The Lost Labyrinth (18 page)

‘I’ll take you round the palace on our way back, if we have time,’ nodded Iain. ‘It’s a wonderful setting. And far fewer tourists than Knossos, of
course, though still pretty busy, especially in season.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘Crete’s like Egypt that way. Tourists come for the sun and the sand, but they like a bit of culture too. Which makes the Minoans big business. Take the Phaistos disc, for example. There’s a lot of controversy about its authenticity. I’m pretty sure that it’s for real myself, but plenty of others reckon Luigi Pernier, the Italian archaeologist who found it, faked it himself out of jealousy for all the publicity Sir Arthur Evans was getting over at Knossos. But the point is, the dispute could be resolved one way or the other in a heartbeat if Heraklion Museum allowed a thermoluminescence test. They won’t, of course. It’s one of the most iconic images of Minoan Crete, so why risk it?’ He shook his head. ‘That’s the way things work here. Profit before truth every time.’

‘Says the author of
The Atlantis Connection
,’ she teased.

‘I guess I asked for that,’ he laughed ruefully, as they came up behind a diesel-belching lorry on the switchback descent. ‘But at least I’m not trying to hide anything. I honestly believe the Atlantis legend is a genuine folk-memory of the Minoans.’ He slid her a glance. ‘You know the gist of it, I assume?’

‘Sure,’ shrugged Gaille. ‘In ten thousand or so B.C. there was a great empire called Atlantis
somewhere west of the pillars of Hercules. It was larger than Africa and incredibly powerful, yet was eventually defeated by Athens and other Greek cities before being destroyed by an extraordinary cataclysm, never to be seen again.’

‘You sound sceptical,’ said Iain, swinging out wide to see if there was any way to overtake the lorry, before pulling sharply back in when he saw a car approaching.

‘We only have the one source for the story,’ replied Gaille, ‘and that’s Plato, who wasn’t exactly frightened of using allegory to explain his ideas. There never was any great island west of the pillars of Hercules, or geologists would have discovered it by now. And there were no civilisations to speak of in ten thousand B.C., or we’d have found evidence of them. And even if there had been, then Athens couldn’t have been involved in destroying it, because it didn’t exist back then. And Egyptian temples couldn’t have recorded it, because they didn’t exist either. So, yes. I’m a little sceptical.’

A short stretch of empty road appeared ahead. Gaille braced herself with her feet as Iain charged the Mustang recklessly into an overtake, tooting his horn to warn the lorry driver and any oncoming traffic. ‘Look,’ he said, swinging back in once he’d passed it, ‘I know Atlantis is risky territory. All those outlandish theories about fish people from outer space with ludicrously advanced technology.
But there’s nothing in Plato about fish-people or aliens. Believe me. I’ve looked. And the technology he describes isn’t much more than irrigation systems and hot and cold running water, which we know the Minoans had.’

‘Not in ten thousand B.C.’

‘Of course not. You’re absolutely right that a lot of Plato’s account simply doesn’t fit.’ They came up behind a long train of traffic, and for a horrible second, Gaille feared Iain was about to try and overtake it all in one go, but then he clucked his tongue in evident frustration, and fell into line instead. ‘But you’ve got to remember how much the story went through before it even got to Plato. For one thing, some Egyptian had to record the story in the first place. Easier said than done. They didn’t have Reuters back then. They couldn’t just turn on CNN. Garbled stories would have come in from across the ancient world, leaving some poor sap to try to make sense of it. And once they’d made a record, they had to keep it safe in their temple archives, even though that temple and much of northern Egypt was under foreign occupation for much of the Minoan era. And you must know better than anyone that the Egyptians weren’t anything like as meticulous in their record-keeping as popular opinion would have them. They were just as lazy, deceitful, propagandistic and prone to natural disasters as anyone else. Then there’s the
Egyptian High Priest who read the story in his temple records and told it to the Greek Solon. Surely there’s at least the possibility that something got mangled in the translation. Solon then went back home and told it to his grandson, who later told his own grandson, who in turn told it to Socrates before Plato wrote it down. How many different people is that it had to pass through? And yet you somehow expect his account to capture the fall of the Minoan empire with perfect accuracy?’

‘I don’t expect anything,’ said Gaille mildly.

