The Golden Silence Read online

  He got the taxi to drop him about a hundred metres before the nightclub. The huge mannequin above the entrance was gleaming in the bright lights, but the doors were dark. The club wouldn’t be open for at least another hour. Looking around, he tried to work out where Dmitri might be. As he approached the chain fence at the edge of the car park, he saw that the rear door was open. Light was spilling over the bench he’d used last night. There was no sign of his client there. He looked back across the road. There was a kiosk opposite the Silver Lady, the area beyond it in shadows. Waiting till the traffic-lights changed, he ran across the wide avenue. The smells of tobacco and chewing-gum filled his nostrils as he went slowly past the yellow structure that was almost blocking the pavement. The branches of an untended oleander were protruding from the unlit space in the retaining wall. He stopped and peered inside.

  A hand shot out and pulled him into the narrow alcove. The bitter leaves of the bush were crushed against his mouth.

  ‘Dmitri?’

  ‘Yes.’ The Russian-Greek’s bulky form was close to him. ‘What you do here, Alex?’

  ‘I’ve come to get you out. The people who run that place are dangerous.’

  ‘No. I wait to see the girls. Last night they arrive about this time.’

  ‘Then you’ll leave?’

  ‘Okay,’ Dmitri said reluctantly.

  Mavros stood there, his arms jammed against his body and the Russian-Greek’s beard tickling his cheek. About half-an-hour later he saw a blue minibus drive across the nightclub’s parking area and pull up by the rear door. He felt Dmitri’s arms move upwards. He was looking through a pair of binoculars.

  ‘Soviet Army,’ his client said. ‘I take with me when I finish service.’

  Mavros tried to make out the faces of the girls who were climbing down from the vehicle. Some of them were blonde, their heads down and their shoulders slumped. They looked like Christians about to be thrown to the lions.

  ‘No,’ the Russian-Greek said with a sign as he lowered the binoculars. ‘Not my Katia.’ He leaned forward so that his head and shoulders were in the glow of the nearest streetlamp and looked left and right. ‘Girls come in cars also. We wait.’

  Mavros groaned and pulled him back under cover. ‘She isn’t there, Dmitri. I sat through the show last night.’

  ‘You not find my Katia, so I have to do it myself, Alex,’ his client said in a hoarse whisper. ‘If you are scared, leave me.’

  Mavros bit his lip. He shared Dmitri’s pain. He wanted to find Katia too, but hiding in a bush wasn’t the way to do it. ‘Look, let’s—’

  He wasn’t able to finish the sentence. There was a screech of tyres and a large black car appeared on the road in front of them. Before they could move, two musclebound men in suits leaped out of the nearside doors and crowded up to the space in the wall. Even in the restricted light, Mavros could make out the muzzle of a matt-black automatic pistol. It was jabbed into his abdomen.

  ‘Out,’ said a harsh voice. ‘Into the car, both of you. Any noise and you’re dead.’

  They were bustled into the back seat, hands running over them to check for weapons. To Mavros’s relief, it seemed that Dmitri didn’t have his gun with him. They were squashed between two men, the driver on his own in the front. As the car accelerated away, Mavros realised that he’d seen all three of them before. The man at the wheel, sunglasses pushed up on his head, was Yannis, one of the coke-sniffers. The gorilla beyond Dmitri was Panos, the other guy from the Silver Lady’s toilets. He took a deep breath. They were also the men he’d seen with the doomed Sifis that night on the mountainside when he intervened. Would they recognise him now he wasn’t leaning over a basin? That wasn’t his only problem. The tall heavy on his left was the one who’d had his hand round the throat of the man who was hustled into the Audi and had subsequently turned up dead. Would he recognise the pair of them from the chase in the Lada? He glanced at his client. Even though Ricardo wasn’t there, they were in very deep shit.

  ‘Head for the old airport perimeter fence,’ the tall man said. ‘You know the spot.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Dami,’ the driver said with a coarse laugh. ‘Where we take the bad boys.’

