The Emperor Awakes (55 page)

She prayed not to have to see this … thing again. But she knew even in her child’s mind that free as she was it was only a respite until their next appointment, at an indeterminate date, for this thing to get bored and come running after her, after amusement, as you would when in the exercise of a favourite hobby.

Only when no-one was watching did she resign herself to the thing’s power and hold over her, isolating herself, so that she did not harm anyone else but herself.

Every time, this thing took out something from her, a part of her. She had no resistance to it, no cure, no medicine to take, no weapon against it, no way to stop it, no choice … To the accidental onlooker it could look as if she was having severe epileptic fits.

But maybe she could use it to her advantage. She would need to think about that. Maybe there would be some knowledge or strength she may be able to glean from it, from the experience, from wrestling with it.

She perhaps could glean some insight into her enemy’s mind and use the connection when it occurred to sabotage her enemy, to feed her enemy wrong information. She had to learn how to control it, how to initiate the connection and how to break it. She did not want to be surprised by it when it decided to pay her a visit and to wait for that moment to use it.

She had to turn that connection into a reliable tool and, perhaps, weapon to serve the cause of the Order of Vlachernae.

And now she had rediscovered her sister. She felt that the two sisters were two sides of the same coin.

CHAPTER 55

Ten thousand metres above the Aegean Sea, Greece
Present day

It was in the plane going back to Cyprus from Le Mirabel that they began to discuss their next steps. They knew they had to move quickly.

The Ruinands and the Marcquesa would not be far behind. They had their own spies. And there was the small matter of the traitor.

Elli thought of Iraklios and she was about to dismiss it when Katerina turned to her.

‘Elli, we know who the traitor is.’ Elli looked at her with blank eyes as if her mind was still somewhere else or was refusing to obey her and open up to hear the truth she feared. ‘In fact my parents can confirm it.’ She turned to her parents who were only now slowly coming out of their nightmare of the last twenty-four hours. ‘Dad?’

‘Elli, it’s Iraklios.’ Andros Markantaskis said, his voice and his face shouting his sadness loud and clear.

‘No.’ A small word full of anguish. Her inscrutability mask slipped, a rare event indeed. But she knew it to be true. She realised she had known for some time, but refused to believe it.

Then, not fully recovered yet, but loath to waste time in self-indulgent grief and soul-searching, determination brightly coloured her voice and she spoke.

‘We need to get back to the organisation of the mission. Tomorrow is the 21
^st
May, the day of Saint Konstantinos and Santa Eleni, and the crucial date for carrying out the ceremony. There may not be another opportunity for who knows how long.’ Her eyes fell on Giorgos. ‘Now, Giorgos, you can access your hard drives from that panel over there. Download all the relevant material. And don’t worry. The encryption and security equipment here is better than that of any secret service or software company in the world. Vasilis will show you how to use it.’ She looked at Vasilis who nodded. ‘Do you have scans of the scroll?’

‘Yes. I’ll get them too.’ Giorgos said and swiftly moved into action.

‘Good. It should not take you more than ten minutes, right?’

‘Yes, that should be enough time to have everything.’

‘Excellent. We’ll start then. I think we could all do with a little time to recover even if we cannot afford any.’

* * *

About twenty-five minutes later Giorgos was ready with all the material printed out. He distributed folders.

‘Take a few minutes to familiarise yourselves with the material.’

* * *

Giorgos was operating the console and projecting the material on a big screen above it. He brought up one of the geological scans. He indicated an area on the scan.

‘Look here at this. It’s a bit fuzzy, but you can clearly see that there are two entrances. Remember there has been a lot of erosion in Limassol in this area. The coastline has receded by a huge measure. I have calculated where the ancient coastline was around 1454 A.D. which from the evidence we have seems to be the time that whatever is down there was constructed.’

He brought up a plan and put it on top of the scan.

‘There is a second submerged entrance which has to be approached from the sea at this point here, next to the Western side of the old port. From the scroll we can deduce that we will need to split into two groups. Both groups will need to be at these precise locations that look to be the entrances into the main cavern containing the structure.

‘You will see from the scan of the scroll in your pack that two of the keys, the ones for the slots corresponding to Alexandria and Athens, will have to be used at the doorway accessed through the castle tunnel and the other key, the one corresponding to Constantinople on the doorway on the seaward side. The keys will need to be inserted and turned at the same time. We will need to be in communication to co-ordinate that.’ He turned to Vasilis. ‘Vasilis?’

Vasilis nodded and took over from Giorgos. ‘We will have to arrange in advance for the access through the seaward side. We will be employing the Valchern Corporation resources here. We will need to make sure that the entrance is not obstructed, and if it is, we will need to unblock it under the cover of construction works. It would not be difficult since Valchern owns this area here adjacent to the old port.’ He said indicating on the map.

‘We will use a special small submarine to pick us up from a place where we cannot be seen boarding it which I propose to be here near the mouth of the now dry river.’ He again pointed at the relevant area. ‘This area is also owned by Valchern. There is a copse of trees and a line of rocks jutting out to sea that should give us cover. The submarine will drop us off underwater at this point where we will change into divers’ suits and will proceed underwater all the way to the entrance. Giorgos?’

‘There are tests we will need to complete successfully and traps we will need to avoid. We will need to be close together and in constant communication. Let’s hope there is nothing to interfere with communications down there, be it the geological composition or an unsavoury companion. No rush moves, please. We cannot afford any wrong steps.

