The Lost Temple (28 page)

“According to Arrian, the temple on the White Island attracted lavish offerings from sailors who put in there. He describes mountains of silver bowls and golden rings, and hoards of precious stones. A treasure trove.”

Muir’s heart restarted; Jackson’s hand eased back into view. Grant kept his fingers wrapped round the Webley.

“According to the text, they also offered many goats.” A conspiratorial smile passed between Sourcelles and Marina. Grant didn’t like it. “But no, as far as I am aware, Captain Kritskii found only stones. No treasure. Perhaps it was hidden in the bowels of the island. More probably it was looted long ago. The Black Sea has always been a haven for pirates and thieves.” He inclined his head toward them with a chill smile. “If you go there, be careful of what you find. There was a reason the ancient Greeks feared the Black Sea as a place beyond the confines of the world, a liminal region peopled by savages. Wild Amazons, flesh-eating Laestrygonians, Sirens and serpents.

“You should not be fooled by the White Island’s chaste name. Too much Christianity has made us think of the afterlife
as a happy place of harps and choirs and soft clouds. The Greeks knew better. Even for heroes it was an angry, torturous place. There is a story about the White Island in Philostratus that the ghost of Achilles instructs a passing merchant to bring him a certain slave girl from Asia Minor. When the merchant does so, Achilles feasts him royally in his temple, then sends him on. But as the merchant sails away he hears screams, horrible screams of impossible agony, coming from the island. It is Achilles, tearing off the girl’s limbs one by one.”

Jackson got to his feet. “Well, thank you very much Mr. Sourcelles. I guess we’d better be going. You’ve been, uh, very helpful to us.”

The others stayed seated. “What about the tablet?” said Muir. “That’s what we came for.”

“What you came for?” Dark anger clouded Sourcelles’s voice. He stood. The fire cast a long shadow back over the room. “You do not come to my house to demand something. My collection is my own. I do not share it with anyone. Unless you have some quid pro quo to offer me in return?”

“Let’s go,” Jackson urged. “We can find this island for ourselves. We don’t need the tablet. Can’t read the damn thing anyway.”

“And what will we do when we get to the island?” Reed looked angrier than Grant had ever seen him. “We’d never even have got started on this hunt without the information on that tablet. What if there are more vital clues hidden on the second half? Whatever’s on this island, it obviously isn’t lying around in plain view.”

“You keep your mouth shut,” snapped Jackson. For a moment Sourcelles was forgotten in his own home as the three men stared each other down. He watched them from beside the fire, listening with detached fascination.

The mournful chime of a bell echoed through the empty house. Everyone looked at Sourcelles, who shrugged. “The doorbell. Jacques will see to it.”

“Are you expecting anyone else?” Grant was already reaching for his gun.

“
Non
.”

“It’s probably Kirby,” said Jackson. “Must be wondering what happened to us.”

The bell chimed again. A flicker of annoyance crossed Sourcelles’s face. “Where can Jacques be?” He crossed to the French windows and opened them. A blast of cold, damp air blew in and the din of the raindrops filled the room. Sourcelles peered out into the rain, though the garden was all but invisible in the gloom. “
Qui est là
?”

“No!” Grant realized what was happening a moment too late. Pulling Marina down, he dived toward the open door. He was still in mid air when the first bullet struck.

The windows exploded in a storm of lead and glass. Sourcelles was knocked back by the impact; he collided in mid air with Grant, and the two men fell to the floor. That probably shielded Grant from the worst of the blast. Jackson, who’d been standing nearest the window, wasn’t so lucky; he reeled away clutching his face. Thin tendrils of blood covered it like maggots.

“Get back!” Grant shouted. Bullets were still flying over his head, but he couldn’t see where they were coming from. “Get into the hallway.” Shuffling back on his knees, he dragged Sourcelles into a corner. The Frenchman had actually been standing in front of the windows, so the flying glass had missed him, but that wouldn’t help. Three wounds gaped in his chest where the bullets had struck, and he had left a thick smear of blood on the white marble floor. Grant looked for something to staunch the bleeding, but there was nothing within reach.

“The tablet. Where is it?”

Thunder roared over the mountain, temporarily drowning out the rattle of the machine-guns. It also drowned out Sourcelles’s answer. Grant bent his ear close to the Frenchman’s mouth, all the while trying to keep an eye on the shattered window frame. “
Where
?”

