The Cassandra Sanction

Chapter Fifty

Ben was the last to retire for the night, long after one in the morning. As he passed Raul’s door he could hear the steady rasp of snoring from inside. Out for the count. He was careful not to make noise as he let himself into his own room, although probably nothing much short of a shotgun blast would have roused the Spaniard from his heavy sleep.

Ben took a shower and then climbed into bed, but he couldn’t sleep. The idea forming in his mind was becoming more unsettling the more he thought about it.

He wanted to be wrong. But he was very much concerned that he was right. There was only one way to know, and he didn’t much like that either. He was just going to have to wait and see what happened.

An hour went by. He couldn’t sleep. He got up and paced his room, did some press-ups and went back to bed. Still couldn’t sleep. Another hour passed. Then another — until, at last, he began to drift away into that otherworldly state somewhere between thinking and dreaming, where nothing seemed quite real—

Except for the sound that yanked him back to consciousness and made his eyes snap open and his body jack-knife up straight in the bed.

It was still dark in the room. He hadn’t been dreaming. What had woken him was the sound of an engine starting up down below. One of the Jeeps. He could hear it revving. Accelerating rapidly away from the lighthouse. Someone in a hurry.

By the time he was up out of bed and going over to the window, the Jeep was already taking off down the road, its taillights disappearing into the darkness.

‘Shit,’ he muttered.

The luminous dial of his watch read almost five thirty a.m. Whatever was happening down there, he didn’t like it. He pulled on his jeans and ran barefoot and shirtless from his room, down the lighthouse staircase and out into the cold morning air. First light was still more than an hour away, and the moon was still glimmering over the smooth ocean. The buildings that housed the staff and Keller’s men were all in darkness. So was the lighthouse, all except for the top floor: Catalina’s floor, its encircling windows and glass dome all lit up as if she couldn’t sleep either.

Or something else. He paused to listen, and thought he could hear the distant sound of the engine over the whisper of the ocean. The Jeep was right across the far side of the island.

Ben ran back inside the lighthouse and took the iron stairs all the way to the top, slowing as he passed Keller’s quarters on the floor below Catalina’s so as not to wake him. He entered her room without knocking, because his instincts told him she wouldn’t be there.

And his instincts were correct. If she’d gone to bed at all, the sheets were now neatly made up. There was no sign of her.

Literally no sign of her. All her things were gone. The laptop and the pile of notes were gone. The tan leather travelling bag that had been lying at the foot of the bed was gone. The wardrobes and drawers were empty. The bathroom was stripped bare of any and all personal effects.

‘Shit,’ he said again.

He’d been right.

It was her who’d taken the Jeep. She’d driven to the low-lying end of the island because it was from the beach that she was intending to make her escape. Catalina Fuentes had no intention of remaining a prisoner in her gilded cage. Not for another day, not for another hour. She was getting off Icthyios. Making good her pledge to end this, once and for all. Her apparent change of mind at dinner had only been a feint to throw off any suspicions that Keller or Raul might have that she still meant business. Ben hadn’t been so easily duped. But then, Keller and Raul hadn’t been there on the beach earlier that day. Neither of them understood the depth of her frustration.

After thinking about it for so many hours, Ben was certain that her plan was to snatch one of the motor boats from the boathouse, and use it to cross over to neighbouring Sárla in order to catch the morning ferry to Karpathos. Where he was sure she intended to board a plane heading God knew where. She still had some money, and with her new identity papers she’d be able to travel freely as long as nobody recognised her face. She’d already become expert at disguising herself to give the paparazzi the slip. With her different hair and some judicious makeup, nobody need ever suppose that Carmen Hernandez was in fact the late, lamented Catalina Fuentes.

Ben hurried back down to the guest level. He could still hear Raul snoring behind the door. Ben had no intention of waking him up. He quickly buttoned on his shirt, hauled on his shoes and returned down below, taking care not to let his footsteps ring on the iron staircase. Outside, he raced to where the remaining Jeeps were parked, jumped into the nearest one, fired up the engine and the lights and took off into the darkness after Catalina.

At high speed, the drive from one end of the island to the other took no more than ninety seconds. He skidded off the road and went roaring over soft sand towards the jetty and boathouse. There was no sign of the other Jeep. He killed the engine and jumped out and ran along the clattering boards of the jetty.

