Chapter 1 – A brush pass
Rhodes City, Rhodes Island, Greece
Day 1
IT WAS DIGGER’S CURIOSITY that inadvertently hauled Rex Dalton and his wife, Catia, out of their Greek Island holiday back into the world of covert operations.
Usually, when the Daltons, both history enthusiasts, went exploring, they preferred to do it on their own, avoiding organized excursions where they had to adhere to strict timelines, predetermined routes, and often unknowledgeable guides. However, this morning after breakfast, when they visited their hotel’s information desk to collect information about the Palace of the Grand Master, the lady, speaking perfect Italian, changed their minds. “The guide today is Liza, the most knowledgeable and friendliest you’d encounter anywhere on this island. She’ll show you every nook and cranny of that palace, and she won’t rush through it. She also speaks five languages: Italian, Greek, English, French, and German.”
On the bus on the way from their hotel to the palace, Liza, a petite, good-looking, middle-aged, friendly woman with dark brown hair, told the group, “Rhodes Island is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece.” She spoke perfect English with a strong pronunciation of the r, characteristic of the Irish brogue. “Although Dodecanese means twelve islands, there are one hundred and eight islands; only twenty-six are inhabited.
“Rhodes city is the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands. It was once the home of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Colossus of Rhodes. It was a bronze and iron statue, thirty-two meters, about one-hundred and five feet tall. It was erected in honor of the sun god, Helios, for helping them fend off the ruler of Cyprus, who besieged Rhodes in 305 BC.
“It’s believed that Rhode Island, in the United States, was named after this island.”
She only had to use three of her five languages; English, Italian, and Greek, to inform her audience of twenty-one, excluding Digger. He was seated between Rex and Catia, staring at Liza as if he understood every word she was saying, irrespective of what language she spoke.
When they arrived at the palace, Liza handed out a set of wireless earphones to each member of the group. Then tested that they could all hear her before leading them to the entrance of the Gothic-style building where she stopped to give them a quick overview.
“The Palace of the Grand Master is also known as the Kastello. It was the ancient bastion of the Knights of Rhodes. That’s the name given to the Knights Hospitaller, a medieval Catholic military order, after they occupied the Island of Rhodes and established their headquarters here.
“The original palace was constructed in the late 7th century as a Byzantine fortress. After the Knights Hospitaller came to Rhodes in 1309, they converted the fortress into their administrative center and the palace of their Grand Master. The palace was damaged in the earthquake of 1481 and repaired soon afterward, and that’s the palace you see here today.
“Italy occupied the island since 1912 and repurposed the palace into this ersatz medieval style. Since the Italians rebuilt it, it served as a holiday residence for the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel III. In 1937, Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator from Italy, whose name can still be seen on the large plaque there at the entrance, transformed it into a summer residence for his high-ranking military officers and himself. After the war, it was converted into a museum.”
Rex, Catia, and Digger were standing at the back of the semicircle of tourists listening intently to Liza when Rex became aware that Digger wasn’t paying attention to Liza anymore.
Digger had a ‘Service Dog’ sticker attached to his harness. Rex had the necessary paperwork to back it up. But the big black Dutch Shepherd wasn’t a service dog. It was the ruse Rex had used ever since inheriting the dog from his friend, Trevor Madigan, a former SAS operative from Australia, who’d been killed in an ambush in Afghanistan in 2014. Digger, an Australian military dog, had been his companion since Trevor asked Rex to take care of him with his dying breath. Rex, mortally scared of dogs since he’d been attacked by one as a small child, had agreed.
And since Rex was a man of his word, he and Digger worked through their issues, and they’d become inseparable mates. Digger had acknowledged him as the alpha in their pack and accepted Catia into the pack from the moment he met her. Digger was Rex’s ‘best man’ at their wedding; he brought the wedding rings in on a dainty white satin cushion balanced on his nose.
Although Rex never learned to give Digger proper commands, like military dog handlers do, over the years, working as a team on many missions, they had developed a unique communications system. Some of Rex’s colleagues believed that the two indeed spoke a language that only they understood. However, the truth was, it was always Rex who had learned to be very attentive to Digger’s behavior as he was doing now.
