Transfusion, p.2
Transfusion, page 2
‘Neither,’ said Viktor decisively. ‘Nico, get Dima to take men out to see if they can bring this individual in alive if possible. I want him here, kept in the basement, for when I return … but if he has to be killed, then so be it.’
TWO
Flynn had sailed into Cyprus a few days earlier and moored his boat – his beloved forty-five-foot sportfisher called Faye – in Kato Paphos harbour. He’d spent a couple of idyllic days in the town with his travelling companion, a recently resigned British cop called Molly Cartwright, exploring on foot, eating and drinking well and living on the boat. Then they had hired a four-wheel-drive Suzuki and driven along the coast to Coral Bay and beyond into the Akamas, the national park that formed the western tip of the island. As many tourists did, Flynn and Molly enjoyed throwing the vehicle along the rough, unmade roads in that part of the countryside. On the second day of exploring the Akamas, they looped back out of the park on one of the less-used roads in order to drive past the long, winding track which was essentially the driveway up through a banana plantation to the mega-villa in which Viktor Bashkim was allegedly holed up.
Flynn had slowed right down and been tempted to turn into the track, but he held back and headed for Paphos instead.
Next day, he hired an off-road buggy, which sounded like being on board a hovercraft, popular in that part of Cyprus to further explore the Akamas. And this time it seemed a much more innocent thing to do to turn up the track to the villa and, if necessary, claim they were exploring in the buggy just as hundreds of other tourists were doing that day and that they hadn’t seen the sign at the bottom of the track which read PRIVATE – Trespassers will be prosecuted in both English and Greek. There was also a picture of a pair of ferocious-looking hounds from hell and the caption Beware of the dogs.
Flynn stopped the buggy at the beginning of the track and ensured his bandana was wrapped securely around his face, his Police sunglasses fitted correctly and the peak of his baseball cap pulled low; Molly did the same. This, too, was not particularly suspicious as most of the buggy drivers and passengers were similarly attired because of the voluminous clouds of dust thrown up from the bone-dry roads, but it did help to keep their identities under wraps just on the off-chance that the old man was in residence. If he saw and recognized Flynn, things might not go well and those hounds might be unleashed.
So prepared, Flynn engaged the gears and set off in the excess-ively noisy vehicle up the track through the banana trees, bouncing along on the very springy suspension towards the gates of the villa. His approach could not have been more visible and audible as there was nothing subtle about the buggy, and as the walls surrounding the villa came into view, an access door set into the wall by the front gate opened and two tough-looking, muscle-bound young men stepped through, their threatening body language enhanced by the machine pistol each had slung across their chest.
Both men held up their hands in a ‘stop’ gesture.
Flynn drove up to them, waving nicely. ‘Hi, guys, we’re just exploring off the beaten track … hope it’s not a problem.’
One stepped up to him, resting his hand on the roof frame of the buggy, and leaned in, glanced at Molly, then stared at Flynn and said in heavily accented English, ‘You fuck off. Private land.’
‘Really? I didn’t know that!’
‘Yeah, well, now you do’s, so fuck off, yeah?’
By this time, the guy behind him had swung his firearm into his hands and was holding it meaningfully with an accompanying glare and chewing gum.
‘Hey, guys, sorry,’ Flynn said. ‘You guarding royalty or something?’
The man at the car leaned in a tad closer, giving Flynn a whiff of his cologne and body odour. ‘Jus’ go.’
‘Getting the message loud ’n’ clear,’ Flynn said, giving him a peace sign. Then he pretended to look around. ‘Thing is space is a bit tight round here. These bastards have the turning circle of an oil tanker. Any chance you can open the gates and let me swing round in there?’
The man stepped back and took a menacing grip on his machine pistol; he didn’t say anything because the message was abundantly clear: it was a ‘no’ from him.
‘Gotcha,’ Flynn acknowledged with a wave.
He selected reverse, twisted in his seat to look backwards and also so he could speak to Molly. He began to negotiate the vehicle back down the track, a journey of about two hundred metres.
