The Babylon Idol

by Scott Mariani

  ‘Former archbishop. Thanks to us.’

  ‘I was barely involved.’

  ‘He’s not the most forgiving type of person.’

  ‘But what does he want with us?’

  ‘Revenge, pure and simple. We hurt him, now he wants to hurt us back. And he’s doing a fine job of it so far. You remember Father Pascal, the old priest from Saint-Jean in the Languedoc who helped us?’

  ‘I never met him. I spoke to him only on the phone, just one time.’

  ‘You won’t be speaking to him again. They beat him to death inside his own church.’

  ‘My God.’

  ‘How about Luc Simon, the Parisian police detective in charge of the Gladius Domini case? Promoted to a desk at the INTERPOL HQ in Lyon afterwards. I’ve been in contact with him now and then over the years. Not any more. He was stabbed to death in his home the same day they murdered Pascal. Not long after someone took a shot at me at my place in Normandy and put my best friend in a coma from which he might never wake up. It’s an orchestrated hit, one after another, all over France and Italy. Yesterday they attacked your villa outside Florence, and pressed it out of your assistant Gianni that you’d travelled to Greece to meet Kambasis. I was just a step behind them.’

  ‘Gianni! Is he—?’

  ‘He’s in hospital. And lucky to be alive. I’m afraid that your agent, Carlo, wasn’t as fortunate. I found him in his office, with his throat cut.’

  ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

  Ben reached into the plastic bag, opened one of the bottles of water left for them by the would-be kidnappers, twisted off the cap and passed it to her. She took a long gulp, passed it back to him with a nod of thanks and then leaned back in the passenger seat with her eyes closed for a moment as she fought her nausea.

  ‘Feeling better?’ he asked after a few moments.

  ‘Not really. Not at all. Because what you say means that poor man Theo Kambasis died because of me. I barely knew him, but he seemed so nice. He didn’t deserve to die.’

  ‘Nice people don’t last very long when Usberti’s around.’

  ‘If I hadn’t come to meet him – if I hadn’t told Gianni I was coming here – but Ben, how could I have known?’

  ‘None of us could have known,’ Ben told her. ‘I wouldn’t have had any idea what was happening if Usberti’s former assistant, a man called Fabrizio Severini, hadn’t written me a letter from jail to warn me that his old boss was back and on the warpath. And until tonight I still had no idea of what was really happening. Because I thought Usberti was planning to kill you, too. But I was wrong. There’s something else going on here, Anna. Something about you breaks the pattern. He might have started out with the intention of taking you out just like the rest of us, but he changed that plan. Now he wants you alive. Not out of compassion, or softness, or because you’re a woman. I know this man. He doesn’t do compassion, and he enjoys the hurt that’s inflicted on women almost as much as the sadists he hires to do it for him, like your dear departed pal Franco Bozza. If he’s decided he wants you taken alive, it’s because now he thinks you’re worth more to him that way.’

  Anna instinctively put her fingers to her cheek, where Franco Bozza’s knife had cut her. Scars could heal, but some memories lingered forever. ‘What could he want from me? Money?’

  ‘I wondered about that,’ Ben said. ‘You’re successful, you’re wealthy. A lot wealthier than someone on an INTERPOL commissioner’s salary, let alone a rural priest. But I don’t think this is about money.’

  ‘Then what? Who am I? I’m just a writer.’

  ‘You’re a little more than just a writer,’ Ben said. ‘You’re a highly regarded scholar with a knack for digging up bits of history that nobody knew before you came along.’

  ‘All the same, why would that make a difference?’

  ‘You tell me,’ Ben said. ‘Gianni couldn’t say much when I spoke to him, because he was all banged up and pumped full of drugs. But I think that when Usberti’s goon, that big bruiser back there, turned up at the villa and put the squeeze on him, he told them a lot more. Which you can be certain reached Usberti’s ears absolutely verbatim, because the guy was recording every word of it.’

  ‘Poor Gianni. I have to call him, tell him how terrible I feel about what’s happened.’

