The Mask of Zeus

by Desmond Cory

  Onlan öldürüyorlar

  Of course the writer herself was still there. In a manner of speaking.

  Tolga söyledi Tolga Tolga Tolga Tolga Tolga

  It was writing that somehow had the quality of a scream and that, Dobie thought, was in effect what it was. ‘“They’re killing them.” That’s what it says. And then, “Tolga told them.” Then—’

  ‘Tolga Tolga Tolga Tolga Tolga.’

  ‘Yes. I expect it was all she could think of. Or all she had time for. The others were being killed in the other room while she, I imagine, was being raped. She’d have been in a state of shock. Physical and mental. But it’s clear enough what she was trying to say. Clear even to you, I suppose …’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Dobie said. He kept the torch beam directed towards the wall, although it had once again become a little unsteady. Enough light was reflected from the rock surface to show a pair of booted feet standing close beside him and the long dull gleam of what could only be the barrel of a rifle or a shotgun, held pointing downwards but otherwise, he had to assume, ready for use. The tautness of the muscles in his stomach and thighs had come back and had become almost unbearable. ‘You’re not going to need a gun, are you? I’d have thought there’d been enough killing done down here already.’

  ‘That depends on how you look at it. But, after all, you’re a reasonable man. We both are, I hope.’ The booted feet stepped back and the dark shape of the blued-steel barrel receded into the shades. Dobie took a deep breath, feeling the taste of vomit at the back of his throat. ‘Let’s just step out of this … room, shall we? I find the atmosphere in here much too oppressive.’

  That was understandable. ‘So do I.’ Dobie got slowly to his feet.

  ‘You go first, then. Mind your head when you … Good. That’s it.’ The boots made no sound as they followed Dobie’s hesitant steps through the archway. Crêpe soles, obviously. But Dobie could hear the sound of the other’s heavy breathing coming after him; both reasonable men, yes, and both scared stiff. Of each other. ‘You’ve realised what this place was used for, of course.’

  ‘Some kind of a meeting-place, it must have been. Or hideout. For those Greek … That’s why they called themselves that. The Mask of Zeus.’

  He had crossed the floor and was standing on the edge of it now, looking down at it. Alcmena, a giantess, her huge thighs straddled, lifted. Procreating a hero. Dobie wasn’t a hero. Just an ordinary chap, really, who was feeling the pressures build up too high for his liking. He stared down at the writhing interlocked figures and didn’t turn round. Was that how it had been in the other room? While she was being raped? … The shapes and colours were swimming now before his eyes, were melting together. He wished that he could see a little more clearly. The sweat was running into his eyes, that was the trouble.

  A reasonable man, yes. But a murderer. With a gun. That made it reasonable, in turn, for Dobie to feel scared. Being scared didn’t prevent him from thinking, but as what he was thinking was that he should maybe have done a bit more thinking before getting himself into his present position of being alone with a murderer, with a gun, that didn’t help very much. His thoughts seemed to be running round in circles. That wasn’t reasonable. In fact it was crazy.

  ‘They must have been all completely mad. Looking back on it. And yet, in another way quite logical. They brought everyone in the village down here at gunpoint and then they shot them. Everyone except the man they really wanted.’

  ‘Uktu,’ Dobie said. He found he was nodding his head in approval. Not of the action, of course. But of the logic.

  ‘Uktu. Oh, he was there, of course. The Greeks knew he was there. They caught him with his pants down, as the saying goes. They caught him and they drove him back to Nicosia and they shot him and left him by the side of the road and it was just one of those things, you know? Bad luck. Or bad judgement. Or anyway … not a betrayal. No connection with this massacre here. All these people here, they just disappeared. But they didn’t want Uktu to disappear. They wanted to show us all that Uktu was dead. They wanted to score a propaganda victory over us. And they did. They did.’

  The voice was normal enough but seemed to be pitched several semitones higher than usual, so that it sounded almost like a woman’s. That might be an acoustic effect, but there was something else rather strange about the intonation that couldn’t have been caused by local conditions and which Dobie really didn’t like at all. ‘But the villagers knew that they’d caught him here.’

