by Tom Harper
He smiled at the girl on the front desk as he went out. The air around him felt almost as hot as the smoke in his lungs, but it was good to be free of the stuffiness inside the library. He wondered how men like Reed could spend their lives locked in those places. To him they were too much like mausoleums, necropolises of dead pages in dead languages.
The thrum of an idle engine disturbed the mid-morning air. Outside the gate, across the road, a green Citroen had drawn up on the pavement. One man sat in the front seat reading a newspaper; another lounged against the rear door and picked his teeth.
'Got a light?'
Grant spun around. Marina was standing in the shade of a plane tree, looking slightly surprised by how quickly he'd turned. She held out a cigarette expectantly.
'Who's watching Reed?'
'He's in the library.' She gave a wary smile. 'I wanted to talk to you. Last night…'
'Not now.' Grant almost knocked her into the flower bed in his rush. He burst in through the front door, past the receptionist and raced down the corridor. A flock of bewildered, bespectacled faces turned up in surprise from their desks and carrels as he all but kicked down the library door.
Reed was still there, exactly where he had left him, peering up at Grant from behind a stack of books. At least he looked more surprised than irritated.
'Mr Grant.' The girl from reception must have run to catch up with him. Her face was flushed, her hair tumbling out of its bun. She looked at him with a mixture of astonishment and outrage. At last, her eye settled on the cigarette still jammed in his mouth. 'You can't smoke in the library.'
Grant spat out the cigarette and ground it into the wooden floor with his heel. Even he was struggling to hide his embarrassment. He let the door swing shut and walked, shamefaced, to Reed. One by one, the other students and academics turned back to their work.
'Was there a purpose to that little drama?' Reed enquired as Grant slid into the chair beside him. He looked around guiltily, as if worried to be associated with the blundering barbarian who had disturbed the library's sanctity.
'I thought…' The chair two places down, where the German had sat, was empty now. But what of it? This wasn't the war, where any foreign accent was automatically suspect and every German was an enemy. 'I thought you might be in trouble,' Grant concluded lamely.
'Only troubled by interruptions.'
'What are you doing?' Marina had joined them. Behind Reed's back, she shot Grant an accusatory look.
'There was a man.' Grant lowered his voice as he drew reproachful glares from the surrounding academics. 'He looked suspicious.' There was a touch of defiance in his voice. He realised how feeble it sounded, but his instinct had been right so often that he wouldn't apologise.
'Well, he didn't try to slit my throat.' Reed's patience was evidently becoming strained, eager to get back to the maze of scribbles and squiggles on his desk. 'And he didn't steal' — he looked down, the reflexive glance of a man checking his watch — 'my bag
Grant followed his gaze down. Four wooden chair legs, two flannelled trouser legs, a pair of scuffed Oxfords — but no bag.
'My bag,' Reed repeated. He sounded dazed. 'It's gone.'
'Was there anything important in it?'
'Important? The tablet was in there.'
* * *
Grant barged through the doors and rushed down the corridor. He skidded to a halt by the receptionist's desk. 'A German — fair hair, brown suit — did he come this way?'
His furious urgency squashed any thought of her scolding him. She simply nodded and pointed to the door. Her arm was still raised when Grant ran through it, down the steps and between the trees towards the gate. The green Citroen was still there: the back door slammed shut with a flash and the car leaped forward.
Grant ran into the street, just in time to suck up a mouthful of exhaust fumes and dust. He pulled out the Webley and emptied it after the fleeing Citroen. The rear windscreen shattered; pimples appeared in the green bodywork. The car slewed round; the driver struggled to control it but he had no chance. The car crested the pavement and slammed head-on into the side of a house. Shards of paint and plaster rained down over the smoking bonnet. The man in the passenger seat rattled his door frantically, but the impact had buckled it and it wouldn't open.
Smoke and steam from the wrecked engine had begun to cloud the picture; through the shreds, Grant saw the rear door open and the thief scramble out. Reed's leather satchel was hooked over his shoulder. He shouted something to the driver, then began running away down the street.
