Evolution of Fear (25 page)

Hope pushed her fingers through her hair. Clay could see strands of grey kinking through the blonde. Her hands were shaking. ‘They’re doing it on purpose,’ she said. Then she sat in the sand and pulled her legs up to her chest and hid her face between her knees.

Hope pulled her phone from her bag, stared at the screen. ‘Missed call,’ she said. ‘It was Maria. Probably just checking in.’

Clay turned the car onto the tarmacked road, headed east. Hope thumbed a number into the keypad and put the phone to her ear. Clay heard the line connect. Hope glanced over at him, speaking into the phone in excited Greek. After a while she went quiet and listened. Clay could hear the voice on the other end of the line, female. It sounded like crying.

Hope closed her phone, stared straight ahead. ‘That was Maria,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. ‘They were stopped at the airport by customs officials, refused permission to leave. She’s back in Nicosia. My ex, the bastard, balked at the last minute. He called customs, told them Maria was taking Alexi out of the country without his permission. They were waiting for them.’

‘Shit.’

‘The asshole set me up.’ She stamped her foot. ‘Now he knows I’ll never get custody. He’s never trusted me, ever since–’ She pushed her palms into her eyes. ‘He thinks I’ve concocted this whole thing as a way to get Alexi away from him.’

Clay said nothing.

‘Alexi is back at my ex-husband’s house. I have to see my son, Clay.’

Clay nodded. He was starting to understand, just starting.

‘We’ll meet Crowbar in Pissouri, then go straight there. It’s on the way. It won’t take long.’

Hope frowned.

They arrived an hour late, drove down the narrow main road that paralleled the empty shore. Rain pounded the windscreen, blown from low clouds that stampeded across the sky like frightened buffalo. Crowbar’s Pajero was parked outside the only taverna in town, an old limestone-brick building with an arched entranceway and a bare winter tangle of grapevines dripping from wire trellises. Clay had taken a circuitous route, doubling back, stopping at roadside turnouts, scanning the traffic behind. He had learned from Istanbul just how good a professional tail could be, and just how poor had been his efforts to elude them. He was taking no chances now.

They left Hope’s car in a side road and walked down the back street to the tavern. Crowbar was sitting alone at a table in the far corner, a view of the grey sea showing through closed-up windows, two empty beer bottles and a third half-full on the table in front of him. A Cypriot family, three generations, halfway through meze, were the only other patrons. The smell of food sent Clay’s head spinning, opened a hole in his stomach. Crowbar stood as they approached, shook Clay’s hand. Hope took Crowbar’s two hands in hers, kissed him on the cheek. He smiled at her. They sat and ordered food.

Crowbar raised his beer. ‘You’re late,
seun
.’

‘Anti-tracking,
my luitenant
.’

‘No need.’

‘No price on your head,
broer
.’

‘I met Regina Medved this morning.’

‘Does she still love me?’

‘As much as ever,
seun
. Two millions worth.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Nicosia. South side. Dialysis machine, mobile ventilator, the whole
fokken
Moscow travelling circus. I showed her that photograph of you all banged up, told her I had you tied up nice and safe. So they’ve stopped looking for you.’

‘With the reward you’ll get, you can retire. Your friends in the company won’t be happy.’

‘Told her I’d hand you over day after tomorrow. Best I could do,
ja
. She’s getting the cash together now. Said it would take her a day.’ Crowbar sipped his beer. ‘I mean,
fok
. A
day
.
Kak
, how do people get that rich?’

‘By screwing people like us,’ said Hope.

Crowbar smiled, took her hand, a child’s fingers disappearing under a paw of hairy, scarred callous. ‘Too right,
bokkie
.’

Hope looked across at Clay. ‘What’s this
bokkie
?’

‘It’s good. You know,
bok
. Antelope.’

Hope’s frown approached neutral.

‘Medved’s
fokken gek, ja.
Crazy as a starving hyena. She’s convinced the Patmos Illumination is here. Thinks it’ll save her. Someone here in Cyprus has promised to deliver it to her. That’s why she’s here,
ja
. Nothing to do with you, Straker.’

The waiter brought their food: chicken souvlaki, unleavened bread, salad. They ate in silence. Clay turned in his chair and looked out of the window at the rainy street. All quiet.

Crowbar pushed away his empty plate. ‘How was your day at the beach?’

Hope glanced at Clay.

Clay looked away.

‘Someone is intentionally frightening away the turtles,’ Hope said, ‘preventing them from coming ashore to lay their eggs. It’s genocide, plain and simple.’

