The Oracle (28 page)

Karamanlis put on his glasses and got closer to look at the photograph: the man had a minute face, a thin, drooping moustache and small dark eyes. A lock of thinning hair attempted to provide some cover for an otherwise bald scalp. Karamanlis fell silent in shock: that man was not Admiral Bogdanos! Or rather, the man who he had always thought was Bogdanos.

He walked back towards the gate where the custodian was waiting for him.

‘Were you relatives?’ he asked.

‘Relatives? No . . . we were in the war together.’

‘I see,’ said the custodian, snapping shut the lock.

Karamanlis drove straight back to the city police headquarters and had an identikit of the impostor issued to all the other stations in the country, requesting identification and indicating that the man might be in possession of information which could provide a direct lead to the deaths of Roussos and Karagheorghis. He also had it sent to Scotland Yard, adding that the man might have information regarding the murder of James Henry Shields as well. He asked headquarters in Athens to inform him immediately of any development, no matter what time of day or night.

He realized that he’d been played for a fool: when that man had taken Claudio Setti away ten years ago he was still alive, and he had surely saved the boy. He’d been wangled all right, like a stupid greenhorn. But at least now he’d managed to blow the fake’s cover, and he wouldn’t be tricked again. What he had to do now was find a name for that man who had hidden behind the identity of Admiral Anastasios Bogdanos for the last ten years. All he had was a face, but maybe that would be enough. He’d be getting news from someplace in Greece soon, or maybe even from England. He’d contact Interpol if he had to. The game had got serious – it had become a question of life or death.

He got home just before ten.

His wife opened the door. He stood on the landing, package of feta in one hand and bottle of retsina in the other.

‘You look awful,’ she said. ‘What happened to you?’

M
IREILLE HAD NOT
asked her father for a personal favour for at least two years, since she had started going out with Michel. It wasn’t easy or pleasant thinking up a plausible reason why her father, Guy François de Saint-Cyr, should arrange for her to access Icarus. But she would have done anything to be back with Michel and to find her way into his life again. He’d excluded her for so long . . . for months and months now. The memory of that night at rue des Orfèvres in Grenoble was still very vivid and it gave her a sense of apprehension and uneasiness that the strange words he’d asked her to look up only served to increase.

‘I’m interested in a certain type of technical terminology in ancient literature,’ she told him. ‘It’s for a publication; Icarus can save me months and months of work. But I don’t want to create any problems . . . if it’s inconvenient just forget about it. I’ll go to the US where there are a couple of universities with partial collections: Stanford, I think, or UCLA.’

The mere thought that Mireille would head out towards those wild Californian schools full of queers and drug addicts was enough for Saint-Cyr to promise all his support. He was surprised and secretly delighted that his daughter had asked for his help as she used to do in the past.

Mireille had to wait a few days for approval to arrive from London and in the meantime she called Michel whenever she could. He didn’t want to waste time, and had already started looking in the National Library in Athens, going through all the books that he thought might contain such phrases. But the best he could do was guess: the Old Testament, Athenaeus, Apollodorus, Dionysius Areopagitas, the Fathers of the Church, Lucianus. He’d also gone to the land registry office to see if he could find out who the building at 17 Dionysìou Street belonged to, but had been told that it would take some time. He’d tried slipping the clerk a tip, but it hadn’t helped much, because anyone who needed anything from the office had obviously done the same. So it was back to square one.

Mireille didn’t manage to get access to Icarus until mid-October, when she received a formal appointment from the company. She arrived fresh off the plane from Paris, emanating the elegance and style of her social rank and her personal beauty, and was taken directly to the office of the director, who was reluctant to hand her over to Dr Jones, the technician who was to help her in her research. He was a shy, young, freckle-faced man with red hair who had certainly never had to deal with a woman so intelligent that she wanted to interrogate Icarus, and so beautiful as to make his legs tremble and muddle his thoughts. His attempts at small talk were wholly inadequate, his compliments awkward and inopportune, but Mireille smiled regardless as he led her along the long hall and accompanied her down to the sterile, uniformly lit basement room where the company devised its computer strategies. And where all the knowledge salvaged from the shipwrecked ancient world was saved on a disk a few centimetres wide.

Mireille did not want her father to regret having obtained this privilege for her, and so for a good hour she entered a series of questions in which she had absolutely no interest but which fitted in with her alibi, were it ever to be checked. But she couldn’t wait to type in those phrases that she’d copied in her notebook.

‘Dr Jones,’ she said, when she felt ready, ‘I don’t know how to thank you: Icarus is a dream come true – it’s saved me months and months of work and research.’

‘Oh, I’ve done nothing. And I’ve enjoyed your company immensely. You see, it’s not every day that I get to assist such a lovely girl. These thinking machines have an advantage over us – they’re completely insensitive to female beauty and can work quickly and rationally, while any human being would be hopelessly confused by . . . well, anyone like me, anyway . . .’

‘How sweet of you to say such a thing, Dr Jones.’

Jones gulped. ‘Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’d like to ask our program?’

‘Now that you ask, there are a couple of odd phrases that I copied down from a book a long time ago, and I would be curious to know where they come from. But I don’t want to inconvenience you. It’s really not important.’

‘No, no, I wouldn’t mind in the least, believe me. What exactly are you looking for?’

