The Oracle (18 page)

The policeman had no choice but to put the car in reverse and begin backing down the winding road, his head out the window to make sure that no one was going to ram him from behind.

K
ARAGHEORGHIS REALIZED THAT
something must have happened and decided to go in on his own. He couldn’t leave that guy down in the caves; tomorrow there would be a whole load of tourists and Lord only knew what he might try. And the police were always stuck with the blame. To hell with it. He went back to the car and switched on the radio: ‘Will you move your ass? That nutcase has gone into the Katafigi caves; we’ve got to get him out of there right now.’

‘Listen, there’s a truck here taking up the whole road. I can’t get by him and I’m backing up to the first turning place.’

‘A truck? Who is it?’

‘Listen, I don’t know, but I think he’s from Hierolimin.’

‘Write him up a hefty fine, at least; he can’t use this road with any kind of load. Then get the devil down here. I’m going in, in the meantime.’

‘All right. I’ll get there as soon as I can.’

Karagheorghis entered the cave and realized that the lighting system had been activated. So the guy had the keys, or at least he knew where to find them. He cocked the trigger on his gun and walked quickly along the first stretch. The tunnel soon widened and the passage was transformed into a vast clearing studded by a forest of diaphanous white stalagmites. He strained to hear, but all he could make out was the soft concert of drops falling from the ceiling of the cavern. All at once he heard a slight gurgling: the lake! The man had entered from the underground river; perhaps he’d stolen one of the boats used to ferry tourists.

He dashed over to the shore of the lake buried so deep beneath the surface of the earth. He had never seen a body of water look this way before: the absence of every living thing, the silence, the vast aperture of the cave, the eerie play of lights in the dark pool, the astonishing colours of the rocks. It gave him a sense of nearly religious wonder. Why had that man come all the way down here, at this time of day; what was he looking for? And where was he now?

He walked down the little path that circled the lake for a couple of hundred metres. The surface of the water was shiny and as black as a sheet of polished steel, without the tiniest ripple. Any dark thought could have taken shape and strength under that inky sheen. He picked up a stone and tossed it into the water, as if to break a spell or banish a nightmare. It was swallowed up without a sound. Yorgo Karagheorghis could hear nothing but his own breath, nothing but the beating of his own heart, which had suddenly quickened.

He thought that it would be best to turn back and wait for his buddy to show up. They could stake out the entrance, wait for the guy there; he’d have to get out somehow. He started to turn back, but a voice rumbled across the lake, ran down the walls of the cavern and splintered against the forest of stalagmites that rose from the ground and from the water.

‘Yorgo Karagheorghis!’

His blood rushed, icy cold with fear, to his heart. He gripped his gun, which had become slippery in his numb, sweaty hand. All he could see was that pale forest of white pillars, streaked with green tears, without soul or life.

‘How do you know my name?’ he shouted. And his voice dashed up against the ceiling, thick with stalactites, and rained back down on his head, shivery and shattered.

‘You threw the girl in the lake, Yorgo Karagheorghis. Did you not throw her naked into the lake?’

The voice seemed to be coming from behind him now . . . how was it possible? . . .

‘Now I’m coming to get you. Don’t you know that this is the mouth of hell?’

Karagheorghis flattened himself against a wall, still and silent. He drew a long breath. ‘So it’s me or you, then,’ he thought, and he began to slip towards the darkest and most hidden corner of the cave. He raised his head and saw what looked like the wide open jaws of a monstrous dog – two pointy stalactites streaked with red like bloody fangs. Bad sign.

The silence was suddenly broken by a slight splash, and he dropped his eyes, astonished, towards the surface of the lake. On the opposite shore, a boat was emerging out of the gloom. A cloaked, hooded figure was standing at the stern, pushing himself along with an oar.

Karagheorghis smirked: ‘Takes more than a trick like this to make me shit in my pants, my friend.’ He swiftly calculated the distance that separated him from his target. When the boat was in range, he jumped out of his hiding place and pointed the pistol at the figure with both hands.

