The Oracle (25 page)

‘Thank you, doctor, for everything you’ve done.’

‘No need for that,’ said the doctor. ‘Let me call the nurse; she has the arrows we extracted. I assume they will be used as material evidence.’

‘You’re right. Thanks once again, doctor.’ Karamanlis waited a few more minutes for the nurse, who handed him a plastic bag closed with a rubber band. He opened it and examined the arrows, all three of which bore that strange phrase. As he twirled them between his fingers, Vassilios Vlassos opened his eyes.

‘Steady now, Vlassos, you’re all right. You were badly wounded, though – look at what they took out,’ he said, showing him the arrows. ‘One of these went through your gut and tore apart your testicle, but the doctor says there’s nothing to worry about. You’ve still got one left, old boy. For a guy like you that’s more than enough, isn’t it?’

Vlassos moved his lips as if he wanted to say something, but no sound came out.

‘Don’t strain,’ repeated Karamanlis. ‘You can tell me everything when you’re better.’

Vlassos motioned for him to come forward; his voice was little more than a whisper: ‘I’ll kill that bastard son of a bitch, Captain, I’ll tear his balls out . . . I . . . I . . .’

‘I know you will. But stay calm now, try to get some rest.’

Vlassos tried to push up on his elbows. ‘Captain, you have to promise me . . . that you’ll let me kill him with my own hands.’

‘Lie down, you stubborn dunce. You’re all stitched up inside and out. If one of the sutures splits you’ll bleed to death for real this time.’

‘Promise me . . .’

Karamanlis nodded. ‘Yes. I promise. When we’ve caught him I’ll leave him in your hands. You can do what you like with him.’

‘Thanks, Captain. What about my lady friend?’

‘She’s fine. We brought her home. Scared the willies out of her, but she’s all right now. I’ll let her know the operation went well so she can come to visit.’

Vlassos dropped back on to the pillow, mouth in a foolish, ferocious smile. Karamanlis put a hand on his shoulder: ‘We’ll get him, old man. You can be sure of it. Sooner or later we’ll catch him.’ As he left the hospital, the sun was rising and the streets were coming to life with the confused buzz of traffic.

C
LAUDIO WAS AWAKENED
by the first rays of the sun and by the jingling bells of a flock of sheep. He sat up, rearranged his clothes and tried to look like a tourist who had stopped to enjoy the dawn during a morning stroll on the beach.

‘Who are you?’ asked a young voice behind him. Claudio turned and found the flock’s shepherd: a boy of no more than thirteen.

‘An Italian tourist. I wanted to see the sun rising. And what’s your name?’

‘Stelio. Do you know what place this is?’

‘I think we’re near Messemvria.’

‘This is Ismaros, the city of the Cicones. This is where Odysseus landed when he returned from Troy. Here he got the wine that he used to make the Cyclops drunk. But how come a tourist like you doesn’t know these things?’

Claudio smiled: ‘Well, I do know about these things, but I didn’t know this was the exact spot. How do you know?’

‘My teacher told me. Want to meet him? He lives over there,’ he said, pointing at a little white house on a small promontory.

‘Sorry, but I can’t now. I’d like to another time, if I’m passing by here again.’

‘All right,’ said the boy. ‘You’ll know where to find me. I always bring my sheep here in the morning.’

Claudio got up, waving goodbye to the boy, and headed towards the state road. He walked for a while along the edge of the road with his thumb out until a truck headed for Turkey stopped and let him in. An hour later, the big semi-trailer stopped at customs and the driver passed two passports to the police, one Turkish, issued to Tamer Unloglu, resident of Urfa, and one Italian, issued to Dino Ferretti, resident of Tarquinia.

‘Hey, Italian!’ called the policeman, in a good mood. ‘Spaghetti, macaroni!’

Claudio waited until he had handed him back his passport and waved at him: ‘That’s right, buddy, spaghetti, macaroni and . . . all the rest.’

The truck started up again, crossed the Evros bridge and stopped a few minutes later at Turkish customs. Claudio filled out a form to request an entry visa, and exchanged a little money while he waited for the driver. They passed Ipsala and Kesan, where the driver turned south to Canakkale. Claudio got out at the turn-off to Istanbul. A few minutes later, another truck picked him up and took him all the way to the great bazaar by evening. Claudio waved goodbye and immediately disappeared into the multicoloured crowd swarming down the streets of the immense market.

C
APTAIN
K
ARAMANLIS DECIDED
to keep the message engraved on the arrows to himself this time. He asked the surgeon to keep quiet about it as well, explaining that this preliminary investigation demanded complete secrecy. He could not avoid reporting back to his superiors in Athens about his stay in Thrace and the attempted homicide of his subordinate while he was on holiday at Portolagos. This put him in a difficult position, because over the last ten years all the top-level security police positions had changed due to the new political situation and he could no longer count on the cover he had once enjoyed.

‘Captain,’ said the chief of police, ‘you were sent to Dirou to coordinate the search and the investigation and you didn’t accomplish a damn thing. At Portolagos, even worse luck: either we’re chasing a ghost, which I have my doubts about, or you’re proving to be quite incompetent. We’ve been able to keep the press out of this until now, but it won’t be long before they catch wind of it.’

Karamanlis grimaced: ‘Unfortunately, I must admit my failure. But please allow me to say, sir, that as far as I’m concerned the game is not over and the next hand will be mine.’

‘Would you mind telling me then what cards you’re holding?’

‘I think I’m close to identifying the murderer. I also am quite sure that I’m on his list, and that makes me the person most suited to carrying on this investigation. I am both the predator and the prey.’

The police chief looked quite confused: ‘It’s very generous of you to offer to act as bait. But won’t you tell me then why the assassin has included you – and your men – on his hit list?’

