The Emperor Awakes

by Alexis Konnaris

  ‘And by behaving as expected you confirmed that the fatal break between me and your brother was true and any doubt would have been obliterated from people’s minds. It was a gamble that has paid off beyond my wildest expectations.’

  Elli stopped her evaluation of the success of her plan and waited for the rescue she hoped was coming.”

  Here ended Aristo’s hypothetical scenario of his conversation with his mother, but did it? Perhaps it was not hypothetical and only a debate in his mind after all.

  Aristo suddenly had the sickening feeling that he did, indeed, actually have that conversation with his mother. When he looked at his mother and saw her intense stare and rebuke, a moment during which only each of them existed for the other and which felt as if they had briefly locked horns, the realisation dawned on him that he had had that exchange with his mother telepathically

  Aristo caught a glimpse of the others present and saw them oblivious to anything but their own thoughts, their own little internal world. The others had heard nothing of the exchange that had taken place.

  Aristo’s reverie, if that was what it was, after having veered wildly off any sensible course, ended abruptly with the much-anticipated rescue that had, by God, now become reality.

  The team in the cells met with little resistance that they easily neutralised. In one cell they found Elli, Aristo, Giorgos and John Halland. The four prisoners heard a commanding voice order them to stand away from the door.

  Elli immediately spurred into action. ‘Come on. Let’s get to the other side.’

  The door was wrenched open. Before them stood four men in what looked like Special Forces uniforms.

  One of them, who must have been their team leader, gave Elli a salute before addressing her.

  ‘Mrs Symitzis. We are operating under Vasilis’ instructions. We are to get you out of here.’ The team leader briefly held Elli’s gaze, and after looking at the others present, his eyes returned to Elli. ‘Please follow us.’ The four former prisoners obeyed without question. Those four men were their ticket out of their captivity.

  Elli turned to the team leader. ‘And Vasilis?’

  ‘He will be joining us later. He’s dealing with the items in the strong room.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Mrs Symitzis, there’s no time.’ They turned towards the door and started to move away. Elli and the others followed.

  In another cell they found Giorgos’ and Katerina’s parents, Andros and Anna. The same scene was repeated there. There was only little resistance on Andros’ and Anna’s part, born of being dazed by their abduction and their disbelief at their dramatic rescue from their nightmare. At least a part of their brain was present and clear and was thankful for their soon-to-materialise return to reality.

  Their situation was compounded by the deafening sirens and alarms that had unexpectedly gone off simultaneously throughout the city and that had come hard on the heels of their ordeal. But the name “Vasilis” managed to get through the fog of their minds. They resigned to their fate and allowed themselves to be led like lambs to the slaughter.

  The rescue team wasted no time in leading everyone to the escape pod. They joined them inside and, immediately the door closed, the pod was launched on its way to the surface.

  The team leader notified their waiting plane to come and pick them up. The plane zeroed in on the pod’s signal. Once the pod was sighted, the plane flew low, almost brushing the water, until it was above the pod.

  There the plane hovered while it lowered its powerful magnet and lifted the pod into its hold. It flew away to a safe height and distance to wait for the signal from Vasilis.

  For Vasilis and Katerina things got a bit complicated. The strong room was well guarded. They had to arrange a distraction for the guards. However, with little time at their disposal, they were faced with three chambers with individual keypads requiring separate codes.

  With the danger of the guards returning at any moment, Vasilis used a special device he had brought with him to break the codes. They managed to do it just in time. Once they had managed to get inside the strong room, relief washed over them.

  Their face smiled as it reflected all the items they sought that were staring back at them. Within minutes they were out, with the guards catching up as they rounded a corner. The guards had swiftly sounded the alarm and gave chase.

  Vasilis called on his internal spies to help them. As they reached their chosen entry point and exit and were getting into their diving suits, Ruinands on Vasilis’ side fell behind them blocking their pursuers’ way and giving them the time to escape.

  Vasilis had contacted the submarine that collected them and rushed straight for the surface. It was picked up by their plane’s magnet and was on its way to be lifted into the plane’s hold when the city’s guns started to roar. Bullets and other projectiles rushed past the submarine as it hung in mid-air, but they missed their targets, both the submarine and the plane.

  But some bullets hit the plane. They caused some damage, but not to critical systems and the plane’s fuselage held intact. The plane was already accelerating away with the submarine still being pulled in and the back hatch half-open.

  * * *

  Inside the city, their escape was discovered. Madame Marcquesa was outraged. She went straight to her strong room and, seeing the precious items missing, she almost had a seizure with the amount of blood that flooded her brain. She wanted to punish her new-found sister.

  Elli’s memory of the day her parents were taken away from her, forever, chose this crucial time to come back to haunt her once more. She sensed Madame Marcquesa’s hand in this. She was her tormentor.

  Then, as if a door was unlocked in Elli’s brain, all the memories from that distant tragic moment in the past came rushing in, and were, strangely, at once uninvited and painfully welcome. Elli remembered everything.