‘Why did you do it?’ shouted the voice, sounding vulnerable this time, touched with pain.

‘I had no choice,’ Karagheorghis shouted back. ‘I had no choice, dammit!’ But as he pulled the trigger, the lights abruptly went out. The shot exploded, tearing through the still atmosphere of the cavern. The roar reverberated into the cave’s most secret recesses and flooded back out, multiplied a thousandfold, fractured and distorted, transformed into a chorus of screams, into a pounding howl.

When the fracas had died down, Karagheorghis, surrounded by total darkness, had lost all sense of time and space. He could only hear the furious beating of his heart.

Then he heard the splashing again: the boat was still advancing towards him, inexorably. He lost control and began to shoot out wildly. As soon as he had discharged the final shot, a flame tore through the darkness at his left. He didn’t understand, couldn’t think: an explosion and then a high-pitched whistle. Then two, three atrocious stabs of pain lacerated his body and his mind.

A small beam of light shone on him, and footsteps resounded on the gravel path. The cold hands of that ghost fell to work on his tormented body, leaving him naked and trembling. Then the little beam of light moved away, the sound of footsteps faded into the distance and he was left to die, alone, in the damp warmth of his own blood soaking the earth.

O
FFICER ANDREAS PENDELENI
reached the entrance of the Katafigi caverns and saw Karagheorghis’s patrol car, parked, with the radio still on. He climbed over the fence and went in. The lights were on and the visitors’ trail was well lit. The policeman advanced cautiously, holding on tight to the Beretta calibre 9, his finger on the trigger. He called out: ‘Yorgo! Yorgo, are you in there? If you’re in there, answer me.’

He heard what sounded like a death rattle, and he ran in the direction it was coming from. He reached the shore of the lake and saw the naked, bloody body of Sergeant Karagheorghis gleaming, half-immersed in the water.

He had been run through by three stalactites, sharp and deadly as spears. One between the neck and collarbone, another in his stomach and the third in his groin.

He put a hand under his head: ‘Who was it, Yorgo? What happened?’

Karagheorghis raised his eyes towards the ceiling of the cave and Andreas could see the broken stumps of the cluster of stalactites which had pierced him through. Certainly no natural phenomenon.

‘Who was it?’ asked Andreas. ‘Did you see who it was?’

Karagheorghis opened his mouth, trying to utter a sound, and his companion put his ear to his lips, hoping he’d say the murderer’s name, but all he heard was his last gasp as his body collapsed lifelessly. Andreas closed his friend’s eyes, then took off his own jacket and tried to cover him up as best he could. As he was going back towards the entrance, he happened to glance at a rock along the edge of the trail. Someone had used the dead man’s blood to write the words:

He hurried back to his car. He switched on the radio and called headquarters at Kalamata.

‘This is Officer Pendeleni. Something terrible has happened. No, a crime. Sergeant Karagheorghis has been murdered, at the Dirou caves. Send a team to investigate and inform the coroner right away. I’ll wait here.’

The sun had dipped below the horizon and a pale golden reflection lapped at the grey towers of Hierolimin in the distance.

Areopolis, the Peloponnesus, 22 August, 7 p.m.

T
HE POLICE COMMISSIONER
of the Kalamata district immediately ordered roadblocks on all the streets of the peninsula: they would trap the murderer at the end of the promontory. He had got there by car; when he tried to turn back he’d be caught in their net. The coastguard was put on alert to stop any suspicious boats trying to set sail from Hierolimin or Cape Tenaros. A helicopter patrolled all the cave exits from above.

When general headquarters in Athens was informed, the case was immediately connected to the murder of retired officer Petros Roussos at Parthenion in Arcadia. The message left by the killer was the same – apparently absurd and meaningless. Athens promised to send someone to work with the commissioner at Kalamata. In the meantime, it was essential that the criminal who had killed Karagheorghis be captured; it was surely the same person who had murdered Roussos. Same deranged mind, same sadistic imagination.

