A Darker God (42 page)

He pulled off the road anyway to calm himself and check the distance on the map. He sat watching as a herd of silky black goats poured past him. Big and muscular, they raised their heads to stare at him with mad amber eyes. They buffeted the car, they scratched it with their horns, all deliberately done, he was sure. They went on their way, resenting his foreign presence in his stinking modern machine. He breathed in with relief when the last one had gone by. A trace of their feral
odour lingered, laced with the scent of herbs they had crushed under their hooves. He moved away from the car and sat with his back to it, hearing nothing now but the distant call of a shepherd boy, echoed close at hand by the desolate cry of a meadow pipit. The countryside had turned into a garigue of low scrub starred with golden crocuses and autumn cyclamens. To left and right, where the land dipped down into a valley bottom, he caught glimpses of a dark blue sea.

A sea which pounded itself into foam at the foot of sheer cliffs. Cliffs which stretched for mile after desolate mile. Would he catch sight of her body? What had she been wearing? He had no idea. It was well over an hour since she’d disappeared. Time enough to reach the headland. There was nothing he could achieve now. He was alone and adrift with his loss and grief. He plucked a small pink flower he didn’t recognise. Persephone had been plucking flowers when she was snatched away by Hades. And her mother, Demeter, had been struck down by sorrow, but she had roused herself and travelled the world, shouting, fussing, demanding that her daughter be restored to her.

Gunning got up and went to the car. There was a frivolous little silver flower holder in the back, he remembered, for the delectation of the passengers. He filled it with water from the flask he’d thought to throw onto the backseat before he left and popped the flower into it. Well, it was no gardenia, but he resolved to give it to Letty when he found her.

He looked up on hearing a donkey’s hooves clipping along the stony road surface. A solitary man smoking a cigarette and coming towards him from the direction of Sounion stopped to peer inquisitively at him. They exchanged greetings and the man threw his cigarette butt away. Gunning politely stamped it into the dust and then, on impulse, took his packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered them. The stranger got off
his donkey and took one with a smile of thanks, and they puffed amiably together for a moment.

“Car broken down?” the man asked.

“No. I’m out hunting,” Gunning improvised. “Couldn’t help me locate my quarry, could you, I wonder?”

“What are you after? There’s not much up here in this scrub … a few rabbits … partridge or two …”

“No, I’m hunting a person … I’m guessing you’re a family man?” he said tentatively.

“Wife and six kids!” came the proud reply.

“Daughters?”

“Two. Fourteen and twelve.”

“Then you’ll understand. I’m chasing after my daughter. My eldest. And silliest. She’s a total innocent and she’s run off with a bloke I don’t approve of. Old enough to be her father … twice married … total wastrel … perverted idiot. But one of those city smooth talkers—you know? They took off on this road, according to my neighbours. But so far no sign of them. They may be in a cream-coloured Delage.”

The man thought for a moment and shook his head. “Fancy car. They know how to turn a girl’s head! Nothing like that on the road this morning. Are you sure they’ve not headed for Vouliagmeni? A man and a girl? That’s where all the nonsense goes on … Take the road to the right when you get to Markopoulo. It’s not far. No, the only motor that’s come past me on the road is a taxi. Out from Athens with a party of tourists.”

“Taxi? Tourists? How many tourists?”

“Well, two and the driver.”

“Two passengers?”

“Two. Man and a woman in the back. Sitting close together. The man had a hat on, the woman didn’t. Fair hair.” He looked suspiciously at Gunning’s dark head. “Nothing like
you
.”

“She takes after her mother. That’s my Anna! How long ago was this?”

The man looked at Gunning blankly and then at the sky.

“You’re a smoker,” said Gunning. “How many cigarettes since you passed the taxi?”

The man grinned and showed his pack. “Five,” he announced.

“An hour and a quarter?”

The man nodded in agreement.

Gunning ground out his cigarette and clapped the stranger on the shoulder. “Thank you! I may be in time!”

