Читать книгу The Isle of Olympia - Andreas Karpasitis - Страница 8

The hotel’s bar was slowly emptying out. The only source of noise came from the bartender as he cleaned his station.

James stuck out like a sore thumb. Papers and folders filled his corner table, and his old, worn-down laptop rested on his lap. In all of the hours that had passed, his note taking had not slowed down; he continued to murmur to himself, random words that wouldn’t make sense to anyone. French police, the diary, the royal family, pregnant. He took a quick sip from his whiskey. All the ice melted a long time ago.

Two enormous security guards entered the bar with determined looks on their faces, seemingly prepared to put an end to who they probably viewed as a squatter one way or another. The bartender quickly rushed in front of them. Worn out by the situation, from the continuous complaints from the customers to the explosive and unpredictable attitude of a drunk, his eyes were filled with relief as he came in front of the guards. It wasn’t his full responsibility now.

As the three men were chatting, the freakishly tall guard would stare at James from the corner of his eyes. The bartender continued whispering to them as they slowly moved towards James’s messy table.

“Sir, we need to ask you to leave the premises,” the more prominent guard with the shaved shiny head and the earpiece commented, as James looked at the daunting figure towering on top of him. “Please collect your things, pay your bill, which I guess should be a fairly large amount, and move on, there is no need to cause any unnecessary hassle. Let’s call it a night.”

James seemed to hesitate at first, giving a quick glance around the nearly deserted bar. Then, taking his chances, he quickly hoisted up to face the guard. As his head came to rest at chest level of the guard, he stumbled upon his words but managed to get the nerve to confront him.

“I realize you are here to do your job, not a fancy job if I may say. I realize that it’s late, and I should be heading out soon,” he replied in his heavy British accent, the guard’s eyebrows frowning in anger. “But please do understand, I have a crucial meeting that should be happening any second now. So if you two idiots could just move on, continue living your insignificant little lives, and leave me alone, I would appreciate it. Thank you very much.”

James ran his fingers through his hair before he quickly returned to his seat. As he started typing on his computer, he completely ignored the two guards looming on top of him. The bald guard was clenching his jaw as he pulled the earpiece out of his ear and relaxed his black tie. With a greater speed than James thought possible, he abruptly forced the screen of the laptop shut. James was able to pull his hands out of the way in the nick of time.

“What the hell man? Don’t you dare touch my possessions again.” James exploded, raising his voice to threatening levels.

“Leave,” The guard requested, his hand still squeezing the laptop. “Now.”

“Mate, I do not think you want to mess with me.” James jaw tightened. “Not today, sir.” He stood up again. In front of the guard, he seemed like an insignificant nobody, but his posture was still menacing, as he stood his ground.

He had the confidence of a hundred men, and for James, this was just a normal day in the office. The confrontations and conflicts he had through his life as an agent made this moment feel like child’s play. For James, the opponent’s size was never an issue. It was all about wits, dexterity, and courage. Even when his blood alcohol level was through the roof, he could focus on a fraction of a millisecond. Yes, he hadn’t been active in the field for the past few years, but he still hadn’t lost his edgy and sometimes dangerous courage.

“Guys,” Murphy’s voice sounded from the depth of the room. “Calm down, let’s talk about this.” It seemed that James would not have to show his long-ago acquired skills from his life in the MI6 tonight as Murphy walked up to the table.

“Saved by the goddamn bell,” he jokingly said to the guard with a smirk on his face as he winked at Murphy. He slowly started to sit down. Without a moment of hesitation, the guard grabbed him from the collar as he tried to pull him back up. Murphy, in quick, defensive gestures, pulled the guard away and looked at James straight in the eyes.

“Let’s all keep calm now,” he continued as his head moved from one person to the other numerous times. He knew now that it was time to flash his credentials, one of his least favorite things to do. For him, it was weakness; the inability to properly handle a situation. He slowly pulled his badge and gracefully flicked it open in the direction of the guard.

“We just need half an hour, nothing more,” Murphy stated. “The bar is almost empty. I will maintain control of the situation,” he said with unflinching determination.

“As long as you keep him under control, you can have as long as you like, sir,” the guard nodded, as he took a step away from the table.

For Murphy, this was the usual reaction. If his badge was involved, he could ask for a glass of water and get a bottle of Chardonnay instead. Not always. He could think of multiple times that being a CIA agent brought the worst out of the situations, but the positives far outweighed the negatives.

Murphy took a seat across the table from James as he checked the surroundings cautiously. The car outside the hotel, that seemed to follow Ethan, smelled like trouble. Instinct was his most trusted feeling. The bar had a couple of guests sitting in the opposite corner, getting ready to pay the bill.