  ‘Not advisable. He’d probably ask where you are, assuming he’s well enough to talk at all. And that’s not something we want our friends to know, in case they go back to chat with him again.’

  She blanched. ‘Please tell me you don’t really think that. You’re just being careful.’

  ‘Being careful is what keeps me breathing air. Chances are they won’t, because Usberti’s goons already found out all they wanted. Whatever he let slip to them that was so important, it’s the only thing that prevented you from becoming just another dead body in Usberti’s revenge campaign. I wouldn’t have been able to save you, Anna.’

  ‘But you did. And it’s not the first time.’

  ‘I’d like it to be the last,’ he said. ‘That’s why I need to understand what’s going on here.’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘I think you do,’ Ben said. ‘You just don’t see the connection. It can only be about one thing. Your research.’

  ‘My research?’

  ‘Something big. Really important. That’s what Gianni told me you were working on. You didn’t just visit Kambasis to talk about Phidias’ workshop, did you?’

  ‘Just as well,’ she muttered unhappily. ‘There’s not much left of it to talk about.’

  ‘Then there’s more to this.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Anna replied. ‘There’s much more to it. Just that I can’t understand why—’ She broke off mid-sentence and her face fell as the realisation hit her. ‘Or maybe I do understand.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ she said. ‘To help you understand what I’ve been researching, I’d have to go right back to the beginning and fill in a lot of detail.’

  ‘Then I suggest we find ourselves a place to hole up in for the night,’ Ben said. ‘Then, you can explain this entire thing to me.’

  Chapter 25

  The winding mountain road led them down towards Andritsaina, which was little more than a village nestling on the forested slope. Not wanting the van to be seen in case it drew the wrong kind of attention, Ben found a wooded layby a kilometre outside the town. It wasn’t the perfect hiding place, but it would have to do. He wiped down the steering wheel, door handles and anything else they might have touched, and then they set off on foot, using Ben’s torch to light their way on the dark road.

  On a winter’s night the village made Olympia seem like a bustling metropolis by comparison. An icy rain began to fall as they made their way through the narrow, almost deserted streets, looking for somewhere to shelter from the cold and get something to eat.

  Anna shivered. The Italian designer coat she was wearing scored high on style but was next to worthless as a winter garment. Her legs must be cold, too. The hems of her lightweight trousers were wet and wrinkled and speckled with mud. ‘Look at me,’ she complained. ‘I look like a vagrant. And I can’t walk another step in these shoes.’

  ‘I don’t know why you do it,’ he said, frowning down at her feet. ‘I don’t mean you personally. Women, in general. Most of them, at any rate, in my experience, which isn’t vast.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You’re a historian. You ought to know that the history of feminine footwear runs right alongside the history of female oppression. Going all the way back to ancient China a thousand years ago, when they invented foot-binding. Like hobbling slaves by chopping off their toes to stop them from escaping, or rebelling. You might as well be wearing barbed-wire slippers.’

  ‘So shoe design is a male conspiracy?’

  ‘How many top shoe designers are women?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some, I would imagine.’

  ‘Then they should know be
tter. They’re selling you all out.’

  ‘Women feel the need to be attractive,’ she said with a shrug. ‘That’s why we do it.’

  ‘You’d look fine in a pair of combat boots.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Bin the rest of the designer junk while you’re at it, in exchange for something more practical.’

  She peered at him, smiling a little. ‘Is that what you go for in women, the butch look?’

  ‘Whatever works.’

  ‘Perhaps there’s a military surplus store in this town, where I can buy a whole new outfit.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ he said.

  ‘More likely than finding any decent kind of accommodation,’ she replied. ‘This is the kind of place where the hotels open in April and close in October.’

  If Ben had been on his own, he’d just as happily have roughed it in the woods with a makeshift bivouac, a fire made of cut branches and a wild rabbit roasting on a skewer for dinner. But Anna Manzini wasn’t someone you could easily take camping. ‘Let’s try there,’ he said, pointing as they rounded a corner and saw a bar that was open for business.

