Lost Temple

Nine

Grant stood on the hotel balcony and breathed the night air. The harbour lights twinkled before him, crisp as stars, each one twinned with a flat reflected smear on the water. At that moment Grant felt like a man trying to navigate by the reflections alone.

'What do we do now?'

Grant turned round. The shutters were pulled back and the room behind him, bathed in a nicotine-yellow light, was framed like a painting. Reed sat on a chair by the dresser, apparently hypnotised by the ceiling fan, while Marina perched on the end of the bed and darned the sleeve of a blouse. Muir lay propped up against the pillows behind her, a cigarette jammed into his scowl. One trouser leg was rolled up to the knee to fit the fat bandage that wrapped his calf and shin — though the doctor who had seen him claimed the bullet had missed anything that mattered.

The question hung unanswered in the smoky air. They hadn't spoken much that day. No one had slept after the gun battle: they had sat up through the night, twitching at every rustling branch and breaking wave. At first light they had gathered the Russians' corpses and sunk them in their boat in the bay, weighed down with stones. Then they had sat down to wait for the fisherman. Much to Grant's surprise, he had come.

Muir flicked ash into the ashtray beside his bed. 'I want to know why the fucking Russians were there in the first place.'

'They wanted the tablet. They almost got it.' Grant pointed to the dresser, where the tablet lay on a lace mat bathed in lamplight. 'Whatever it is, your Element 61, they're after it too. Which makes me wonder: what's so special that both the Yanks and the Soviets are so eager to have it?'

Muir stared him down. 'I told you: I'm just the bag man. The real question you should be asking is, how did they find us.'

Grant poured more wine from the half-empty bottle on the balcony and threw it down his throat. 'There's a civil war going on in this country. Soviet military advisers crawling all over the place. Half the population supports the EAM.'

'Those bodies we sank weren't a bunch of military attaches who got lost in the dark. They knew what they wanted — as you said — and they knew where we were. Even we didn't know where we'd be two days ago. Someone told them. And you don't have to look too hard for the bloody fifth column in this room.'

The hard silence that followed was broken by a flash and a flat bang echoing off the harbour. Grant spun round, his hand instinctively going to his hip. But it was only a firework, a prelude to the bombardment that would be let off when midnight struck on Easter Sunday.

'It's funny how these traditions rub on with Christianity,' said Reed. 'It's such an ancient idea, trying to drive away evil spirits with loud noises.'

He had spoken to nobody in particular and nobody paid him any attention. Marina was staring at Muir, with much the same look on her face as when she shot the Russian on the beach. Though this time Muir had wisely kept his gun close to him. 'What are you saying?' she hissed through bared teeth.

'I'm saying it's a queer business how you went for a walk just as the Soviets turned up on our doorstep. Queerer still how you finished off that last chap before he could tell us anything. And let's not forget the small matter of your dear departed brother.'

'He wasn't a Communist,' spat Marina. 'He was a hero.'

'He was thick as thieves with the Communist Party of Greece.'

'Because they were the only people willing to organise the resistance against the Germans when all the politicians just wanted to crawl into their pockets. Alexei didn't care about Stalin or the dictatorship of the proletariat — he just wanted to fight the Nazis.'

'And when they were gone? Who was going to take over?'

'Did it matter?' Marina's face burned with hatred. 'Stalin or Truman or General Scobie — what's the difference? You all just wanted to take Greece for yourselves.' She made a half-turn round the room, fixing Grant, Muir and Reed with a smouldering glare. 'You know, there's a legend that once upon a time the women of Lemnos got together and killed all the men on the island in one swoop. Maybe they had the right idea.' She stormed out of the door and slammed it behind her. For a moment the echo drowned out the fireworks in the harbour.

Muir rasped a match against the box. 'Good fucking riddance.'

Grant looked at him in disgust. 'You know her brother wasn't a Communist.'

'As far as she's concerned he was. And she's hiding something.'

'She's angry as hell because of what happened to her brother.'

'Then why don't you tell her the truth about it? Is there any more wine in that bottle?'

Grant picked up the bottle of Moschato. It was unlabelled and covered in dust from the hotel owner's cellar. He jammed in the cork and lobbed it across the room to Muir. Muir winced as he stretched to catch it.

'Marina knew Pemberton, she knows the archaeology and she can handle herself in a fight. She probably saved our skins on the beach last night.'

