Pandemic by James Barrington

something for it.’
    ‘Take it, take it,’ Spiros grumbled. ‘And take the rest of this rubbish as well.’ He opened the case once again, dropped the three remaining flasks into their empty
recesses, added the red file, and slammed the lid shut.
    Ten minutes later, Nico left Aristides’s house and began the short walk to his own apartment – actually three rooms, accessed by an outside staircase, on the upper
floor of a two-storey house owned by a friend – which lay on the northern edge of the village. As he walked through the silent streets, deserted but for a handful of near-feral cats noisily
disputing their territorial rights, Nico became more conscious of the weight of the object he grasped with his right hand.
    From what Spiros had told him, it seemed that the case had remained underwater for a long time, several years at least. It was therefore probably unlikely that anyone would take an interest in
it now. And it was just a steel case after all, though specially constructed for carrying those strange flasks. The flasks themselves were something else. He still had no idea what the brown powder
was, but it just had to be valuable to somebody somewhere, otherwise the comprehensive sealing and locking of the stoppers on the flasks made absolutely no sense. And if it was valuable, there was
always the chance that someone might come looking for it.
    Nico stopped at the end of the street and considered for a few moments. It might be best to handle the steel case and its contents the same way he treated most of the other prizes that Spiros
had wrested from the Mediterranean over the years. Taking it back to his home might be asking for trouble. On the other hand, it was late and he was tired. He could hide it somewhere else in the
morning.
    Yes, he nodded, and turned right. Three minutes later he opened the door to his apartment and stepped inside, placed the steel case in the bottom of the free-standing wardrobe in his bedroom,
and walked straight through into the bathroom.
    Spiros Aristides put down the toolbox just inside the kitchen door, walked back into his sitting room and looked sourly at the three fingers still remaining in the bottom of
his bottle of Scotch. What the hell, he thought. He’d be in no fit state to dive tomorrow, but he hadn’t planned to go anywhere. He settled down at the table and poured himself another
glass. He’d finish the bottle and then call it a night.
    Twenty minutes later, as he drained the last remnant of Scotch from his glass, and lay down fully clothed on his unmade bed, Spiros Aristides sneezed. Forty-five minutes after that, sitting on
the edge of his own bed in the upstairs apartment on the northern edge of Kandíra, Nico Aristides sneezed as well.
     
Chapter 4
    Tuesday
Kandíra, south-west Crete
    Christina Polessos was seventy-eight years of age, and had lived in Kandíra most of her life. Burnt brown by the sun, she invariably wore black – almost the
Cretan national colour – in memory of her husband, dead some forty years. And that, coupled with her stooped posture, noticeably hooked nose, large dark eyes and thin and somewhat mean mouth,
gave her a quizzical, crow-like appearance. Everyone knew her, but few really liked her. She knew everyone, and returned the favour by liking almost no one.
    She especially didn’t approve of Spiros Aristides. He was a mainland Greek for openers, and had never married, which were two strikes against him right away. He drank far too much, as she
made sure everyone knew, and she was quite convinced that he was involved in something illegal every time he went out in his boat. In this, of course, she was perfectly correct, although her
oft-repeated tales of gun-running and drug-smuggling bore no relation to the truth.
    And his house! In contrast to most of the whitewashed houses in the narrow street, it looked a disgrace. The paint on the shutters was faded and peeling, the tiny garden overgrown and
weed-strewn, and