“Give her hide a good tanning!” called the man as Gunning fired up the engine again. “And as for the bloke—you’d do well to …”

Gunning was glad his Greek didn’t stretch as far as understanding the anatomically precise details of the advice so cheerily given, but he acknowledged the helpful spirit in which it was delivered with a wave as he let in the clutch and moved off.

“I may be in time!” he’d said. It had been a polite and convincing leave-taking. He didn’t believe it. An hour and fifteen minutes ago they’d had ten miles further to travel. Even if he pushed the car along recklessly down this rough road, risking overheating and burst tyres, when he reached the headland they would still have had plenty of time to … He refused to contemplate the scene, setting his brain instead to work out speeds and distances. He came up with the same conclusion each time he ran the calculation. If his worst nightmare came true, they would be returning from the headland, just the two men in a taxi, and he would meet it head-on just this side of Markopoulo.

He smiled grimly and accelerated. Head-on is exactly how he planned to meet them.

Chapter 37

G
ood. We have the place to ourselves. I thought before we inspect the temple we’d first go to the edge and look over the two-hundred-foot drop into the Aegean.”

“Stun the sacrificial victim with a further show of the horrors on offer? No, thank you. I’m going nowhere near the edge. I’m not dressed for a cliff-top ramble.” Letty glanced down at her Sunday-morning-at-leisure outfit: espadrilles on her feet—canvas confections that wouldn’t last two minutes scrambling over a stony headland studded with thornbushes—baggy Chanel lounging pants in a fashionable shade of ultramarine, white blouse. Her body would be a long time crashing about in the foam before anyone noticed.

They strolled arm in arm away from the parked taxi, two tourists looking about them, enjoying the solitude and the staggering beauty of the scene. Letty gestured at the car. “Not bringing the lad along on this educational jaunt?” She was trying to hold down her panic and, by adopting a cheerfully unconcerned approach, thought she might even lead him into a more rational frame of mind. If she started to scream and run about he’d put a bullet in her in seconds. And every second counted. They’d surely known for over an hour now that she
was missing. Maria had seen her go off with this man. Montacute was on his way. So was Gunning. They could only be minutes behind. She kept herself from looking back down the Athens road. She must do nothing to increase the pressure on him.

“He takes no interest in the past. He is young.”

“Mmm … not quite house-trained yet. I had thought so. Look—you clearly have things to confide. Why don’t we go and sit in the middle of the temple floor? The views through the columns are so beautiful. And, do you know? I’ve never been here before in the morning. Always at sunset.”

Surrounded by an expanse of white marble, she and Gunay would offer a clearer target to a police marksman firing from a distance, she reckoned. With a bit of luck they’d have sent Harry. She would take care to sit as far as possible from her companion if he acceded to her suggestion.

He did.

She settled with her legs by her side, ready to spring up and dash to cover when the chance arose. “Now, Mr. Gunay, I hate to start at the end of any story. Why don’t you begin at the beginning? It all goes back to Andrew meeting you in Salonika, doesn’t it? Don’t pull that face! You know you’re going to tell me. Because none of this makes any sense at all unless you tell someone what’s on your mind. Does that young oaf in the car have any appreciation of what you’re trying to achieve? No. Well, I may not approve, but at least I’ll understand. What on earth did Andrew do to cost him his life, that of his wife, who never knew you, and, potentially, me? Three lives? Is that the value you choose to put on the contents of the funeral chest?”

“Ah … it’s surfaced again, has it?”

Surprised that he was so little moved by her mention of the box, she enlarged: “For a moment. It’s gone straight back underground again, I’m afraid. But at least it’s very safe. It’s in
a bank vault. We realised it was not what it at first appeared …”

He nodded. “Gold. Wouldn’t fool anyone for longer than a second. My father-in-law painted it.”

“Is that what you’re after? Look, Gunay: It was left to me. I’m willing to trade—my instant and safe return to Athens against the box and contents. You have my word that I’ll make the arrangements for transfer as soon as the bank opens tomorrow morning. How about it?”

