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 "..." – "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.