by Tom Harper
Before he could speak the waiter appeared again. He set two tumblers of whiskey on the table in front of Grant and Marina, and left without presenting a bill.
'From America,' Molho said. 'The first instalment of Truman's aid programme.'
Grant sipped his drink. He'd drunk enough cheap liquor, in underground bars from Cape Town to Moscow, to recognise the real thing when he tasted it. 'Is this what you deal in? The black market?'
'Is there any other in Greece? All our markets are black now.' Molho's face stayed still and courteous, but his eyes were hard. He nodded to the stage, where a full-breasted woman sheathed in a silver dress had taken over the microphone. 'Do you know our Rembetika music, Mr Grant? Before the war, it was a curiosity, music for addicts and thieves. The rembetes were a melancholy cult who thought that only their initiates understood the truth of misery. Now it is our national music.'
He swirled his drink in his glass. The big man beside him said nothing, but watched the singer and drummed his fingers on the table in time to the music.
'I'm looking for an artefact. A Minoan tablet.' Grant rushed out the words, almost stumbling over them. Everything since the phone had rung seemed like a dream and, as in a dream, he was frightened he would wake up before it finished. 'Just before the war an English archaeologist came into your shop. He bought a clay tablet, or half of one, with writing on one side and a painting on the other. You remember the piece?'
Molho took a drag from his silver cigarette holder. 'I sold many artefacts, before the Germans closed my shop.'
'Not many like this. It's unique — or was, until you split it in two.' Grant looked Molho in the eye.
The Greek nodded. 'Mr Grant, I am a businessman. Whatever I am selling — American whiskey, Russian cigarettes, pieces of clay — I need to get the best price. What people want most, they pay most for. If my customers want ten cigarettes at a time rather than twenty, or a half-litre of whiskey, or two pieces of stone instead of one, I sell it. Of course there is a risk. Sometimes instead of twice as much profit, I make twice as much problem for myself.' Molho leaned back in the booth. 'I must tell you, Mr Grant, you are not the first man to come to me asking about a clay tablet. Soon after the occupation a German came to my shop. A Dr Klaus Belzig.' His eyes narrowed. 'I see you know the name?'
'Never met him. But you told him Pemberton bought the tablet.'
'Dr Belzig was under the false impression that the tablet had been intact. I did not correct him; why should I? He asked me what happened to the tablet; I told him I sold it to a British archaeologist from Crete. I even showed him a copy of the receipt.'
'So Belzig went off to Crete. But Pemberton was already dead.'
'That was unfortunate for Dr Belzig. And perhaps lucky for Mr Pemberton. Dr Belzig's methods were… notorious.' Molho lifted his left arm from under the table. Marina gave a gasp of horror. A gold cufflink clasped the starched white shirt cuff- but there was no hand. Molho pulled up his sleeve a little to show off the grim stump, a rounded stub with scars like string round it.
Even Grant blanched. 'Belzig did that?'
'I was only a Jew.' He gave a grim laugh. 'He told me I was luckier than the man who stole the tablet from him. He took one hand — and I gave him one name. I knew Pemberton was English. I did not know he was dead, but I thought he would be out of Greece. Safe. Belzig would never learn I had only given him half the tablet, because he would never find any of it.'
'Christ.'
Molho pulled his sleeve back down. 'Perhaps Belzig did me a favour. Before, we heard rumours among the Jews. There was an uncle in Germany, or a cousin had a girlfriend in Warsaw. But no one really believed — how could you believe such a thing? After Belzig, I saw what the Nazis could do. So I disappeared.'
Applause pattered round the smoky room as the singer finished her song. She left the stage and slid into one of the booths, sucking hungrily on the proffered pipe. Her place was taken by a man, slim and foppish. His black hair was slicked flat against his scalp and with his narrow moustache he looked almost like a Nazi. Grant wondered if it was supposed to be ironic.
The singer stood stiffly in front of the band. The bouzouki player began a fast lick, his fingers flying over the frets. Grant leaned forward. 'And the second piece of the tablet? What happened to that?'
