Kitabı oku: «The Lost Labyrinth»
The Lost Labyrinth
Will Adams
To Robert, Eleanor and Grace
Table of Contents
Cover
Titlepage
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About The Author
Other Books By
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
Crete, 1553 B.C.
The food hadn’t quite run out yet, but it would soon. And last night the snows had arrived, laying a white blanket over the plain, cutting off the pass. No relief would be coming now. Not for a month at least. More likely not until spring.
It was over.
The fire had gone out days before. There was no more wood. Not that Pijaseme needed a brand to navigate these caves. They were a natural labyrinth, yet he knew them better than any man who’d ever lived. He’d spent fifty-two summers in the service of the gods here, presiding for the last ten over the temple outside, during which time he’d led the discovery and consecration of three new galleries. But he kept his hand to the wall all the same. So much had changed these past years that it was reassuring to know that some things were immutable.
He could remember the moment still. It had emblazed upon his mind. For years, the goddess had been angry. For years, he and his fellow high priests had sought to understand their offence, the better to make reparation. But each of them had offered different solutions, and the goddess had grown unhappier. He’d been on the final descent to Knossos for the great harvest gathering when a light like sunrise had burst upon the northern horizon. For a moment he’d been euphoric: he’d prayed all his life that the goddess herself would come while he yet lived. But then he’d realised she’d come in anger.
And what anger!
Her roar had deafened him for days. Her hail of molten rock had set forests on fire all across the island. The waves she’d sent, as tall as mountains, had destroyed their fleets and ports. She’d blacked out the sky for many moons and assailed them with an extraordinary violence of storms. Ash had fallen calf deep upon their fields, killing their crops and trees and herds, blighting them with boils and deadly wasting diseases and causing this brutal, endless famine.
He reached the great gallery. It was brighter than he could ever remember, the sunlight that filtered through the thin crevice in its roof magnified by the mirrors of snow around its edges. A flake fell coldly against his temple, then ran like a tear down his cheek. He watched more arrive, fluttering slow as tiny feathers. Perhaps this was what the island needed. A purge of clean pure snow. Perhaps when it melted, it would take the ashes of the past with it, and the island would be born anew.
But Pijaseme wouldn’t be there to see it.
He’d already prepared the poppy-juice. Now he poured it into the goblet. A gust of wind played the crevice like a horn as he did so. The Minotaur was roaring. He looked up at it towering above him, set there by the gods themselves as guardian of the island’s oldest and most sacred labyrinth, which was why so many craftsmen and architects had made the pilgrimage here, to glean inspiration for their palaces. He poured a small libation in the basin at its feet before draining the rest in one go, grimacing against the taste. Then he walked down the corridor of axes to the great throne, where he set the bull’s mask and horned crown upon his head and tried to buckle the sacred robe around his throat. But he was too weak from age and hunger to bear its weight, so he left it draped over the throne’s high shoulders instead.
The poppy-juice began to ply its comforts. He felt his goddess smile, pleased by his choice of penance. He picked up the bone-handled knife and teased the wrinkled pale skin of his inner forearm with its tip.
It had been a fearful time, not knowing why the world had changed, or what to do. Survivors had converged on Knossos from every corner of the island, seeking comfort in numbers, terrified not merely by the cataclysms, but also by the knowledge that there was nothing now to prevent their one-time subjects coming here to take their revenge for all the casual cruelties they’d suffered at their hands. Nothing to stop them looting the holiest places of their sacred treasures, either.
It had been Pijaseme himself who’d suggested a solution to this latter problem—hiding all those treasures here, in the sure knowledge that no outlander would ever find them. He’d stood up before the council and given his oath that the goddess herself had visited him in a dream, and so ordered. They’d all been so eager for her forgiveness that they’d acquiesced at once. The treasures had duly arrived over the next few moons, Pijaseme giving each party in exchange a receipt for what they’d brought, along with a fired clay disc imprinted with signs so that their successors could find this labyrinth again, should none of them still be alive when finally the island recovered.
How he’d exulted as the treasures had stacked up! He’d been certain that the goddess would reward him. But her anger hadn’t died. If anything, it had grown more savage, more personal. While other communities had seemed to reach and pass through the worst of this blight, his own had suffered more and more. She’d taken his surviving children, and their children and grandchildren too, until only he and his beloved grandson Eumolpos had been left of their once great family. And finally he’d acknowledged in his heart the true reason for her fury. There had been no dream. He hadn’t brought these treasures here for her glory; he’d brought them for his own.
