The Doomsday Prophecy

Chapter Thirteen

At that moment, one and a half thousand miles away on the tiny Greek island of Paxos, Zoë Bradbury was being roughly shoved and prodded down the beach, back towards the jetty where she’d tried to escape four days before.

It was the first daylight she’d seen since then. For four days she’d been tied down to the bed, only allowed free when she screamed to be allowed to use the toilet. For four days, they’d been questioning her around the clock.

The whole time, she was racking her brains to remember. Who was she? Sometimes there was just nothing there, nothing but a big empty blank. But then, every so often, it felt like something was stirring in her mind, as though the drifting fragments of memory wanted to gel together and fall into focus. Faces, voices, places. They hovered tantalisingly in her head. But just when they seemed so close and she tried to reach out to them, they would suddenly dissolve back into the mist.

She stared for hours at the tiny scar on her finger. A childhood injury, maybe. But how had she got it? She had no idea. A thousand other questions crowded and jostled in her mind. Where was she from? Who were her family and friends? What was her life like?

And then there was the most horrifying question of all. What did these people want with her?

As her initial acute terror faded into a new kind of steady, chilling horror, she watched and listened to her captors. Two of the men never spoke to her and she saw little of them. It was the woman and the fair-haired guy she had the most contact with. The woman had a hard look about her, but there were times when it seemed to melt a little, and she spoke more kindly.

The fair-haired guy was a psychopath. Zoë hated him profoundly, and the only thing that had kept her going throughout those endless hours had been her fantasy of somehow getting free, getting that gun or the knife from him, and using it on him.

But however they tried to get the information out of her, whether the threats were implicit or whether they were obscenely violent and screamed in her face, none of it was working. She could see they were getting increasingly desperate.

Then a new thought had come into her mind. What if her memory did come back to her? What would they do to her, once they had whatever it was they wanted?

She had a good idea what the fair-haired man wanted to do, if the woman let him. Maybe her amnesia was the only thing keeping her alive.

And now they were taking her somewhere. But where? Had they finally given up on her? Her heart raced at the thought. Maybe they were letting her go, taking her home.

Or maybe the time had come when they’d decided it was pointless, and they were going to finish it. End her life. Here, now, today. Her hands began to shake.

The fair-haired guy’s pistol was pressing hard against her spine as he shoved her across the beach. ‘Move it,’ he muttered. She tried to walk faster, but the soft sand was heavy going in her bare feet, and her legs felt like jelly. She stumbled. A rough hand grabbed her arm and jerked her up to her feet. The gun stabbed painfully into her.

She risked a glance over her shoulder. The man was glowering at her. Behind him, the woman was following with a pensive look on her face, checking her watch and gazing up at the sky. The other two men tagged along quietly with blank expressions. One of them was holding a gun loosely against his side.

Zoë trembled violently. They were going to kill her. She knew it.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ the low voice said behind her. ‘You want to run.’ He chuckled. ‘So run. I want you to run, so I can shoot you down.’

‘Keep your mouth shut,’ the woman snapped at him.

They reached the edge of the sand. Zoë was shoved towards the wooden jetty. She stepped up onto it, feeling the hard salt-encrusted planks against the bare soles of her feet. They followed. Were they going to drown her?

Then she heard it. The distant buzz of an aircraft approaching. She shielded her eyes and looked up to see a white dot against the sky. She kept watching it as she walked slowly along the jetty.

The white dot grew bigger until she could make out its shape. It was a small seaplane.

They reached the end of the jetty. The clattery rumble of the seaplane’s twin engines filled her ears as it sank lower and lower in the air. Its underside skimmed the waves, bounced and then touched down, sending up a fan of spray. It settled in the water and came round in a wide arc, leaving a churning white wake. It drew up level with the jetty and sat bobbing in the water. The spinning props settled down to an idle. The sound of the engines was deafening and Zoë cupped her hands over her ears. The gun was still pressed hard to her back.

A hatch opened in the slim fuselage, and a man peered out. He stared coldly at her, then nodded to the others. He and another man moored the plane up to the jetty and slid out an extending gangway, like a narrow bridge over the water. Zoë felt herself being pushed towards it. She staggered across the wobbling gangway into the plane. It was hot and cramped inside. A strange man thrust her down into a seat.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she gasped in terror.

The fair-haired guy appeared in the hatch, and for a moment she froze at the thought that he was coming with her. Then the woman put a hand on his shoulder and shook her head at him. He seemed to protest, then relented. He stepped aside and it was the two other men, the quiet ones, who climbed into the plane and sat down beside Zoë. They ignored her completely. Then the hatch was shut, and she felt the vibrations mount as the twin aircraft engines revved up for takeoff.

Hudson and Kaplan stood and watched the plane skim across the waves. It climbed into the blue sky and became a fading white dot. Then it was gone.