Molho held his gaze. 'How much is that information worth to you? Will you take another hand?'
An electric howl cut through the room, silencing all chatter and gossip. Up on stage, the singer was clutching the microphone stand like a drowning man. His body contorted round it; you would hardly have believed such a slight man capable of such a sound. The howl trembled, then rose a pitch.
Grant's face stayed perfectly still. 'I'm only asking. But there are other men who want it. Men like Belzig. If they find you…'
Molho drained his drink. 'Are you trying to intimidate me, Mr Grant?'
'Just giving you fair warning.'
'I believe you. But — you understand — I am a businessman. If somebody comes into my shop and offers to buy something — maybe a clay tablet — for one hundred drachmas, I wonder if he will really pay two. Or if there is another man who will pay three. And what about you? I have not asked you why you want it -1 am too polite. But I do not think you are an archaeologist, like Mr Pemberton, or a collector. Are you a treasure hunter? I have heard from my sources that you are with two Englishmen and an American — as well as your lovely companion. I wonder, who are you working for?'
Grant gave a tight-lipped smile. 'I sometimes wonder myself
'You cannot be frank with me, I understand. So I cannot be frank with you. You understand.' Molho smiled and stood. The heavy beside him stood too, just in case Grant had any ideas. 'I will think about your request, Mr Grant. Perhaps, when I have decided how much the information is worth, I will name my price. If so, I will contact you at your hotel.'
Grant leaned across the table, only to collide with the bodyguard's fat palm shoving against his chest. 'Don't take too long. There are too many people after this thing. Dangerous men.'
Molho lifted his left arm and waved it at Grant and Marina, a chilling goodbye. 'I know.'
* * *
The Mercedes sped them back to the hotel through empty streets. Grant and Marina sat in the back and said nothing. In the corridor outside their rooms, they paused. To anyone passing, they would have looked like two lovers returned from a late evening dancing. Grant had his jacket slung over his shoulder and his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow; Marina had slipped off her shoes and clutched them in her hand, her feet more used to work boots than heels. Her face shone with sweat and a kohl tear smudged the corner of her eye. One of the straps of her dress had slid down over her shoulder.
'Goodnight,' said Grant. In the silent corridor, deadened by the hotel carpet, it sounded more abrupt than he'd meant it. 'Unless…' He moved a step closer. Marina's hair was thick with the spices of night and music: smoke and sweat, liquor and perfume. Perhaps all the hashish in the club had left him dazed. He lifted his hand and stroked the side of her face, pushing back the lock of hair that had fallen over her eye. She didn't pull away. He let his hand slide down: over her cheek, her neck and on to her shoulder. Tenderly, he pulled the strap back up.
'I've got a bottle of brandy in my room.' He knew how false it sounded, but he needed the lie to cover him. It had been too long to take anything for granted.
'Just one drink,' said Marina. She sounded almost dazed, automatic. She let him take her arm and guide her to his door, nestling against his elbow as he fumbled for the key. He slid it into the lock — and stopped. Molho's whiskey was warm inside him, Marina's perfume almost overwhelming, but there were some instincts you never forgot.
She sensed him stiffen and tilted her head to look up at him. 'What is it?'
'Shh.' Grant was staring at the door frame. A tiny corner of yellow paper peeked out from the crack between the locked door and the frame, almost invisible unless you knew to look for it. He alw
ays put it there when he left the room. But it wasn't quite where he'd left it. They hadn't just gone in; they — whoever they were — had also spotted the trap and tried to reset it. That meant they knew what they were doing. And the Webley was inside the room.
Grant pulled the key back out of the lock, keeping his hand on the door handle. Marina edged away, watching him in confusion. 'Have you got your pistol?' he mouthed.
Without warning, the handle turned and the door flew inwards. Still holding on to the handle, Grant was dragged forward into the room. He stumbled, caught his foot on something and sprawled forward on the floor. Someone came after him, but Grant was too quick. He rolled over and sprang up, took one step back and jabbed his opponent in the solar plexus. There was a groan and a muffled 'Geez'.
Grant stopped his fist mid-swing and stepped back. The man in front of him was doubled over in pain, but there was no mistaking the tight crew-cut, the broad shoulders and the navy blazer. Further back, Muir was sitting on the end of the bed with a cigarette in his hand.
'Where the fuck have you been?'
Eighteen
A stifling silence gripped the library. It was partially the weather, which after a week of April breezes had turned hot and sultry; partially the collective effect of more readers in the room. The Easter holiday was over, and the motley company of students, artists and academics who made up the British School's clientele had begun to drift back. They perched on desks around the room, earnestly poring over books that looked almost as ancient as the civilisations they told of. Sitting by the window with a newspaper, Grant felt as out of place as he ever had, oppressed by the worthy purpose around him. That and Muir's reaction the previous night.
* * *
'And that was all? He told you to go and you just went? Like a fucking puppy?'
Grant barely bothered to argue. 'It was his home ground — and he had a gorilla next to him in case I tried something.'
'If you'd told us where you were going — instead of sloping off with the girl like some salesman in Bognor — we could have followed you. We'd know a damn sight more if you had.'
'There was no time. Molho arranged it that way. If you'd tried to follow us he'd probably just have dumped us.' He remembered the hole in the car seat. 'Or worse.'
Muir jabbed his cigarette dangerously close to Grant's face. 'Right now, this little Yid is our only link to the rest of the tablet. Next time he calls, don't you dare call your fucking girlfriend. You call me. Otherwise I'll have you off this caper and back in a cell in some shitty corner of the Empire faster than fuck. Understand?'
* * *
Grant put down his paper and went over to Marina. Her pile of books had grown, though she still had some way to go before it matched Reed's, opposite. He peered over her shoulder. 'What are you working on?'
She leaned back so he could see — the curious book with its pasted-in patches of Greek. At the bottom, in a neat line of faded cursive script, someone had written what looked like a string of nonsense. 'Paus.III:19.11; Strab.VII:3.19; Lyc.Alex:188; Arr.Per.21.'
'Arr.Per.21.'
'Is that a crossword clue?'
Marina sighed. 'They're references — places in the ancient texts where the White Island is mentioned. Pausanias wrote a guide to Greece, a sort of ancient Baedeker. Strabo was a first-century geographer. Lycophron wrote an almost indecipherable poem about the Trojan war and Arrian was a Roman functionary who wrote a description of the Black Sea to amuse the Emperor Hadrian.'
'Do they say anything useful?'
'They all say it's somewhere in the Black Sea.' She put down her pen. 'Apart from that, they can't agree on anything. Pausanias and Lycophron say it's by the mouth of the Danube; Arrian only says it's somewhere in the open sea and Strabo puts it about five hundred stadia from the mouth of the Dniester.'
'How far's that in real money?'
'About a hundred kilometres — but he doesn't say in which direction.' She shuffled through her papers. 'I also found a reference in Pliny — he claims the White Island is actually at the mouth of the Dnieper. You can't really rely on the ancient geographers for measurements, but both the Danube and the Dnieper estuaries are actually approximately one hundred kilometres from the Dniester.'
Grant scratched his head. 'So either it's by the Danube, or the Dnieper, or it's nowhere near either of them.' He glanced across the table to Reed, lost in a whirl of symbols and photostats. 'I thought he said this island was just a legend — some sort of mythic paradise for heroes.'
'I think he was wrong. In all the references I've found, the only hero they ever mention is Achilles — or sometimes Patroclus, who was Achilles' companion. The White Island wasn't a generic paradise. It seems to have been specifically, uniquely, associated with Achilles.'
'You think that makes it more likely to be true?'
'It must have come from somewhere. There's no comparable legend for any of the other heroes: there must be a reason why this particular story grows up around Achilles.'
She pulled one of the books towards her. 'According to Arrian, there's a temple to Achilles on this island. Pliny goes further and says that his actual tomb is there.' Her eyes sparkled, bright as life in the dusty library. 'What if it was — is — a real place? The lost temple of Achilles and his tomb inside. No one's ever found it.'
'Because no one can agree where it is. Besides, even if it's all true, what's to say that this magic shield will be there?'
