by Tom Harper
The paper was covered with her small, neat writing — all in Greek, except for one word that leaped out at Grant like a bullet between the eyes: Sourcelles.
Twenty
North Aegean, near Thessalonica. Two days later
The seaplane soared high over the water like a messenger from the gods. In the dazzling sunlight the tips of its silver wings rippled like molten glass in a furnace. No wonder Zeus so often appeared as an eagle, Reed thought, for this was a god's eye view of a land that only gods could have made. The clouds below lapped round an archipelago of thrusting mountain peaks, while further west, where the clouds parted, the sun shone on the sea like a sheet of sapphire. He murmured to himself:
…the sandals of celestial mould,
Fledged with ambrosial plumes, and rich with gold,
Surround her feet: with these sublime she sails
The aerial space, and mounts the winged gales;
O'er earth and ocean wide prepared to soar,
Her dreaded arm a beamy javelin bore.
What would Homer have written, Reed wondered, if he could have seen his country from here?
* * *
It had taken them the best part of a day to track down Sourcelles, a day spent shouting into telephones and tapping out telegrams in the offices at the Hotel Grande Bretagne. From that little room, tentacles of enquiry had gone out all over Europe: first to consulates, libraries, universities, and — most often — the grey building off Victoria Street; then gradually closing in around tax offices, mayors and local police chiefs. By the end of the day Muir had been able to report back to Jackson at the hotel.
'Luc de Sourcelles. Naturalised Greek, but French originally, as you'd guess from the name. His family comes from Bordeaux — they were involved in shipbuilding, which is what brought him to Greece originally. He inherited a fortune, which he's mostly ploughed into his collection of ancient Greek artefacts. He's a nut on the subject — obsessed with the age of heroes. Corresponded with Schliemann's widow — occasionally pops up to badger some obscure European archaeologist. They humour him because they hope he'll fund them. No one will say so, but everyone thinks he's a crackpot. Famously — if that's the right word — reclusive. Widowed, one daughter, lives in a mansion in Macedonia, outside Thessalonica. Ten years ago he wrote a monograph, published privately in Paris:
La Mort d'Achille et son Au-delà.'
'What's that when it's at home?'
'The Death of Achilles and his Afterlife.
His speciality. Marina found out about it researching the White Island. That's why she had the name in her notebook.'
'Any good?'
'They didn't have it in the library,' Marina explained. 'I just found a reference to it in a footnote in another book.'
'Huh. And you think he's the guy who bought the second piece of the tablet off the dead Yid?'
'It would make sense. The writing alone would have interested him — and then there's the painting on the back. Reed thinks there might have been something in the picture that hinted at Achilles, or the shield, or even the White Island.'
'Did you manage to get in touch?'
'We tried to phone him but couldn't get through. There's been a lot of rebel activity up in the north of Greece — the lines may have been damaged.'
Jackson had scowled. 'Then we'd better go visit with him. And hope we get there before the Reds show up.'
* * *
Thessalonica was a gloomy city spread round a bay. Ghostly mansions lined the waterfront; much of the port still showed the ravages of the recent war. Beyond, a few minarets raised their heads above the skyline, a reminder of more distant invasions. Even now, it felt like a city near the front lines of a war. As the seaplane chugged into the harbour, they passed between warships and transports waiting to discharge their cargo, their hulls as grey as the skies overhead.
A car met them at the docks, a black Packard driven by an American soldier. A serial number was stencilled along the bonnet of the car and another one along the right chest pocket of the driver. 'Lieutenant Kirby,' he introduced himself, reiterating what was written on his uniform. He couldn't hide his surprise as he looked over the rest of the group. Reed, in his donnish tweed and spectacles; Muir, who always looked to Grant like a black marketeer with his sharp suit and darting eyes; Marina, in a demure black dress belted at the waist; and Grant, whom he probably took for the mechanic. 'HQ told me to take you wherever you want to go, sir.'
'Did they say anything else?' said Jackson.
'Only that I shouldn't ask any questions.'
