Alec and his companions stood on the steps, gazing down in mute astonishment. How could such a thing have happened? How could an entire sea have vanished, seemingly without a trace? And then it dawned on Alec what the answer must be and all his fears and anxieties came rushing back in an instant. He turned to look at the others.
‘We have to get to high ground,’ he yelled. ‘Quickly!’
Ethan stared at him. ‘But what . . . where . . . ?’
‘There’s no time to explain. We must—’
He broke off as a sound interrupted him – a distant sound, a low hum, which was rapidly building in volume. Then, off on the horizon, they saw something moving, something that at first glance looked like a low wall, sliding rapidly across the seabed towards them. But as it drew closer, they could see that it was actually a wall of water, a colossal wave that was rushing towards them at a terrifying speed. Alec had read about events such as these. He knew they were caused by a sudden displacement on the sea floor, something that had undoubtedly been caused by the volcanic eruption on Santorini. A vast body of seawater had temporarily been displaced and rushed away from the land; but now that same water was sweeping back, moving at a speed of up to six hundred miles an hour. As it neared land, the wave would grow higher and higher, until it was eight or ten times above its usual level and powerful enough to destroy anything in its path.
Alec saw that figures on the beach below him were running madly back towards the trees. He thought they had the right idea and, turning around, he started running up the steps, dragging Ariadne after him.
‘Come on!’ he bellowed. ‘We’ve only got minutes before it hits!’
There was an instant of shocked silence and then everyone was following Alec, pounding up the steps as fast as their legs would carry them. They reached the flagged approach and Alec could see that the stone slabs were now exploding into fragments as they experienced the full force of the seismic shocks. The runners were obliged to lift their arms to shield their faces as lethal chunks of rock flew in all directions. Alec noticed that Coates was heading towards the palace entrance and had to yell at him to make himself heard over the steadily rising roar of the approaching water.
‘No, Coates, we need to go higher!’
He led the way around the side of the palace, looking frantically for some avenue of escape, and then noticed several narrow trails leading up the steep hillside into which the temple had been built.
‘This way,’ he shouted. He pushed Ariadne in front of him and urged her to climb. She sprang forward, as agile as a mountain goat, and began to claw her way upwards. Everyone else found themselves a route and followed her example. Lieutenant Sideras holstered his pistol and Stephen flung his rifle aside and started climbing.
Alec risked a glance back and saw a great boiling swell of water sweeping up the steps and across the courtyard below him. In the same instant, he saw a huge marble statue cast aside as though it was no more than a child’s toy. He turned his attention back to climbing, pulling himself up the steep slope with every ounce of energy left in his body, leaping from rock to rock, grabbing at tree limbs and bushes, whatever came to hand. The roaring tumult blotted out all other sounds as the water approached and Alec realized that they weren’t going to make it. He was aware of the light being shut off as the wall of water reached them, towering overhead. He had time for one final image – that of his father’s disapproving face – and then he grabbed hold of the roots of a sapling and clung on as tightly as he possibly could. He remembered to snatch in a deep breath and then gritted his teeth, trying to anticipate the shock of the water before it hit.
But he could not have imagined the raw power that lay in that mighty wave. It hit him like a ton of rock, smashing him against the steep hillside and tearing him away from the roots to which he’d been clinging so tenaciously. Then his air was gone and he was in a strange silent world, being pummelled and pounded as though caught in a herd of stampeding animals. He no longer knew which way was up and which was down. He opened his eyes only to see a chaos of unrelated things tumbling around him – uprooted tree branches, flapping fish, struggling people, but mostly just millions and millions of bubbles, exploding around him, so that it was hard to see anything, and always the current was pushing him, twisting him this way and that, no matter how he struggled to resist it.
He got an impression of light above his feet and struggled to twist round so he might try and claw his way towards it, but something hard smashed into his back, driving the last ounce of air from his already aching lungs, and a strange calmness seemed to settle around him. He let himself sink, thinking how much easier it was not to struggle, to simply allow the water to claim him for ever.
But then he became aware of a movement in the water ahead of him. A young woman was swimming down towards him, her black hair trailing out behind her and her dark eyes gazing serenely at him through the waters. For an instant he thought he was looking at another mythical creature – a mermaid. But then she moved closer and threw an arm around him and he realized that it was Ariadne: she was holding him against her and powering her way back towards the light, rising steadily up from the depths. Alec’s head was spinning and he wanted to tell her that it was too late, that she should concentrate on saving herself because he couldn’t possibly hold his breath a moment longer . . .
Then his head broke the surface and he gasped involuntarily, snatching a breath deep into his lungs. He turned to look at Ariadne. ‘You saved my life!’
She smiled and put her arms around him, and they gave each other a fierce hug as they trod water. For a moment there was nothing else in all the world but the two of them, holding each other and rejoicing in the fact that they had survived. But then the reality of the situation came rushing back. Alec glanced anxiously around, looking for the others, and in that same instant somebody burst up from the water beside him. Ethan! He too threw back his head and snatched in a much-needed breath. He trod water, staring at Alec.
