell me about Maria, please.’
Cara Parks leaned back on the arm of the sofa. ‘Tell you about her? She’s been with me for over five years. We hit it off straightaway. I wasn’t sure about doing a dumb scream movie — believe it or not, my background is in off-Broadway theatre — but my agent was keen and so was Maria. Turned out to be the best move I ever made. And I couldn’t have done it without her. The crews on those movies can be pretty gross, but Maria licked them into shape and even the nude scenes were OK.’
Mavros tried hard to put those from his mind. ‘So you’d say you were friends beyond the work level?’
‘Friends, no. For a start, there isn’t anything beyond work in Hollywood. Even going for a drink means bonding with people who have some professional interest. Put it this way — I’ve never been to Maria’s house. But I can call her any time and she’s there for me. I guess what I’m saying is that as well as needing her, I respect her. Any good?’
Mavros nodded. ‘When and where did you last see her?’
‘Right here, on this piece of furniture. It must have been about nine in the evening on Sunday. I was looking over my lines and Maria was telling that asshole Jannet to keep his comments till the morning.’
‘You and the director don’t get on?’
Cara raised her shoulders. ‘It’s no biggie. He’s good at his job and I don’t have any fundamental problems with what he wants.’
‘But you don’t like him?’ Mavros persisted, probing her unwillingness to come clean.
‘No, I don’t,’ the actress replied, after a pause. ‘He’s a loudmouth and a bully, though that applies to plenty of his kind. Is this relevant?’