Perfect People

113

It was a perfect night. They could have waited weeks for conditions like this, months even. No moon, heavy cloud cover, a light swell. They cut the motor and drifted, and within seconds, operating on synchronized watches, all the other outboards on the fleet of twenty inflatables had been cut, too.

Sudden hush. Just the slop of the ink-black ocean, the splash of oars, the creak of rowlocks, the sound of nervous breathing, the rustle of tough clothing fabrics.

Twelve miles to the south, the lights of the ships were now no longer visible. Out there in the darkness on the edge of the horizon, two aircraft carriers, one belonging to the Greek navy, one to the United States, were hove-to, on full alert. Helicopters sat on both their decks, crewed-up, waiting.

With all electronic equipment switched off, and all conversation forbidden, the crew in the flotilla of shore craft rowed the final three miles in silence.

*

At half past one in the morning, Harald Gatward knelt beside his bed, face buried in his hands, communing with the Lord in a prayer vigil more intense than any he had held in months.

He felt like he had hit a wall with his worship, the kind of wall marathon runners face after the first few miles, the wall of pain and despair you have to get beyond, because when you do, when you muster your resources and force yourself through, soon the juices start flowing, and everything becomes easier.

Satan had put up this wall and he needed God to help him find a way through it.

Father Yanni, the Abbot, had come to his cell and spoken to him last night, told him in that wise, lugubrious voice that the other monks had noticed he wasn’t praying so well recently. Particularly the past couple of days. Father Yanni wondered if, perhaps, the American was sickening for something? Or having doubts?

‘The man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin,’ Harald Gatward had replied.

The Abbott told him the monks would pray for his faith, then had said a short prayer with him, and left.

Gatward opened his eyes and stared into the darkness of his room. Soon it would be the drum call to matins and they would all see his troubled face. Might be better this morning to remain in his cell; he had to think through his problems, the ones he could not, dare not, share with the Abbot or any monk here.

Timon Cort.

Lara Gherardi.

What a mess.

Had Timon Cort said anything before he had died? Had Lara Gherardi? Was there anything in their possession that could yield clues to the enemy?

It had been a mistake sending Lara, and he was bitterly regretting it now. She had been a good person; he had acted out of panic, hadn’t thought it through properly, and had not given her time to plan. It would have been better to have sent someone not emotionally attached; her love for her fellow Disciple must have affected her judgement.

In five years, through meticulous planning and discipline, rigorously following the guidance of God, none of his Disciples had made one slip. Now, in the space of less than forty-eight hours, two were dead.

He closed his hands over his face, and began to recite from Psalm 73.

‘Oh Lord, when my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before You.’

Outside, he heard drumming. The sharp rapping of wood on wood, beginning softly, then rapidly rising in a frenzied crescendo, echoing across the flagstones below, and across the monastery walls.

The beat was getting louder.

As if a wooden gong was hammering inside his skull.

I’m coming, all right, yes, yes, to matins, I will come.

Louder still.

His door burst open. Shocked by the intrusion, he looked up straight into blinding white light. The next moment he heard a sharp hiss, smelled a sour reek like a perfume that had gone bad, then in the same instant, he was enveloped in a moist, acrid cloud.

It felt like acid had been thrown into his eyes. Crying out in pain, he squeezed them shut, pressing his hands back over his face, and now his throat and lungs seared as if he was breathing in flames.

He tried to remember his military training. To stay calm. No panic. Just think the situation through before acting. But he was suffocating; his gullet was on fire, his nostrils, his lungs. He tried to open his stinging eyes. Could see nothing, just a blur of blinding light. He was trying to think, to work out what was happening.

He stumbled against his table, fell to the floor with it, heard a sharp crack that might have been his laptop striking the floor also. Instinctively he curled up into a ball and rolled, always present the enemy with a moving target.

He crashed against something hard. A leg of the bed. Then against the wall. Lay still. Coughing, choking, his eyes burning, fighting for air.

Voices outside. Unfamiliar voices. The drumming had stopped. Instead there were strange footsteps, all kinds of new sounds. One very angry voice shouting down below. It sounded like Father Yanni.

He tried to sit up, forcing his eyes open, and saw through a wall of tears a figure, just a dark blur of a figure, towering over him.

His coughing eased; the acrid smell was fading a little; he took a deep gulp, but it was like sucking fire into his lungs and he coughed violently again. ‘Who – who are you-?’ he wheezed painfully, squinting, panic-stricken, desperately trying to blink his eyes clear, but to no avail.

The voice was American, with a faint Kansas twang, and sounded a little muffled. It said, ‘Where are the children, motherfucker?’

Gatward tried to speak but had another coughing fit. The light that was shining in his face was making the pain in his eyes worse, and he put his hand over them.

‘PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD, MOTHERFUCKER. ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER.’

Harald Gatward hesitated, then obeyed. Who the hell was this man? Except, the pain in his eyes and throat and lungs was so bad, he almost didn’t care who the man was, he just wanted the pain to stop. He didn’t care if he died at this moment.

‘WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN?’

‘What children?’ he wheezed, before lapsing into more coughing.

‘You want to make this easy, or you want to make this hard, you piece of shit? Because it would give me a lot of pleasure to make this real hard. Where are the children?’

Gatward, confused, shook his head. ‘What children?’ Moments later, someone was seizing his hands, jerking them behind his back; he tried to resist, but the moment he drew in breath, he began coughing. ‘Wharachireren?’ he managed to get out.

Something metallic closed around one wrist then the other. Handcuffs.

‘Whoorrruyou?’

‘Special Agent Norbert, FBI. I’m here in the presence of the Greek Police and the US Military.’

The air in the room was clearing now. The taller man lowered his gas mask, produced his ID from an inside pocket and held it out to Gatward, who, still suffering from the CS gas, was unable to see what it was, let alone read it.

Special Agent Norbert, dressed in a flak jacket, fatigues and a balaclava, with a Uzi sub-machine gun crooked under one arm, said, ‘Colonel Harald Edgar Gatward, I’m arresting you on charges of conspiracy to murder and kidnap. You have the right to remain silent. You are coming back to the United States with us today; even as we speak your extradition papers are being stamped by the Greek authorities. They don’t want a piece of shit like you polluting their country.’

His lungs a fraction better now, Gatward said, sullenly, ‘I saved their monastery.’

‘You saved their monastery? That’s funny. Who’d you save it for?’

Gatward said nothing.

‘For the children? That who you saved it for?’

‘What children?’

Something in the way Gatward said that gave Special Agent Norbert a distinct prick of unease.