‘I have not as yet drawn any definitive conclusions, and I shall certainly communicate them when I have. But it’s hardly difficult to imagine why: our work involves turning over the worst scum of society to the law. When someone manages to escape, or to be pardoned for . . . political reasons, then this someone will be out looking for revenge. Consider in any case that the killer was not allowed to succeed in his intent: sergeant Vlassos was saved, at the brink of death, by our operation.’

‘This is also true. Then you want the case to stay in your hands?’

‘If possible, I would like that, yes.’

‘All right, Captain. I will give you one more opportunity, but don’t count on a second.’

‘That will not be necessary, sir,’ said Karamanlis, and left the office.

That evening he went to headquarters to check on the identikit sent by the Kalamata police of the man who had hired the truck at Hierolimin used to transport the wood to Gythion. It was the same man who had brought the wood to Hierolimin by sea: almost certainly the face of Admiral Anastasios Bogdanos.

Skardamoula, 13 September, 9 a.m.

A
FTER HAVING ABANDONED
the fishing cooperative’s truck at the gas station as they had been told, Norman and Michel took a bus back to their hotel, where they found the blue Rover in perfect running order and their keys at the Plaja reception desk. They waited days in vain for further contact. Michel had thought long and hard about the meaning of the phrase found next to the corpses of Petros Roussos and Yorgo Karagheorghis, without getting anywhere. They decided finally to take matters into their own hands, and to cast their thoughts back to the moment when they’d stumbled upon the golden vase in the basement of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. They would return to the capital and try to contact Aristotelis Malidis. He had been with Periklis Harvatis during his last hours, and he had been the last caretaker of the vase of Tiresias. Perhaps he had some sort of connection with the mysterious person who had failed to take them to the vase.

Norman wanted to go first to Macedonia, to the place where his father had been found dead, to see if he could learn anything more than the bare facts Scotland Yard had provided. They decided to split up and to call each other every couple of days, meeting up in Athens ten days or so later to exchange information. It seemed like a good plan to both.

Norman drove up the Strimon valley one fine day in mid-September, finding the place so gorgeous that it nearly made him forget the reason for his mission. The river meandered in wide turns through woody groves and beautiful meadows. The slow-running waters were covered with pond lilies; big old plane and beech trees heavy with foliage bent to touch the water, where flocks of sheep came to drink during the hottest hours of the day. This was the ancestral homeland of Orpheus and Zalmoxis, the mythical land of centaurs and chimeras.

He spent the night in a clean, freshly whitewashed little room in a private home near a town called Sidirokastro. The stars had never seemed nearer: the galaxy curved over the ridge of Mount Pindus like the veil of a goddess fluttering in the dark, and the stars were so close to the ground that they seemed as bright and sweetly scented as mountain orchids.

That night at a tavern he asked around for a guide who was well acquainted with both sides of the border and who spoke Vlachì, the mountain dialect used on the Yugoslavian side of Macedonia as well as here on the Greek side. The generous fifty dollars a day Norman was offering attracted no shortage of takers. The next day, at dusk, a hunter of about forty named Haralambos Hackiris showed up: he had been born in the area and was familiar with every inch of the woods and river banks for a twenty-kilometre stretch, even on the Yugoslavian side, where he knew plenty of people. He was definitely a smuggler, and admitted as much to Norman, but on the whole seemed to be honest and trustworthy.

Norman told him why he had come to the mountains and asked him what he knew or had heard about an English gentleman, a hunter, who had been killed by an arrow and found gagged and blindfolded.

‘I did hear about it,’ said Hackiris. ‘And I can tell you that whoever killed him was not from around here, otherwise we’d know who it was and why he’d done it. We know everything that goes on up here. There are still some poachers who hunt with a bow and arrow so the game wardens won’t hear them, but there are very few of them, old men who wouldn’t kill a person for all the gold in the world. There are others who carry Turkish drugs over the border, but they certainly don’t use bows and arrows.’

‘I’ll offer you an extra bonus of three hundred dollars,’ said Norman, ‘if you bring me news about who could have killed him and the circumstances of his death. But if you try to trick me, I won’t even pay you for your services as a guide.’

The next day they left by car and crossed the Yugoslavian border. They parked the car in a garage near the state road and started on foot up to the ridge of the mountain and then up even further towards the high Strimon valley.

‘If there’s anyone who knows something, that’s where we’ll find him,’ said Hackiris, pointing at a village halfway up the hillside beyond the river. They waded across the river and entered the town at around three in the afternoon. It seemed practically deserted. An old lady dressed in black carrying a bundle of grass or a jug of water on her head would pass every now and then. There were no law enforcement facilities to speak of, although they did find a local policeman who lived in a private residence. Hackiris explained why they had come and chatted with him for a few minutes in Vlachì.

‘Do you have twenty dollars?’ he asked Norman. Norman passed him a couple of bank notes.

‘Well?’

‘A few things you’ll find interesting. He was the first one to examine the corpse. Said he only seemed to have been dead a couple of hours.’

‘And what did he find?’

‘There was a message sticking out of the dead man’s jacket pocket. He had a friend of his who knows Greek copy it out before they turned him over to the Belgrade police.’

‘For what reason?’

‘Doesn’t twenty dollars sound like a good reason? He thought that sooner or later it would be worth something.’

‘Well, can I have it, then?’

‘Certainly.’

The policeman took a vase from a shelf, stuck in his hand and took out a little notebook in which a couple of lines had been scribbled. Norman scanned it quickly:

Hackiris saw his expression: ‘Was it worth twenty dollars?’ he asked.

‘It was worth much more,’ murmured Norman. ‘It was worth a man’s life . . .’

Hackiris chattered on in Vlachì with the man; neither of them seemed bothered in the least by Norman’s words.