The exodus had taken place earlier that summer, when it had become clear that yet again there’d be no harvest. Eumolpos had taken charge, scavenging for wood in the mountains, dragging the timbers down to the coast, building a ship in which the few survivors had sailed north in search of a new land to settle. Their ancestors had arrived here from across the sea, after all. It seemed only fitting that they should leave that way too.
It had been a wrench to watch them go. Eumolpos had been Pijaseme’s heir as high priest at the temple. But there was no temple any more: Poseidon earth-shaker had seen to that. And at least this way Eumolpos would carry with him his memories, his knowledge of the sacred objects and rituals. At least this way, the goddess would still be worshipped. Before he’d left, Eumolpos had asked Pijaseme to go with them, albeit with lowered eyes. But Pijaseme was too old and proud. Besides, he’d taken a sacred vow to look after these treasures to the death. And, to the death, he would.
Despite the poppy-juice, the pain was fierce as he stabbed through the leathern skin of his wrist, then gashed jaggedly upwards along his forearm. He didn’t let it stop him though, not with the goddess watching. He switched the blade from hand to hand, then slashed his other forearm too. Blood fell in slow waterfalls to form red lakes upon the dusty rock.
It was fitting. It was as it should be.
It had been his life to please the goddess. And he had failed.
ONE
Broward County Jail, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
‘Visitor,’ grunted the guard, heaving open the heavy steel door of Mikhail Nergadze’s cell. ‘Come with me.’
Mikhail took his time rising to his feet. It was a point of self-respect in places like these that you never gave the uniforms anything for free. Besides, he already knew who it would be. That court-appointed psychologist with her sneering upper lip and her aggressively folded arms. He’d always had an instinct for women like her. And sure enough, she was waiting impatiently for him in the dusty white-tiled interview room, dressed with her customary sharp-edged chic in a navy suit jacket and pencil skirt, her black hair cropped almost as short as his own prison crew-cut, just the faintest touches of perfume and make-up. Yet, he noted, faint though those touches of perfume and makeup might be, they were still there.
‘Mister Nergadze,’ she said sourly, enunciating each syllable like an insult.
‘Doctor Mansfield,’ he nodded. ‘This is a pleasure.’
‘Not for me, I assure you.’ She gestured curtly for the guard to remain inside the room, then invited Mikhail to take one of two facing chairs. She waited until he was seated, then put down her briefcase by the other chair, produced a micro-cassette recorder that she placed on the floor between them, and sat opposite him. Then she brought out a set of papers on which she began to make notes on with a bulbous green fountain pen, glancing at him every few moments, like an artist working at a portrait, hoping no doubt to pique his curiosity. But Mikhail refused to bite. He folded his hands loosely in his lap and waited. It was perhaps five minutes before she sighed and rocked forward, passed two stapled pages to him, along with a blunt stub of pencil, as though he couldn’t be trusted with her pen. ‘Look at these for me, would you?’
‘Why?’
‘Do you really have so many better things to do?’
Mikhail shrugged and took the two pages, ran his eyes down the list of questions, gave her a dry cold look. But he didn’t mind playing. The opposite, if anything. He knew it would tear at her all the more when his family’s army of lawyers finally got him out, which they would any day now; because without a body the police had nothing, and everyone knew it.
Failure to conform to social norms.
An easy starter. It never failed to astonish Mikhail that anyone should conform. Tick.
Regular bouts of irritability and aggression. Tick. Impulsiveness. Tick.
She had a nice figure, this shrink. He had to give her that. Terrific legs. Tan and shapely, long and smooth. Yet muscled, too. A ballerina’s legs. Ideal for clasping tight around a man’s waist. Making the most of them too, as far as professionalism would allow, at least, with her high heels and a slit in her skirt that showed rare flashes of thigh, and constantly drawing attention to them by folding one over the other, or allowing them to part just wide enough to offer a glimpse of the shadows beneath. Not much else to write home about, unfortunately. A face like a toad, with flared, upturned nostrils, and her complexion still raw from the ravages of teenage acne.
Disregard for the safety of others. Tick. Irresponsible behaviour. Tick. Multiple short-term marital relationships. Tick.
Her manner didn’t do her any favours either, all snorts and squints, as if her main ambition in life was never to let anyone get the better of her. But she was young and female, when all was said and done; and Mikhail had learned long ago to take what pleasures he could in institutions like these.
Lack of regard for promises, deals and agreements. Tick. Manipulative. Tick. Lack of empathy.
