Age of Heroes (40 page)

THIRTY-THREE

Kardionisi

T
HEY DINED ON
a terrace jutting out a hundred metres above the sea. A warm breeze stirred the damask napery and the leaves and flowers of the jasmine trellis that lined the parapet. A crescent moon rose into the dusky sky, seeming to ignite the stars as it passed.

The wine was a pale Boeotian retsina, nicely chilled, not too coarse or sharp. The food was meze. The conversation was stilted. Hélène did most of the talking, keeping to generic, inoffensive topics: celebrity scandals, property prices, political elections. She played the perfect hostess, making sure her guests were well looked after and wanted for nothing.

Theo wasn’t even sure why he, Chase and Sasha were still there. By now, they could have got what they’d come for and be sailing back to the mainland. An hour ago he had had not one but both of his main suspects – Evander Arlington and Harry Gottlieb – standing right in front of him, ripe for interrogation. Before he had been able to open his mouth to begin, however, Hélène had butted in. It was getting late. Nearly time to eat. Why didn’t they do this like civilised people? All sit down together and have a meal? There were important matters to discuss, no question, but wouldn’t it go better around a table, with bellies full?

“An excellent suggestion, my dear,” Arlington had said, stroking his rounded gut like a favoured pet.

“Hear, hear,” Chase had said. “Don’t know about anyone else, but I could eat a horse. Actually, we were just in Russia, so I probably have.”

Theo had protested, knowing it was futile. Hélène’s mind was made up, and Helen of Troy always got her way.

As servants gathered up the dessert course dishes, he laid a hand on the table, firmly enough to make a small thud.

“Time we addressed the elephant in the room.”

“Not that we’re in a room,” Chase chipped in.

Hélène dismissed the servants.

“So, we’re alone,” she said. “Theo has been itching to get to this point all evening. It’s quite rude of him, how unappreciative he’s been of Evander’s and my
xenia
. Sitting there all sulky and surly through dinner. But I’m prepared to forgive. Theo, the stage is yours. Speak. These so-called Myrmidons; tell us about them.”

“I won’t beat around the bush,” Theo said. “Evander, Harry. I’m quite convinced one of you is responsible for the deaths of Aeneas, Orion, Orpheus, Achilles and Heracles.”

Arlington spluttered. Gottlieb merely pursed his lips.

“Really!” Arlington said. “That’s why you’re here? You come all this way, you take advantage of my hospitality, just to bandy about wild accusations? How insulting. I knew this was going to be about the killings, but I had no idea you’d be implicating
me
in them. I’d like to know what you base this – this
preposterous
allegation on.”

“Simple. It requires a great deal of money and influence to mount the kind of paramilitary operation we’ve been seeing, to send a top-notch hit squad jetting all over the world. Money and influence are something you both have in abundance. Then there’s the twelve artefacts. Only two people have ever had access to the details of where they were buried: Harry, who did the actual hiding, and you, Evander, the guy he gave a list of the locations to as a failsafe.” Theo shrugged. “Honestly, it’s no more complicated than that. It’s got to be one or other of you. Unless...”

“Unless what?”

“The fact that Harry is here, when he told us he had gone to ground, opens up a new possibility. The pair of you have been conspiring together.”

Gottlieb’s expression remained smugly, aggravatingly enigmatic, while Arlington grew redder in the face. He seemed to swell up in his indignation.

“You can’t even decide which of us to pin the blame on, so you’re hedging your bets and going for
both?
” he said. “Why not bring Hélène in on it while you’re about it? Chase too? And Sasha? Why not embroil all of us in this little paranoid fantasy of yours? I’m absolutely flabbergasted that you have the temerity to speak to me like this, in my house. I should have you thrown out, at the very least, although I can think of far worse fates I’d like to visit on you.”

“The more you bluster and threaten, the more I think I’m right.”

Arlington stood, shoving back his chair, bumping the table with his thighs, making the cutlery and glassware jump. “All you have done is insinuate,” he said, jabbing a forefinger at Theo. “Where is the proof? Bring it to me now. Show me, beyond any doubt, why you believe I have organised a campaign of murder against the demigods – against my own brethren.”

