He could hear yelling on the road. Someone was getting an earful. A moment later, one of the Georgians appeared and got down on his hands and knees, then reached beneath the Mercedes, pulled free a transmitter, held in place by strips of black tape. If he’d just looked around, he’d have seen Knox instantly; but mercifully he didn’t. There was more talking. Decisions were made. They all climbed back in their Mercedes, then reversed back up the lane and away.

  Knox gave them thirty seconds or so, then got to his feet, brushed himself down, went to take a look. No sign of them. He checked around the corner. The road was clear. He pulled the wheelie-bin aside to let Sokratis out, then pushed it back into the empty slot and climbed into the rear of the Volvo. Sokratis drove cautiously off. His pale blue shirt had turned two-toned with sweat; he smelled nearly as bad as the wheelie-bin. ‘I thought you said that man was your husband,’ he scowled accusingly at Nadya.

  ‘Did you?’ asked Nadya innocently.

  ‘I don’t do this kind of mobster shit. I do divorces. That’s all.’

  ‘Then this is an excellent chance to expand your business.’

  ‘You think this is funny?’ he shouted. ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘I didn’t lie. You made assumptions, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t work for clients who lie to me. Get out of my car. Now.’

  ‘Don’t be such an ass,’ she retorted. ‘You’ve still got my luggage. Drive me to my hotel, and then do what the hell you like, if you haven’t got the balls for this kind of work.’

  ‘I don’t have his luggage,’ said Sokratis, jabbing a thumb at Knox.

  ‘Just drive, will you. Or give me my money back.’ She turned in her seat. ‘Where do you want to go?’

  There wasn’t much point in Knox returning to his car; Mikhail had his keys. ‘How about a Metro station?’ he asked.

  ‘You heard him,’ Nadya told Sokratis.

  He gave her a glare, but he couldn’t hope to match wills. He drove warily on. They reached the main road and he leaned forward as far as possible, his eyes almost comically peeled for black Mercedes.

  ‘You were telling me about the Nergadzes,’ Knox reminded Nadya.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. She glanced at Sokratis, her faith in him evidently shaken. ‘Do you speak French?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ She switched language smoothly. ‘Let me give you some more background on Ilya. He owns several oil and gas interests, like most of the oligarchs; but there are rumours that his first billion came from trading guns to Afghanistan in exchange for heroin.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘The Americans put pressure on the Georgian government to go after him. But families like the Nergadzes stick together. You can’t arrest just one of them without precipitating a small war. A simultaneous mass arrest was planned, but somebody blabbed. The whole clan fled to Cyprus—they’ve got several houses there, not to mention a mega-yacht and much of their cash. But Ilya’s not the kind for exile, however pampered. Negotiations for his return were getting nowhere, so he set up his own political party to target vulnerable government seats, and he won enough of them to make himself a real thorn in the president’s side.’

  ‘And suddenly he was allowed back, no doubt?’

  ‘Of course. Everyone assumed he’d quit politics, having got what he’d wanted; but it seems he’d developed the taste. You have to understand something. Georgia is one of the great fault-lines of our modern world. It separates those who have oil and gas from those who need it. It separates NATO from the old Soviet Union, Islam from Christianity, drugs from their markets. Whoever controls Georgia matters.’

  ‘And Nergadze wants it to be him?’

  Nadya nodded. ‘He made his first bid in the 2008 presidential elections, but he barely scraped in third. That should have been that for a few more years, except for South Ossetia. Nergadze and the other opposition leaders forced new elections. Nergadze has made himself the main challenger. Our current guy is so unpopular, he should walk it, except that he’s got serious problems of his own. He’s seen as being too close to the Russians, for one thing, and we Georgians hate the Russians. On the other hand, we don’t just hate them, we fear them too. So if Nergadze can convince voters he’s the man to repair our relationship with Moscow without jeopardising our independence, he’ll win. That’s why he’s been filling his speeches with nationalistic bullshit recently, and spending a fortune buying up and repatriating Georgian art and artefacts, doing everything he can to prove himself our greatest patriot.’

  Knox sat back. He understood now why Mikhail Nergadze was here in Athens, though it didn’t explain why he was after Knox, not unless…‘Oh, hell,’ he muttered.

  ‘What?’ asked Nadya.

  ‘They’re after the golden fleece,’ he told her bleakly. ‘And they must think I’ve got it.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  I

  In the end, Nina hadn’t needed Kiko to tell her what had happened the night before. Their horse-riding excursion had made it obvious. The solicitude with which Ilya Nergadze had helped Kiko up onto his mount, the way he’d ridden alongside him, joshing him and tousling his hair, boasting about his wealth and lands: behaving, in short, like a smitten suitor trying to impress his love.