Mikhail paused. He’d always been slightly perplexed by questions about empathy. It was like colour-blindness. People who couldn’t distinguish between red and green, that was one thing; but how to know that his perception of yellow was the same as everyone else’s? Empathy was like that, almost impossible to judge relatively. Over the years, a number of psychologists had shown him pictures of people’s faces, as though they thought he suffered from Asperger’s syndrome or something. But Mikhail had never had any difficulty distinguishing happy from sad, surprised from intrigued, angry from lustful; and he understood what each of those emotions were too, having experienced them himself. Besides, people kept accusing him of being manipulative, and how could he manipulate people if he lacked empathy? He could be a bully, yes, or excessively demanding; but manipulative? Surely that demanded a certain level of fellow-feeling. So he’d always thought the real question was, did he give a fuck? With empathy, he reckoned you were supposed to give a fuck. He thought that was probably the whole point of it. And the answer was no. He didn’t give a fuck. But here was the nub: How could he be sure that that made him unusual? How did he know that other people gave a fuck (or at least, any more of a fuck than he did)? He only had their word for it. Perhaps he was just more honest than they were. The way he saw it, no one truly gave a fuck how other people felt. Not truly. All they gave a fuck about was how other people felt about them. That’s why they postured and pretended concern, because they thought other people would respect them or love them more. But, what the hell, he knew the answer she wanted. More to the point, it was the one that would gnaw at her most when he walked out of here a free man.
Lack of empathy. Tick. Lack of remorse. Tick.
Though he’d never really seen what the fuss was about remorse, anyway. Such a dishonest emotion. If you couldn’t live with the consequences of your actions, do something else, don’t wail about it. More to the point, don’t get caught. Mikhail couldn’t remember the last time anyone expressed remorse before they got caught? No, best left to politicians and TV evangelists.
Often in trouble as a juvenile. Though it had never been his fault. Tick.
A parasitic lifestyle.
He bridled a little at the choice of word. He was no parasite; people just understood that they owed him, because of the kind of man he was. But fuck it, he was on a roll: Tick.
He looked up at her. ‘Where do you live?’ he asked. ‘Somewhere around here?’
‘Just finish the list.’
‘Only we should get together for a drink when I get out.’
‘I don’t make dates fifty years in advance.’
Pathological dishonesty. He’d be lying if he said otherwise. Tick.
Cruelty to animals and other people.
‘When you say cruelty,’ he asked, ‘do you mean physical violence? Or do you include mental cruelty as well?’
‘Would it make a difference?’
Fair point. Tick.
Considers themselves outside or above the law. Tick.
He glanced up sharply enough to catch her staring at him. He smiled knowingly, and she tossed her head and looked away, haughty as a rich girl’s pony, as though she thought Mikhail was so far beneath her, it was an ordeal even to be in the same room as him, as though she had to steel herself. But he hadn’t forced her to visit. Nor had the court, not this time. No. She’d come here on her own account.
Rampant fantasies of personal prowess and triumph.
Yes, he thought. Last night I dreamed about coming after you, you bitch. Tick.
Exaggerated sexuality.
He paused again. ‘Do you mean that I exaggerate my sexuality? Or that my capacity for sex is uncommonly large?’
She smiled thinly at him, reluctant to give him anything. ‘The latter.’
Exaggerated sexuality. Tick.
‘Is that why you’ve been masturbating over me?’
‘Just finish the list.’
‘When you masturbate over me, do you imagine me naked?’
‘The list, please, Mister Nergadze.’
‘Mikhail, please.’
Demands immediate and complete compliance from those around them. Tick. Superficial charm.
He hesitated over this one, too. ‘Superficial?’ he asked.
She frowned, surprised he’d stumbled over such a common word. ‘Superficial means, er, like, er, on the surface.’
Mikhail felt himself being lifted up by a gentle wave of anger, that his Eastern European roots and accent had yet again been mistaken for stupidity. It had happened so many times during his years of exile in England and America that perhaps he should have grown used to it, but it still had the power to catch him by surprise. On the other hand, gaol had taught him to keep his safety-catch on, to bide his time for the chance that would soon come. He waited for the wave to subside again before replying. ‘I know what it means,’ he said. ‘What I’m asking is what you mean. Charm is, by definition, superficial, wouldn’t you say? I think the word you’re looking for is “false”, isn’t it?’
She coloured a little. ‘I suppose false would…yes, that would be fine.’
He crossed out ‘superficial’, wrote in ‘false’ instead. Tick.
Envious of others.
He frowned. Would he really switch places with anyone else? To get out of here, maybe. But what the hell. Tick.
Often bored. Tick.
He handed her back the questionnaire. A perfect score. She took the pages with a slight smirk, as though she’d just won a bet with herself. Mikhail smiled too. He liked cocky shrinks. They thought they were so insightful, so well-armoured. It fucked them up all the more when he got inside their heads. ‘You never answered my question,’ he said.
‘What question?’
‘Do you imagine me naked? When you masturbate about me?’