“Other than the logical reasons I’ve just set out, I don’t have anything concrete linking you to the Myrmidons, Evander.”

“Precisely. It’s all just circumstantial. Conjecture.”

“But,” Theo continued, “what I would like you to tell me is where you keep the copper cylinders Harry gave you, the ones containing directions for finding the artefacts.”

Arlington, still standing, narrowed his eyes. He was thinking.

“Now that you ask, I’m not sure. It’s been ages since I last saw them.”

“You’re kidding me. Perhaps the most important items you’ve ever had in your possession, and you don’t know where they are?”

“Do you have any inkling how much stuff I own? How many works of art, pieces of memorabilia, treasures, trinkets?”

“But the cylinders are none of those things. They’re
life or death
for us. They’re not something you just leave carelessly lying around. If you really have forgotten where they are, you’re either breathtakingly irresponsible or the biggest fool that ever lived.”

“And you, sir, are as impertinent as they come!” Arlington thundered.

“Oh, sit down, Evander,” said Hélène. “Stop beating your chest. Theo isn’t the slightest bit intimidated. We can work this out without slapping our dicks on the table, can’t we?”

Sasha chuckled, as did Chase.

Arlington hesitated, then took his seat again. His wife had defused much of the tension, though far from all.

“Not that you wouldn’t win that particular competition,” she added with a decorous leer.

Her husband, in spite of everything, was unable to quench a smile.

Finally, Gottlieb spoke. “I hate to say it, Evander, but Theo has a point. You ought to know where the cylinders are. Is it conceivable that you’ve lost them?”

“No. I don’t think so. I’m fairly certain they’re at my place in New York. Stored in the safe there.”

“Only
fairly
certain?”

“If not, then at the castle in the Cairngorms, in the cellar. One or the other. Hélène, I don’t suppose you have more of an idea?”

“How long have we been married, darling?”

“Forty years.”

“Closer on fifty, but who’s counting? I’ve been by your side all that time. I’ve shared three different surnames with you. But I’ve never heard about any copper cylinders before today.”

“Have I never mentioned them?”

“Not once. Must have slipped your mind.”

“Well, there you go, Theo. That exonerates me. I’m not even sure where the damned cylinders are, and my wife says they’ve never once come up in conversation. I can’t say I’ve even thought about them in recent times. I remember, when Harry gave them to me, telling myself that I should be careful with them, make sure they never fell into the wrong hands. But time passed, I had other things to focus on, and the cylinders became just part of the baggage I carried around with me.”

“Anybody else thinking of the ending of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
?” said Chase. “No? Just me, then.”

“Assuming you’re telling the truth, Evander,” Theo said, “that doesn’t mean you never looked at what’s inside the cylinders.”

“But I never did.”

“So you say.”

“Won’t take me at my word, eh?”

“I’m not in the mood to trust
anyone
at present, you least of all.”

“Less than Harry? I’m genuinely hurt.”

Theo turned to Gottlieb. “That’s a point: why
are
you here, Harry? I thought you had some bolthole you’d run to.”

“See that yacht down there?” Gottlieb gestured in the direction of the jetty, just visible from the terrace. The superyacht bobbed on the evening tide. A crewman was out on the foredeck, polishing chrome trim. “That’s it. That’s my bolthole.”

“I assumed the boat was Evander’s.”

“Mine?” Arlington snorted. “Even the smallest of the three I own is twice the size.
That’s
a dinghy.”

“It’s a hiding place that allows me to go where I like,” said Gottlieb. “Rather than being confined in one spot, I can be anywhere – and nowhere. Fully crewed, all mod cons, a floating home from home. I have to dock at port every couple of weeks to refuel and resupply, but otherwise I can just keep cruising indefinitely, unfindable. It’s the perfect refuge for weathering a storm. A figurative storm, that is. An actual storm, too, come to think of it.”

“I should have guessed,” said Theo. “Odysseus roaming the Mediterranean again. Why not?”

“There is a certain symmetry to it, yes. A certain irony as well.”

“Just be careful which islands you put in at.”

“There are far fewer hazards for the traveller in the Med these days. No Sirens, no Scylla and Charybdis, no Circe. All those have gone. The most I have to worry about is colliding with a boatload of refugees in the dark. But to go back to your question: I decided to pay Evander a call for the simple reason that I felt he should be given a heads up. I knew that you, Theo, would be gunning for him. I thought the least he deserved was some forewarning.”