  Inside, the place was half-empty but warm and welcoming: part hardcore drinking joint, part fast-food grill house, part family restaurant. The owner was a jovial bear of a man named Kris Christakos, who was proudly fluent in English. ‘You are the first tourists I have seen for months,’ he commented as he brought over a whisky for Ben, red wine for the lady, and took their food order.

  Ben explained that they were on their way south towards Messini, but their car had broken down on the mountain road and they’d had to walk all the way here. Was there anywhere in the village they could get a room for the night? Kris beamed and pointed a finger straight up at the ceiling above him. ‘We have a couple of rooms to let upstairs. It’s not much, but it’s better than the mountain. My brother Nick, he drives a taxi and is also a mechanic. In the morning he can take you back to your car and fix it for you.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Ben said with a smile and no intention whatsoever of letting anyone connect them with a stolen kidnap van.

  While they were waiting for their meal, he took out his phone. ‘Who are you calling?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Someone you know,’ he replied.

  Roberta Ryder and Anna Manzini had met briefly, years earlier, at Anna’s villa in the Languedoc during the Gladius Domini affair. It hadn’t been a comfortable meeting, with Ben caught in the middle of two otherwise highly rational and intellectual women who, for reasons he never could fathom, were potentially ready to start clawing each other’s eyes out over him.

  When Roberta’s distant voice came on the line, she didn’t sound any happier. ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Oh, I’m having a whale of a time out here in sunny Jerkville, Ontario. There’s ten feet of snow outside the window of my shack and I can’t sleep at night because of wolves howling. As long as I don’t run out of firewood to feed my little stove, I’m just peachy. Any idea when I can go back to my life?’

  ‘Stay tight. I’ll call you again soon.’

  ‘That was quick,’ Anna commented with a raised eyebrow as he ended the call. Ben didn’t reply. He instantly started punching in another number. When a different female voice answered after two rings, he launched straight in. No greeting, just an urgent ‘How is he?’

  ‘I’m with him now,’ Sandrine Lacombe said. ‘Still no change. He’s stable, but that’s the best I can say.’

  Ben took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  Sandrine said, ‘You know the police came here again, looking for you?’

  ‘Good luck to them,’ Ben said.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ he replied. ‘I have to go, Sandrine. Call me if there’s any news about Jeff.’

  ‘You know I will. Take care, okay? Wherever you are.’

  ‘It sounds as if there are a lot of women in your life, as ever,’ Anna said with a wry smile as Ben put the phone away. Then, seeing his look, her expression became serious. ‘That was about your friend?’

  ‘He still hasn’t woken up.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The food arrived a minute later, served by Kris’s daughter Talia. Ben hadn’t eaten more than a bite since arriving in Greece, and attacked his plate of paidakia, which was essentially just grilled chops with potatoes. Anna contented herself with a salad, most of which she just shunted around her plate, picking at just a couple of morsels until she finally gave up. ‘I can’t eat. I keep thinking about that poor man.’

  ‘Kambasis?’

  ‘Such an interesting person,’ she went on, shaking her head, as though the violent sudden death of a less interesting individual could be construed to be a less tragic event. ‘Archaeology was in his bl— was in his family. You know his father, Leonidas Kambasis, was the local Greek archaeologist who assisted with the German-led project to excavate the workshop of Phidias in the fifties?’

  ‘It’s amazing just how little I know,’ said Ben, still waiting to find out a lot of things.

  Anna went on, ‘In fact, people tend to forget that it was actually the Nazis, not the Greek government, who enabled the first really extensive modern excavation of Olympia, starting in 1936, to mark the opening of Hitler’s grand Berlin Olympic Games that year. The Nazi engineers in charge of the excavation project were Emil Kunze and Hans Schleif, who as well as being a classical archaeologist was also an SS Standartenführer. Hitler was passionate about the preservation of the site, regarding his Third Reich as a cultural and aesthetic successor to ancient Greece. The Olympia project became known as the Führergrabung or “Führer excavation”. There was even a special Kunstschutz department within the Wehrmacht responsible for its protection, which issued orders to German soldiers not to urinate on the ruins as it damaged the marble.’

