The Lost Labyrinth (22 page)

Indignation almost provoked her into rashness, but prudence rescued her just in time. She ducked out of their line of sight, slipped off her shoes, picked them up, and tiptoed silently away.

‘The golden fleece?’ asked Nadya. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘I wish,’ said Knox. He filled her in on Petitier and the seal-stones he’d found, then gave her a précis of the fleece’s history, its connections to Eleusis and Crete.

When he was done, Nadya looked stunned. ‘You think it really exists?’

‘It’s possible. Would it have an impact on the election?’

She gave a dry laugh. ‘Are you kidding? We Georgians are incredibly proud of our heritage; and we’re superstitious too, especially in times of uncertainty. If Nergadze brings the fleece back to Georgia, and it’s the real thing, he’ll be a national hero, he’ll
walk
the election.’ She shook her head, as though the prospect was too dreadful to bear.

‘That bad, huh?’

‘He’s a drug-smuggler. He’s an arms dealer.’

‘So why’s that your problem?’

‘It’s my job,’ she sighed. ‘I’m a journalist, a political journalist. Or a blogger, I’d guess you’d call me.’

‘There’s money in that?’ asked Knox, surprised.

‘Not exactly. But it’s a good way to build your profile; and there’s certainly money in having a profile. Besides, it’s not like I live on caviar and champagne.’

‘And you’re here doing a piece on the Nergadzes?’

‘Sort of.’ She stared out the window for a few moments, considering what to tell him. A butcher was trimming fat from the carcass of a slaughtered lamb with practised strokes of a knife so long it looked more like a sword. ‘I was at a Nergadze press conference a week or so ago,’ she said finally. ‘Ilya was announcing some new policy for the fiftieth time. Go to a few of these things, you soon realise all the interesting stuff happens off stage. There was a man leaning against the back wall. He was obviously a Nergadze. You recognise the look after a while. But I hadn’t seen him before, which was odd, because the whole family have been out campaigning relentlessly.’

‘Maybe he was a cousin,’ suggested Knox.

‘Not from the deference with which people treated him. But, anyway, I was curious enough to follow when he left. He was driven to the private jet terminal at Tbilisi International Airport, then got on Nergadze’s plane. I called a contact in airport operations. The manifest showed only one passenger: Mikhail Nergadze. I’d never even heard of him. I tracked down his birth certificate: he’s Sandro Nergadze’s son, which makes him Ilya’s grandson. All Sandro’s boys went to the same school outside Gori. I had a friend check their records. Mikhail was there until he was fourteen, then he was suddenly sent away to an English public school.’

‘So?’

‘It just seemed strange, that’s all. I checked the local newspapers on a hunch. Two days before Mikhail was sent abroad, a twelve-year-old girl was abducted from a nearby orphanage.’

‘That’s pretty thin,’ said Knox.

‘I contacted his English school, claiming Mikhail had applied for a job with me, and I was checking his references. He stayed there less than a year, and only two terms at his next school. I joined one of those school networking sites, asked if anyone remembered him. No one would tell me much. They sounded scared of him, even after all these years.’

Sokratis pulled in sharply at that moment, tyres screeching against the kerb. ‘Your Metro station,’ said Sokratis, reaching back to open Knox’s door. ‘Now get out.’

‘One more minute.’

‘No. Out. Now.’

‘Be quiet,’ Nadya told him, running short of patience. She turned back to Knox. ‘No one was sure why Mikhail had left either of his English schools, though there were all kinds of ugly rumours. He pretty much vanished after that, except for a couple of Internet hits of him doing rich kid stuff in Cyprus, jet-set parties and nightclub openings, that kind of thing. I asked my guy in airport operations to let me know if and when
Mikhail came back, but the next time he called it was to let me know that the Nergadze plane was about to set off for Athens again, carrying four Nergadze staff. I figured something big had to be going down. I couldn’t get here before them, so I contacted our brave Greek friend here through his website, and asked him to pick up their trail.’

‘That’s it!’ scowled Sokratis, as though aware he was being insulted. ‘Get out.’

Knox stepped out onto the pavement, but held the door open. ‘You want to meet up again later?’ he asked. ‘I reckon we could help each other.’

