In the Athens office of UCSO, the shock of Maria Galanos’ death had begun to wear off, to be replaced by an atmosphere of oppressive gloom. The usual high spirits of the Greek girls were dimmed, and Mr Limonides had become even more withdrawn. Katherine Ball was due in from London the following day, and Mitchell Berger was hoping that her brisk professionalism would lighten the mood and return them to normality.
Claude Rameau had come back from ten days in Rwanda, and Berger had been trying to keep track of her – not an easy task since she clearly regarded the office as merely a convenient place to drop in to from time to time when it suited her. The more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Claude Rameau was the source of the leak about the UCSO shipments. An accomplice, possibly, but not the prime mover. For a start, she wasn’t in the country enough, let alone in the office, to know in detail what was going on – or to keep an eye on the ships’ manifests.
No, the obvious suspect was not someone in the office at all. Berger’s suspicions were now focused on the shipping agent, Mo Miandad. Acting on these suspicions, he had followed Miandad the previous week when the man left the UCSO offices in the late afternoon after one of his regular visits to Mr Limonides. When Mo got on to a bus, Berger hailed a passing cab and, to the obvious delight of the taxi driver, told him to follow the bus. They’d stopped and started, keeping closely behind the bus as it made its way for two miles or so across the city, until Berger saw Miandad alight. The taxi driver had been disappointed when Berger leaped out and paid him off. He’d asked if he should follow on slowly behind, ready in case he was needed again, but Berger told him to go away.
They had ended up in a part of Athens that Berger did not know – a suburban enclave of flats and small houses, which from the look of the pedestrians on the street seemed to be occupied largely by older people, with a good smattering of ethnic minorities. He followed Miandad from a distance, and spotted him turning into a terrace of stuccoed houses where he opened a front door with a key. This must be where he lives, thought Berger. That seemed to be confirmed when, minutes later, an Asian woman and a teenage girl, both wearing headscarves, came out of the same front door.
There was nothing suspicious going on here, it seemed, and Berger turned away to return to the office. It was as he was walking back to the bus stop that he noticed a name on one of the streets that rang a bell with him. He’d seen it somewhere before, but couldn’t recall where. It was only as he was sitting on the bus that he remembered – he’d seen the name in the police report on Maria’s murder. It was the street where she had lived.
Now, a week later, Mo Miandad had come into the office for a morning session with Limonides. Berger hovered in the corridor, keen to see if the Pakistani would go and talk to the newly returned Claude Rameau. He didn’t, but when the Frenchwoman left early for lunch, followed only a few minutes later by Miandad, Berger decided to follow the shipping agent again.
This time Miandad stayed on foot, walking quickly through the middle-class neighbourhood where the UCSO offices were situated, heading towards the harbour. Berger found him easy to track. Though he was comparatively short, he was wearing a hat – an old-fashioned fedora, which could be spotted from a good distance. Berger followed him through a commercial zone of rough bars and fast-food outlets, then into a better neighbourhood with modern office buildings and an American chain motel three storeys high.
Mo walked on, past the entrance to the hotel’s reception area. And then suddenly he turned and went up an external flight of stairs which led to the walkways that ran around the second and third floors of the motel. He must be meeting someone in a room up there, thought Berger, with increasing excitement. Maybe it was Claude Rameau – she could have taken a cab and be waiting already inside the room.
Quickening his pace, Berger followed him up the same staircase, listening for his quarry’s steps on the treads above him. Tonk-tonk-tonk. The metal stairs reverberated as the man climbed. Then suddenly the noise stopped; Berger stopped too. When the steps resumed he continued climbing, treading lightly, two steps at a time, until he reached the third floor where he paused just short of the top of the flight of stairs. Slowly he extended his head and peered cautiously along the walkway, first in one direction, then the other – where he saw, at the far end, almost a hundred feet away, the familiar figure of Mo Miandad. There was someone else there, in front of him – a blonde woman with her back to Berger, wearing what looked like a black raincoat. It could be Claude Rameau; Berger’s pulse quickened. Mo Miandad looked back for a second and then they both disappeared around the corner. Had he spotted Berger?
He sprinted after them along the gallery, then slowed as he reached the corner, listening for footsteps. He saw another stairway leading down and could hear footsteps on the treads. He went to the top of the steps and peered down. Two floors below he spotted Mo and a fleeting glimpse of the blonde woman, just as she left his field of vision. Damn!
He ran down the staircase without any thought for the noise he was making – his only aim now was to catch up with them and confront them. When he reached the bottom of the stairs he hesitated. There was no one in sight. He turned along the passage which led past the long line of ground-floor rooms. A door halfway along was ajar, as if someone had just gone inside. Running towards it, he realised that he didn’t know what he was going to say to explain why he was there – but it was they who needed to do the explaining.
As he came up to the open door he slowed down. Inside, the room was pitch black. He stepped through the doorway, reaching out for the light switch. He flicked it on and at the same moment felt a hand on his back. Before he could turn around, the hand pushed him – hard – and he stumbled forward, landing on the concrete floor with a painful crack to his knees. He winced and tried to get up to confront his assailant. But the door behind him closed with a sharp click. Trying to ignore the pain in both his legs, Berger reached for the door handle. It was locked.
He looked around and saw that he was trapped in a service cupboard, facing two brooms and a row of mops, bolt upright in their buckets. A trolley against one wall held piles of clean sheets and folded towels. On the wall, bottles of disinfectant and liquid cleaner crowded a shelf. This was obviously not where Mo conducted his assignations.
Going back to the door, Berger began to pound on it with his fist. When there was no response, he shouted, ‘Help!’ Then ‘Help!’ again. He felt very stupid. He had fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book. I’m past it, Berger thought to himself. He remembered his old colleagues in the Agency. How they would love to hear about this.