The Lost Labyrinth (21 page)

‘Really?’

‘Sure. Mead’s a dangerous substance if you don’t know what you’re doing. They must have had
some method for memorising and passing on their recipes. Look at the structure of the stories sometime, their use of numbers…’

They passed through a collar of trees, the ground a brown carpet of last year’s leaves, pine needles and cones, and the soft pebbles of animal droppings. Giant cobwebs stretched across the path, strands glittering like attenuated silver, catching in her hands and hair. Out the other side, the landscape changed markedly. The gradient steepened and there were fists of grey rock everywhere. She found it harder and harder to keep up. It wasn’t just that Iain was fitter; his boots were much more suitable for the slippery, jagged terrain, while her plimsolls kept turning so that her ankles were soon bruised and bleeding.

She took out her bottle of water, warm from the sun, swallowed a couple of mouthfuls then splashed a little on her brow, used it to brush back her hair. Now that she’d stopped, she felt the tightness in her calves, a warning twinge of a hamstring. She looked longingly at a moss-covered rock.

‘Fancy a breather?’ asked Iain.

‘I’m fine,’ she assured him. ‘But you have one if you like.’

He laughed, amusement and understanding mixed. ‘Thanks,’ he said, shrugging off his pack. ‘I rather think I will.’

A convoy of army trucks rumbled past on the main road, bored soldiers staring out of the backs. Edouard glanced instinctively down at Mikhail’s shotgun, but he was holding it safely out of sight. They waited patiently till the last of the trucks was gone, then Mikhail turned back to Davit, and prodded him in the chest with his finger. ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘I thought you said they came this way.’

‘They did, sir,’ muttered Davit. ‘I saw them.’

‘Then where the fuck are they?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Maybe they ran for it,’ suggested Edouard.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Mikhail. ‘Carrying their Volvo with them, no doubt?’ He shook his head in scorn, turned back to the others. ‘And who were they anyway? Where did they come from?’

There was silence, no one daring to speak. ‘Perhaps a pair of good Samaritans,’ suggested Zaal finally.

‘Good Samaritans!’ scoffed Mikhail. ‘Why would good Samaritans be following us?’

‘They weren’t,’ said Boris. ‘It was just coincidence. They were way behind us on the road.’

‘They were following us,’ insisted Mikhail. ‘Check beneath the cars.’ It was Zaal who found the transmitter, tearing it free from beneath the second Mercedes, holding it up like a tribute to Mikhail. He took it and weighed it in his hand, then turned to Edouard. ‘This is your car, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a rental,’ said Edouard. ‘I just picked it up at the airport.’

‘You led them to me,’ said Mikhail. ‘You led them right to my fucking house.’

‘No,’ said Edouard, backing away. ‘I’d have—’

Mikhail took a step towards him. ‘How
could
you be so fucking stupid?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve compromised this entire operation. You’ve compromised
me
!’

‘No,’ said Edouard. His calf banged one of the flower-pots; he stepped sideways between them out towards the road. But Mikhail followed
him, invading his space. He tried a submissive smile, touched his arm in an effort to establish a bond.

Mikhail looked incredulously down. ‘Did you just touch me?’ he asked.

‘I only—’

Mikhail took another pace forward, jutting his face into Edouard’s, so that Edouard instinctively stepped back and out into the road. A truck tooted as it swerved around him, clipping the rear wheel of an overtaking motorbike, sending it fishtailing down the road before the rider somehow managed to right himself. Edouard danced back onto the pavement, his heart going crazy.

‘What now?’ asked Boris.

‘We find that Volvo,’ said Mikhail, who’d already lost interest in Edouard.

‘How?’

‘Didn’t any of you idiots get its plates?’ They all shook their heads. Mikhail sighed and pointed to the transmitter Zaal was holding. ‘That damned thing must belong to someone. Find out who. Then bring me their head on a fucking platter.’

‘But how do we—’

‘On a fucking platter,’ said Mikhail. ‘Or it’ll be yours instead.’ He checked his watch. ‘You have three hours. I’d use them well if I were you.’

Gaille began to hear a strange rushing noise as she climbed higher, like a river in full flood. She laboured on upwards for a few more minutes, her legs burning and trembling with tiredness, before she discovered what it was—wind funnelling through a narrow pass between two high peaks. Grey clouds had gathered at the mouth, like disheartened ghosts outside the gates of purgatory, waiting to be let in.