Clay reached into his pack and pulled out the black cylinder about the size of a car’s oil filter. Six inches of cable hung from one end like a severed tail. He put it on the table. ‘They’ve buried these along the sea bed in shallow water.’

‘Noise emitters,’ said Hope. ‘We’ve been watching that beach during the nesting season to make sure no one disturbs the turtles. They must have laid it a few winters ago, probably by ship. We never thought to check underwater.’

‘
Fokken
hell.’ Crowbar looked genuinely astonished.

‘What about Zdravko?’ Clay said, putting the device back in his bag.

‘Found him.’

‘Limassol?’

Crowbar nodded. ‘The aunt is with him. The neighbour says she saw an old lady go into the place four days ago, hasn’t seen her leave since.’

Clay’s insides jumped.

‘I’ve got a colleague watching the place now.’

‘We’ve got to get them both out, Koevoet – Rania and her aunt. And we’ve got to do it soon, before Chrisostomedes moves either of them.’

Crowbar finished his beer, nodded.

‘And it’s got to be simultaneous. If Chrisostomedes finds out someone has snatched away his insurance policy, Rania’s dead.’

‘Chrisostomedes will address a Neo-Enosis rally tomorrow afternoon in Nicosia,’ said Crowbar. ‘He leaves for Nicosia tomorrow morning, according to my sources.’

‘So it has to be tonight.’ Clay looked at his watch. ‘We need to get the beach samples to the lab in Nicosia, get Hope to her son. Tomorrow is Sunday. The enquiry starts on the twenty-second, Tuesday. It’s doable.’

Crowbar frowned. ‘You need to keep out of sight, Straker. You’re supposed to be my prisoner. You can’t be dropping in to labs, socialising.’

Hope reached for Crowbar’s forearm. ‘Maria can take the samples in. She knows the lab, the technicians there. We do a lot of work with them.’

Crowbar forced deep furrows into his brow, finished his beer. ‘Do you trust her?’

Clay looked over at Hope.

‘Of course, yes,’ said Hope. ‘I asked her to take my son to Greece, for Christ’s sake.’

‘How much do you know about her?’ said Crowbar.

‘She’s worked for me for almost three years now. Before that I supervised her PhD. I trust her implicitly’

Crowbar grinned. ‘Okay,
ooma
. Good enough for me. We go tonight.’

Clay nodded.

Crowbar put a mobile phone on the table. ‘Time you had your own phone,
my seun
.’

The two and half hours to Nicosia hung up like a week on the front line waiting for leave. The rain persisted, coming in waves, turning the roads into rivers. Hope was sullen and quiet, wrapped in her own fears. She had called Maria and asked her to meet them outside a
periptero
just off the highway, about a mile from the lab. She had also called the lab manager and asked him to come in for an important job. By the time they reached the outskirts of Nicosia it was late afternoon and the rain had cleared.

When they pulled in to the puddled gravel parking area outside the
periptero
, Maria was already waiting for them in her silver VW Beetle.

Clay stopped the car, kept the engine running, reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick fold of US dollars.

Hope glanced at the cash. ‘Not a good idea,’ she said. ‘Paying cash would arouse suspicion. Let me put it on the university’s account.’

‘We need rush service. You’ll have to pay double.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Hope, pushing away his hand.

Maria was walking over to the car now. Hope rolled down her window.

Maria leaned in. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying. ‘I’m so sorry about your son, Doctor Bachmann,’ she said. ‘I did exactly what you said. But when we tried to go through customs–’

‘It’s okay, Maria. Don’t worry. It’s not your fault. Thanks for trying.’

Maria nodded and looked across at Clay. ‘Doctor Greene.’

‘Thanks for this, Maria,’ he said, reaching for the bag of samples in the back seat and handing them to her.

‘We need rush service,’ said Hope. ‘Tomorrow if possible. Put them on our account. It’s very important, Maria.’

The girl took the bag and nodded. She pulled out a little notebook and a pen. ‘Analysis suite?’

Clay specified the analyses to be conducted.

‘And tomorrow morning,’ said Hope, ‘I need you to go to the border crossing in Agios Demetios. A man called Berker will meet you there and give you a second set of samples.’

Maria blanched.

‘Don’t worry, Maria. He’s an old friend. I called him and asked him to collect half a dozen samples from Karpasia Beach as soon as he could and deliver them south. The samples will be labelled
Valk
, and are to be run for the same set of chemical parameters.’

‘
Endaxi
?’ Clay asked. Okay?

Maria nodded and hurried away to her car.

