A Deadly Twist Read online

  He smiled. “Precisely. Which is why when you went into the Kastro, I waited until you came out. I didn’t want to spook you.”

  “How did you know I’d come out the same way I went in?”

  He smiled again. “I see you’re not familiar with the town. There are only two gates into the Kastro, the Paraporti to the south, and the Trani to the north. You went in through Trani, and I guessed you’d come out the same way.”

  She stared at him. “Okay, so you guessed right, and now you have your chance to tell me your story. So, tell me.”

  “If I expect you to believe me, I first better demonstrate my bona fides.” He waved to a waiter. “Bring us a bottle of whatever the lady’s drinking and a glass for me. Then leave us alone unless I call for you.” He turned to Nikoletta. “The wine’s on me, and I’m pretty sure that what I have to say will take at least a bottle.”

  Whatever’s on his mind, he has a unique way of getting to the point.

  “I’m going to tell you facts about stories you’ve covered that I could only know if I’m who you’ll think I am after you’ve heard me out.”

  “Uh, okay?” She picked up her wineglass and leaned back in her chair. “I’m listening.”

  Over hours of conversation, and just as many bottles of wine, he delved into a half dozen sophisticated ransomware attacks, three embarrassing government document dumps, and two mysterious deaths officially recorded as accidents, all reported on by Nikoletta. He did not object when she pulled a notebook out of her bag and started taking notes but warned her not to record his voice or take his photo.

  She pressed him with questions, and he answered with details she already knew, plus many she did not but that were consistent with her long-held suspicions. Details that only someone intimately aware of the ransomware and documents involved, and how the victims’ deaths were made to look like accidents, would know.

  “It’s easier than you can imagine to interfere with a computer that controls a vehicle’s antilock brakes, and if you do that on a twisting mountain road, investigators will just chalk it up to another tragic accident.”

  Nikoletta stared at him. “You do realize how nonchalant you sound in talking about the harm you’ve done to so many.”

  He shrugged. “All I want to know is have I told you enough to establish my credibility?”

  “I assume you won’t tell me your name.”

  He smiled. “Next question.”

  “What about your online nickname?”

  He smiled again, saying nothing.

  “Why are you telling me all this? You’re implicating yourself in major crimes, including murder.”

  “I don’t view them that way. I think of myself as employed to make computer systems do what my clients want. It’s an intellectual challenge. I’m a black hat hacker, battling the white hats trying to keep me out of their systems.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “This is not a video game. What you’re doing literally destroys lives. You can’t seriously believe that’s just an intellectual challenge.”

  He leaned in. “My bottom line is that however you wish to characterize my past, I’m giving up that life. I no longer feel the rush I once did on achieving what others had thought impossible. It is time for me to leave the game and, having made that decision, I want to set the record straight.”

  “Some might say this is all hubris on your part, a desire to see your exploits glorified in the press.”

  He smiled. “They can say what they like, but that’s not in keeping with how I’ve lived my life.” He picked up his nearly empty wine glass. “My reason for this conversation is simple. The world should know that there are people out there like me. Plain, seemingly ordinary folk, paid to do very bad things for calculated purposes without leaving a trace of guilt or motive. We thrive in places where officials are quick to embrace innocent excuses for anything bad that happens on their watch—and where the media are reluctant to question authority.”

  He slugged down the rest of his wine and leaned forward. “In other words, I mean this conversation as a warning to you and your readers. Beware: we are among you.”

  He called for the check. “I think you should leave now, Nikoletta. I’ll take care of paying. You just take care of yourself.”

  * * *

  Nikoletta couldn’t believe her good fortune at the widespread attention generated by her story. Magazine and TV crews tracked her down on Naxos for interviews, and her editor told her to forget about writing the tourism piece. He wanted her back in Athens, where he’d assigned two reporters to assist her on follow-up stories tied to her mysterious interviewee.

  She told him she wanted to write the Naxos article. When he asked why, she said fate had sent her to Naxos for a reason, perhaps an even bigger one than meeting with the hacker. She’d only know for sure once she completed the piece.

  Her editor pointed out that it was he, not fate, who’d sent her to Naxos, and now he wanted her back in Athens ASAP. They argued back and forth and compromised on her returning in Athens in four days’ time.

  “But I can’t promise you that the police won’t be hounding you before then,” he told her. “They keep screaming for access to you, and I don’t know how much longer I can stall them.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do your best, as you always do.”

  “Stop with the BS and just make sure you’re back here in four days.”

  “You mean on the fifth day.”

  “First thing in the morning. Bye.”

  As soon as they hung up, Nikoletta set off in search of sources for her other story. With her newfound celebrity, she had little trouble getting politicians to talk, but they spoke only in platitudes reflecting the interests of their particular constituencies. Representatives of the tourist industry were also readily available and eagerly expressed their polished, politically correct views on each topic she raised. She completed those interviews in one day, all without leaving Chora.