Digger had gotten up from where he was sitting between him and Catia and moved forward a few paces. He was staring raptly at someone or something to Catia’s left. His ears were pitched forward, and his nose was wiggling a little. Rex could see he wasn’t alerting to danger, but something must have stirred his senses and curiosity.
Rex followed the line of Digger’s gaze, and about four paces away he found the object of interest; a man, about five foot ten, dressed in faded black Levi’s jeans and matching Levi’s jacket, dark blue t-shirt, and black sneakers. The olive-skinned man, by Rex’s estimates, in his late forties, had a smooth-shaven face, dark hair, prominent cheekbones, and dark-brown eyes, lending him an air of intellect. The man carried a small black nylon shoulder bag, about six by twelve inches, hanging off his right shoulder. Although at first glance, his posture suggested he was relaxed, it was his head moving slowly from side to side, his darting eyes, and the biting of his lower lip that were telltales of anxiety.
Rex was a highly-skilled former black operations operator with, among many other specialist aptitudes, exceptional spycraft skills. He removed his earphones, put his arm around Catia, pulled her close to him, and whispered in her ear, “The man to your left with the black shoulder bag. He’s on edge about something.”
“How do you—,” she started, turned her head slowly, and looked at the man. After a few seconds, she nodded. Catia was a former Mossad agent, skilled in street craft, surveillance, counter-surveillance, hand-to-hand combat, and use of weapons. “What’s making him nervous? He’s not behaving like he’s a fanatic about to launch an attack,” Catia whispered.
“No, he’s not aggressive. Digger would’ve warned us. I think he’s looking for someone.”
“Questions?” Liza asked in three different languages.
A few paces ahead of the Daltons was an old man with a black fedora hat and full-face silver beard, hornbill glasses with thick lenses, in a wheelchair pushed by a young woman with dark hair in her mid-thirties, dressed in dark slacks, sneakers, and sunglasses. Probably his daughter or his caretaker. The old man asked a question which Rex couldn’t hear.
But Liza’s reply he heard. “Yes, that’s correct. Archaeologists found evidence that this was the exact spot where the ancient temple of the Sun-god Helios once stood and, in all likelihood, this is also the spot where the Colossus of Rhodes stood.”
The old man asked another inaudible question. Liza replied, “Yes, in 1522, the island became part of the Ottoman Empire, and they used it as a command center.”
The old man smiled and thanked her.
“Any other questions?” Liza asked. When there were none, she said, “Please follow me.”
The group followed her through the arched entrance and ended in the quad. Other groups varying in number from fifteen to twenty-five were already inside.
While Rex and Catia surreptitiously kept Digger’s man in sight, they saw him opening the shoulder bag. They were ready to spring into action if a knife, gun, or bomb trigger came out of the bag—but he only retrieved a pair of sunglasses and a light-blue bucket hat with London printed in black on the front and donned them. He moved the black nylon shoulder bag to his left shoulder.
“Ahh… signaling someone,” Rex muttered.
“Ten o’clock. The blond man with the Roma cap,” Catia whispered.
Rex spotted a Caucasian male among a group leaving the palace heading toward them. He was in his mid to late forties, blond hair, about six feet tall, blue jeans, black t-shirt, and blue denim jacket. On his head was a black baseball cap with Roma embroidered in gold on the front. A black nylon shoulder bag identical to London’s was draped over his left shoulder.
They saw London making eye contact with Roma, and the very slight, almost imperceptible, nod from Roma.
Roma and London were a few seconds and about ten to twelve steps away from making what was known in the lexicon of covert operators as a ‘brush pass.’ A technique typically used in a crowded public area, where operatives pass information to each other. In a properly executed brush pass, they won’t even stop walking; at most, they’d bump into one another. A common method of exchanging the information was for both to carry identical objects, such as a newspaper, briefcase, magazine, or, as in this case, black nylon shoulder bags, containing the information.
Then they saw Roma come to a sudden stop and twist around. A tall woman with a shock of shoulder-length raven-black hair, large sunglasses, dressed in dark blue jeans with a white blouse and zipped up jean jacket, bumped into him. She apologized, took a step to the side, and kept on walking straight toward London, who stood about five paces away from Rex and Catia.
Roma had turned back to start walking again, but he took only one step, grabbed his heart with both hands, and dropped to his knees without making a sound, then slowly tipped forward on his face.
In different languages, people had started screaming, “Heart attack!” “Is there a doctor here?” “Get an ambulance!”