Ben reached the steps that led down to the boathouse. He flung open the door and peered inside. At first he could see only shadows; then as his eyes adapted to the murk he was able to make out the swirling reflections of the water and the shapes of the three boats moored up there, bobbing gently, their sides clunking together with the swell. He could see no sign of any loose moorings. It didn’t look as if Catalina had taken one of the boats, after all.

Then where was she? And where was her Jeep?

It was at that moment that Ben heard the sound of another engine starting up. It wasn’t the Jeep, or anything remotely like it. It was the rush of twin turbofan jet turbines rapidly gaining pitch and power from a whooshing whine to an ear-splitting roar as Austin Keller’s private aircraft prepared for takeoff.

Ben scrambled out of the boathouse and went sprinting back along the jetty, the noise of the plane filling his ears with every advancing step. He raced for the pebbly rise that blocked the view of the airstrip from the beach.

It was impossible. Catalina was flying the plane? By herself?

As he reached the top, the full blast of the noise hit his ears. The asphalt was all lit up like a motorway. The aircraft had taxied out of the hangar, past where the Jeep was parked with its doors hanging open and its headlamps burning. The runway lights gleamed on the sleek white fuselage. The jet turbines were still mounting in pitch, reaching a noise level that sent needles of pain lancing through Ben’s eardrums. He ran down the other side of the rise towards the asphalt, waving his arms and yelling, ‘Stop! Wait!’ But his voice was so completely drowned by the enormous noise that even he couldn’t hear a word he was shouting.

The aircraft began to roll. The howl of the turbofans grew even louder, breaking the limits of all possible noise. The nose and wing lights seared his eyeballs with their dazzling whiteness, making him blink. Some insane part of him wanted to chase after it, grab hold of it, pit his strength against its and force it to stop. He couldn’t let her go.

But she was going, and nothing he could do could prevent that now. The engine blast drove him back. The immensity of the sound resonated through the ground under his feet like an earthquake tremor. He could feel his ribs vibrating. He clamped his palms tight over his ears, stopped running and came to a halt on the runway. Stood helplessly by and watched as the jet accelerated away from him. Faster — and faster — and faster still, scorching the air in a wake of superheated exhaust gases from its nozzles.

Then it was up, and away, leaving him feeling tiny and powerless on the ground as it hurtled into the night sky.

And she was gone.

Ben’s ears were still ringing wildly as he ran back to his Jeep. He fired up the motor, threw it into drive and spun it back towards the road.

Ninety seconds later, he was back at the lighthouse. The noise of the departing jet must have woken the household, or at least part of it. Keller’s floor was all lit up, as was Andréas’ and Melina’s little building around the back of the residential block. As Ben skidded the Jeep to a halt, Keller emerged in his pyjamas from the lighthouse entrance, hair all awry, rubbing his eyes and gaping up at the sky in disbelief. A moment later, Andréas and Melina appeared from their doorway, wrapped in dressing gowns and looking startled and anxious. Keller saw Ben getting out of the Jeep and demanded, ‘Hey! What the hell’s going on?’

Ben said nothing. He glanced up at the lighthouse and saw that the guest-floor windows were dark. Raul must still be asleep, but then the quantity of wine he’d downed that evening would have knocked out a horse. Ben wondered if Bauer and the rest of Keller’s crew had the same excuse. Because there was no sign of life coming from their block either. No movement, no lights.

‘That was the plane,’ Keller was saying in a stunned voice, jabbing a finger up at the empty, dark sky. ‘My plane.’

Ben ignored him and made for the crew block. He had a bad feeling, but he didn’t yet know why.

When he threw open the door and found the light switch, he knew. And his bad feeling suddenly got worse by a factor of ten.

Bauer, Emmert, Spencer, Willis, Fulton and Griggs stared back at him, their eyes wide and blinking in the light. They were all facing the doorway, side by side, trussed helplessly to a row of chairs, struggling against the ropes that bound their arms and ankles and the gags tied tightly over their mouths. Each of them had a livid, fresh bruise on his forehead.

Six men. One was missing.

Avery, the pilot.

Ben walked around the back of Bauer’s chair and yanked his gag free. Bauer spat bits of fibre and yelled, ‘Untie us!’

‘Talk to me, Bauer,’ Ben said.

‘She’s out of her head,’ Bauer said. ‘I can’t believe she did this to us.’

Keller stood in the doorway, eyes boggling at the sight of his men.

Ben got to work on the knots that held Bauer’s wrists. They were pretty good ones. ‘One woman, against six of you? She’s a scientist, not a Royal Marines commando.’

