Limassol, Cyprus
Present day
Elli received the call she had been dreading. A scrambled signal did not allow her to trace the call. A disguised voice told her that there was a message for her. They had her son, Aristo. They wanted something in exchange to be revealed later.
She would be picked up from the Hotel Grande Beyon in Athens at five o’clock in the afternoon the next day. She should come alone. Then the caller hung up. It was just before midnight.
Elli called her pilot and arranged for one of her private jets to be on the tarmac at Larnaca International Airport with the engines revving ready for take off. Then she arranged for the Hotel Grande Beyon to have her usual suite ready; she would be arriving there in the early hours of the morning.
She was told she was lucky that it was not occupied. She didn’t know whether that was the case or whether they were planning to move the occupier to another suite, because she was such a good customer, but it didn’t matter as long as she got what she wanted. Then she called her driver and apologised for waking him up.
She went upstairs to her bedroom and took ten minutes to pack a small overnight bag. She let Mrs Manto know that something came up and she would be going to Athens on urgent business that very night. Mrs Manto was surprised, as Elli had only done that a few times in the past year, but guessed that it was part of a global tycoon’s hectic life.
Elli was standing outside her front door within twenty minutes of the call. The car pulled up. She jumped in without waiting for her driver to open the door for her and they were off. Barring an incident, they should be at the waiting plane at Larnaca International Airport within forty-five minutes at the latest.
By three o’clock in the morning of the following day Elli’s plane had landed at Athens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport and parked in a quiet corner reserved for private planes. A car drove up to the jet. Within forty minutes Elli was in her suite at the Hotel Grande Beyon wondering what to do for the next thirteen hours or so.
At ten to five in the afternoon she was standing in the lobby just inside the front entrance. She knew she should have sat down so as to draw the minimum attention to herself, but her impatience could not let her.
At exactly five o’clock a man gently touched her arm. She turned and was looking into eyes of the most unusual green she had ever seen owned by a man no older than thirty and with a masculine and angular but at the same time angelic face.
She was taken aback. She smirked to herself. She was looking at the civilised, mesmerising and admirably acceptable public face of one of the most ruthless organisations in the history of the world.
‘Mrs Symitzis, would you follow me please?’
She followed him to the waiting car outside. The man opened the door for her and joined her in the back seat. The driver had the car running and drove off immediately the back door closed with a gentle thud. They rushed through the city with police escort and sirens to get through the car-clogged streets quickly.
Once they were out of the city centre and into the Northern suburbs the police escort fell away. They left the city behind them and were driving on the Ethniki Odos or National Route, the motorway connecting Athens with Thessaloniki in the North of the country in the province of Macedonia.
It was soon after they got onto the motorway that the man sitting next to Elli leaned towards her holding a scarf in his hand.
‘We cannot allow you to see where we are going so I will need to put a blindfold on you. Please don’t show any resistance.’
Elli was no fool. She knew there was no other way. If she refused, they would turn back or just drop her there and then in the middle of nowhere. So she nodded.
Of course she believed she knew where they were going. It must have been the Ruinands’ underwater city, Le Mirabel, in Marathon Bay, North of Athens. Vasilis had told her about that. She knew what to expect.