‘Out of our hands,’ Kaplan said.

Hudson cast a sullen look at her. He’d been counting on getting on the plane and being there when they went to work on the girl. After days and days on this rock, now he’d been cheated. ‘Then we can get out of here,’ he muttered.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘We have other work to do.’

Chapter Fourteen

Oxford The tenth day

It had been a blur of time for Ben as he sat endlessly hunched over the desk in his flat, deep in study, completely immersed in textbooks and dictionaries and piles of notes, stopping only to eat and sleep. No phone calls, no visitors. It was a time of total focus, and his mind thrived on the concentration. It helped him forget.

By afternoon on the third day of it, his eyes were burning. The spread-out papers on his desk were turning into a mountain. The coffee at his elbow had gone cold hours ago, neglected while he’d been trying to decipher page after page of knotty Hebrew. It was driving him crazy, but as the lessons of twenty years ago slowly filtered back into his brain, things were coming into focus for him.

For the first time in days, his phone rang. He felt its pulsing buzz in his pocket, dug it out and answered. It felt strange to hear his own voice again.

It was Charlie. He sounded far away, anxious and agitated.

‘Ben, I need your help.’

Ben leaned his weight back in the reclining swivel chair and rubbed his eyes, light-headed from concentration. He forced himself back into the present. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m still here on Corfu,’ Charlie said quickly. ‘Things are turning out more complicated than you said they would. I’m running into problems.’

‘What do you need from me?’

Charlie said something Ben didn’t catch.

‘You’re breaking up.’

‘I said, I need you to come out here as soon as possible.’

‘I can’t do that. Can’t you just tell me what’s going on?’

‘I know it sounds odd, but I have to explain it to you face to face. I can’t talk about this on the phone. There’s a situation developing here.’

‘It’s a simple job, Charlie.’

‘That’s what you told me. But believe me, things didn’t turn out that way.’

Ben sighed and was quiet for a few seconds.

‘Ben, please. This is serious.’

‘How serious?’

‘Serious.’

Ben closed his eyes. Shit. ‘And you’re absolutely certain you can’t handle this on your own?’

‘I’m sorry. I need backup. You know this kind of stuff better than me.’

Ben sighed again. Shook his head. Punched out his left fist and looked at his watch. He did a quick calculation. He could catch the Oxford Tube into London and be at Heathrow in a few hours. Catch a flight to Athens and from there to Corfu. ‘OK, copy that. Give me an RV point and I’ll be with you by midday tomorrow.’

He was there by breakfast.

It was an island Ben had never been to before. He’d expected an arid landscape but from the air Corfu was strikingly green, a paradise of woods and wildflower meadows, mountains and blue ocean. In the distance he could make out rambling ruins and sleepy villages nestling in the pine forests as the plane circled and dropped down towards the airport at Kérkyra, Corfu Town.

But he didn’t have much time for the beauty of the place. He was tired, and fighting to contain his annoyance. He couldn’t understand why he had to be here, why Charlie couldn’t deal with this on his own. Had he misjudged him? The man had been a good soldier. Tough, determined, resourceful. But maybe he’d lost his edge. Ben had seen that happen before.

He stepped off the plane into the warmth of the sun. In the small airport he rented a locker and stuffed into it his passport, his return tickets and the thick hardcover philosophy book he’d brought to read on the plane. He wasn’t planning on staying long, and he wanted to travel light. The only items he kept with him were his wallet, his phone and his whisky flask.

He wondered about the Bible. He’d been carrying it around a lot lately, and had got used to having it to hand to dip into. It was compact and not too heavy. He decided to bring it along. He slung the lightweight duffel bag over his shoulder, secured the locker and put the key and his wallet into his jeans pocket.

Outside the airport, he hailed a taxi. He leaned back in the noisy Fiat and took in the scenery. The driver talked incessantly in such rapid broken English that Ben couldn’t understand a word. He ignored him, and pretty soon the guy shut up. It was only two miles into Kérkyra, but traffic was already building, and by the time they entered the city the roads were badly snarled up. Ben paid the driver in crisp euros, hauled his duffel bag out of the back and decided to walk it.

He walked fast, impatient to hear what Charlie was going to tell him. The rendezvous was at the guesthouse where Charlie was staying. Ben had the address and used a cheap map he’d bought at the airport to find his way through the old town.

He walked up narrow streets where washing hung like banners on lines strung between the houses. The place was crammed with life and bustle – shopping arcades, tavernas, hot food bars and cafés. He walked through a thronging marketplace, rich with the salty tang of lobster and squid. Stand after stand of fresh olives glistened in the sunshine. In the hectic buzz of San Rocco Square people were sitting outside cafés, taking their morning coffee. Traffic rumbled through the old twisty streets.