‘Next time you decide to pay a visit somewhere, count me out,’ he spluttered.
Alec nodded – and managed a weak laugh. He looked around, trying to get his bearings. They were near the top of the hillside. He thought he could see the branches of a few trees ahead of him, jutting up from the water, but the current was pulling him away from them – which, he decided, meant the water must be receding. Then he saw Stephen surface a good distance off to his right. He got his breath back and then waved, to tell them he was all right. Alec waved back and continued to tread water, looking anxiously around.
A couple of moments later, Lieutenant Sideras came floundering up, a few yards further on from Stephen. He splashed around then started to swim back to join the others.
The top of a slender tree trunk began to emerge from the receding waters and Alec paddled over and grabbed onto it, holding Ariadne to him as he did so. His feet found purchase on the hillside and he stared around, realizing that one person had still not emerged from the water’s deadly grip.
‘Where’s Coates?’ he asked Ethan.
The American frowned. He twisted round, looking in all directions, but there was no sign of the valet.
‘He’ll be OK,’ said Ethan, but he didn’t sound too confident. He knew just as well as Alec that Coates was a poor swimmer, and it already seemed a miracle that so many of them had survived the impact of that colossal wave.
Lieutenant Sideras and Stephen swam closer and Alec saw that they too were looking hopefully around them, as they found places on the hillside to cling onto. The water continued to drop, sluicing past their legs, taking all kinds of wreckage with it. Alec told himself there was still time for the valet to appear, but as the minutes passed and the water level dropped lower and lower, there was no sign of him.
‘What’s happened to him?’ he asked Ethan. ‘He has to be all right. He can’t have . . .’ He couldn’t bring himself to say the word. Drowned.
Ariadne clung onto him. ‘I’m sure he’s all right,’ she soothe
d. ‘Maybe the water just swept him further along the hillside.’
Alec nodded, but a desperate feeling was rising up within him – the thought that he had lost Coates for ever. He was able to stand now, so he pulled himself away from Ariadne and began to struggle across the boggy hillside, not caring that he was sinking to his ankles in mud. He shouted his valet’s name, over and over, and his voice seemed to echo across the hills, but still there was no answer. He could hear the others calling now, moving in different directions across the hillside, and he could sense the hopelessness in their voices, the distinct impression that they didn’t really expect to find Coates . . . at least, not alive. Sorrow clutched at Alec like an icy fist. He fought down the impulse to cry. Coates had been there for as long as he could remember, as solid and dependable as his own shadow. If something had happened to him, he simply wouldn’t know what to do. How would he be able to carry on if Coates was no longer there to guide him, to reprimand him, to remind him what a confounded nuisance he was?
He staggered on for some distance, the thick mud dragging at his ankles as though trying to prevent him from going any further. Finally, he came to the trunk of a tall tree and sank down beside it, no longer able to fight off his grief. He began to weep like a child, his shoulders shaking. His best and oldest friend was gone and he felt lost in the enormity of the moment.
‘Why, Coates?’ he cried. ‘Why?’
‘For goodness’ sake, stop blubbering and get me down from here!’
Alec gasped. The voice had come from somewhere above him. For one ridiculous moment, he imagined that Coates was speaking to him from beyond the grave. He even pictured his valet, sitting on a cloud like a cartoon angel, wearing a halo and clutching a harp; but then he looked up into the ragged branches of the tree, and there was Coates in the flesh, clinging on grimly and looking down at Alec with an outraged expression on his face. He was soaking wet, smeared with mud and his usually immaculate hair was sticking up on top of his head, as though he’d just got an electric shock; but as far as Alec could see, he was unharmed.
‘Coates!’ he cried. ‘You’re alive.’
‘Of course I’m alive!’ Coates sounded extremely peeved and he was hugging the bare tree limb as though his very life depended upon it. ‘The question is, how am I supposed to get down from this ruddy tree?’
And then Alec was laughing, laughing like a lunatic. He stared up at Coates and his eyes filled with tears again, but now they were tears of joy, such was his relief. He slumped down on his backside, in a big splash of muddy water.
‘Oh, Coates,’ he said, ‘you are priceless!’
‘I fail to see what’s so blinking amusing,’ said Coates; and then there was a sudden splintering sound. The limb to which he was clinging broke off the tree and he came tumbling to earth with a yell of alarm, but the ground beneath him was so soggy, he landed with a dull splat, throwing up plumes of mud in all directions. He rolled over with a curse and sat up, glaring at Alec, the whites of his eyes looking shockingly bright against his mud-plastered face.
‘I suppose you thought that was hilarious too,’ he growled.
This only set Alec off again and when the others finally wandered over, following the unexpected sound of laughter, they found the boy and his valet, sitting facing each other in the mud, Alec laughing like a hyena and Coates threatening to get up and tan Alec’s backside if he didn’t stop cackling immediately.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Aftermath
WHEN THE WATERS had finally subsided, the bedraggled party made their way back down the hillside, slipping and sliding in the mud. Halfway down the hill they came to one of the huge statues that had stood at the entrance to the palace. It was lying on its side, a mighty warrior vanquished by a prodigious force. The warrior’s blind eyes stared up at the sky and the expression on his sculpted face suggested a state of shock – that he could not believe that he had ended up lying here in the mud, so far from the doors that he had guarded for so long.
