Dillon turned and smiled up at Ezra who was standing with his hands on his hips, breathing in the night air and the rich scents deeply — a love affair with the ambiance. His eyes were unreadable, his appearance neat and his greying hair well groomed, neatly combed and oiled. Dillon caught the distant scent of coconut oil.
“Much better, thank you.”
“Would you care to walk with me through the grove?” “It’s a fine night. A walk would be good.”
The two men stepped down from the veranda of the whitewashed villa and the sandy soil felt soft, comfortably cool under Dillon’s bare feet. They moved between the olive trees, inhaling the earthy moist scent, moving through the gloom a little uncomfortable at first: untrusting. As they walked, Dillon offered Ezra a cigarette. They both lit up and stopped within a small clearing on the seaward side of the grove. Dillon lifted his face in an attempt to attract the slightest of breezes to evaporate the sweat covering his body.
“This is a very warm place to live, Ezra,” said Dillon eventually. “Yes it is,” rumbled Ezra uneasily. The cigarette seemed tiny in his huge hands. “But we don’t always have a choice in these matters. The Partners are hard task masters. They command, and we mere mortals obey.” He smiled a smile without humour, bloodless in the moonlight.
There was a pause. The breeze whispered between the trees. “I think I’m following in your footsteps,” said Dillon. “So it would appear. I have been reading up on your recent — ah, shall we say adventuresin both Cornwall and Scotland. Tatiana has, of course, filled me in on some of the details. It would seem that wherever you are — death follows closely.”
“Well, I admit someone appears to want me dead, if that’s what you mean.”
“Hmmm. That would be the most logical assumption; a thought that did leap to mind is that you were set-up. Used. A tracker with the sole function of leading somebody to me. After all, Scorpion has had units all over the planet systematically terminated — wiped out by teams of highly trained Assassins. And yet they only sent one after you. Strange, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“And further moves have been played across the global chessboard.”
“Such as?”
“Computer hacks to all of the international banking institutions
— billions of dollars stolen. The authorities all confirm the same thing. They haven’t got any idea of how a hack of this magnitude was carried out; because there was no data evidence left behind. And the other thing is that no-one has claimed responsibility, which is odd, because geeks like their fellow geeks to know how smart they are.”
There was a long, long silence. Ezra enjoyed his cigarette. Six hours ago the Thames House grid was hacked into and a total lockdown initiated. Remotely. The lock-down lasted for forty-five seconds; afterwards the geeks could not find any form of data footprint of the hack. In all of these attacks, all that is left — is a lot of red-faced and very confused people.”
“Bloody hell, Ezra.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Ezra said softly.
“Do you think these hacks are linked to Scorpion being wiped out and the attempts to terminate me…”
“Dillon, I know for a fact that no official agency wants you dead. We have much bigger problems… And the Assassins, the one that came for you, I fear these killersare not in the employ of any legitimate organisation. Whoever it is, has resurrected an ancient order of very dangerous killers.”
“Who sent them?” Asked Dillon, voice hard, humour vaporised. “I don’t know,” Ezra sighed, and scratched his chin. He ground his cigarette stub into the earth. “Although, I have my suspicions.” “I have a few suspicions of my own,” snapped Dillon. “Now I know that you still want me dead Ezra — and I can’t say I really blame you after what we went through: I thought I’d misjudged you when we arrived here.”
“You had,” said Ezra softly.
Ezra faced Dillon, who looked up at the big man. Ezra rubbed at the scar on his right ass cheek self-consciously and Dillon noted the movement, remembered in vivid Technicolor that it had been his own bullet that had wounded Ezra’s flesh, and given him a permanent limp.
“You are Dillon, Ferran & Cardini’s most resourceful man — or used to be. No longer do you seek adrenalin rush assignments; you have become withdrawn, hidden away in the midst of the Scottish Highlands with nothing more than your own company and a bank of computer screens as your window to the outside world. But let’s not forget the knowledge you’ve amassed over the years, and the awesome ability in tracking people down — and in killing them… Now, I had thought of killing you,” said Ezra. “Right here on Santorini… But I feel, Dillon, that would be wasting a valuable resource, and I have a far greater use for you.”
Dillon lit another cigarette. And offered the opened packet, Ezra took one, and lit it with a slim gold lighter.
“And what might that be?”
“The anger I have harboured against you has gone. You love Tatiana. And because of your love for her, I forgive you for shooting me in the ass; we need to pull together during this time of great need… Tatiana needs you. Dillon, somebody is trying to de-stabilise governments and economies all over the planet — why? Scorpion was the defence and has been all but destroyed. Scorpion was the firewall against this sort of thing ever happening; Scorpion was certain death to those individuals and organisations who oppose all that stands for good in this world.”
Dillon frowned. Ezra was one of the strongest, most honest men he had ever met. There was no streak of weakness — Ezra had shot sleeping men, wounded men, dying men. Dillon would not have been a problem… and this reinforced the notion that the world was full of shit.
“What the hell is going on here?” Dillon asked softly, turning his eyes away from Ezra, gazing through the olive grove towards the ocean, moonlight glinted off of the water in the distance. “Who is using highly skilled Assassins, to systematically take out Scorpion units and are now tracking me? Who do you suspect is behind all of this?”
Ezra shrugged, but looked away. Dillon caught a hint of something; something unsaid, something he almost grasped but missed in the darkness. Ezra was hiding something. Hiding something very bad.
“Only a handful of Scorpion operatives have survived,” he rumbled, rubbing wearily at his eyes. “But more — the destruction of the Scorpion project took only forty-eight hours from start to finish.” Ezra turned to look into Dillon’s eyes. Dillon’s face showed unconcealed shock.
“Forty-eight hours?” He whispered.
“Yes, forty-eight hours — two days. Our Assassin friends are looking for something — something retrieved by Tatiana many months ago, and passed on to me for safe keeping. A possibility arises, Dillon — the possibility that you were chasedhere. This facility is highly classified… Not even Tatiana knew, but you sure as fuck should not have done either. This is way outside the normal boundaries of Ferran & Cardini.
Dillon nodded, smoke pluming from his nostrils. He scratched the stubble on his chin with the tips of his fingers.
“You really think it’s that black and white? I lead the bad guys here, because they know you have, whatever it is they want back, and they think they know that I know where you are? Are you off your trolley?”
“Why did you come here, Dillon?”
“Answers, Ezra. Answers.”
“And because you had no other options and nowhere else to take Tatiana. Since my brother killed himself, where else would you bring her, except to her uncle Ezra, despite your initial misgivings and our differences?”