  Her next three days had her trekking across rural Naxos, trudging from one remote location to another, following one introduction to the next, charming and cajoling opinions out of largely taciturn farmers and herders. Most interviews were frustrating, teeth-pulling exercises, but every so often she came across a tiger anxious to devour a perceived adversary with sharp- toothed rhetoric.

  It was a grueling four days, but she got what she wanted for her story, and more.

  Nikoletta returned to her hotel in Chora exhausted. It was well after dark, but also her last night on the island, and she’d promised a group of locals who’d helped her with her story that she’d celebrate with them at a bar in town.

  She made it to the bar by eleven with the intention of putting in a quick appearance and heading back to her hotel. But her friends had brought along homemade food and a bouzouki band. She had to stay—and didn’t escape until after two in the morning.

  Alone and a bit tipsy, she stumbled in the direction of the hotel. At the base of the path leading up along the bluff, she paused, wondering if she dared risk going that way. As she was about to take the longer, safer route, she noticed fireflies moving along the bluff path.

  Fireflies? she thought, shaking her head. It couldn’t be fireflies. Then it hit her, and she laughed. They weren’t fireflies but folks like her, hiking along the path with light from their mobile phones to guide them. She dismissed her earlier pangs of anxiety, lit up the flashlight on her mobile, and struck out on the path.

  The wind had come up, and she could hear the sea crashing on the rocks below. It was a bit trickier a walk than she’d imagined, but somewhere up ahead, others were headed the same way, and from the sounds she heard coming toward her, likely even more intoxicated than she. In a matter of minutes, she’d be safely in her bed. She had nothing to fear.

  * * *

  Ring, ring.

  The phone rang four more times.

>   A grasping hand knocked a book off the nightstand before finding the mobile phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Nikoletta, I must see you right away.”

  She looked at the time. “It’s four o’clock in the morning. Who is this?”

  “The storyteller who bought you several bottles of wine a few nights ago.”

  She sat up in bed. “What do you want?”

  “Trust me, it’s important. Very important. Meet me outside the lobby of your hotel in ten minutes. Don’t be late.”

  He hung up before she could say another word.

  How did he know I was in this hotel? How did he get my mobile number? Did I tell him? Those were the first questions running through her mind. But…he was a skilled professional. She pulled on her jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers; grabbed her room key; and hurried down to the lobby.

  “The game’s afoot” is what Sherlock Holmes would say at a moment like this, she thought.

  Ah, the joys of the reporting life…even at four in the morning.

  Chapter Two

  Conventional wisdom holds early summer in Greece to be a beautiful time of year. The water is warm, the winds are mild, and the tourists are better behaved. But as far as Andreas Kaldis’s workload was concerned, he saw little difference from season to season. The nation’s criminal underbelly never seemed to go on holiday.

  Ring, ring.

  Nor do the phones.

  He waited for Maggie to answer.

  “It’s the managing editor of your favorite newspaper,” Maggie bellowed in from her desk outside Andreas’s open office door. “And he’s in his usual foul mood.”

  “Great, just what I need to make my day.” Andreas picked up the phone. “Hi, Gio—”

  “Kaldis, it’s Pappas here.”

  Andreas wondered if Giorgos Pappas had purposely patterned his abrupt telephone style after the curmudgeonly stereotypes popularized in film and TV. Though it could be grating, Andreas viewed it as an act—like the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz—and liked the newspaperman.

  “What a pleasant surprise, Giorgos. To what do I owe the honor of this call?”

  “I need you to find my reporter.”

  “I beg your pardon? What reporter?”

  “Nikoletta Elia. She should have been in my office hours ago, but isn’t.”

  Andreas wanted to ask Pappas if he’d been drinking but decided to play along for a bit longer. “Do you think something’s happened to her?”

  “Of course I do. Otherwise why would I be calling you to find one of my reporters?”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “Damn it, man. If I knew, I wouldn’t be calling you.”

  Andreas counted to three. “Giorgos. If you want my help, back off.” He paused for Pappas’s response. None came, so he continued. “Why do you think her being a few hours late for work involves something that would interest the police?”

  “Five days ago, we published a story she wrote about a mysterious computer pro operating on the Dark Web. It sent cops all over Europe scouring through their closed files, looking for clues to who he might be.”

  “Yes, I recognized her name. But what makes you think something’s happened to her?”

  “We agreed that she’d stay on Naxos until today to finish up a story on the push to expand tourism there. When she didn’t show up in the office this morning, I tried calling her, but my calls kept going into voicemail.” He paused. “So, I called her hotel to see if she’d left yet. I was told she’d not checked out, and when I asked to be put through to her room, again there was no answer. I convinced the manager to check if she was there. He said she wasn’t, but her things were.”

  “Please excuse the indelicacy of this question, but perhaps she spent the night elsewhere?”

  “I thought the same thing, but her mobile was next to her bed, and she’d never go anywhere without it.”

  “I’d like to help you out, but frankly, this still doesn’t sound like a police matter.”

