Written In Stone - Chapter Six

                                     

  

AND ON WE GO - THE STORY IS DEVELOPING

    I was very pleased to receive this chapter back without too much red ink. It was the first time I did not have to send it back after correction. There were the usual suspects, a little 'show, don't tell' and a 'cliche'. There were also a few redundant words and some description that did nothing to the story. All in all, It was like getting a little pat on the head. I celebrated with a tot of Scotch in my 1.00 am cup of tea. I did however, on the editor's advice, insert a little back story about Jessica's initial reaction and thoughts on Enda. I think it worked well.   

CHAPTER SIX

 London’s underbelly reminded me of my home, Belfast, and why my parents crawled out of the rubble to give me a better life and education. I became a journalist trying to change an indifferent world.  

       Damn Hart and Hrisacopolis. I refused to look the other way.      

       Annoyed at both men, I gunned my car down the approach road to the better side of Wapping and the Herald building. As I drove around a bend, I caught sight of kids from the nearby tower block kicking a ball up against the doors of an abandoned warehouse. The ball bounced across the road in front of my car. I punched the brakes and skidded to a halt. After several deep breaths, I wound down the window and ordered the kids not to play in the road. I drove off at a slower pace. A string of four-letter words and two fingered salutes followed.

       Not the most endearing of neighborhoods but then the last thing a newspaper baron worries about is a scenic location. The City airport bustled a short distance away and easy access to several major trunk roads carrying commuters in all directions through the metropolis lay nearby. Wapping became the Herald headquarters in the eighties and whether I liked it or not, the hub of activity for Hart’s empire.

        I parked close to the building, jumped out of the car, and ran for cover. Undercover parking existed for management, not the newsroom.

       Inside, a blast of hot air caught me on the back of my neck. The temptation to stand and dry out faded with the sound of running feet behind me. I reached the elevator and while waiting, five other staff joined me. We dripped rain on the marble floor, all of us looking at our watches as though our lives depended on time – a stupid British thing I’ve never understood – and nodded to each other without saying a word. I smiled inwardly, visualizing a group of those little dogs you see on the rear shelf of a car giving you a nod. The elevator arrived and we all piled in.

       We remained silent as we ascended to the newsroom. I couldn’t get the Greek out of my mind. There was something missing. I’d got a few enquiries of my own to attend to and decided to ask Jessica to follow up on one particular member of the Hrisacopolis family.

       A soft pinging bell warned we had arrived at the newsroom. Everyone braced themselves as the doors slid back with a slight judder. Facing us was a herd of journalists on their way out. Beyond them office staff on their way to meetings clutched folders. I successfully sidestepped them, only to bump into Max’s secretary carrying a polystyrene cup of coffee. She gave me a tight smile but declined the piece of crumpled tissue I produced from my pocket to dab her dress with.   

       I walked to my cubicle, crossing the firing line between our deputy editor and a fellow journalist. They were shouting at each other over news of a plane crash while competing with the buzz of telephone conversations around them. 

       Monday mornings normally started with a couple of aspirin.

       Before I reached my desk, I could see a long pair of legs stretched out from behind the partition. Dressed in a pleated light blue skirt and navy blue jacket, Jessica put me to shame in my dull gray suit. Her red beads were gone, replaced with a gold charm bracelet. The gardenias however, still hung in the air, an invisible man trap.

       After our afternoon at Jack’s, I’d decided to work a few hours at the office. I lost track of the time and finished at ten-thirty. Hrisacopolis turned out to be an interesting man. The more I found out about him the more I wanted to dig. Call it instinct but despite Max’s warning I knew I’d find a great story behind the story. The results could sit in my drawer for the time being.

       Jessica sat in my chair looking at the notes, holding my pen mid air as though correcting mistakes. The desk looked clean and tidy. I bit my tongue. She’d created a mess in my mental comfort zone.

       “Hi,” I said, cheerfully. I shook my raincoat and draped it over the wall. “It looks different around here.” I waited until she got to the end of the page. When she turned the page I got a little more direct. “What the hell have you done with my papers?”

       I hovered over her, my anger rising. The cubicle contained my little cozy piece of the world and it only housed one, not two.

