The Oracle (44 page)

‘Damn,’ complained Mireille. ‘We need a map that includes Greece and the Middle East, or at least Greece and Turkey.’

‘The bar down at the port!’ exclaimed Norman. ‘There’s a Freytag & Berndt down at the port that covers the entire area. It’s there for the truckers coming down from the Balkans. There’s another one just like it at the Capitan Adreevo customs in Bulgaria. Let’s go.’

Norman had remembered correctly: on the wall of the bar was a Freytag & Berndt with a scale of 1/800,000. Under the curious stares of the bar goers, Norman and Mireille traced out the axis of Harvatis on the wall map and joined up the two sides.

‘My God,’ said Mireille, backing up. ‘My God, it’s the Nemrut Dagi!’

Canakkale, 13 November, 10.30 p.m.

T
HEY LEFT THE
bar and got into the car.

‘Nemrut Dagi . . .’ said Norman, starting it up. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘You should know,’ said Mireille. ‘Didn’t you study archaeology?’

‘Yes I did, but it was just for two years, it was a long time ago, and what I studied was building techniques in the Roman Empire: streets and aqueducts. Then I left it. Archaeology made me think of Athens, of the friends I’d lost. I switched, found a new profession. Journalism – something different every day.’

‘Nemrut Dagi is a solitary mountain of the eastern Tauern range which faces the Euphrates plain. It’s completely barren and wind-beaten. Antiochos IV Epiphanes of Kommagene, a minor king allied with the Romans, had a monumental tomb built for himself in the first century ad at the very top. A pyramid of pebbles, sixty metres high, flanked by two terraces and guarded by fourteen colossal statues, each thirteen metres tall. In front . . . there’s a sacrificial altar. From time immemorial, the mountain was said to be a magical place: an Islamic legend says that Abraham brought his son Isaac to be sacrificed there. The legendary Nemrod – the man who dared to defy God – went hunting there. There are even traces of Hittite civilization, magical astrological signs left by the Persians . . .’

‘So this is the place called Kelkea or Bouneima?’

‘I’m convinced of it. And I’m convinced that Michel is racing towards it . . . and that death awaits him there if we don’t get there first.’

‘Before who?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Before it happens. We don’t have a moment to lose.’

‘But how could Michel have figured out how to get to this place if you were alone when you broke into the basement of that house?’

‘He does not know what the place is. He’ll have been lured there somehow . . . I don’t know how. Along with the others.’

‘What do you mean the others?’

‘He is . . . the ram.’

‘Oh, Mireille!’

‘Did you know that Michel was born at Siwa? That he’s the son of an Italian soldier and a Bedouin woman? Michel was born on April the thirteenth, so that makes him an Aries, the sign of the ram. And Siwa is the site of Aries, the ram. He was brought up at an institute for orphans called Chateau Mouton, where the children were called “moutons” or lost sheep. He has been branded by that sign his whole life.’

‘I don’t believe in astrology or any of that other nonsense.’

‘The other two are the bull and the boar.’

Norman shook his head: ‘This is pure folly, you know that, don’t you? I believe that there is a rational solution to everything, and I refuse to accept this madness. But I will follow you, Mireille. Because I want to find my friend Michel. And Claudio, who killed my father. I need to know whether I’ll throw my arms around his neck or put a bullet through his forehead. Now you lie back and rest. I’m going to drive all night.’

Mireille lowered the seat back and closed her eyes while Norman sped off towards Smyrna. From there he would take the road that led inland through the high plain: Afyon . . . Konya . . . Kayseri . . . Malatia. Good God, it would be exhausting.

Norman reflected that if Michel were really headed towards the same place, he would have to take the same road; it was the only way to reach Nemrut Dagi. He hadn’t lost hope of catching up with him – he’d have to sleep sooner or later, stop along the way. His car was much faster and more powerful than the Peugeot that Mireille had rented, and over such a long distance that could mean a lot. All at once, while Norman was thinking his own thoughts and calculating the times and distances of such a long journey, Mireille sat up.