The man in the passenger seat was still struggling with the door as Grant reached the car. He'd pulled out a pistol and was hammering the grip against the side window. It shattered, leaving a jagged jaw of broken glass round the frame. In his desperation to get out, he hadn't noticed Grant coming and Grant didn't give him a chance. Before he could shoot, Grant reached in through the hole in the window, grabbed his arm and dragged it through. The man was still clutching the gun by its barrel; he tried to turn it round, but Grant banged his arm down on the windowsill, impaling it on the broken glass. The man screamed and dropped the pistol. Still keeping his arm immobilised, Grant bent down, picked up the gun and shot him twice in the chest. The bloody arm went limp.
Grant let go and ran round the back of the car, to see the driver stumbling towards him. He still looked dazed from the crash. One hand was half-raised, whether in surrender or defence Grant couldn't tell; the other was fumbling for something inside his jacket.
Grant didn't know how many bullets he had to waste, but he knew he had no time. He shot the driver — at that range, there was no question of accuracy — and then, as he tottered, kicked his feet from under him. Before he'd hit the ground, Grant was past him and running after the thief.
His quarry had already gone some distance down the street, but he was shorter and heavier than Grant, and cramped by Reed's bag. His brown linen suit flapped round him; his leather shoes slapped on the pavement; the people on the street stared as he ran past, but no one tried to stop him. With so many spectators, Grant didn't dare risk a shot. But he was making ground.
The thief reached a corner and looked round. He couldn't have missed Grant barrelling towards him, waving his gun like a lunatic. He shrugged Reed's bag off his shoulder and let it fall in the gutter, then sprinted across the street. Grant saw him and accelerated. The boulevard was wide and free of traffic — if Grant could catch him there he'd have a clean shot.
A bell was ringing off to his left, but Grant ignored it. He reached the corner, dropped into a crouch and raised the pistol. A line of concrete flower tubs barricaded the middle of the avenue, but the thief s head and shoulders were still clearly visible above, like a silhouette on a shooting range. It was a shot Grant had made a thousand times before.
And then the man vanished. With a whoosh and a rush and a tolling clang, a brown wall shut him off. A tram rolled down the avenue, impervious to Grant, to urgency, to anything but its own shunting progress. A couple of the passengers inside must have noticed the dishevelled Englishman at the edge of the road waving a gun: they pointed and pressed their faces against the glass, turning as the tram trundled inexorably on.
Grant ran forward, dodged round the tram's rear end and jumped up on the concrete tub. He searched the surrounding streets, scanning through the crowd of grey suits and black dresses. The German had disappeared.
A police car raced up the broad avenue and screeched to a halt. Grant laid the pistol in the flower bed and clambered down. Over on the pavement a familiar figure pushed through the gaping crowd. Marina had finally managed to catch him up. Reed's discarded bag dangled from her hands, but her face was grim.
Grant raised his arms in surrender as the police closed round him. 'Did he leave the tablet?' he called.
She shook her head. 'It's gone.'
Nineteen
Hotel Grande Bretagne, Athens
'Christ, you know how to make a mess of things.'
They were in a room at the Hotel Grande Bretagne. It wasn't as grand as it sounded. Taking the name at face value, the British army had moved in after the liberation in 1944 and never really gone away. Rooms had been commandeered, fittings stripped, furniture changed, walls and partitions knocked down and rebuilt, so that what had once been a de luxe suite was now a cramped office — albeit one with gold flock wallpaper and a crystal light fitting.
Grant sat in a hard wooden chair. It was uncomfortably like the one he'd sat in when he first met Muir in Palestine. Except this time Muir was angry. 'I've got two dead Russians rotting on the street, and everyone from the British ambassador to the fucking librarian wants to know how they got there.'
Grant leaned back against the chair and folded his arms across his chest. 'They were Russian?'
'Well, they're not talking — obviously. But the car was registered to the Pontic Shipping Corporation, which is a local front outfit for Soviet State Security. Cigarettes, coins and the usual wallet fluff all point the same way.' He saw the look of surprise on Grant's face. 'Why? You were expecting the Salvation Army?'
'The thief — their accomplice — was German. I ran into him on the stairs — before he walked off with the bag.'
