The Oracle

by D. J. Niko

  Or not.

  “How can you be so sure of what it says?” she asked. “There has always been some controversy as to what rights Lord Elgin was granted. For all we know, this firman could prove he had permission only to study and reproduce the Parthenon art—not take it away.”

  Sir Richard’s thin lips curled into a smile. “Either way, that document is of great value to Britain.”

  He didn’t need to say more. She turned the conversation. “What does any of this have to do with Danny—and with me?”

  “Fair enough. Let’s start with Madigan. His assignment in Thebes had nothing to do with the university. He was working for us.”

  She’d heard that story before. “Working for you how?”

  “Even after we arrested this dealer, Ishaq Shammas, and extradited him, the thefts continued. It became apparent his network was still in motion. According to the dealer’s computer records, the mysterious collector who had bought the firman also was after a brass obelisk and willing to pay any price for it. Through Interpol and the Thurlow Foundation, we knew such an object had been found near Thebes. We also knew the director of the ephorate was not trustworthy. We needed someone on the inside—someone who had our interests at heart—to monitor the activity and report back to the head of Joint Intelligence.”

  “And who better than a scientist on official business?”

  “Exactly right.” When she huffed, he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Be a big girl, darling.”

  She jerked away. “Don’t patronize me.”

  “Hear my words, Sarah. He would have never agreed to any of this if it weren’t for you.”

  She bit her lip and turned away. It was what Daniel had tried to explain—and what she had categorically dismissed—when she’d last seen him. She’d refused to accept she had anything to do with Daniel’s decision to work for the government, for a man should take sole responsibility for his actions. Yet she knew the truth was more complicated than that. Some part of her didn’t want to hear it for fear it would add to her guilt.

  “It was last November, after the plane went down,” Sir Richard continued. “He came to me with information about the Ashworths, demanding their arrest. He feared for your life in Jerusalem. I was on a diplomatic mission, so I put him in touch with James Langham, the head of Joint Intelligence. Langham also happened to be chairman of the Thurlow Foundation, which was a strategic appointment to protect the crown’s cultural interests. At any rate, Langham made Madigan a deal he could not refuse: our intervention in Jerusalem in exchange for his cooperation in Thebes. Madigan was desperate to save your life, so he accepted.”

  She snapped her head toward him. “You took advantage of a desperate man for your own means? You and your cohorts are more despicable than I thought.”

  “Madigan got what he wanted, and so did we. I see nothing despicable about that.”

  “Of course you don’t. You never do.” She stood. “I’ve heard enough.”

  As she walked toward the door, he came after her. “I know you’re angry, darling, but I need you to hear what I’m about to say.”

  Sarah took hold of the doorknob. She wanted to bolt out, to get lost in the grimy streets of Athens, to run until the cord to Sir Richard and his circle of power were severed for good. But she also needed to hear the whole truth, no matter how painful it might be. She let go of the knob and turned to face her father.

  He took two steps toward her. “Listen to me, Sarah. I need your help. I fear Madigan is in serious trouble.”

  Twenty-nine

  Stephen Bellamy stood on the rooftop terrace of the main house at his Delphi compound, admiring the view. Below the dense canopy of pines and orchards that populated his property, the barren slopes of the Phaedriades rose from the lavender mist. At the foot of the mountain, the still waters of the Gulf of Corinth lay hidden within a necklace of peaks dissolving into the horizon. It was a scene straight out of a Homeric epic, a forbidding land that gave away nothing, the ultimate battleground where heroes were tested and men’s cunning prevailed over brute force.

  The stories from mythology stirred him. He could relate to the ancient warriors who put honor above all else and fought to the death for the ideals that mattered—ethnic purity, autonomy, the right to worship and express themselves as they damn well pleased. It pained him that his own country did not recognize those qualities in him. He was determined to prove his mettle and regain the respect that had evaporated on that ill-fated February day.