  * * *

  She saw herself as a young girl playing on her father’s knees, a happy joyful peaceful time, before she grew up and roared into the woman she was today.

  In the background, behind the house the mountains were framed by the blue sky and the luscious meadows sparkled in the midday sun, that yellow disc in the sky, merciless to all but this earth and to us, shining down on an idyllic landscape about to be shattered.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, smashing the brightness of another perfect day, a dense fog descended from the upper reaches of the mountains and began to spread quickly. The fog hovered there, just a couple of feet above the ground, and for days afterwards stubbornly refused to lift and disperse.

  It was but a harbinger of things to come, and soon, so very soon. If only they had known how to read the ominous signs that unbeknownst to them were slowly choking them. Paradise blinds one to the inevitable and obvious that seems impossible to accept, even if it is looking one in the eye.

  One day, soon after the fog’s arrival, her father was taken away and her mother never came back from a journey. On that day she was out in the meadows playing with her friends, the animals that inhabited this realm, and with the people that worked it and tended it with love, a love built and nourished over generations, one after another after another.

  Her sister was taken away too. Her brother who was also spared was given to another family to be cared for, a family that did not live far and that allowed the two remaining siblings to grow up together and become as thick as thieves.

  Nobody could separate them. Nobody could try to harm one of them without the other coming charging and bearing down on the attackers bend on revenge and protection.

  The devastated lonely girl was taken into the care of Demetrius, a friend of her father’s, a gentle man, a man of great intelligence, abilities, prowess and achievement. She lived with him and his wife, Iolanthe, at once the most fearsome and most generous woman she had ever met.

  Iolanthe and Demetrius were prime examples to follow for the young girl in her formative years, the best anyone could have wished for, and a catalyst for the
development of her personality.

  She had few memories of her mother and father and even those few precious memories were vague. There was nothing vivid to satisfyingly grasp for comfort and to cherish. Iolanthe became her surrogate mother and Demetrius her father.

  Those two unique individuals influenced and sculpted her view of life and of people and her reactions and interaction with the environment around her. Iolanthe and Demetrius had worked hard to prepare Elli for her future role.

  It was they who had initiated her into the secrets and practices of the Pallanians and the Order of Vlachernae and of her family and of the Cypriots and the Greeks, so that she knew her own and her people’s history and had a deep knowledge of where she came from.

  They were the ones who helped her reconcile her tragedies with her future responsibilities as head of the Order, the family and the mighty Valchern Corporation. They set her, as best equipped as possible, on her difficult journey, on a collision course with her destiny, with a great enemy, and were instrumental in her becoming the powerhouse and dominant force that she would later become, always using her ruthlessness and fairness for good.

  Back to that fateful day, the fog became as thick as soup and stung the eyes and, if you enjoyed doing that almost blind, you could almost swim in it, and you could almost taste it, an earthy buttery sweetness, spiced with bitterness and savour, and spiked with the herbs and coniferous smells and tastes of the forest.

  The fog took a life of its own, like a huge beast on an aggressive move on not just her surroundings, but principally her and only her.

  Her family was the target and the aggressor was the enemy that did not want her to survive and fulfil her pre-destined and prophesied role. Somehow they knew. What was that fog? What did it represent to her or to anyone else? Did it appear in a unique form to each one that was unlucky enough to cross its path and fall in its lap and become its target and potential victim?

  More precisely, who was it? She could sense it was a living breathing being. A human presence, another creature, something else? That she could not say.

  Now she finally knew who it was. The Ruinands. Their eternal enemy. Who else could it have been? She knew it deep down, but never really admitted it to herself before now.

  She now understood the Marcquesa. But she still could not accept what she had been told. Yet there did not seem to be any doubt. She had to concede that the DNA test put paid to that.

  A chill ran down her spine, chilled her to the bone and tickled her sensitive nerve-endings. The sensation was painful. She could not breathe. She was choking, her breathing attempts were almost failing and coming out coarse, troubled and hurried with every laboured breath spiced with pain.

  She felt she was choking on the very air entering her larynx and lungs that should have given her relief. Her experience that day, that horrible feeling foretold the future; she knew it now. It was a foretaste of travails, trials and tribulations to come.

  Then, this … thing, let go of her but only for a moment. She broke free and ran back to the house with all the strength left to her and closed the door as if that would be a deterrent to that force.

  Yet even though she was a child, her mind had in those excruciating moments grown beyond her years and to her the act of barricading herself behind that door, inside her home and sole refuge, was attune to instinctively putting a barrier between her and her pursuer.

  She prayed not to have to see this … thing again. But she knew even in her child’s mind that free as she was it was only a respite until their next appointment, at an indeterminate date, for this thing to get bored and come running after her, after amusement, as you would when in the exercise of a favourite hobby.

  Only when no-one was watching did she resign herself to the thing’s power and hold over her, isolating herself, so that she did not harm anyone else but herself.

  Every time, this thing took out something from her, a part of her. She had no resistance to it, no cure, no medicine to take, no weapon against it, no way to stop it, no choice … To the accidental onlooker it could look as if she was having severe epileptic fits.

