‘To tell you that I am going to look after Mrs Kersten personally. I will patrol outside her windows all night.’ The Italian raised his massive shoulders. ‘Of course, my staff will be doing their usual rounds, but I will provide extra protection.’
‘That’s very good of you.’
‘It’s nothing. Mr Kersten was a great man and a very kind employer. I. . I would do anything to bring him back.’ Tears appeared in his eyes and he wiped them away with the arm of his suit.
Mavros nodded to him and went over to the women.
Niki’s gaze was slightly less frosty. ‘Cara tells me you’re going out on a job.’
The actress smiled at him, despite the look she got in return.
‘Job?’ he repeated. ‘I’d hardly call it that.’
‘Oh?’ Niki said. ‘And how would you describe going to rescue Cara’s assistant from a village full of criminals?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m coming too.’
Mavros’s joy was confined.
‘Where are we going?’ Niki asked. She was squeezed between Cara Parks and Mavros in the Jeep, having left her bag at the hotel. He had explained about his neck wound without going into too much detail.
‘Chania,’ he replied.
‘Not the village?’ Niki smiled crookedly. ‘You don’t think we’re up to it, do you?’
‘Three of us taking on a horde of heavily armed Cretan mountain men who have proclaimed a vendetta. .’ He stopped himself too late.
‘A vendetta?’ Niki said. ‘Against who?’
‘Um, me,’ Mavros mumbled. ‘And the guy who was driving this.’ He had no choice but to recount the story, without going into Mikis’s use of the Colt.
‘You threw a rock into the face of an armed man from the most dangerous village in Crete?’ Niki said, her voicing rising to a shriek. ‘Are you completely insane?’
‘He was only knocked out,’ Cara said, trying to calm her. ‘And Alex got my friend Maria back.’
‘Who’s since been kidnapped — again.’ Niki turned and gave her an appraising look. ‘I can see why they call you “Twin Peaks”. Are they real?’
Mavros restrained himself from smashing his head against the steering wheel. ‘For Christ’s sake, Niki, get a grip. Cara isn’t the enemy.’
‘Is that right?’ Niki took a deep breath. ‘OK, I’m sorry, that was rude. I’m. . I’m worried.’ She looked through the windscreen. ‘This island is like a foreign country — one with extremely restless natives.’
‘They’re not all bad,’ Mavros said. ‘Behave yourself, please. We’re about to meet some of the good ones.’
He had looked at the map before they left the Heavenly Blue and now found the Tsifakis depot without trouble. There was a fenced enclosure with numerous cars and small buses beyond a wide gate. The offices were in what looked like an old factory. A lot of money had clearly been spent on its renovation.
Haris Tsifakis met them in the stone-flagged reception area.
‘Alex,’ he said, nodding. ‘Ms Parks.’ He waited to be introduced to Niki.
‘Oh, this is my. . partner from Athens,’ Mavros said awkwardly.
‘Niki Glezou.’ When she wanted, Niki could be very user-friendly. She gave the Cretan a broad smile and shook his hand vigorously.
‘What news of Mikis?’ Mavros asked.
‘My wife is at the clinic,’ he said, his face falling. ‘Our son is still unconscious. It seems he will need an operation, but the doctors want to wait until this evening to decide. Please, come to my office.’ He led them into a large room with two mahogany desks, both equipped with computers and several telephones. ‘Eleni and I have always worked together. We set up the car-hire business in 1966 and grew it very quickly, largely thanks to Mr Kersten. He used us for guest tours and transfers.’ He shook his head. ‘His death is a tragedy.’
Mavros was interested by the Cretan’s response. He wasn’t old enough to have fought in the war, but his parents’ generation would have lived through the horrors of the German occupation. He still revered a man who had landed by parachute on the first day of the invasion.
‘Can I use one of the computers?’ he asked.
Haris went behind the nearer desk and booted up the machine. Mavros found what he wanted in under a minute and printed out the image.
‘We urgently need to find this man,’ he said, handing over the picture. ‘I know he’s in Chania or the environs.’
‘That’s the antiquities dealer who’s always walking out of court with a sick smile on his face,’ the Cretan said.
‘Tryfon Roufos,’ Mavros confirmed. ‘Can you find where’s he’s staying?’
‘Easily — if he’s in a hotel or pension.’ Haris picked up a phone and gave instructions to an employee. ‘If he’s in a private house, it’ll take a bit longer, but I can circulate his photo.’
‘I saw him in a taverna in the old town a few nights ago,’ Mavros said. He described the location.
‘Tou Philippou. Good, the owner is a friend.’
‘He was with David Waggoner.’
‘Was he now? I’ve never thought much of Mr Waggoner. He made much of his exploits here during the war, but the truth is that the local resistance leaders were much more important in the fight against the occupiers.’
Mavros didn’t need much more convincing that the former SOE man had feet of clay. The question was, had he orchestrated Rudolf Kersten’s death?
‘Leave this with me,’ Haris said. ‘I’ll call you as soon as I get anything. I presume you want to keep the Jeep?’
‘Is that all right?’
‘Of course.’ The Cretan beamed at Cara. ‘It’s on the film’s account.’
Mavros thanked him and led the women out.
‘You didn’t tell me Roufos was on Crete,’ Niki said, as they headed for the vehicle. ‘Then again, there are a lot of things you haven’t told me.’
‘This Roufos,’ Cara said, as she opened the Jeep’s door. ‘What’s he supposed to have done?’
‘A lot,’ Mavros said.
Two pairs of eyes bored into him as he started the engine.
‘All right, I’ll tell you.’ Mavros ran through Roufos’s interest in Kersten’s coin collection, his attempt to scare him off by sending round the three skinheads, and his connection with Waggoner. ‘The Englishman has a house on the outskirts of Kornaria-’
‘The village where Maria was held,’ the actress put in. ‘So what is it you think, Alex? That Roufos is involved in her kidnapping?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s one of several things I want to ask him. I’d also like to. . shit!’
A large pickup cut in front of him as he tried to turn out of the Tsifakis depot. Three muscle-pumped men got out and walked slowly towards the Jeep, their faces set in stone.
Hildegard Kirsten had been going through her husband’s clothes and wardrobe. She didn’t know why, but she felt compelled to check the pockets of his jackets and shirts, even though they had almost all been laundered. She found a single euro in one of the jackets he had worn recently, perhaps that evening they had met Alex Mavros and the beautiful actress at the beachside bar. She put the coin against her cheek and tried to transfer the touch of Rudi’s fingers on it to her skin.
Blinking back tears, she slipped the euro into the pocket of her skirt, where she had also put the labrys, and continued running her hands over his clothes. Many of them were old, but their experiences of the war and its aftermath in Germany had made them reluctant to discard anything that might be useful — and relative poverty had recently been threatening them.
Then she found it. Tucked away in the back pocket of a pair of slacks Rudi had worn a week ago was a single sheet of A4 paper, folded twice. She had a strong feeling of foreboding as, fingers trembling, she knelt on the floor and spread out the page. The writing, in German, was Rudi’s, his well-formed and spaced letters as legible as they had been in his love letters to her all those years ago. But this was very far from being one of them. The blue ink from the fountain pen he always used was unfaded and looked to have been written recently. She read: