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Chapter 9: On the Mykonos Operation
Freddie steps off the Flying Dolphin onto the harbour side. He can remember when the low, sleek, hydrofoil ferries were new. Now, the throb of their diesel engines sounded more desperate than powerful. They were tired and battered by years in use. He felt the same way sometimes.
Mykonos quay has the usual array of restaurants and bars. On the hill behind the quay, windmills stand like sentries guarding the port and trying to ensure the place goes on looking like the postcards of it.
It’s hot. The Dolphin left Agoras at eight o’clock and now the sun is about as high as it is going to get. Freddie is sweating. Mainly, it’s the false beard and the wig that are causing the problem. He hates using prosthetics but there was too big a chance of bumping into one of his old customers on Mykonos. That, or some of the competition.
Freddie hefts his bag over his shoulder. Alicia’s place is a couple of miles out from Mykonos town but he doesn’t want to take a taxi. He’s working light. Everything he needs is in his bag. Even so, it’s hotter work than he’d like. He’s carrying too much weight to make this comfortable.
He stops about 100 yards short of Alicia’s. There’s a handy bar. He treats himself to a dish of olives and can of Coke and sits quietly watching the world go by. The gallery is called “Mykonoids”. It seems like she’s moved into multi-media stuff; there’s a video screen pushed up against the window rolling what, even from where Freddie is sitting, looks like a series of flash gun explosions. A complicated metal mobile made of what looks like rusty car parts swings erratically. Alicia appears at the door of the gallery with a client. She’s wearing a short white denim skirt over bare tanned legs with a white tee shirt. Blue ceramic beads on her leather thong necklace echo the roofs of a hundred Orthodox churches on the island. The look is simple and obviously expensive. Freddie looks across towards the gallery in a casual way, but in one quick glance he’s taken in all he needs. Height, weight, muscularity; things that might affect the snatch. How she moves, how big her mouth is. He already knows what he’s going to do. This is just a chance to go over it one more time in his head.
She shakes her customer’s hand and he’s gone. She watches as he gets into a Porsche 911 parked outside. Freddie can’t think where he’s going to get much driving from that on the island. Alicia pushes her blonde hair back with sunglasses that probably never leave the top of her head as the Porsche drives off. She goes back into the gallery.
Freddie downs the last of his Coke, picks up his bag, drops a couple of Euros on the table, and heads off towards the gallery.
There’s a buzz as he steps through the door. “I’ll be right with you,” a voice, Alicia’s he assumes, calls from the back room.
Freddie looks around. None of the stuff on the wall is to his taste. He’s always preferred the representational to the abstract, and the multi-media, kinetic stuff just goes swooping way over his head, assuming it’s got any valid intellectual or artistic merit.
Alicia comes in from the back. “Hi,” she says. “How can I help?”
She looks as good close up as in the photographs in Rick's PowerPoint. Just as well, thinks Freddie, it’s not time for dramatically re-arranging things. “I’ve got something you might be interested in,” Freddie says and passes his box to her.
Alicia takes one look at the contents of the box and then looks up at Freddie. It’s a look that blends the vices of lust, greed and envy almost seamlessly. It’s a look that Freddie knows quite well. It’s usually a sign that an auction is going to be profitable but, in this case, it’s a good indicator that Freddie’s plan is going to go well.
“I think this needs some careful attention.” Alicia’s voice is as calm as she can make it. “I think I’ll close up for a while. We won’t want to be disturbed.” She puts the box down with almost reverent care. Walks across to the door to the gallery and turns the sign around so it now shows “êëåéóôü” – ”Closed” – to the outside world. “Let’s go through to the back. Would you like some coffee?”
He knows what she’s thinking. If the piece in the box is genuine, it’s worth a fortune and if he’s offering it to her, it’s almost certainly illegal. She’s only seen one like it before and that’s in the museum in Iraklion on Crete. It’s the figure of a standing male, a kouros, one hand clutched to his forehead. It’s big, maybe 50cm high, and carved out of ivory. There’s a trace of gold leaf around the lower limbs as though once it was clad in gold.