  No way would Edouard be able to get help here before tomorrow at the earliest. He had too many troubles of his own. It was up to her, therefore, to keep Kiko and the twins safe. It shouldn’t be beyond her. This was a castle, after all; and even though the drawbridge was up and there was no realistic way off the island, there were all kinds of places to hunker down. She took the children to her room, cautioned them not to leave until she returned, then set off on a search. The keep itself was too busy and too full for her purposes, so she started with the outbuildings. The stables were clean and spacious, pungent with animal smells. But the stalls were mostly occupied, and the others were empty and comfortless.

  Two grooms came in laughing, but they fell silent and dropped their eyes deferentially the moment they saw her, mistaking her for someone who mattered. She turned away from them, passed through a door into an open-plan garage crowded with black SUVs and a red Lamborghini. The smell of burning was coming from an open door on the far side. Curiosity drew her on. A smithy, its forge ablaze and crackling, tongs, hammers and an axe hanging from its walls, along with horseshoes, hinges, ploughs, swords, gardening tools and other examples of the craft. Sandro and Ilya Nergadze were standing around the anvil with two other men, conferring and studying papers. Sandro crouched to pick a golden goblet from a blue plastic basket, and Nina recognised it instantly as part of her husband’s Turkmeni cache.

  Indignation almost provoked her into rashness, but prudence rescued her just in time. She ducked out of their line of sight, slipped off her shoes, picked them up, and tiptoed silently away.

  II

  ‘The golden fleece?’ asked Nadya. ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘I wish,’ said Knox. He filled her in on Petitier and the seal-stones he’d found, then gave her a précis of the fleece’s history, its connections to Eleusis and Crete.

  When he was done, Nadya looked stunned. ‘You think it really exists?’

  ‘It’s possible. Would it have an impact on the election?’

  She gave a dry laugh. ‘Are you kidding? We Georgians are incredibly proud of our heritage; and we’re superstitious too, especially in times of uncertainty. If Nergadze brings the fleece back to Georgia, and it’s the real thing, he’ll be a national hero, he’ll walk the election.’ She shook her head, as though the prospect was too dreadful to bear.

  ‘That bad, huh?’

  ‘He’s a drug-smuggler. He’s an arms dealer.’

  ‘So why’s that your problem?’

  ‘It’s my job,’ she sighed. ‘I’m a journalist, a political journalist. Or a blogger, I’d guess you’d call me.’

  ‘There’s money in that?’ asked Knox, surprised.

  ‘Not exactly. But it’s a good way to build your profile; and there’s certainly money in having a profile. Besides, it’s not like I live on caviar and champagne.’

  ‘And you’re here doing a piece on the Nergadzes?’

  ‘Sort of.’ She stared out the window for a few moments, considering what to tell him. A butcher was trimming fat from the carcass of a slaughtered lamb with practised strokes of a knife so long it looked more like a sword. ‘I was at a Nergadze press conference a week or so ago,’ she said finally. ‘Ilya was announcing some new policy for the fiftieth time. Go to a few of these things, you soon realise all the interesting stuff happens off stage. There was a man leaning against the back wall. He was obviously a Nergadze. You recognise the look after a while. But I hadn’t seen him before, which was odd, because the whole family have been out campaigning relentlessly.’

  ‘Maybe he was a cousin,’ suggested Knox.

  ‘Not from the deference with which people treated him. But, anyway, I was curious enough to follow when he left. He was driven to the private jet terminal at Tbilisi International Airport, then got on Nergadze’s plane. I called a contact in airport operations. The manifest showed only one passenger: Mikhail Nergadze. I’d never even heard of him. I tracked down his birth certificate: he’s Sandro Nergadze’s son, which makes him Ilya’s grandson. All Sandro’s boys went to the same school outside Gori. I had a friend check their records. Mikhail was there until he was fourteen, then he was suddenly sent away to an English public school.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It just seemed strange, that’s all. I checked the local newspapers on a hunch. Two days before Mikhail was sent abroad, a twelve-year-old girl was abducted from a nearby orphanage.’

  ‘That’s pretty thin,’ said Knox.

  ‘I contacted his English school, claiming Mikhail had applied for a job with me, and I was checking his references. He stayed there less than a year, and only two terms at his next school. I joined one of those school networking sites, asked if anyone remembered him. No one would tell me much. They sounded scared of him, even after all these years.’

  Sokratis pulled in sharply at that moment, tyres screeching against the kerb. ‘Your Metro station,’ said Sokratis, reaching back to open Knox’s door. ‘Now get out.’

  ‘One more minute.’

  ‘No. Out. Now.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ Nadya told him, running short of patience. She turned back to Knox. ‘No one was sure why Mikhail had left either of his English schools, though there were all kinds of ugly rumours. He pretty much vanished after that, except for a couple of Internet hits of him doing rich kid stuff in Cyprus, jet-set parties and nightclub openings, that kind of thing. I asked my guy in airport operations to let me know if and when Mikhail came back, but the next time he called it was to let me know that the Nergadze plane was about to set off for Athens again, carrying four Nergadze staff. I figured something big had to be going down. I couldn’t get here before them, so I contacted our brave Greek friend here through his website, and asked him to pick up their trail.’

