Lost Temple

by Tom Harper

  Lost Temple

  Tom Harper

  Fans of thrillers with an Indiana Jones angle who just can’t wait for the next James Rollins or Steve Berry novel should check out this very entertaining tale.

  Set in the late 1940s, it features a disparate group of adventurers (including a disgraced British solider, a beautiful archaeologist, and a university professor) who are searching for an ancient treasure that could have important ramifications for the postwar world. As they race from place to place, following clues to the treasure’s location, they discover that key elements of Greek mythology might not be so mythological after all.

  With a lightning-fast pace, a cast of colorful characters, plenty of twists and turns, and a story that reaches into the past and the future, the novel is sure to please fans of the historical-thriller genre.

  This is the author’s seventh novel, following his three-volume series set during the First Crusade and three Napoléon-era novels written as Edwin Thomas. It’s a stand-alone, apparently, although readers will no doubt finish this one and immediately begin clamoring for a series.

  Tom Harper

  Lost Temple

  About the Author

  Tom Harper is the author of seven novels including Knights of the Cross and Siege of Heaven.

  He studied history at Oxford University and now lives with his wife in York. In 2005 and 2006 he organised the CWA Debut Dagger competition for unpublished writers.

  More information about Tom and his novels is atwww.tom-harper.co.uk.

  Dedication

  For Oliver Johnson the Special One

  Epigraph

  When, by chance, this story had fallen into my hands, I — eager to tell the truth of history — felt compelled to spread it more widely: not out of vanity, but rather so that I might provide entertainment for an idle mind.

  Preface to A Journal of the Trojan War, Dictys of Crete

  Map

  Prologue

  Crete, 20 May 1941

  Legend said this was the first place men flew. Like artificial birds, they had dressed themselves with beeswax and feathers, launched themselves from the lofty palace and soared over the jewelled sea. They had climbed high, ever nearer the sun — until one, a boy, flew too close, melted his wings and fell. By the time the last feather settled on the water, the boy had slipped beneath the waves, into myth. Now there were men in the sky again. Instead of feathers they flew on wings of silk, and the webbed harnesses which held them would not melt in the sun.

  Fallschirmjäger, they called themselves: hunters from the sky. They did not fall, but swooped down to the earth like hungry eagles.

  Pemberton saw them from his office window. He had known he was in trouble when the bombing stopped. For the past week it had been a regular terror: the drone of the engines, then the howl of the diving Stukas and the ground shaking under their explosions. Sometimes the bombs had come so near the villa that the artefacts shivered in their display cases, rattling like loose teacups on saucers, until the staff moved them down to the basement. Now the bombs had stopped. The illustrious refugees who had made his life a misery had departed and the staff were all gone — Pemberton had sent them home to their villages and families that morning. He was the only one left. And it was time for him to go.

  He grabbed his knapsack from the hatstand in the corner and turned it out over the desk. A week-old sandwich fell limply on to his desk, followed by a half-empty thermos, his camera, torch and penknife, and a few crumpled chocolate wrappers. He kept the torch and the penknife and discarded the rest, though he made sure to pop the film out of the camera. Then, trembling with haste, he unlocked the desk drawer and pulled out the notebook. Dust had spidered the creases in the soft brown leather, and the gold monogram in the corner had almost worn away. It had been a gift from his wife, almost her last, and he treasured it — but that was not what made it most valuable. The invaders could have everything in the villa — the artefacts and museum pieces, the clothes and the furnishings imported from England, even his beloved library — but not that.

  There was nothing else he could do. He buckled the knapsack and walked to the door. He stepped out into the sun, while above him a multicoloured canopy of silk clouds — white, red, green, and yellow — drifted earthwards from the sky.

  * * *

  Pemberton had waited until he was certain, until he saw the first parachutes blossoming in the afternoon sky. Now it was too late. The whole valley throbbed with the echo of the Junkers-52 transport planes roaring overhead, and he could already hear the staccato thump of gunfire from round the bend that led north to the harbour at Heraklion. The Germans must have landed south of the town, cutting him off, and with every passing moment more reinforcements were jumping in from the Junkers. He wouldn't get through that way. So he went south, up into the hills and towards the mountains.

  He walked quickly. He had been on Crete since before the war, two years now, and his long hikes into the island's interior had become legendary among his colleagues. The flab that had begun to creep over his belt after too many college dinners had retreated, and if the sun had bleached the last traces of black out of his hair, it had compensated by breathing new health and colour into his cheeks. He was fifty-six, but felt younger now than he had ten years earlier.

  When he had gone about a quarter of a mile, he looked back. In the dip below, the excavated walls of the palace of Knossos were just visible in the ring of pine trees. The palace had been his life's obsession and even in his hurry he felt a stab of loss at abandoning it to the invaders. As a student before the Great War he had helped the legendary Sir Arthur Evans dig it out of its three-thousand-year sleep — a golden age, when it felt as if they tunnelled into myth itself and every day brought new finds that turned legends into history. Thirty years later, widowed, he had returned as the site's curator. Archaeology's age of heroes had passed: the swift charge of discovery had given way to the meticulous crawl of scholarly analysis, but he had been happy enough. He had even managed a few discoveries of his own — and one that would have astounded even Evans. He reached behind his back and squeezed the knapsack, making sure yet again that the notebook was still there.