'Shame you didn't shoot him too. Did you get a look at him?'
'Sandy hair, red face. Solid.' Grant shrugged. 'I'd recognise him again if I saw him.'
Muir's eyes narrowed. 'Would you?' He snapped open his briefcase and pulled out a thick dossier, flicking through the pages until he found the one he wanted. He passed it to Grant. 'How about him?'
For once, it was a good clean photograph; posed, not snatched. That didn't make it more attractive. A man in bloused trousers and riding boots stood on top of a mound of earth and rubble. He held a spade which he had planted in the earth, a conqueror raising his standard on the ramparts of the city he had vanquished. He was younger, thinner and more handsome than the man Grant had met on the library stairs, but something in the proud face smirking down at the camera in triumph was irreducible.
'That's him. Who is he?'
'Klaus Belzig. Archaeologist, Nazi and all round nasty piece of work. File came through this morning in the diplomatic bag.'
'You said he disappeared from Berlin in 1945.' Grant's mind was working quickly. 'If the men with him in the car were Russians…'
'… They must have dug him up from Siberia, thawed him out and brought him in to help with the hunt. They know what they're looking for.'
'Belzig was the one who found the tablet.'
'And now he's got it back.'
Something about the tablet triggered a flash of worry, a half-formed thought that Grant couldn't quite complete. Before he could think about it Muir had continued, 'It could be worse. Reed says he'd already transcribed the writing that was on the tablet. If he can't decipher it, I don't suppose they can.'
The other half.
With a sickening lurch, Grant realised what had been worrying him. 'Molho never told Belzig he broke it in half. Belzig thought it was intact, that Pemberton had the whole thing.'
'So?'
'So now he knows — he's going to go after Molho.'
Muir strode out into the ante-room and snatched the phone off its cradle. 'Hotel Eurydice,' he demanded. He drummed his fingers on the desk while he waited to be connected, then waved Grant over and thrust the receiver at him. 'You talk to them. You speak the lingo.'
Grant took it. 'This is Mr Grant — room thirty. Has anyone left a message for me?'
'One moment.'
Grant covered the mouthpiece with his hand. 'Did you and Jackson manage to find Molho's club this morning?'
Muir nodded. 'Boards, bars, locks: no one home. Jackson left one of his men…'
Grant waved him to be quiet as the receptionist came back on the line. 'No messages.'
He rang off, then dialled the operator again and got the number for the Charon Club. He let it ring for ages, so long that the sound became mere echoes in his brain.
'Neh?' A woman's voice, sleepy and suspicious.
'Is Molho there?'
No answer.
'If he comes, tell him Mr Grant rang. Tell him I need to speak to him. Very important. Yes?'
She rang off.
* * *
He couldn't go back to the library, so he went to the hotel. He lay on his bed and tried to sleep — he should have been tired, but the chase with Belzig had left him tense with adrenalin. Sunlight throbbed through the thin yellow curtains, diffuse and timeless. Someone — probably Reed — had left a book on his bedside table, a translation of the Iliad.
Grant picked it up and leafed through it. At some point he must have fallen asleep, though he didn't realise it until a knock woke him. He sprang out of bed, grabbed the Webley and padded across the carpet to the door. 'Who's there?'
'Me,' said Muir. 'Get your hat and your gun. Jackson's man just rang in. Molho's arrived at the club.'
They almost ran out of the hotel. There was some sort of commotion at the reception desk as they strode past — Grant thought he heard the girl calling his name — but he was already halfway out of the door and ignored her. Muir drove, a pre-war Wolseley he had picked up from the embassy motor pool. His driving was as aggressive as the rest of him: he raced the car down the beach-front road with no regard for the holidaymakers, donkeys and pedestrians who made up most of the traffic.
They knew something was wrong the moment they got there. An army jeep had pulled up outside, blocking the mouth of the alley. An American soldier guarded it and another infantryman stood at the top of the steps that led down to the cellar.
The sentry by the jeep strolled towards the Wolseley. The driver's door almost flattened him as Muir leaped out. 'Is Jackson here?'