  ‘Too much schnapps in their bloodstream,’ Ben said. It was just like Anna to dwell over historical detail at a moment like this, and he had to hold back from pushing her onto more important matters.

  ‘After the war, Emil Kunze returned to oversee the continuing excavations, as though nothing had happened. It was ironic that after three and a half years of Nazi occupation, the execution of a hundred and thirty thousand innocent Greek civilians and the decimation of the population, the Olympia site was completely unscathed.’ Anna shook her head sadly. ‘And even more ironic that it survived all those terrible times, only to be demolished seventy years later because of us.’

  ‘We didn’t demolish all of it,’ Ben said. ‘Only the bits that were still standing. In another few centuries, who’ll know the difference?’

  If Anna sensed the attempt at levity, she didn’t show it. ‘Anyway, you wanted to know why I went to see Kambasis. You were right, Ben. My reason for talking to him was very central to my new research project. Nobody in the world knows more about Phidias than he did, as he inherited his passion for the subject from his father. He was the best person to talk to, in order to find out if it was feasible.’

  ‘If what was feasible?’ Ben asked, pouring himself a glass of wine.

  ‘Do you know anything at all about Phidias?’

  ‘No, but I have a feeling you’re about to enlighten me.’ Ben wanted to add, ‘And I wish you would.’

  ‘He was a master sculptor who lived and worked in Olympia two and a half thousand years ago, during the fifth century BC. Phidias was renowned for many great works but his most famous creation was a giant gold and ivory statue of Zeus, which became known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It stood twelve metres in height, a spectacular monument, quite magnificent.’

  ‘It’s not in the museum,’ Ben said. ‘The ceiling’s not high enough.’

  ‘It’s not in any museum,’ Anna replied. ‘For a thousand years it remained housed in Olympia’s Temple of Zeus, which as you’ve seen is now completely ruined. Sometime in the fifth century AD, it disappeared from there. Stolen, dismantled,
broken up into pieces, nobody knows. What we know of it in modern times comes only from ancient texts and images on old coins. Having inherited his father’s fascination for all things related to Phidias and his works, Theo Kambasis made it his life’s goal to rediscover the statue’s remains, as he was convinced they were still somewhere in the vicinity of the Olympia site. He spent much of his time there, searching for clues, and wrote numerous papers and articles on the subject. That was how I came to learn about him, and why I wanted to talk to him in person.’

  Ben was beginning to understand, or at least he was trying to. Chewing a mouthful of paidakia, he said, ‘So that’s what this big new research project is – you’re looking for the statue of Zeus?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘No, that’s not my interest.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘As I said, what I wanted to discover from Theo Kambasis was whether or not the technology truly existed in the fifth century BC to create an enormous golden statue of that kind. How feasible was it back then, with the facilities available, to create an object so huge out of precious metals?’

  Anna shoved her unfinished plate out of the way and leaned eagerly across the table with her hair falling across her face, looking at Ben with a sparkle in her dark brown, almond-shaped eyes. ‘You see, before I went any further with this, I needed to know whether the story could be true or not. Now, together with the evidence I’ve already collated, what Theo Kambasis told me has got me convinced.’

  ‘Convinced about what?’ Ben said, now thoroughly confused. ‘What evidence? What story?’

  ‘The story of the biggest, most legendary, most fabulous golden statue in all of history,’ Anna replied, spreading her arms wide with a flourish. ‘That’s what I’ve been working on for my new book, and I’m certain it exists.’

  Chapter 26

  ‘It all begins with the Bible,’ Anna said. ‘I don’t suppose you would be especially familiar with the Bible, Ben?’

  He was aware how little she really knew about him, or his past. When they’d first met, he’d been posing as a journalist. She’d soon come to realise he was a little more than that, but he’d never told her many specific details. He smiled. ‘I’ve heard of it, though. Isn’t it that book all about God and Jesus and stuff?’