       She laid the pen on the desk and looked up with wide eyes.

      

The opportunity to work with Enda Osin came as a surprise to Jessica. She vaguely remembered seeing him a couple of times on the newsroom floor but they had never met. Her office, three floors above the newsroom, was a world away. Work sometimes took her out to art galleries, auctions and museums but never into the newsroom bedlam.

        Max asked her to meet him urgently for an assignment, providing research for Enda. She wondered why she would have anything to do with politics. It was a pleasant surprise when Max briefed her on an upcoming project for the Sunday supplement.

       The ‘Osin Column’ was already popular with readers when she joined the Wapping office, and she too admired his in-depth political comment. The prospect of working with him excited her. She looked on the opportunity as a chance to do something more interesting than writing art reviews.

       Enda turned out to be very different to the man she expected. Instead of a well groomed and polite gentleman, she found herself shaking hands with a savy Irishman. His bright blue eyes looked into hers and gripped her attention while she shook hands. The dry humor aimed at Ms Linguard made her smile. A little shorter than herself and almost twice her age, she liked him at first meeting. Across one cheek there was a short, thin scar that gave him a not too rugged look she found attractive.

       What did surprise her was the man’s wardrobe. A worn jacket, scuffed shoes, and a un- ironed shirt. The clothes were expensive, obviously from a bespoke tailor. The shoes were Italian leather. Max had warned her, Osin was a bachelor.

       The last four days proved difficult. Enda was well educated but lacked any kind of well practiced social graces. Their backgrounds were different and Enda’s witticisms could be annoying. His political views though, confirmed his expertise. She listened, fascinated and interested in his vast knowledge of world financial and political matters.

       Frustration at Enda’s comment the day before annoyed her. She realized that his words were not personal. It was her beforehand comment that showed she may not have understood his depth of knowledge into Hrisacopolis history. She resolved not to make the mistake again, although she felt no need to apologize.     

      

         

Jessica ignored the question and told me my notes, although informative, did not exactly stay within the agreed research areas.

       That said, she returned to the notes and read on.

I felt an irresistible urge to place both hands around her neck. I sat on the edge of the desk and leaned forward, speaking as calmly as I could.  

       “There are several things we have to establish here.”

       She turned her head and held me with a steady gaze.

       “First, this is my chair and this is my desk and this is my pen and this is my space.” I pointed at each item and ended by waving my hands in the air. “Next, these are my notes.” I snatched them from her and leaned closer. “I’d be obliged if you’d refrain from sticking your nose into my work. Last – since when did you decide what we will and won’t do?”

       I’d apologized for the stupid remark I made at the rally but this was different. There were fifty messy desks in the newsroom and no-one touched a thing, not even the cleaners.  She should have known that.

       Jessica answered my question with silence, and a glare.

       “Now - get out of my chair and go get your own,” I growled.

        She rose and left the cubicle without saying a word.

       The chair didn’t look much, just a small secretarial chair with a worn cloth seat and three squeaky castors. After sitting in it for half an hour my buttocks ached and I spent a lot of time shifting from side to side, but somehow it survived the years. The point is, it was part and parcel of my workplace and I didn’t like trespassers.

       I settled into the chair and opened the file, feeling justified at taking Jessica down a peg or two. After a few minutes she reappeared pushing a large black leather executive chair before her with one hand. The chair glided in next to mine, filling the space in the cubicle and making it impossible for me to leave. She sat upright with hands clasped in her lap, an expression of superiority set on her face. In all the years I’d been at the office no one ever owned a chair like that in the newsroom.

       I guess the way I looked at the chair begged an answer.

       “Max let me have it,” she said, her voice clipped and guarded.

       “Really, just like that. You must have been very persuasive.”

       “Not at all,” she snapped, “I asked politely.” She brushed an imaginary speck from her skirt.

        The bait dangled in front of me but I wasn’t interested. What did interest me lay inside the folder she’d been reading. The previous nights work turned up a lot of material, some relating back to the fifties and some to current activity going on in the Brussels corridors of power. Hrisacopolis proved to be a very shrewd and clever man, a bastard too.