‘Masturbation, Mister Nergadze?’ she asked dryly. ‘Are you not confusing me with yourself?’
He looked into her eyes and held her gaze. She tried to stare him out; she didn’t stand a chance. When finally she broke and looked away, her throat turned lovely hot confused colours, and he felt a familiar stirring in his loins that confirmed to him the true reason she’d come back, which had nothing to do with his so-called disorder. At least, it had everything to do with it, but not in a way her professional association would approve.
She composed herself again, turned back to him, flint in her eyes, wanting pay-back. ‘So,’ she said, ‘you want to tell me what really happened that night?’
‘I already told you what happened.’
‘The real story.’
‘Oh, the real story.’
‘You want to, you know. In the end, men like you always boast about their…exploits.’
Mikhail nodded at the guard still standing by the door. ‘And men like him send us to the chair for it.’
She turned to the guard. ‘Leave us, please.’
The guard glowered at Mikhail. ‘You sure about that, ma’am? This one’s a mean son-of-a-bitch.’
‘I asked you to leave us alone.’
They both watched him out. Mikhail could tell she was pleased with herself; demonstrating courage and trust, just like they counselled in the textbooks. The steel shutter in the door shrieked open, and the guard put his eye to the viewing window, his face magnified and made even uglier by the glass.
‘What if he can lip-read?’ asked Mikhail.
‘You want to trade seats?’ she asked. ‘So as he can’t see your face?’
‘I want him not to watch at all.’
She went to the door, held a murmured but intense conversation. The door closed, then the shutter over the viewing window. She sat back down. ‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Ready to talk now?’
‘With your tape recorder on?’
‘This session is confidential. I assure you, nothing will be used against you.’
He snorted and raised an eyebrow. She sighed and switched off her machine. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what you want to know. But I want something from you first.’
‘What?’
‘I want to know why you’re so interested in me.’
She studied him a moment, as if to assess him for sincerity. It always amazed him how credulous these people were: she seemed to have forgotten her checklist already. He kept his expression impassive, knowing she wanted to tell him, her own cleverness bottled like champagne bubbles inside her, pressing for release. When she began to talk, she quickly grew excited. She stood up, began walking back and forth across the narrow room, gesturing grandly. She was working on a paper for the journals, it transpired. Her subject matter was narcissistic sociopaths. That Mikhail was one would be obvious to any first-year student, of course; but most people with narcissistic personality disorder were either cerebral or somatic, which was to say arrogant because of their intelligence or because of their physique and athletic prowess respectively. He was both. That in itself made him a curiosity. But there was more. Most narcissists were, at heart, self-loathing. It was their very hatred for themselves that drove their desperate need for adulation and worship from the people around them, their need for what she called narcissistic supply, and which she talked of as though it were a drug. When they were deprived of that supply, their fantasies about themselves collapsed, they fell into depression and despair. But he, while displaying all the signs of classic narcissism, seemed immune to depression and despair, even when his narcissistic supply was denied him, and she wanted to know why. Criminal narcissism was her thing, and she sensed in Mikhail an opportunity for a real advance, because if she could find his secret, maybe it would offer a way to palliate self-loathing in others and so break the narcissistic cycle altogether. She got all excited and earnest, wobbling a little on her heels as she walked, red patches glowing on her throat and cheeks, like a litter of kittens seen through a night-sight. Finally she stopped and gave him one of those well, there it is shrugs, expecting him to honour his part of the deal, tell her how he’d raped and murdered that innocent little thirteen-year-old Lolita.
Innocent! Hah!
He stood and pushed back his chair, its feet growling over the bare cement floor. Then he started walking towards her. She produced a nervous smile, her pupils flickered, and she backed away until she was up against the wall by the door. He kept advancing, slowly, fixing his best unthreatening smile in place, as though she were some lapdog yapping at him, and he didn’t want to spook it, or he’d lose his chance to kick it.
She balled her fist up to pound on the door and summon the guard. She tensed her arm twice in preparation, but Mikhail kept advancing and in the end she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Self-knowledge at last. She put both her arms down by her side, fingers splayed like sunbursts. He was standing right in front of her now, their bodies almost touching face, chest, knee, toe. He could hear her breathing patterns change until they were in synchrony with his. He rewarded her with a smile. He placed one hand on her left shoulder, the other, on her hip, began to gather up the charged fabric of her skirt. They stared each other in the eye. She neither stopped him, nor encouraged him, but when he slipped his hand beneath the skirt and up her thigh over her knickers to her pudenda, she gave an almost inaudible exhalation, like some pre-packaged grocery product being punctured, allowing that preservative air to escape. A moment of almost pure silence, except that he could hear the saliva washing around her mouth and throat, while a pulse flickered in her pussy, like some terrified rodent cowering in his palm. ‘Mr Nergadze,’ she croaked, in her best schoolmarm tone, as though to reprimand him. He waited, but she said nothing else, so he gave her a gentle encouraging squeeze and smiled more broadly at her. She smiled weakly back, a smile of complete concession, an invitation to do whatever he wanted.