  But maybe she could use it to her advantage. She would need to think about that. Maybe there would be some knowledge or strength she may be able to glean from it, from the experience, from wrestling with it.

  She perhaps could glean some insight into her enemy’s mind and use the connection when it occurred to sabotage her enemy, to feed her enemy wrong information. She had to learn how to control it, how to initiate the connection and how to break it. She did not want to be surprised by it when it decided to pay her a visit and to wait for that moment to use it.

  She had to turn that connection into a reliable tool and, perhaps, weapon to serve the cause of the Order of Vlachernae.

  And now she had rediscovered her sister. She felt that the two sisters were two sides of the same coin.

  CHAPTER 55

  Ten thousand metres above the Aegean Sea, Greece

  Present day

  It was in the plane going back to Cyprus from Le Mirabel that they began to discuss their next steps. They knew they had to move quickly.

  The Ruinands and the Marcquesa would not be far behind. They had their own spies. And there was the small matter of the traitor.

  Elli thought of Iraklios and she was about to dismiss it when Katerina turned to her.

  ‘Elli, we know who the traitor is.’ Elli looked at her with blank eyes as if her mind was still somewhere else or was refusing to obey her and open up to hear the truth she feared. ‘In fact my parents can confirm it.’ She turned to her parents who were only now slowly coming out of their nightmare of the last twenty-four hours. ‘Dad?’

  ‘Elli, it’s Iraklios.’ Andros Markantaskis said, his voice and his face shouting his sadness loud and clear.

  ‘No.’ A small word full of anguish. Her inscrutability mask slipped, a rare event indeed. But she knew it to be true. She realised she had known for some time, but refused to believe it.

  Then, not fully recovered yet, but loath to waste time in self-indulgent grief and soul-searching, determination brightly coloured her voice and she spoke.

  ‘We need to get back to the organisation of the mission. Tomorrow is the 21st May, the day of Saint Konstantinos and Santa Eleni, and the crucial date for carrying out the ceremony. There may not be another opportunity for who knows how long.’ Her eyes fell on Giorgos. ‘Now, Giorgos, you can access your hard drives from that panel over there. Download all the relevant material. And don’t worry. The encryption and security equipment here is better than that of any secret service or software company in the world. Vasilis will show you how to use it.’ She looked at Vasilis who nodded. ‘Do you have scans of the scroll?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll get them too.’ Giorgos said and swiftly moved into action.

  ‘Good. It should not take you more than ten minutes, right?’

  ‘Yes, that should be enough time to have everything.’

  ‘Excellent. We’ll start then. I think we could all do with a little time to recover even if we cannot afford any.’

  * * *

  About twenty-five minutes later Giorgos was ready with all the material printed out. He distributed folders.

  ‘Take a few minutes to familiarise yourselves with the material.’

  * * *

  Giorgos was operating the console and projecting the material on a big screen above it. He brought up one of the geological scans. He indicated an area on the scan.

  ‘Look here at this. It’s a bit fuzzy, but you can clearly see that there are two entrances. Remember there has been a lot of erosion in Limassol in this area. The coastline has receded by a huge measure. I have calculated where the ancient coastline was around 1454 A.D. which from the evidence we have seems to be the time that whatever is down there was constructed.’

  He brought up a plan and put it on top of the scan.

  ‘There is a second submerged entrance which has to be approached from the sea at
this point here, next to the Western side of the old port. From the scroll we can deduce that we will need to split into two groups. Both groups will need to be at these precise locations that look to be the entrances into the main cavern containing the structure.

  ‘You will see from the scan of the scroll in your pack that two of the keys, the ones for the slots corresponding to Alexandria and Athens, will have to be used at the doorway accessed through the castle tunnel and the other key, the one corresponding to Constantinople on the doorway on the seaward side. The keys will need to be inserted and turned at the same time. We will need to be in communication to co-ordinate that.’ He turned to Vasilis. ‘Vasilis?’

  Vasilis nodded and took over from Giorgos. ‘We will have to arrange in advance for the access through the seaward side. We will be employing the Valchern Corporation resources here. We will need to make sure that the entrance is not obstructed, and if it is, we will need to unblock it under the cover of construction works. It would not be difficult since Valchern owns this area here adjacent to the old port.’ He said indicating on the map.

  ‘We will use a special small submarine to pick us up from a place where we cannot be seen boarding it which I propose to be here near the mouth of the now dry river.’ He again pointed at the relevant area. ‘This area is also owned by Valchern. There is a copse of trees and a line of rocks jutting out to sea that should give us cover. The submarine will drop us off underwater at this point where we will change into divers’ suits and will proceed underwater all the way to the entrance. Giorgos?’

  ‘There are tests we will need to complete successfully and traps we will need to avoid. We will need to be close together and in constant communication. Let’s hope there is nothing to interfere with communications down there, be it the geological composition or an unsavoury companion. No rush moves, please. We cannot afford any wrong steps.