The Mask of Destiny

by Richard Newsome

  Gerald leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. ‘What Great Aunt Geraldine wanted me to do.’

  He crossed to the door but paused before opening it. He turned back to face his mother. ‘Mum, about Walter…’

  Vi wafted a hand through the air. ‘Oh, I’ve sacked him,’ she said.

  ‘Sacked Walter!’

  ‘Yes. He turned up here an hour ago spouting some nonsense about being assaulted by your little friend Ruby and being manacled by that nice Constable Lethbridge. And some rubbish about your sock, Gerald! I could hardly trust my emotional and physical future to someone as unstable as that.’

  Gerald smiled wider than he had in ages. ‘I love you, Mum.’

  Vi looked surprised. ‘Why, I love you too, my darling boy.’

  Sam and Ruby were waiting, just as they’d arranged, by a fountain in a piazza. Children splashed in the shallow water, shrieking with delight. The square was teeming with tourists and locals taking in the warm evening air.

  ‘Here you go,’ Gerald said. He handed Sam and Ruby a thousand euros in cash each.

  Sam’s eyes bulged. ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Billionaire,’ Gerald said. ‘Remember?’

  ‘I’m hardly going to forget,’ Sam said as he folded the money into his pocket. ‘But I thought you weren’t going to use your credit card.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to. But then I passed an American Express office and thought, why not? Jarvis knows we’re in Rome, so there’s no harm using it here. And I told the teller I needed the money for a trip to Portugal. That should buy us some time. So, did you guys make your phone call?’

  Ruby screwed up her face. ‘Yeah. Mum was pretty upset—glad to hear from us and everything. But worried.’

  ‘Did you tell her what we agreed?’

  ‘She left that to me,’ Sam said.

  ‘I can’t lie to my own mother,’ Ruby said. ‘Even for you, Gerald.’ Her cheeks flushed and she turned away to look at the children playing in the fountain.

  ‘Lucky for us I have no such issues,’ Sam said. ‘They’re convinced we’re on our way to Russia.’

  ‘Great,’ Gerald said. ‘Between that and Portugal, Jarvis should have no idea where to look. Now we just have to get to Brindisi.’

  Ruby let out a light sob.

  ‘What is it?’ Gerald asked.

  Ruby’s chin was on her chest and her eyes were closed. ‘This better be important, Gerald. I’m letting down a lot of people here.’

  Gerald put a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. ‘You don’t have to come,’ he said. ‘You can be on a plane home tonight if you want.’

  Ruby wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffed.

  ‘Nah. Can’t bail out now and leave you behind, can I? Besides,’ she sniffed again, ‘I’ve never been on a ferry.’

  Chapter 17

  By the time the battered Kombi van rattled into the Athens bus station, Gerald had lost all feeling in his buttocks.

  The side door opened and he rolled out onto the buckled concrete driveway.

  ‘Numb bum,’ he said, jumping on the spot to get the blood flowing again. ‘Numb bum.’

  Ruby insisted on giving the three Swedish backpackers they’d hitched a ride with a one-hundred-euro note.

  ‘Please take it,’ she said. ‘You’ve been so helpful.’

  Sofia accepted the money with a summer-tanned smile. She hugged Ruby and they all waved farewell as the van coughed and pulled into the choking Athens traffic.

  It had been three days since Gerald, Ruby and Sam had left Rome and they were living the backpacker dream. They’d taken a bus to Brindisi, and there had been no sign of Inspector Jarvis or any incidents with the Italian police. From Brindisi they caught a ferry to Greece, retracing the route taken by Quintus and his sons more than sixteen hundred years before.

  On the ferry they met Sofia, Anna and Malena.

  ‘I reckon Sofia was keen on me,’ Sam said, still waving as the van disappeared from view.

  Ruby shook her head. ‘There’s no delusion like self-delusion,’ she said. She pulled her backpack onto her shoulders. ‘Come along. Let’s see if anyone can help us get to Skiron.’

  The bus terminal bore the effects of years in the Athens sun. Traffic grime caked the outside walls and weeds endured stubbornly in the cracks in the paving. A dozen stray cats of all colours and patterns lay spread-eagled in whatever shade they could find.