By the time Clay and Hope reached the centre of town, night had fallen and the streets shimmered with light. Closed shop-front windows glowed, beckoned to a homeward trickle of umbrella-toting office workers. Random squares of light burned inside the dark hulks of squat office buildings, desperate bankers staring into flickering screens, the stink of alchemy oozing into the air even on a Saturday night. Money never sleeps, thought Clay, doesn’t take a day off.

‘What will you do?’ said Hope. It was the first time she’d spoken since dropping the samples with Maria. ‘The two of you. After, I mean.’

‘I don’t know. Go to Africa, I guess. Disappear for a while.’

She pointed left. He turned.

‘I wish I could disappear.’

Clay said nothing, drove.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘Just along this street.’

Clay slowed the car and scanned the street. Windows evening-lit, a few cars parked half up on the pavement, tree shadow swaying over rooftops, house fronts.

‘This is it,’ she said.

Clay stopped and turned off the engine. There was just the quiet of the street, Hope sitting there beside him, her face almost hidden in the darkness.

‘Alexi is waiting for you,’ he said.

Hope tried a thin smile, failed. ‘Be careful,’ she said.

‘You too, Hope.’

‘I’ll be in meetings with my co-convenors all day tomorrow, preparing for the enquiry. Opening statements start at ten o’clock Tuesday morning. Erkan is scheduled to testify at two that afternoon. If he decides to show up, that is.’ She paused. ‘Will you be there?

‘Not a good way to disappear.’

‘If you could testify, Clay, it would be very valuable. Rania, too.’

‘You’ll have all the proof you need. I’ll give you Erkan’s dossier. You don’t need us.’ He felt sick inside.

Hope stared at him across the half metre of darkness that separated them. After a moment she opened her door and stepped out of the car. ‘Come in with me, Clay, please.’

Clay looked at his watch, nodded, got out of the car and followed her to the house.

Hope’s ex answered the door. He was a big man, tall, heavy-set. As soon as Clay saw him he knew something was wrong. His eyes were red, swollen. He looked like a little boy who’d lost his mother at the fair.

‘Hope,’ he said, glancing at Clay. ‘What have you done with him?’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Hope, reaching for the door-frame. ‘Where’s Alexi?’

‘The police are on their way.’

‘Police?’

‘After I brought him home from the airport, I took him to the park to play. I turned my head for a minute, and he was gone. I’ve looked everywhere, called everyone. I know you’ve taken him, you and that bitch Maria.’

Hope stood in the doorway looking as if she’d been given a dose of cyanide, could feel it creeping through her body. ‘What are you talking about?’ she gasped. ‘Where is my son?’

‘Stop the bullshit,’ her ex-husband bellowed, leaning forward at the waist. ‘Where is Alexi?’

Hope raised her hand to her mouth. ‘My god,’ she whispered. ‘You think …. You think
I
have him.’

‘That’s exactly what I think, you slut.’ He jutted his chin towards Clay. ‘You and your
friend
, here.’

Hope wheeled around, her glance ricocheting off Clay like an afterthought. ‘He’s … He’s got nothing to do with this, Pavlos. Where is my son? What have you done with him?’

‘You tell me,’ he screamed. ‘Your bullshit story about being in danger, about needing to leave the country. Using that dyke Maria as your mule. I can’t believe I almost fell for it.’

Hope withered, took a step back. ‘Do you think I would kidnap my own son?’

Pavlos leaned in, only a couple of paces from Hope. ‘You bitch. You fucking bitch. You’ve been wanting to take him from me ever since we–’

‘Ever since what?’ screamed Hope, counter-attacking. ‘Ever since
you
left
me
? Go on, say it. You left me. For that brainless whore of yours.’

Pavlos flinched a moment and then started towards Hope, fists clenched. Clay stepped forward, interposed himself between trembling mother and heaving, near-hysterical father. He and Pavlos were
inches apart. Clay could smell the foulness of the guy’s breath, the fear seeping from his pores. The guy was almost as tall as Clay, probably as heavy, but soft, arms and belly like dough.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Pavlos screamed, spraying Clay’s face with cold spittle. ‘Get the fuck out of my way.’

Clay wiped his face with the sleeve of his stump arm, said nothing, just stared back at the man. For a short moment Clay wondered if he’d try. Pavlos puffed and heaved, the muscles in his neck twitching under their layer of fat, his fists still clenched at his sides, and then it was as if everything just drained out of him at once. His shoulders slumped and his head dropped and all of a sudden he was inches shorter and the rage was gone and only the fear was left. He backed away towards the middle of the room, sank into a chair and folded his arms across his chest.