Jackson clapped him on the shoulder. 'Good man. Now, we need to get to a place called the Villa Pelion. Know it?'
'No, sir.' Kirby pulled out a map and spread it over the Packard's bonnet. Grant leaned over to look; he was surprised to see that all the markings were in German.
'Greeks can't make maps for shit, sir,' Kirby explained. 'It's easiest to use the ones the Krauts left.'
Jackson tapped the map with his pen. 'That's the place.'
Kirby looked worried. 'The Reds are pretty busy up that way, sir. There's a radio in the vehicle -1 could call in for some back-up if you like. Might take a little while, but…'
Jackson glanced at his watch. 'No time. The bad guys want this guy too. Just get us there as quick as you can.'
'Yes, sir.'
Before they left, Kirby rummaged in the boot and brought out a Sten gun with a folding stock. He handed it to Grant, who was squeezed in the front seat with Jackson. 'You know how to use this?'
Grant nodded.
'Keep it handy. Just in case.'
They drove out of the city, through the flat pasture and wheat fields that occupied the coastal plain. After so much famine, the crops were at last beginning to grow back, pushing their way between the concrete pillboxes and twisted steel tank traps that still littered the landscape. Not all the obstacles were in the past, either. Three times they had to stop to pass through checkpoints manned by Greek soldiers. Each time, Kirby's uniform got them through unmolested; each time, Jackson handed over a copy of Belzig's photograph with instructions to stop him if they saw him.
'What's the latest on the civil war?' Jackson asked, in between two of the roadblocks. 'Are we winning?'
'You'd probably know better than me, sir.' Kirby kept his eyes on the road. 'I just got here. Officially, I don't arrive for another three months. But from what I hear it's not good. The DSE…'
'Who are the DSE?' Reed enquired from the back. The bumps and potholes had left him pale, and he pressed an arm against the ceiling to brace himself.
'Deemo-kratikos Stratos Eladdas.'
Marina winced to hear Kirby manhandling her language the same way he crunched through the Packard's gears. 'Democratic Army of Greece. Commies, to you and me. From what I hear, they're doing pretty OK. They're not just taking pot-shots at convoys any more — they're trying to take the cities. Stalin's supplying them through Yugoslavia and Albania. And now the Brits have dropped out — no offence — if we don't hold the line here they'll roll us up all the way to Athens.' He shook his head. 'It's a helluva thing. But we're hitting back. Way I figure it, most of these guys are just peasants, sheep stealers. They won't have the stomach for a stand-up fight.'
'Don't be so sure,' Grant warned him. 'Most of them learned their trade against the Nazis. Before that, they spent five years underground resisting the Metaxas dictatorship. They know all about fighting dirty little wars.'
'Lucky for them they found someone to supply their guns,' said Muir drily. His eyes met Grant's in the rear-view mirror for a second, before Grant looked down at the Sten gun in his lap. If he had regrets, he didn't let them show.
After a few miles the road left the plain and began winding up into the hills. The higher they climbed, the lower the sky seemed to get. A hard ceiling of cloud pressed down on them, filling the spaces between the dark, scrawny pines that crowded the slopes. The road deteriorated to little more than a forest track. Kirby looked ex
hausted from the effort of wrestling with the wheel as he struggled to navigate the endless switchbacks, ruts, rocks and fallen trees that impeded their way. The rest of them held on to whatever they could and tried to gulp down breaths of air, while Grant gripped the Sten and scanned the impenetrable forest.
They passed a village — a mean place, half derelict. They would have assumed it had been abandoned if not for the shadows that moved inside the empty windows and splintered doorways, watching them pass. Jackson, squeezed between Grant and Kirby in the front seat, wriggled his hand inside his jacket to reach the Colt pistol tucked under his shoulder.
They came round a bend on the flank of the mountain and saw the house at last. They could hardly have missed it. A huge slice of the hillside had been carved off and levelled into two broad terraces across the face of the mountain. The lower level seemed to be gardens; above, buttressed by a huge retaining wall, perched a mansion that could have graced any estate in the Loire valley. Everything about it — from the lead tiles of its squat, steep-sided roof, to the white limestone walls, to the box hedges and gravel paths that surrounded it — could have been imported wholesale from France. Perhaps they had been.
