The Age of Zeus

33. HAUT-PIETRA

A nother day was spent looking, in vain, for the Minotaur. The monster was proving more elusive than any they'd hunted so far.

A third day passed, with a similar lack of results, and at the end of it, as the Titans were trudging back to camp, Hyperion said, "Base, we're wasting time here. Time and power cells. The forests round here are as dense as Daffy Duck, and the damn monster seems to know how to make itself scarce if it wants to. Is there any way you guys can help?"

"How do you mean?" said Landesman.

"You've got computer geeks there. Couldn't you get them to, I don't know, take over a spy satellite and try and pinpoint the Minotaur from space by its heat signature or some such?"

"Speaking as one of those computer geeks," said Patanjali, "I have mad skills, but I'm still not that good. No way could I infiltrate anybody's defence surveillance system without Argus noticing and tracing the hack back to here."

"Sorry, Hyperion," said Landesman, "but you're just going to have to keep doing it the hard way."

"All right then, how about this? In the Gulf, when our side needed to track down a bunch of insurgents, often as not we'd draft in some local help. Nobody knows the lay of the land better than the folks who live there. And there's guys here who'd be willing, I reckon, to work with us."

"You're suggesting we contact the Resistenza?"

"Contact 'em, draft 'em in. That way we could double, maybe even triple the number of pairs of eyes we've got on the ground. And it's not as if we're needing to keep ourselves so much of a secret now, not since Bruges."

"I'm with Hyperion," said Crius. "I can't see the harm in bringing the RCDC in on this."

"If you want my opinion, not that anyone does," said Iapetus, "it's got to beat fossicking through this fucking bush all day long."

"Tethys?" said Landesman.

"I've got nothing against the idea, in principle," Sam said. "We just have to be careful. We give our presence away to the wrong person, a Pantheonic sympathiser, say, or just someone with a computer who thinks it'd be cool to tell the world that those monster hunters from Bruges are here, and we're screwed. The Olympians'll come down on this island like a ton of bricks, with us right underneath. And while I'm not scared of facing them, I want it to be on our terms, when we're the ones with the element of surprise, not them."

"Let me think about it," said Landesman. "I'll get back to you with an answer as soon as I can."

An hour later, he did.

"Right, I've done some homework. There's a town roughly twenty miles from your current position. Haut-Pietra. It's reputed to be a hotbed of RCDC activity. Go there in civvies and see if you can't rustle up interest among the indigenes. But, as Tethys said, be sure you choose people you think can be trusted."

Haut-Pietra perched on a hilltop. Its focus, and highest point, was a church, with a hundred or so houses shelving away around it on all sides, many looking as though they were clinging onto the steep slopes for dear life. Vineyards and groves of fig and mulberry lined the one and only approach road. So did a parade of telegraph poles, to each of which someone had tacked a photocopied sheet of A4 showing the face of the little girl killed by Apollo, Ghjuvanna Venturini, with the slogan " Giammai dimentica!" — "Never forget!."

The town square, in the lee of the church, was dusty and shaded by a couple of plane trees. A game of petanque was under way in the middle of it, while outside two cafes, at opposite corners of the square, townspeople sat at tin tables and imbibed aperitifs along with the cooling evening air.

Sam and Ramsay had come alone. There was no point in all the Titans turning up mob-handed. Two of them could nose out the RCDC as effectively as five, without arousing as much curiosity.

They drew stares nonetheless.

"It's you," Ramsay told Sam as they took a seat at one of the cafes, the Bar Galetti. "Everyone's dark and Italian-looking. They can't have seen many pale redheads before."

"Oh yeah? And how many black men do you think drop by every day?"

"Well, if it is me they're so fascinated by, it's only because they ain't ever laid eyes on a brother this handsome. Or else they're mistaking me for Denzel Washington. I often get taken for Denzel, and him for me."

For all the interest the other patrons of the cafe were showing in them, it took a while to attract the waiter's attention. He spoke to them in Corsu, confident they wouldn't have a clue what he was saying. Sam responded in her best GCSE French, and the waiter, evidently a proud nationalist, pretended this was a language unknown to him. In the end, however, he took pity and grudgingly acknowledged her order of " un vin maison et une biere" with a curt " d'accord."

When he returned with the drinks, Sam tipped him generously. Then, as there was nothing to be lost by taking the direct approach, she asked him if he knew of anyone in the Resistenza Contru-Diu Corsu.

Silence fell over the cafe, a hush so complete that the metallic click of the petanque balls out in the square sounded like planets colliding.

"Uh oh, tumbleweed moment," Ramsay murmured.

The waiter shrugged, circling a finger at his ear as if he'd misheard or else had not recognised those particular words with his oh-so-severely limited French.