‘You know ancient Greek, obviously.’

‘Of course, I’ve been one of the main contributors to the Icarus program.’

‘It’s something that a friend of mine transcribed into modern Greek from the ancient Greek. I’d like to identify the original source. It’s just a couple of phrases . . .’

She showed him the transcriptions in her notebook: ‘She’s naked, she’s cold,’ and ‘You put the bread into a cold oven.’

‘Weird stuff,’ said Jones.

‘You’re right.’

‘Okay. Let’s try.’

The technician typed in the first phrase, then hit the search key. The numbers of the files being scanned flew over the display while the following message appeared:

Eight minutes! The machine could go through the entire body of classical literature in just eight minutes!

‘Found it,’ said the technician suddenly. ‘Look, he’s found it.’ A blue blinking light at the top right of the screen signalled that the search was over, and the exact source of the quotation appeared at the centre of the display:

Jones turned to the girl with a vaguely dismayed look on his face. ‘It’s an Oracle of the Dead, miss, reported by Herodotus.’

Herodotus! Lord knew what obscure sources Michel was looking through that very minute. Why was it that one tried the most difficult things first? Herodotus of all things!

‘Let’s see who it refers to,’ added Jones, as he typed in another query. Icarus responded instantly:

and then again

‘The phrase refers to Melissa, the dead wife of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, if I’m not mistaken.’

Icarus answered at his request for confirmation.

‘Let’s look at the second phrase now,’ said Jones, and entered the first of the versions Mireille had written down.

replied Icarus after a few minutes, adding:

Several more minutes passed. A window on the screen was analysing all the possible grammatical and stylistic variations that the program’s endless philological memory could assemble. Mireille was fascinated: ‘Incredible,’ she murmured, her eyes glued to the screen. ‘Fantastic’ A message finally appeared:

‘Let’s try it this way,’ suggested Jones, entering:

Icarus promptly started searching again, and, after just a few seconds, provided the answer, together with the phrase in ancient Greek:

It concluded with the text source:

‘Strange,’ said Mireille. ‘Could it be the same passage?’

‘Not quite, miss. It’s in the following paragraph. Look, I can call up the entire chapter.’

It took just a few seconds for chapter 92 of Book V of Herodotus to show up on the display. Both read it in silence, then Jones said with a naughty tone: ‘Quite some story, miss.’

‘Yeah,’ replied Mireille, a bit embarrassed. ‘I wonder what it could have meant in the context I found it in . . .’

‘Icarus is printing all the operations we’ve requested. If you need more than one copy, we have to specify that.’

‘Two. Two would be fine, thank you.’

‘Of everything?’

‘Yes, everything. Please.’

Jones took the sheets coming off the printer, slipped them into a folder and handed it to Mireille, who thanked him warmly.

‘You’re not going straight back to France, I hope,’ Jones found the courage to ask in a small voice.

Mireille looked at her watch. ‘If I hurry I’ll be able to catch the five-thirty plane from Heathrow. I just don’t know how to thank you, Dr Jones. You’ll say goodbye to the director for me, won’t you?’

‘Oh, yes, certainly,’ stammered Jones, disappointed. They got into the elevator, and in that brief moment of forced intimacy he wanted to make another attempt, but before he got his courage up, the elevator had already arrived at its destination and the door was opening.

‘Thanks so much again,’ said Mireille, hurrying down the corridor that led to the exit.

Jones stood watching the soft roll of her hips under her white linen skirt, and blushed at the thoughts running through his mind.

He shouted after her: ‘Come back any time you like!’

Mireille turned with a smile and waved, then reached the exit. She tried Michel’s number from the first booth she found and then again at the airport, but got no answer. Michel at that moment was futilely pouring over his books at the National Library. She found him after midnight, calling from a restaurant along the highway:

‘Mission accomplished, Professor.’

‘Mireille, you’ve really succeeded?’

‘Icarus is great, It didn’t take longer than fifteen minutes. Both phrases are from Herodotus.’

‘Herodotus? Good God, I can’t believe it.’

‘Right, Herodotus, Book V, chapter 92, paragraphs 2 and 3. Both Oracles of the Dead. Messages from the underworld.’

P
AVLOS
K
ARAMANLIS ARRIVED
at police headquarters eager to see whether the identikit he’d sent around the country had found a match, but he was immediately disappointed. Lots of answers on the table: all negative. No one seemed to remember having seen that face. Except for Skardamoula and Hierolimin, but he hadn’t even bothered sending it to them.

He asked his friend at the Ministry of Defence for an appointment and met him for dinner in a tavern.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Has there ever been a mix-up in your files? Like, a mistaken identity for instance?’

‘Absolutely not. Why do you ask?’

He took a copy of the identikit out of his pocket: ‘Have you ever seen this man?’ His friend shook his head. ‘Look at him carefully,’ insisted Karamanlis, ‘it’s very important. Are you certain you’ve never seen him?’

‘Absolutely certain. It’s not the type of face you forget easily.’

‘Well, I’ve been dealing with this man over the last ten years as if he were Admiral Anastasios Bogdanos. That’s how he introduced himself ten years ago, and that’s who I believed he was.’

‘Oh no, Admiral Bogdanos looked absolutely nothing like that. My God, how could a man like you let that happen? Didn’t you get information on him?’