  Ruby pushed on the glass door and they walked into the squat terminal building. It was almost deserted. A couple sat at a round table, their suitcases nearby, and sipped on small cups of coffee. An elderly man dozed, propped in a chair in the corner. Another man, alert to the newcomers, wandered up and offered to sell them lottery tickets. When Ruby declined, he shrugged and went back to his seat by the window.

  Sam eyed a cafe at the far end of the room, and a glass case stuffed with pastries. ‘Why don’t you go ask at the information desk while I find us some lunch,’ he said.

  Gerald watched his friend saunter over to the cafe. ‘Does he ever not think of food?’

  Ruby looked across at her brother and gave a shrug. ‘Only when he’s eating,’ she said.

  The information desk had a few faded posters of islands and beaches stapled to the front, and some curled postcards tacked to the wall. Ruby picked up a tourist map from a stack on the counter. It was coated in a thin film of dust. A woman sat behind the desk, chewing gum. She was engrossed in a novel and didn’t look up.

  ‘Hello,’ Ruby began, ‘we’re trying to find a town called Skiron. Can you help?’

  The woman snapped her gum. The expression on her face didn’t need translating. She glanced over at a group of men who were clustered around a table at the far end of the depot.

  She shouted out to them in Greek. One of the men yelled something back. She responded with another shout.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Gerald asked Ruby.

  ‘Not sure,’ she said. The verbal volleys grew in intensity.

  ‘They must be related.’ It was Sam, back from the cafe. His cheeks were covered in pastry flakes. ‘Want some?’ He held out a bag of triangle-shaped delicacies. Gerald and Ruby munched in silence while the shouting continued.

  Finally, the woman picked up her novel and jerked her head in the direction of her opponent. ‘He will take you,’ she said, returning to her book. ‘Taxi.’

  ‘Is Skiron close by?’ Gerald said.

  ‘Quite close—maybe thirty minutes from here.’ The voice belonged to a tall man who had ventured across from the group in the corner. He extended a hand towards the door. ‘My taxi is out the front.’

  In the forecourt stood a car that looked like a refrigerator box on wheels. Its front bumper was held in place with duct tape. The hubcaps were missing and the bonnet was almost rusted through. The taxi was parked under a scraggly tree and the mottled shadows made it look even more like the subject of a machine-gun attack.

  ‘We’re seriously getting in that thing?’ Sam said.

  Ruby studied the vehicle from under an arched eyebrow. ‘It does look a bit rattly.’

  Gerald grabbed a door handle and pulled. He nearly jerked his shoulder from its socket. The door didn’t budge.

  ‘You need to use your hip,’ the driver said. He thumped into the side of the car and lifted the handle at the same time, jolting the door free.

  Gerald peered inside. A faded blanket was spread across the back seat; a corner was scrunched up to reveal torn vinyl and disintegrating padding underneath. Asleep in the middle of the blanket was a large ginger cat.

  ‘Um,’ Gerald said, looking back at the driver.

  The man frowned at the backseat and clicked his tongue. He reached in and grabbed a handful of ginger fur at the back of the cat’s neck and hauled it out. The cat was dumped under the tree. It took two steps then flopped onto its side in the shade.

  ‘It’s times like this that I miss Mr Fry,’ Sam said. They piled into the back of the taxi.

&
nbsp; The driver dropped behind the wheel and the car lurched to the side, the springs groaning under the shift of weight. ‘You want to see Skiron, yes?’

  The taxi engine fired into life and they edged away from the bus station into the packed Athens traffic. The driver introduced himself as Christos and kept up a steady travelogue as they wound through the centre of town.

  Under the relentless summer sun, the inside of the car was stifling. ‘Do you have air conditioning?’ Sam asked. ‘It’s roasting back here.’

  ‘You have a choice,’ Christos said, glancing at Sam in the rearview mirror. ‘If the air is on, the car is off. This way is better, I think.’ He wound down his window and a hot gust blasted the back of the taxi. ‘Nice breeze.’

  Sam flopped back into the seat. ‘What are we going to do when we get to Skiron?’ he said. ‘It’s not like we have any idea what we’re looking for.’

  Ruby leaned her arms on the top of the front seat. ‘Is Skiron very big?’ she asked the driver.

