‘You’re in no fit state to walk,’ she uttered pitifully.
‘I’ll manage,’ I told her bravely although the effort was more than I dared to consider.
I started off hobbling painfully across a field. It took me a good ten minutes to get to the rise but my hunch was well rewarded. The highway was there as I predicted. There was a signpost close at hand with two arrows on the crossbar facing opposite directions. Under one was the name Agios Nikolaus, beneath the other was Rethymon. However, facing me from the centre of the post were the words Iraklion and Knossos. I froze in confusion. This wasn’t Israel! We were on the island of Crete! What was Primar playing at? Why the charade and all the nonsense about travelling to Israel when he knew that the aircraft would bring us here? Previously it had mattered little where he wanted us to go. We were at his mercy. But now the switch had been made there were questions which needed to be answered.
When I returned to Penny, I informed her of our location. She became very tearful, complaining that we were pawns being pushed around a giant chessboard. The impact of how close we had been to death clearly affected her. Then, suddenly, I had another hunch. The solution had to be in the pilot’s cabin. I didn’t like the idea of staring at Chedda’s remains but I needed to search that part of the plane. Avoiding his mutilated body as best I could, holding a handkerchief over my face, I rifled through the wreckage trying to find some evidence which would make sense of our landing in Crete. However there was nothing to be found. Whatever might have been there had been blown into the sky in the explosion. If so, it was lost for ever. I started to search the rest of the aircraft when Penny called out with an element of alarm in her voice.
‘Someone’s coming!’ she shouted. ‘I can see them at eleven hundred hours!’
I stopped searching and hobbled outside to see a man, with a pair of binoculars hanging idly at his chest, wearing a sports jacket and grey flannel trousers moving swiftly in our direction. I noticed particularly that he kept his hands in his pockets. When he reached us, he called out in an amiable manner with an American accent.
‘Are you two okay? You’re darned lucky to be alive. My God! Look at the state of this plane!’
I took him to be an American tourist on holiday having a stroll round before lunch. ‘Where are we?’ I asked unnecessarily.
‘You’re in Crete. Very close to Heraklion the capital,’ he replied honestly. ‘Where were you headed for before the crash?’
‘Israel,’ I replied, wishing I had kept my mouth shut.
He burst into laughter. ‘Israel… you must be kidding! That’s the best I’ve heard today. You’re some way off course, you know. Didn’t you use the compass?’
‘Can you help us get to Heraklion?’ I asked. ‘Do you have a car?’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ he returned slowly in his drawl, his voice changing to a more menacing tone. ‘I’ll send you on your way all right but it won’t be where you’re thinking. That’s the reason I’m here.’ He removed the right hand from the pocket of his jacket to show that he was holding a revolver. He pointed the gun directly at my head, almost at point-blank range. I froze in my tracks unable to make a move to defend myself.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded as fear welled up inside me. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
‘Is this guy for real?’ he laughed glancing towards Penny. ‘I’m holding a gun at his head and he asks me what I’m doing.’ He turned to look at me again with an ominous expression on his face. ‘I’m finishing off the job, you dummy!’
Penny shifted her feet awkwardly as though a stone had crept into her shoe. Before I knew what was happening, she bent down and removed the shoe which she raised and hurled at the man’s neck with considerable force. The to-cap struck him in the neck, just below the Adam’s Apple, and he dropped the gun to clutch at his wound. I moved to reach for the weapon, hampered by the fact that my limbs were stiff and sore but he managed to kick it away and then began to grapple with me. I was no match for him in my injured condition and I knew that it would take little time for him to overpower me. As soon as he had gained the advantage, he took hold of my throat and began to squeeze tightly with both hands. I was unable to break his grip and it soon became impossible to breathe. A mist began to cloud my eyes and although I could hear Penny’s voice calling to me from the distance, it became fainter as the life drained from my body.
‘Roll clear!’ she shouted vehemently. ‘Roll clear!’
There was nothing I could do to comply with the order for the man’s strength was too much for me. As the life ebbed from me, the mist returned to red before my eyes. I heard the sound of a shot ring out which seemed to echo right across the valley. The man’s hands loosened on my throat and he collapsed on top of me. I pushed him off and rolled over as Penny allowed the pistol to fall from her hand.
‘Oh Lord!’ she screamed hysterically. ‘I’ve killed him! I’ve killed him!’
The man lay at full stretch on the ground with a bullet hole drilled neatly at his temple. It was pointless to test his pulse for there was no doubt that he was dead. I clambered into the aircraft and emerged with a bottle of brandy that was intact and a blanket. After covering the body with it, I opened the bottle and took a very long swig.
‘I had to shoot him,’ bleated Penny bursting into tears. ‘He would have strangled you.’
‘You don’t have to convince me of that,’ I responded, feeling my neck tenderly. ‘I must say you were very sharp. That action with your shoe was pretty quick thinking. It’s lucky you happened to hit him in the throat. I dread to think what might have happened had you missed.’
She shrugged her shoulders aimlessly. ‘I had to do something. It was ll I could think of at the time.’
I nodded and moved to the body. ‘I’d better check his identity,’ I told her. ‘Perhaps it’s best if you look away.’ She turned her face in the opposite direction as I lifted the blanket and searched the man’s clothing. I removed a wallet and some papers from the inside pocket of his jacket and then covered him up again. ‘His name’s Tomas Duran,’ I related after glancing at his passport. ‘It’s all right… you can look now. I’ve covered him up.’
She came towards me and stared at the passport. ‘Who are these people?’ she asked quietly. ‘Who are they?’
‘I wish I had the faintest idea. Perhaps we ought to fly back to London and forget the whole thing. Primar… Chedda… all of it. Primar probably thinks we’re dead.’
‘What about the letter Primar said he would send to our employer about the shortfall in fund… allegedly stolen by us?’
‘I reckon it was all a bluff.
‘How can we forget all this? Two men are dead. Primar might be missing. You’ve only Chedda’s word the he didn’t turn up. He may be in similar trouble elsewhere.’
‘Look Penny,’ I told her weakly. ‘I’m no hero. Who cares about the 21st Century Crusaders. It’s none of our business. I don’t even know what they stand for.’
She pretended not to hear me and took the papers I had taken from the dead man to read. ‘Nothing of much importance,’ she muttered. ‘A few odd notes and a memo from a Commander Spring.’
‘Commander?’ I echoed. ‘Here… let me see that!’ I took the memo from her and read it. The sheet of paper bore only two lines. ‘The Acropolis Restaurant, Heraklion,’ I read out slowly. ‘Urgent… repeat Urgent! Commander Spring!’ I stared at Penny blankly. ‘What do you make of it?’
‘I think we should go for it now that we’re here. Otherwise what was the point of it all?’
I pulled a wry face at the thought of pursuing the matter. uncertain whether or not I should allow Penny to influence me. It wasn’t my fault or my problem that two men had died. Less than twenty-four hours earlier I had been sitting in my office in the City of London with no serious concerns. Now there was conclusive proof of my adultery with my secretary, my wife had left me and two men were dead. In addition, I was shaken and physically injured, suffering a considerable amount of pain, lost in a foreign country with no money, and very displeased with my lot in life. But that wasn’t all. My secretary was now pressing me to become involved in someone else’s war. I was not amused!