  Mavros watched as they turned off the coast road and headed inland. It wasn’t long before they cut down a backstreet and reached a quiet dead-end. The high wire surrounding the former airport was in front of them. The nearest buildings were commercial properties with few lights on them. There was no one around. Mavros was trying to work out if the fact that they hadn’t been blindfolded was good or bad. Either their captors didn’t regard them as important enough to take the trouble, or they didn’t care that they could be identified—meaning they were going to dispose of their captives.

  His mouth went dry. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘You’re making a mistake. We—’

  ‘Pano, get the other guy’s ID,’ the man called Damis said, extending his hand to Mavros. ‘I want yours.’ He gave a hard man’s stare and brandished his automatic. ‘Carefully.’

  Mavros moved forward in the cramped space, eased his wallet out of his back pocket and handed it over.

  ‘Well, well,’ Damis said, holding up one of his business cards. ‘Look what we’ve got here. A private investigator by the name of Alex Mavros.’

  There were groans.

  ‘This one’s called Dmitri Tratsou,’ Panos said. ‘What kind of name’s that, shithead? Are you foreign?’

  ‘I am Greek,’ Dmitri said, glowering at him. ‘From former Soviet Union.’

  ‘Jesus,’ the driver said, turning round. ‘He’s a fuckin’ Ivan. We’d better tell Ricardo.’

  Damis raised his hand. ‘Wait a minute. Let’s find out what they were doing outside the Silver Lady.’ He turned to Mavros. ‘And don’t tell me you were feeling each other up.’

  Mavros was choking inside the Mercedes. The air was heavy and rank now that the air-conditioning wasn’t running. He decided to tell the truth. It might even be that the musclemen would let something slip. ‘We’re looking for his daughter Katia. I don’t suppose you know her?’

  Yannis burst out laughing. ‘And if we did, we’d tell you, tosser?’

  Damis gave him a stern look. ‘Be quiet.’ He nudged Mavros. ‘This Katia, she’s gone missing?’

  For a moment Mavros thought he saw sympathy in the man’s dark eyes. ‘Yes. There’s a photo of her in my wallet.’

  Damis looked at it, then showed it to the other two. ‘I haven’t seen her. You?’

  The other two men looked blank.

  ‘Nice face, though,’ the driver said. ‘I could—’ He broke off when he saw Dmitri’s expression. ‘What are we going to do with these assholes?’

  Mavros waited as the tall man kept his eyes on the photo of Katia. His heart was thundering in his chest. Would he buy their story? If he recognised them from last night, would he take that as an explanation for the tailing of the Audi? Why should he, since there was no girl in the car?

  ‘All right,’ Damis said, handing back the photo and wallet. ‘I hope we understand each other. There’s no Katia at the Silver Lady. I don’t want to see either of you near the club again.’ He opened the door. ‘Get out.’

  Mavros followed him, while Dmitri was hauled out by the gorilla called Panos.

  ‘Give him a little souvenir,’ Damis called over the roof of the car.

  Mavros heard a dull thud followed by an expulsion of air as Dmitri went down. There was a cackle of laughter from the driver.

  ‘Okay,’ the tall man said in a low voice. ‘You heard what I said. Keep your distance. This isn’t a game.’ He drove his fist into Mavros’s midriff.

  From the ground Mavros heard the doors of the Mercedes close and the engine start.

  ‘Christ, it stinks in here,’ Yannis was saying, his window sliding down. ‘We should have handed them over to the Father and Son. They’d have given them some real pain.’ Then he accelerated away, sending gravel flying.

  Mavros had one hand over his eyes an
d the other on his belly.

  ‘You okay?’ His client was on his knees, gasping for breath.

  ‘Yes.’ Mavros felt his abdomen with his fingertips. The blow had scarcely winded him. ‘You?’

  ‘I’ve had worse,’ Dmitri said with a grin. ‘Much worse. These men fools, not serious gangsters.’

  Mavros got to his feet. Yannis and Panos certainly struck him as fools, but not Damis. He was on a different level, more authoritative and thoughtful. But there was something strange about him. Had he mistimed his punch, or did he have some reason for pulling it? The guy who hit Dmitri had done a much better job, whatever the Russian-Greek said.