  ‘Big?’ Christos said, sounding surprised. ‘No. Not very big. The same as the others.’

  ‘The others?’ Gerald said, but Christos didn’t reply.

  Twenty minutes later they pulled off the main road and entered a twisting maze of narrow laneways, bordered on each side by whitewashed buildings with front doors opening right onto the street.

  Christos drove into a small square and pulled over to the side of the road. An imposing hill, rocky and sparsely treed, towered above them. An ancient building was perched on top.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ Gerald asked Sam.

  Sam blinked up at the building’s white columns, stark against the brilliant blue of the sky.

  ‘Isn’t that the Acropolis?’ Sam asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ Christos said. ‘The birthplace of democracy.’

  ‘But,’ Sam said, ‘isn’t the Acropolis in Athens?’

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘We’re in Athens,’ Christos said. ‘Where did you think we were?’

  ‘You were meant to take us to Skiron,’ Sam said.

  The taxi driver turned in his seat and stared at Sam, Ruby and Gerald.

  ‘Skiron isn’t a place,’ he said. ‘Skiron is a person.’

  ‘A person?’

  ‘Yes,’ Christos said. He twisted in his seat to point out the window. ‘He’s over there.’

  Gerald led the exit from the back of the car. His eyes followed the direction of Christos’s pointed finger, towards a large block of land that was overgrown with weeds and wildflowers and strewn with the remnants of ancient buildings. At one end—the target of Christos’s finger—stood an eight-sided building.

  ‘What? Does he live in there?’ Sam said.

  Christos regarded him evenly. ‘You’re not the smartest boy alive, are you? That’s the Tower of the Winds.’

  Gerald’s jaw dropped. Had he heard right?

  ‘There’s a Tower of the Winds in Athens?’

  ‘Of course,’ Christos said. ‘It’s been here for two thousand years. Go and have a look.’

  Gerald looked to Ruby. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘We’ve come this far.’

  Gerald paid the fare and Christos turned the taxi in a tight circle. ‘Say hello to Skiron for me,’ he called out the window as he motored out of the square.

  A spiked iron fence ran around the outside of an area about the size of a soccer pitch. It was littered with broken columns and chunks of castoff marble. Stray cats poked their heads above the clumps of grass and weed, playing tigers in the grass. Gerald walked up to a ticket booth and bought three passes from the elderly woman sitting inside. ‘Uh, Skiron?’ he asked.

  The woman poked a thumb towards the white marble tower at the end of the block.

  ‘This must be it,’ Gerald said. He increased his pace across the stony ground. ‘This must be what the clues have been leading us to.’

  Sam and Ruby rushed to keep up with him.

  ‘I wish I shared your confidence,’ Sam said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The taxi driver said Skiron was a person, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And we found out about him from a painting in the Tower of the Winds in the Vatican, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Gerald, this time with less certainty.

  ‘A painting done four or maybe five hundred years ago.’

  ‘Um…’

  ‘And you’re thinking this Skiron bloke has been hanging around here since then, on the off chance that you might pop by for a chat?’

  ‘Sam?’ Gerald said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Shut up, will you?’

  They reached the tower and gazed up at its smooth marble walls. The eight sides rose twelve metres or so and were capped by a conical roof. A man in dusty blue overalls was sweeping a path that ran around the base of the tower.

  ‘What do you think?’ Ruby said. ‘Could it be him?’

  Sam snorted. ‘He must be the oldest cleaner in Athens then.’

  ‘Weren’t you shutting up?’ Ruby said.

  Gerald gave a determined nod and walked up to the man. ‘Excuse me?’ he said.

  The man stopped sweeping and looked at Gerald. He did seem incredibly old. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Skiron?’ Gerald asked, his eyes widening.

  The man looked at Gerald as if he hadn’t heard him quite right. Then a smile spread across his face. ‘Skiron,’ the man said with a slow nod.

  Gerald was astounded. Could this possibly be the man mentioned in a five-hundred-year-old painting?

  ‘You…’ Gerald started. ‘You’re Skiron?’

  The man nodded again. ‘Skiron.’ Then he pointed to the top of the tower behind them. ‘Skiron.’