‘Not tonight,’ said Nadya. ‘Too much to do.’

‘How about breakfast, then?’

‘Sure.’ She pulled out her diary. ‘Where?’

Knox didn’t trust Sokratis an inch. He took Nadya’s diary and wrote down the name of a Plaka café, scribbled directions to it. ‘Eight thirty?’ he suggested.

‘See you then,’ she agreed.

‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘Why are you really so interested in this guy?’

‘I just told you. I’m a journalist.’

‘Balls. No one does what you’ve been doing just because a man was leaning against a wall.’

She gave a little snort; her gaze drifted past his shoulder, fixing on memories. ‘I recognised him,’ she admitted. ‘The moment I saw him, I knew I’d seen him before.’

‘When?’ asked Knox.

Her gaze returned from the far distance; somehow she found a smile. ‘On the night my husband was murdered,’ she said.

Gaille gladly agreed to Iain’s suggestion that he scout on ahead and search for a way down the escarpment face, not least because it gave her the chance to take the weight off her aching legs. The ground here was rocky and bare, and what little vegetation there was defended itself fiercely with thorns. She took anything that might crush from her day-pack, then sat upon it and let her body rest. A black beetle made slow progress across the dirt. She watched it until it was gone. A slab of rock jutted from the earth nearby. It looked unnaturally smooth, like an ancient monument to honour the high pass. And unless her eyes were deceiving her…

She grimaced as she pushed herself back to her feet, went over to it. Yes. There was a pattern in its surface, two symbols chiselled into it like ancient graffiti: a man marching and then an outstretched hand, though both so faded it was hard for her to be sure. She turned on her camera-phone and took a photograph. The signal was
weak and fluctuating, but at least there was one. There surely wouldn’t be if they ever made down into Petitier’s plain. She didn’t feel comfortable that no-one knew where they were, however experienced Iain might be, so she went to the escarpment rim and took a photograph of the plain and the farmhouse, another of herself blowing a kiss to the camera. Then she sat back down and composed a text to Knox, updating him on their progress, before sending it and the photos on their way.

It was another five minutes before Iain returned. ‘Good news,’ he said. ‘I’ve found a path. Of sorts, at least.’

‘Of sorts?’ she asked, her soles clenching with a little anticipatory vertigo. ‘What if it’s not Petitier’s house down there?’

‘It has to be. It’s where that shop-woman said it was. Besides, who else would live out here? The Cretans go crazy without company: it’s only us foreigners who like to be alone.’

‘And if it’s locked?’

‘Not a problem. I’ve got my tent and all the supplies we could need. Besides, if we turn back now, we’ll only have to come back in the morning. And didn’t I kind of get the impression that speed was of the essence, what with your French friend’s name to clear?’

The invocation of Augustin was the prod Gaille
needed. ‘You’re right,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘Let’s do it.’

Sokratis drove in silent umbrage to the centre of Athens, wanting Nadya to know he resented the way she’d treated him. Traffic was light, they were soon at her hotel. He dropped her outside, popped his trunk so that she could take out her overnight bag and laptop, then sped off without a backward glance.

His anger was only a façade, however; he needed it to conceal his guilt. He drove around the block, parked two hundred metres up the street, then watched the hotel’s front door. It wasn’t long before his suspicion was vindicated. A taxi pulled up and Nadya reappeared with her bags, looking furtively around as she limped down the steps.

The bitch! He’d known she’d try something.

He gave her a healthy head-start. She was clearly on her guard. The taxi headed into Plaka, the network of narrow tourist streets at the foot of the Acropolis, then stopped outside another hotel. Sokratis pulled in behind a van to avoid being spotted. He watched as a hotel porter helped her with her bags. She paid off her driver then limped inside.

When he settled on his plan, Sokratis felt a
twinge of shame, but he stamped down hard on it. A roof for his head, food for his table, a little money to show a woman a good time, once in a while. That was all he asked. Besides, his website made it quite clear he was a divorce specialist. It was her own damned fault for putting him in such an intolerable situation. Yes. It was her own damned fault.