“I have learned the value of an Englishman’s word!” he sneered. “This is not the arrangement I am seeking. Money does not interest me. I am not a rich man but I have sufficient for my needs and the needs of my family.”

“What
are
you seeking?”

“Justice. A life for a life. Three lives for three innocent lives, and one above all for a nation’s pains,” he whispered.

“Not sure I quite understand you. Are you going to tell me the names of the three innocents, Mr. Gunay?” She asked it quietly.

“My wife, my daughter, and my son.”

“Where did they die?”

“On the Bosphorus. A refugee transport ship. Bad crossing.” The words were coming slowly from him. “Many died from malnutrition on the way. The water was bad. And then disease broke out. Almost everyone died. We were not allowed to land until it had run its course, for fear of its spreading to the rest of the population. We were anchored, helpless, in torment, on a ship of death. The few remaining of the thousand who had started the journey ministered to the dying and threw their bodies overboard. I could not save my family. My Katerina, my Adriana, my Andreas. I watched them sinking in each other’s arms. I should have sunk with them to the bottom. I should not have abandoned them.”

Letty left a long silence, head bowed.

He looked at her with narrowed eyes. “You are weeping? For people you never met?”

“For all the poor souls who died and the ones who lived on. Whether I knew them or not,” she replied softly. “
‘They wept and shared in human miseries,’
Homer says of the Horses of Achilles. If a horse may feel pity, I’m sure you may allow an English girl to do so. We have our insights and sympathies. Please don’t scoff when I say I can imagine a little of your grief. I lost my mother when I was a girl, and my only brother died, shot down in the war. I think if I were to multiply the pain I knew, I might be approaching an understanding of yours.”

“You would need to multiply by two million, Miss Talbot. No one can do that. And the injustice goes uncorrected, even unacknowledged. The men who signed away Greek and Turkish lives sleep easy in their beds and climb the ladder of political success. A ladder whose rungs are slippery with the blood of children. And who is there to scream this injustice from the rooftops? The victims who managed to live this far are too busy struggling to make a new life for themselves. They bow their heads and scratch a living. I am the exception.”

“You seem to have prospered in your new land?”

He grunted. “With half a million leaving Greece and one and a half million going the other way, there was no shortage of land for us Greeks. I was a farmer. Tobacco, corn, olives. I was given a piece of land twice the size of that I’d had in Macedonia. I put it all down to tobacco. A gamble, but I had calculated before I left Greece the increase in demand. I was not wrong. At a time when it hardly mattered to me anymore, Nature smiled on me. Good season followed good season. I found an abundance of capable workers, an efficient manager. I opened my own tobacco processing factory. That too thrived. I began to trade more widely. It seems that when I no longer care about success, she favours me. And now I have the time, the resources, and still the energy to right a wrong.”

“Righting a wrong? Of this magnitude? Not possible. What you’re talking about is vengeance. Revenge, not pure and simple but impure, complex, and ultimately corrosive. I’m not going to preach to you or even explain. I’d be wasting my time. But I do need to understand:
why Andrew?
He tried to help you, didn’t he?”

“He became the focus of my hatred. With the gendarmes at the gate, he made an offer for my farm, my house, and everything in it.”

“A good offer?”

“A derisory offer! It was worth twenty times the price. He said it was the largest amount he could lay his hands on and I was lucky to get cash from any source at all in Salonika at that time. I had to accept his word. No one had money in those terrible days. The Jews and the bankers who might have dealt had been burned out of their livelihoods in the fire in ’17 and chaos still reigned. Paper money was worthless—when you could lay hands on it. I was to travel to a foreign country, not knowing what currency would be accepted on the journey or at the other end, open to attack by robbers and tricksters the moment we arrived at the docks. When Merriman promised me gold coins, a transportable means of exchange, what could I do but accept? I was cheated, of course. I presented Merriman’s chit at the British offices he’d told me to go to. I was expected. The cash was ready—but only half the amount I’d been promised. ‘Very sorry and all that, old chap, but resources somewhat stretched, don’t you know. Lucky to have scraped this much together. Only possible as a personal favour to old Andrew.’”