He reached Charlie’s guesthouse just before nine, a faded stone building on the edge of a busy road right in the heart of the old town. It had a café terrace outside, tables lining the pavement and shaded by wide parasols and dozens of trees planted in big stone urns.

Charlie was sitting at one of the tables, a newspaper and a pot of coffee in front of him. He saw Ben across the street and waved. He looked relieved more than happy, and he wasn’t smiling.

Ben threaded his way across the brisk traffic and between the tables to where Charlie was sitting. The place was already busy with families eating breakfast, the season’s first tourists with their cameras and guidebooks, people grabbing a bite on their way to work. A small man in a light cotton jacket was sitting alone near the edge of the terrace, working on a notebook computer.

Ben hung his jacket over the back of the empty wicker chair at Charlie’s table, dumped the duffel bag on the ground and sat down. He leaned back in the chair, kicked his legs out in front of him and crossed his arms.

‘Thanks for coming,’ Charlie said.

‘This had better be good. I’m tired and I shouldn’t have to be here.’

‘You want coffee?’

‘Just talk,’ Ben said.

Charlie was frowning. He looked even more agitated than he’d sounded on the phone. He folded up his paper and laid it on the table beside him, took a sip of coffee and looked hard at Ben.

‘I have a bad feeling,’ he said. ‘About Zoë Bradbury.’

Chapter Fifteen

‘I came here as a messenger and ended up like a detective,’ Charlie said. ‘You told me she wouldn’t be at the villa, but I checked anyway. No trace. The owners didn’t know anything about where she’d gone afterwards. She didn’t make her flight either. Then I went to see the friends of the family that she’d been staying with initially. Couple of ex-pats. A bit stuffy, middle- class prigs. I could see why she didn’t get on with them. They told me the same story they’d told her parents – that she’d argued with them, left, got booted out of the hotel, rented the villa. Nothing new. So I started scouring the island. I’ve been to every bar and café, showing her picture and asking if anyone has seen her, saying I was a friend of the family trying to get in touch about a pressing legal matter at home. I’ve spoken to everyone. Police, the ferries, the airport, taxi drivers, hotels, hospital. You name it. I gave out cards with my number on, in case anyone knew anything. Must have given out fifty or sixty of them. And nothing. She just isn’t here.’

‘So what makes you think something happened to her?’ Ben said. ‘Plenty of ways off an island without leaving a paper trail. She could have caught a ride on someone’s yacht. She could be sitting a mile offshore as we speak, lounging on deck sipping on a cool drink.’

Charlie listened. He shook his head.

‘There’s always a trace you can follow,’ Ben said. He let the irritation show in his voice. ‘You didn’t have to press the panic button so soon.’

‘There’s a lot more. When you hear it, you’ll understand why I called you.’ Charlie was talking fast, looking jumpy.

‘I’m listening.’

‘Then I got a call from this guy. Said his name was Nikos Karapiperis and that someone had told him I was looking for Zoë. He sounded concerned. Said he knew her and had something to tell me. But he didn’t want to say much on the phone. Preferred to meet up somewhere.’

‘So he’s married,’ Ben said. ‘Respectable local guy. His wife is away and he’s been dallying with our girl.’

‘You got it. About forty-five years old, businessman. Something big at the golf club. Pillar of the community. Posh house here in Corfu town, and also this little hilltop hideaway out in the countryside, a good place to chill out and bring girls. He didn’t want to talk to me at his main residence, because his wife and kids had just got back from holiday. He invited me up to his hideaway. I went there to meet him. He seemed really nervous. Told me a lot of things.’

They were distracted by a child running by the terrace tables. He was seven or eight, a typical little Greek boy, black hair, dark eyes, deeply tanned. He wore a striped T-shirt and red shorts. He was playing with a football, bouncing it skilfully like a basketball player with a rhythmic slap of rubber against pavement. He ran round the edge of the tables, chortling to himself, bouncing the ball as he went. A couple of women at a nearby table smiled as he ran by them.

As Charlie reached for the coffeepot to top himself up, Ben twisted in his seat, admiring the kid’s skill with the ball. The kid was too intent on keeping the rhythm going to notice anyone watching him. But then he missed a bounce and the ball went sideways and hit the leg of the table where the small man with the computer was sitting. The man swore at the boy in some language that Ben didn’t recognise over the traffic noise. His face was lean and angular, and his eyes blazed for a second. The kid picked up his ball and backed off.

‘I wish that damn brat would go and play somewhere else,’ Charlie said.

Ben turned back to face him. ‘Just tell me what Nikos Karapiperis told you.’

Charlie continued. ‘They’d been seeing each other, discreetly, for a while. It started as a one-night stand. Apparently she had quite a few of those. Then it got more serious, and they saw each other again and again. He was pretty frank with me. He’d had flings with girls before, but this was different. He was beginning to really care for her. Liked buying her things, he said. But then, suddenly, she didn’t need his money any more. She had plenty of her own.’