Sam shrugged too, as if it was of no consequence; her enquiry had been a casual one, nothing more.

Conversation slowly resumed in the cafe like a flock of birds settling after a gunshot. Moments later it scattered to the winds again as a round-bodied, bullet-headed little man emerged from the cafe interior. He made straight for Sam and Ramsay, moving unhurriedly but with a dead-eyed purposefulness. Sam could sense Ramsay tensing up beside her, ready to meet violence with reciprocal or, if need be, greater force.

"Wait," she hissed out of the side of her mouth. "I think we've flushed out our RCDC member already."

The man halted at their table and said, in guttural English, "Please finish your drinks and leave."

"Of course," Sam said. "But first, we'd like to talk to you. In private."

"Drink," said the man, "then go."

"I believe you are an important person here. You have an enemy on this island. I believe you, or people you know, would like to remove that enemy. We do too." She felt safe saying this. She doubted any of the Corsicans within earshot knew English as well as this man did, if at all. The exchange, in that sense, was already a private one.

The man's eyes were coal. "Enemy? Corsicans have no enemies. We have been invaded by Greeks, Romans, Genovese, French. They are all gone. Only Corsicans are here now."

"Bull." Sam was unable to resist the pun. "We have experience in dealing with the kind of enemy I'm referring to. We want to make you an offer. We want to join forces with you. Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you know who we are?"

The man gave a slow nod, and something occurred briefly with his lips, a twitch that could have been a smile had the stony seriousness of his face allowed it. He appraised Sam and Ramsay for a moment or two longer, then beckoned them with a flick of his fingers. "Come this way."

In a back room that was part office and part stock-room, he introduced himself as Paulu Galetti, the cafe's owner, and confirmed that he did belong to the RCDC. He was, in fact, commandant of the Haut-Pietra arm of the Resistenza and a member of the movement's supreme body, its five-man ruling committee.

"And you," he said, "you are the ones in Brussels, and in Singapore, and in Syria." It wasn't a huge room, but Galetti had a presence that seemed to fill it — though perhaps that was just his abysmal underarm odour.

"We get around," said Ramsay.

"You are brave. To kill the monsters. To make the Olympians angry. Very brave. Crazy also. The Olympians will tear you to confetti if they get their hands on you."

"Don't we know it."

"They might try," Sam said. "And they might just be in for a surprise. But let's not worry about that now. Our aim, for now, is to deal with the Minotaur, Mr Galetti. We have the means. We have the weapons. What we don't have is the manpower. Put simply, we've been looking and we can't find the monster. And we were thinking the Resistenza might be able to help out with that."

"Might be keen to, too," Ramsay added.

Galetti canted his head to one side. "Hmm. Interesting. I am tempted. The Minotaur has been a curse on Corsica for so long. But if we help you, and you kill it, what then? Maybe the Olympians get angry with us. Maybe they do to Corsica the same as to San Francisco and Paris, but worse. When they finish with us, there could be no Corsica left."

"Would they, though?" Sam said. "After all, when I last looked, Bruges was still standing. It hasn't been attacked. Neither has Singapore or any of those other places we hit."

"True," said Galetti. "But who is to say they won't change their tactics, if they decide to set an example again?"

"It's a possibility, I agree. But Mr Galetti, your Resistenza hasn't been afraid to shoot at the Minotaur. I don't think you are afraid of the Olympians either. You said it yourself. Corsica has been conquered time after time, but still remains the home of Corsicans."

"You appeal to my patriotism."

"Of course."

"And to my male pride. If I refuse to help you, it will look as if I'm a coward. You seem wise to the nature of the Corsican man."

Or just men, Sam thought.

Galetti grinned. A sudden softening of those impenetrably hard features of his, as startling and remarkable as a thaw in permafrost. An upper premolar was missing, but that didn't lessen the effect.

"The offer is appealing," he said, leaning towards Sam in a way which implied that part of its appeal lay with her. "The RCDC will be only too glad to join you. You have my assurance of twenty men, perhaps more."

"Twenty would be plenty."

"It will be a pleasure working with you, Miss…?"

"Tethys. It's best if you know me only as Tethys. And this is Hyperion."

Galetti took the callsigns in his stride. "Miss Tethys, Mr Hyperion, together we are going to do a great thing."

Seemingly from nowhere he rustled up a bottle of myrtle liquor and three shot glasses.

"A drink to celebrate? Seal the deal?"

The liquor was both sickeningly sweet and chokingly raw, fiery enough to seal a weld, not just a deal. Potent too. Even though Sam and Ramsay both stopped after three glasses, they left the Bar Galetti extremely drunk.

Drunk enough to find themselves sharing a tent later.

And a sleeping bag.

And each other.

But not so drunk that they regretted it afterwards.