The Oracle (29 page)

‘It was you who gave me all the information I needed. I just never thought of asking you what he looked like. The thing is, he was always so perfectly informed about everything, so determined, so damned right at the right time and in the right place that it never occurred to me that he could be anyone else.’

‘And you said that you’d seen him recently?’

‘That’s right. It was thanks to him that one of my men, sergeant Vlassos, made it out of a murder attempt alive.’

‘That Portolagos business?’

‘Yeah. We’ve tried to keep the press out of it, but it looks like the same hand that struck Roussos and Karagheorghis.’

‘That’s possible.’

‘I’ve got to find him, understand? If I can’t get the upper hand here, I’m screwed. I’ve got the authorities on one side – they’re getting suspicious and have probably started their own investigation – and I’ve got this murderous lunatic on the other . . .’

‘Out looking for you?’

‘I’m absolutely certain of it.’

‘What does this con man know about you?’

‘A lot. Too much.’

‘And you? What do you know about him?’

‘Nothing. Not even his name.’

‘No clue?’

Karamanlis shook his head. ‘My only lead is a golden vase that disappeared ten years ago from the National Museum during the assault of the Polytechnic. It was important to him.’

‘Where is it now?’

‘Don’t know. Maybe he has it, maybe he’s sold it or given it away . . .’

‘That’s it?’

‘Yeah, that’s it. Nearly, anyway.’

They’d finished eating and the waiter had brought their coffee. A group at the next table had begun singing; between one song and the next they ate pistachio nuts and drank wine, loudly arguing about the soccer season.

‘Practically nothing. That’s strange, very strange. There seems to be something underneath it all which is beyond our understanding. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it. When did you learn that that man was an impostor?’

‘When you told me he was dead. It seemed impossible to me, so I went directly to Volos, to the cemetery. I saw his photo.’

‘Listen, I have a suggestion for you. You’ve got so little to go on, it probably can’t hurt. There are people who, just by looking at a photograph of someone, or a sketch even, can perceive where that person might be, like a radar beam localizing a shape in the sky or in the sea . . .’

Karamanlis smiled: ‘Is that how badly off I seem? Let’s get a crystal-gazer over here to look at our coffee grounds!’

The other man seemed offended. ‘The person I’m talking about is no crystal-gazer. This person is exceptionally gifted. They say that members of the government, and even the President himself, have consulted him in critical situations. He lives completely isolated in a hovel on Mount Peristeri, living on what game he can catch and on milk from the sheep and goats that share his house with him. No one knows how old he is, no one even knows his name. Go to him and show him that sketch, describe the vase to him, the one that disappeared. He’ll get a complete picture of it in his head. He goes where he wants to go, in any moment, no matter how far. He’s . . . he is . . . a
kallikàntharos
.’

Very few people were still lingering in the tavern. An old man, probably a drunk, was slumped over a corner table, sleeping. Karamanlis got up and put on his jacket.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s not the kind of thing you do every day. I’ll have to think about it.’

Athens, Olympia Bar, 20 October, 5 p.m.

N
ORMAN ORDERED A
Metaxa brandy for himself, and a glass of Roditis for Michel. ‘I feel like ordering something for that cop over there in the car.’

‘You really think he’s watching us?’

‘What else is he doing? He’s been on me since Sidirokastro. Well, we’ll just let him stew in his own juices. So, tell me how it feels to be back in this cafe after all these years.’

‘I was here a few weeks ago, just ran into it by chance. It made me feel terrible. Really awful. All of this has been hard on me.’

‘You said that you’d discovered the meaning of those messages, didn’t you?’

‘Well, I found the context, and that’s something. Mireille went to London, to the central headquarters of British Informatics, to consult Icarus, a program that can analyse any aspect of classical literature, including literary criticism over the last ten years. The author is Herodotus, very well known.’

‘And we’d imagined some obscure source.’