The road ended at a wrought-iron gate. Two marble lions gazed down from the gateposts, aloof and disdainful. Grant jumped out of the car and tried the gate. It was locked, but there was a black brass button set into one of the pillars. He pushed it and waited.
Kirby craned his head out of the car window. 'Nobody home?' His voice sounded small and feeble against the brooding immensity of the mountain; the cloud and pines seemed to swallow it up.
'You said he was a recluse. Maybe
Grant broke off and turned to look down the gravel driveway. He stared.
A stiff figure in a black raincoat and bowler hat was walking towards them, his crisp footsteps crunching on the path. He held a black umbrella erect in his left hand; a bunch of keys jangled in his right. There was something of the bank clerk or the railway station attendant about him. He came to a precise halt, three feet back from the gate, and stared at them through the iron bars.
'Oui?'
A fat-bellied raindrop landed on the back of Grant's hand as Reed leaned out of the car window and said, 'Dites a Monsieur Sourcelles que le Professeur Arthur Reed est venu pour lui voir.'
The butler — he must be a butler, Grant thought — stepped behind the gatepost and pulled out a telephone receiver concealed within. He spoke a few words, listened, nodded. 'Monsieur Sourcelles is honoured that Professor Reed has come so far to visit. He would very much have liked to greet him. But — malheureusement — he is busy.'
Grant resisted the urge to threaten him with the Sten gun. 'Tell Monsieur Sourcelles it is very important. Tell him it concerns the clay tablet he bought in Athens in 1941. Tell him his life is in danger. Not from me,' he added.
The butler stared at him, dark eyes in deep sockets. With obvious reluctance he picked up the telephone again and spoke a few more words. Oui. Oui. Bon.
'Monsieur Sourcelles welcomes you.'
The butler opened the gate and they rolled up the driveway, between flower beds and lawns, willows and laurel hedges. Further away, through the poplars that hemmed the estate, Grant could see the alabaster outline of a domed classical temple — presumably a folly, though beside the house it seemed almost rational.
The car ground to a halt at the foot of a stairway that led up to the main house. The rain was heavier now. Forgetting decorum, they piled out of the car, ran up the stairs with their jackets and bags held over their heads, and pushed through the open door. They waited there, trembling and dripping, until the butler reappeared to show them through.
The inside of the chateau — none of them could think of it as a villa — was stark and cold. Everything seemed to be carved from white marble: the floors, the stairs, the Corinthian half-columns set into the walls. Marble busts, all ancient, stared from marble pedestals and marble athletes flexed marble muscles in marble alcoves.
'Feels like a mausoleum,' said Jackson, shivering. The only colour came from the rich oil paintings that lined the walls between the columns. White-breasted nymphs tempted anxious heroes; alabaster goddesses turned feckless men to stone. A fair-haired woman wreathed in flowers admired herself in a golden mirror. In one, a twisted dwarf pressed an iron corselet against a woman's chest. Everything in the canvas was dark, except for the woman who shone with an almost ethereal whiteness. A blood-red scarf billowed behind her.
Reed stopped in front of it. 'Van Dyck. The woman is Thetis; the dwarf, Hephaestus. And that' — he waved a finger at the iron breastplate, stopping it an inch short of the canvas — 'is the armour of Achilles.'
'Good to know what it looks like,' muttered Jackson.
The butler showed them into a drawing room, where an assortment of second-empire furniture clustered round a marble hearth. The deep brocades and chintzes seemed all the richer for their stark setting, poised and elegant in the surrounding emptiness. Tall French windows lined the rear wall, leading on to a terrace. Raindrops spattered the glass, and the gardens below were almost invisible in the gloom.
A rumble of thunder rolled around the house, as if the whole mountain had turned on its foundation. A moment later came the lightning; for a split second everything in the room was cast in a sorcerous silver light. The fire spat sparks in the air and the dim electric lights flickered like candles. It took a moment for Grant's eyes to readjust — and to widen in surprise.