James’s face was buried in his computer screen, the light bouncing off the dark circles around his eyes in the dimmed lit bar, completely ignoring Murphy.

“Hello James.”

“Murphy. It’s been a long time,” James replied, his eyes still on the computer screen. “So, you are here to make me change my mind, right? You want to interfere in something that’s out of your jurisdiction?” James paused as he shook his head. “The CIA never ceases to surprise me. What if I told you, Murphy, that if I shared all the information I have collected in the past decade, it would completely change the way you look at your government; you will abandon your blind and biased beliefs. You will lose your loyalty to an agency you sacrificed so much for.” James looked at Murphy as he picked up his glass of whiskey. “Well, Mr. Murphy Coleman, you are already here, so you’ll have to listen.”

James knew that Murphy’s history with the agency was long. The agency was his life. He sacrificed his somewhat short marriage due to his blind patriotic loyalty to the CIA’s war on terror and the current conflicts with the Russians. It was an endless war against everyone that posed a real threat. After his divorce, he became so recluse that his social life completely collapsed; work was his only and true devotion.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” Murphy said to the bartender.

“I believe we should cut to the chase, Mr. Coleman.”

“Of course, sir, let’s do so,” Murphy replied, half curious to see what James was obsessing about and why he was there wasting his precious time.

James pulled up a photo from the numerous folders lying on the table. Carefully, he placed it in front of Murphy.

“August 31^st, 1997. Paris, France.” James pointed his finger to the photograph, a snapshot from a surveillance camera.

Murphy rolled his eyes as he leaned in to have a closer look at the photo. The picture showed the crashed Mercedes Benz of Princess Diana. James’s finger was pointing on the motorcycle stopped next to the completely destroyed car. The passenger of the bike was leaning his head through the wreckage.

“There were a lot of theories back then. The driver was drunk, the reporters caused the crash; a possible assassination. The royal family wanted her out of the way, and they wouldn’t accept a possible marriage with a Muslim. Or she had damaging information for the Royal Family. So many theories.” He then added, “Sightings of the motorcycle were also mentioned. That didn’t take a long time to die out, even though there were actual references by the sole survivor of the crash.”

Murphy took a sip from his whiskey, which the bartender just placed on the table as James pulled a few more photographs from the envelopes. They were still security camera snapshots, but they looked different, they had a different color, different feel. James shuffled around the photos, giving Murphy time to make sense of what they were depicting. He eventually pulled them towards his chest, hiding them entirely.

“But then I came across this,” James said with a sense of pride. “I’ve started looking into this sometime in two thousand and ten or eleven. The exact year is a bit of a daze. It was sometime after our meeting. Back then, I didn’t have touchable proof; they were just assumptions. I thought I was getting there, but weirdly enough, I would always come to a dead end. Like someone was trying to stop it. That’s when my life also started to follow a downward spiral: accusations, rumors, past mistakes. I was losing leads, documents. That’s when I started being paranoid and extra careful. Since 2011, I’ve been to Paris more times than I can count, trying to piece this thing together. Last year, my last visit there, lasted for around six months; I went through everything and everyone.

“I tried to follow the bike, but I couldn’t; it was almost impossible. But I could follow it up to a certain point, and that’s where I focused all my energy. Trying to figure out what the people on the bike did next. And after fifteen years, it’s pretty hard, believe me. People die, people forget, people just let go. But if you persevere and you keep asking, you will get the information you need. Even if sometimes it’s just by pure coincidence.” James punctuated his point by placed the photos on to the table, stacking them in an orderly fashion. Murphy looked at the first photograph. It showed the bike in a small Parisian alley. It was dark, but you could clearly distinguish a motorcycle.

“I kept hanging out by the area close to where the bike was first sighted. Walked around the streets, went to the bars, went to the restaurants,” James added, seeming to intensify Murphy’s realizations that the man sitting across him not only was an alcoholic but had also developed a frightening obsession.

Conspiracy theorists abounded, but James was a special case. Murphy continued to listen reluctantly and with the apparent unwillingness to take things seriously.

“One day, I went to a café and I ordered an espresso. It was one of these small one-person coffee shops. You know, where they have a couple of tables, and they have gourmet, roasted coffee. Well, the owner, around his fifties, started chatting with me. One thing led to the next, and I briefly mentioned my concerns and what I was looking into. I also showed him the snapshot of the bike, and then he said this,” James paused, and took a fairly big sip from his whiskey, “he said this exact phrase ‘oh, yes, the bike, I remember this bike, it stopped here, in front of my shop.’”

