Chapter 25 Showboat
Iona’s racing boat Penelope was the star attraction at the end of the Akti Enosseos pier. Iona was besieged by teenagers and young men who had jumped from the dock onto Penelope’s extended foredeck. A dozen or more of them now surrounded Iona on the dock, taking selfies with her in the background. Several of them started a chant, “Mathilda! Mathilda!”
Phaesta was confused. “Who is this ’Mathilda’ and why do they want selfies with you?”
“They think I’m a famous racing-boat driver named Mathilda Wiberg. Last year she was the first woman to win the UIM Formula 2 World Championship. A few minutes ago one of these kids took my picture and used a face-swap program on his cellphone to paste my face onto a press release of Mathilda receiving the winner’s trophy. He posted it to TikTok and sent it to his friends. Now they all think I’m her.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“I AM serious. Look over there at the kids arriving on bicycles and electric scooters, racing to get here to see the famous race boat lady.”
Alexandra pushed her way through the obstacle course of bicycles lain on the ground. She felt her cellphone vibrate in her shirt pocket. Colonel Verranos’s instant messenger flashed onto the screen.
whats going on alexa looks like a mob scene
dunno myself some sort of teen-age mass selfie rave
is dimitri there
next to me
tell him to follow the male accomplices they might be part of the nea chora smuggling gang
what do i do with the umbrella
give it to dimitri to stash in his hotel room tell dimitri if the attackers turn on him he should point the umbrella at them they will think it is still armed
gotta go the perp wants me on the boat to go to her studio
go girl
“Alexandra, HURRY! We need to leave,” Iona shouted. “This mob is crazy!”
Alexandra had to serpentine her way through bicycles, scooters, and young men in the delirium of idol worship to reach the ramp to Penelope’s open-air cabin. Phaesta extended her hand to steady her. Penelope was rocking against the dock’s rubber bumpers from the milling mass of young people on the foredeck clamouring for selfies with Iona.
“ΣΤΑΜΑΤΗΣΤΕ ΟΛΟΙ EVERYBODY STOP!” Iona screamed. “ΤΕΛΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΣΕΛΦΙ! NO MORE SELFIES!”
The teenagers reluctantly jumped down onto to the pier. They mollified themselves by showing each other their selfies.
The two assassination accomplices had regained enough vision to stumble away from the scene. Dimitri followed them a dozen metres behind. They were still semi-blind and wouldn’t think to look back to see if they were being followed.
Iona sat down in the captain’s chair, swearing nonstop in Greek, “γαμημένοι μαλάκες παιδιά, gamiménoi malákes paidiá fucking shithead asshole kids! I’d like to strangle them with their cellphone cables.”
“Where is Dimitri?” Phaesta asked.
“Went back to his hotel. The kids were too much for him.”
“That makes two of us,” Iona spat.
She snapped open a waterproof switch panel, inserted a key and turned it. A deep-throated whine emerged from below the seat where Alexandra and Phaesta sat side by side. Penelope rumbled into life.
“The turbines need a minute to warm up,” Iona explained. “I’m furious with these kids, but I feel I owe it to them to give them a show of what a racer like Penelope can do. We will be obliged to leave the harbour at a speed no greater than five knots. Once we are in deep water past the lighthouse, I will double back outside the sea wall and give these kids a show they will never forget. The manoeuvres will get pretty violent. Are you καλά, kalá with that?”
Iona disappeared into the cabin and re-emerged with three yellow foul-weather ponchos with oversized trouser legs.
“We are going to get really wet, so make sure these are completely zipped up. Pull the strings that surround your face very tight.”
Iona quickly slipped into her poncho, then walked forward onto the front deck and addressed the awe-struck youngsters in Greek.
“Kαλά, everybody. Go on out to the Defklallonos Seawall leading to the Lighthouse and walk to the Firkas Bastion. I’m going to put on a Mathilda Wiberg boat show for you!”
