Tomb Raider: The Ten Thousand Immortals (12 page)

“The Ten Thousand Immortals?” Menelaou finished. “Because they have also visited me. Two, three months ago. Presumptuous. Wicked.”

“What are they, sir?” Lara asked.

“Rich, bitter old men,” he sighed.

“But—”

Menelaou sat back and slid his palms apart across the top of the counter, a gesture that suggested he was shoving the past out of his way.

“In practice,” he said, his voice soft with the slow, Greek accent, “they are a private security consortium. Immensely wealthy, immensely successful… weapons dealers, traders, brokers… mercenaries. The Ten Thousand Immortals have been around for a very long time. They have made their riches from other people’s wars.”

He leaned forward, smiling.

“They pretend they are actually immortal,” he said.

“Pretend?”

He waved a hand.

“It is part of their thing… their… persona,” he said. “They like to inspire awe. Who would you rather employ? A mercenary? Or a mercenary who is three hundred years old and has a reputation to match?”

“They can’t be three hundred years old!” Lara laughed.

“No?” he agreed, chuckling.

“No. They can’t,” Lara said firmly.

Menelaou nodded, allowing it.

“Some of them claim to be a great deal older,” he said. “Some of them claim to be warriors of Xerxes, of Darius.”

“It’s all part of their thing. Their mystique,” said Lara.

“Oh, yes, yes, yes,” nodded Menelaou. “But ask yourself this… Why would they be so anxious, suddenly, to procure the Fleece? Eh? An artifact that heals and grants immortality? Yes? Perhaps, after Yamatai, the Ten Thousand Immortals started to feel… mortal, Lara Croft.”

“When did they come to you?” she asked.

He paused. “It would be two months ago. My reputation as the owner of the Fleece is widely known. Me, I blame my big mouth.”

“What did you tell them?” Lara asked.

“That I have a big mouth,” Menelaou smiled. “That I talk too much. That I made bold claims. They came in here and threatened me. They had guns. Then they went away, empty-handed. After that, I improved my security. To them, I was a dry lead.”

“And to me?” Lara asked.

“I used to have a reputation,” said Menelaou sadly.

“Trust me, the Internet ensures that your reputation will follow you forever.”

“That might be a curse,” said Menelaou.

“It brought me here,” said Lara. “I consider it a blessing.”

“You want to talk about the Golden Fleece?” asked Menelaou.

“Yes,” said Lara, “I do.”

“Then, let us talk,” said Menelaou. He picked up the small, circular brass tray with its gorgeous enameled surface and carried it into his office. He dropped sugar lumps into the tiny jewel-like coffee glasses and poured the coffee from the steaming pot.

Lara began by outlining what Babbington had told her about the mining methods in Colchis.

“Your professor is absolutely correct,” said Menelaou, “except for one or two important details. Don’t look so sad. It will all come right. I promise you.”

“But if he’s right,” said Lara.

“Ah, but the details,” said Menelaou. “God is in the details.

“There is a region in Georgia called Zemo-Savanti. It is the highest, most mountainous region in the area. A difficult place to live. Most gold miners kept to the lower slopes where the streams had grown old and shallow, but one spring, high in the mountains, was the mother of the true fleece. One man, a boy, fit, strong and adventurous, bartered everything he owned for one fleece. It was a young ram’s fleece, small and soft and curly. He took his fleece to that spring. He threw it in, and he waited.

“He grew tired and thin while he waited and waited, like a hermit. He foraged and he prayed to the gods. He took the fleece from the spring only when it was golden all over.”

“Just one fleece?” asked Lara.

“The true Golden Fleece,” said Menelaou. “When he tried to lift the fleece from the spring, he was weak, and it was weighed down with water and the gold it had captured. At first he could not do it. As he rolled it and squeezed it, he found strength in his hands and then in his arms. As he lifted it on his back, he felt warmth in his shoulders, and as he stood, his back straightened and he no longer felt hunger or pain.”

Lara could stand it no longer.

“The article I read said you had the Golden Fleece, that you owned it,” she said.

“How do you think I lived to be so ancient?” asked Menelaou, breaking into his belly laugh once more. He put down his empty coffee glass, dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief, and leaned over to open the bottom drawer of his desk. Lara was amazed when he pulled out a tin box. It was gold and heavily embossed with a design.

The box was Queen Mary’s Christmas gift box for 1914.

“A pity I don’t have the contents,” said Menelaou, “but what’s inside is far more valuable, and no one would look for it here.”

“The article said you wanted a million francs for it,” said Lara.

“What would you pay for it?” asked Menelaou, the mischievous grin back on his face.

Lara’s face fell.

“It’s priceless to me if it could save Sam,” she said.

“Don’t be so sad,” said Menelaou. “All things are possible when you’re young and strong.”