  Gerald looked closely at the upper portion of the building. Each of the eight walls was topped with a carving, a frieze, showing a man in the midst of some activity.

  Gerald had a sinking feeling in his gut. ‘One of those guys is Skiron?’ he asked.

  The man took Gerald to a corner of the tower and pointed to a carving of a bearded man flying through the sky and carrying a pot with smoke wafting from it.

  ‘Skiron,’ the cleaner said. He pointed in the direction the bearded man faced. ‘Hot winds. Yes?’

  Gerald nodded slowly. ‘The hot winds come in from this way?’ he said. ‘And Skiron is some god or other who blows them in?’

  The cleaner smiled and gave Gerald the thumbs up. ‘Skiron,’ he nodded. ‘Hot air.’

  ‘You got that much right,’ Ruby said. The man smiled again and went back to his sweeping.

  Gerald flopped down onto a block of marble and stared up at the bearded figure on the wall. A mythical figure who blew in the summer winds. Terrific. Was this where his search had been leading? A dusty corner of some Athens tourist attraction, among the weeds and stray cats?

  Ruby sat next to Gerald. ‘Maybe there’s something hidden around here,’ she said. ‘Some other clue.’

  Gerald kicked out at the stones at his feet, sending a spray across the path and startling a kitten that had been stalking something in the grass.

  ‘I give up,’ he said, almost to himself.

  Ruby didn’t look up from her shoes. ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘All this running about on some stupid thousand-year-old treasure hunt. We don’t even know what we’re looking for. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘But what about Charlotte and the murder of Mason Green?’ Ruby said. ‘The police still think you did it.’

  ‘Maybe. But they have to prove their case. What evidence have they got?’

  ‘Your DNA on the murder weapon, for a start!’ Ruby was almost shouting at him. ‘Or had you forgotten that?’

  Gerald opened his mouth but, before he could say a word, a sharp shove on his chest sent him sprawling backwards off the marble block into the weeds. Startled, he looked up to find Sam standing over him, and the face of Skiron staring down over Sam’s shoulder.

  ‘
What did you do that for?’ Gerald said.

  Sam glowered at him, his face beet red in the heat. ‘Because I’m sick of you changing your mind all the time. You’re all over the shop. One minute you’re gung-ho and all guns blazing. Then it’s some sook-fest: “Oh it’s all too hard. I just want to crawl under a rock and have a good cry.” Well boo-hoo, mate. Make your mind up.’

  Gerald raised himself on his elbows from among the weeds. ‘You’re not so relaxed today, then,’ he said.

  ‘Well, give us a break,’ Sam said. ‘You’re like that guy in the Shakespeare play, the one who’s got murders going on all around him and can’t decide what to do.’

  ‘Hamlet,’ Ruby said.

  ‘Who?’ Sam asked.

  Ruby looked at her brother and shook her head. ‘You really did come out of the oven a half hour too early,’ she said. ‘So what’s it going to be, Gerald? Do we keep looking or are you going home to face the music?’

  Gerald felt the twins’ eyes boring into him. What was he supposed to say? His only way out of a murder trial was to find Charlotte. But what hope did he have of doing that? And besides, wasn’t that a job for the police? Or private detectives? Couldn’t he just throw some money at it and make the problem go away? Wasn’t that the billionaire thing to do?

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ll sort everything out from there.’

  Sam threw up his hands in disgust and stalked off.

  Ruby leaned over and squeezed Gerald’s arm. ‘Are you sure?’ She gave him a soft smile. ‘Because I’m happy to keep searching with you.’

  Gerald screwed up his eyes. He was so tired.

  ‘Let’s find our way home,’ he said. ‘Do you still have that map?’ Ruby was about to protest but bit her lip. She dug into her backpack and found the map she’d picked up at the bus station. As she handed it over, Gerald noticed an ornate compass face on the cover.

  His hand froze in mid-air. The design looked awfully familiar.

  ‘Hey, Sam,’ he called out.

  Sam was kicking around in the grass at the base of the tower. ‘Yeah, whaddyawant?’ he grumbled back.

  ‘You remember that compass design—the one on the floor of the tower at the Vatican?’

  ‘Yeah. What about it?’