The Lost Labyrinth

THIRTY-FIVE
I

The symbols chiselled into the various rocks matched clusters on the reverse of the Phaistos disc. There was no question. At least, the only question was what it signified. Gaille brooded on it for a minute or so, but without coming to any firm conclusions. Perhaps Iain would have some ideas. She set the disc aside, went back to the shelves, chose a folder at random from one of the many wire racks. It proved to contain photographs taken inside a cave, of several niches filled with crude votive offerings; pre-Minoan from the look of them, though she was no expert. A second folder chronicled the excavation of a pit perhaps a metre long by half a metre wide. It included standard archaeological photographs of various finds in situ, with a wooden ruler next to them to show scale, and a file-card with a date and reference number, presumably cross-referenced to the boxes.

She looked through several more of the folders, found one with pictures of the escarpment face. She was about to put it back when she noticed something incongruous, and so she took it into better light. Yes. There was a man in a dark shirt and jeans crouching in the dappled shade of a tree halfway up. She squinted more closely, but he was too distant from the camera to be recognisable. But one thing was clear: Petitier had been under surveillance, and he'd known himself to be. No wonder he'd got spooked. No wonder he'd tried to pre-empt discovery by coming clean.

She put the folder back. It seemed they were in date order, so she decided to start with the most recent. One of the first folders she opened contained another set of pictures of the man hunkering down, though in different clothes and on another part of the escarpment. But these were of a different order of clarity, focused and sharp, almost as though Petitier had been sufficiently spooked to invest in a telephoto lens. In the first shot, the intruder was looking through his field-glasses, so she couldn't see his face. But in the second his features were all too easily recognisable. Her legs went a little weak on her, she had to reach out for the shelving to steady herself.

It was Iain.