  ‘Come, we go for drink, Alex.’

  Mavros was examining his clothes. The area seemed to be the dog toilet of south-east Athens. ‘Do you know how we look? Not to mention smell. I’ve got a better idea.’ He took out his phone.

  ‘Is that the Glezou Laundry? I need your services. About fifteen minutes.’

  Dmitri was peering at him in the gloom. ‘We go to clean clothes?’

  ‘If you’re lucky, you might get a drink too.’

  They found a taxi two streets away. The driver was a smoker and didn’t notice the state of his passengers until it was too late. During the drive to Niki’s flat, Mavros ran over what had happened. He couldn’t understand why the tall man called Damis had let them off so lightly. He was also wondering about the driver’s last words. Who were the Father and Son? Could they have been involved in the killing of the man Damis and Ricardo had bundled into the Audi?

  He knew who would be able to help him.

  Damis was beginning to feel the strain. He went into the toilets at the nightclub and locked himself in a cubicle. It wasn’t just the operation to snatch the Russian that Mrs Chioti had ordered him to play a part in, though that was worrying enough. Yannis and Panos were full of themselves for spotting the guys hiding in the hole in the wall opposite. He’d said he’d tell Ricardo about the private investigator and the bearded man who were looking for the girl, but he didn’t intend to do that. Not tonight, anyway. There was too much going on and he didn’t want any more distractions. He was taking a risk. Ricardo would find out sooner or later, even if Damis didn’t volunteer the information. How could he justify keeping quiet about it? The investigator Mavros, Damis had heard of him. He was a hot shot. He’d solved a high-profile murder case on one of the islands last year. It had been in the papers and on the TV. Was he really after a missing girl or was there more to his surveillance of the Silver Lady? And what the hell had he been doing tailing them in the ancient Lada?

  The outer door banged.

  ‘Dami?’ It was Panos. ‘You in there?’

  ‘Yes.’ He flushed the toilet and went out to the row of washhand basins.

  Panos was closely followed by Yannis.

  ‘Not shittin’ yourself, are you?’ Yannis asked.

  Damis stood upright and grabbed the lapels of the driver’s suit jacket with his wet hands. ‘No.’ He lifted him off the ground and sniffed. ‘I think you might be, though.’

  Panos started to laugh raucously.

  ‘Christ, loosen up,’ Yannis said, wiping his jacket.

  ‘Oh, I’m loose,’ he replied. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We’re going in five minutes,’ Panos said. ‘You’re inthe front car with Mr Ricardo, Yannis and me are covering you.’

  Damis strode out, his head held high. He needed to show the other two that he was worthy of the promotion Mrs Chioti had given him. They’d benefited too, though the idea of that pair of idiots riding shotgun didn’t fill him with confidence. Neither did the fact that Ricardo was in charge of the operation. He was a sick bastard, but he was experienced and he had a sharp eye. Damis knew that the bald man had doubts about him because of what had happened with Lakis, not that it had done Lakis any good. The Father was bad enough but the Son…with his cold eyes and the ruthless way he’d launched the fish spear, the Son would have given Pol Pot nightmares.

  ‘You’re driving,’ Ricardo said as they approached the Audi. ‘I’ve told Yannis to keep about a hundred metres behind us.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  The bald man glanced at him as he was fastening his seat belt. ‘I’ll tell you when I’m sure we’re not being tailed.’

  Damis didn’t react to that. He was half-expecting Ricardo to mention the Lada and its occupants, but he didn’t.

  ‘Testing,’ the bald man said into a walkie-talkie. ‘You receiving, Pano?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Okay. Let me know if you see anyone on us.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Ricardo dropped the receiver between his legs. ‘Head for the city centre.’

  Damis turned left on to the coast road and accelerated away.

  ‘So, how do you feel about the job tonight?’ Ricardo’s eyes were on him again. ‘Looking forward to picking up one of the opposition’s top men?’

  ‘Sure,’ Damis replied evenly.