She returned to her seat, put her right hand on the turbine throttle, her left hand on the steering tiller, looked over her shoulder and backed Penelope out into the harbour’s exit lane. Penelope was sluggish moving forward at five knots. She wallowed through the water like a hippopotamus in mud.
They neared the lighthouse.
“Alexandra and Phaesta, reach behind your seats and you will find some safety straps and buckles. They cross from your shoulders to the buckles on the opposite hip. There is a second seat belt that crosses over your hip. Pull the belts as tight as you can. You are sitting on three Vericor gas turbines totalling 18,000 horsepower at 30,000 rpm and spray is going to be flying in every direction.”
Iona circled well clear of the lighthouse shoals, then aligned Penelope with the seawall thirty metres offshore where the water was deep enough. She let Penelope glide to a halt while she strapped herself into the captain’s chair.
She screamed “Dikty-y-y-y-n-a-a-a” and shoved the throttles forward to full. The low whine of the turbines erupted into a scream so deafening that Alexandra wanted to cover her ears but she was pinned to her seat by the acceleration.
Penelope lunged from dead stop to her top speed of 65 knots or 120 km/hour in seconds. By the time Penelope passed the wide-eyed teenagers standing at the Firkas Bastion, Penelope’s rooster tail erupted out of the water higher than the Lighthouse. Iona swerved Penelope into a sharp left turn which had them skidding sideways across the water. Penelope’s hull had been designed without a keel, so even when sliding broadside her deck remained level.
Iona swerved Penelope through several high-speed slaloms, then slewed into a tight left full circle and pulled the throttles back to idle. Penelope responded by spinning in a circle like a top, slowing down with each full turn. Iona then aligned Penelope parallel with the Defklallonos Seawall, pointing west.
She looked back at Alexandra.
“Kalá?”
Alexandra shouted, “I haven’t had this much fun since I wrecked my first car drag racing my brother on East Seventh Street in Manhattan. Do it again!”
Iona flashed her a thumb’s up. She pushed the throttle levers to full again. Penelope leapt out of the water as she accelerated forward. At top speed and directly alongside the Firkas Bastion, Iona pulled on a lever that reversed the turbine jets from facing astern to facing forward. “Emergency stop!” she screamed. An enormous eruption of water billowed up on either side of the hull, spraying off to the sides in a giant fan that drenched the teens on top of the Bastion. They were in ecstasy.
Alexandra was hurled forward so hard by the deceleration she was grateful for the tight straps holding her in.
Penelope had slowed from 65 knots to full stop within three of her own lengths. It took longer for the tower of water hurled skyward to rain back down than to bring Penelope to a stop.
Iona pressed the restraining belt release on her captain’s chair, bounded out, stepped up to the foredeck, faced the incredulous teens on the bastion, threw kisses at them with her hands, and bowed low in a ballet curtsey. A forest of cellphones flashed.
She returned to the captain’s chair and belted herself in.
Alexandra shouted, “Chania is going to have a bonanza night on TikTok!”
Iona replied, “Let’s get to Paraleia Ménies!” She pushed the throttles full forward. Penelope geysered a towering rooster tail as she raced across half-metre waves at 65 knots. The teens on the Bastion rushed en masse to the Lighthouse to record Penelope’s white plume all the way to the Rhodopou Peninsula.
They were not alone. The woman assassin stood atop the twenty-metre-high parapet wall in the old Byzantine-era Fortezza. Her cellphone record Penelope’s plume until it abruptly stopped. She noted a slight indent in the profile of the Rhodopou as it descended to the sea.
Later in her rental room she brought up Google Earth on her Russian-made laptop. The indent was named Ущелье Фундас, Fundas Gorge. It descended into a fishhook shaped cove labelled Паралия Мениес, Paraleia Ménies. Google Earth’s resolution had improved to the point where the woman could detect a dock with a small boat on one side and a large boat on the other, an elongated building with solar panels, a large satellite dish, a polytent structure, and a second white building with solar panels and a translucent roof.
No other structure was visible within a five kilometre circle.
Perfect. I will be back in Russia by the time their bodies are found, she thought.