  “I’m not done yet. I haven’t told you about the body?”

  Andreas sat up in his chair. “What body?”

  “The hotel sits on a bluff high above the sea. According to the manager, a body was found early this morning on the rocks just below the hotel. Police have been there all morning looking for evidence.”

  “I take it the body was not your reporter’s.”

  “Correct. Police haven’t identified him yet, but their thinking is he was a tourist unfamiliar with the terrain who lost his footing in the stiff winds that came through there late last night.”

  “Sounds plausible.”

  “Yeah, just like Nikoletta’s hacker made his handiwork look like accidents.”

  “Are you suggesting that the body somehow ties into your missing reporter?”

  “According to the manager, a hotel security guard saw Nikoletta leave the hotel a little after four in the morning to meet someone over by the edge of the bluff.”

  “And was that someone the body they found?”

  “The security guy never saw who she met, but she never returned.”

  Andreas picked up a pencil and began drumming its eraser on his desktop. “So, what do you think happened to her?”

  “Not a clue. But I’m worried her disappearance is somehow tied into the hacker.”

  “If you’re suggesting he had second thoughts about talking to her, or was worried that she could identify him, I’d think she’d be the body they found on the rocks.”

  “That’s why you’re the detective, and I’m just the hysterical editor.”

  “There’s another obvious angle,” said Andreas, “but it, too, doesn’t explain why a tourist ended up dead instead of your reporter. Nikoletta must have alarmed anyone who’d ever hired her hacker. Even though the cat’s out of the bag for those exposed in her article, his other clients could be worried about follow-up articles covering other activities pointing back at them.”

  Andreas heard a deep swallow on the other end of the line.

  “Um, we do have an investigative series planned to look into other incidents potentially linked to him.”

  “Who beyond you knew of those plans?”

  “My publisher and the two reporters I assigned to work with Nikoletta.” He gave Andreas the names of the two reporters. “But anyone familiar with the newspaper business could guess that’s what we’d do. I mean, that’s how you sell papers.”

  Andreas leaned back in his chair. “Okay, you’ve piqued my interest. I’ll send someone over to Naxos to look into this. Just one promise I need from you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t publish anything about your concerns for your reporter—or my unit’s involvement in this. If she’s been abducted and is still alive, the last thing she needs is for her captor to think we’re onto what happened and closing in.”

  Silence.

  “Well, do we have a deal?” asked Andreas.

  “I had to tell my publisher what happened. He went ballistic at the possibility of someone kidnapping one of his reporters. No telling what he might do.”

  “Just tell him what I said. Publicity at this time will only endanger her more. And keep your fingers crossed that he listens.”

  “Following directions is not a customary strong point among publishers.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes, you’ll try.”

  “Let me know as soon as you hear anything.”

  “That’s a two-way street,” said Andreas.

  “Understood.”

  “Great. Now let me get back to work.”

  “Thanks, Andreas.”

  Andreas stared at his dead phone. That was the first time Giorgos had ever called him by his given name.

  He’s worried.

  * * *

>   Detective Yianni Kouros looked forward to spending the coming weekend in Athens with his girlfriend, Toni, something her job playing piano in a Mykonos bar rarely permitted. This weekend, though, the bar was closed for a wedding, giving Toni the opportunity to visit him, and Yianni a break from his weekend ferryboat commute to Mykonos.

  He planned on showing his American-born girlfriend the real Athens, not the heavily promoted version sold to tourists. But that was still two days away, and at the moment he had a message to see his boss “as soon as you get in.”

  Yianni had been Andreas’s right-hand man since their days together on Mykonos, when Andreas was the island’s police chief and Yianni a brash young bull of a rookie cop. He stuck his head through the open doorway to Andreas’s office.

  Andreas was talking on the phone but waved Yianni toward a chair in front of his desk. “Yes, Minister, I understand the importance of protecting members of our free press from violence.” He rolled his eyes. “Yes, we are not Turkey.”

  Andreas put his hand over the mouthpiece, “It’s our Public Order and Citizen Protection Minister grandstanding for a publisher demanding that we find his missing reporter.”

  “What missing reporter?” whispered Yianni.

  Andreas took his hand off the mouthpiece. “Of course I’m listening. I was just telling my best detective to clear his desk to take charge of this matter.” Andreas rolled his eyes again. “Absolutely. I’ll let you know as soon as we learn anything more.” Andreas nodded. “Yes, the best to you and your wife too. Bye.” He hung up the phone, sighed, and looked at Yianni.

  “Every day I thank the Fates that I gave up that position as Minister of Public Order and returned here to the relative calm of chasing bad guys.” Andreas pointed at the phone. “The gyrations he has to go through to satisfy all the interests demanding his attention is enough to drive a person mad. In order to keep the jackals constantly nipping at his heels from getting a clear shot at his throat, he has to keep his constituents thinking only he can be relied upon to make things happen. This time he had to put on an act for a publisher who’d burst into his office venting about us failing to find a reporter I just learned might be missing.”