       The articles about the Elgin marbles would be as glossy and as nice as Max wanted them but that wouldn’t deter me from digging deeper than the Greek’s smile. I wanted Jessica on my side for a variety of reasons, particularly her connections within the jet set hierarchy. Her father, a colleague informed me, retired a diplomat with years of experience on the ‘garden party merry-go-round’.

       “I’m sorry I got angry but you should have known,” I said. “I’ve written a column in this little hole for the last two years… on my own. My notes are the only thing that belong to me around here.” I sighed and threw my notes across the desk.

       “I suppose I deserved what I got.” She cast an eye over the desk. “If you want to live like this….  And I shouldn’t be looking at your notes. I’m sorry Enda.”

       “You can look at anything you like but don’t move anything.” I wiggled a finger at her.

       The smile returned, the hands unwound and the legs slid across one another. “I guess the urge to purge political stupidity and corruption is too strong for you to ignore, right?” She reached across the desk and picked the file up. “What’s the plan then?”

       I told her I didn’t have a plan but did have a strong feeling that unless someone stopped Hrisacopolis in time, his corrupt tentacles would poison the European Union. By coercing fellow delegates on the ways and means committee he’d certainly cause chaos whether Turkey joined the EU or not.

       “Surely Turkey will eventually join now that Cyprus is in the EU?” she asked, placing the folder on her lap.

       I shook my head. It depended on a lot of things including human rights issues. There was a lot the Turks would have to sort out first.

        I put two fingers over my mouth as Max scurried by with an armful of folders. A trail of cigar smoke and two managerial lackeys followed him. “Working hard, you two, I hope.” He said it over his shoulder without looking back at us.   

       Jessica opened the file and looked through a pile of newspaper cuttings I’d collected. Like me, she knew no resolution on sovereignty meant it would be easier to promote public unrest.

       I agreed. From that moment on the Greek Cypriots would have support from the UN Security Council.

        I could see Hrisacopolis standing on the sidelines watching the disintegration of the Turkish Republic. A strong leadership and therefore a strong trading partner would be a better solution. No doubt whatsoever, the EU would back a declaration of Enosis from the Greek parliament, and the Turkish government would have no choice but to agree to yet another condition if they wished to join the Union.

       Jessica looked up from some photos. “Despite your tough exterior you do have a heart then, not just a journalist’s sense of justice?”

       There was no sarcasm in her voice although there was a silent question.

       “You’d better believe it,” I answered.

        Yes, I cared about my fellow ordinary Joe and his family. That’s why I loved my job. When Whitehall did something right I sang their praises. When they got it wrong, I liked kicking ass on behalf of Joe.

       Her eyes never left mine while I spoke. A hint of a smile showed around her lips – a sarcastic smile. “Well, I guess that explains a couple of things.”

       “What’s that?”

       “Why you live out of a suitcase and eat at McDonald's. You don’t get time to settle down while you’re saving the world. Have you got a red cape?”

       We laughed together.

       “So what’s next?”

        I told her I was going to lunch with a buddy of mine from the Foreign Office whose father worked in Brussels. While I enjoyed lunch, she could dig up as much as possible about Hrisacopolis’ son, George.

        I opened a drawer in my desk and took out a press clipping carrying a story on George’s death and a picture of the man. “That’s what he looked like.”

       Jessica took the cutting from me and studied it, then tapped the picture. “He’s quite a handsome young man. I wonder who this woman is.” She held the picture up to the light.

       Shaded by a tree, George sat on a large rock with an arm around a woman. Only one of her arms and a shoulder showed.

        “No idea,” I answered, “probably a girlfriend.”              

Another chapter that saw more problems with how I developed the relationship between Edna and Jessica. By now I was beginning to doubt my abilities as a writer but kept telling myself things would get better provided I read and understood the editor's notes and put those words of advice into practice. Sometimes it is really hard to sit and watch the cursor strike out a paragraph or sentence that took a long time to create. That's when I normally go and make a pot of tea and feel sorry for myself and pretend the editor doesn't know what she is doing. I then return to the work and finish the page I am working on - then read it through. Guess what - it all reads much better.

