The Lost Temple (39 page)

“And if we don’t make it back in time?”

Jackson shrugged. “Then meeting Kurchosov’s going to be the least of anyone’s problems.”

Black Sea, east of Kerch Strait. 7:58 a.m.

The plane touched down with a puff of spray, racing in under the slate-gray sky. The cliffs reared up out of the sea, stark white, with the higher walls of the mountains looming behind them. It all felt strangely familiar to Grant, rushing in to a hostile shore. But whereas in the war—or even a month ago when he had landed the guns at that fateful beach in Palestine—he would have felt a keen edge of excitement, this time he couldn’t summon the energy. An unsettling lethargy had him in its grip; even the bucking boat felt dead beneath him. He hoped it wasn’t an omen.

They came in under the cliffs and throttled back the engine, scanning the shore for a place to land. Seabirds circled above them, launching themselves off the cliffs with haunting cries and plunging down into the sea. Grant saw one swoop out with a fish wriggling in its beak; water showered off as it flapped its wings to gain height. He remembered the story Sourcelles had told them about birds cleaning the temple with the spray from their wings, and shivered.

Three hours earlier, still before dawn, they had assembled on a dock in front of an unmarked warehouse on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. A light rain had been falling, coating the rusted metal and cracked concrete with a fresh sheen that gleamed orange in the sodium lamps. With ships’ engines
throbbing in the background, the air thick with coal smoke and engine oil, it had felt like a fitting beginning to a journey to the underworld. Just before they were due to depart a lorry had pulled up next to the gangway. Grant remembered the hiss of its tires on the wet dock. Three men in combat fatigues had jumped out. Two of them quickly transferred half a dozen duffel bags from the lorry to the Soviet flying boat, while the third came across to greet them.

“Lieutenant Kowalski, US Marines.” He’d started to lift his hand in a salute, then remembered his orders and diverted it into an awkward handshake.

“Jackson. This is Grant.”

He’d shaken Grant’s hand and looked at Reed. “Who’s he, Lincoln?”

“I borrowed them from the embassy,” Jackson explained. “They were all they could give me, this time of night. Just because Kurchosov’s holding out for the tablet, I figure he’s not going to give up looking himself. If he shows up again I want some cavalry with us this time.”

Grant had checked around the deserted dock, wondering what lurked in the shadows beyond the chain-link fence. “With luck, he won’t know where to go.”

“He’s got Marina and she’d already figured out the whole Philostratus angle.”

“She won’t talk.”

Jackson had looked as though he’d have liked to say something, but thought better of it. “Let’s hope so.”

“There.”

Round the end of the promontory the cliffs split apart. Grant looked for willows or poplars, but saw nothing but a field of reeds waving gently behind a shingle beach. A small lagoon lay behind that, cradled inside the arm of the beach—but open at one end, where a shallow channel spilled into the sea. They taxied the plane toward it. The white cliffs towered over them; the pulse of the propeller echoed back off the high walls, drumming into their skulls. The channel was so narrow
Grant feared they would surely snap a wing against the cliff, or be dashed into it by a rogue wave.

The flying boat nosed into the lagoon and came to a stop in the still water. They leaped out into the foam, slipping and struggling as the rocks slid away under their feet. Kowalski’s men made the flying boat fast and unloaded the equipment. While they did that, Grant walked up the shingle slope to the back of the beach. Beyond, he could see a tight ravine filled with trees and bushes. A small river trickled out of it into the lagoon.

Reed joined him. Even there, on the shores of the Soviet Union, he was still neatly dressed in a suit, a waistcoat and a tie. His one concession to practicality was his boots, black army boots that poked incongruously from under his tweed trousers.

“Heroes’ temples were always supposed to cause lush vegetation to grow up around them. It was thought to show the fecundity of the hero’s presence.”

“Doesn’t make it any easier to find.”

Reed didn’t answer. He stared about him at the lonely bay: the sepulchral cliffs, the dark sky, the keening birds and the pebbles that rattled like bones.