Officer Pendeleni, who had discovered his partner dying in the cave at Katafigi, participated actively in the investigation along with his colleagues. They searched the caves thoroughly with the aid of local guides; speleologists from the University of Patras who had been conducting research on the site were also called in, all to no avail. The police worked all night, in shifts, exploring every nook of every gallery. Divers sounded the waters of the underground lakes but never found a thing.

Pendeleni managed to locate the truck driver who had blocked off the road as he was trying to get to the caves, and arranged to meet with him that evening at a tavern in Hierolimin. The man was absolutely above and beyond suspicion; he had been working in the area for over thirty years. It was his load that seemed questionable; the boat that picked up the lumber he unloaded at the pier at his destination in Gythion seemed to be the same one that had delivered it earlier.

‘And that didn’t seem strange to you?’ asked the officer.

‘Oh, it seemed strange all right.’

‘And it didn’t occur to you to ask the guys on the boat why they were giving you the runaround?’

‘They had paid me in advance: why should I stick my nose in other people’s business? They asked me to pick up a load in one place and deliver it to another place. Fine with me, as long as the money’s there.’

‘And who placed the order? Can you remember?’

The truck driver nodded. ‘You don’t forget a face like that.’

‘Is it someone from around here?’

‘No. I’ve never seen him around here, but he sure knew the place.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, a strong meltemi wind was blowing yesterday morning when he got there with the boat, and I can tell you that he was handling it as though he’d always navigated in these waters. I couldn’t believe it.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘Medium height, strong build, about fifty, I’d say. His eyes were blue . . . light blue, like the water near the rocks. A face of stone . . . a sailor, no doubt about it. And a good one.’

‘And he was aboard the boat when you unloaded at Gythion?’

‘No. There was no one on the boat. I unloaded the lumber at the pier and I got someone from the dock workers’ cooperative to sign. May still be there for all I know.’

D
EEP WITHIN THE
bowels of the cramped, dark cave, the passage finally started to widen. A slight, barely perceptible luminescence lit up a bend ahead.

‘It won’t be long now, just a few more metres and we can rest. Don’t give up, just keep moving. Look . . .

The passage widened and splayed open under an immense vault curved over a vast surface. A slight but very distinct glow, in contrast to the inky darkness preceding it, allowed them to make out the boundaries of the chamber.

‘Good God, Commander, what is this light?’

‘It’s the natural phosphorescence of the rocks, which are somewhat radioactive here: that’s why you’re wearing that plastic cape. Pull up the hood. We’re going to be here for hours, no sense taking unnecessary risks.’

‘I don’t understand. How did you know about this underwater passage and how did you know that that horrible shaft would lead to this underground cathedral?’

‘There’s far more here, my son. Soon the sea that covers the bottom of this cave will ebb enough to let the reflection of the moon filter through, and you’ll see more wonders.’

‘You haven’t answered my question. You almost never answer my questions.’

‘You’re wrong. I’ve always answered all of your questions. The real ones. You wanted justice to be done and I’ve prepared the day of judgement for those who have destroyed your life and Heleni’s. What does the rest matter?’

At that moment, the distant mouth of the cave started to tremble and to glitter softly, and the vault was illuminated by a wondrous light, fluid and shivering, animated by silent, ever-changing waves: the light of the moon reflected by the rocky surface of the sea. The rocks seemed alive with iridescence and they could hear the sea breathing, a long powerful noise like that of a sleeping giant. An acutely salty odour pervaded the atmosphere, which was vibrating with innumerable reflections.

‘Come on,’ said Admiral Bogdanos. ‘It will take us nearly an hour to reach the sea. We have to move before the water level gets too high.’ He began walking and the sound of his steps on the gravel mixed with the distant waves of the Aegean and the rustling of the wind. Claudio started after him but soon stopped dead in his tracks, immobilized by wonder: the light was flowing across the bottom of the cave as well, revealing every minimal detail.