  ‘Some of them did, anyway. So they all had to die. Because if we ever found out that Uktu had been taken in Alanici, we’d naturally have wondered how the Greeks knew that he was there. Somebody told them, of course. And there was only one person who could have done that.’

  ‘Tolga söyledi,’ Dobie said.

  That was one Turkish phrase he was sure he would never forget.

  ‘Tolga söyledi. Tolga told them. Yes.’

  The voice seemed to have moved away, to have edged over towards Dobie’s left, and there was a short pause before it spoke again. ‘There should be a gas lamp here somewhere. Derya had a … Ah, yes. Here it is. I’ve only been down here once before, you know, and quite frankly I hoped never to have to come down here again.’ Dobie heard the sharp scratch of a match, ludicrously loud in the water-dripping silence, the hiss of a gas jet and a moment later a brittle and golden light struck off the dark walls at his eyeballs, the stones of the mosaic instantly echoing its sudden brilliance. ‘This place has a … I don’t know … an aura … I haven’t felt completely myself ever since. But then I’m not myself. I’m not the person I believed myself to be. No one is. It’s just that this place makes you realise it.’

  Dobie rubbed his stinging eyelids with his fingers. It only made them worse. ‘It’s hotter than you’d think,’ he said foolishly. And dark, and deeper than any sea-dingle. But then this was Hades. It was supposed to be just like this.

  ‘You see, the moment Derya showed me that room … and that writing … in one way I couldn’t believe it, it was totally incredible and in another way it was as though I’d always known it. Can you understand that? I can’t. I mean, when I was a boy there may well have been things that I couldn’t have understood, things that I may have noticed without ever really making anything of them, and then of course they sent me to England and that may have been why or at any rate one of the reasons so I never got to know him well; that’s Uktu I’m talking about …’ Dobie turned at last and watched Cem Arkin lower the gas lamp to the floor and adjust the control lever, the hissing light shining full on the pale, abstracted face. ‘I’m rambling a bit, aren’t I? I suppose it’s an idea I still haven’t managed to come to terms with. Uktu and …’ His head turned slowly on its heavy neck till he was staring back towards the other room. ‘And me not being who I thought I was. It’s all so bizarre. You know what I mean?’

  A wooden bench ran along the wall behind him. Dobie hadn’t noticed it before. Cem sat down on it, propping the shotgun against his knee, his right hand gently caressing the barrel. Dobie kept his eyes fixed on that hand as he approached and seated himself alongside. He welcomed the chance to sit down. His legs, too, were tired and aching.

  ‘They must have looked very alike. Being twin brothers.’ He was aware that he was still talking foolishly, but that couldn’t be helped. It seemed important that he should go on saying things, somehow, to keep that hand where it was, stroking the gun barrel. And away from the trigger.

  ‘Oh, they did. Yes. They did. But they were very different, really. I mean, my father was, well … a schoolmaster. An academic. With all that the word implies. Very like me, in fact. The marriage was arranged, of course, so my mother’s people must’ve thought he was due for a prosperous career – though I’ll bet they’d be staggered to see where he’s got to today, if they were alive to see it. Which they’re not. But Uktu, he was more a man of action, he was … glamorous, I suppose you’d have to say. Or what’s that … Charisma. That’s the word I was th
inking of. He had charisma. In fact it got up my nose a bit, all that hero-worship. But at the same time, yes, it was exciting or he was and I felt that even then, so if my mother felt … or if she … Yes, but I can’t bring myself to understand it. I keep telling myself I don’t blame her. Or them. But I do.’ He raised his eyes, fixing Dobie with a dispassionate level-eyed stare that seemed to be completely at odds with the undertone of desperation, or of something else, apparent in his voice. ‘You understand it, though. Or at least you guessed it. And yet you didn’t know either of them. That’s just not possible. Is it? How is it possible?’

  Yes, Dobie thought, he’d need to know that. To prevent anyone else from making guesses in the future. In the future that it seems pretty obvious I haven’t got. Yes, he’d want to know that. ‘I suppose it was the necklace,’ Dobie said.

  ‘What necklace?’