  It was 1990. He was stationed in Seoul as part of the United States Forces Korea but was often in the field, training his men to be battle-ready should tensions in the region flare up again. On one of those occasions, Bellamy’s men were conducting exercises in the north along the DMZ.

  The colonel personally led his men on drills through the uplands. He still remembered the icy fingers of winter on his skin as he tore through snow fields, in places three feet deep. He didn’t mind. He’d always regarded tough terrain as a welcome challenge, a privilege even.

  When they reached a peak and looked down the ridge toward the valley below, they saw a makeshift cabin just inside the North-South border. Smoke rose from a chimney: someone was in there.

  Bellamy signaled to his men to follow him down the mountain. As they fell into position to cover him, he approached the structure and looked inside the frosted window. Six men huddled around a table, discussing something in Korean.

  Though he didn’t speak the language, he understood every word. It was only natural after eight years in the godforsaken country.

  Wind hissed in his ears, raising fresh snow that whipped his face like a thousand needles. He didn’t flinch. He put his ear to the wall and listened.

  What he heard astonished him. Ignoring the mounting flurries, he stood in the same spot for almost an hour and heard the entire, surreal exchange, allowing for the possibility he’d misunderstood.

  There was no mistake about it. The men were discussing a seismic weapon. It was clear the North Koreans were in bed with the Russians, and together they were developing a sinister technology that could amount to the ultimate terrorist weapon: an earthquake so powerful it could tear a nation apart, decimating its population and plunging it into economic ruin.

  And responsibility would lie with the blameless, for it would be deemed an act of God. It was the perfect scheme.

  The wind blew up again, this time howling with fury. One of the Koreans looked out the window. Bellamy’s reflexes were not fast enough.

  “Somebody’s there!” The conspirator shrieked.

  A shot shattered the window, and a burst of glass shards exploded onto the snow.

  One of Bellamy’s men fired back.

  “Hold your fire!” His order could not be heard over the wind or seen through the raging snowstorm. His ears rang with the staccato blasts of machine-gun fire. One of the shots—he could not tell if it was from the enemy or friendly fire—grazed his shoulder. As he reached for his own weapon, he watched his own blood pour down his arm and spill onto the bright new snow.

  The cabin went quiet. His men stopped firing in response. Bellamy had no illusions about it: the North Koreans were not down and out. He stole a quick glance through the jagged glass teeth of the splintered window and saw one of the men sprawled onto the table and another on the floor. A third crouched under the table, reloading a weapon with shaky hands. He was no soldier.

  Though the Koreans were armed, they were no match for his troops. Convinced his men could take them all down and put an end to their malicious conspiracy, he signaled to his men to fire.

  It was a mistake that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  A square-jawed blond man with eyes the color of a glacier stepped out of the shadows of the cabin, holding a shoulder-launched weapon.

  “Jesus,” Bellamy cried, crouching only a split second before the blast.

  Hyperventilating, he looked across the snowfield and watched the missile detonate in a massive fireball.
In slow motion, body parts flew through the air and pools of blood splayed onto the snow. No one had been spared. The only evidence of what had happened was the smell of charred human flesh, an odor that had stayed with him to that day.

  The blond man came through the front door of the cabin and pointed an automatic at Bellamy. Three other men, equally armed, exited the cabin and stood behind their leader. He spoke to his captive in Russian, then repeated the words in English. “You. Put down your weapon and stand up.”

  “Russian scum,” Bellamy muttered through clenched teeth. He did as told.

  The leader barked some orders in Russian, and two of his cohorts rushed to Bellamy. They handcuffed and hooded him, then pushed him to his knees. He felt the business end of a weapon graze the back of his head. He heard the click of a trigger.

  Gunfire exploded all around him, so loud he could not hear his own screams for mercy. He fell to his side, shaking like a fish out of water. He was certain he was dying.

  The salvo stopped, but the bursts of fire echoed across the mountains, mocking him anew. He lay in a fetal position, his world dark beneath a black hood, waiting for death to come.