  Another plane swept in low from the north. In the clear air he could see it plainly: the squat nose, the black cross on its side, even the white ribbon of the static line trailing behind. It must have reached the end of its drop run; in a moment it would swing round, wheeling back to the mainland for another cargo. Except that it didn't turn. It carried on over the palace and up the valley, straight for him.

  Pemberton was no coward. He had stood in the trenches in Flanders and forced himself over the top with the others, but the sight of the oncoming plane froze him still. He tipped back his head and spun round as it lumbered overhead, the beat of its engines so slow he thought it must drop out of the sky. The square hatch in the fuselage gaped like a wound.

  Pemberton jumped: a figure had appeared in the hatchway and was peering out. He must have seen Pemberton, and for a second Pemberton felt a strange communion as their gazes met. Then the man fell. Arms outstretched like wings, he dropped from the plane, hung there a moment, then was whipped away by the slipstream. A long tail unravelled behind him, pulled taut and blossomed into the white dome of a parachute, jerking him upright like a marionette. Even then, he still seemed to be falling with terrifying speed.

  It had taken seconds, but already there were more men in the air behind him. The plane hadn't finished its drop run at all. Pemberton looked down. The wind would carry the paratroopers past him, but not so far that he could escape them. He was trapped. With no alternative, he turned back towards the palace in the trees.

  * * *

  He scrambled up the four-thousand-year-old steps and collapsed behind a wall, b
reathing hard. Evans's ambition had not been satisfied simply by excavating the palace: in places he had actually tried to rebuild it and the result was a clutch of half-built rooms emerging from the ruins like ghosts. Some visitors found them evocative, others an insult to archaeology; Pemberton, though professionally expected to disapprove, had always been secretly fond of them. He had never thought he would find himself hiding for his life there. He twisted round and lifted himself to peer out of the window in the resurrected wall.

  For a moment he dared to hope that perhaps the paratroopers had headed inland. Then he saw them. They were even closer than he'd feared: in the few minutes it had taken him to run back to the palace, they had extricated themselves from their parachutes, formed up and begun manoeuvring down the valley. He could see them spread out in a thin line, moving through the dappled olive groves that sloped down to the palace. He counted six of them, in tight-fitting rimless helmets and baggy green smocks that seemed strangely impractical for fighting. If they had taken the road to the west, they would have gone well past the ruined palace. As it was, they would walk straight into it.

  From away behind him something hard and metallic grated on stone. He spun about in terror — then, belatedly, remembered the men in the valley. Had they seen him? No. They had vanished under the shadow of the south wall and were temporarily out of sight. He looked back, more careful this time. In the great courtyard, where the ancients had once danced on the backs of bulls, a huge crimson parachute lay spread out like a bloodstain. The fabric writhed and shivered in the breeze, while behind it a tangled mane of black ropes trailed out to a steel canister about the size of a coffin. Pemberton could see the crack of the impact in the gypsum slabs and he felt a flash of anger at such casual vandalism.

  The first of the German soldiers, a sergeant, hauled himself over the parapet and ran across the courtyard to the canister. The others followed, crowding round him as he knelt and opened the lid. Some of the men were stepping out of the baggy overalls they had worn for the drop, revealing the grey battledress and bandoliers beneath, while others took the weapons the sergeant was handing out.

  But away from the soldiers, something was moving. From the corner of his eye, Pemberton saw a figure creeping across the roof of the shrine that stood a little way to his left. He wore a white smock, with a black scarf tied over his head, every inch the traditional Cretan farmer. In his hand, held carefully to avoid scraping it on the stone, was a rifle. It looked even more ancient than the man himself- it could hardly have seen use in the half-century since the Turks were chased off the island — but there was no doubting what he meant to do with it.

  Pemberton edged out from behind the column that sheltered him and flapped his hand, trying to attract the Greek's attention without alerting the Germans. They seemed oblivious to the danger: three of them had lit cigarettes and stood there smoking, while the others packed their equipment into rucksacks. One of them made a joke, and nervous laughter rippled around the courtyard.

  'Psst,' Pemberton hissed through clenched teeth, pushing caution to its limits in his desperation to stop the Greek. What was the man thinking? The Germans had almost finished unloading the canister and were ready to go. In a few more seconds they would be on the move — and Pemberton would be safe.

  The Greek must have heard Pemberton. He turned sharply, angling the gun; then smiled broadly as he recognised the English archaeologist, a familiar presence in the valley. A broken row of teeth gleamed very white against his wizened brown skin. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder, squinted down its rusted sights and fired.

  Blood exploded from the German sergeant's throat as the shot reverberated around the courtyard. On the roof of the shrine, the Greek was frantically trying to reload, tugging on the heavy bolt of his rifle. But the Germans had seen him. Jagged lightning flared from the muzzles of their machine pistols and a torrent of bullets tore into him. The force of their impact rolled him backwards, leaving a sticky smear of blood across the flat roof.

