The Oracle (13 page)

He walked out on to the street, while a cold pale light sculpted the barren mound of Mount Hymettus against an ash-grey sky. He nudged the backpack up on to his shoulder and walked north. A truck transporting a herd of sheep to the pastures of Thessaly stopped to pick him up. He got into the rickety vehicle and curled up on the seat with his backpack between his legs. The bleating of the sheep, the chatter of the driver, the din of the old asthmatic engine and the unhinged side boards didn’t even touch the abysmal silence of his soul, or alter the painful, stupefied look in his eyes.

He crossed Thessaly and Macedon, passed the border at Evzoni and travelled through Yugoslavia under torrential rain on a Bulgarian semi carrying a load of meat for Italy. He crossed Austria and Germany, sleeping in hostels or under the shelters at service stations. In three days and three nights he reached the Channel and landed at Dover, white with snow.

Athens seemed as distant then as a remote and desolate planet.

When he opened his passport at the border control station, a photo fell out: it was a polaroid he’d taken with Michel and Claudio next to the Deux-Chevaux on the mountains of Epirus. He didn’t bend down to pick it up, allowing it to be trampled by the muddy boots of the truck drivers at the inspection counter.

And so he snuffed out the memories of the last years of his youth.

T
HE
I
TALIAN CONSULATE
opened an investigation into the death of Claudio Setti, although he had no close relatives, as instructed by the Foreign Affairs Ministry. The version provided by the Greek police contrasted greatly with the information they were able to collect among his companions and professors at the Italian school of archaeology in Athens. Claudio was described as an easy-going, polite boy, with rather conservative political ideas, scrupulous in his studies. Not the picture of a dangerous terrorist, unless he had agreed to accompany his girlfriend that day without knowing what was in the car. In any case, no evidence for any involvement on his part ever turned up, and his death remained a mystery.

Captain Karamanlis, who had sought more information on Ari Malidis, ended up abandoning his efforts. The file he had asked for eventually came through, but bureaucratic red tape and the lack of eagerness on the part of the Fine Arts Service to collaborate with the political police led to considerable delays, and his request ended up fuelling suspicion on his account rather than providing any useful information. Moreover, Admiral Bogdanos’s words had had a profound and long-lasting effect on him, hanging over his head like a permanent threat. Besides, normalization operations were taking up all of his time: inspections, interrogations, searches, arrests.

He had gone as far as Patras and Salonika to incriminate a number of professors who had declared their solidarity with the students during the Polytechnic revolt, and to arrest members of clandestine labour unions who had encouraged the students’ demands for a general strike.

Throughout all these operations he was never able to uncover anything more than what everyone already knew: that there was widespread intolerance of and rebellion against the government. But he never had the least doubt that his convictions were absolutely on the ball: he was certain that the whole plot had been cooked up by outside organizers and that it was just through bad luck that only the little fish had got caught up in his nets.

Sometimes, late at night, he sat at his desk with a sandwich and a bottle of beer trying to trace the connections between the group of people who had given him so many headaches at this crucial moment of his life: Norman Shields, who had told him about the golden vase, was the son of James Henry Shields, the liaison between the Greek and American secret services, and was the friend of Claudio Setti, Michel Charrier and Heleni Kaloudis. Plus he knew Ari Malidis, who had brought a dying man to the hospital at Kifissìa in the middle of the night.

And this Admiral Bogdanos, who always knew everything and was everywhere. He’d even known about his unfortunate midnight excursion to the museum basement! Who could have informed him? The director of Antiquities? Improbable. The young Shields himself ? But what connection could there be between a high-ranking secret service officer and a twenty-year-old student? The strangest thing was that there were no plausible connections between these people, apart from the group of friends, who were clearly all archaeology students. But there was one thing that they all had in common: the magnificent gold vase that he had held in his hands for a moment.

Was that the connection? The true centre of gravity? If only he could manage to find out where it was and what it meant – those figures engraved on the vase . . . so strange – then maybe he’d understand what it was that tied all those people together. But the vase had disappeared and he had no clue where he could find it. And something told him that it was too risky, business too big for someone like him. Bogdanos’s order to stay away had nearly even made him forget about the blow a stranger had dealt him so unexpectedly that night in the National Museum.

For weeks and weeks he was also tortured by the thought that Bogdanos might screw him with that story about Claudio Setti. After all, he had no real proof that the kid had been rubbed out, and he cursed his hastiness that day. He’d let himself be drawn in like a novice. Maybe Bogdanos wanted to keep him on a leash with the threat of resurrecting a dead man and setting him on him. Okay, so what could be the worst possible scenario? He could always say he had acted in good faith, and refer to the personal objects, the ID card and medal that he’d shown to the coroner. When he’d nearly forgotten all about it – since nothing had happened in the meantime – one of the errand boys handed him an envelope. It contained a photograph showing Claudio Setti on the table of a morgue. If it had been anyone else, he would have turned it over to the technicians in the lab, but he thought it best to rely on cop’s intuition this time. He burned the photo and banished it from his thoughts.

As time passed, the situation returned to normal; day after day, life was resuming its usual rhythms and at police headquarters they went back to busying themselves with thieves and robbers, smugglers and swindlers. His opponents were in the cooler, meditating on their stupidity. This should have set his mind at rest, put his soul in peace. And yet . . . he was tense and nervous. Even at home, where he’d always managed to keep out work-day worries, he was irritable and bad-tempered and his wife did nothing but repeat ‘What’s wrong with you?’ At times, getting out for a walk and a bit of fresh air, he even had the sensation he was being followed: a shadow that he could almost see out of the corner of his eye, but which vanished as soon as he turned his head. Him, followed! That was a laugh. He was the bloodhound, capable of hunting down his prey for weeks on end, for months. He must really be worn out.