  It never did. But in the nightmarish years that followed, he often wished his life had been taken on that bitter winter morning.

  “Colonel.”

  Bellamy turned to face Sorenson standing at the threshold of the French doors that separated the salon and the terrace. “What’s with the sourpuss, Tom?”

  “Colonel, I can’t hold off Zafrani any longer. He says he wants answers by this weekend—or he will put a hold on the wired funds.”

  “Damned Syrians have no concept of patience.” He brushed past his aide as he went back inside. He walked to a burled ash humidor box sitting on a shelf and removed a Montecristo. He lopped one end off with a guillotine and wedged the other between his teeth. “You let him know we’ll be ready.”

  “But, sir, we don’t have—”

  “Silence, boy. You let me worry about that.” He scanned the dumped-out contents of his captive’s backpack, neatly arranged on a table in the center of the room. He paced the perimeter of the table and looked more closely at each object. Based on the climbing tools and rope, he surmised Daniel Madigan could hold his own in the backcountry. Still, he didn’t see that as a threat—mostly due to a small packet that spoke volumes.

  Bellamy picked up the blister pack of Valium, then tossed it back onto the table. He shook his head. “That boy ain’t right. This is going to be easier than I thought.”

  He reached inside his pocket for a lighter and lit the cigar, twirling it as the flame turned the tip red hot. He rolled the smoke around his mouth before exhaling it. The Cubans, he thought, weren’t good at many things, but they sure could turn tobacco into poetry.

  He glanced out the French doors at the acres of chestnuts, oaks, and pines spread across his property. His gaze traveled to the barren mountaintops beyond. On the other side of that mountain, his destiny would soon unfold. He smiled as he let the thought settle.

  “Tom, get word to Isidor. Tell him to be on the lookout for a blonde English woman. It’s only a matter of time before Sarah Weston takes the bait.” He spoke over his shoulder. “Oh, and Tom?”

  “Sir.”

  He turned his focus back to the woods. The sprawling no man’s land was the perfect place to go hunting.

  “Get me the MK12 and the 6P62.” He smirked. “It’s time to have a little fun.”

  Thirty

  Sarah wandered the back streets of Omonia, the square in the heart of downtown Athens. She needed time to process what she’d just heard and a distraction to keep from doing something she’d regret.

  She glanced furtively at the faces around her: Bangladeshi men, dressed in sarongs and tank tops, chewing paan as they sat idly on stoops of shuttered buildings; homeless waifs lying on filthy blankets on the sidewalk, staring vacantly at passersby and on occasion summoning the energy to extend an open palm; an emaciated young woman dressed in a cheap, skin-tight micromini, standing against a corrugated metal construction wall, cigarette in hand, soliciting business.

  She couldn’t believe how Omonia Square had changed in the years since she’d visited Athens. Apart from the die-hard souvlaki stands and tobacco kiosks, businesses had gone under, leaving behind boarded-up buildings that eventually became magnets for posters and political graffiti. The apartments, once desirable real estate, had been left to decay and converted to low-rent immigrant quarters, many with no heat or running water. The Greeks had all fled to other neighborhoods, handing the spiritual keys to their Omonia over to poor, jobless foreign settlers—some legal, some not—and letting them turn this former hub into a cesspool of debauchery.

  Sarah stopped by the temporary wall, behind which was an abandoned construction site now strewn with garbage. She took a cigarette out of her jacket pocket and fumbled for a lighter. The streetwalker walked up to her, offering a light. Sarah accepted it, noting the multiple needle marks on the woman’s arms. She met her gaze and realized she was probably no older than sixteen. The girl flashed a smile, a heartbreaking playfulness in it. Sarah nodded her thanks and walked on.

  The bleakness of the surroundings reflected Sarah’s mood. Since the conversation with her father, she wanted to be anonymous and invisible, to be lost in the underbelly of misery. It had been nearly two years since they had spectacularly parted. She’d refused to walk in his shadow; he’d disinherited her. It really was that simple, that final.