CHAPTER FIVE

It was the kind of morning I loathed. Light rain fell from a dark gray sky, collecting in puddles by the side of the narrow lane outside my mews cottage in Bayswater. Sheltered from the rain by an overhanging chestnut tree, a neighbor’s large black tomcat sat hunched on top of an old red brick wall. He stared down at me with darting amber eyes, watching my feet shushing through piles of yellow leaves. Across the courtyard, more of the same leaves stuck to the asphalt in a montage of webbed ducks feet.

       I was still mad at Hart and Max but most of all, irritated at having to work with an assistant. I wasn’t sure things were going to work out with Jessica. Social airs and graces were okay in the sophisticated atmosphere of art galleries and Sotheby’s, but a much harder skin and some knowledge of political corruption were required when dealing with men like Hrisacopolis. Maybe I was being too hard on her; she was only supposed to dig up historical facts. 

       I couldn’t shake the dark mood off. The damn weather wasn’t helping either.

       Loud squeaks from rusty hinges reminded me the small white picket gate needed oiling.  I pushed it open and stepped out onto the sidewalk. There was a metallic clang as the gate slammed shut behind me.

       The tomcat stalked me and stopped at the corner of the wall, the end of his tail flicking back and forth. I curled my lip at him, pushed the trilby firmly down on my head, and walked briskly into the stiff breeze.      

       Ahead of me, cars sped past the end of the mews and down Craven Road toward Paddington railway station. There wasn’t any point in taking the car; the tube took me straight to the square.

       A blast of cold air hit me as I turned the mews corner. I held the ends of my coat collar tight with one hand while keeping the other deep inside a warm pocket. I cursed inwardly. My eyes began to water. If it weren’t for Jessica I’d still be in bed.

A crowd of placard carrying protesters, some dressed in colorful raincoats and others sheltering under decorated umbrellas, gathered in groups around a makeshift stage beneath Nelson’s Column. Under a small marquee, a Conservative Member of Parliament extolled the virtues of British culture and argued why the marbles should stay in Britain. Jessica and I listened for half an hour but learned nothing new.

       Max insisted we attend, and under normal circumstances I would have argued against going, but not this time. The last thing I wanted to do was argue with Max. Jobs in the print industry were scarce enough and he had stuck his neck out for me. Besides, it was because of him I got my column.

        Hrisacopolis was a shipping magnate with a lot of political allies in the Greek government and he’d been involved in a few scandals during the seventies and eighties. Jessica knew this but wanted me to fill in a few gaps, especially on what could soon happen in Brussels. My irritable dark mood began to fade a little.

       The rain stopped and we moved to a vantage point up on the steps of the National Art Gallery. In the summer, tourists and sightseers packed the place. At that moment, apart from the small crowd surrounding the speaker, there were a few pedestrians hiding under umbrellas. They were hurrying across the square to Whitehall, Pall Mall, or Northumberland Avenue. What never changed were the dozens of vehicles, cabs, and buses, that rumbled around the square, travelling to and from hundreds of destinations every day and night of the year. This was one part of the city centre I loved.

            Jessica yawned behind a half folded hand. “So tell me what he’s up to now.”

       I focused on her face, the speaker and the crowd merging into the gray background. Despite jeans and a bright orange sweater, she still caught the eye. A pair of fleece lined suede boots kept her feet warm, although her toes tapped the ground now and again.

       Taking a granola bar from her purse, she nibbled on it and then wiped a crumb from the corner of her mouth with the tip of a little finger.

       Her voice interrupted my train of thought.

       “Enda?”

       I started. “Oh…. he’s a very active politician with more contacts than Eros has arrows.”

       I already knew a lot about our principle subject. Hrisacopolis wielded more power than ever before and from what I heard around Whitehall, was manipulating his political buddies from behind the scenes. I’d been writing an article on the Cypriot unrest in the late nineties when I first came across his name.

       Jessica listened with interest. “Enosis and all that, right?”

       A small gaggle of students, one carrying a placard with the legend – THE STONES MUST    GO HOME – jostled past us. They were climbing the steps for a higher point from which to shout their protests. I mused they might be at the wrong rock concert but kept the joke to myself. Jessica wouldn’t find it funny.