He pried the lid off the tin, folded back a piece of silk that was wrapped around the artifact inside, and then held the whole thing out for Lara to take it.

She cradled the tin in both of her hands and looked inside. It was nothing more than a grubby, matted, grey scrap of something that she couldn’t easily identify. It smelled strange, oily and organic, and very old.

“This is it?” she asked.

“What did you expect?” asked Menelaou, laughing once more.

“Ares said the whole world was interested in the Golden Fleece. He told me to beware, to trust no one. It seems so… insignificant. Can this really be such a powerful artifact that a man like Ares would kill for it? Could he really believe it could have the power to make him immortal?”

Menelaou laughed his great heaving belly laugh again.

“Maybe so, and maybe not so much,” he said. “Menelaou is a purist.”

He put his finger to the side of his nose and leaned a little closer, lowering his voice.

“I am an old man, and I have no one to tell my secrets to. You are young and beautiful, and you have an honest face. Shall I tell you an old man’s secret, or should it die with me?”

Lara looked into Menelaou’s eyes, and he broke into another laugh that rumbled up from his belly.

“Don’t look so serious,” he said. “I will fall into your eyes if they grow any bigger. But there are worse ways for an old man to die.”

“So, this is not the Golden Fleece after all?” asked Lara.

Menelaou nodded his head.

“Of course this is the fleece...a portion of the fleece,” he said. Then, he smiled a mischievous smile that made him look like an overgrown boy with a shock of white hair. “I have asked myself many times, ‘But, Menelaou, where is the gold?’ Perhaps this is a mystery in two halves.”

Lara looked down at the grey scrap of wool in the tin box.

“Go on. Touch it.”

“I couldn’t,” said Lara.

“Of course you could. You should,” said Menelaou.

Lara wiped her fingers on her jeans and tentatively held them over the scrap of wool in the tin. She stroked the thing very lightly with her forefinger. It felt oily and rough.

“You feel something?” asked Menelaou.

“Nothing,” said Lara. “Nothing at all.”

“You are young and fit and healthy,” said Menelaou. “You should feel nothing. Now, we should barter. Tell me what you will give me for this great artifact.”

Lara could not tell whether the warm, funny man was teasing her. He seemed serious. She could get the money, but an object like this was beyond priceless. If a man like Ares was interested in finding it… If it was worth her life… If it was worth any life… More than the object, the information that Menelaou had given her was crucial. She had not reached the end of her quest. This little scrap of wool was not enough. She must find the gold that had come from it. Somewhere, in some form, there was Colchis gold, the gold from the fleece, the other half of the mystery of the Golden Fleece.

The silence extended between them for several long seconds, until Menelaou broke it.

“What about a story?” he asked. “Why don’t you tell me all about what happened on Yamatai? Why don’t you educate me a little? Indulge an old man. Talk to me of adventure and magic and the wonders of the world. I don’t get out much anymore.”

It was a small enough price to pay, and for the next hour, Lara talked about Yamatai. Menelaou was sympathetic when she cried, and plied her with more Turkish coffee when she could not go on. The experience was informative for him and cathartic for her. It cemented their strong liking for one another.

They were sitting together in companionable silence halfway through the story when a soft hum sounded somewhere in the room. Lara looked up at Menelaou.

It sounded like a machine, a fan on a computer coming suddenly to life, but she saw no computer on his desk. The sound stopped after only a second.

“Two visitors in one morning,” said Menelaou. “I should see who else wants to do business with this ancient Greek today.” He laughed at his own joke as he got up and made his way to the obstructed door.

“Do you object to me locking the door behind me?” he asked.

Lara shook her head, not thinking.

“I shall send whoever it may be away with an appointment,” said Menelaou. “When your story is over, I shall be well paid for my little bit of immortality. Life has been good to me.”

It was the key turning in the lock that brought Lara back to her senses. Then, the soft hum of the buzzer sounding again. She went to the window, opened it, and looked down on the street. She could see very little of the man standing in front of the building, just the curve of his shoulders and back, not even the top of his head. The woman standing behind him had long hair, tied in a ponytail.

Lara did not see the firearm, and she did not hear a bang. What she heard was the soft spit of a shot being fired through a silenced gun barrel. She recoiled.

Menelaou was dead.

Lara jammed the lid back on Queen Mary’s Christmas gift tin and stuffed it into her rucksack. Then, she went into the little kitchen of Menelaou’s office. She couldn’t go out the way she’d come in, even if the door hadn’t been locked. She couldn’t go out of the window either. She was on the fourth floor.

She heard feet on the stairs. The Immortals knew she was here. They had been staking out Menelaou.

They were at the door.

Lara remembered Menelaou’s words. “After that, I improved my security.”

She rushed to his desk, bent down, and saw the newly-installed “panic switch” under it. She hit it.