James watched as surprise colored Murphy’s face. He knew the same things were running through Murphy’s mind as when James had this revelation. The impression was that all possible scenarios had been checked at the time of the accident. Murphy leaned in closer with interest.

“Oh, someone seems intrigued,” James pointed out before continuing. “At that point, I was overwhelmed and excited. But that didn’t stop me from still searching for a camera around the small alley. I turned to see if the café had a camera. As expected, it didn’t, but to make sure I asked the man sitting next to me if they had one. He said no. I was getting disappointed, as this could have been a huge lead, something that no one else had come across before.” James sipped more of his whiskey; taking each down just like water—one after the other.

Murphy’s face sagged.

“I quickly grabbed my stuff and stood up, looking for a couple of euro to pay for my coffee. The man, watching me, clarified his statement. He explained how this was a fairly bad area, and his store would get robbed once in a while. In order to deter potential thieves, they were trying out a new surveillance system. ‘It didn’t work,’ the man said. They broke the camera a few months later, which apparently was a couple of days after the incident.” James took a deep breath as he revealed the second snapshot. The bike was still static, right next to the walkway, the two passengers with their helmets on. A car could be spotted entering the alley in the background.

Murphy had moved to the edge of his seat, nearly falling off. James watched as Murphy’s eyes flicked to the remaining snapshots in his hand.

James, without saying anything, pulled out the next photo, which showed the car further in the alley. The following picture was of the car next to the bike. The camera shot the pictures in profile— about twenty, twenty-five feet away.

“I couldn’t make a face at the beginning,” James added. “It took me a while, but I managed to clear the picture, I didn’t want anyone else involved so I had to get this done myself.”

Murphy squinted at the photo. The passengers had helmets on, and the car had tinted windows.

James pulled the next photo. It was a close up of the car; the second passenger of the bike was leaning towards the back seat of the vehicle—the window half-opened. A female figure appeared from inside. It wasn’t clear who it was, but you could guess who it could have been when suddenly James pulled the last photo. It was an extreme close up, digitally enhanced. You could see the top half of Diana’s face, her distinctive nose and eyes. Murphy’s eyes lit up as if confirming the thought that it was definitely her. At least, the woman seemed to be her.

James watched Murphy’s expression as it changed. It was as if he could read Murphy’s mind: Yes, this drunk ex-MI6 agent may be showing him made-up evidence, and maybe he is a risk, but at that specific moment, he crossed the line. However, Murphy didn’t get up and storm away, he slowly pulled the picture closer. In the background, the figure of another individual could be distinguished but with extreme difficulty.

“What does this mean?” Murphy asked, his tone neutral.

“Well, my theory is the following: first of all, she’s alive and well.” James nodded and chuckled. “And secondly, the evidence is strong that she was also pregnant. Pregnant with a child that wouldn’t had been accepted so easily. At the time, her relationship was strongly criticized by the royal family. It was also widely known that she wanted to find her peace. She was in love. They managed to fake their deaths to escape and live their own lives out of the restrains of their families and the spotlights of the society they were living in,” James added as he tapped his index finger on the photograph, pointing to the bike. “The most interesting part is the people that helped them. I have a few undeniable facts that they acted before, and that they are probably involved in a much bigger organization than you and I can even comprehend—”

“Listen,” Murphy interrupted, as he pulled one of the photographs closer to him. “From experience, any amount of surveillance footage cannot prove anything for certain.” He brushed his finger over the faded face of what seemed to be Princess Diana. “She can be a look-a-like, a so-called doppelgänger, or possibly this footage is fake. There can be so many other explanations, even with what I’ve seen through my career as a secret agent, it’s hard for me to believe that this was all a lie. If it was a lie, I would have probably known—”

“Come on Murphy, remove those goddamn blinders and see the evidence for what they are,” James exhaled and with agitated moves, stood up and quickly piled up the photos and roughly collected the documents. “I need to visit the bathroom, be right back.” James continued gathering whatever pieces of paper thought were important and didn’t want to leave exposed.

With big and nervous movements, James passed through the space between him and Murphy, while avoiding any unnecessary physical contact, and walked away. When he was a few feet away, he turned around and looked at Murphy.

“Would you get me one more please—double whiskey, lots of ice.”

In his peripherals, James saw the bartender roll his eyes.

Murphy looked stunned. Not that long ago, James had looked and sounded more composed, more reliable, and more trustworthy. And now — Murphy took a quick sip from his not so chilled whiskey; as he briefly shut his eyes, he took a deep breath.