'Grow up. She killed that Russian because she had no choice. If we'd captured him he'd have spilled the beans on her.'

Grant shook his head. 'I don't buy it. She could have shot me instead. You were down, Reed was unarmed, the Russian had the tablet. They could have jumped in the boat and been halfway to Moscow by now.'

A chair scraped on the floor. Reed had stood — and flinched, as two angry stares pinned him back. 'I, er, thought I'd get a little air.'

'No you fucking won't. We've almost lost you once already this weekend. Don't know what nasties are lurking out there.' Muir gestured out of the window. The street below was filled with noise and light as the townsfolk hurried to church for the midnight Easter service.

'I'll go with him.' Like Reed, Grant was desperate to get away from the stale anger in the room.

'Keep your eyes open. Especially with Marina on the loose.'

Grant buckled the Webley's holster round his waist, then pulled on a jacket to cover it. 'We'll be careful.'

The fresh air was a relief. They stood on the hotel's porch and breathed it in for a few moments, not speaking. They didn't have a destination in mind, but the moment they stepped into the street they found themselves carried on the current of the crowd. They were all dressed in their Sunday best: fathers in three-piece suits, however threadbare; mothers in high heels dragging along children with scrubbed faces and pigtails. All of them, even the smallest child, carried long white candles.

'I hope Marina's all right,' said Reed. 'She seemed rather upset about her brother.'

'She should be. We killed him.'

'Oh.' Reed grimaced and didn't ask any more. After a pause: 'I suppose you're not troubled by this sort of thing. Midnight raids. Russian spies trying to kidnap you. Guns being waved all over the place. People dying.'

'Troubled?' Grant laughed. 'Maybe. You get used to it.'

'It's funny. I suppose, in a way, I've spent all my life with war. Homer,' Reed added, seeing Grant's surprise.

'I thought you said that was a fairy tale.'

'Some of the stories are. But Homer…' Reed paused, his eyes half shut, as if savouring a fine wine on his tongue. 'He puts the truth back into them. Not the literal truth — though actually, his poems are far less fantastical than most versions. The poetic truth.'

'Don't believe everything you read in the papers, Professor. There's not much poetry in war.'

'"My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity".'

'Wilfred Owen was a hopeless romantic. There's not much pity in war either. I learned that much from my dad.'

Reed, far too steeped in the ways of an Oxford don to enquire further, fell silent. They walked on with the crowd, out of the town and towards the church on the headland at the mouth of the bay. The flash of fireworks lit up the sky like a distant storm.

'It was the smell, you know.'

'Pardon?' Surprised from his thoughts by Reed's unexpected remark, Grant looked up.

'The story Miss Papagiannopoulou…'

'Call her Marina,' Grant interrupted. 'It'll save you years of your life.'

'The story she referred to. The women of Lemnos didn't just spontaneously murder their menfolk. They did it because they'd been shunned. They'd been afflicted by a curse that gave them terribly bad breath — they'd offended Aphrodite — so, naturally, their husbands refused to kiss them. Or offer other, erm, marital favours. So they killed the men.'

'Doesn't exactly solve the problem.'

'That's what they discovered. A few months later Jason and the Argonauts popped by on their way to find the golden fleece. The women practically held them at spear-point until the Argonauts obliged them.'

'Must have been a hard life, being an Argonaut.'

'Hm?' Reed wasn't really listening. 'It's funny how all these old stories about Lemnos revolve around odour. Philoctetes' stinking wound, the women's foul breath. Almost as if Lemnians had a reputation.'

He trailed off, lost in his own thoughts as they reached the end of the promontory. A square, whitewashed church rose above them — but they couldn't get any nearer, for the crowds had completely surrounded it. From inside, Grant could just make out the drone of the priests chanting the Easter liturgy, though no one seemed to be paying much attention. Children chased each other through the forest of legs, while adults greeted each other and gossiped quietly.

'Not quite C of E, is it?' Reed grinned.

A hawker, with pairs of candles hanging from his arms like onions, moved up towards them. Grant would have sent him packing, but Reed beckoned him over and, after some brief haggling, came away with two candles. He handed one to Grant. 'The Greeks say if you burn it down it burns away your sins.'

Grant squinted down the length of the slender taper. 'Do they come any bigger?'