‘Yeah, right. So, there are two phrases: the first – “She’s naked, she’s cold” – was left on the corpses of both Roussos and Karagheorghis. The phrase comes from an Oracle of the Dead, and it’s the response that Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, receives from the oracle by calling up the ghost of his dead wife Melissa at Ephira. Periander had consulted the oracle to find out where a certain treasure had been buried, but the oracle shamed him with its answer: Periander was so miserly that he had refused to burn Melissa’s bridal gown on her funeral pyre because it was too precious, leaving his wife naked and cold in her grave.

‘In an attempt to exculpate himself, Periander gathered all the most illustrious ladies of the city and had them remove their clothing so it could be burned in honour of his dead wife. He queried the oracle once again, and this time he got the second response. The phrase that was carved on the arrow which ran through Vlassos, if you can trust Karamanlis on this one: “You put the bread in a cold oven.”

‘The phrase was a crude reminder that Periander had coupled with his wife after her death. Melissa, through the oracle, was accusing him of raping and desecrating her corpse. We’d consider him some kind of psycho, but for the ancients his crime was even worse. It was considered a heartless monstrosity, deserving of the most horrible punishment.’

‘Good God. But what do you suppose it can possibly mean here and now?’

‘I’ve thought and thought about it. The most logical deduction – if we can call any of this logical – is that the messages reveal the reason these men were condemned to death. Since the first message was identical for Roussos and Karagheorghis, we have to assume that they committed the same crime, although I have no idea of what it could have been. The second message, on the other hand, is very explicit . . .’

The juke box, which had been mute up to that moment, suddenly started playing a song and Michel started. ‘Norman,’ he said, ‘this song – do you remember this song?’ Norman shook his head, puzzled. ‘Claudio used to play this song when we first met him at Parga. He used to play it on his flute . . .’ He jumped up and ran over to the juke box. He looked at the man who had chosen it: dark skin, black eyes, a thick moustache. Lebanese, maybe, or a Cypriot, there were lots of them in Athens. He sat down again, shaking and bewildered.

Norman looked into his eyes: ‘Michel, Michel . . . Claudio’s song was an old Italian folk song. How could it be in that juke box? You’re hearing things.’

Michel lowered his head and fell silent, choked up with the hopelessness of his memories. When he lifted his head again his eyes were gleaming: ‘I can’t think of anything else. Heleni must have . . .’ he faltered.

‘Come on,’ said Norman, ‘you’ve got to get it out.’

‘Heleni must have suffered the same . . . outrage . . . as Melissa. Her dead body . . . Oh God, oh my God!’ He raised his hand to his forehead to cover his tears, uncontrollable now.

Norman was upset as well. ‘I think you’ve hit on the truth – that arrow hit Vlassos through his groin. I think it was deliberate.’

‘If what we think is true, can you imagine how much they suffered, the two of them? If Claudio survived, he has become poisoned by hate and the desire for revenge. A death machine. Not a man any more, Norman, he’s no longer a man. Think of what he had to go through. It was my fault, Norman . . .’

Norman passed him his full glass of brandy: ‘Drink this, it’s a lot stronger. Swallow it, I said.’ He put a hand on Michel’s shoulder: ‘Every person in this world can only resist for so long. You were just a kid, and you were incapable of withstanding the torture they were subjecting you to. Maybe even Claudio wouldn’t have held up at that point. Or me, for that matter. You mustn’t be ashamed, Michel. You mustn’t take the blame. Listen, right now we have to do everything we can to get in touch with him, if he’s alive. We have to talk to him and force him out of the crazy isolation he must have been living in all these years. We have to stop him from committing more crimes. Tell him what’s happened, make him understand what he’s doing. We have got to find him. Karamanlis believes that he’s going to go for the kill with Vlassos and that then it will be his turn.’

Michel still couldn’t talk: he seemed to be watching the people pass by on the pavement, but he wasn’t really looking at anything. His eyes were filled with ghosts.

‘Maybe I’m on the list too. I’ve never thought about it. I always loved him – I never thought he’d want to kill me.’