       “Union with Greece is not ‘and all that’,” I admonished lightly.

       During the fifties, Hrisacopolis poured money into the EOKA terrorist organization. Because of a few men like him the troubles rumbled on for years.

       Jessica rolled the granola wrapper into a tight ball between her fingers and deftly pushed it into her jean pocket, using the tips of her fingers. The movement stirred something inside me. I breathed deeply and looked back at the speaker.

         “Money seems to have been the root of all evil in this family,” she said, looking up at more black clouds rolling across the sky.             

       I nodded. At the end of World War II, Andronis’s son, eight year old Paul, inherited his father’s shipping business. At twenty-two, he fought a guerrilla war alongside Archbishop Makarios and General Grivas, mainly against the British. His wealth and connections funded EOKA and kept the Cypriot dream alive. A few years later, Paul sent his son, George, back. He fought with Grivas but the cause he fought for faded fast. A year later he died in a skirmish with the British on a beach at Pomos Bay. He returned to Athens, a posthumous hero.                       

       It was the end of the fight but not the dream. A military coup in Greece led to terrible repercussions for the Turkish Cypriots. Turkey invaded northern Cyprus shortly after and formed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.              

       Jessica gave me a knowing look. “Now everyone agrees not to agree and the Cypriot question hangs around in a time vacuum.”

    I smiled at her neat conclusion. A UN plan, put forward to end partition, still needed agreement.

       “So apart from getting himself a pat on the back as a good patriot and plenty of publicity regarding the marbles, what’s Paul’s connection with Enosis today?”

       She was asking all the right questions and I was impressed. I told her Cyprus was part of the European Union already for a year but one problem still remained.

       “Sovereignty.” Jessica clapped her hands and grinned. She looked as though she’d just won a prize. I was starting to warm to her.                

       “Got it in one. In the meantime Paul Hrisacopolis has plans of his own,” I said.

       Another speaker took the stand to loud applause.

       Hrisacopolis needed a platform on which to speak so he could meet members of the EU and grease some willing hands.

       “Do you know that for sure,” asked Jessica? She pulled a small red fold away umbrella from her bag and flipped it open. Rain had started falling again, quite heavy.

       I looked at her and nodded. “I’m ninety percent certain.”

       Hrisacopolis needed a position from which he could influence decisions about the future of Cyprus. The end of November would be an ideal time for him to be in that position. It gave him time to make his move and see who might be his new friends.

       “Supposing what you say is true. How does he get his platform and opportunity to rub shoulders with the power brokers inside Brussels?” 

        Someone on the stage started shouting amid a lot of cheers from the crowd. Jessica’s feet tapped the ground in turn. Taking her by the arm, I guided her away, carefully avoiding a pigeon waddling around my feet.

       A small restaurant I frequented wasn’t far away. Not exactly the Ritz but it served hot food all day and the coffee tasted good. We could have a private chat in one of the dingy corner booths.   

        Traffic got heavier and hissing tires splashed through puddles as rain hit the road and bounced. Jessica took my arm, pulling me under the umbrella. Our conversation carried on while we walked along the sidewalk.

        I’d found out something interesting from my Whitehall sources. Plans for forming a committee looking at proposals put forward by Athens and Ankara with regards sovereignty were nearing completion. Hrisacopolis, selected by his political buddies in Greece, supposedly because of his shipping and oil interests and connections with other EU industries, won the vote as their representative. Of course, this development wasn’t public.

       Jessica stopped, gradual realization lighting up her face. “Right.... platform, opportunity, and position of great influence.”

       “Precisely.” I pulled my collar up. “ He’s  manipulated the system so he can follow his own plans.”

       We started walking, pointing the umbrella forward against a blustery wind. “You obviously don’t have a very high opinion of him, do you?”

       I counted on my fingers. “Terrorism, blackmail, bribery and murder. No, not very much.”

       “Have you ever met him?” She was almost shouting over the wind.

       “No. Why?”

       “I always reserve my judgement until I’ve met someone like Hrisacopolis. I’m sure he’s all you say he is but he did fight for a cause he believed in.” She took a large stride over a small puddle.