He let go of her, stepped away, returned to his chair, sat back down and folded his hands once more in his lap. ‘Narcissistic, am I?’ he asked. ‘Or is it simply that I am beautiful?’
TWO
I
The Kastelli Hotel, Athens, Greece, two weeks later
The three of them were laughing hard at the sheer awfulness of Knox’s joke when Augustin swiped his hotel key-card through the lock outside his room and pushed his door open with his foot. But the laughter died at once.
It was the smell that did it for Knox: not that it was overpowering, just sour and ugly, but it provoked an immediate and visceral disgust, so that he knew something was badly wrong. He looked over Augustin’s shoulder and saw gouts of blood and vomit on the fibrous blue carpet, and then a naked elderly man lying on his back in the narrow aisle between the double and single beds, his right arm thrown out above his head. There were stains around his waist, where his bladder and bowels had vented. There was a great gash in his forehead, too, from which copious amounts of blood had spilled, and there was a look of such stark terror on his face that Knox instantly assumed that not only was he dead, but that he’d sensed his fate in the very moment it had overtaken him.
It was a real shock, then, when the man convulsed upon the carpet, a spasm that ran up his body like a flapped-out sheet. It was Claire who moved first, trained medic that she was. She pushed past Augustin and knelt down beside him. ‘Ambulance,’ she said succinctly. Augustin nodded and hurried around the single bed, then knelt on it to grab the bedside phone and dial the operator.
The man opened his eyes and gave a little croak, trying to speak, blood-frothed saliva leaking from the side of his mouth. Claire wiped it away with a corner of the bedspread. He spoke again. She shook her head to indicate that he should preserve his strength, but he kept persisting, so Knox pushed aside the bed to make room for himself on his other side, then knelt down and put his ear close to his lips. But the man’s voice was so weak that it was almost impossible to make out anything much more than the shape and thrust of the syllables. He frowned interrogatively at Claire. ‘Elysium?’ he suggested.
‘Maybe,’ she shrugged.
‘Who the hell is he?’ asked Knox, standing back up.
‘Roland Petitier,’ said Augustin, still waiting for the operator to answer.
Knox nodded. An old archaeology professor of Augustin’s who’d vanished without trace nearly twenty years ago, only to reappear unexpectedly a few weeks before, and who was scheduled to address the conference the following afternoon. ‘But what’s he doing here?’
Augustin gave a very Gallic shrug, as if to disclaim responsibility. ‘I hear a knock on my door earlier. I think it must be you, come to take me to the airport. But no, it’s him. After twenty years. He tells me his room isn’t ready yet and asks if he can stay here until it is. I tell him no. I tell him I am about to collect my fiancée Claire from the airport. He swears on his mother’s life he’ll be gone by the time we get back. On his mother’s life!’
‘You can’t exactly blame him for—’
Augustin held up a finger. The operator had finally picked up. ‘Emergency,’ he told them curtly. ‘Room five-thirteen. We need an ambulance.’ He listened a moment. ‘No. He’s taken a blow to the head.’ Another pause. He looked around the room. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
Claire had tilted Petitier’s head backwards, and put her ear against his mouth. ‘Tell them he’s stopped breathing,’ she said, with impressive calmness. ‘Tell them to bring a defibrillator.’ While Augustin relayed the message, she moved briskly into cardiopulmonary resuscitation, using both hands to pump Petitier’s chest hard. She clearly knew what she was about, so Knox stepped away to give her space, then took the opportunity to see if he could work out what had happened.
The room was virtually identical to his and Gaille’s on the floor above. The medium-pile blue carpet showed signs of wear; the double and the single bed both sagged a little in the middle. There were dark spots on the mirrors of the dressing table, and on the glass of the framed prints of the Acropolis, Mycenae and Epidaurus on the walls. A splashing noise was coming from the bathroom. He pushed open the door to see the shower spraying hot water into the bathtub, trapping thick clouds of mist against the ceiling. He made to turn it off, then paused at the startling realisation that this might be a crime scene, so he went back out and closed the door behind him.
