“So now we can all go together?”
“Your assistance would be greatly appreciated, my son. This increased activity would appear to be linked with various hot spots of trouble around the globe and at Scorpion HQ in London. The partners of Ferran & Cardini have a strong hunch of there being a connection.”
Alix nodded.
The Priest smiled. “We will have to meet at the old Sarum private airfield in Wiltshire — I have a few jobs to take care of first along the way.”
“No problem. Just name the time.”
The Priest glanced at his wristwatch. “Twelve hours from now.”
We’ll be there,” said Alix softly.
The twin engines droned like bees gathering honey. Tatiana woke up, rubbed her eyes, and watched the sun dancing across the tops of cotton-wool clouds. She yawned, enjoying the view for a few moments; far below, the brilliant blue landscape of the Mediterranean, marked with the Islands of the Balearics, reminded her of long past holidays, and much better days — happier days before the imminent crisis that now loomed and would grip the world’s economies and governments and cripple them beyond recognition…
She shifted on the uncomfortable seat. Winced as the stitches that Dillon had so expertly sown her together with, pulled tight.
She glanced across at Dillon. “You okay?”
“Never felt better.” Although, Dillon’s wane smile, told a different story.
“Where are we?”
“We’ve just flown over Mallorca.”
“Mallorca. I had a few good holidays there in the past. My father owned a villa in Puerto Pollensa, up in the north of the island.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Honestly? Battered, bruised, and sore, but I’ll live. You hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Which bag is the food in?”
The blue one has food and drink in, and I apologise in advance for the amount of junk food content. I swear, somebody should sue the manufacturers of that shit.”
Tatiana rummaged. Found food — or a close approximation thereof. She ate, and so did Dillon, even though his hands were firmly gripping the Cessna’s control column.
“You look tired, where are you refuelling?”
“We’re heading for Sicily to refuel.”
“I thought you were never going back to Sicily? Something to do with the Mafia wanting you real bad after you destroyed their very large shipment of cocaine. Wanted by men with machine pistols who want you very, very dead?”
“Well, yes. But when I say Sicily, it’s a biggish island and what I mean is that I’ve arranged to rendezvous with an old friend, just outside of Ragusa. That’s on the other side of the island and a long way from Palermo.”
“So there’ll be no time for sunbathing or sampling the exquisite local food?”
“Not this time, luv. I’m sorry. Anyway, the less time I spend on that island, the better.”
They were still over the sea, and the sun glittered across waves and tiny crests of foam. Tatiana watched Dillon carefully; she could see his concern about landing on Sicily but he hid it well. The Mafia chased him all over Europe; he had killed every one of his pursuers one by one before returning to the UK. The Mafia have long memories… She had read it in his personnel file, and as he always said, it wasn’t the Mafia that bothered him; it was the one million Euro contract that they had put out on him…
Hours had passed.
The ‘rendezvous’, much to Tatiana’s horror, was a narrow dirt strip cut between lines of olive groves. Dillon brought the twin engine Cessna down in a swirl of dust, taxied to the far end, turned, and came to a halt, much to the bewilderment of a small group of olive pickers who were sitting in the shade eating their lunch. Tatiana watched Dillon go across to them from the Cessna’s cockpit, decidedly on edge and alert for any signs of trouble.
She needn’t have worried. Dillon, all smiles, nodded in her direction and she watched as one of the older women, dressed traditionally in black garb, lead him away to throw back tarpaulins concealing drums of what Tatiana assumed was aviation fuel. She did not understand how Dillon made contacts, nor how he had arranged this little meeting; so she decided that it was probably best not to ask.
An hour later, when Dillon climbed sweating and covered in dust into the cockpit, Tatiana had been sleeping again. She smiled wearily at him. “We fuelled up and ready to go?”
“We should have just about enough to get us to Santorini. That’s assuming we don’t meet with any problems along the way, we’re going to be flying low altitude and under radar…”
They flew low with the sun high in a sky of brilliant blue…
Tatiana decided it was quite romantic or it would have been if she hadn’t taken a bullet in the shoulder and they hadn’t been running for their lives. What happened? She thought, what had happened to her near perfect world? It had been going so well, so smoothly.
Ezra walked slowly through the spectacular landscaped gardens of his hillside home, gazing around in appreciation of the vividly colourful scene; looking down he observed honey bees hovering and settling on the abundance of large blooms throughout the garden. He lifted his head slowly, hair whipping gently in the light breeze, and gazed out across the breathtaking view before him — a medley of browns and burnt orange merging into the dazzling blue of the ocean. The amber light of early evening flowed effortlessly across the island landscape like molten honey, breaking across white painted villas, moulding itself around the trees. Although, Ezra could not see them from where he was sitting, sheer cliffs rose up hundreds of feet from the ocean floor and he could feel the past violence of this ancient land within his soul.
The high voltage electric security fence, made the large man feel comforted, solid and real without any fear. Ezra sat in his private grounds knowing that he owned outright everything, and everyone around him was a part of him, belonged to him — and he belonged to them; a symbiotic relationship that made Ezra smile. His hand reached out and, lightly touched the shocking purple petals of the flower. He sighed.
The sun was sinking, glinting a deep burned red in his dark eyes.
He rose slowly to his feet, pulling himself to his full height and massaging the constant ache in his right hip and lower back. Moving away from his view-point, he was soon walking back through landscaped gardens, along wide sandy paths, winding back and forth, and leading uphill towards his luxury villa complex and the last glimpses of the sparkling dance of the sun’s sinking rays. Ezra walked on, the limp in his left leg becoming more pronounced with each step he took, sweat rolling down over his temples, his long grey hair flowing behind him in the light breeze, his automatic Browning cumbersome, yet comforting, in its leather shoulder holster concealed under his robes.
As he walked, the Scorpion G8 link comm. pressed against his right thigh through the pocket sewn into the Bedouin style robes he was wearing. He hated the heavy device. It had been hacked of course, by his own programmers — just because they could. The small device had been dismantled and reassembled minus certain circuitry and software. Ezra kept the G8 close to him at all times; it was a constant reminder of distant, better days.
Ezra halted for a moment, turning, hands on hips, regaining his breath.
The landscape of Santorini spread out before him, the most awesome of panoramic views he had witnessed in his many years of travelling the miserable ball of rock called Earth.
Ezra loved the Greek Islands and in particular, Santorini; that is why he had chosen this place in which to set up and run a stateof-the-art listening and monitoring station for the Israeli Intelligence Agency — Mossad.