A jeep screeches to a halt in front of them, blocking the road, and four men jump out, shouting: 'Police! Police!' Two of them are brandishing steel batons. the kind cops use in riots. There is some crazy accusation of a handbag stolen from the club. Cameron wonders: 'How can they be police when they are wearing Club Tropicana T-shirts?' The cousins and another man they are walking with obey when told to put their hands against a wall. Cameron whispers urgently to Doujon, who has been known to fight back like a little dog that doesn't recognise its relative size: Just give them what they want, it's not worth a fight.' They are frisked and the men, finding little, demand passports. But the cousins have left them back at the hotel. This seems to infuriate the men and there is much shouting in angry, incomprehensible Greek. Cameron pushes Doujon out of the little circle the men have created, and the third man takes off at a run. Cameron says, 'Let's get out of here, hoping they can just brazen it out and walk away. That's when the largest of the men opens his telescopic baton and smashes it into Cameron's face, breaking his nose, which begins to bleed profusely. Doujon jumps back into the fray to help Cameron, and with a sickening thud the baton is smashed into his head. Doujon drops straight down anc his attacker falls on him, raining yet more blows to his head. Cameron is screaming at the man to stop and has just managed to drag him off his cousin when Matthew, one of the guys they have been partying with, comes along on a motorbike. He doesn't hesitate to defend his new friends. 'What the fuck are you doing? Leave him alone!' he booms. By himself he takes on three of the men and does quite a lot of damage. But in a callous manoeuvre he hasn't anticipated the four men manage to pick him up bodily. Holding a limb each they run him head first into the roadside rock wall. Not content with the sickening level of injury done the first time, they pick him up and pound him once more into the sandstone He's out cold. The men get back in their jeep and flee, leaving a scene of utter devastation behind them. When Matthew comes to he is in agony and has blood all over his face. He tears off his singlet to wipe it away. Doujon is unconscious and his cousin and lifelong companion is cradling his wounded head, calling his name over and over. Then there is only silence. With the shouting and violence gone, the meltemi can be felt again on the skin. But the fragrance of the day has changed. There is blood and terror in the air. Cameron, in shock and considerable pain, his face swollen and bloody, is growing extremely anxious about Doujon. He's also mindful of Matthew, now sitting dazed and babbling on the ground at the bottom of the rock wall, his head swollen and bleeding. How can this have happened? What provoked the ridiculous rage in these guys as they meted out justice of their own on people they didn't know without a shred of evidence of wrongdoing? To Cameron's enormous relief Doujon does comes around after about five minutes. He has no idea what has happened and just wants to go home to rest. 'Please, just take me home,' he says. But Cameron is having none of it. Someone calls an ambulance and Cameron and Matthew ride with Doujon to the local medical centre. Doujon is awake when the ambulance arrives on the beach road to collect him but on the journey to the medical centre experiences a violent seizure. Cameron and Matthew have seen nothing like it. When the spasms stop there is no rousing Doujon. At the hospital Doujon is whisked away and the staff won't let Cameron see him. They won't reply when Cameron pleads for news of his cousin's condition, and seem frantic. Many hours pass before the cousins are put on an emergency army medical evacuation plane and flown to Athens. This wasn't in the itinerary. In other circumstances a ride in an army plane would have been thrilling. Cameron hangs on to the overhead netting and to the receding hope that Douj will somehow be all right. When the medicos come to talk to him they say nothing can be done- even though Doujon's body is still working perfectly, he is brain dead. Of course, extensive tests will need to be conducted before this can be determined to be a legal certainty, but the tests are mere formalities. They say they are sorry; there is really nothing they can do. It takes Cameron seven anguished hours to make the call home, not to Oliver and Rosemarie, but to his dad, Hugh. It is the hardest thing he has ever had to do in his life.