‘She’s alive and she wants us to know it.’
‘She’s not alive. She’s dead,’ Mark Redmayne said, as if by saying the words forcefully enough, he could make it so. ‘We killed her.’
Pinching the bridge of his nose to try to shut off the headache hammering wildly inside his skull, he gazed out of his office window. Below him, Manhattan lay spread out like a dream, a glorious kingdom he had conquered. Mark Redmayne hadn’t founded his company, but under his leadership he had grown it from the modest printing business his father had left him into a global multi-billion-dollar empire. It was incredible the effect a tragic childhood could have on one’s ambition, one’s determination to succeed at all costs. Business success, however, meant nothing to Mark Redmayne compared to this. The Group, and the work they did under Mark’s leadership – that was reality. That was what mattered.
‘We killed them both,’ he muttered, as much to himself as to his operative on the other end of the line.
‘Maybe not,’ said Gabriel.
‘“Maybe?” … Don’t you give me “maybe not”!’ Redmayne exploded. ‘I was there, OK? I watched that chopper go down.’
Most of The Group’s agents were terrified of the boss’s temper, and with good reason. Mark Redmayne wasn’t known for his compassion; his retribution, once invoked, was ruthless. But Gabriel was one of the few people immune to his outbursts. Nothing could sway him from the facts.
‘Athena Petridis’s DNA was never found, sir.’
A muscle on the side of Mark Redmayne’s jaw began to twitch.
‘Because her remains were destroyed in the fire.’
‘But her husband’s weren’t?’ Gabriel challenged. ‘They were in the cockpit together, side by side. If his bones didn’t burn, why should hers?’
‘I don’t know,’ Redmayne admitted grudgingly. ‘I just know that they did. This discussion is over.’
He hung up, which was childish, but he didn’t have the strength or the patience to listen to any more of the agent’s doubts. Largely because they were his doubts too. As soon as he saw the picture, the dead child with his branded foot, he knew. Athena Petridis, that bitch, that witch, that untouchable monster of a woman … was alive.
Mark Redmayne had hated the Petridises for a very long time. There was a special place in his psyche for people who hurt children. The terrible secret of his own childhood – the single, awful event that had made him who he was and led him to The Group in the first place – had fanned the flames of his loathing into a raging, crazed, homicidal inferno which no force on earth could ever put out.
But what if somehow – impossibly – Athena Petridis had survived the crash that had killed her husband? And she was out there right now, laughing at them, laughing at him, for having the audacity to think he’d won. For twelve years, she’d played dead, lulling The Group, and the world, into a false sense of security. But now, with this sick, cruel message, this violation of an innocent child – L – she was back.
‘I’ll fetch you new balls, sir.’ Mark Redmayne’s caddy looked nervously at his employer. Mr Redmayne was not used to losing, and had a reputation for taking his frustrations out on the closest underling to hand. This time, however, to the caddy’s relief, he seemed oddly calm.
‘No need, Henry. There’s nothing wrong with my old balls. I just need to remember I have them.’
‘Sir?’
‘And then I need to start playing a bit better.’
Back in his Bombardier Challenger Learjet after the round, Mark Redmayne made the call he’d been putting off since this morning.
‘Let’s say you’re right.’
‘Sir.’ Gabriel waited.
‘Let’s say she’s alive.’
‘She is alive, sir.’
‘So you say. But what leads do you have?’
‘None yet, sir.’
‘Well find some if you expect me to take you seriously,’ Mark Redmayne commanded, and hung up.
Opening his briefcase, he looked again at the picture of the dead boy. No name. Just a tiny, maimed corpse, washed up on the beach like so much trash. That was how Spyros Petridis had treated the poor and the powerless. Like trash to be discarded. And his she-devil wife had helped him do it.
No governments had had the balls to take on the Petridises. It had been left up to them, to The Group, to do what needed to be done. To right what was wrong. To track down evil wherever it lurked, and destroy it whatever the cost. The Group operated outside of laws, outside of boundaries, outside of national interest or political or religious affiliation. They took risks no one else would take. And they covered their tracks. Always.
Killing Athena Petridis once had been Mark Redmayne’s duty.
Killing her twice would be his pleasure.
Sikinos, Greece
Sister Magdalena, Mother Superior of the tiny Convent of the Sacred Heart, bowed her gray head in prayer. Dusk had already fallen, and through the windows of the remote, Byzantine chapel set deep in the island’s wilderness, one could glimpse the setting sun bleeding its dying rays into the sea.
Forgive me my transgressions, the elderly nun murmured, her arthritic fingers worrying at the rosary beads around her neck. Help me to find the right path, Lord. Guide me through the darkness.
Most of the nuns were at supper in the refectory, a simple repast of tomatoes, olives and vine leaves stuffed with wild rice. But Sister Magdalena always fasted on this day: the anniversary of Sister Elena’s arrival.
Sister Elena and the visiting priest, Father Georgiou, were the only other souls in the chapel tonight. Across the stone-flagged nave, inside an exquisite, medieval carved wooden confessional, Sister Elena was receiving the sacrament.
‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’
The Mother Superior could hear only mumbling: first Elena’s soft, singsong tones and then Father Georgiou’s deep baritone. Although of course she knew the words by heart.
‘Name your sins, my child.’
What sins could Elena possibly have? This kind, gentle, endlessly patient soul? This stoic, even cheerful, sufferer of torments that would have broken any ordinary human being? Poor Sister Elena. She had lost so much. Her youth, her beauty, her loved ones. Even now, all these years later, the doctors said she was in constant physical pain. And yet her faith remained as strong as ever, a shining beacon of hope through the dark night of despair.
She should be leading us, Sister Magdalena thought, for the thousandth time. Not me. I’m like John the Baptist, unfit even to wash her feet. And yet Sister Magdalena accepted that this was God’s plan. Elena had come to them on the boat from Ios like