‘We’ll see what the police say,’ he muttered.

Hope closed the door, leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor, burying her face in her hands. Sirens wailed in the distance.

Clay’s phone buzzed. He put it to his ear, turning away from the warring parents.

‘It’s me.’ Crowbar’s voice was rough, hard. ‘Zulu Tango left the Limassol apartment ten minutes ago.’

‘The old lady?’ Clay answered in Afrikaans.

‘Still in there, as far as we can tell.’

‘Sit tight, Koevoet. There’s something I have to do.’

‘We need to go soon.’

‘Stand by,’ said Clay.

Clay put the phone in his pocket, touched Hope’s shoulder, looking over at Pavlos. ‘Will you be okay, Hope? I have to go.’

She looked up, nodded. By now Pavlos was catatonic, immobilised. Clay looked right at him, made sure that he was listening. ‘Call me if you need anything, Hope.’

She nodded, the sirens close now.

Clay turned and ran down the front steps and jumped into Hope’s car. He rounded the end of the street just as a police car sped past
in the other direction, flinging a panic of strobing blue light across the house fronts.

Clay sped down Digeni Avenue, turned past the English School towards Strovolos. Finding a broad gravel shoulder lined with dusty cypress trees, he pulled off the road, stopped, grabbed his phone and found the scrap of paper Katia had given him at the dinner party.

She answered second ring.

‘Katia, it’s me, Doctor Greene.’

‘I know that isn’t your real name.’ She spoke as if she’d been expecting him.

‘I need to talk to you.’

Silence for a moment, and then: ‘Come to my apartment.’ She told him the address.

‘Ten minutes.’

‘Doctor Greene?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m glad you called.’

Katia’s apartment was in one of the new blocks that had gone up on the south side of Strovolos to accommodate the influx of tax exiles, bankers and accountants who now dominated the island’s economy. Eight stories, tall for Nicosia, it was square-edged, concrete and glass, all the old trees taken out and paved over.

Clay parked around the corner and buzzed at the main entrance. The door clicked open. He ran up the stairs to the third floor, found apartment twelve and knocked.

Katia opened the door. In her heels she was almost as tall as Clay. Her hair was down, big red rings freshly curled. Perfume hung in the air, something expensive. She was wearing pull-up stockings and a half-cup bra that left her big pink nipples exposed. She smiled. ‘I was hoping you’d call.’

Clay closed the door, stood for a moment looking at her. Other
than the hive cascading from her head and the carefully plucked curve of her eyebrows, she was hairless. She stepped closer, put her arms around his neck.

‘That’s not why I’m here,’ he said, gently pushing away one of her arms, trying to ignore the jolt of desire fizzing through his extremities.

She looked at him a moment, unsure, as if surprised that a man had called on her not wanting sex. Then she smiled, turned and walked away. Her body was tight, pampered, the skin without flaw. She vanished into a doorway, returned a moment later wearing a floor-length, oriental-style silk dressing gown. She lit a joint and sat on the couch.

Clay sat opposite her. ‘Where is Dimitriou?’

She took a long draw on the spliff, a crisp sound as the weed ignited, glowed. ‘Why should I tell you?’

‘Because someone has taken Doctor Bachmann’s son, and I think he knows who.’

She took another drag, offered him the joint.

He waved it away. ‘No thanks, Katia.’

‘You’re not as fun as I thought you’d be.’

‘I’m not as fun as
I
thought I’d be.’

She frowned, pinched the roach end of her joint and inhaled through puckered lips.

‘Where’s Dimitriou, Katia?’

Katia exhaling: ‘I don’t know where he goes or what he does. He pays for this apartment, my clothes, expenses, and for that I do what he tells me.’

Clay nodded, understood. ‘Have you heard him mention anything, anything at all, about Hope or her son?’

‘I hear a lot of things. They talk all the time, he and Nicos. They think I’m stupid, that I don’t know Greek. But I do.’

‘Better than me.’

She smiled. ‘Like the last time I was at Nicos’ place in the mountains. I like that place. It’s so beautiful. The pool is great. Anyway, Nicos was showing Dimitriou some of his art, all that really old stuff
he has. Did you know that Nicos tags each piece with a microchip, so that if someone tries to take it, the alarms go off? I bet you didn’t know that.’

Clay nodded. ‘You said you liked scuba.’

‘You remember.’

‘There’s a wreck off Polis that’s good,’ he said. ‘You should try it.’