By now, the tall woman was next to London. She stopped and turned to look back at Roma, then slowly turned sideways, looked at London, and said something to him. He turned to face her looking surprised, raised his sunglasses, and smiled. The woman put her arms around his neck, and he put his arms around her in an embrace.
Digger started growling, and that was when Rex saw the stiletto in her right hand. Rex pulled the quick-release string on Digger’s leash and started toward London and the woman, but he was too late. The stiletto had plunged into London’s heart.
London screamed and dropped to his knees; his hand clasped over his chest.
The woman tried to rip the shoulder bag off London’s shoulder, but couldn’t get it off; his arm was inside the loop of the strap. The woman saw Rex and Digger coming, turned, and ran toward the exit, the stiletto still in her hand.
London toppled forward onto the gray tiles of the courtyard floor.
“Digger, follow! Don’t attack! Catia, help him,” he pointed to London. “I’m going after the woman.”
As Rex set out after the woman, she was already more than fifteen paces away. Mass hysteria erupted as people started yelling, “Terrorists!” “Attack!” “Hide!”
Digger was about three yards behind her, barking and yelping. Rex was worried that the woman, no doubt a professional killer, would hurt Digger with that stiletto if he came too close to her. But Digger must’ve understood the command not to attack as he kept his distance.
As she exited the palace gate at full speed, she turned left and headed for the nearby copse of trees.
Rex was closing in on her quickly. He was about seven yards away from her when she stopped and turned to face him and Digger with the stiletto in her left hand, swinging it in a wide defensive arc in front of her.
Rex didn’t slow down. Digger had stopped out of her reach but kept on growling and snarling.
With her right hand, she reached inside her denim jacket.
A gun!
Rex raced past Digger.
When the woman’s right hand reappeared, there was a .22 Beretta pistol in it, and she was about to turn it on Rex. He was three steps away from her; he had the momentum, he leaped into the air and kicked her in the solar plexus with both feet. The force of the kick body-slammed her into the tree behind her with a grunting thud. Her sunglasses and the stiletto were gone. She had light-gray eyes, the eeriest, most lifeless eyes he’d ever seen. Contact lenses. She was shocked and bewildered and looked as if she was going to lose consciousness. The gun was still in her right hand, which was crossed over her breasts.
Digger was next to him.
“Stand down, Digger!” Rex got up and took a step forward to disarm her. He was reaching for the gun when her hand twisted slightly, pointing the gun up at her face, and she pulled the trigger. The bullet went through the bottom of her chin, straight through her mouth into her brain. Her body fell sideways.
“Damn!”
Rex didn’t touch her or the gun. Below her mane of black hair, he noticed a patch of blonde hair—she’d been wearing a wig. He took his satellite phone out and snapped a few photos. Then he removed the wig and took a few more.
He looked around; there was no one outside who could’ve seen what just happened. He wasn’t sure if that was necessarily a good thing. He’d have to tell the police what happened, and a corroborating eyewitness would’ve been very helpful. Even so, the absence of onlookers gave him the opportunity to search the body for identification quickly. But the search confirmed Rex’s suspicion that the woman was a professional when it only produced two hundred euros in cash, which he left in the jacket pocket where he found it, and an iPhone which was switched off.
He had a decision to make; take the phone or leave it? Why would you want to do that? What are you going to do with the phone? This is not your case. Yes, but she killed at least one person and was about to kill me. His thoughts were interrupted by Digger’s yelp—a sign that he was distressed. He patted Digger’s back, “Don’t worry, it’s over, buddy, you can relax now.” He clipped the leash on. He stood, looked at the phone, which he still had in his hand, and shoved it into a side pocket of his cargo pants. “Let’s go and check on Catia.”
When they arrived back in the courtyard, Digger snarled and growled a path through the crowd for him and Rex, sat down next to Catia, and started nosing her while making soft whining noises to comfort her.
Catia was sitting on the ground. London’s upper body was resting on her lap. Her hands and face and clothes were covered in his blood. He was dead. She put her arm around Digger’s neck and whispered, “Thanks, Digger. I’m okay.”
Rex moved London’s body off her lap and laid him gently on the tile floor. Then he stood and pulled Catia up into an embrace and whispered, “It’s over. The police should be here soon.”