“You couldn’t have Skyped him? Sent a text?”

“Some things are better done in person. I was in the area anyway, and Evander and Hélène are such excellent hosts. You can’t fault me for wishing to partake of their generosity.” As if to illustrate the point, Gottlieb plucked the retsina bottle from the ice bucket and refilled his glass.

“You have to admit,” Theo said, “it doesn’t make you look innocent, you being here. Doesn’t make Evander look innocent, either.”

“You seem convinced that we’re in cahoots.”

“There’s that word again,” said Chase. “Cahoots. Love it.”

“What you’ve yet to explain,” Gottlieb continued, “is why. Why would we collude in the killing of demigods? What do we get out of it? I personally had nothing against Aeneas, or Orpheus, or any of them.”

“Neither did I,” said Arlington.

“My interactions with each of them have been sporadic at best. There was never any longstanding animosity.”

“I guess not,” Theo said.

“Put it another way. Of the five demigods who’ve been killed, I harboured a grudge against none. And the same is true of Evander. The only demigod I can think of whom
he
might have cause to resent, Theo, is you.”

Arlington bowed his head briefly in acknowledgement.

“And you,” Gottlieb said, “are most assuredly alive.”

“S
O WHERE DOES
that leave us?” Chase said to Theo and Sasha.

The three of them were making their way to the guest cottages at the southern end of the island, the pointed of the heart. Ioannis was escorting them. The paths were lit by parades of knee-high lights.

“Back at square one,” said Sasha.

Theo shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it any further until they were alone again, unaccompanied.

Ioannis showed them to a row of blocky, self-contained apartments, like huge sugar cubes set in a straggling line. Each had a king-size bed draped in Egyptian cotton bedlinen, a balcony and a spacious bathroom.

“Have a look round,” he said. “They’re all made up. You may choose whichever you like.”

“Except Harry Gottlieb’s, presumably,” said Chase.

“Mr Gottlieb isn’t staying here.”

“He has his yacht,” said Sasha.

“As a matter of fact, Mr Gottlieb is staying up at the house,” said Ioannis. “There is a bedroom there reserved for – ahem – special guests.”

“That’d be about right,” said Chase sardonically. “Harry Gottlieb wouldn’t slum it with
hoi polloi
like us.”

“You’ll find a selection of nightwear in the closets which you’re welcome to borrow. Fresh towels too. If there’s anything else you need, whatever the hour – food, drink, anything – simply press the intercom button. Someone will respond. If that will be all?
Efcharisto
.
Kalinichta
.”

After the major domo had departed, the three demigods reconvened outside.

“We should just go,” Theo said.

“Are you shitting me?” said Chase. “I don’t know what your cottage is like, cuz, but there’s a whirlpool bath and a multi-jet shower in mine. The drinks cabinet’s stocked like you wouldn’t believe; so’s the fridge. There’s about a billion channels on the TV. The last thing I want to do is get on that goddamn boat and spend six hours schlepping back to the mainland. Screw that. I was on a long-haul plane last night. Tonight I want a decent sleep in a comfortable bed.”

Theo couldn’t argue with his logic or the force with which he expressed it.

“Sasha?”

“We can head back to Piraeus in the morning. I’ll instruct Rosalind and Melina to stand down until daybreak. One thing, though, Theo.”

“Yeah?”

“How long have you suspected that Harry Gottlieb might be behind the killings? It wasn’t something that occurred to you just this evening. You weren’t grilling only Arlington. It was both of them.”

Theo could see no point in lying or prevaricating. “Gottlieb’s been on my radar since Chase and I met up with him in Washington. The way he bailed on us was kind of a red flag.”

“So you would have considered me tainted by association, since it was Gottlieb who sent me to join you in Russia.”

“Can’t deny it.”

“Yet you never said anything.”

“I might have been wrong. I was playing the odds. And trying to avoid pissing you off.”

“Do you still have misgivings about me?”

“Want me to be honest?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“You weren’t with us in Stolby, and you were the only one who wasn’t. You stayed behind.”