‘We’ve already arranged for Eleni Symitzis’ remains to be transported from the Symitzis Museum in Athens to Limassol. We thought about whether to stop on our way to pick them up, but that would be risky and we could not afford the delay or something going wrong. We wouldn’t want the Ruinands catching up with us in Greece and jeopardising everything.

‘The priority is to get to Cyprus as quickly as possible. We have the phial with Iakovos’ blood. We have the three icons and we can, therefore, now establish which of the three are the two real Likureian icons. We have the Emperor’s ring and the Book of the Pallanians and its missing part, the seven pages comprising the chapter called “The Pallanian Resurrection”. The scroll explains in detail how to put everything in its rightful place once we reach the Emperor’s tomb.

‘I propose to split the teams as follows: the team to approach from the castle tunnel will consist of Elli, Aristo and Katerina. John, you can dive can’t you?’ John nodded. ‘OK. Myself, Vasilis and John will deal with the seaward entrance. Vasilis?’

‘I’ve already arranged with trusted people from Valchern for the equipment to be ready at the appointed place and they will be expecting us. Andros and Anna will be taken to my mother’s house by four of our men where they will be under guard until this is over. The house, already a fortress, is now impregnable.

‘OK, everybody, that’s all. We should be landing soon. We are all suffering from lack of sleep, but I think the adrenaline will keep us going for as long as necessary to complete this mission.’

CHAPTER 56

Limassol, Cyprus
21st May
Present day

Vasilis, Giorgos and John were already at the quayside ready to board the small submarine. Elli, Aristo and Katerina were in the large cavity below Limassol Castle next to the wall covering the opening to the tunnel beyond.

The castle closed an hour earlier. There was nobody else around. A small device detonated the explosive that surgically removed enough part of the wall to allow a human to go through.

Elli, Aristo and Katerina switched on their torches and cautiously proceeded through the opening. Once they entered a strange feeling came over them. It hit them that time seemed to slow down only inside the tunnel.

They walked on, their ears pricked for the slightest noise or sign of danger. The tunnel was a lonely place, but the sense of the slowing down of time made it even more threatening and lonely. It felt as if they were being choked, their limbs pulled apart, as if they were slowly being dismembered.

They had only walked a few paces when they saw the beginning of openings on either side of them. First one on the left, then the next on the right and so on. They stopped at the first one. A part of the dark wall started to glow with an inscription. Elli recognised it immediately.

‘It’s in the Pallanian language. Turn on the voice recorder on your phone. We can pass it through its transcription programme.’ She traced her fingers over it and the characters bubbled in her vocal chords. They heard a voice from a faraway era.

“The temple of wisdom is asleep, dismembered, its life extinguished, if only for a moment in its time, a lifetime in the time of men, it lies hidden in the four corners of the earth, it lies in wait for the time when the one favoured by the gods will bring together the pieces and the torso of the body of the king lost in the city that had reigned as queen in the darkest time when all around it were being stifled, and reawakened by the blood of its progeny, the king will show the way and breathe life into that wonder that was lost, but was once shining bright above all stars in the fiery firmament of a blinding sky. The one that reawakens the king will manipulate him and wield his power but only for the common good. If anyone attempts to use that power for his own ends, the power shall be extinguished and he with it.”

In the meantime, Vasilis, Giorgos and John had entered the tunnel on the seaward side. They hadn’t realised it but the gradient of the tunnel was gradually ascending.

After they had covered a few feet they encountered a series of steps hewn from the rock that led to another tunnel at a higher level than the one they were in. They noticed that the sea water was lapping against the bottom two steps and appeared to remain at a constant level of a couple of feet lower than the lip of the next tunnel.

Once they had reached the higher ground they were relieved to now be walking on dry land. As they no longer needed their diving equipment, they took it off and abandoned it there. With the equipment not weighing them down they could move a lot faster.

The tunnel they entered was similar to the one on the other side accessed through Limassol Castle with similar openings at the same irregular intervals. They had heard Elli read the inscription. There was nothing similar at their end. They waited as the other group had begun to throw ideas as to the meaning of the inscription.

An expression of recognition coloured Katerina’s face.

‘It must refer to Constantinople and the king must be the Emperor. That bit about the pieces of the Emperor’s body could be a test, something we need to get before we proceed to the tomb and the final act of waking the Emperor. The “temple of wisdom” could be an actual structure that we should find further on inside with pieces missing that we would need to insert to complete it.

‘Then again “temple of wisdom” could be referring to a space with manuscripts residing inside, a space very much like a library, perhaps? It could mean that the Emperor’s tomb could be inside the temple.’ Katerina paused, suddenly, and surprisingly for her, self-conscious and shame-faced. ‘I hope I’m not going on a wild tangent here. Sorry. My imagination got the better of me.’

Suddenly she had second thoughts and quickly recovered from her unlikely feeling of shy embarrassment. She certainly did not have an inferiority complex. Her defiance and common sense reasserted themselves. ‘But, surely, especially because of what we have encountered so far on this adventure, my speculation is not that crazy, is it? I only wish the geological scans were clearer.

‘The geological strata or something in there was interfering with the satellite imaging. But the outline of that subterranean structure in the middle could be a temple or a church. And there seems to be a chasm surrounding it, above and below and on each side. It looks as if there is no way to reach it. We’ll have to get there and see by ourselves. If indeed there exists that chasm around whatever structure is there, there may be walkways leading to it.’

Giorgos cut in. His voice carried clear through their earpieces. ‘Katerina, it looks like you will have to go through the opening next to the inscription before you proceed further along the tunnel.’