Chapter 63

 

Nick scrambled to get Tony and the kids packed up and in the car. He decided that it was better to rescue Dmitry himself rather than let Elaine call on “someone else” for help, because there was only one “someone else” he could think of.

He drove like a maniac up to Lyon, arriving just in time to drop Tony and the children off at Luna’s house and catch a commercial flight through Italy that put him on Santorini Island in the late afternoon.

As he carried his bag down the steps to the tarmac with the other arriving passengers, he looked past the tiny Santorini Airport terminal and at the horizon to the west—the sky was a menacing purplish-gray. He had noticed the thunderheads from the air—it was obvious that a serious storm was headed this way.

He had checked the weather forecast before leaving Lyon, and it had called for heavy rain starting tonight.

This was going to make his backup plan harder to implement, if it came to that, but he couldn’t wait for good weather—Luna had said that Spyro Leandrou was on the verge of turning Dmitry over to the Russian Embassy. Dmitry was loyal, had become a good friend to Elaine, and had been groomed into a valuable asset. Quirky and difficult to manage, sure, but most valuable assets were.

Nick hoped he would be lucky and could get Dmitry out of jail by bluffing and using pressure tactics. Physical extraction would be a last resort.

Nick was traveling under a fake Russian passport that Brian, his handler, had gotten him a few years ago for one of his extraction jobs. As soon as he cleared passport control and customs, he went out into the lobby and found a rental car company that would take a cash deposit—he had no credit card that matched the name on the passport—and picked up an economy car.

He had done as much research as he could on the island in the short time he’d had available. He drove the rental car straight to Amoudi Bay, a seaside fishing village where tourists could supposedly rent small boats. By the time he arrived and parked near the crumbling concrete boat dock, the sky looked even more menacing and the first drops of rain began to pepper the windshield.

Two bearded Greek men were scrambling to take down a large umbrella they had apparently been sitting under beside the pier. They didn’t seem to notice him standing there.

“Excuse me,” Nick said loudly.

They both glanced at him but kept wresting with the umbrella, cursing, he guessed, in Greek—apparently the mechanism that lowered it was stuck.

“I want to rent a large fishing boat,” Nick said, speaking with a European accent, or what he hoped sounded like one. “Maybe something like that?” He pointed to a cabin cruiser that looked fairly new, the best-looking craft there.

The bigger of the two men frowned at him, pointing at the dark clouds behind Nea Kameni. “You want go fishing in that storm?”

“No, no, I want to rent the boat for the whole week, get the paperwork out of the way, pick up the key so I can use it whenever I want.”

The other man laughed. “Paperwork? You think this is Miami?”

They both got such a laugh out of the joke they stopped cursing the umbrella. “We make picture of your passport on phone—no ‘paperwork.’ For that boat, you give four hundred euro deposit for damage.”

 

* * *

A few minutes later, Nick was sitting inside a little tavern adjacent to the dock, having a grappa with the two men who rented him the boat, while the rain and wind battered the building. The tavern was crowded with locals, mostly burly fisherman. Nick wanted them all to get a good look at his face and for the two men to have a solid impression of him. For this particular part of the operation, he was Sven Hjarlmarsson from Sweden. He was not particularly good at foreign accents, so he simply said, “Ya, ya,” a lot and gave the two men an old Swedish passport to photograph. It was expired and he banked on the two men not noticing that, which they didn’t.

As soon as the intensity of the rain let up to the point he wouldn’t get completely soaked dashing out to the rental car, he said goodbye and headed towards Fira, where the police station was located. The unexpected rain had thrown a considerable wrench in his plan, which he felt was thrown together too quickly. Not having the usual intel and weaponry for an extraction operation, which he was afraid this might turn into, made him feel naked and insecure.

He had scouted the island as best he could using public online maps. His original plan had been to pilot the rented boat over to a more remote area of the island and tie it up on the shore. Once he got Dmitry out of jail, they would take the rental car to the boat and then pilot the boat to Milos, the nearest island with a decent airport—daily flights departed from Milos to destinations all over Europe. Piloting the boat at full speed, Nick thought he could make the trip in about two hours. He had made sure the boat’s fuel tanks would be topped up and was banking on nobody figuring out what he’d done until he and Dmitry were long gone.

With this wind and rain, however, it would be more difficult to pull this off. He would be seen boarding the rented boat with another man who would fit Dmitry’s description, and the police might assume that the two of them were headed to another island. But searching the open sea was difficult in itself, and with this rain and low cloud coverage, it would be nearly impossible. So the inclement weather had its advantages.

 

* * *

When Nick reached Fira, he parked the rental car around the corner from the police station. Sandwiched between a travel agency and a sunglasses shop on the sleepy, narrow street, the one-story government building blended in with all the others—it was cream colored, with the window frames the standard cornflower blue, like the island’s famous cave houses. It was set back a little from the street and had a small parking lot and courtyard. The only giveaways were the cluster of antennae atop the roof and a small, gray one-man guard house out front, which appeared to be unoccupied when Nick drove past.

