by Tom Harper
She had almost finished when the priest from the gate entered and shuffled up to her seat. 'There is a man at the gate to see you,' he whispered. 'O Kyrios Grant.'
Marina looked startled: how had he found her? 'Did he say why?'
The priest shook his head. 'He said it was important.'
Marina glanced at the books on the desk. She would be finished in another five minutes — perhaps she should just make him wait. But if Grant said it was urgent…
She stood, leaving her books where they were. 'I'm coming back,' she told the librarian as she left.
* * *
Grant didn't know what woke him — he hadn't realised he was asleep. His shirt was damp with sweat and his mouth was sour. He gulped down some water from the glass on the bedside table, though it was stale with dust.
He looked at his watch: four o'clock. A heavy afternoon stillness gripped the hotel; outside, even the muezzins seemed to have knocked off for a nap.
Still half asleep, he looked at his watch again. Where was Marina? She'd said she would be back by lunchtime. He sat up and looked around the room. None of her things had moved — and he'd have heard her if she'd come in.
Grant pulled on his shoes and went out into the corridor. He knocked on Reed's door and waited impatiently. His anxiety grew as the silence dragged on; what had happened to everyone? He tried the handle — not locked — and opened the door.
The room looked as if it had been ransacked. Books and papers lay strewn all over it, together with unfolded clothes, discarded shoes and half-drunk glasses of tea. Grant had no idea Reed could have brought so much with him. The curtains were still drawn, bathing the room in a dull amber light. And there in the middle of it all, sitting cross-legged on the bed in a silk dressing gown, was Reed.
He looked up, blinked and rubbed his glasses on the belt of the dressing gown. 'Grant? Sorry — you should have knocked.'
'I did.' Grant picked his way through the mess and found a corner of the bed to perch on. 'Have you seen Marina?'
Reed took one last look at the paper he'd been studying, then put it down, balancing it on his knee. 'I thought she was with you. I haven't seen her all day.'
'She went to the library first thing. Do you know where that is?'
'In Constantinople?' Reed had never reconciled himself to the change of name to Istanbul. 'This city's been a centre of learning for the last millennium and a half. It probably has more libraries than mosques. Did she say what she was looking for?'
'No. Yes, wait. She said they had something.' Grant racked his brain. 'A
Suda?'
He was about to ask if that meant anything to Reed, but he saw immediately from his face that it did.
'That must be the Ecumenical Patriarch's Library.'
'Do you know where it is?'
'More or less. I'm sure you could take a taxi.'
'Get dressed. You're coming with me.'
Reed glanced about the room, as if surprised to see the mess around him. 'I don't know that I'd be much help.'
'You're not coming to be helpful. We've already lost Muir. If something's happened to Marina then chances are you're next.'
* * *
They hailed a taxi and set off. Reed quickly decided that being chased by Soviet fighter planes and shot at by guerrillas held no terrors compared with taking a taxi through Istanbul. The driver seemed to think he was back in the imperial hippodrome, racing chariots wheel to wheel for the adulation of the masses; or perhaps one of his Ottoman ancestors, galloping his steed across the great Anatolian steppe. Neither, Reed thought, quite compared to the crowded streets and cramped alleys of modern Istanbul.
'Who's this Suda Marina was looking for?' Grant asked. The taxi swerved past a man with a donkey and veered right again to avoid an oncoming tram.
'It's a book, a sort of literary dictionary. It was compiled in the Middle Ages for the Byzantine court. It gives potted biographies of a lot of writers we'd otherwise never have heard of. Very few copies survive nowadays.'
'What would Marina have wanted with it?'
'I've no idea. Perhaps she thought of another author who might have mentioned the shield, or the White Island.'
Reed went silent for a moment as the driver executed a complicated manoeuvre, which seemed to involve lighting a cigarette, honking his horn, turning a hairpin corner and shaking his fist at the lorry he was overtaking all at the same time. Reed went white and mumbled something in Greek.
'What was that?' Grant asked, clinging on to the passenger strap.