‘She made Avery tie us up,’ Bauer jabbered. ‘Got us one by one. Banged each us over the head in turn while we were sleeping. Dragged us in here and tied us up. Must’ve got the rope from the store shed.’ His arms came free and he rubbed his wrists to get the circulation back into his hands. ‘She’s fucking insane!’

‘Then she and Avery were working together?’ Ben said.

Bauer shook his head. ‘No chance. Pete Avery’s one of us. She made him do it. Had that goddamned Glock pointed at him the whole time. I don’t blame the guy. She’d have shot him. She had the look.’

‘Where did she get a pistol?’

‘It was his.’ Bauer pointed at the red-faced Willis three chairs down the row, who garbled something incomprehensible through his gag. Ben stepped over to Willis and tore the gag away.

‘I was cleaning it—’ Willis began.

‘In your sleep?’

‘No, no. Before I hit the sack. I left it on the table—’

‘With a full magazine in it?’ Ben said.

Willis nodded. ‘Gun can’t work on an empty mag, man.’

‘You left a loaded firearm unattended on the table while you went off to bed,’ Ben said. ‘That’s the definition of an idiot.’

‘Give us a break,’ Bauer said, leaning down to untie his own ankles. ‘We’re living on an island. Nothing ever happens around here. She took us by surprise. We were sleeping, for Christ’s sake.’

Ben shook his head. ‘You’re all idiots. Where’s the gun now?’

‘She took it,’ Bauer said.

‘And Avery?’

Bauer nodded. ‘Him too. Once he’d finished tying us up, she made him go with her. He didn’t have a lot of choice. Like I said, she meant business. Next thing, they took off in the Jeep.’ As he talked, Bauer managed to loosen the ropes around his ankles and flung them away. He stumbled unsteadily out of his chair to start untying the rest of his men.

Ben turned to Keller. ‘So now we know what happened. Catalina made Avery fly the plane.’

Keller looked stricken, jaw dropping, pale with shock. ‘Wait. Wait. What are you saying? She took my pilot hostage and stole my Lear?’

‘Apparently so,’ Ben said. ‘Unless you have any better theories.’

‘Where’s she gone?’

‘Away,’ Ben said.

‘I can’t believe she’d do something like that,’ Keller protested. ‘It’s impossible. It wasn’t her idea. It was that lunatic brother of hers, right? You know there’s something wrong with him, don’t you? I always thought so. This was his plan.’

‘That would be why he was still fast asleep and snoring like a bull after she and Avery had already left in the Jeep,’ Ben said. ‘It doesn’t sound very plausible to me. But you can always go and ask him, when he wakes up. I’m sure he’ll be happy to explain.’

Keller’s mouth dropped open another inch. ‘Holy crap. You’re right. Then it must be true. Has she lost her mind? What the hell does she think she’s doing?’

‘Getting off this island,’ Ben said. ‘The only way she thought she could. If you ask me, she’s been planning it for a while.’

‘And it’s partly my fault,’ Keller said with a deep frown. ‘Because it was me who arranged to have those false papers made for her. I got the best guy in the business for the job. Cost me thirty thousand bucks, and I thought I was doing a good thing. She was planning on running out on me, all along.’

‘What was the alternative, Keller? Would you rather have kept her prisoner here?’

‘No, damn it!’ Keller yelled. ‘But why would she run? She had everything here! Everything she could possibly need!’

‘Except the one thing she wanted,’ Ben said. ‘The one thing you couldn’t offer her, Keller. Her freedom.’

‘Freedom? Freedom to do what? Go and spill her guts out on TV? Go and make a fool of herself, and maybe get herself killed in the process? Is that what this is all about?’

Ben said nothing in reply, but the answer to the question was clear in his mind. And he now understood exactly what it was Catalina intended to do next. The uncomfortable thoughts nagging inside him were falling into place at last. The things she’d asked him on the beach made sense to him now. Asking him what it was like to kill a person. Telling him nothing would ever be the same.

He remembered the other things they’d talked about. Napoleon Bonaparte’s historic escape from his gilded cage on the island of Elba. The exiled warrior going back to attend to unfinished business.

Death or glory.

Ben knew that Catalina hadn’t forced Avery at gunpoint to help her steal Keller’s jet so that she could get to the nearest television studio and cause a major sensation. The whole thing at dinner had been a deliberate smokescreen, to distract them all from her real intentions.

She was going after Maxwell Grant in revenge.