She makes them each a strong Greek coffee, pouring the thick black liquid into tiny cups from a battered copper briki.
“Where’s it from?”
Freddie shakes his head from side to side. “Hard to say. Least-ways my contact didn’t say. What do you think?”
“Late Minoan, if it’s genuine. Could be the pair to the one from Palaikastro except there isn’t a pair to the one from Palaikastro, is there?”
“That’s what I’d been told.”
“What makes you think I would be interested in this?” She’s wary. He’s not surprised. The police would have her on a Dolphin back to Piraeus and out of the country faster than you could say ‘cultural theft’, assuming she didn’t check into the the Korydallos Prison for a ten or twenty stretch on the way through.
“The people you deal with here. This isn’t a tourist shop. Your customers pay for good stuff. They even pay for stuff like this,” he nodded at the metal mobile swinging in the window. “Plus the word is you’ve shifted a few things before. Nothing big, nothing unique, but interesting stuff. Night hawked off Lefkandi, I’d heard, or picked from the seabed off Mochlos.”
“What terrible lies people tell about me.” She’s fluttering the eye lashes. Freddie thinks Rick’s assessment is on the money, as ever. “I can’t think why they’d say that. But, this is a beautiful thing.”
Her attention is so distracted by the kouros that she doesn’t notice Freddie’s sleight of hand dropping the small capsule into her coffee as he passes his hand over it. She doesn’t notice the drug either. It’s tasteless and, besides, the bitter coffee and the sweet sugar mask anything else.
She sits down, looking a little puzzled as the drug takes effect.
Freddie keeps up his end of the conversation, confusing her by appearing to ignore the effects she is feeling. “You must be able to find a home for it. Among your Porsche-driving, helicopter-flying set. There’s plenty of Russian money coming into the islands, too, these days, isn’t there?”
“Hnng, myurr...” is the last thing she says as she slips off the chair, unconscious. Her coffee cup tips over as she falls. It spreads a short, thick patch of sticky grounds across the table. She spreads herself across the floor.
Freddie puts the kouros back into its box carefully. Stopping for an amused moment to consider that its packing closely resembled the way in which the girls had been packed back at the centre.
The tragic thing about the kouros he has just shown Alicia is that it is genuine; it was dug from the site at Agoras by Bethany and her team of archaeologists currently enjoying – if that’s the word — the hospitality of Pashim Bey in Egypt. Until Alicia mentioned the one from Palaikastro, Freddie hadn’t realised there was anything like it on Crete. Artefacts of the Post-Palatial Minoan periods hadn’t really been the subject for discussion when he’d said goodbye to Bethany and her team, any more than they were with Alicia now.
With the kouros safely packaged, Freddie turns his attention to Alicia.
He rolls her over on to her face and pulls her wrists behind her. Cable ties do the job of fixing them together. That done, he lifts her up and sits her on a chair. It’s an old wooden stick back chair, substantial enough, Freddie thinks, to hold her when she wakes up, legs spread wide enough so she won’t find it easy to turn over. He drops her arms over the back, links some rope around them and her waist, pulling her tight against the back of the chair. She’s breathing easily, still unconscious. He takes each leg in turn, bare, tanned, soft blonde hairs, bare feet in Nike trainers. He draws one back to the back leg of the chair. He takes a turn of rope around the chair leg and then around her ankle, slides the rope between chair and ankle, loops it and ties it off. He does the same on the other side. She’s stirring a little. He didn’t use much of the drug. It’s safer that way and, besides, he didn’t need to do more than slow her down so he could do this. She’s shaking her head trying to get back her senses. He waits until she’s pretty much all the way back to conscious before he starts on her gag.
She’s coming around. Freddie walks across and pulls a wad of cotton waste from his bag. She’s awake enough to know something is going on that she doesn’t like, but not so awake that she can stop it. Freddie squeezes either side of her jaw to open her mouth so he can push the cloth inside. It’s a big knotted wad, enough to stuff her mouth and firm enough so there’s no risk she’ll swallow it and choke. Freddie holds her head up by the hair so he can check it’s in right. Then he takes his roll of tape, slices off pieces six inches long and straps them criss-cross fashion over her mouth. He uses half a dozen or so, smoothing them down carefully. She’s almost fully conscious now, aware of the ropes and the gag. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t like it. Freddie’s efforts are rewarded with a poisonous look and a growl. Freddie isn’t bothered.