One day he picked up the phone and called a friend at the Ministry of Defence: ‘Do you have an officer named Bogdanos on the navy list?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Nothing in particular. Just . . . curious.’

‘Bogdanos, you said? Wait, I’ll check. Certainly, Anastasios Bogdanos. I’ll call you back when I’ve taken a look at his file. It’ll be a fine opportunity to see you! You never come round any more. You never think of an old friend unless there’s something you need, huh?’

‘You’re right, I should be ashamed of myself. Thanks for your trouble.’

They met a few days later at a tavern in the Plaka.

‘He’s a war hero. Did time on the submarine
Velos
, much decorated, gold medal, former commander of the navy academy, currently assigned to special duties with the staff office, of which he is a member.’

‘Is it too much to ask what these special duties are?’

‘You said it. Let him go, my friend, don’t bite off more than you can chew.’

‘Is he so powerful?’

‘He’s an honest man. No one has anything on him. In our current situation, that makes him a man to be feared, because he knows everything about everyone, but no one can accuse him of anything.’

‘Would you say he can be trusted?’

‘I don’t think he’s ever fallen back on his word. If you’ve collaborated with him in some operation, you’re safe on all sides. He’s a man who, when he has to, pays off his debts in person. And punishes . . . in person, if necessary.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘There’s nothing more I can tell you, even if I wanted to. I hope I’ve been of some help to you, my friend.’

‘Oh, you certainly have. Of great help. Thank you.’

His friend changed the subject, chatting about the soccer championship and the music festival at Salonika. But the sound of a bouzouki wafted in from a nearby house, with the words from a song by Theodorakis: ‘
In his cell they tortured Andreas, And tomorrow they’ll take him to die . .
.
’

‘Listen to that garbage! They should be arrested and taken to trial. They should all be arrested.’

Karamanlis fingered his
komboloi
, passing the yellow plastic beads from one hand to the other.

‘Right.’

‘Good. Well then, I’ll say goodbye. Come by some time. You only show up when you need something, dammit!’

It was getting dark and Karamanlis walked to his car. He stopped at a street vendor’s to buy a packet of roasted chestnuts for the kids: they loved them.

Tarquinia, Italy, 28 May 1983, 5.30 p.m.

T
HE MAN AT
the reception desk was obviously annoyed at having to take his eyes off the Formula One grand prix on his little portable TV. He turned to the client who had just walked in.

‘There are no vacancies,’ he said. ‘Unless you have a reservation.’

‘I do have a reservation,’ said the stranger, resting his suitcase on the floor.

The clerk took the register, turning the TV set so he could still see it out of the corner of his eye.

‘What’s the name?’

‘Kouras, Stàvros Kouras.’

The clerk ran his finger down the guest list.

‘Kouras with a K, right? . . . Okay,’ he said, ‘here we are. Suite 45, second floor. Could you please give me an ID, and then you can go right up.’

The stranger placed his passport on the counter. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘I need some information.’

‘Yes?’ replied the clerk, increasingly torn between his job and the object of his true interest.

‘I’m looking for a man named Dino Ferretti. He lives here in Tarquinia and he’s a tour guide.’

‘Ferretti? Sure, he often takes our guests around. Matter of fact, if you hurry you’ll probably find him with the last group of tourists at the necropolis of Monterozzi. Do you know how to get there?’

‘No, but I’ll find someone who can tell me,’ replied the stranger.

‘Oh, sure,’ said the clerk, turning the volume on his set back up.

The stranger asked a boy to take up his suitcase and walked out of the door, leaving the deafening roar of Niki Lauda’s McLaren behind him. He went to his car and drove past the city limits to the entrance of the necropolis. It was nearly closing time and the custodian had already put away the tickets and pulled down the shutter. He stood beside the gate, waiting for the last tour group to leave. They trickled out a few at a time, strolling towards the bus that was waiting for them. The guide, a young man of about thirty-five with a tour agency badge in the buttonhole of his jacket, was among the last to arrive. He lingered, answering the questions of the two or three people most interested in the tour. They were elderly American ladies in leisure suits and hats, still piqued by the sex scene in the Tomb of the Bulls and asking for embarrassing elucidation.

When they were all in the bus, the guide stepped up on to the footboard, checking outside to make sure there were no laggers, when his eye fell on the black Mercedes with Athens plates parked at the end of the lot. He suddenly scowled, staring at the indistinct shape behind the windscreen. The bus’s pneumatic door slid shut, and he sat down next to the driver, eyeing the rear-view mirror. The Mercedes pulled out behind the bus and followed it at a distance of a couple of hundred metres. The tourists got out in front of the Rasenna hotel as the guide waved goodbye and set off on foot towards the high part of town. The Mercedes had disappeared.

He stopped in a grocery store to buy some cheese and cold cuts and pick up a magazine at the news-stand. He walked off, paging through it, headed towards a small building not far from the cathedral square. He stopped and looked around, trying to shake the sensation that he was being followed, then went into the main door and took the stairs up to the top floor.

He stood at the window and let his gaze wander over the spread of red roof tiles and the flower-filled countryside beyond smelling of freshly cut grass. A cloud of starlings wavered uncertainly in the sky, looking for shelter as night began to fall.

A knock sounded at the door: a dry, hard sound. He sensed the same presence behind the door as behind the shiny surface of the windscreen up at the necropolis. Far off, over the fields, the clouds of starlings scattered, the dark shadow of a kite splitting them apart. He went to open the door.

‘Good evening, son.’