Limassol, Cyprus
Present day
In the meantime, in Limassol, Andros was speaking on the phone with his cousin, Andrew Le Charos. Andros could hear the urgency in Andrew’s voice coming down the line all the way from Sydney.
‘Andros, you have to open the package I sent you and give what’s inside to Elli. There is not much time. Forget that I said in my letter that it should be opened if you haven’t heard from me for a week or if I’m dead. Before you unwrap it, throw it…’
The line went dead.
Andros shouted at the mouthpiece, but he knew as he did so that there would be no reply forthcoming from the other end. He knew something terrible had happened to Andrew. What he didn’t know was that the conversation had been overheard.
At the other end of the world in Sydney, Andrew Le Charos was working late in his office in the Fanari Tower. A group of four Ruinands disabled his security guards and the security systems at the building and within five minutes they were standing outside Andrew’s office.
Two of them stayed there while the rest went to the next floor up, Andrew’s penthouse suite. They entered the penthouse. There was no danger of tripping any security systems as they had inside knowledge of the entire security system of the building and the penthouse’s security system, which was handled separately off-site, had already been rendered inoperable. They only had a brief sojourn dealing with Andrew in his office after having surprised him.
Within minutes they were exiting the Fanari Tower with Andrew in their care. Their ultimate destination was Le Mirabel, the underwater city and nerve-centre of the Ruinands.
That was where Andrew would be brainwashed to serve the Ruinand cause and punch further holes into the Order of Vlachernae and Elli’s organisation. The Madame Marcquesa had changed her mind about Andrew and realised that he could have his uses, but only under her full control.
Andros got up and almost ran to his study. He opened the safe and took out the package that Andrew Le Charos had sent to him. He weighed it in his hand. It felt unusually heavy. He thought back to his conversation with Andrew. He remembered the last thing Andrew told him. He had said to “open it and throw it”. That was a strange thing to say.
But there was no other way of interpreting Andrew’s words. He wondered whether Andrew meant it literally. There was only one way to find out. Andros toyed with the package for a while and tossed it from hand to hand. There was no harm in following Andrew’s instructions, as he could see no alternative. Doubting the sanity of what he was about to do, he threw the package in the air.
On its descent to the floor the package narrowly missed his palm. Just before the package touched the floor it opened up like a flower with multi-coloured sparks flying everywhere and bouncing off the walls.
Andros shielded his eyes and tried to protect his body from the onslaught. But when the firework display stopped and he checked his body for signs of injury, he found nothing and was perplexed. A few seconds passed and suddenly out of the centre of the flower rose an exquisite icon unlike any he had ever seen. He was hypnotised by its beauty.
He wanted to touch it, but he hesitated for fear of triggering some unintended consequence, worse even than the spectacle he had just witnessed. He feared an explosion which considering what he had just witnessed would not be such a crazy notion.
There was a noise in the entrance hall and Andros called out the names of his wife and his daughter, but there was no reply. He remembered Katerina’s warning and at that moment he knew there was an intruder in the house.
He was tempted to freeze on the spot from fear and shock, but he steeled himself and thought quickly, looking for a weapon. He was too far away from his desk and could not reach the licensed revolver he had inside one of the draws.
He saw the letter opener. He grabbed it and held it to his side, partly hidden by his shirt and his slightly bulging stomach. He then remembered the icon on the floor next to him. He quickly picked it up and hid it behind some books on the bookshelf closest to him, forgetting his earlier reluctance to touch it.
Just as he was quickly bringing his hand back to his side, a smiling face appeared at the door of the study, a face he knew very well. He breathed a sigh of relief, he let his shoulders visibly relax and his suspicions instantly fled from his mind.
He made a few tentative steps ready to hug that person, when he stopped as the smile vanished and his shock at the sudden change was amplified when he stood nailed to the spot looking at the barrel of a gun that appeared out of nowhere.
The intruder had just caught Andros’ movement at the bookcase when he entered the room. Unobstructed he went to the bookcase and he searched with his hand. He found what he sought and his fingers closed around it in a gentle gesture redolent with self-satisfaction.
A smile of mirth coloured his face. Mission accomplished. This person and his grief-stricken brood would not bother us again. From now on he would be my master’s houseguest, a silent embalmed decorative presence, a worthy addition to the glory that was Le Mirabel.
Andros knew his fate was sealed. He was thankful that his wife was not in the house with him. But then his last thought was that that was not a guarantee that she would be safe.
At the moment that the bullet travelled and just before it lodged in Andros’ chest on a straight course to his heart, determined to pierce it and shred it to pieces, and before Andros collapsed to the floor unconscious, Andros saw his wife standing behind the traitor, Elli’s traitor, and was, discreetly but desperately, signalling to her, hoping not to alert the traitor.
Her shock at the unfolding turn of events did not give her enough time to pick up on the danger signals, recover from her initial shock and flee.