       “Yeah right,” I scoffed, “so that gave him the go ahead to kill innocent people.”  Why is it women find powerful men attractive?”

        I knew as soon as I opened my mouth and started to speak that I should have kept my thoughts to myself.

       “Oh, for goodness sake, Enda, that is so childish,” She pulled her hand away from my arm. The rain dribbled passed my collar and down my neck.

       “Really,” I said, more to myself than to her?

       We continued on in silence, Jessica striding on the high moral ground while I shuffled along with embarrassment, soaking wet. After what seemed an eternity, I grabbed hold of her arm. “Sorry,” I shouted, half turning toward her.

       She shivered and put an arm through mine, pulling me back under cover.

       “Actually, I think you may be right about him.” An impish grin tugged at the corners of her mouth and raised her eyebrows. Her brown eyes sparkled.

       “Why?”

       “He’s paying for the restoration work on the Parthenon – eighty million plus.”

A HORRIBLE DEATH - CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

A MURDER AT SEA

This chapter is posted here because the book will be published before we get half way through the story. I just wanted to share something I love writing about - MURDER. I hope you enjoy. Chapter 5 will be posted next week.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

       Ahmet studied the notice board at the end of the long hallway without seeing a word. His eyes homed in on the refection of the Frenchman walking towards him.

       He congratulated himself for making the decision to follow Osin. It would be dangerous killing him and the woman. Any question of authenticity regarding the grandson could ruin his plans. Fighting on two fronts was becoming a headache.

       Ioannis had spent most of the morning lounging on his private balcony before heading to the casino at noon. It was while he followed Ioannis across the main lounge that Ahmet spotted Osin talking to the French journalist, Claude Aurele. Some sixth sense triggered an alarm and after their brief conversation, he followed the two men back to Osin’s cabin.

       Now, as Aurele passed him, Ahmet noticed the fawn folder and realized its significance. Neither man had the folder before they entered Osin’s cabin.

       Not wishing to raise any suspicions, Ahmet made his way back to the main salon and went to the Purser’s office. Showing his security pass, he entered the office and searched through the passenger list for Aurele’s cabin number. It was on the same deck as Osin’s but on the opposite side of the ship. The situation needed dealing with quickly, before Aurele could pass the information on to his office in Paris. The man’s death had to look like an accident. Ahmet closed his eyes briefly. Within minutes the man was going to die. What to do? His mind raced.

       He took a sheet of notepaper from the purser’s desk and wrote quickly in block capitals. His hands were shaking. He pulled a kerchief from his top pocket and dabbed his forehead. A minute later, he folded the note and placed it inside an envelope, then hurried away across the main lounge and took the elevator down to deck five. As he waited for the doors to open, Ahmet felt a twinge of pain in his right foot and cursed his pretend brothers in MIT. The affects of the falaka

beatings reminded him of Diyarbakir prison.

 His employer, a shipping agent, discovered his true identity as Kurdish. Police threw him into prison for carrying forged identity papers. Three days later, agents came for him.

       Half conscious from the beating twelve hours earlier, they dragged him down stone steps into a foul smelling basement.  Laid on a table, they tied his feet to a wooden board suspended from the ceiling. With legs raised, the soles of his feet felt the full force of a flexible rubber hose for half an hour. Screams echoed off the walls and down from the whitewashed ceiling. He remembered the ceiling. He remembered the sneering faces of the two guards and the insults they screamed back at him.      

       It wasn’t until three years later, after a chance meeting with another inmate in the courtyard, that he found an escape route from his tormentors. The man turned out to be a captured member of PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party, and he was awaiting a trial. Both men knew the outcome would be execution. The man, Ekrem, talked feely about his family and his fight to create independence for the Kurds. A scared neighbor, hoping to escape arrest, betrayed him. Ahmet saw an opportunity and by the time their conversation had finished, he knew the name of the informer and where he lived.

       A week later, Ahmet sat in the office of the Director of MIT, the Turkish National Intelligence Service.  Falsely accusing Ekrem’s neighbor of terrorism, they rewarded him with freedom and recruited him to find work in Istanbul as an informer on Greek business activities.