A black laptop case was leaning against the bed, bulkier than Augustin’s, so presumably Petitier’s. Again, he left it untouched. The white net curtain billowed over the balcony door, pregnant with breeze, revealing a few red smears upon its fabric. He pushed it carefully aside. The sliding glass door was wide open. He went out onto the balcony. The moulded plastic table and one of the two matching chairs had been overturned, as if by a storm or a fight. An overnight bag was lying on its side, the old brown leather ripped open and leaking entrails: underpants, vests, shirts and trousers. He leaned out over the railing, looked down past lower balconies to the narrow alley far beneath, congested with rusting skips filled with multicoloured bags of hotel waste. He looked left and right. The neighbouring balconies were separated from one another by spiked railings, but it would be easy enough for anyone with a head for heights to swing around them; and there was precious little chance of being seen.
Back inside, Augustin was standing by Claire, wanting to help but not sure how. ‘I knew I should say no when he asks to stay,’ he told Knox.
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘He seemed so desperate. I mean he was really paranoid that someone was after him.’
‘Paranoid?’ asked Knox dryly.
‘He made me swear not to tell anyone he was here. That’s why I said nothing earlier.’
‘Did he give you any idea who was after him?’
‘No. But he’s found something, I know that much. In Crete, apparently. Some seal-stones and maybe some other things. I think perhaps he has them with him, because he won’t let go of his overnight bag, you know. I mean he hugged it against him like it was his only child.’
Lift doors opened down the corridor. There were shouts and the thud of heavy boots. Two policemen in the dark blue uniform of the Elleniki Astynomia appeared at the door, holding white crash helmets and truncheons in their hands, as though fresh from riot duty. The first was tall and powerful, yet his features were soft and unlined, making him look almost too young to be in the police. His partner was older, portly, wheezing from the run. He pushed past his younger colleague, sized up the situation. ‘Away!’ he ordered Claire. She didn’t even look up, too concentrated on giving Petitier CPR. ‘Away!’ he barked more loudly, angered at being ignored.
‘She’s a doctor,’ protested Augustin. ‘Leave her be.’
‘Away!’ he shouted a third time.
The younger policeman stepped forward, nettled by this lack of respect for his partner. He reached around Claire from behind, grabbing her breast as he did so.
The colour rose instantly in Augustin’s face; he punched the young policeman hard on his cheek, sending him sprawling. Then he turned to Claire. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
The young policeman got back to his feet, a look of pure fury in his eye. He lashed his baton so hard across Augustin’s cheek that a fragment of tooth flew from between his lips, and he cried out and fell to his knees, hands to his bloodied mouth. Knox hurried to intervene, but the older policeman seized him by the arm and held him back. And something seemed to release in his young partner, a kind of obscene rage. His face was almost purple as he smashed his baton down on Augustin’s crown, mercifully catching him only a glancing blow, yet still splitting his scalp so that the blood gushed even as he fell onto his side in the narrow gap between the bed and wall. Claire screamed and grabbed the policeman’s arm, but he threw her off easily, then turned back to Augustin and hit him again. But the way Augustin had fallen made it hard for the policeman to get at his head, so he pushed the bed aside and stepped around him to give himself a better angle of attack.
Finally Knox fought his way free. He hurried across the room and grabbed the policeman’s flailing wrist, twisting it sharply. The policeman yelped and dropped his baton, turning to Knox with a slightly dazed expression, as though uncertain what was going on. Then he looked down at Augustin lying unconscious at his feet, at the oily dark blood gathering in a shallow lake on the carpet, and at the red spatters of guilt already caking on his own hands, and a look of horror appeared upon his face, and he began to weep.
II
A conference room, Tbilisi, Georgia
Conflicting emotions tussled in Edouard Zdanevich’s breast as he stood in front of the painting. It was executed in oils on black oilcloth, perhaps seventy centimetres wide by a metre tall, a portrait of a voluptuous woman in a rocking chair, nursing an infant through the folds of her blue-black dress, the barest hint of breast showing. Simple colours and themes executed with intense power and humanity. A Pirosmani, without doubt, as gorgeous as any in Tbilisi. Yet Edouard had never seen it before, had not even known it existed. And while it was a thrill for him merely to be in its presence, it infuriated him that these damned Nergadzes had it hanging here on their wall, when he doubted any of them knew what it was, or why it was important, or the first thing about the great man who’d painted it. All they ever knew or cared about anything was how much it cost.
Somewhere in the building, a door opened, allowing out a billow of raucous laughter. Another of the Nergadzes’ famously debauched feasts, no doubt. Edouard despised such wanton displays of gluttony, lechery and drunkenness—but it would be nice, he had to admit, to be able to despise them from the inside for a change.