'Homer':
Shot headlong from his seat, beside the wheel,
Prone on the dust the unhappy master fell;
His batter'd face and elbows strike the ground;
Nose, mouth, and front, one undistinguish'd wound.
Three near-death experiences later the taxi dropped them off outside the library gate. The window in the door swung open; the grey-haired eye examined them suspiciously. 'Yes?' he said in Greek.
'We're looking for a friend. A woman. She came to use the library this morning. Have you seen her?'
The eye narrowed. 'She was here this morning.'
'Was?
When did she leave?'
'Noon?' He sounded uncertain. 'Three men came in a car.'
Grant felt an invisible hand twisting a knife in his guts. 'Did she say where she was going?'
'She said she would come back.'
'Has she?'
'No.' Another twist. 'But she has left her work here.'
Grant looked around desperately at the street, as if he might find Marina walking towards him, the most natural thing in the world. There was no one. 'Can we see?'
The priest opened the gate with obvious reluctance and took them across the courtyard into the vaulted library. Marina's bag hung on the back of the chair where she had left it, with a single book on the table in front of it. A small slip of paper poked out between the pages.
Grant snatched it up. The tide was in French, but the name on the front leaped out at him. 'It's Sourcelles's book. She said she was interested in something he'd mentioned.' Grant opened it to the page she'd marked. One sentence in particular caught his eye, one that had been partially underlined in pencil. He showed it to Reed, who translated the French:
On this aspect the oft-neglected
Philostratus of Lemnos
is particularly loquacious.
'Who's Philostratus of Lemnos?'
Grant had grown so used to Reed's ready answers to his questions, to the smiles of indulgence or the twitches of impatience that came with them depending on his mood, that he barely thought about them any more. He had long since reached the conclusion that the professor was for all practical purposes infallible, a walking encyclopaedia of the ancient world.
But instead of answering, Reed pursed his lips and looked blank. 'Philostratus,' he repeated. 'A minor philosopher of the third century AD, I think. Not really my period — except that I seem to remember he wrote a biography of Apollonius of Rhodes, who wrote the principal poetic account of Jason and the Argonauts. That's probably why Marina wanted the Suda — to look him up.'
Grant curled his hand into a fist to try to keep control of himself. 'Well, he probably didn't kidnap her.'
'If he's from Lemnos, he might have known something about the cult of Hephaestus.'
They found the librarian. He looked suspicious at first, but a few sharp words from Reed persuaded him to unlock the cumbersome door and lead them down into the subterranean treasury. He opened the box and laid the crumbling book on the table.
Reed's hand trembled as he touched the silver-plated cover. 'The young woman who was here this morning: did she look at this book?'
The librarian's wispy beard seemed to float in the darkness as he silently nodded. Reed turned the stiff pages; Grant marvelled at the tiny lettering, neat as type.
'Here we go.'
'Philostratus. Son of Philostratus Verus, the sophist from Lemnos. He was a sophist in At
hens, then in Rome when Severus was emperor until the reign of Philip, he wrote: Declamations; Descriptions (four books); Market-Place; Heroicus; Dialogues; Goats, or Concerning the Pipe; a life of Apollonius of Rhodes (eight books); epigrams; and other works.
'Heroicus,'
Reed repeated.
'On Heroes.
Do you know this work?'
The librarian nodded. Wordlessly, he gathered up the Suda and returned it to its box, then swept out of the vault. They followed him up to the reading room. He didn't head for the shelves; instead he went back to his desk. A wooden trolley sat beside it, piled with books waiting to go back to their shelves. The librarian plucked one from near the top, a slim volume in a black and red binding, and handed it to Reed.
When he opened it, Grant smelled a sudden blossom of almond and rose, a flower in the dusty desert of the library. 'Marina must have been reading this,' he said, imagining her perfumed wrist rubbing the page edges as she turned them. 'What is it?'
Reed pulled out a chair and sat down at one of the tables, scanning the pages. Grant tried to swallow the desperate impatience seething inside him.