Soon shalt thou reach old Ocean’s utmost ends,

Where to the main the shelving shore descends;

The barren trees of Proserpine’s black woods,

Poplars and willows trembling o’er the floods:

There fix thy vessel in the lonely bay,

And enter there the kingdoms void of day.

“At least it sounds like we’ve got the right place this time.”

Grant heard footsteps crunching up the beach behind him. He turned and saw Jackson.

“Where to now, Professor?”

Reed shrugged. “The
Odyssey
talks about a river. I suppose we should follow it.”

They made their way round the edge of the lagoon,
splashing through the shallows and reeds, until they reached the place where the river entered it. Kowalski’s men struggled under the weight of all the equipment they had to carry: as well as their rifles and packs, they had brought picks, shovels, the Bismatron and what looked to Grant like blasting charges.

Jackson reached a small islet of broken stones and looked back. “Does it have a name, this river?”

“Homer calls it Acheron—the River of Grief.”

Jackson shook his head in mock despair. “You sure know how to pick ’em. Don’t tell me where it leads; I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

They followed the river inland. Grant led the way. There was no path, no way through the undergrowth at all. In the narrow valley the trees grew so close together they were all but impenetrable. They hid the sky, stretching their branches toward the light like the hands of the damned. Many of the smaller trees seemed to have been choked off completely by their taller rivals, but they had no space to fall. Even in death they stayed upright, their leafless corpses black and rotting. The only way through was to stick to the river, hopping from rock to rock, sometimes wading through. Mercifully it wasn’t deep—little more than a stream—and the water never came much above their knees. Even so, they struggled to avoid the undergrowth. Creepers trailed from the overhanging trees like snakes, snatching at their hair, while half-submerged stumps and branches lurked in the stream to trip them.

There was almost nothing to see beyond the water and the woods, but gradually Grant had the impression that the valley was narrowing around them. The ground got steeper; the stream quickened. Ahead he could hear a rushing noise that seemed to float above the trees. He came to the bottom of a little cataract, where the fast-flowing water frothed and bubbled, and looked up. Not far ahead he could see cliffs and sky framed between the trees like a doorway.

The rushing noise had become a roar. Grant scrambled up the last few rocks, ignoring the water splashing all over
him, soaking his shirt and trousers. He halted at the top, crouching on a flat boulder, dripping.

He had come to the top of the valley. The forest stretched away on either side, curving round to meet the cliffs that curved back to join them. The round hollow between was filled by a broad pool which emptied into the stream where he stood. The surface of the lake was black and fathomless, except at the foot of the cliffs where it bubbled and frothed under the impact of the waterfall cascading down from the heights above.

Jackson and Reed clambered up beside him, crowding on to the boulder like castaways on a raft. Kowalski and his men waited below.

“Now what?”

Reed gazed at the waterfall. “According to Homer, we should come to a place where two other streams join the river.”

“What are they called? The river of hurt and the stream of pain?”

“The River of Fire and the River of Lament, actually.”

“Sorry I asked.”

Grant pulled the tablet out of his knapsack and unwrapped it, trying to shield it from the spray blowing across the pool. “It looks like two streams in the picture. Unless they’re just contours in the mountain. What does the Bismatron say?”

Jackson scrambled back down to rejoin the marines. Grant saw him take the Bismatron out of its box and turn it on. The rush of water drowned out whatever noise it made; the needle barely flickered.

“Not much.” He frowned at the dial. “Maybe something. I guess we have to go on.” Jackson pointed to the cliffs beside the waterfall. “Can we get up there?”

Grant eyed it up. It wouldn’t be easy. The cliffs weren’t impossibly high, perhaps fifty feet, but the white stone was icy smooth, even without the fine coating of spray from the waterfall. “Sure,” he said casually. “Have you got a rope?”

With one of Kowalski’s men in tow, Grant splashed his
way round toward the waterfall. The others watched from the far rim of the pool. It was hard even getting close to the foot of the cliff: it seemed to drop well below the surface of the lake, so there were few rocks to stand on. Where the trees and the cliffs joined, Grant paused. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to stand—except maybe a rocky shelf that protruded a few inches from the base of the cliff a few yards away. Grant peered into the pool but saw only his own reflection on the black mirror.