She looked down at his stump. ‘What happened to your hand?’

‘I traded it.’

She smiled. It was a sad smile. ‘That woman, the journalist.’

Clay said nothing.

‘You traded it for her, didn’t you? You love her.’

Clay nodded. Close enough.

‘I know why they were threatening your friend,’ she said.

Clay looked into her eyes. They were the colour of the acid pools at the Mephistos copper mine, sterile and opaque. ‘Please, Katia.’

‘He lives near the Presidential Palace, on Afxentiou Street. Number five.’

Clay stood. ‘Thanks, Katia.’

‘He’s an asshole. I hate him.’

Clay said nothing.

She stubbed out her joint, looking up at him from far away. ‘If you ever, you know, want to…’ she pulled at a curl, ‘…go diving, just call me.’

By the time Clay reached the outskirts of Nicosia, it was already gone nine. Soon he was on the old Troodos road heading west for the mountains.

He called Crowbar. He was still watching the Limassol apartment where they suspected Rania’s aunt was being held. Zdravko hadn’t returned. No one else had gone in or out. Clay pressed on, pushing Hope’s little car to the limit, speeding through the night. He could feel time start to fray, its long edges coming apart, spinning
away. Everything had changed, though he could discern in the world around him no overt signs of transition. The car functioned as designed, the road unfurled before him in the myopia of the headlights, his heart pumped blood, the mobile’s green light pulsed in the darkness on the empty seat beside him. And yet change was here, all around him, and it was as if he were being carried along in a fast-moving river, the banks far off and shrouded in fog. He could feel it cooling his blood, pushing him further into the darkness. Some live, some die. Those that live pass on their genes. Modification by natural selection, Darwin had called it.

Clay closed his eyes, drove on. Time slowed. He could hear the engine screaming in front of him, feel its vibration. How long now? A second? Two? So many dead. And never with any time to understand, just that instant between living and not, with nothing in between, no time to prepare, to consider what was to be lost, what might have been. Binary only. On. Off. Where did the interface lie, at what limit? How long could a moment last?

He opened his eyes. The road was still there.

He jammed the accelerator to the floor, hurtled towards her.

The road steepened, Sunday-night empty. The lights of Kakopetria flashed past, vanished in the rear-view mirror. Thick stands of pine reached blackened arms out over the road. He jammed his stump down onto the wheel, picked up the phone, hit redial and cradled it between his shoulder and ear.

Crowbar answered.

‘Go in twenty,’ Clay told him.

Clay left the car on the side road where he’d stopped before with Hope and plunged into the forest towards Chrisostomedes’ mansion. Lights flashed between the dark, upright torsos of the pines, among the pleading arms, through the needle fingers. The fence was there, the glow of the gatehouse. A single guard inside, a car parked just nearby, inside the compound. Clay stayed in the trees, moved downslope, away from the gate, picking his way through the granite boulders, over the steepening outcrop. The house was above him
now, perched on the cliff. He zipped up his jacket put on his headlamp, unlit, and started climbing. He’d always been a strong climber – as a child in the trees outside his parents’ house, before the war with friends in the Draakensburg. One-handed, unbalanced, he had to rely far more on his feet and the power of his legs, shift his centre of gravity down. The lower section was steeper and more featureless than he’d remembered. Twice he dead-ended, had to backtrack, find a new route. Finally he found a fault zone, a near-vertical discontinuity in the rock. It was some way out from under the house, visible from the balcony twenty metres above, within the throw of the building’s lights.

Twenty minutes had come and gone. Crowbar would have gone in by now, and with any luck would have rescued Rania’s aunt. Clay jammed his stump into the fault and started to climb. Able to use his left arm this way, he moved quickly up to a layer of fractured basalt. A narrow, weathered ridge marked the interface between the layers. Bird droppings dotted the rock, lines on a road. He hugged the rock face, toed his way towards the house. He was almost back in shadow when the phone buzzed in his pocket. He kept moving. Soon he had reached the lowermost foundations. He swung up over a cross brace, followed the rock to the abutment where it met the main slab. The dining room where he’d last seen Rania was directly above. He flicked his headlamp to red, ran the beam along the abutment wall. Nothing. He’d have to go up and over. He followed the base of the slab, gained the side of the house then extinguished the headlamp, moving along the concrete wall until he came to a recess. Inside, a doorway leading into the foundation. He tried the handle. Locked. He switched on the headlamp again, examined the handle, the locking mechanism. Light off, he stood with his back against the wall, breathing hard. The phone buzzed again.