“The gallery.” The guns had stopped, but now even the
rain almost overpowered Sourcelles’s voice. “It is in the east wing—on the top floor.” He lifted a limp arm to his throat and tugged at his blood-soaked collar. Grant tore it open for him. He’d assumed the dying man just wanted to breathe—but his fingers were still scrabbling for something. A leather cord hung round his neck. Grant lifted it and pulled out a small brass key from under the shirt.

“The Gorgon,” Sourcelles whispered. “Behind the Gorgon.”

He went limp. There was nothing more Grant could do. Keeping his back to the wall, he edged round the room to the exit. The others were there, sheltering in the hallway. Reed clutched Sourcelles’s book to his chest; he must have snatched it off the table.

“Sourcelles bought it,” Grant said. “The tablet’s upstairs.”

“That’s not going to be much use if we can’t get out,” said Muir. “We don’t even know what we’re up against.”

“Kirby said he had a radio in the car.” Grant turned to Jackson. “Can you use it to raise the American HQ?”

Jackson nodded. “Gonna take a while for the cavalry to get here, though.”

“We’ll meet them halfway. There’s an airstrip on the other side of the mountain. It won’t be on their maps, but it’s roughly between the villages of Enispe and Stratie, in the valley.”

Jackson stared at him incredulously. “How do you know that?”

“I used it in the war.”

Jackson might have argued, but at that moment an enormous explosion tore through the living room beyond. A cloud of dust and splinters swept into the corridor. Through the ringing in his ears, Grant heard shouts from the terrace outside and more shots. They ran down the corridor, past the sightless row of marble heads. Ancient heroes watched them from above, frozen in their own battles. They stopped at the end of the passage, by the corner that led to the front hall and the main staircase.

“Give me your hat,” Grant said to Jackson.

Jackson did. A bust of Socrates stood on a column about chest height just inside the corridor. Grant hung the trilby on its head, then crouched down and heaved against the pillar. It slid easily across the polished marble floor, past the corner, out into the hallway and . . .

Two cracks sounded almost at once: a pistol shot and the bullet chiselling into the marble. Half of Socrates’ right cheek split off and crashed toward the floor. Before it hit, Grant had sprung out behind the column, trained the Webley through the narrow gap it made with the wall and squeezed off two shots. The trilby fluttered down. By the front door, something heavier thudded to the ground.

Grant glanced at Jackson. “Cover me.”

He bounded into the hallway and dived behind the stairs. No one shot at him. He peeked out from behind the banister. A body in green fatigues, with a red star sewed on the sleeve, lay sprawled across the threshold. There was no one else there.

Grant waved Jackson forward. The American sprinted across the hall, flattened himself against the wall by the front door and risked a quick look out.

“Is the car still there?”

“Uh-huh. But I don’t see Kirby.”

“As long as the radio’s there.”

At a nod from Grant, Jackson dived out through the front door and rolled down the steps to the parked car. He crouched against its back tire. Grant waited for the bullets to come, ready to return fire at a moment’s notice. No one seemed to have seen them.

Jackson edged his way round to the car’s rear, popped open the trunk and pulled out a field radio. He struggled under the weight. Bracing it against his chest, he ducked his head round the Packard’s taillight to check for danger. He shuddered. Kirby’s corpse lay prone on the ground, bleeding into the gravel.

But there was no time to mourn. There was a movement behind one of the hedges. Grant saw it; he stepped out
through the doorway and fired two quick shots, giving Jackson enough time to scuttle up the steps. He staggered under Grant’s outstretched arm with the radio and collapsed onto his knees.

“Mind you don’t break it,” said Grant. He fired one more shot, then slammed the door shut. “Tell your headquarters to send a plane to the airstrip. We’ll meet them there. Then find a back door and get out of here.” He looked back to Marina. “You come with me.”

“And where are you going?” Muir looked furious at being ordered about by Grant.

“We’re going to find the tablet.”