Knox leaned against the Metro carriage door as a woman in mourning black weaved between the passengers with her right hand outstretched, a swaddled infant cradled against her left hip, reciting a half-hearted plea, not expecting alms, nor getting them either. The tracks were elevated here, offering a view over the city. Nico was right. You could indeed see the Olympic Stadium from a distance, its gleaming white arches towering over ugly suburban housing made even uglier by graffiti and satellite dishes.

He got out at Irini, down the steps and between two shallow ornamental pools onto a windswept concourse. A brass band was somewhat unexpectedly thumping out Souza while marching on the spot, as though playing and moving simultaneously
was still beyond them. A mini-cyclone fluttered the pages of a discarded phone-book like applause, while paper bags and empty sweet wrappers whirled in impressively tight circles, like gymnasts with their ribbons.

He took out the scrap of paper on which Nico had scribbled Antonius’ address, then asked the people he met until one pointed him on his way. He walked through a vast parking lot, empty except for a few families visiting the swimming pool, from which he could hear splashing and squeals of delight. He hurried across a main road. A woman out walking her dog directed him to a street of plush semidetached homes with sleeping policemen and neat rows of polished cars, interspersed with occasional skips filled with ripped-out carpeting. But there was no such gentrification taking place at Antonius’ house, a rotten tooth in an otherwise perfect register. His front garden was a jungle, his walls overrun by ivy. The house had withdrawn into itself, like its owner.

Knox rang the bell. No reply. He put his ear to the door, but the neighbours had the builders in, their hammers and drills making it impossible to hear. He pounded on the front door, then looked up at the first floor windows. Not a sign of life. The letter box attached to the front gate was overflowing with junk mail. His apprehension grew. Maybe Antonius had hated the
noise of construction so much that he’d decamped: but with Petitier dead, and Mikhail Nergadze on the loose, it was hard not to worry.

A narrow passageway led down the side of the house. The paintwork was scarred and blistered, as though it had come second in a knife-fight. A sash window was raised a few inches, allowing the house to breathe. He tried it and it lifted easily. Surely Antonius would have locked up properly if he’d left for a few days. He glanced around to make sure that no one was looking, then clambered inside. There was a sour smell to the place, as though something was rotting. ‘Hello!’ he called out. ‘Anyone home?’

No answer. He walked along a short corridor into the kitchen. The shades were down over the back windows; the door was blocked by stacks of crates and boxes. A half-eaten crust of sliced bread on a plate had curled up its corners and turned green.

He turned the other way. The carpet in the downstairs loo was soaked. He reached a gloomy room with a cheap pine table and chairs, their joints splashed with clumsy archipelagos of white glue. The walls were so damp that the old lining paper was peeling freely. Afternoon sunlight through the slat blinds threw a grid on the brown-cord carpet, half-covered by discarded envelopes and their onetime enclosures: bills, summonses,
demands, furiously-phrased letters from small tradesmen. A life falling apart.

The hammering next door grew so violent that the walls shook, releasing motes of dust into the air that caught in Knox’s throat, so that he had to cough quietly into his fist to clear it.

There was a stack of books on the table, as though Antonius had been going through them. Knox glanced down their spines. Robert Graves, Apollonius, others with equally obvious connections to the golden fleece. There was a pile of Internet print-outs too. He flipped through them. Stories of the mega-rich buying up art and history, names underlined or highlighted. He kept looking until he found a story about Ilya Nergadze celebrating the purchase of a cache of Georgian gold from Turkmenistan.

A green light was blinking on the answer-phone. He pressed play with his knuckle, wary of leaving prints. Beeps and silences mostly, people calling but not leaving messages, save for a woman who yelled abuse and a man demanding payment or else. The last messages were both from Nico, sounding anxious, asking him to call him back. The tape finished and rewound. Knox’s sense of foreboding, already strong, turned to fatalism. He went out into the hall and turned towards the stairs, and found what he’d almost been expecting.

Back at the house, Mikhail’s anger was building. For one thing, Olympia hadn’t yet shown up, despite the clear instructions he’d given her the previous night. For another, his men were making little headway in tracking down the owner of the Volvo. He stood on the stairs with folded arms and watched them work their phones and the Internet, wondering who to take it out on. He’d promised consequences, after all. It was time to demonstrate that he meant what he said.