'It's an account of the Trojan war.' Reed looked up. 'It's a typical device in fiction of this period: the ghost of a minor character from the Iliad pops up and tells a weary traveller everything Homer got wrong. There's practically an entire literary sub-genre in late antiquity. What makes this one remarkable, for our purposes, is that it was written by someone who had intimate knowledge of the Lemnian cult of Hephaestus.'
He gave a tired smile as he saw Grant's expression. 'Your guess was right. According to the introduction, Philostratus was a priest of the cult of Hephaestus on Lemnos.' Reed took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'He would have had an unrivalled knowledge of the cult's history, its innermost secrets. In fact, there appears to be a school of thought that the entire work is riddled with mystic double meanings that only initiates of the cult would appreciate: secret words that would appear wholly innocuous to the lay reader. But there is one thing particularly noteworthy in the text. He says':
The White Island lies in the Black Sea, towards the inhospitable side, which is on the left as you sail into the mouth of that sea. It reaches thirty stadia in length but not more than four in width. Both poplar and elm trees grow on it: some happen to grow wild, but others are planted by design around the temple. The temple is situated near the Sea of Maeotis (which flows into the Black Sea) and the statues in it are Achilles and Helen, crafted by the Fates.
'Where's the Maeotis Sea?'
'The Maeotis was the Greek name for what we now call the Sea of Azov.' Reed got up and fetched an atlas from the shelves. But it was like no atlas Grant had ever used. The cartographers seemed to have been drunk: all the familiar outlines were distorted and even the places he recognised had been given unfamiliar names. Italy was no longer the tall, high-heeled thigh-boot he knew, but a stubby, clumsy workboot. It was not the world as it actually was, but the world as men had once seen it.
As Reed turned the pages, the contours slowly resolved. Vague lines became more precise; bays and inlets nibbled into the sweeping coasts and the amoebic continents evolved spines, appendages, limbs. Now the maps were printed, not hand drawn, their shapes recognisable as the modern world. Though the names were still strange and foreign.
'Here we are.'
The map was of the eastern Black Sea, dated 1729. Reed pointed to where the Sea of Azov joined the Black Sea. 'The Cimmerian Bosphorus.' He shook his head, berating himself for some error or failing only he knew.
Now sunk the sun from his aerial height,
And o'er the shaded billows rush'd the night;
When lo! we reach 'd old Ocean's utmost bounds,
Where rocks control his waves with ever-during mounds.
There in a lonely land, and gloomy cells,
The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells,
'When Odysseus sails to find the portal to Hades, Cimmeria is the last country he passes before he crosses the Oceanus. Now, the ancient Greeks believed that the Cimmerians had been a real people who lived into historical times. According to Herodotus they lived around the north-east corner of the Black Sea. He says they'd all been slaughtered by subsequent invaders, but that their name lived on in…'
'… place names,' said Grant, remembering. 'Always the last to go.'
'Hence the Cimmerian Bosphorus. The Euxine Bosphorus — nowadays the Bosporus — led into the Black Sea from the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean; at the opposite end the Cimmerian Bosphorus led out into the Sea of Azov. I believe nowadays it's called the Kerch Strait.'
'And you think that's what Marina found: that the White Island is somewhere near there?'
'That's what Philostratus says — and the Odyssey agrees.'
Grant peered at the map. 'But there are no islands there.'
A burst of frustration welled inside him; he slammed the book shut.
'Shit.' Searching for whatever Marina had been working on had somehow staved off the feelings of helplessness. Now even that was a dead end. 'We have to find her.'
Reed looked at him with tired eyes. 'And how will you do that in this city of almost a million inhabitants?'
'The police?'
'They'd be more likely to lock us up. We haven't even got our passports.' He gave a sad shake of his head and touched Grant's arm. 'I'm sorry. I suppose we'd better tell Jackson.'
* * *
'Jesus Christ.' Jackson threw a glass ashtray across the room. It punctured the flimsy wall, bounced off and landed on the carpet. Flakes of ash fluttered down around it. 'This is your fault, Grant.'