It was now just after seven p.m. Nick was counting on the usual day cops and administrative folks being off duty, and that included the chief of police.

Nick sat in the parked rental car and double-checked his disguise in the rearview mirror. He had applied the fake facial hair on the way over, and he wanted to make sure it was still in place. It seemed that the humid air from the rain was making the adhesive less sticky than it should be.

This disguise consisted of a mustache and beard, along with a heavy-framed pair of photo-sensitive non-prescription glasses and a cheap suit and tie that looked at least ten years out of style

He frowned at his reflection—he thought he looked like a 1970’s disco dancer, minus the sideburns. He was no more good at disguising himself than he was at speaking with a fake foreign accent, but he had no choice. If Spyro Leandrou’s right-hand man, Costa, happened to be at the police station at this moment interrogating Dmitry, Nick would be recognized as Patricia Carter’s former employer—Costa had sat face-to-face with Nick in his own living room only a short time ago.

Fighting the wind and rain, Nick opened the car door and fumbled around with a large umbrella he’d bought, trying to keep his glued-on facial hair dry. After glancing up and down the side street to make sure no one was around, he grabbed the plastic-made Sig Sauer pistol from under the seat and slipped it into the waistband of his trousers behind his back. He had smuggled the weapon through airport security in the toilet kit designed to conceal it—the weapon was identical to the one Elaine used.

For this operation, though, he hoped he would not even have to draw the weapon, let alone use it.

Nick left the car unlocked for a fast getaway.

 

* * *

 

As Nick approached the front entrance of the station, he checked it out as much as he could, peering under the umbrella through the rain. Only three vehicles were parked in the small lot—one police cruiser, a compact car, and a couple of motorcycles. He noticed that there was a small table and three chairs set up off to one side of the front door, like you saw in front of virtually every type of establishment in Greece, with a few abandoned coffee cups and an ash tray overflowing with cigarette butts.

When he approached the front door, he half-expected it to at least be locked, with buzz-in required, but no, things were so laid back here on this island, the police didn’t even take that precaution. A good sign, he thought—maybe Luna was right and this little facility was no more secure than the jail in the fictitious little town of Mayberry, North Carolina.

Nick’s hopes faded when he stepped inside the lobby and moved towards the front desk. There was a square-jawed man of about forty sitting behind it, muscles bulging under the sleeves of his blue uniform shirt as he typed on a computer, hunt and peck style. He was no Greek version of Barney Fife, that was certain. His sidearm and well-worn holster were visible on his hip—Nick was sure the pistol was well oiled and was fully loaded and that the man knew how to use it.

“Kalispera,” Nick said, putting a friendly but I’m here on serious business expression on his face.

The man glanced up from the computer screen and gave a nod, then stood up and looked expectantly at Nick. “Kalispera.”

Nick pulled the fake Russian passport from his pocket and slid it across the desk. “I am Dmitry Durov’s attorney.” Nick rolled the ‘r’ on the word “attorney,” speaking in a Russian accent that was probably overdone. “I am told you hold him here.”

The cop looked surprised. He glanced down at the Russian passport, which had a clean-shaven picture of Nick that was about twelve years old. The passport, in fact, was expired, but he didn’t think the cop would notice that small detail.

The man slid the passport back, a little aggressively, Nick thought.

“So?”

“You hold my client here illegally. You must charge him with crime or release him at once.”

“The victim in the case is considering filing charges.”

“Victim? What victim?”

“Durov’s car rolled down a hill and endangered lives. He did not put on his parking brake.”

Nick glanced around the station condescendingly as if they had no idea what they were doing. “You put man in jail here because he forget parking brake?”

The cop narrowed his eyes. “His car almost killed child, son of important man who live here.”

“Almost? The child was not hit.”

“No, but we try to decide if this was accident or…” He searched for the English word. “With intention.”

“Ridiculous!” Nick said, raising his voice. “I knowing Dmitry Durov his whole life—I knowing his mother, his father, they good family. Dmitry come to Santorini to rest after operation in hospital. He very tired, he do simple mistake.” Nick slapped his palm down on the desk, hoping to make enough noise so that Dmitry would hear him. “I demand you releasing my client immediately! Make him pay fine, whatever, but you must release him!”

“Stay calm,” the cop warned, glancing at a door to the right.

Nick glanced over at it, too—there was a camera mounted above it. Nick was sure it led to a cell, or maybe several cells.

“If you do not releasing my client immediately,” Nick said, pulling his phone from his pocket, “I call Russian Embassy in Athens and you will be having big problems—I have friends there.” Nick motioned to the doors. “I want see Dmitry!”

“This is not possible.”

“You tell me it’s not possible for prisoner to talk to lawyer? This sounding like old Soviet Union! What kind of place this Santorini?” He looked around, again, as if bewildered, and then pulled out his phone. “I call Russian Embassy—no more game.”

Now the cop looked alarmed. “Just a moment, just a moment,” he said, gesturing for Nick to put the phone down. “I will make call.”

The officer pulled out a cell phone and walked over to the far side of the office and began speaking in a low voice.

Nick wondered who he was calling.