Chapter 45
Eve isn’t sure that she’s ever seen anywhere as beautiful as the Aegean Sea from the air. The brassy sky, the translucent sea, the precipitous islands with their miniature harbours and their clustered white dwellings. And the dazzling light, pouring into the cockpit of the circling helicopter.
The pilot points downwards. ‘Skila. We land on the beach, OK?’
Eve gives him a thumbs-up. The island’s tiny. A near-vertical cliff sloping down to a beach of bone-white sand, with a single white villa set on a rock shelf. And there, on the beach, a single figure.
The helicopter comes in low over the shallow turquoise waves. Above the beach it levels, seems to rock in the air, and touches down in a whirl of sand.
The pilot reaches across Eve to open the passenger door, and she climbs out.
Oxana is standing some distance away, watching with wary, exhausted eyes.
She’s unzipped her wetsuit to the waist, revealing a black one-piece swimsuit.
Her dark blonde hair is unkempt and stiff with salt.
Her face and arms are tanned pinkish-brown, her forehead, nose and shoulders are peeling, and a blackish, bloody line is scored across her upper neck.
Eve approaches her, conscious of each step, feeling her sandals pressing into the thin surface crust of sand. She sees that the line across Oxana’s neck is a bullet track, and a recent one, judging by the raw state of the wound.
Oxana watches her, not moving, not blinking.
‘Johnny said you needed me.’
The faintest of nods.
‘So I’m here.’ Eve holds out a hand. ‘It’s time to go.’