The Oracle

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘This is also true. Then you want the case to stay in your hands?’

  ‘If possible, I would like that, yes.’

  ‘All right, Captain. I will give you one more opportunity, but don’t count on a second.’

  ‘That will not be necessary, sir,’ said Karamanlis, and left the office.

  That evening he went to headquarters to check on the identikit sent by the Kalamata police of the man who had hired the truck at Hierolimin used to transport the wood to Gythion. It was the same man who had brought the wood to Hierolimin by sea: almost certainly the face of Admiral Anastasios Bogdanos.

  14

  Skardamoula, 13 September, 9 a.m.

  AFTER HAVING ABANDONED the fishing cooperative’s truck at the gas station as they had been told, Norman and Michel took a bus back to their hotel, where they found the blue Rover in perfect running order and their keys at the Plaja reception desk. They waited days in vain for further contact. Michel had thought long and hard about the meaning of the phrase found next to the corpses of Petros Roussos and Yorgo Karagheorghis, without getting anywhere. They decided finally to take matters into their own hands, and to cast their thoughts back to the moment when they’d stumbled upon the golden vase in the basement of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. They would return to the capital and try to contact Aristotelis Malidis. He had been with Periklis Harvatis during his last hours, and he had been the last caretaker of the vase of Tiresias. Perhaps he had some sort of connection with the mysterious person who had failed to take them to the vase.

  Norman wanted to go first to Macedonia, to the place where his father had been found dead, to see if he could learn anything more than the bare facts Scotland Yard had provided. They decided to split up and to call each other every couple of days, meeting up in Athens ten days or so later to exchange information. It seemed like a good plan to both.

  Norman drove up the Strimon valley one fine day in mid-September, finding the place so gorgeous that it nearly made him forget the reason for his mission. The river meandered in wide turns through woody groves and beautiful meadows. The slow-running waters were covered with pond lilies; big old plane and beech trees heavy with foliage bent to touch the water, where flocks of sheep came to drink during the hottest hours of the day. This was the ancestral homeland of Orpheus and Zalmoxis, the mythical land of centaurs and chimeras.

  He spent the night in a clean, freshly whitewashed little room in a private home near a town called Sidirokastro. The stars had never seemed nearer: the galaxy curved over the ridge of Mount Pindus like the veil of a goddess fluttering in the dark, and the stars were so close to the ground that they seemed as bright and sweetly scented as mountain orchids.

  That night at a tavern he asked around for a guide who was well acquainted with both sides of the border and who spoke Vlachì, the mountain dialect used on the Yugoslavian side of Macedonia as well as here on the Greek side. The generous fifty dollars a day Norman was offering attracted no shortage of takers. The next day, at dusk, a hunter of about forty named Haralambos Hackiris showed up: he had been born in the area and was familiar with every inch of the woods and river banks for a twenty-kilometre stretch, even on the Yugoslavian side, where he knew plenty of people. He was definitely a smuggler, and admitted as much to Norman, but on the whole seemed to be honest and trustworthy.

  Norman told him why he had come to the mountains and asked him what he knew or had heard about an English gentleman, a hunter, who had been killed by an arrow and found gagged and blindfolded.

  ‘I did hear about it,’ said Hackiris. ‘And I can tell you that whoever killed him was not from around here, otherwise we’d know who it was and why he’d done it. We know everything that goes on up here. There are still some poachers who hunt with a bow and arrow so the game wardens won’t hear them, but there are very few of them, old men who wouldn’t kill a person for all the gold in the world. There are others who carry Turkish drugs over the border, but they certainly don’t use bows and arrows.’

  ‘I’ll offer you an extra bonus of three hundred dollars,’ said Norman, ‘if you bring me news about who could have killed him and the circumstances of his death. But if you try to trick me, I won’t even pay you for your services as a guide.’

  The next day they left by car and crossed the Yugoslavian border. They parked the car in a garage near the state road and started on foot up to the ridge of the mountain and then up even further towards the high Strimon valley.

  ‘If there’s anyone who knows something, that’s where we’ll find him,’ said Hackiris, pointing at a village halfway up the hillside beyond the river. They waded across the river and entered the town at around three in the afternoon. It seemed practically deserted. An old lady dressed in black carrying a bundle of grass or a jug of water on her head would pass every now and then. There were no law enforcement facilities to speak of, although they did find a local policeman who lived in a private residence. Hackiris explained why they had come and chatted with him for a few minutes in Vlachì.

  ‘Do you have twenty dollars?’ he asked Norman. Norman passed him a couple of bank notes.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘A few things you’ll find interesting. He was the first one to examine the corpse. Said he only seemed to have been dead a couple of hours.’

  ‘And what did he find?’

  ‘There was a message sticking out of the dead man’s jacket pocket. He had a friend of his who knows Greek copy it out before they turned him over to the Belgrade police.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘Doesn’t twenty dollars sound like a good reason? He thought that sooner or later it would be worth something.’