‘Armed and dangerous,’ he said to her.
‘Surely that’s against the law, even here in Cyprus?’
‘Probably.’
‘We phone the cops, then?’
‘I doubt the effectiveness of that.’
‘How … why? Oh, yeah,’ Molly said, realizing the meaning of Flynn’s response.
‘What did you make of the guy’s accent?’
‘Russian, maybe?’ Molly guessed.
‘Which kinda fits the rumour,’ Flynn said as they reached the end of the track and he slewed the buggy into the road before gunning it back towards Paphos. He dropped it off at the hire company’s lot and they strolled hand in hand down through the town to the harbour and back to Faye. They both showered on board and then, as evening drew in, they drove back towards the Akamas and settled in for an evening meal at the Sunset Tavern on the edge of the park, ordering kleftiko which had been slow cooking most of the day.
It tasted amazing.
Up to that point, Flynn had said very little – not that he often had much to say anyway – but Molly watched him nervously, wondering what was coming next. Finally, Flynn’s terrible habit of keeping everything in his head made her boil over a little.
‘Time to talk,’ she said. ‘What’s the plan?’
Enigmatically, he sipped his ferociously chilled pint of Keo, one of the island’s home-produced lagers, while he mulled things over and had deep thoughts. Finally, he explained what he wanted to do. It wasn’t complicated and he promised it would be time-bound; Molly knew that whatever she said, she would be unable to talk him out of it. Not that she really wanted to; she understood his motivation, but she wanted him to stay safe, not take unnecessary risks, and she told him so.
‘It’s just me watching the place for a couple of days.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m not going to storm it or anything, and if nothing comes of it, nothing comes of it,’ he said philosophically.
Molly stared at him with undisguised disbelief. ‘How is that statement even remotely true? Just because you might not see him doesn’t make it certain he isn’t actually there or still alive … I know you, Steve. You’ll want to confirm it one way or another … which begs another question: what happens if you do spot him?’
Flynn put another mouthful of the tender lamb into his mouth, rolled his eyes with delight, chewed, swallowed, drank more lager, wiped his lips with a napkin, looked at Molly in a deep, significant way – and said nothing.
‘Just as I thought,’ she said. She knew exactly what the answer was and he didn’t have to say a word because his expression on its own struck a chord of terror in her heart.
Next morning, Flynn was up early. He walked up the hill into Paphos town to a used-car lot he’d spotted a couple of days earlier, which sold a range of very ropy vehicles from a small forecourt out front. Around the back was a huge, high-fenced enclosure jam-packed with a further array of even more battered vehicles, from which he chose a very dilapidated Renault 4. He haggled with the owner who gratefully accepted cash, no paperwork and, more importantly, no questions.
He drove the exhaust-popping vehicle back down to the harbour where he explained his plan to Molly and, pointing to the wreck on wheels, said in conclusion, ‘This is just in case I need a quick getaway that can’t be traced.’
‘A getaway?’
He nodded.
‘In that? That’s a getaway car?’
She looked at him and shook her head. He held out the ignition key between his finger and thumb – no more than a worn, thin, slightly twisted length of metal.
They were standing on the quayside.
‘I’ll see you in about an hour,’ he told her and kissed her on the cheek, then walked along the jetty, stepping aboard Faye. Molly watched him throw off the mooring ropes and slowly ease the sleek boat out of her space, then sail out of the harbour.
She exhaled a long sigh, then smirked as she suddenly remembered the first time she had ever met Flynn, not so long ago in a pharmacy in Blackpool that he had tried to rob to get painkilling drugs for a gunshot wound to his leg. Molly, then a firearms cop, had been obliged to Taser him to the ground. Yes, it wasn’t such a long time ago, but much had happened since.
She clambered into the wreck, already refusing to call it a car – it was just a chunk of metal on wheels – and gingerly sat at an unusual angle on the driver’s seat to avoid being jabbed by the broken spring protruding up dangerously through the fabric so it didn’t stick into her bottom. She put the key into the ignition – it went in with a lot of wriggle room – and started the engine which popped a lot.