Grant and Marina left the others and ran up the curving stairs. The sounds faded behind them as they passed the first floor and carried on up. The stairs ended on the next floor in a square landing, with corridors leading away on both sides and a round window looking out over the gardens and driveway below. Grant peered through it. The rain was hard as ever, blotting the grounds into a drab canvas of greens and grays, but he thought he could make out a group of men huddled in the shelter of the retaining wall below the driveway. Something that wasn’t lightning flashed and Grant heard a bang that wasn’t thunder. He decided not to risk a shot. It was too far for the Webley and he didn’t want to risk giving away his position.

“Where did Sourcelles say he kept the tablet?”

Marina’s question drew him back to the task at hand. “The east wing.” He thought for a moment, then pointed to his right. “That way.” And . . . something else. “I think he said to look for the Gorgon. Does that make any sense to you?”

“The Gorgon was a monster, a woman with snakes for hair, tusks for teeth and brass claws instead of hands.”

“Sounds like an ugly bitch.”

“She’s a manifestation of everything men fear about women’s sexuality. One look from her could turn you to stone,” said Marina, with a look that came close to achieving the same effect.

They moved down the corridor, opening every door they came to. This part of the house didn’t seem to be much used—bedrooms with bare mattresses, bathrooms whose tubs were only filled with dust—but it still displayed a trove of artifacts. Most of it was pottery rather than sculpture: vases, amphorae, jugs and bowls with a dizzying variety of shapes. On the curved sides, black-glazed heroes shadow-boxed their miniature battles. More paintings hung on the walls: long portraits framed in heavy gold. Grant scanned them, looking for the Gorgon. None of the women he could see fitted the bill. They reclined in swathes of gauzy cloth, careless of their nudity, looking on while earnest heroes did battle. One of the men was mounted on a winged horse, thrusting his lance into a creature that seemed to be some monstrous hybrid of a lion, a goat and a dragon.

Grant called Marina over. “Is that it?”

“That’s the Chimaera. In the myths, the Gorgons were his aunts.”

“I can see the family resemblance. Did you find anything?”

“No.”

They’d reached the end of the corridor. A full-length portrait, larger than life, covered almost the entire wall, but the woman in it was far from a monster. Her skin was pale as ice, her eyes blue and piercing. She wore a high-peaked helmet and a silver breastplate of scaled armor, while her hands held a spear and an intricately decorated shield. Grant assumed she was Britannia, though he couldn’t think why the Frenchman would want her in his house.

“Perhaps there’s something on one of the pots,” said Marina. “I didn’t examine all of them. Maybe . . .”

Shouts in the stairwell cut her short. A moment later footsteps thudded on the stairs. Grant turned back.

“Look at the painting,” said Marina.

“I hate to tell you this, but I don’t think that’s where our problems are coming from.”

“Look at the painting,” she repeated urgently. She reached for his shoulder and spun him round. “The shield.”

The footsteps were getting louder—at least two pairs, Grant reckoned. They paused on the landing below and Grant heard muffled voices conferring. Reluctantly, he looked where Marina was pointing. The shield was almost head-high, so close that for a second all he could see were the individual flecks of gray and white paint. Then he saw it. In the center of the shield, embossed in the metal but seemingly with a life of its own, a suffocating face pressed out of the metal. Vipers sprouted from her head and curved tusks hung in her mouth like daggers. But it was her expression that was most terrible, drawn into a snarl of infinite, implacable hatred. Even in paint, Grant felt his bones stiffen just looking at it.

“The woman in the painting is Athena. When Perseus killed the Gorgon Medusa, he cut off her head and brought it to the goddess who set it in her shield.
That’s
the Gorgon.”

Grant grabbed the ornate frame and ripped the picture away. A hairline crack traced the outline of a door in the smooth wall behind, and a small hole invited the key.

“Hurry,” said Marina. One of the men following seemed to have peeled off to clear the first floor; the other had kept on climbing. Grant could hear his footsteps turning as he reached the half-landing directly below their floor. “Give me your gun.”

Grant handed Marina the Webley, then took Sourcelles’s key from his pocket and slotted it into the hole. The mechanism moved smoothly. He heard a latch click and pushed against the door.

A low squeal echoed down the corridor as the hinges creaked. For a moment Grant froze, wondering if he’d been heard. Then he decided it was too late for that. He put his shoulder to the door and gave an almighty heave. It swung in with a shriek of protest. That ended any lingering hope that they hadn’t been heard—but the door was open.