‘Take this business of dates. Plato said that Atlantis was destroyed nine thousand years before Solon’s time. The Minoan empire collapsed nine
hundred
years before Solon’s time. Isn’t it just possible that someone somewhere got a symbol wrong?’

‘What about it being west of the pillars of Hercules? Or being larger than Africa?’

‘Some people back then believed that the Hercules had set his pillars at the Hellespont, not the Straits of Gibraltar. Crete was west of them. And, yes, the Egyptian high priest did indeed describe Atlantis as bigger than Africa, but he went straight on to say that it was the main island of an archipelago ruled by a confederation of kings. Plato describes this main island as a rough oblong, six hundred kilometres long by three hundred wide.
Nothing like as big as Africa, but actually pretty close to Crete. So it wasn’t the
island
of Atlantis that was huge, but the area it controlled. The Minoan empire had outposts all over the Eastern Mediterranean, from Greece round to Egypt, just like Atlantis did. Add all this space together, land
and
sea, then you do indeed get a vast area, as large as Africa was believed to be back then.’

‘I suppose.’

‘And Plato describes Atlantis’s main island in some detail. He says it was mountainous with a big plateau in its south.’ He waved his hand out the window. ‘We’ve just passed over a mountain range, in case you weren’t watching, and we’re currently driving through a great plain. The Atlanteans worshipped Poseidon, just as the Minoans did. They revered bulls, just like the Minoans. And Atlantis was divided into at least ten kingdoms, just like Minoan Crete. And when it finally fell, it fell to mainland Greeks, just like Minoan Crete.’

‘Don’t I remember something about Atlantis being formed from black, red and white rock?’ asked Gaille mischievously.

‘Quite right,’ nodded Iain. ‘Doesn’t sound much like Crete, I admit, but it
is
a perfect description of Santorini, the Minoan’s most important outpost. We can’t be sure precisely
how
important, of course, because Santorini used to be a volcano, Mount Thera, until it blew itself up in the
most violent eruption in human history, leaving just a semicircle of rock in the water. And that eruption is of course another point of similarity between the Minoans and the Atlantis legend, perhaps the most remarkable of all. Plato says that Atlantis vanished after a great earthquake, leaving behind only an impassable mud shoal. Thera’s eruption would have felt like a massive earthquake, even as far away as Egypt, and it would have left the Aegean a thick soup of pumice and ash for decades. And it surely inflicted a mortal wound on the Minoan empire, leaving them at the mercy of whoever came conquering first. The Mycenaeans, as it happened.’

‘If you say so.’

They’d reached the town of Timpaki. Iain put on his indicator and began to brake and pull in. For a shocked moment she feared he’d taken umbrage at her tone, that he was about to stop and order her out. But he merely turned into a petrol station instead. ‘Stay here,’ he said, getting out. ‘I need to fill her up.’

The delegates suddenly started arriving at the pavilion in a flood. The buses from the hotel had evidently arrived. Nico entered with them, talking
animatedly with a member of his staff. Knox went to join them, and they went together up to the podium, where they talked him through the controls. He felt a sudden flutter of nerves, that coppery taste at the back of his mouth. Public speaking didn’t come naturally to him.

‘Fifteen minutes,’ said Nico. ‘Okay?’

‘Okay.’ He walked back and forth across the rear of the stage, keeping a lid on his nerves as he gave Augustin’s text a final read-through. The lights in the main part of the pavilion went down; the stage grew brighter. He went to sit upon his appointed chair. Nico took his good time about making his way to the podium, where he tapped the microphone to make sure it was on, then cleared his throat, milking the moment. The auditorium was now packed, people standing at the back, even a few journalists, to judge from the notepads and cameras, presumably looking for new angles on Petitier’s death.

‘I’m sure you’ve all heard by now of the terrible events of yesterday afternoon,’ began Nico. ‘My first instinct, of course, was to cancel today’s proceedings. But you good people have come so far for this conference, and it’s so rare to have so many of the world’s great authorities on Eleusis in one venue, that I felt we owed it to scholarship to persevere, however tragic the circumstances. And I’m glad, to judge by this excellent turnout, that so many of you agree.’