Jackson was waiting for them inside, together with a man in a blue suit whom Grant didn't recognise. Smoke from the night before still clouded the air, but the music was gone. Stools and chairs stood stacked on tables, their legs in the air like sea urchins; half a dozen musicstands were tucked behind a curtain; a mop oozed water into its bucket. In a strange way it reminded Grant of the palace at Knossos. An archaeologist could find these artefacts in a thousand years and never understand what had happened there.
Molho lay in the middle of the room under a white sheet — a tablecloth that someone had thought to lay over him. He couldn't have been dead for long. Red smears stained the tablecloth, as if a careless diner had spilled a bottle of wine, and a dark pool seeped from under the hem.
'It's a hell of a thing,' said Jackson. 'They really did a job on him. Teeth, fingers, the works.' He sounded brutally dispassionate, a tradesman delivering a bill of goods. 'Whatever secrets he had, you can be damn sure he told them.' With the toe of his shoe he tugged back the cloth to reveal the face. 'That him?'
Molho's face was a horrific sight. Grant had seen worse in the war — not much worse, but enough to keep his composure. 'That was him. Poor bastard.' He'd liked the man, as much as he'd known him. It seemed impossibly cruel that he should have survived the war and all its horrors, only to meet this end. But then the world, as Grant well knew, could be an impossibly cruel place. 'Cover him up, for God's sake.'
Jackson kicked the sheet back over his face. 'Mike here' — he gestured to the man in the blue suit — 'was watching the place. When Molho showed, he scrammed to the nearest phone to call me. Missed the bad guys going in. Shame.'
Mike grimaced. 'I didn't realise they were in there until they came out. Jumped in a black Mercedes and drove off.'
'Did you see the number plate?' said Muir.
'I did, but…' Mike shifted uneasily. 'It's those goddamn Greek letters. You don't recognise them, you know?'
'Molho's car was a black Mercedes,' said Grant. He gave them the number — another habit he'd learned at SOE.
'We'll get the local cops to put out a bulletin. Probably won't do jack, but you gotta try. We've got guys at the ports and airports too on Red watch. Maybe they'll show up there.'
&n
bsp; 'They'd better turn up somewhere,' said Muir tightly. 'I think we have to assume that the Soviets came here to ask the same questions we wanted to put to him. I think we also have to assume that they didn't let him die until they had the answers. With Molho dead, Dr Belzig's our only link to the second half of that tablet.'
'You're assuming we have to find him.'
Three pairs of eyes turned to face Grant. 'Even if Belzig does get the whole tablet, he's not going to be able to read it. Who's he going to come after then?'
* * *
Jackson and his colleague stayed to search the building for any records Molho might have kept. Muir and Grant drove back to the library to pick up Reed and Marina. No one spoke as they drove back along the beach-front road to the hotel. A low haze hung over the sea, blurring the island silhouettes on the horizon; it caught the light of the sinking sun and puffed it into a nebula of pink and gold on the water.
They trooped into the hotel in silence. All Grant could think of was a cold bath and a glass of beer, but as they passed reception one of the girls ran out from behind the desk and accosted him. 'O Kyrios Grant.' She thrust a slip of paper into his hands. 'A message for you.'
Grant looked at the paper. There was only one word, carefully written out in block Latin characters. Whoever wrote it had obviously struggled with the unfamiliar alphabet: the tentative strokes and wobbly lines looked more like a child's writing: SOURCELLES.
'Did you take this message?' Grant asked the girl.
She nodded. 'On the telephone. He spelled it out very carefully.'
'What time?'
She pointed to a small note in the corner: 13.47.
He must have rung just before the Russians arrived. Grant winced as he remembered the sight of the body.
'What is it?' Muir pulled the paper out of his fingers and examined it.
'Sourcelles?
What the hell is that?'
'Maybe the man who bought the tablet.'
'And how the fucking hell are we supposed to find him? Get the Paris phone book? Ring the French embassy?' Muir turned away in disgust. But Marina was suddenly animated. She delved in her handbag and pulled out the slim notebook she had been using at the library. She flicked through the pages, then stopped. Wordlessly, she passed it to Grant, holding the page open with her thumb.
