by Tom Harper
“Like the dead. Where’s Reed?”
“In his room. He’s been up since dawn. Seems to think he’s on to something with the tablet. Which he’d better be. If they’ve got Muir, the Reds must have everything pretty much figured out. That tablet’s our only ace and it’s not much use if we can’t read the damn thing.” He looked around the empty restaurant.
“Where’s Marina?”
“Library.” Grant squeezed his olive so that the stone shot out of the end and bounced across the table. “She wanted to look up something Sourcelles said.”
Jackson looked agitated. “You let her go on her own?”
“She can take care of herself.”
“Jesus, Grant, that’s not what I’m worried about. The Commies have been all over us since you stepped off the boat on Crete. And here in Istanbul . . .” He shook his head. “Christ, there’s more Soviet spooks here than guys selling carpets. Hell, half the guys selling carpets probably are spooks.”
“She can take care of herself,” Grant repeated.
“You know what I mean.”
“You’re wrong.” Grant’s voice was hard; his eyes dared Jackson to go on.
“I hope so. Meanwhile, we’ve got business to be getting on with. With Muir gone, we need to get some back-up. I’ll cable Washington and see if they’ve got any troops in the neighborhood we can borrow.”
“Aren’t we going back to Athens?”
Jackson shook his head. “No point—not until we know what the tablet says. The Black Sea still seems the most likely spot for finding the shield. Wherever it is, we’re probably closer here than anywhere else.”
“What about Muir?”
“We gotta assume the worst. He knew the risks. If he was a pro, he’ll have put a bullet in his brain before the Reds got him.” Jackson pushed back his chair and stood. “I’m going to the consulate. You stay here and watch Reed. If he finds something—or if anything happens—call me there.”
Grant finished his breakfast, wandered out to buy an English-language newspaper from the kiosk across the street, then went back upstairs. Jackson and Reed were sharing the room opposite, and he rapped on the door to make sure the professor was all right. A muffled grunt suggested that he was and that any interruption would be unwelcome. With a sigh, Grant retreated to his room and flopped down on the bed. He could smell Marina’s perfume on the sheets.
The taxi pulled away, leaving Marina alone on the quiet street. She walked up to a small wooden gate and rang the bell. Behind the whitewashed wall she could see the semi-domes of a church, hardly remarkable in this city of domes and towers, and a tall, apricot-colored building like an inverted pyramid, each floor overhanging the one below. The paint on the door peeled away like skin, and crude political slogans were daubed on the wall, but inside the compound everything seemed peaceful.
A window in the door slid open. A suspicious eye surrounded by a wild sea of gray hair peered out. “Yes?”
“My name is Marina Papagiannopoulou,” she said in Greek. “I’ve come to use the library.”
The lines round the eye softened to hear the familiar language. The window closed, a lock turned, and a stooped priest in a black cassock and kamilafki hat admitted her.
Even Marina, who was used to scrabbling in the ruins of ancient civilizations, felt the age around her as she entered the courtyard. Not the age of Knossos, so remote that the gulf of history between them was unbridgeable, but the age of a grandparent or great-grandparent, a sense of faded glories, spent energy and endings, a life at peace with itself. She supposed it had been declining in this city for five hundred years.
To her surprise, the library turned out to be the church building she had seen from the street. She mentioned it to the priest, who gave a toothless smile.
“After the Ottoman invasion, the conquerors decreed it could no longer be used for religious purposes. His Holiness the Patriarch decided it would serve truth best to become a library.”
There was something unsettling about stepping inside, past the golden gazes of mosaic saints, into the dim space. Wooden shelves sagging with books lined the walls and filled the spaces between supporting columns, while lacquered desks in a cruciform arrangement sat in the middle of the chamber under the dome. Marina seated herself at the near end, as close to the door as possible, and pulled the copy of Sourcelles’s monograph out of her bag. She leafed through it, not entirely sure what she was looking for, but certain she would recognize it when she saw it.
Like the Hero himself, the White Island presents a troubling duality to those who attempt to explain it. On the one hand is its benevolent aspect as a haven, a “Sacred Harbor” in both the literal and metaphorical senses. In Arrian we find recorded the detail that Achilles would appear in dreams to passing sailors and guide them to the island, to the “most advantageous places to put in, the safest anchorages.” On the island itself, Arrian and Philostratus both report the legend of the seabirds, of which there were very many, cleansing the temple through the brushing and flapping of their wings; though this is contradicted by the proverb quoted in Pliny (NH X.78) that “no bird flies over Achilles’ temple on the island of the Black Sea where he is buried.” In a similar vein, both authors repeat the idea that the livestock on the island offer themselves willingly to be sacrificed at the temple of Achilles, standing docilely before the temple and offering their necks to the knife (the idea of the “willing victim” is, of course, of fundamental importance to religious eschatology throughout history). The whole picture created is one of order and harmony, an Edenic (or, more accurately, Hesperidean) paradise where man and nature and gods live in complete sympathy to each other’s needs.
And yet, as befits its status as a liminal place on the strange outer edge of the world, there is a serpent in this garden (literally so, if we consult the narrative of Captain-Lieutenant N. D. Kritskii concerning his 1823 visit to Zmeiny Ostrov); an aura of danger pervades the White Island. On this aspect the oft-neglected Philostratus of Lemnos is particularly loquacious. He relates the strange sounds sailors heard from the island: great voices that could “freeze the sailors with fright”; the sounds of battle, weapons and armor and horses. He states that no man was allowed to remain on the island past sunset. Most gruesomely, he tells the tale of the merchant whom Achilles commanded to bring him a slave girl. Thinking she was wanted merely for sexual gratification, imagine his horror when he heard her screams as the vengeful Hero tore her limb from limb and devoured her. Though the White Island may be a paradise of light for gods and heroes, for mortal men it is a place of savagery and darkness, not to be approached lightly.
Marina underlined a few words in pencil, then went to find the librarian—another priest. He took some convincing that her request was legitimate, but in the end gave in. He led her down a flight of stairs, along a dark corridor in the vaults of the old church, to a locked room whose shelves were filled not with books but with boxes. These were locked too; he took one down and opened it on the small round table in the corner of the room. A single book lay couched on tissue paper inside. It looked ancient: a silver plate inlaid with jewels and colored stones formed the front cover, while its edges were black with age. Crumbs of the leather spine scattered the paper around it. Marina opened it reverentially.
The priest-librarian refused to leave her, but waited while she found what she wanted. The pages were brown and brittle, like spun sugar; each time she turned one she was terrified she would snap it. As soon as she had found what she wanted and copied it out, he took the book back and shut it safely away in its casket.
Back in the reading room, Marina pulled more books from the shelves and began reading. She worked diligently, glad of the solitude. She felt as though she could feel space and air around her after so many days in the stifling company of men. She knew what Muir and Jackson thought of her, what they suspected; she was tired of having to endure their sharp looks and sneers. There was something unpleasant, masculine, that inevitably went with them. Even R
eed, of whom she was very fond, could be trying. And as for Grant . . . She crossed her legs under the table and turned back to her book. Grant was far too complicated to think about here.
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 realized 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 center 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 maneuver, 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 gray-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 toward 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 title 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 encyclopedia 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 w
ispy 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 Athens, 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 unrivaled 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:
