The Evolution of Fear (Claymore Straker #2) - Paul E. Hardisty Page 0,79

Larnaca.

Hope again dressed his wounds. ‘Do you want to look in a mirror?’ she said. ‘You look like a stray without a home.’

Clay trimmed up the main, patted the cockpit scupper. ‘This is my home.’

Hope sat with her back against the cabin bulkhead, watching him as he trimmed sail, corrected course. After a long while she looked him in the eyes. Her face was set hard. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’ve always been taught that death is a good thing.’

Clay locked her gaze. ‘So was I.’

‘Do you think it is, Clay?’

‘In the way I was taught? No.’

‘The war.’

Clay nodded. ‘It’s not good or bad, Hope. You can’t think that way. It’s inevitable, that’s all.’

She paused, hung on this a moment. ‘It’s inevitable because evolution demands it. Death keeps the genetic code fresh. Therefore it must be good.’

‘QED?’

She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around herself. The breeze wisped her long hair about her face. ‘Our chromosomes are capped by repetitive strands of DNA that protect them from fraying. Telomeres they’re called. As we age, these telomeres gradually burn out, like fuses. And when they do, we start to die. Death is programmed into us from the start.’

Clay traced the horizon with his eyes. ‘Those men didn’t die of old age.’

‘No, they didn’t,’ she said in a whisper, barely audible over the wind. ‘It was evolution’s other imperative.’

He eased the main sheet, trimmed up the Genoa. ‘Don’t overanalyse, Hope.’ Not now. Later you will have time. More than you could ever want.

‘The killing gene,’ she said. ‘A throwback to our days as hunters. We’re programmed to kill.’

Clay said nothing.

‘More than that, Clay. To enjoy killing.’

Clay looked out to sea, pushed this away. ‘Don’t, Hope.’

‘It’s part of you, Clay.’

He considered a reply, abandoned it. After a while he said: ‘I can tell you, theory doesn’t help.’

They lapsed into silence again, the breeze fluking across the flat grey sea. A couple of gulls sideslipped over them, wingtip close, then disappeared towards Syria.

‘You saw what they painted on the wall,’ Clay said, breaking the quiet. ‘Neo-Enosis.’

She frowned, nodded. ‘Chrisostomedes has been warning for months that they would take action.’

‘What is Guenyeli?’ he said.

Hope curled up against the forward cockpit bulkhead. ‘On Christmas Eve 1958, Turkish Cypriot militia across the island attacked Greek Cypriots in their homes. Hundreds were killed, including women, children and old people. The village of Guenyeli was one of the worst. Thirty people, mostly children, were locked inside a schoolhouse and burned alive.’

‘1958. Jesus Christ.’

‘Revenge has no statute of limitations. Here especially.’

‘Just what you’d expect from Neo-Enosis.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘But there’s something I don’t understand.’ He’d not had time to consider it until now. ‘Those men tonight, the ones with the guns.’

‘Murderers.’ She put her head on her knees a moment, looked back up at Clay. ‘This will make the Commission’s work almost impossible. If people were scared to talk before, just imagine how difficult it will be to get any credible testimony now.’

‘There’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘Those weren’t Greek Cypriots, Hope. Any of them.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Were you listening to them?’

‘No, I…’

‘They were speaking Russian.’

29

Looking Down Through Blood

They passed the Ayia Napa headlands just after noon the next day and brought Flame into the Larnaca marina four hours later. They’d spoken little, taking turns on watch so the other could sleep below. Now they stood by Clay’s rental car, the late-afternoon sun slanting across the marina car park. Clay could see the stress on Hope’s face, the circles under her eyes like bruises, the lines around her mouth deeper, more anxious than before. A few hours can change the way you see everything.

They agreed that Clay would drive Hope to her house near Paphos. It was Wednesday, Maria was looking after the seminar, and there was no reason for Hope to go back to Nicosia and the university. Weekends she usually spent working at the Lara Beach research station she’d set up almost five years ago with a series of grants from the EU and the Government of Cyprus. Clay knew she didn’t want to be alone.

They drove along the coast road, watching the Med flash past, the tired fields littered with stone, the soil stripped away to reveal the island’s bare white bones, the forests that once covered this place centuries gone now, hacked away by successive empires. Just after dusk, Clay stopped at a roadside periptero. Hope got out, stretched her legs and disappeared into the shop. Clay walked through the dust of the parking lot to a payphone