It’s a couple of hours later. Alicia is sitting tied to the chair in the back room of the gallery, bored and frustrated at not being able to do anything about the ropes or the gag. Freddie is in the same room. He’s sitting almost opposite her, playing patience, dealing cards onto an upturned crate. There’s another hour before he’ll move Alicia.
Freddie gives a satisfied grunt as the final card turns over and the hand comes out. He gets up and stretches, walks across to Alicia, and gives himself the treat he’d promised himself for a winning hand. He picks up his knife and moves towards her. She shrinks back in the chair. He grins and slices her white denim skirt open, up the front seam. The blade slips along it like it’s slicing through wet paper. With her ankles tied, one to each of the back legs of the chair, the tightness of her skirt had held her thighs close together. With the seam cut, they spread apart showing a white vee of cotton panties. She tries to shrug away from him, but the ties won’t let her. Freddie’s enjoying himself; just him, some rope and a struggling girl. It’s nice to get back to first principles for a change.
He lays the tip of the blade just touching the inside of her right thigh. The message is clear. You know what that did to your skirt, think what it could do to your skin. Alicia growls. It’s an animal-like noise that carries fear, fury and frustration. It’s not loud, the handful of cloth jammed into her mouth and the strips of tape that hold it there make sure of that, but she can see he’s amusing himself at her expense and she doesn’t like it.
Mainly though, she’s confused. She assumes this is all because he wants to rob the place, so why is he waiting around? There isn’t any cash in the gallery and, while the art on the walls has some value, he’d have been better off picking on one of the jewellery shops.
Eventually, she gets her answer.
It’s dark. Freddie looks at his watch. He leaves Alicia for a while and heads up to the two room apartment she has over the gallery where he throws some clothes, money and her passport into a small suitcase. It will look like she’s gone off by herself for some reason. He cuts her ankles free from the legs of the chair, but then ties them one to the other and runs some rope around her knees as well. As he’s tying her legs, his hands push between the insides of her thighs. She squeals and tries to wriggle away from him. Freddie grins tolerantly; she’ll have to put up with far worse before too long.
He checks around the place and tidies up, takes his box and her bag and suitcase out the back of the gallery to where the gallery’s van is parked and opens the back of it. He puts the kouros, in its box, carefully down on the floor of the passenger side. He goes back for Alicia, checks her gag and unties the ropes that hold her to the chair. He gets Alicia on to her feet. Now she realises that he’s taking her with him, she really starts to panic, mewing and trying to thresh back and forward. He puts her over his shoulder and gives her what is intended to be a reassuring pat on the arse. That just makes her madder. Freddie carries her out to the van and pushes her down in the back. There’s some sacking she uses to protect pictures when they’re being moved. He tosses it over Alicia, covering her from view.
Then it’s easy: shut up the gallery and drive down to the bay on the far side of the island from the harbour. There’s no one about. Ellie is waiting for him with the zodiac. It’s no trouble to get Alicia out of the van and into the boat. Alicia’s still struggling, but neither Freddie nor Ellie seem very interested. She ferries the helpless girl out to the yacht while Freddie drives the van back to the port, parks it not far from the Dolphin quay, and then steps in to one of the bars for a celebratory Metaxa while he waits for Ellie to bring the yacht around to the port. It takes her about an hour. Freddie is feeling quite mellow by the time he steps on to the yacht. Alicia is tied up on one of the bunks in the forward cabin. Ellie has sliced the rest of her clothes off, so that now she’s completely naked.
Freddie gives an approving nod. He may be doing Norman a favour but it should turn out all right financially. Alicia doesn’t know which of them she’s more scared of: the man who snatched her or the woman who stripped her. She’s got all of the time of the crossing to Agoras to work it out.
© Freddie Clegg 2011
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