‘Beware the pyramid at the vertex of the great triangle . . .’ she said.

‘Mireille, are you dreaming?’

‘No. I’m wide awake. A few days ago, at the Athens police station, I took a look at Captain Karamanlis’s appointment book. A page was marked, and that phrase was written on the page.’

‘So?’

‘You don’t get it? The pyramid at the vertex of the great triangle: it’s the funeral mound at the peak of Nemrut Dagi, the vertex of the triangle that we calculated. So Karamanlis was warned against getting too close. My God, Karamanlis must be the boar . . . or the bull. But who was it that warned him? Who else knows about this?’

Norman had no idea how to answer. At the bottom of a hill, he downshifted and revved up the engine, pushing it as far as it would go with anger and frustration. He got to the top of the hill and raced down at full speed.

T
HE REAR LIGHTS
grew fainter and fainter in the distance.

‘They’re driving like crazy,’ said Karamanlis. ‘Speed it up or we’ll lose them.’

Vlassos accelerated: ‘Don’t worry, Captain, they won’t get away. We’re in better shape than they are; we slept all last night, while they were taking turns at the wheel of that junk heap.’

‘Right,’ agreed Karamanlis, ‘but they’re younger than we are.’

‘You think they’re headed to that place they marked on the map at the bar?’

‘Yes. I do.’

‘But why all that confusion, running here, running there, to scribble a few lines on a map hanging on a wall?’

Karamanlis seemed not to have heard his last question; he’d turned on the reading light and was going through his appointment book. By chance, he opened to the page dated 5 November where he’d written the words ‘Beware the pyramid at the vertex of the great triangle’, which immediately brought to mind the big triangle that Norman and Mireille had drawn on the map in that smoky bar at the port. Okay, so his destiny was waiting for him at some godforsaken place in the mountains of Anatolia. His day of reckoning? So it seemed, and he thought of the contorted face of the
kallikàntharos
on Mount Peristeri, that cruel, alien voice: ‘What are you doing here Captain Karamanlis?’

A rush of adrenaline coursed through his veins and he pounded his fist on the open book.

‘It’s my own fucking business what I’m doing here!’ he shouted.

Vlassos turned towards him, disconcerted: ‘Hey, Captain, who are you yelling at? Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’

Karamanlis closed the appointment book and leaned back as if he wanted to rest: ‘Fine. Of course I’m fine, I’ve never felt better.’

Vlassos shut his mouth for a while, sneaking looks at his travel companion who was sitting with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes half closed.

‘Captain,’ he said, ‘what if there’s more than one person waiting for us there? There’s only two of us. What are we going to do? That one guy . . . you said he was so tough . . .’

‘Afraid are you, Vlassos? No, you needn’t be afraid. Don’t you know I’ve got a lot of friends in this country? Back during the war in Cyprus, when there was the arms embargo against Turkey, I let a couple of shipments of spare parts get through . . . they remember their friends around here.’

‘You made military shipments to the Turks? Captain . . .’

‘Idiot, what do you know about international strategies? What’s important is that at Adyaman we’ll find a little group of Kurds armed to the teeth. They’re going to help us – let’s say – hunt down some drug traffickers, loaded with dope and with dollars. The traffickers are ours – dead, of course – the money is theirs. Not bad, huh? They thought they’d be luring us off into a strange land where we’d have no one to count on, but they were wrong, weren’t they? A gentleman always has friends, remember that. Now let me sleep for a while. Wake me up when you can’t keep your eyes open any more. Until then, race like the wind, Vlassos.’

Eski Kahta, eastern Anatolia, 16 November, 5 p.m.

Michel got out of the car and found himself leaning up against the wall of a nearby house, weak from fatigue. Over the last three days he hadn’t slept more than a few hours, but he was tormented by the idea of not getting to Claudio in time. So much time had been wasted; he’d had to have the car repaired when it could no longer stand up to his gruelling demands, and he’d even turned down the wrong road a couple of times, exhausted as he was.