“Thank you. I’m okay now.” She looked in the direction where Roma had gone down. Another crowd had gathered there. “Let’s see if we can help.”
It didn’t take long to find out that Roma was dead. There was no blood.
“A massive heart attack, I suspect,” said a paramedic from England.
Rex and Catia agreed but didn’t tell him what they thought caused it.
Three people dead in less than three minutes was more than enough to ruin everyone’s day, if not their entire holiday. Within minutes the palace had been shut down. No one could come in or go out. The police were on their way.
All but a few had their cellphones out, taking photos and videos, making calls and sending text messages. Rex and Catia made no calls and sent no text messages. Still, as inconspicuously as possible, under the pretext of typing messages, they both took photos of Roma and London and tried to capture as many of the other faces in the courtyard as they could on video.
“Let’s find a quiet place,” Catia said after a few minutes. “I have to tell you something.”
With all the people still milling around in anguish and uncertainty, many of the benches beneath the arcades of the quad were empty. As they made their way to an empty bench, they passed within two paces of the old man in the wheelchair and his minder. The old man was staring quietly and impassively at them as they passed. Rex couldn’t help but wonder what was going through the old man’s mind, he must have been in shock. The woman with him nodded at them but didn’t say anything.
They picked an isolated bench and sat down with Digger between them. Catia noticed Digger’s intent stare at the old man and the woman who were now about fifteen yards away. She reached out and scratched Digger’s back, “Don’t worry, Digger, they’ll be okay now.” She turned to Rex. “It never ceases to amaze me how sensitive he is to people’s emotions.”
“It’s mindboggling isn’t it,” Rex said.
“Okay,” Catia said, “here’s what I want to tell you. In the few seconds, while the man I tried to help was still conscious, he asked me to take a USB flash drive out of his shoulder bag and give it to the CIA man...”
“CIA man?”
“Yes, apparently the blond man with the Roma cap was CIA. I didn't want to rummage through his bag in full view of everyone, so I just shoved his bag into mine. I hope in the turmoil no one noticed.”
Rex nodded slowly. “Maybe no one did, unless there were backups as there often are when a brush pass takes place. Still, with two calamities happening in such quick succession, a watcher would’ve had to keep an eye specifically on you all the time to notice what you did.”
“What about the woman you went after?”
“Dead….”
“Did you…”
“No, she preferred to send a .22 bullet into her brain rather than being captured.”
“A zealot,” Catia murmured.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“I saw them hugging, they must have known each other,” Catia said.
“Yes, it certainly looked that way.”
Catia opened her shoulder bag, and under the charade of searching for something, she unzipped London’s bag. Inside was a packet of chewing gum, a small tin with breath mints, a small pack of man-tissues, an iPhone, and a metallic-red thirty-two gigabyte USB flash drive. She took the iPhone and flash drive out and placed them in one of the pouches inside her bag.
Rex caught a glimpse of the phone as Catia transferred it. It looked the same as the one he took from the dead woman. He told Catia about it.
“Okay, I think we should try to get the man’s bag back to him,” Rex said. He took his bomber jacket off, emptied all the pockets, and pointed in London’s direction. “Let’s cover him with this.”
Catia nodded, took the jacket from Rex, and folded it over the same arm as she had her shoulder bag. They walked over to the body, where she placed the jacket over the dead man’s face. London’s shoulder bag, minus the flash drive and iPhone, was back with his body.
Back on the bench, Rex said, “So, if we were to believe that the blond guy was indeed CIA, I guess your guy was his informant, and the woman was here to prevent the exchange from happening. I suspect she gave the CIA guy a ‘heart attack’ with some kind of rapid-action lethal injection.”
Catia nodded slowly. “And thus, we find ourselves in the middle of a real spy drama with a poisoned syringe, a secret message, and dead agents.”
“Damn. Didn’t they get the memo that we don’t do this shit anymore?” Rex said.
Catia smiled. “Apparently not. But first things first, how do you want to handle the police?”
“I suggest we tell them the truth. . . but only about the parts they need to know. As far as I’m concerned, what they need to know only starts with the moment the people started yelling about a heart attack. What they don’t need to know is about the flash drive, the iPhones, and what the man with the London hat told you.
“And, of course, they don’t need to know what we think happened here?”
“Agreed,” said Rex just when the police sirens were heard.
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