When they finally got down to the courtyard, they were amazed to witness the level of devastation that the wave had wrought. The stone pillars had been felled like trees, the huge wooden entrance doors to the palace wrenched off and reduced to matchwood and the arched doorway all but collapsed upon itself. Through a ragged opening, they could see that the corridor beyond was swamped with mud and seaweed, and that here and there, parts of the roof had been brought down to crash onto the flagged floors.
‘How will I ever recover Wolfe’s body from in there?’ asked Lieutenant Sideras.
‘Take my advice,’ said Ethan. ‘Forget the place ever existed.’
‘And the parents of Mr Travis? Do they not deserve to know what happened to their son?’
‘Make up a story,’ Coates advised him. ‘Tell them he met with an accident . . . that he drowned and his body was washed away . . . anything but the truth. They wouldn’t want to be told what really happened to him, not if they’re ever going to find any peace for themselves.’
Lieutenant Sideras seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he nodded. They went on their way, finding what was left of the marble steps in the dark slippery ooze and guiding themselves carefully downwards. Below them, the stone jetty was still submerged. The waters had swamped the beach and moved into the trees beyond. Among the debris floating on the water Alec could identify the wreckage of Wolfe’s beautiful yacht. The mighty wave had picked it up and smashed it into matchwood. Alec noticed a solitary white lifebuoy with the name Ariadne spelled out upon it. Further out, thousands of dead fish covered the surface of the sea, floating like white spectres. Off on the horizon, Santorini seemed to be in a somewhat calmer mood now. Black smoke still spewed into the sky, but it was nothing like the great pall they had witnessed earlier.
Coates, still slicked from head to foot in mud, took Alec’s arm and drew him off to one side, so he could talk quietly in his ear. ‘What are we going to do about the girl?’ he murmured.
Alec looked at his valet in surprise. ‘Do about her?’ he echoed. ‘Why, she’ll come with us, of course.’
‘You mean, back to Crete?’
‘Yes . . . and then to Athens.’
Coates glared at him. ‘You cannot be serious!’ he protested. ‘What do you suppose your father will say if we just turn up with her?’
‘Coates, she saved my life back there.’
‘I appreciate that, but—’
‘Her father is dead. Her home has been completely destroyed. We can’t just dump her on the streets of Crete like some beggar, can we?’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘And if I know Father, he won’t stand by and see her left in such a pickle – particularly when I tell him how if it hadn’t been for her, I’d be dead by now.’
Coates looked perplexed. ‘Why is it after every trip we make with you, I end up with a lot of explaining to do?’ he asked.
‘You won’t have to explain anything,’ Alec assured him. ‘I’m seventeen now, it’s time I started speaking for myself.’
They continued on down, slipping and sliding on the precarious descent, until they had gone as far as they could without actually plunging into the sea.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Stephen.
‘We wait,’ said Lieutenant Sideras. ‘Sooner or later, help will come.’
They didn’t have to wait too long. After some ten or fifteen minutes of scanning the horizon, Alec’s keen eyes discerned a small black blob, something that was clearly heading in their direction. After a few minutes, he was able to see that it was the fishing boat that had brought them to the island.
‘How could it have survived the wave?’ gasped Lieutenant Sideras.
‘I guess when the water receded, it must have swept the boat away with it,’ suggested Alec. ‘If the skipper had any sense, he’d have untied the mooring rope and let it happen, rather than let his boat be stranded on the seabed.’
‘Yes, but that wave was colossal,’ argued Coates.
; ‘Near the shore it was,’ agreed Alec. ‘But out in deep water, it wouldn’t have been anything like as powerful as it was in the shallows. A tiny boat like that would have ridden it like a cork in a rain barrel.’
He turned to see that Ariadne was gazing back up the muddy steps, as though deep in thought. ‘Sad to be leaving?’ he asked her.
She shook her head. ‘I’ve looked forward to this moment for years,’ she said. ‘It’s all I have dreamed of. But I suppose I always imagined that when I left Candia, my father would still be alive.’
Alec placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Ariadne, it’s horrible what happened to him. But the authorities would have caught up with him sooner or later. After the things he’d done, there’s no doubt that he would have faced a lifetime in prison . . . maybe even the death penalty.’
‘I know,’ she said sadly. ‘He did terrible things, and he deserved to be punished for them. I just wish you could have met him before the madness took him. In his own way, Alec, he was a great man.’
‘A shame that such a keen mind should have been applied to the pursuit of pure evil,’ said Coates sternly. ‘What your father did to innocent people was nothing short of monstrous.’
‘Cut her some slack,’ advised Ethan. ‘She’s been through enough. It wasn’t her fault her father turned out the way he did.’
‘I appreciate that,’ said Coates, ‘but let’s not forget it was Miss Wolfe’s message that lured Alec to the island in the first place.’
Maze of Death Page 18