In the boat, Flynn turned west out of the harbour and kept fairly close to the shoreline, passing the Edro shipwreck wedged on rocks at Peyia, where it had met its end one very stormy night without loss of life; it had never been re-floated and had since become a tourist attraction. From there, he passed the outcrop that was Yeronisos Island, executed a sharp right turn into the tiny fishing harbour at St George’s and, as he had previously arranged via an exchange of euros, moored Faye alongside a row of colourfully painted fishing boats which operated from there.
Molly had already arrived in the car, leaving the wreck in the car park behind the beach café, and was there to watch Flynn manoeuvre Faye into her berth. As ever, she marvelled at his boating skills, realizing he was most at home on board.
She stepped on as he tied up and kissed him.
‘That was nice,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m beginning to think I love you,’ she admitted hesitantly.
Flynn instantly clammed up and Molly noticed the sudden tension in his being. Among many other things she had learned about this man was that he was very poor at masking his feelings as well as admitting them.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have said that,’ she said quickly.
‘No,’ he said, his eyes playing over her. ‘No …’ His rigidity dissolved. ‘What I meant is that, no, you should have … it’s fine … great, in fact,’ he said, beginning to blabber a little, caught off-guard by her revelation. Sure, these two people definitely had feelings for each other and the past year or so of living together in the confined conditions of an albeit fairly spacious boat had demonstrated how well they managed to rub along from simple lust to basic domesticity – but the ‘L’ word had not reared its complex little head before. There had been moments – mainly for Flynn in post-sex moments when he was at his weakest – but he had never actually spoken the word. He said, ‘More than good.’
‘You didn’t quite give me that impression, Flynnie,’ she said, beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable, the creeping redness of embarrassment slithering up from her chest to her neck like a flame. ‘Forget I said it.’
‘It’s not something that’s easy to forget,’ he said. He stooped slightly – he was six foot two, while she was five feet and ten inches – and looked into her eyes. ‘Look, let’s just get this job over with, shall we? Two days at most, then it’s done and dusted, whatever, and we’re gone. We head back to Ibiza, finish off whatever’s left of the season in this godforsaken year, then sail back to Puerto Rico and go big game fishing.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Then get on with the rest of our lives – together.’
Molly sighed heavily down her nose. ‘Thing is this, Steve,’ she said, reverting from the casual ‘Flynnie’ to the more formal use of his first name. ‘I came into this with my eyes wide open, not expecting commitment or anything more than a good time. But’ – she shrugged helplessly – ‘I’ve fallen in love with you. Can’t help it, just have. And now I think we’ve reached our Rubicon. Y’know, the point where decisions have to be made one way or the other …’
They held each other’s gaze.
Finally, Flynn said, ‘Two days, eh? I can’t stay watching the villa for ever and I don’t particularly want to, but if Viktor Bashkim is still breathing, I need to know, because if he is, neither of us will ever be safe.’
‘OK,’ Molly conceded with a twist of her lips. ‘Two days, then we get on with the rest of our lives.’
‘Two days,’ he confirmed.
She knew he was probably lying, despite his best intentions.
After Flynn and Molly had been unequivocally told they were trespassing on private property and the two heavies at the villa had demonstrated a show of aggression, Flynn had reversed back down the track in the buggy, keeping his eyes open for any suitable position from which he might keep a watch on the villa.
When he finally said goodbye to Molly the day after their verbal dalliance about love, he knew roughly where he was going to hide, at least to start with.
He parked the old Renault on a dead-end track in the banana plantation about half a mile from the villa and went the rest of the way on foot. He was dressed in a khaki-coloured shirt and cargo pants to help him blend in with the sand-yellow coloured rock of the area and had a small rucksack on his back with a couple of bottles of water, a few high-energy bars and a couple of packs of peanuts to keep him going through the day. He was only going to be there in daylight hours because he didn’t have any night-time kit with him, but his usual binoculars were adequate for what he wanted to achieve.