        As a Kurd, Ahmet loathed his paymasters but looked forward to hurting his other enemy. An advertisement in a newspaper for a senior shipping clerk led him to the Hrisacopolis shipping office in Istanbul.

The door slid open and Ahmet stepped out into the passage. Aurele’s cabin was just three doors from the elevator, to the right. He noticed the figure of a man disappearing up the stairway to another deck at the end of the passage. Ahmet breathed deeply. Taking quick strides, he reached Aurele’s cabin and without hesitation, knocked on the door. He waited for several seconds and knocked again, a little louder and more urgently.

       He stood, feet slightly apart, hands on hips. He was ready to pounce the moment the door opened. Sweat glistened on his forehead. He dared not shift his focus from the target for a second. The longer he stood there the greater the chance he would be discovered. At the sound of a flushing toilet and running water, Ahmet tensed. When nothing happened, he banged on the door with his fist. If someone entered the passage now he would have to abort and make an excuse for his presence.

       The Frenchman’s voice called out but the words were too faint for Ahmet to understand. Very slowly, he placed the palm of his left hand on the door, just above his head. The door remained shut. Then he heard Aurele’s voice, clearer. The man was talking on the telephone. Ahmet acted instantly. There was no panic. He needed a cool, clear head.  Taking a credit card from his jacket top pocket, he slid it below the lock on the door and jerked upwards. There was a loud click. His left hand pushed and the door swung open.

       With his back to the door, Aurele sat on the bed talking into a small tape recorder. A hearing aid lay on the bed beside him. Ahmet closed the door swiftly without a sound, his eyes surveying the cabin in a split second. He moved forward and in two strides, reached the bed.

       The Frenchman never saw his killer. Ahmet’s hands grabbed Aurele, one under the chin and the other, the back of the head. A sharp twist followed by a hollow crack that resonated around the cabin ended the man’s life in an instant.

       Ahmet pulled the body toward the door and placed the hastily written note he’d written, inside Aurele’s jacket. He stood quite still for a moment and took several deep breaths. Completing the task required speed but rushing without care led to mistakes. Being methodical kept him out of trouble. He wiped his forehead again.

       He stepped over the body to the side of the bed and pulled the telephone flex from the wall. With a penknife taken from his pocket, he cut the flex from the telephone and knelt down beside the body. A minute later, one end of the flex bit deeply around the Frenchman’s neck, and the other tied securely to the cabin door knob.

        Ahmet pulled himself up and reached for the folder lying on the bedside table. It slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor. A piece of paper with his name on it lay underneath. He picked it up and at a glance read the word ‘imposter’. There was no need to read the rest. He knew what it meant. The papers were loose. Ahmet took them from the folder and stuffed them into his inside jacket pocket. He then checked the penknife and credit card were back in the top pocket. It was time to clean up and go.

       The folder easily creased in half and slid down the inside of his trousers. It was important he left without it under his arm after leaving the cabin. He carefully wiped the telephone. The last task was the hardest. He struggled with the body and managed to set it upright against the door. With the slack flex in one hand, he wound it around the doorknob. He made sure that with the flex tight, the buttocks hung an inch or two off the floor. Last, he wiped the knob and then slowly opened the door a crack. The passage was clear in one direction but he couldn’t see the other. He pulled again, keeping the kerchief around the knob. The door opened slowly as he pulled it against the weight of the body. Fortunately, the little Frenchman was very light.

       With just enough room to squeeze out into the passage, he transferred the kerchief to the outer knob and pulled with both hands. The door wouldn’t budge. He placed a foot against the door frame and pulled. The door moved inches. He tried again. The pain in his foot was too much. He let his foot rest on the ground and using all his strength, gave the door one last pull. It moved and clicked shut.

       Ahmet was breathing heavily. He ran the kerchief over the upper part of the door panel and then turned toward the lift. Before he pushed the button to call it, he realized his mistake. He turned back and walked past Aurele’s cabin, mopping his face and neck. Someone might be in the elevator. They could place him at the scene. He walked briskly.

       At the far end of the passage, he reached the stairs and stopped. He banged the handrail, suddenly remembering the tape recorder. A sudden wave of panic and nausea coursed through him. It was too late to do anything.