'Why are you looking at me? I didn't kidnap her.'
'Get with the programme. Nobody kidnapped her.' Jackson paced the room angrily. 'She's been spying on us for her Russian friends since day one. Why else do you think we keep running into them — because we use the same travel agent? How'd they find you on Lemnos? How come they found us in Athens — and ended up at Sourcelles's house half an hour behind us? How'd they get on to us on Snake Island so quick?'
'I don't know. The point is it wasn't Marina. She kept that tablet safe for six years without telling anyone.'
'She probably didn't know what it was worth. Jesus! We should never have trusted her. Washington'll have my balls served up for breakfast in an omelette when they find out.'
'And if she was a spy, why would she go now? There's nothing to go on except that tablet, and Reed's about to crack it.'
A look of horror crossed Jackson's face. 'Where is the tablet?'
'In my room.' Reed had watched the whole argument from the safety of a corner. He looked embarrassed, a house guest forced to witness his hosts' marital bickering. 'It's still there. I checked it ten minutes ago.'
'She thought she was coming back — she left her things in the library.'
'Well, gosh. That fucking proves it. You think it wouldn't have occurred to her to leave a false trail to slow us up, Einstein?'
Something snapped inside Grant. Before Jackson could think to protect himself, Grant had taken three strides across the room and lifted him up by his lapels. He slammed him into the wall, shaking him like a rat.
'Put me down.'
'I'll put you down when you apologise.'
'Apologise for what? Insulting your little Commie whore?'
There was no telling what Grant might have done next, but at that moment there was a knock at the door. All three men turned to look.
'Not now,' snarled Jackson.
Either his words were too muffled to be clear, or they weren't understood. The door opened. An elderly porter in a white jacket stood in the corridor. His face went slack as he saw the scene in the room: 'Telefon,' he whispered, plainly terrified. He mimed a receiver with his little finger and thumb. 'Telefon for Mister Grant.'
Grant dropped Jackson and ran after the porter, almost pushing him down the stairs in his hurry. Jackson came after him. The receptionist stared at the look on Grant's face and mute
ly offered him the telephone. Grant was about to take it when Jackson pushed in his way. 'The call's for me.'
'Right. But I want to hear it too.' Jackson turned to the receptionist. 'Is there another extension?' He held up both hands and made the same bull's-horn gesture that the porter had made.
'Icki telephone?'
The receptionist pointed to the opposite end of the counter. She rearranged the plugs in her switchboard, then nodded. Grant and Jackson took the handsets.
'This is Grant.'
It was a bad line, full of hisses and electric crackling, but the voice was clear and cold. 'My name is Kurchosov. I have your friend.'
Grant's heart beat faster. He said nothing.
'I will offer her to you in exchange for the tablet.'
At the other end of the counter Jackson covered the mouthpiece with his hand and mouthed, 'Play for time.'
'Your friend Belzig stole the tablet.'
'There is a second piece.' A dangerous edge crept into the voice. 'The more important piece. You stole it from the Frenchman's house.'
'We left it in Greece.'
The line hissed. 'For your friend's sake I hope you did not.'
'It's no use to you anyway. You can't read it.'
'We will decide that for ourselves — when you give it to us.'
'I can't.'
A dangerous edge entered Kurchosov's voice. 'You will. We will meet you on the Uskudar ferry at this time tomorrow. You will bring us the tablet.'
The line went dead.
* * *
'Now do you accept Marina's not working for them?'
Jackson looked as if he was about to say something, then saw the dangerous look in Grant's eyes and swallowed it. Instead, he turned to Reed. 'How are you getting on with the translation?'
Reed looked glum. 'I thought I had it this morning. This afternoon I felt I'd as much chance drawing words out of a hat.'
'Is there anything we can do to help?' said Grant.
Jackson took a drag on his cigarette. 'Like what? If he can't read it, you sure as shit can't. And it's all goddamn Greek to me.'