A man stood beside the fire, just in front of a chaise longue. He must have been lying in it before, though Grant hadn't seen him. His face was pale and lined, with a translucent quality that made the skin shimmer in the firelight. A mane of silver hair was slicked back almost to his shoulders. He wore a velvet smoking jacket and loose trousers. He was barefoot.
'Mes amis. Welcome.'
Twenty-one
They seated themselves on the stiff furniture. The butler arranged another log on the fire and withdrew. Sourcelles looked at Reed — as did everyone else. They all felt, instinctively, that it needed an uncommon power to contend with Sourcelles in his domain.
'Your visit is an honour, Professor Reed. You must know I admire very much your scholarship. But who are your friends?'
Reed cleared his throat. 'Mr Jackson and Mr Muir, from the British and American governments respectively. Miss Papagiannopoulou, who was an assistant to John Pemberton, the English archaeologist, on Crete before he died. And…' A precise description failed him. 'Mr Grant.'
Sourcelles flashed Grant an appraising look — not hostile, but careful. 'Welcome. You would like some cognac? Some calvados?'
'No, thank you.' Reed spoke for all of them — though Grant would have been glad of a gulp of something warm.
'Bien.'
Sourcelles leaned back in his chaise longue, arranging himself like a cat. He took a long silver cigarette holder from a box on the side table, slotted in a cigarette and drew a deep draught. A nimbus of smoke gathered round his head. Everyone waited — but he seemed completely preoccupied, almost oblivious to them.
'Six years ago you bought a Minoan clay tablet from a dealer in Athens called Molho,' said Reed. He spoke tentatively, like a student reading out an under-prepared essay in a tutorial.
Sourcelles twitched his shoulders, the merest shrug of indifference.
Reed continued, 'The tablet was incomplete. It had been broken.'
'By the man who sold it to you,' added Grant. Sourcelles's eyes flickered like a snake's. 'Did he tell you that? Molho sold the other piece to John Pemberton.'
Sourcelles's gaze swept on to Marina. 'You saw this? You have proof?'
'We had the tablet, until two days ago. A German stole it — though he'd probably say he was just reclaiming it, as he was the one who dug it up in the first place.'
'What did it look like?'
'About this big.' Reed framed the dimensions with his hands. 'A dozen lines of Linear B script on the obverse. On the reverse, a faint
painting showing the usual iconography associated with Minoan shrines. I imagine your piece looks very similar. Perhaps like this?'
He took out Pemberton's photograph, now dog-eared and creased, and passed it to Sourcelles. The Frenchman barely glanced at it. 'This could be anything. I have many pieces in my collection. It is the best private collection of Mycenaean artefacts in the world, I think. Private collection,' he repeated. Little puffs of smoke escaped his mouth as he said it. 'It is not for public viewing.'
'We're not the public,' said Grant. 'And we're not the only ones coming here to look for this tablet. Why don't you telephone the Athens police and find out what happened to Molho. He already lost a hand protecting you from Belzig. Did you know that?' He looked at Sourcelles's face, the skin like parchment that had been scraped clean, and decided he probably did. 'Now he's lost his life — only this time he couldn't protect you. Belzig knows you have this thing. He'll come here; he's probably on his way already. Do you want to know what he did to Molho? It wasn't nice.'
'And if I show it to you? What will you do with the knowledge you gain? I wonder, do you even know what you are really looking for?' Sourcelles gave Grant a piercing look, saw no answer and dismissed him with a sneer.
'The White Island,' said Marina. She kept her eyes fixed on Sourcelles, ignoring the suspicious stares she drew from the others. Sourcelles gazed back. His mouth turned up at the corners in a smirk, though Grant couldn't tell if it was respect or satisfaction at some private victory.
'The White Island was the last resting place of Achilles, where his mother carried him after his death at Troy. It was also where his hero cult began. The tablet holds the key to finding it.'