All the talks were being filmed for posterity, and the cameraman now swept the audience. It gave Knox an idea. Anyone at yesterday afternoon’s talk had an ironclad alibi for Petitier’s murder, with the Athens hotel a good forty minutes away. But anyone
not
there had some explaining to do, particularly if—

His name was called out suddenly. He looked up to see Nico beckoning. There was a polite smattering of applause that grew louder as he walked across and shook Nico’s hand. He oriented himself at the podium, checked the controls and the teleprompter.

Over the years Knox had known Augustin, he’d come to take his friendship for granted. You did that with people like Augustin, because they never made a point of it, they never asked for anything in return. He had a sudden vision of him in the ICU, his face swollen, his skull fractured, fighting for his life; yet at the same time he had the strongest sense of his presence here in the pavilion, watching him right now, his arms sardonically folded, as though to make sure that he’d do him justice. And suddenly what Knox had seen as a chore to pay back Nico for helping get him out of gaol took on a different aspect. Augustin had talked lightly about this lecture, but it had been his chance to prove himself to the world outside Alexandria, and he’d worked his heart out on it. He’d rewritten it
countless times, had rehearsed it endlessly. But now he was lying in an ICU bed, and—brutal though it was to acknowledge—this talk could yet prove his memorial. Knox owed it to him to make it fitting.

An earthquake had struck off the coast of Alexandria several months before. Not severe, as these things went, barely enough to shake dust from the plaster, rattle a roof or two, make people smile nervously at each other as they hurried out their front doors. But it had also put a crack in an old block of flats overlooking the Nouzha gardens, and a week later the facade of the building had groaned and then simply sheered away. The property had duly been condemned and destroyed. A bulldozer had revealed an underground chamber. The Supreme Council for Antiquities in Alexandria had called in Augustin, and he in turn had called in Knox and Gaille.

Now he played edited highlights on the giant screen of Gaille’s footage of that first exploration, jumping and bumping as they clambered over rubble and debris, the hazy white flare of flashlights playing over the
loculi
and detritus on the floor, human bone and the occasional fragment of pottery glowing palely against the darker dirt. He didn’t speak, just let the atmosphere build. It was one of the great privileges
of archaeology, exploring such sites for the first time in hundreds or even thousands of years. But finally he sensed his moment. ‘Behold the Alexandrian district of Eleusis,’ he began. ‘They call them the Mysteries. But in Egypt, at least, thanks to my good friend Augustin Pascal, they may not be that way for very much longer.’

They found Knox’s Citroen parked on the cobbles outside the site entrance. Edouard backed into a nearby space, the quicker to get away, then he and Zaal went over to the other Mercedes, from which Boris and Davit were climbing out. The rear window hummed down; Mikhail beckoned from within. They all went over. Mikhail had his trousers unzipped and down around his thighs, Edouard was startled to see, and the hooker’s face was buried in his lap. ‘Well, boss?’ asked Zaal, not skipping a beat. ‘What now?’

Mikhail pointed to a nearby café, its garden overlooking the car park. ‘Go wait for me in there,’ he said. ‘Order me coffee and an ouzo. I’ll be with you in a minute.’ The window hummed back up.

They took a corner table with a view of the site’s entrance and the cars. Edouard watched in fascination as Mikhail’s Mercedes started to rock back and forth, the shock of passers-by at the
shadow theatre behind the tinted windows. The sheer contempt for others, to fuck a hooker in broad daylight; how Edouard envied that. Climax arrived and passed; the Mercedes fell still. A few more moments passed and then the rear door opened and the hooker got out, her jacket slung over her shoulder, picking at her crotch and wobbling a little as she walked, her high heels unsuitable for the cobbles. Mikhail himself emerged a few moments later. He checked his reflection in the tinted glass, straightened his collar, then headed towards the café.

Boris’ mobile began to ring at that moment. He answered it, then passed it to Edouard. ‘For you,’ he said.

‘You have my answers for me?’ asked Sandro bluntly.

‘You have my wife for me?’ responded Edouard.

‘She’s here now. You have thirty seconds.’

‘Nina?’ he asked eagerly. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ she assured him, though her tone sounded guarded. ‘We went out riding this morning. Even Kiko. It was the first time he’s been out since that time with Nicoloz Badridze.’

‘Nicoloz Badridze?’ frowned Edouard, shifting up to make room for Mikhail. ‘You don’t mean—’