  ‘The one he must have given her. With the letter V as a pendant. V for Victory. Uktu. And for the rest, I’d have to say that Seymour told me about it. Or tried to. Amphitryon and Zeus … The same, but different. The human being and the god. He couldn’t put it more directly than that. Either he didn’t want to or he couldn’t. Or a bit of each.’

  ‘He couldn’t. He still can’t. Ever. Ever.’

  ‘And Derya certainly can’t. You were having an affair with her, I suppose? Off and on?’

  ‘An affair? What a very English expression that is. But off and on … Yes. Yes. That describes it very adequately. In fact, that sums it up. Do we really have to talk about that as well?’

  It was a shotgun all right. Single-barrelled. He had both hands on it now; the hands were large and capable and perfectly steady and looked to be well practised in the use of deadly weapons. If Cem reckoned that one barrel would prove to be enough, he was almost certainly right. Dobie looked down at the torch still gripped a little too tightly in his own right hand and switched it off. It wasn’t needed now.

  Fiat lux. Cem would need light, of course, to do what he was going to do, but the lamp was on the far side of the bench, way out of Dobie’s reach. ‘You don’t have to talk about anything,’ Dobie said, ‘if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Because you know it all already, right? You’re rather a maddening fellow, Dobie. But you have to know that, too. You seem to be such a harmless chap and in reality you’re about as harmless as a king cobra in a lucky dip. That’s why I’m going to have to deal with you accordingly.’

  ‘As with the female of the species?’

  ‘Oh, no. No nice soft pillows for Professor Dobie. No, I’m going to blow your fucking head off. And,’ Cem Arkin said, ‘if you nod your head wisely and say, “I know,” just once more, then I’m going to get really angry.’

  ‘There’s no need for that, I hope,’ Dobie said.

  Outside, the sun was setting behind the Karpaz mountains. It was difficult to see what could stop it, or why anyone should want to. Professor Berry pressed Cem Arkin’s doorbell for a third time before turning sadly away.

  Professor Berry was a reasonable man. He could, in other words, draw logical inferences from established facts. If nobody answered Cem Arkin’s doorbell when somebody rang it, the inference might be drawn that Cem Arkin was out. The next step would naturally be to seek further confirmation of this hypothesis. Standing at the gate, Berry Berry saw that Hillyer was approaching, walking-stick in hand, returning no doubt from his evening constitutional. ‘Have you seen Cem anywhere?’

  Hillyer halted, blinking uncertainly in the fading light. ‘I saw him go out a couple of hours ago. In his car.’

  ‘Oh,’ Berry Berry said. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Maybe gone to shoot a pigeon or two. He had his gun with him, anyway.’

  Berry Berry found this puzzling. ‘That’s very strange. I’d arranged to call on him at this hour. It’s not like Cem to forget an appointment.’

  ‘Well, he should be getting back any moment now.’

  ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘It’s getting dark,’ Hillyer explained patiently. ‘You can’t shoot pigeons in the dark. Or anything else, for that matter.’

  ‘Ah. Quite so. That’s true. Well,’ Berry Berry said, turning away, ‘in that case I’ll try to catch him later.’

  Hillyer watched him march away. Berry Berry, he thought, was a strange fellow, but then he’d long since come to the conclusion that all these Cyps were loopy. It was nice to think that he had a Britisher as a next-door neighbour. But then he wasn’t altogether sure about Dobie, either.

  Who, to add to his other troubles, now had a headache.

  ‘There’s no need for that, I hope,’ he heard himself saying.

  Curiously, his own voice seemed to have risen a pitch or two, though he wasn’t speaking loudly. ‘After all, there are things that you still want to know. Or so I imagine.’

  ‘Yes. There was some kind of a map, I suppose. It’ll have to be destroyed. Where is it?’

  ‘Not a map. A set of computations. On a mini-disc.’

  ‘I looked everywhere. I couldn’t find anything. Then later I thought that Seymour might have burnt it with the rest of his stuff. A mini-disc … where is it?’

  ‘In my jacket pocket. Up there.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’ Cem, too, was speaking softly now, almostly gently. ‘Except … You worry me, Dobie.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there are times when it’s politic to lie and this is one of them. And yet you’re telling me the truth. I know you are.’

  ‘Of course it’s all in that book that Seymour wrote.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘About the mosaic. He got most of it from Kaya, apparently. And some of it from Derya. She was running the computations for Kaya, but when something came up that she thought was really interesting … she held it back. It’s on the disc all right, but it’s encoded. So you see—’

  ‘Yes, that’s what she was looking for in the first place. The mosaic. Or so she told me. Of course it must always have been underground, this … temple or whatever it is. They celebrated things here. Mysteries and I don’t know what. Fertility rites and all that. He had it on the brain, all that mythology stuff, Seymour did. But we take it all for granted, here on the island. It’s no big deal.’

  ‘A massacre is,’ Dobie said.

  ‘Well, the Greeks have made progress, I suppose. Like everyone else.’

  ‘What did Derya do, exactly?’

  ‘You mean, when she found … that?’ He didn’t mean the mosaic.

  ‘Yes.’

  Cem shrugged. He seemed to have very few un-British gestures, but this was one of them. ‘She read the message. She knew what it meant. They came to my office and she told me about it. That handbag you saw in there, my mother’s handbag … There was a paper in it, a document. She showed it to me as proof. I couldn’t … It wasn’t enough. I wanted to see for myself. So they brought me down here. Yes. I saw.’

  The wooden bench was becoming uncomfortably hard and Dobie’s headache was getting worse and worse. Yet he had to keep on talking, and to keep Cem talking. Easily and affably. It hardly seemed worth the effort involved, but he had to because he had to. No other reason. He said, ‘There would have been something that she wanted, I expect.’

  ‘She had what she wanted from that moment on. Power.’

  ‘Then she’d want a way in which to exercise it.’

  ‘Let’s say,’ Cem said glumly, ‘she made of it a future threat. Not against me. Against my father. Or you could even say against the whole bloody republic. Because it’d be nothing short of a national disaster if my father were to be discredited at this stage. He’s done so much for us the people here would forgive him almost anything. But not that. Betraying Uktu to the Greeks. Informing on his brother. It’d take us all back to 1974 again and this time we wouldn’t even feel able to trust each other. Derya knew all that. Of course she knew it.’

  ‘And Seymour? Did he know it?’

  ‘Seymour? Look, we were sitting here on
this bench just as you and I are sitting here now. And he was listening to us talking. But like he wasn’t listening. Like he couldn’t understand Turkish – which in fact he can, well enough. Then he walked out. He knew what she was up to but he couldn’t do anything to stop it, was the way I saw it.’

  ‘So you had to stop it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he know that you meant to?’

  ‘I think so. Yes. But he couldn’t do anything to stop that, either. Or maybe he didn’t want to. She had him blocked every which way, you know. Blocked in his work. Blocked in his sex life. I don’t know how she did it. She had the power, that was all. So she exercised it. Kept him on those drugs he used, poor sod. She had him riddled right through with guilt, like with … machine-gun bullets. It’s crazy, she never felt any guilt, not at having it off with me or those soldier boyfriends of hers or anyone else or for anything at all; if she had she might have realised what it was I had to do, but no, it didn’t ever occur to her … But Seymour … Yes, well, Seymour …’

  It was starting to happen, whatever it was that Dobie had been waiting for – and perhaps Cem Arkin, too. Dobie looked away from the gun and down at Cem’s booted feet, at the thick smears of grey mud coating the heels and insteps. Dobie’s own shoes were also bedaubed with it. Here in Hades there was always moisture, the water seeping down from the walls and into the earth, forming here and there a dark film of gluey mud.

  ‘He came here with us but he didn’t know the way, he didn’t have the map, otherwise, don’t you see? I’d have had to kill him, too. But I didn’t, I couldn’t. He was so high on his goddam drugs that night, I didn’t think he’d be in touch with reality until the morning. Derya didn’t think he would. He wasn’t supposed to. He never had the times before, when I’d spent the night in her room. Shit,’ Cem said, ‘I had to do it, I had to. There wasn’t any choice. Any other way out. None at all.’