It quickly grew chilly, all that cold air channelling through this narrow gap, the wind whipping at her back, making a mockery of her cotton blouse, flapping her trousers around her ankles. Shivers turned to shudders; she daydreamed of jerseys and thick jackets. Visibility deteriorated too; in places, the cloud was thick as a fogbank. They reached a barbed wire fence, its wooden stakes grotesquely topped by goat skulls, voodoo fetishes to warn off unwanted visitors. ‘You sure we’re not trespassing?’ she asked.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Iain assured her. He trod down on the topmost strand so that the stakes either side leaned deferentially towards him, then helped her across. ‘Trust me. I walk these mountains all the time. As long as you behave yourself, anyone you meet will be glad of the company. Besides, this has to be Petitier’s land by now, and he’s hardly going to complain, is he?’

The pass was treacherous with loose landslide cobbles, meaning Gaille had to keep her eyes down to mind her footing. She lost track of Iain in the thick mist, but assumed he was ahead of her. She’d been walking for a couple of minutes when she heard Iain shouting anxiously. ‘Gaille! Where are you?’

‘Here,’ she replied. ‘Why?’

‘Be careful. I think we’re near the edge of something.’

‘The edge of what?’ A gust of wind answered the question for her, thinning the cloud momentarily, revealing the pass falling away a few steps ahead to a sudden vertiginous drop. She stopped dead, took a step back. ‘Hell!’ she said. ‘You must be psychic.’

He appeared out of the mist, led by her voice. ‘You get a sense for these things if you do enough hiking.’ He led her left, away from the centre of the pass. The wind slackened at once, and the cloud thinned and then vanished, allowing some welcome sunshine through, and also revealing what she’d briefly glimpsed: that they were on the rim of a natural amphitheatre of rock, like the caldera of some extinct volcano. There was a fertile circle at its foot far below, perhaps two or even three kilometres in diameter, divided into fields and groves, with a great yellow sea of gorse away to its north. A farmhouse stood in the approximate
centre of this plateau, too distant to make out in any detail, other than for a black water tower on its roof and the glint of solar panels. And, beyond the farmhouse, two of those ugly polythene greenhouses. ‘What now?’ she asked, daunted by the natural stockade of escarpment walls.

‘There has to a path somewhere. If Petitier can make it in and out with a mule, surely we can too.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Trust me,’ he insisted. ‘It’ll be fine.’

Trust me
, she thought, a touch sourly. It seemed to be his answer for everything.

Knox was still lying on the tarmac, muscles fibrillating from the strain of holding the wheelie-bin, his nose assaulted by its overheated stench. The cat he’d startled away a minute earlier now reappeared and began mewing and glaring down at him from the roof of the nearest caravan.

He could hear yelling on the road. Someone was getting an earful. A moment later, one of the Georgians appeared and got down on his hands and knees, then reached beneath the Mercedes, pulled free a transmitter, held in place by strips of black tape. If he’d just looked around, he’d have seen Knox instantly; but mercifully he didn’t. There
was more talking. Decisions were made. They all climbed back in their Mercedes, then reversed back up the lane and away.

Knox gave them thirty seconds or so, then got to his feet, brushed himself down, went to take a look. No sign of them. He checked around the corner. The road was clear. He pulled the wheelie-bin aside to let Sokratis out, then pushed it back into the empty slot and climbed into the rear of the Volvo. Sokratis drove cautiously off. His pale blue shirt had turned two-toned with sweat; he smelled nearly as bad as the wheelie-bin. ‘I thought you said that man was your husband,’ he scowled accusingly at Nadya.

‘Did you?’ asked Nadya innocently.

‘I don’t do this kind of mobster shit. I do divorces. That’s all.’

‘Then this is an excellent chance to expand your business.’

‘You think this is funny?’ he shouted. ‘You lied to me.’

‘I didn’t lie. You made assumptions, that’s all.’

‘I don’t work for clients who lie to me. Get out of my car. Now.’

‘Don’t be such an ass,’ she retorted. ‘You’ve still got my luggage. Drive me to my hotel, and then do what the hell you like, if you haven’t got the balls for this kind of work.’

‘I don’t have
his
luggage,’ said Sokratis, jabbing a thumb at Knox.

‘Just drive, will you. Or give me my money back.’ She turned in her seat. ‘Where do you want to go?’