All the doors around her double-bolted with electric switches. A chain sheet slid down and locked out the office door. Menelaou’s apartment was far more high-tech than it seemed.

The Immortals were pounding on the outer door. Lara feared they might use explosives to force their way in.

There had to be a fire exit, and it had to be in the kitchen.

She headed back into the kitchen. A hatch had opened. A secure escape. She got in.

There was a ladder, tightly fixed to the bricks and running down a hidden shaft in the building.

She pulled the safe room hatch shut behind her and scrambled down the ladder. From the room beyond, she heard a small charge blow the secure chain door open. People rushed in.

Lara dropped the last six feet off the ladder, and emerged via a side door onto Rue Henry de Jouvenel. She quickly hailed a taxi. She began to say “Gare du Nord”, but remembered that Ares knew she had tickets for the Channel Tunnel back to London.

“Charles de Gaulle,” she told the taxi driver.

“Oui, mademoiselle,” he said.

Chapter 16

I
t was a long ride to the airport, at least forty minutes, and probably closer to an hour, depending on the traffic. Lara didn’t know what she was doing or where she was going, except that she had to get away from Ares, and from Paris.

She knew that her quest for the Golden Fleece wasn’t over. Menelaou was dead, and she had a piece of his artifact, but somehow she felt further from helping Sam than ever. Where could she begin to track down the gold?

She needed to make a decision.

Lara took out her phone and risked turning it on. She’d turned it off when she’d landed in Paris. She didn’t have anyone to call. She’d had a job to do. She hadn’t turned it back on after meeting Ares, because she wasn’t sure what he was capable of. But she was leaving France, and she needed to make plans. She needed to decide whether to head back to London. She was nervous about heading back to the Gare du Nord and using her return half of the Channel Tunnel rail ticket, so she needed to book a flight.

As soon as Lara turned her phone on, it pinged to let her know she had messages. She scrolled through them. There was a lovely one from Willow, and one from Professor Cahalane. The last one, sent only last night, was from Kennard Montez. Lara almost ignored it, but he’d given her the lead to Menelaou, and she felt partly responsible for the old man’s death. Besides, she had his portion of the Golden Fleece, if that’s what it really was. Maybe, just maybe, Kennard could provide her with a lead to the gold, or at least give her closure on Menelaou.

The message read, “Leaving tomorrow to join a dig at Anafi. The guys are eight months in with promising outcomes. Join us?”

Anafi,
thought Lara.
Why does that sound familiar?
She couldn’t remember, but at least it was a location, a possible destination if she decided not to go home to London immediately.

Lara thought for a moment and then texted back, “Anafi?” Then she realised that Kennard was probably already en route, and it was likely that he had switched his phone off. She pocketed her mobile and pulled the Book out of her rucksack. She was flicking through it, trying to find references to the location, when her phone pinged.

It was a message from Kennard. It read, “At the airport. Anafi is in the Cyclades. The Argo’s first port after recovering Fleece. Meet me there?”

Lara hesitated, but only for a moment.

“Maybe,” she texted back.

She felt a wellspring of excitement in the pit of her stomach. To be where the Argo had been, to follow in Jason’s footsteps, to track the journey of the Golden Fleece from Colchis, those things might put her on the path to finding the gold. She felt that she had her first lead.

She still had questions. She still wanted to know who Ares was, what he was. She needed to know why he was so interested in the Golden Fleece and why he had wanted her dead when he found out that she couldn’t give him any new information. She wondered what he would have done with her if she had been able to tell him anything.

Then she got to thinking about Menelaous’ office, about all the wonderful things he kept there. She wondered what value could be put on the objects in that room. Any one of the artifacts he had collected might be priceless. The collection must be beyond the reach of even Ares’s purse. Ponytail and whoever was with her would not find the fleece. They would not know what they were looking for. In the process of looking for it, how much damage could they do? How many objects would they destroy as they dismantled the room searching for the object in the little tin box nestled in among Lara’s clothes in her rucksack.

Lara shook her head. She couldn’t think about it. Perhaps it was a good thing that Menelaou was dead. Perhaps he’d be better off not seeing the devastation of his property, of all the wonderful antiquities he had accumulated in his lifetime.

Lara thought back over the couple of hours she had spent with the funny, warm man. She had liked him. Her father would have liked him too, and now he was gone. Lara put her hand in her rucksack and felt around until she clasped the Queen Mary tin box. She gripped it hard for a moment. It was ironic; the artifact inside was supposed to heal, was supposed to bestow immortality on its owner, not get him killed. Could it do that without the gold? Menelaou seemed to think it could. He had called himself a purist, but he had also laughed a lot, and enjoyed the stories. Perhaps he was a realist, a man with his feet firmly on the ground, a man of the world. Lara had touched the fleece and felt nothing.