“I’m wet enough anyway,” he muttered. He shrugged off his knapsack, slung the coiled rope over his shoulder and jumped in.

The water was warmer than he’d expected and in this corner of the pool the current actually pressed him back against the cliffs, rather than sucking him out toward the spout. He kicked through the water and hauled himself up on to the shelf, shivering to be in the breeze again. The cliff thrust out at him, chest to chest; he couldn’t stand without the feeling he might fall backward at any moment.

He looked over to the marine watching from the shore. “Wish me luck.”

Grant was no stranger to climbing. As a boy he’d spent hours crawling all over the chalk headlands at Flamborough; as a man he’d hauled himself up more walls and cliffs than he cared to remember. But this was a different challenge. The surface of the rock was soft and undulating, like skin. The only way to get any purchase was to spread himself like a lizard, clinging on to the low swellings in the cliff. He could only move by sliding his hands up inch by inch. Even on the smooth rock his fingers were soon rubbed raw. His wet clothes weighed him down, though at least the shirt stuck to the cliff face as much as his own body. Sometimes, that seemed to be the only thing holding him up.

He glanced down. That was a mistake—not because he feared heights, but because he saw how little distance he had come. He turned his attention back to the cliff and struggled on. For a short while the slope angled in a little and the going got quicker. Then, suddenly, the cliffs bulged again,
more than vertical, hanging out over him. There was no hope he could squirm up that. He pressed his cheek to the rock and glanced right: no way round. To his left the waterfall suddenly seemed thunderously loud.

There was no alternative. Bracing his legs as best he could in the shallow hollows in the cliff face, he lunged upward. His palm slammed against the overhang; his arm shuddered; his fingers closed—and felt a thin pucker in the rock. Not a moment too soon. Just as he touched it his foot lost its purchase. He kicked out, thrashing to find a foothold, but his boots just skidded off the rock. For a moment he dangled in space, his whole weight crushed into his fingertips.

He could have let go, fallen, trusted to luck and hoped for the pool to catch him. It hardly crossed his mind. Inch by inch, pound by pound, he hauled himself up. The tendons in his fingers felt thick as hawsers; the cramp in his hands was almost unbearable. Even the bones in his arms ached. He reached up again and this time his hand closed round something firmer. Hope gave him strength; his toe found a small dimple in the rock and he pushed himself up. With a gasp of release he hauled himself over the lip of a small ledge. It was tiny, less than a foot deep, but to Grant it felt like a football field.

When he had caught his breath he looked up. He was still well below the summit, but the way was easier now. A thin crevice split open the cliff—not much, but enough to worm the toes of his boots into. After what he’d already endured, it was almost as good as a ladder. He worked his way up and at last hauled himself over the top of the cliff. He lay there for a moment, breathing hard and rubbing his arms.

“What have you found?”

The faint shout from below drew him back to the present. He looked down. Reed and Jackson were still standing on the boulder at the head of the stream, staring up like frogs on a lily pad.

What had he found? He looked around. He had come into a high, steep-sided valley, almost like a sunken meadow. There were no trees, only the stream winding through the
thick turf. It was surprisingly placid here; even the noise of the waterfall seemed distant and muted. In a strange way it reminded him of Scotland. At the far end of the valley, in front of another cliff, two stone columns stuck out of the ground like tusks.

He unhooked the rope from his shoulder and tied a bowline round an outcrop of rock. He tossed the rest of the rope over the cliff. Then he lit a cigarette. In a few minutes the first marine had pulled himself up, followed—at varying speeds—by Jackson and the others. Reed came last, with the equipment, harnessed into the rope and hauled up by the marines. He didn’t seem to have suffered from the ordeal; in fact, his face shone with excitement. He looked around in wonder. “Remarkable,” he breathed. “Like a lost world—stout Cortez and all his men. We might be the first men to tread here for three thousand years.”

“Let’s hope there aren’t any more coming.”

A breeze whispered down the valley. Soaking wet from scrambling through the stream, they shivered. Grant looked back at the way they’d come up. The forested slope hid the beach, while the sea had all but disappeared in a smear of fine haze.