‘Me too. I could be just as blameworthy in his eyes. I was supposed to meet him that night in the Plaka, with a doctor for Heleni. Claudio may think I betrayed him. Think of my father. The message on his body implies that he took part in that crime, even though Karamanlis told me that wasn’t true when I talked to him in Sidirokastro. We have no choice, Michel. We have to find him and tell him the truth. He’ll believe us – for Christ’s sake, he has to believe us. But if we want to find him we have to ask for Karamanlis’s collaboration. We have to meet with him and . . .’

Michel wheeled around: ‘No! You’d have to kill me first! That man is the cause of everything. He’s the one who had me tortured. He’s the one who had Heleni killed and who has turned Claudio into a machine without a soul, if it’s true that he survived.’ There was a cold light in his eyes. ‘If I see Karamanlis it’ll be to pay up my bill.’

Norman grabbed him by the shoulders: ‘Don’t be an idiot! We have to meet with him, understand? We have no choice. When we talked at Sidirokastro, I don’t think he told me the whole story. I’m sure he didn’t. He was just trying to get information from me. Now we’ve managed to decipher those messages while he’s still groping around in the dark. We’ll tell him what we know if he agrees to give us the full picture. That’s the only way we can be sure about the messages and . . . decide how to respond.’

Michel lit up a cigarette and smoked it in silence. ‘Norman, I don’t know if I can stand the sight of him. Put yourself in my shoes.’

‘Michel, you were there that night at police headquarters. Things might come back to you if you see him. You were there, Michel.’

Michel sucked in a deep breath and balled up his fists between his knees, as if he was trying to gather up all his strength. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘When?’

‘Now. Right now.’

Norman got up and walked straight towards the car parked on the other side of the road. The man behind the wheel tried to start it up, but Norman got there quicker. ‘Hey, you,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I’m talking to you. Call the captain and tell him we have to talk to him, my French friend and me. Now. We’ll wait for him inside the bar.’

After his initial embarrassment, the policeman started up the car and drove off. He radioed Captain Karamanlis shortly thereafter and told him about the invitation he had received. Karamanlis had been interrogating an ex-convict; he turned him over to his deputy and took off towards the café on Odòs Stadiou. The sun was setting over the port of Piraeus, sinking into the thick smog in a sulphurous haze.

M
ICHEL AND
N
ORMAN
walked to one of the bar’s inside rooms and took a table near the window, looking out on the street.

‘Michel,’ said Norman, ‘what do you think of the message that was found on my father’s body?’

‘I’m not sure, but I think it means something like, “You’re a man used to seeing death and violence but even you couldn’t have stood the sight of this.” Whoever wrote it probably knew about your father’s past as an operative or his role in the war, but he also wanted to reproach him for the girl’s death.’

‘Heleni as Cassandra?’

‘Maybe. In any case, all these messages have something in common.’

‘What?’

‘They are all words pronounced by the dead. And that in itself is a message.’

‘Hold on,’ said Norman suddenly, watching the street. ‘He’s coming.’

Michel paled but stayed composed. When Karamanlis sat down opposite him, he looked him straight in the eye and without a tremor in his voice said: ‘Those whom death does not part are destined to meet again. A drink, Captain Karamanlis?’

But it was Norman who began to talk, to explain how they’d managed to find the sources for the death messages, and Karamanlis realized he’d have to turn up new cards if he wanted to find out what they had in their hand. None of them noticed a black Mercedes with dark windows parked along the pavement in front of the bar. And none of them saw the camera behind the windscreen that captured them talking and drinking together.

By the time they had finished talking, Norman – who had been told only partial truths in Sidirokastro – knew exactly why his father had been killed. And the meaning of the death messages had become clear to them all. Karamanlis told them what was behind the first message, identical for Roussos and Karagheorghis, and Michel spelt out what the message carved on Vlassos’s arrow meant. Taking the captain’s embarrassed silence as an admission of guilt, he continued, seething with hate and indignation: ‘You allowed Sergeant Vlassos to commit such a monstrous act! You are an abomination. You should be locked up in an asylum for the criminally insane for the rest of your life, and never be allowed to see the light of day again. I’d like to see you smashed dead like a toad . . .’