  And yet, because of Daniel, it wasn’t. Daniel had known Sir Richard long before he’d met Sarah, which made for a complicated triangle. Even after Sarah and her father had fallen out, Daniel did not lose contact with Sir Richard. It was an odd symbiosis—the two men couldn’t have been more different, both in background and world-view—but they had a mutual respect that meant they always had each other’s back. Some sort of men’s code, she supposed.

  She hadn’t fought it. If anything, she’d secretly hoped it would be the catalyst to bring her and her father back together. But she wanted him to reenter her orbit on her terms—not as the mighty Lord Weston, aloof and doling out orders, but as a present and loving parent.

  In a stroke of supreme irony, she got her reunion. It was definitely not what she had in mind.

  Sarah took a drag and exhaled slowly, breathing her angst into a plume of smoke. Gazing absently at a small gathering of Muslims kneeling on carpets and bowing to the East, she replayed the conversation in her mind.

  “What sort of trouble?” she’d asked in response to her father’s proclamation about Daniel.

  Sir Richard’s mouth stiffened. “First let me say there were conversations between Langham and Madigan I knew nothing about. Langham tends to act quickly and decisively, which is why he is so good at his job. But this time, I fear he’s gone too far.”

  Already he was trying to shift blame. So typical, Sarah thought. She’d spent a lifetime watching her aristocrat father declare his righteousness at the expense of others, sparing no one, least of all his own family. She braced herself for whatever bomb he was about to drop.

  “The original deal was simple: Madigan would pose as a consultant and collect information on the obelisk—what it was, why this collector wanted it, that sort of thing. He also was meant to keep an eye on Evangelos Rigas, whom we suspected of corruption. We now know it was worse than we thought: Rigas and several others up the food chain had been promised access to the firman in exchange for the obelisk and, more to the point, what it unlocked. As you know, the Greeks would do anything to get their hands on that document.”

  Sarah recalled the twin footprints at the Cadmeia crime scene and outside the expedition lab. “Did Danny know about Evan’s implication?”

  “Yes.” Exhaling, he ran a hand across his neatly parted, if thinning, golden-brown hair. “But he didn’t know the extent of it until he was in Cairo.”

  She put a hand up. “You have to break that down for me. What’s in Cairo?”

>   “Ishaq Shammas, the antiquities dealer. He’s serving a sentence in Tora.”

  “Danny was sent to the prison? To do what?”

  “To tell Shammas he was in possession of a message found within the cave of Trophonius.”

  She shook her head. “That’s a lie.”

  “A bluff. It was part of Langham’s plan. Since Shammas is the only person known to be affiliated with this organization, Madigan was to ask Shammas who could appraise the find.”

  “But that’s code for ‘I want to sell.’”

  “Or exchange. The ultimate goal was to exchange the map for the firman.”

  She was incredulous. “And Danny knew this?”

  “Not until the very end, at which point he refused to go along. He gave Langham a right bollocking and cut him off.”

  She exhaled her relief. “Thank God.”

  “Not so fast, darling. This is where it gets sticky.” Sir Richard’s face went pale, and the corner of his mouth turned down. It took him a moment to utter the words: “No one’s heard from Madigan since. My fear is that he has been abducted.”

  “Being incommunicado to being abducted is a big leap.”

  “Not really. When Madigan didn’t answer calls, Langham asked me to intervene. My staff rang through to the hotel where he was staying and were told Madigan was taken away in an ambulance last night.”

  Her mind’s eye was flooded with the images of the box of Valium, the bloodied sheets, the spent whiskey bottle. She recalled the Valium had come from an English chemist. “He was taking some medication. What do you know about his condition?”

  Sir Richard cocked his head. “He hadn’t talked to you about it?”

  “He went out of his way to hide it from me.”

  “He probably did not want you to think him weak.” He sighed. “He suffered from anxiety, some sort of post-

  traumatic stress related to the plane crash.”