‘Did you find out where she was getting it?’

Charlie nodded. ‘It came from the States. Someone sent her an international money order for twenty thousand dollars. She wouldn’t tell Nikos who sent it, but she did tell him that there’d be more of it coming her way very soon.’

‘More?’

‘A lot more. The kind of money that would free her up for the rest of her life, she said. Apparently she was talking about coming back and buying a big house here, settling. She said she’d never have to work again. So if it’s true, we must be talking millions.’ Charlie paused. ‘But here’s the really strange bit.’

Ben blinked. ‘What?’

‘She never told him who sent the money, but she said it was all because of some prophecy.’

‘What prophecy?’

‘That was all Nikos knew. She was vague about it. The prophecy had something to do with the money. I have no idea what that means. Someone predicted that she’d win the lottery?’

‘When was the last time he saw her?’ Ben asked.

‘At the party she threw on her last night here, the night before she was due to catch the flight back to England. He didn’t really want to be seen at her parties, but he drove down there and hung around for a while, trying to keep a low profile as best he could. He was there until around eleven-thirty. They had an arrangement that afterwards, she’d ride her scooter up to his hideaway. They were going to spend a last night there. He was supposed to wait for her at his place.’ Charlie reached back across for the coffeepot and refilled his cup.

‘But she never got there,’ Ben said.

Charlie shook his head. ‘That’s the moment where we lose track of her. Sometime between Nikos leaving the party, around eleven-thirty, and the time she should have turned up at his place, she disappeared.’

‘Did you say she was using a scooter?’

‘One of those big fancy super-scoots. It was a rental. She never returned it. It’s disappeared too.’

‘So maybe we’re looking at a road accident. A little drunk, after the party. She could be lying in a ditch somewhere.’

‘Maybe,’ Charlie said. ‘But there’s more to it. Nikos said he thought something weird happened at the party. He knew she liked men, and there were a lot of much younger and fitter guys than him there. So he was keeping an eye on her. Jealous type.’

‘Go on,’ Ben said.

‘Apparently there was this guy hanging around her. Nikos described him as young, early thirties or thereabouts, good-looking, fair hair. He came in with a woman, but soon afterwards he started flirting a lot with Zoë. Said his name was Rick. Nikos thought he sounded American.’

‘What about the woman?’

‘Could have been Greek, according to Nikos. But he didn’t hear her talk at all, and he didn’t take a lot of notice of her. He was more worried about this Rick character, because it looked like Zoë was responding to him. Then Nikos said Rick went to the bar and fixed her a drink. He couldn’t be sure, but he said there was something furtive about the way he did it. He was standing with his back to the room. Nikos thought maybe he was slipping something into the glass.’

Shit, Ben thought. He’d been here before. At best it was a guy loading the dice by slipping a woman an aphrodisiac. A little worse than that, it could be a date- rape setup. The worst possibility was abduction. And that was the option that seemed to fit the picture. ‘This isn’t good,’ he said.

‘Nikos wasn’t totally sure of what he saw,’ Charlie said. ‘But he went over and butted in right away. Asked her for a dance. While he was at it, he spilled the drink, kind of accidentally-on-purpose, just in case there was something in it. They danced, and he warned her about Rick. Told her to stop the party and come away as soon as she could. She argued with him, and he was scared she was going to cause a scene and draw attention to him. He warned her again to stay away from this Rick guy and not to touch any drinks anyone gave her. Then he left, went back up to his hideaway and waited for her.’

‘How do we know she even intended to go to his place? She could have been stringing him along.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Charlie said. ‘Because then she wouldn’t have let him put her baggage in his Mercedes earlier that day, and drive it up to the hideaway. A rucksack with all her clothes and things. And a travel pouch with her passport, money, plane tickets, the works. She was serious about going up there to meet him.’

‘So it looks as though perhaps this Rick person didn’t give up so easily,’ Ben said. ‘What happened next?’

‘When Zoë didn’t turn up that night, Nikos tried to call the landline at the villa. No reply. Then he went down there. It was all closed up, empty. The scooter was gone. She’d vanished. That’s when he began to worry.’

‘And he couldn’t call the police about the disappearance,’ Ben said. ‘He’d have to let out about their relationship, and he’d have been scared that if she just turned up after a couple of days, he would have compromised himself for nothing.’

Charlie nodded. ‘He was in a fix. When he heard that I was asking questions and I told him I was employed by her family, he was very happy to give me her stuff.’

‘Where is it now?’

Charlie pointed upwards to a window. ‘The rucksack is in my room upstairs. The pouch is right here.’ He reached over and grabbed a plastic shopping bag off the seat next to him.