  The guns went quiet. In the far distance, Pemberton could hear the battle for Heraklion still raging, but the sounds were flat and unreal after the savagery of the Schmeissers.

  One of the soldiers ran forward, up a shallow flight of stairs to the roof of the shrine where the dead Greek lay. He kicked the body, then fired a single redundant bullet into the corpse's skull. Pemberton shuddered and edged further round the column that shielded him. Evans's reconstructed rooms were little more than showpieces, with no more depth than the Wild West facades of a Hollywood studio. With men in the courtyard and now to his left as well, there was precious little space for Pemberton to hide. He pressed his back against the pillar, not daring to move.

  Opposite, by the back wall, a shadow moved in the doorway. Pemberton froze, then breathed again. A tiny kitten had sauntered through the door and was standing in the sunlight, staring at him with wide eyes.

  'Go away,' Pemberton mouthed, craning over his shoulder to make sure the German on the roof couldn't see him. What if the cat's movement attracted his gaze?

  The kitten sat down on its hind legs, lifted a paw and began licking itself.

  'Shoo.' Glancing around, Pemberton could see the soldier was still on the roof across from him, using it as a lookout to scan the area for more partisans. If he looked over now he would surely see Pemberton.

  The men in the courtyard shouted impatiently. Their sergeant was dying and they were keen to get him help. With a last look down the valley the soldier on the roof turned back. Pemberton's shoulders slumped forward and he hugged his knapsack with relief.

  But the cat had stopped washing itself and was standing very still, wobbling a little on its stubby legs. A crow had flown down and perched on the bullet-riddled corpse, oblivious to the German standing a few feet away — or to the young predator crouched in the shadows. The kitten's tail quivered and its open jaw made a strange clicking sound. Then it pounced.

  After that, everything happened too fast for Pemberton to see. The man on the roof spun round, spraying an indiscriminate stream of bullets into the open room. His comrades in the courtyard could see even less, but they were in no mood for caution. They opened up with everything they had, and suddenly the air was filled with a storm of lead, concrete, stone and plaster. Something sliced open Pemberton's cheek, just missing his eye, but he barely felt it. He leaped to his feet and, still clutching the bag, hurled himself through the opposite doorway. He never saw what happened to the cat.

  * * *

  The palace of Knossos was no longer the labyrinth it had been in legend, but there were still ways to lose yourself in it and Pemberton knew the layout better than any man alive. He burst through the door, almost oblivious to the shouts that followed, and dropped over the edge of the balcony into the open ruins below. A slit opening led into an underground chamber, beneath the room he had come from, then out into the sunlight again. Here a succession of long corridors stretched out to his left but he ignored them and turned right. They had not excavated much here, afraid of disturbing the foundations of the ruins above, but they had driven a couple of test tunnels under the great courtyard. One of them went all the way to the far side. If he could get there he might be able to work his way down to the east gate and slip out among the trees at the bottom of the valley. Footsteps pounded on the terraces above him and he pressed himself flat against the buttress wall. If anyone looked over the edge now he would be in plain sight. But no one came. There was the opening, a black hole in the embankment a few yards away. He ran to it and squeezed in. It was not much wider than Pemberton himself: several times, he banged his shoulders on the old timber joists that shored up the ceiling. Fine streams of loose dirt sifted through the cracks, settling in the creases of his shirt and trickling down his collar. Worst of all, there was no room to look back to see if anyone had followed him. He could only struggle grimly on, pushing his bag in front of him, towards the small square of light that winked at the end of the tunnel.

  At last he reached i
t. With a final heave, he pushed the bag out so that it dropped on to the floor, then slithered after it. He was now in the shaft of the grand staircase, the best-preserved part of the palace. That had not satisfied Evans, who had embellished it still further with replica frescoes and painted columns, so that it looked almost as it must have done those thirty-three centuries earlier. To his right, a flight of stairs led up towards the courtyard, while another flight disappeared down on his left to the lower levels. If Pemberton could only get down there…

  Flat footsteps rang out on the stairs above. Before Pemberton could move, they rounded the corner and stopped short on the landing. A German paratrooper stared down on him. He was limping slightly, perhaps from the parachute drop, but the gun in his hand didn't waver.

  'Was haben wir hier?'

  His young eyes widened as he took in the strange sight. He had expected another farmer, or maybe a lost soldier, not this bedraggled, bespectacled English archaeologist.

  'Was bist du denn für einer? Engländer? Soldat?'

  He jabbed the Schmeisser at Pemberton.

  'Spion?'

  Pemberton wrapped his arms round the bag and closed his eyes. Everything had been for nothing and now he would die here: one last skeleton in the minotaur's labyrinth. Irrelevantly, he thought of all the tombs he had broken open during his career and wondered if their angry denizens would be waiting to abuse him in the afterlife. At least he might see Grace again.

  A shot rang out, echoing around the gloomy shaft. To his surprise, Pemberton didn't feel a thing. Perhaps the soldier had missed — or perhaps he was already dead. He waited for what seemed an eternity for the man to finish the job. When nothing happened he opened his eyes.