The cold night air whipped a bit of vitality into him, until he felt steady enough on his feet to go towards the agency which rented jeeps during the summer to tourists for a jaunt into the mountains. The office was closed, but a little boy assured him that it was not only in Smyrna, in Istanbul, in Adana that there were important tourist agencies. In fact, the local rent-a-car agent turned out to be easily located: the man, in his sixties, worked as a leather tanner in the off-season, and he greeted Michel in the midst of a flock of shorn sheep. He said that the Italian had indeed passed through, but that he hadn’t left the car; he’d wanted to keep it for another twenty-four hours.

‘Where was he going?’ asked Michel. ‘Did he say?’

The man shook his head: ‘He’s crazy, that one. He took the road that goes up the mountain. I told him about the bad weather that’s been predicted, but he didn’t even answer. Well, all the cars are fully insured, so if he’s happy, I’ve got no problem with it.’

‘What could he have gone to do on the mountain?’

The man widened his arms: ‘To see the pyramid, why else? I’ve never seen so many people at this time of year, that’s for sure.’

‘Has someone else been by?’

‘Two men, a couple of hours ago.’

‘Did you see them?’

‘One about sixty with a grey moustache and balding head, the other a little younger, about fifty, big man, well built. Both of them all tooled up.’

‘Thanks,’ said Michel. ‘Listen, how far do you think I can get with that?’ he asked, pointing to the dusty blue Rover.

‘Almost up to the peak unless it starts to rain. Or worse, snow. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if that happened.’

‘Thanks for warning me,’ said Michel.

He found a store open that sold everything from olive oil to climbing boots, and bought a pair of heavy shoes, a blanket and a sheepskin jacket. He got some bread and a bottle of water too, returned to the car, and sped in a cloud of dust through the little town of low houses surrounding a minaret. The mountain top towered before him now, silhouetted against the reddened sky.

Herds of sheep traversed the fields all around, being led towards winter pastures by their shepherds dressed in full-length fur capes and flanked by ferocious Cappadocian mastiffs with iron-spiked collars and ears clipped to the root. What could Claudio be doing on that mountain? For a moment he thought he’d made a crazy mistake, following a spectre he’d seen for a few seconds in a dusty truck-packed car park through the whole of Anatolia. But Claudio’s image in his memory was solid and very real, turning towards him for an instance in the beam of full headlights, his eyes filled with pain just like that night in the courtyard of the
astynomia
in Athens. Had he recognized Michel? Was that why he had fled so quickly? Or was he too racing towards an appointment he couldn’t miss?

He went as far as he could by car, then abandoned it at the side of the road, shouldered his backpack with the blanket, bread and cigarettes and began the climb. The mountain peak got darker and darker, step by step, the black pinnacle standing out against the night sky. The tall grass, desiccated by the long dry season, bowed under sudden gusts of icy wind.

The fatigue brought on by climbing suddenly overwhelmed him, his legs buckled and he fell to his knees. He looked around in a panic: if the storm surprised him in this condition he’d surely die. There was a little cave just ahead, sheltered from the wind. He hobbled towards it. Some shepherd must have used it; there was some hay in the corner and a little straw. He curled up with the blanket around him and ate some bread from his pack, forcing down a few sips of water. He felt a little better but decided to wait until dawn to continue his climb towards the peak. Who would be crazy enough to venture out in such solitude? He pulled his jacket tighter around him and lit a cigarette. That small glow in such a deserted land shone like a beacon over a wide sea.

‘C
APTAIN, CAPTAIN, DID
you see that?’

Karamanlis was staring at the black pinnacle looming up at less than a kilometre’s distance: the enormous mausoleum of Commagene. He turned towards Vlassos, annoyed: ‘See what?’

‘A light. Down there, look, now . . . see it?’

‘So? A shepherd lighting up a stinking cigar. Calm down and get some rest. As soon as it’s light, we’ll go and see if there’s anyone up there. And if so, what their intentions are. Our friends will be along soon; they’re used to travelling in the dark, like cats.’