A hush fell over the crowd. Up on the hilltop a spark appeared in the door of the church. It hovered for a second, divided in two, then again and again, multiplying from candle to candle as it passed through the crowd.

'The original light comes from Jerusalem,' Reed whispered. 'Every year the patriarch of Jerusalem crawls into the Holy Sepulchre — Christ's tomb — and a holy fire spontaneously kindles itself out of the air. The patriarch lights a candle from it and passes the flame on to his congregation.'

'Sounds like hocus-pocus to me. He's probably got a lighter stuffed down his pants.'

'Maybe.' Again, Reed seemed to filter out everything but the sound of his own thoughts. 'Extraordinary to think, though, that in ancient times the islanders waited for the boat to bring the sacred fire. And here we are, three thousand years later, doing exactly the same thing.'

Grant trawled through his memory. He felt as if he'd learned more history in the past week than all the previous thirty years of his life combined. 'You mean the fire ritual? The one where they turned out all the lights for nine days?'

'Indeed. Interestingly, according to one of the sources, the ritual was meant to purify the island after the episode I told you about earlier. The darkness was a time of penance, symbolic death to atone for the historic murder of the menfolk. Then the light arrived, symbolising new life and rebirth.'

'Pratolaos.' The name jumped into Grant's mind. 'The first man, reborn in a cave.'

'Not so different from another man who was buried in a cave and came back to life.' Reed stopped talking as the man in front of him, a burly farmer in an ill-fitting suit, turned round. Grant braced himself for a complaint, but the man only smiled and reached out his candle, tilting towards Reed's. The wicks touched; Reed's took the flame and flared into life. A bubble of wax trickled down towards his fingers.

'Christos anesthi,' said the farmer. Christ is risen.

'Alithos anesthi,' Reed replied. He is risen indeed. All around them the greeting and counter-greeting whispered through the crowd, like moths on a summer night. He turned to Grant and offered him the flame. 'Christos anesthi.'

'If you say so.' Grant lit his candle and held it awkwardly, trying not to drip wax on his shoes.

'Are you uncomfortable?'

Grant gave a bashful grin. 'Confused. I'm not sure if I'm burning away my sins, apologising for those husband-slaughtering women, worshipping Jesus or conjuring up Pratolaos.'

Reed smiled. 'Now you're getting the idea. But you mustn't hog the fire. You're supposed to pass it on.'

Grant turned round. The fire had already spread beyond him: most of the candles behind were lit. But one seemed to have missed out. He reached forward. The two candles collided, knocked against each other a few times in a clumsy courtship, then finally settled long enough for the flame to leap between them.

'Christi anesthu,' Grant mumbled.

She retracted her candle and held it up in front of her. Orange light shone on her face and the reflected flame burned in her eyes.

'Marina?' Grant almost dropped his candle. 'Jesus Christ!'

'… Is risen indeed.' She turned away; Grant half lifted a hand, but she was only passing the fire on to the man behind her. When she had finished she turned back. She had been crying, and even among the crowd she looked strangely vulnerable, as if she couldn't decide whether to spit in his face or run away.

'I'm sorry about Muir,' said Grant. 'He's… He's an arsehole.'

'I didn't sell you out to the Russians.' Her voice was brittle.

'I never said you did. But you can see why Muir's jumpy. Someone must have told the Reds where we were. And it's a shame you shot the Russian. It would have been useful to find out what he knew.'

He gave her a sideways glance, which she answered with an uncompromising glare. 'There was a bulge under his coat and he was reaching for it. What would you have done?'

'That was the tablet.'

'Then it's lucky I didn't hit it.'

He reached out a tentative hand and brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen over her cheek. She didn't stop him.

'Anyway, Muir doesn't matter any more.' A breeze stirred through the crowd and Grant cupped his hand round the candle to protect it. 'There's nothing at that sanctuary. This trail was three thousand years old before we started. It's not just cold: it's bloody frozen in the depths of time. Might as well give up now and go back to Crete.'

There was a discreet cough from behind. Grant and Marina turned, to see Reed watching apologetically. With the candle clutched in his hand, he looked like a choirboy on Christmas eve. 'Actually, I think the trail's warming up nicely.'

Grant and Marina stared at him in disbelief. 'How?' Reed tapped the side of his nose. 'The clue was in the ancient stories.' He smiled. 'You just have to follow your nose.'