There wasn’t much point in Knox returning to his car; Mikhail had his keys. ‘How about a Metro station?’ he asked.

‘You heard him,’ Nadya told Sokratis.

He gave her a glare, but he couldn’t hope to match wills. He drove warily on. They reached the main road and he leaned forward as far as possible, his eyes almost comically peeled for black Mercedes.

‘You were telling me about the Nergadzes,’ Knox reminded Nadya.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. She glanced at Sokratis, her faith in him evidently shaken. ‘Do you speak French?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ She switched language smoothly. ‘Let me give you some more background on Ilya. He owns several oil and gas interests, like most of the oligarchs; but there are rumours that his first billion came from trading guns to Afghanistan in exchange for heroin.’

‘Jesus.’

‘The Americans put pressure on the Georgian government to go after him. But families like the Nergadzes stick together. You can’t arrest just one of them without precipitating a small war.
A simultaneous mass arrest was planned, but somebody blabbed. The whole clan fled to Cyprus—they’ve got several houses there, not to mention a mega-yacht and much of their cash. But Ilya’s not the kind for exile, however pampered. Negotiations for his return were getting nowhere, so he set up his own political party to target vulnerable government seats, and he won enough of them to make himself a real thorn in the president’s side.’

‘And suddenly he was allowed back, no doubt?’

‘Of course. Everyone assumed he’d quit politics, having got what he’d wanted; but it seems he’d developed the taste. You have to understand something. Georgia is one of the great fault-lines of our modern world. It separates those who have oil and gas from those who need it. It separates NATO from the old Soviet Union, Islam from Christianity, drugs from their markets. Whoever controls Georgia matters.’

‘And Nergadze wants it to be him?’

Nadya nodded. ‘He made his first bid in the 2008 presidential elections, but he barely scraped in third. That should have been that for a few more years, except for South Ossetia. Nergadze and the other opposition leaders forced new elections. Nergadze has made himself the main challenger. Our current guy is so unpopular, he should walk it, except that he’s got serious problems of his own.
He’s seen as being too close to the Russians, for one thing, and we Georgians
hate
the Russians. On the other hand, we don’t just hate them, we
fear
them too. So if Nergadze can convince voters he’s the man to repair our relationship with Moscow without jeopardising our independence, he’ll win. That’s why he’s been filling his speeches with nationalistic bullshit recently, and spending a fortune buying up and repatriating Georgian art and artefacts, doing everything he can to prove himself our greatest patriot.’

Knox sat back. He understood now why Mikhail Nergadze was here in Athens, though it didn’t explain why he was after Knox, not unless…‘Oh, hell,’ he muttered.

‘What?’ asked Nadya.

‘They’re after the golden fleece,’ he told her bleakly. ‘And they must think I’ve got it.’

In the end, Nina hadn’t needed Kiko to tell her what had happened the night before. Their horse-riding excursion had made it obvious. The solicitude with which Ilya Nergadze had helped Kiko up onto his mount, the way he’d ridden alongside him, joshing him and tousling his hair, boasting about his wealth and lands: behaving, in short, like a smitten suitor trying to impress his love.

No way would Edouard be able to get help here before tomorrow at the earliest. He had too many troubles of his own. It was up to her, therefore, to keep Kiko and the twins safe. It shouldn’t be beyond her. This was a castle, after all; and even though the drawbridge was up and there was no realistic way off the island, there were all kinds of places to hunker down. She took the children to
her room, cautioned them not to leave until she returned, then set off on a search. The keep itself was too busy and too full for her purposes, so she started with the outbuildings. The stables were clean and spacious, pungent with animal smells. But the stalls were mostly occupied, and the others were empty and comfortless.

Two grooms came in laughing, but they fell silent and dropped their eyes deferentially the moment they saw her, mistaking her for someone who mattered. She turned away from them, passed through a door into an open-plan garage crowded with black SUVs and a red Lamborghini. The smell of burning was coming from an open door on the far side. Curiosity drew her on. A smithy, its forge ablaze and crackling, tongs, hammers and an axe hanging from its walls, along with horseshoes, hinges, ploughs, swords, gardening tools and other examples of the craft. Sandro and Ilya Nergadze were standing around the anvil with two other men, conferring and studying papers. Sandro crouched to pick a golden goblet from a blue plastic basket, and Nina recognised it instantly as part of her husband’s Turkmeni cache.