  ‘Well, can I have it, then?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  The policeman took a vase from a shelf, stuck in his hand and took out a little notebook in which a couple of lines had been scribbled. Norman scanned it quickly:

  You in your day have witnessed hundreds slaughtered, killed in single combat or killed in pitched battle, true, but if you’d laid eyes on this it would have wrenched your heart.

  Hackiris saw his expression: ‘Was it worth twenty dollars?’ he asked.

  ‘It was worth much more,’ murmured Norman. ‘It was worth a man’s life . . .’

  Hackiris chattered on in Vlachì with the man; neither of them seemed bothered in the least by Norman’s words.

  ‘There’s something else,’ he said. ‘But this will cost you twice as much. Forty dollars.’

  ‘All right,’ said Norman, putting his hand back on his wallet. The policeman walked into another room and came back with a newspaper-wrapped bundle that he placed on the table. Norman opened it: it contained an arrow. ‘He found it stuck in a trunk at a height of about two metres,’ translated Hackiris, ‘at a short distance from where your father’s body was found. He dug out the head with his hunting knife and took it home. Obviously the weapon of a foreigner.’

  ‘He failed his first shot,’ Norman muttered to himself. ‘His hand can tremble, then . . .’ Turning to his guide, he said, ‘Ask him to tell you where he found the body, and take me there.’

  The policeman led them out of the house and took them to the outskirts of the village. With ample hand gestures indicating the bottom of the valley, he explained how they could get to the scene of the crime.

  Norman followed his guide through a damp, wooded ravine where gigantic beech trees with multiple trunks sprouted from large masses of sandstone covered with dripping moss. He raised his eyes to the sun filtering through the foliage, and then lowered his gaze to a huge tree trunk. A spring of crystalline water gushed alongside.

  ‘I think it happened there,’ said the guide, pointing at a kind of niche between two enormous roots.

  Norman sat on a stone and passed his hand over the rough bark of the tree to which his father had been nailed by the lethal dart. Eyes welling with tears, he listened for a while to the rustling of the leaves and the gurgling of the spring, the low voi
ces of the forest in the deep peace of midday. ‘It was a good place to die,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, Father.’

  ATHENS AWOKE VIOLENT emotions in Michel: the Acropolis, the Polytechnic, the French School of Archaeology, the National Museum. It was as if the clock of his life had been turned back, taking him back to the moment in which, unable to stand on his feet, tortured in body and soul, he was led out of police headquarters and put on a plane.

  He settled into the hotel in the Plaka where he had told Norman he could be reached, then walked out on to the street without a precise destination in mind. He passed near the Olimpieion, and then Syntagmatos Square, where the tourists were waiting to take pictures of the evzoni at the changing of the guard. He ended up at a bar on the corner of Stadiou Street where he had spent many an evening with friends. He sat down at a table and ordered a Fix beer.

  ‘They don’t make it any more, sir,’ said the waiter.

  ‘An Alfa then.’

  ‘Not that one either. You must have been away from Greece for a long time, sir. Now we have export beer.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been away for a long time. I don’t want any beer then. Bring me a coffee. Turkish.’

  The waiter brought the coffee and Michel sat watching a group of young people joking and laughing at a nearby table. Time had flattened out so entirely in his mind that he felt like joining them, as if he were as young as they were, as if nothing had ever happened. He suddenly caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the glass of the window: a little grey at the temples, with wrinkles at the sides of his eyes. He was sitting all alone and surrounded by ghosts, only darkness and emptiness around him. Michel took off with a knot in his throat, pushing through the crowds swarming from the offices and shops on their way home. He burst into a run without knowing where he was going, walking fast and then running again until, as if in a dream, he suddenly found himself at the start of Dionysìou Street, long and oddly deserted.

  He stopped and began to walk slowly down the right-hand pavement, observing the odd street numbers across the way. It was getting dark, and the grey sky of Athens was turning a hazy light red. A boy on a bicycle rode by. A child ran out on to a balcony after a ball and drew up short, watching him in silence. An aeroplane passed in the distance, scoring the sky with a white wake of smoke.

  17 Dionysìou Street.

  The faded sign of an old printer’s shop, paint peeling. A dusty shutter pulled all the way down, closed with a rusty padlock just as dusty. It looked like the shutter hadn’t been opened in years. Michel stood silently in front of the abandoned, unlikely shop, losing track of time. Then he noticed a bar further on down the road, where a lighted ‘Milos’s Bar’ sign was just being switched on. He went in and sat near the door, so he could have a view of the street nearly the whole way down. He ordered an ouzo with water and ice. When the waiter brought it, he asked, pointing to the shutter at number 17, ‘Is that printer still in business, as far as you know?’

  The waiter leaned over and then shook his head: ‘It’s always been closed up like that. Since I’ve been here, anyway.’

  ‘And how long have you worked here?’

  ‘Seven years.’

  ‘And you go by there every morning?’

  ‘Every blessed morning.’

  ‘And you’ve never seen anyone go in or out?’

  ‘Never. Can I ask why you want to know?’

  ‘I collect a magazine that was once printed there and I’m looking for some back issues.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you know if that building has a doorman?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say so, sir. You only find doormen in those big modern buildings on Patissìon Street or Stadiou Street or in Omonia Square. These houses are all very old – they’ve been here since before the war against the Turks.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Michel said, leaving him a good tip. He left and walked away. He wanted to get back to the hotel, in case Norman called.