A pair of glass cabinets stood against the wall, both filled with Colchian gold jewellery, vessels, ornaments and coins. The pieces were very familiar to him. They’d come from a trove discovered some decades earlier in an abandoned well in the hill-country of Turkmenistan, across the Caspian Sea, and had been on display in their national museum in Ashgabat. It had long been known that many of the pieces were Georgian, but only recently had the Turkmeni government countenanced a sale. Edouard himself had flown to Ashgabat, where he’d negotiated their purchase and repatriation. Though he’d used Nergadze money, the agreement had been clear: he’d bought the cache on behalf of the nation of Georgia, for display in her national museums. Ilya Nergadze had bathed in public admiration for days on the back of his generosity. Yet the gold pieces weren’t on display at any national museum. They were on display here, where ordinary Georgians would never have the chance to see them.
Footsteps approached briskly outside, then the double doors banged open and Ilya Nergadze marched on in, followed closely by his son Sandro and one of his small army of bodyguards. He went everywhere on the march, old man Ilya, like a general on the morning of battle. He was tall and extravagantly thin, with a high brow, a flat nose and a tight line to his mouth, as though life had been unforgivably cruel to him, rather than to everyone who’d come into his orbit. His hair and eyebrows, until recently a snowy white, now glistened with black dye, while his skin had been noticeably tightened by nip-tuck surgery and botox injections, an effort at youthfulness that should have made him look ridiculous, except that people like him somehow never looked ridiculous, particularly not in their presence, perhaps because everyone was too afraid to snigger.
‘I’m grateful you asked me here,’ said Edouard, joining them at the rosewood conference table. ‘We need to finalise the transfer of—’
‘All in good time,’ said Sandro, sitting opposite him. He was considered the diplomat of the family; which was why he’d been appointed head of his father’s presidential campaign.
‘But people are talking,’ protested Edouard. ‘My colleagues at the museum keep asking me when they’ll—’
‘He said all in good time,’ said the bodyguard.
Edouard looked sourly at him. Nergadze bodyguards typically knew better than to talk in the presence of their superiors. But this one looked more relaxed than most, perhaps forty or so, wearing a turtleneck sweater beneath his black jacket. He was unshaven, too, perhaps the better to show off the crescent scar in his cheek, where no stubble grew. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Edouard stiffly. ‘I don’t believe we’ve met.’
‘This is Boris Dekanosidze,’ said Sandro. ‘My head of security. I wanted you to meet him because you’re going to be working together over the next few days.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You’re leaving for Athens tonight. Directly after this meeting, in fact.’
‘I’m doing nothing of the sort,’ retorted Edouard. ‘I thought I’d made it clear that I won’t accept any more commissions until you honour your—’
‘You’ll accept whatever commissions we tell you to accept,’ said Ilya.
‘There’ll be plenty of time to complete the transfer of the cache once you return,’ added Sandro, in a more emollient tone. ‘But right now, we have an urgent situation, and we need your help.’ He nodded to Boris, who slid a manila folder across the polished rosewood. Edouard opened it reluctantly, then read through the correspondence inside with growing bewilderment. ‘This is a joke,’ he said finally. ‘It has to be.’
‘My grandson Mikhail is going to see the item in question tomorrow morning,’ said Ilya. ‘You will go along with him.’
‘But you don’t even have a grandson called Mikhail,’ protested Edouard.
‘Do I not?’ asked Ilya.
‘Boris will be with you too,’ said Sandro, into the ensuing silence. ‘He’ll pay for this item once you’ve authenticated it.’
‘If I authenticate it, you mean,’ said Edouard.
A look of profound irritation clouded Ilya’s face. ‘Please don’t persist in telling us what we mean.’
Another silence fell. Somewhere deep in the house, a burst of uproarious laughter was timed so perfectly that Edouard couldn’t help but think that Nergadze’s guests were watching him on CCTV. Not for the first time, he realised how inconsequential he was to these people. Their presidential campaign was in full swing, and Ilya was making good headway in the polls. Nothing else mattered to them. ‘You can’t seriously expect me to authenticate a fake,’ said Edouard.
‘It won’t be a fake,’ observed Sandro. ‘Not once a man of your reputation has verified it.’
‘It would ruin me. I won’t do it.’
‘You will do it,’ said Ilya.
Edouard forced and held a smile, aware he wouldn’t get anywhere by confrontation. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’d like to help. Really I would. But I can’t. Not this weekend. My wife is already furious about how much I’ve been away recently. She issued me with an ultimatum, as it happens. We spend this weekend together, or else. You know what wives are like.’
‘Don’t worry about your wife,’ said Ilya.
‘But you don’t understand. I gave her my word. If I fail to—’
‘I said, don’t worry about her.’
There was something in his voice. ‘How do you mean?’ asked Edouard.
‘I mean that your wife and your daughters will be very well looked after while you’re away. And that charming son of yours too.’