  ‘Of course, you didn’t have much choice. Mrs C threw you in without a second thought.’ Ricardo gave a hollow laugh. ‘She didn’t seem to care that you almost let Lakis escape.’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Oh, I know that. Why would you have dropped your knife deliberately?’ He leaned closer. ‘It wasn’t as if you liked Lakis.’

  Damis glanced in the mirror and pulled out in front of a van. ‘No, I couldn’t stand the wanker.’ He looked at the bald man. ‘The Father and Son, they’re really something.’

  Ricardo lit a cigarette. ‘They certainly are. Did you see the way they hooked the bastard up? No wonder his heart gave out.’ He adjusted the rear-view mirror on his door.

  ‘Have they always worked for the family?’

  ‘As long as I’ve been around.’ The bald man blew smoke over him. ‘You don’t want to be asking questions about them. And you don’t want to tell anyone else about them. They’re the family’s secret weapon.’

  Tell that to Yannis, Damis thought. He wondered if the investigator Mavros had heard the Father and Son being mentioned. He realised that he was being warned off and kept silent. When they approached the junction that led to the western suburbs, Ricardo told him to bear left. He did so, aware that the other man was beginning to breathe more heavily. They must be getting close to the scene.

  ‘Pano?’ Ricardo said into the walkie-talkie. ‘Anybody on our tail?’

  ‘No, boss.’

  ‘Tell Yannis to close up now.’ The bald man turned to Damis. ‘Turn left at the next junction. After about half a kilometre you’ll see some warehouses on the left. I’ve got a couple of guys in a car there. Pull up behind the parked lorries.’

  Damis did as he was told. The buildings were lit up for security, but the truck park was in the shadows.

  ‘Turn off your lights,’ Ricardo said as they coasted to a stop, repeating the instructions to the car behind.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘We wait.’

  Half-an-hour passed, cars speeding past on the wide avenue and train wheels rattling on the rails nearby. The car was full of Ricardo’s smoke and Damis was sweating in the enclosed space. Finally the walkie-talkie crackled.

  ‘They’re on their way. Two cars. Target’s in the front one, sitting behind the driver.’

  ‘You hear that, Pano?’ Ricardo said in a low voice.

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Take the rear car out when I give the word.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Ricardo put the handset down. ‘Jesus, where do we find these morons? Yes, boss. No, boss. Can I kiss your arse, boss?’ He leaned forward and opened the glove compartment. ‘You know how to operate these?’

  Damis looked down and saw a pair of Uzi machine-pistols. ‘Yes, boss.’

  Ricardo glanced at him and then laughed. ‘Maybe you’ve got some balls after all. We’re taking the lead car. Make sure you don’t hit the guy in the back seat.’ He looked ahead. ‘Start the engine. You see them
?’

  ‘Yes.’ Damis turned the key in the ignition. A couple of top-of-the-range BMWs were moving slowly across the parking area.

  ‘Any moment now a friendly truck driver is going to put the shits up them.’

  Damis watched as exhaust fumes appeared from a lorry to their left, its lights staying off. Then it moved forward, accelerating surprisingly quickly.

  ‘Go, go!’ Ricardo shouted.

  Damis drove forward, aware of Yannis’s Mercedes alongside before it veered off to the right. He aimed the Audi at the front BMW. It had been forced to stop by the lorry. He hit the brake and stopped the car about ten metres from them. Ricardo was out in a flash, his machine-pistol stuttering. The front window shattered and the driver and the man next to him fell forward, their heads exploding in crimson.

  Damis opened his door, Uzi in his right hand, and loosed off a long burst over the roof of the front car. He heard a fusillade of shots as Panos and Yannis emptied their weapons into the second BMW.

  ‘All right!’ Ricardo shouted. ‘We have him.’ He leaned into the back seat and hauled a fair-haired man out. ‘Don’t try it.’ He smashed his weapon down on the man’s arm and a silverplated automatic fell to the floor. ‘Help me, Dami.’

  Together they dragged the man to the back of the Audi. Ricardo looped plastic straps round his wrists.

  ‘Open the boot.’

  When it flipped up, they heaved the captive in, forcing him to bend his knees.