  The waiter cleared off the table, pocketing the tip, then walked out to put sheets of plastic on the outdoor tables. He glanced over to the other side of the street. It had become dark, and he could see a thin stream of light coming from under the shutter at number 17.

  ‘Sir!’ he shouted towards Michel, who had reached the end of the street. ‘Sir, wait!’ But Michel didn’t hear him over the sound of the traffic on the main street he was approaching, and he turned the corner. The waiter went back to work, but as he waited on his customers that evening, he continued to check the other side of the street. When he got off work at 2 a.m. there was still a little light seeping out from under the shutter.

  NORMAN CALLED AT nine that evening.

  ‘Where are you?’ asked Michel.

  ‘In a garage not far from the border. I’ll be staying at Sidirokastro tonight and then tomorrow I’ll drive down.’

  ‘That was quick. What did you find out?’

  ‘The information I’d been given was correct: Scotland Yard had kept a detail of my father’s death hidden. There was a message found on the corpse.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘“You in your day have witnessed hundreds slaughtered, killed in single combat or killed in pitched battle, true, but if you’d laid eyes on this it would have wrenched your heart.” What is it, Michel? What does it mean?’

  ‘Wait, I know, I’ve heard it before, I’m sure. Give me ten minutes and I’ll tell you. I’m sure I’ve heard it before.’

  Norman hung up and Michel opened his suitcase and took out his copy of the Odyssey, which he had brought with him. He had marked several passages which had struck him. Here – Odyssey XI, Agamemnon speaking to Odysseus in the Kingdom of the Dead.

  When Norman called back, he was ready with the book in his hands. ‘It’s from the Nekya, Norman, Book eleven of the Odyssey. Odysseus has raised Agamemnon’s shade from the dead, and the Great Atreid tells of how he, his comrades and Cassandra were murdered upon their return from the Trojan war, in his own house . . . those words express his horror at the massacre of his comrades and of a helpless girl . . .’ Silence on the other end of the line as the international phone call counter ticked away. ‘Norman, are you there?’

  Norman’s voice sounded tired and detached. Every word was costing him great effort. ‘Yes, I am. This links my father’s death to Roussos and Karagheorghis.’

  ‘That seems possible.’

  ‘There’s no other explanation.’

  ‘I don’t know, Norman. It’s not simple. Come to Athens and we’ll talk about it. I’ll try to find out what the other messages mean. An idea has come to me.’

  ‘All right,’ said Norman. ‘I’ll come.’

  ‘Norman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t lose heart. We’ve got to see this thing through to the end.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. Think about your idea. I’ll be bringing you something.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘An arrow. Identical to the one that killed my father.’

  Michel went and sat at the little table in his room, took out a cigarette, and began to look at the Odyssey. He compared Norman’s message with the original wording and scanned the poem page by page to search for the words found on the bodies of Roussos and Karagheorghis. They sounded as if they might be from passages in the Odyssey, but his efforts proved fruitless.

  He lay down on the bed and tried to relax, but his thoughts would not let him rest. He and Norman certainly hadn’t had much success. Their hunt for the vase of Tiresias had run up a dead end, and they hadn’t heard a thing from the man they’d met at Kotronas. And now James Shields’s death seemed somehow connected to the murders of Roussos and Karagheorghis, but how? And why? And who the hell had printed Periklis Harvatis’s little book, if the print shop at 17 Dionysìou Street had been closed for so long?

  The next day he would ask for an appointment with the director of the National Museum and attempt to get in touch with Aristotelis Malidis. It was the only possible way out of a blind alle
y.

  The phone rang again; it was the front desk with an international call.

  ‘Michel? It’s Mireille. I’ve finally found you!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t have time to call and tell you I’d got to the hotel here in Athens.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I managed to find you anyway, didn’t I? How’s it going?’

  ‘This research is hairier than I’d imagined. We’re running into all sorts of obstacles.’

  ‘But I want to see you!’

  ‘So do I, very much.’

  ‘I’m off work next week. I want to come to Athens to be with you.’

  ‘Mireille, this isn’t just academic research. I’m helping my friend Norman to investigate his father’s death. There may even be some danger involved.’

  ‘That’s why I want to be with you.’

  ‘Believe me, it’s what I want most right now. I dream about you every night, but I’m afraid you being here could create problems . . . especially for Norman. I’m sure he wants some things to remain just between the two of us. You can understand, can’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. You don’t want me in the way, right?’

  ‘Mireille, just give me a few days. If there’s a break, I’ll call you immediately.’

  ‘All right. But remember, the longer the abstinence you’re forcing on me, the greater the penance you’ll have to pay.’

  Michel smiled: ‘Ready and willing for any penance you have in mind, my lady.’

  ‘I miss you.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Michel, are you hiding something from me?’

  ‘Mireille, there is something, but I can’t tell you now. I don’t know how to tell you. Please keep loving me, even . . . afterwards. You’re the most important thing in my life.’