Edouard kept a family photograph in his wallet. He liked to take it out whenever he felt low. It came unbidden to his mind now: himself looking rather portlier than he’d like, yet undeniably grand in his chartreuse suit and yellow cravat, a quiet protest against the black worn by almost every other adult male in Tbilisi, as though their whole nation were in mourning. Nina in her gorgeous blue velvet dress. The twins Eliso and Lila in matching cream blouses and ankle-length black skirts. Kiko in the white-and-red rugby shirt signed by the Georgian national team. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.
‘They are to be my guests,’ said Ilya. ‘Just until you return from Athens.’
Edouard dropped his hand to his pocket, felt the contour and weight of his mobile phone against his thigh. A phone call, a text message, telling Nina to put the kids in the car, take them away somewhere, anywhere.
‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ said Ilya, reading his thoughts. ‘They already are my guests. My grandson Alexei is taking them to my Nikortsminda estate as we speak.’
‘They’ll be very well looked after,’ Sandro assured him. ‘We’re having a family get-together this weekend. It will be a holiday for them. Fresh mountain air, riding, sailing, good company, delicious food. What more could anyone want?’
‘And you won’t have them on your mind, this way,’ added Ilya. ‘This way, you’ll be free to concentrate all your energies on the successful conclusion of our project.’ He leaned forward a little. ‘Do I make myself clear?’
Edouard felt himself sag. Nina had begged him not to get entangled with these people. She’d begged him. The only time in their marriage that she’d gone down on her knees to him, taken his hands, kissed them and wept imploringly into them. But he’d gone ahead anyway. He’d known better.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Perfectly clear.’
III
Omonia Police Station, Central Athens
Chief Inspector Angelos Migiakis was not in a good mood. He rarely was when forced to defer afternoon visits to his mistress because of a call of duty. Even less so when that duty was to sort out yet another mess that threatened to engulf his crisis-plagued department. ‘So what did Loukas say?’ he asked.
‘He backed up Grigorias,’ replied Theofanis. ‘He says that this man Augustin Pascal attacked Grigorias for no reason, that Grigorias was only defending himself.’
‘Then what’s the problem?’
‘Because Loukas is lying, that’s what.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’ve known him fifteen years. This is the first time he won’t look me in the eye.’
‘Shit,’ muttered Angelos. He picked a glass tumbler up from his desk, made to hurl it against the wall opposite, checked himself just in time. Anger was a problem for him; but he was doing his best.
‘I think I can get him to tell me the truth if I push him,’ said Theofanis. ‘But I wanted to speak to you first. I mean, the last thing we need right now is another scandal.’
‘Yes,’ said Angelos caustically. ‘I’m aware of that.’ He put the tumbler back down, then looked across at Theofanis. ‘So what do you think did happen?’
‘Who can say?’ He nodded at the statement lying on the desk. ‘But for my money it’s like this guy Knox told me. Grigorias gave the woman a grope. The Frenchman saw it and got mad. She’s his fiancée, after all. Then Grigorias went crazy on him.’ He gave an ugly grimace. ‘You should have seen what he did.’
‘Not good?’
‘Not good at all.’ He took a long breath then added: ‘And I can’t even say I’m that surprised, the way Grigorias has been acting since his girl left him. I did warn you we should take him off the street.’
‘So this is my fault now, is it?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You know how understaffed we are.’
‘Yes.’
Angelos slapped his desk with both hands. ‘That fucking imbecile! That fucking imbecile!’ He took a deep breath, waited for the calmness to return. ‘Well, we’ll just have to hold the line, that’s all. They’re foreigners, aren’t they? No one will take their word against ours.’
‘They’re also archaeologists. They’re here for some kind of conference. So they don’t exactly fit the usual profile of troublemakers, do they? And this man Knox, the one downstairs, he’s the one who found the lost tomb of Alexander the Great, remember? And who brought down the Dragoumis family. He’s a national bloody hero.’
‘Christ!’ scowled Angelos. ‘I’m going to skin that malakas Grigorias.’
‘Not until this is over.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You say this Knox is downstairs now?’
‘Yes.’
‘And is he a reasonable man? Can we come to some kind of understanding?’
Theofanis considered this a moment. ‘He’s angry,’ he said. ‘But he’s scared too. For himself, yes, but more so for his friend Pascal. If we could offer some kind of guarantee of good medical care…’
‘How the hell am I supposed to do that with our fucking hospitals?’
‘Then I don’t know what to suggest,’ shrugged Theofanis. ‘Maybe you should meet him yourself.’
Angelos pushed himself to his feet. ‘Maybe I should,’ he agreed.
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