Although he was pretty certain the position he’d identified on that backwards journey away from the villa was a good one, he spent some time slowly circumnavigating the villa in a circle about 300 metres distant to see if there was a more suitable spot to lie up. In the end, he was reasonably content with the place he’d initially chosen and settled into it behind the rocks and under the shade of the trees.
He placed the rucksack by his side and took out one of the water bottles and also his Ruger automatic pistol, which he usually kept in a hidden compartment in Faye’s engine room. He had brought it along without Molly’s knowledge.
There wasn’t much going on at the villa.
The wrought-iron front gates, backed with green mesh netting that made seeing into the courtyard beyond difficult, were kept closed mostly, opened when an occasional vehicle came and left. There was a delivery from a local supermarket, and an open-topped Jeep left with two men on board and returned with the same two a few hours later.
What was clear was that the premises were well guarded. Flynn counted at least eight heavies, including one female, who were clearly on protection duty. The only CCTV he could see from his position was a camera covering the gate. Over the course of that first day of watching, the side gate opened a few times to let different pairs of guards out to stroll around the perimeter of the villa walls, always armed but not necessarily mentally switched on. The patrols seemed perfunctory and were usually interspersed with long cigarette breaks and a lot of time spent on mobile phones.
The heat grew in intensity throughout the day and, probably because he was out of practice, there was a point mid-afternoon where Flynn leaned back against the rock in the dappled shade provided by the trees; his eyelids began to feel heavy and droop, and although he fought it, he nodded off.
He was awakened by something cold and hard pressed into his cheek. Immediate thought: muzzle of a gun.
He jerked awake, scrabbling to find his own gun, and in so doing terrified the goat that had stumbled across him and placed its snout on his face to check out its discovery.
‘Holy shit!’ Flynn hissed as the goat reared away bleating and bounded off to join its flock of accomplices being herded across the barren ground by a young man.
Flynn froze, feeling the slimy mucus from the animal’s nostrils on his face, hoping the young goatherd hadn’t seen him or, if he had, didn’t think anything about a guy catching forty winks in the shade. Whatever, the young man showed no sign of having seen him and carried on herding the goats away.
Flynn’s heart rate decreased. He took a long swig of now lukewarm water and settled back to watch the villa, knowing he could not afford to doze off again.
‘Obviously something’s going on,’ he said later to Molly as they ate fresh seafood pasta on the rear deck of Faye down in St George’s harbour. ‘It’s some sort of fortress,’ he said, shovelling two large prawns into his mouth. ‘Somebody’s being guarded, even if it isn’t old man Bashkim, and I’m pretty sure that any non-corrupt law enforcement body would be interested to know who is holed up there.’
‘Have you spoken to Karl Donaldson yet?’
Flynn shook his head.
It was Donaldson – an FBI agent – who had alerted Flynn to Viktor Bashkim still being alive, though he needed an official sighting to confirm it. Flynn suspected that Donaldson expected him to check it out on his behalf, like setting a Jack Russell after a rat – a ruse that had worked well.
Flynn recalled the phone call he’d taken from Donaldson a couple of weeks earlier when he and Molly had been out on Faye, having found a very secluded bay on the north of the island of Ibiza, where they were enjoying a long, lazy bout of skinny-dipping and sunbathing.
Flynn had been stretched out on the foredeck of the forty-five-foot boat with a face towel draped modestly over his private parts, one area that had never been allowed to catch the sun’s rays, alongside Molly who was much less cautious and seemed happy to let everything fry. He’d heard the sat-phone ringing in the cockpit and had grudgingly gone to take the call.
‘Flynn? Me, Karl Donaldson,’ the conversation had begun abruptly and without preamble.
Flynn was instantly on guard and tense even though he had no idea why Donaldson should call him out of the blue. They weren’t friends, although both had a connection to retired detective superintendent Henry Christie – a guy who was somehow often a catalyst for bad things happening.