'I think it's where Odysseus brought it, as an offering to the dead hero on his way back to Ithaca. So much of his story takes place in the Black Sea, it makes no sense unless he was there for a reason.'
'Maybe he was blown there by accident.'
'There's no wind that could carry a ship all the way from Troy to the Black Sea. It was famously difficult even to sail up the Dardanelles. And once Odysseus gets to the Black Sea, he keeps on going east. Look.' She grabbed another piece of paper, a list of points joined by flowing arrows. 'These are the episodes whose imagery or associations suggest they take place in the Black Sea. They almost all happen in sequence, suggesting some sort of geographical coherence. And the centrepiece — the whole point of his journey there — is his visit to the underworld.'
Across the Oceanus' stream,
A desolate shore where sirens scream
And heroes dream
Beach your ship at Persephone's bower,
Where poplars soar, where willows flower
And die that hour,
Then hasten down
To the mouldering
House of Death.
'Odysseus goes there. In a chasm where two rivers meet he makes a sacrifice and he opens the door to Hades.' She held the book so Grant could see. On the facing page, a woodcut illustrated the event with dark, heavy lines. A ship was drawn up on a beach fringed by poplars, so straight and high they looked more like the bars of a cage. In the middle of the page two white torrents cascaded down the flanks of a dark mountain and at the point where they met a tiny figure stood dwarfed beneath the stark crags. A haltered white ram waited on his left, a black ewe on his right, and the cliff in front of him yawned open.
Despite the warm room, Grant shivered. 'You're saying Odysseus went down to hell?'
'He summoned spirits from the dead. To the ancient Greeks, Hades wasn't a place you physically went to. Travelling there was a spiritual process, a journey of the soul. They believed there were certain sacred places where the barriers between the worlds thinned — that if you went there and performed the correct rituals, you could commune with the dead. In the poem, when Odysseus comes to the far side of the Oceanus, he digs a shallow trench. He pours wine and milk and honey round it, then fills it with the blood of the sheep he's sacrificed. And the ghosts come. Tiresias the prophet; Agamemnon, killed by his wife Clytemnestra; Ariadne and King Minos.' She paused significantly. 'And Achilles.'
Grant allowed himself to look impressed. 'You think that Achilles' temple — his tomb — was the place where Odysseus went t
o the underworld?'
'Or perhaps that he went to the tomb, on the White Island, to offer the shield to the dead Achilles, and later the story was misremembered as a visit to the underworld.'
'So all we have to do is find it.' Grant looked at the two lambs in the picture, staring ahead at the monstrous cliff and awaiting their fate. 'Do we have to sacrifice sheep to get there?'
'Let's hope we don't have to sacrifice anything else.'
* * *
Grant left Marina and the professor to their books, and wandered out for a cigarette. Unsettling pictures filled his mind: lowering cliffs, pools of blood, ghosts like wraiths of cloud and carrion birds calling from the rocks. The images were so strong that he forgot to look where he was going. He walked through the library door and straight into a man coming the other way, almost knocking him down. A sheaf of papers flew into the air, blowing around the corridor like snow.
'Sorry.' Grant reached down to help the man up. The gesture was ignored. With an irritated harrumph, he got to his feet and brushed himself off. He was a squat, ugly man, with a square head and thin fair hair cut very short. His skin was red and grainy, as if a nasty rash had consumed his face, and his close-set eyes burned with anger.
'Pass auf.'
He took a step back. The piggy eyes widened — as much as they could — then narrowed quickly. 'Next time, you must be more careful.'
His English was almost impenetrably accented, but even so, Grant could sense something evasive in it. He looked closer at the man. Did he know him? Not that he could remember. But he couldn't shake the feeling that in that moment of anger there had been a flash of recognition.
The man picked up his papers and pushed past Grant into the library. Looking back through the glass pane in the door, Grant saw him sit down at the central table, two seats along from Reed.
'Probably nothing,' he muttered, trying to convince himself. He'd been promising himself a cigarette for the last half-hour. And Marina was there to keep an eye on things.