  ‘That’s it!’ scowled Sokratis, as though aware he was being insulted. ‘Get out.’

  Knox stepped out onto the pavement, but held the door open. ‘You want to meet up again later?’ he asked. ‘I reckon we could help each other.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ said Nadya. ‘Too much to do.’

  ‘How about breakfast, then?’

  ‘Sure.’ She pulled out her diary. ‘Where?’

  Knox didn’t trust Sokratis an inch. He took Nadya’s diary and wrote down the name of a Plaka café, scribbled directions to it. ‘Eight thirty?’ he suggested.

  ‘See you then,’ she agreed.

  ‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘Why are you really so interested in this guy?’

  ‘I just told you. I’m a journalist.’

  ‘Balls. No one does what you’ve been doing just because a man was leaning against a wall.’

  She gave a little snort; her gaze drifted past his shoulder, fixing on memories. ‘I recognised him,’ she admitted. ‘The moment I saw him, I knew I’d seen him before.’

  ‘When?’ asked Knox.

  Her gaze returned from the far distance; somehow she found a smile. ‘On the night my husband was murdered,’ she said.

  III

  Gaille gladly agreed to Iain’s suggestion that he scout on ahead and search for a way down the escarpment face, not least because it gave her the chance to take the weight off her aching legs. The ground here was rocky and bare, and what little vegetation there was defended itself fiercely with thorns. She took anything that might crush from her day-pack, then sat upon it and let her body rest. A black beetle made slow progress across the dirt. She watched it until it was gone. A slab of rock jutted from the earth nearby. It looked unnaturally smooth, like an ancient monument to honour the high pass. And unless her eyes were deceiving her…

  She grimaced as she pushed herself back to her feet, went over to it. Yes. There was a pattern in its surface, two symbols chiselled into it like ancient graffiti: a man marching and then an outstretched hand, though both so faded it was hard for her to be sure. She turned on her camera-phone and took a photograph. The signal was weak and fluctuating, but at least there was one. There surely wouldn’t be if they ever made down into Petitier’s plain. She didn’t feel comfortable that no-one knew where they were, however experienced Iain might be, so she went to the escarpment rim and took a photograph of the plain and the farmhouse, another of herself blowing a kiss to the camera. Then she sat back down and composed a text to Knox, updating him on their progress, before sending it and the photos on their way.

  It was another five minutes before Iain returned. ‘Good news,’ he said. ‘I’ve found a path. Of sorts, at least.’

  ‘Of sorts?’ she asked, her soles clenching with a little anticipatory vertigo. ‘What if it’s not Petitier’s house down there?’

  ‘It has to be. It’s where that shop-woman said it was. Besides, who else would live out here? The Cretans go crazy without company: it’s only us foreigners who like to be alone.’

  ‘And if it’s locked?’

  ‘Not a problem. I’ve got my tent and all the supplies we could need. Besides, if we turn back now, we’ll only have to come back in the morning. And didn’t I kind of get the impression that speed was of the essence, what with your French friend’s name to clear?’

  The invocation of Augustin was the prod Gaille needed. ‘You’re right,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘Let’s do it.’

  IV

  Sokratis drove in silent umbrage to the centre of Athens, wanting Nadya to know he resented the way she’d treated him. Traffic was light, they were soon at her hotel. He dropped her outside, popped his trunk so that she could take out her overnight bag and laptop, then sped off without a backward glance.

  His anger was only a façade, however; he needed it to conceal his guilt. He drove around the block, parked two hundred metres up the street, then watched the hotel’s front door. It wasn’t long before his suspicion was vindicated. A taxi pulled up and Nadya reappeared with her bags, looking furtively around as she limped down the steps.

  The bitch! He’d known she’d try something.

  He gave her a healthy head-start. She was clearly on her guard. The taxi headed into Plaka, the network of narrow tourist streets at the foot of the Acropolis, then stopped outside another hotel. Sokratis pulled in behind a van to avoid being spotted. He watched as a hotel porter helped her with her bags. She paid off her driver then limped inside.

  When he settled on his plan, Sokratis felt a twinge of shame, but he stamped down hard on it. A roof for his head, food for his table, a little money to show a woman a good time, once in a while. That was all he asked. Besides, his website made it quite clear he was a divorce specialist. It was her own damned fault for putting him in such an intolerable situation. Yes. It was her own damned fault.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I

  Knox leaned against the Metro carriage door as a woman in mourning black weaved between the passengers with her right hand outstretched, a swaddled infant cradled against her left hip, reciting a half-hearted plea, not expecting alms, nor getting them either. The tracks were elevated here, offering a view over the city. Nico was right. You could indeed see the Olympic Stadium from a distance, its gleaming white arches towering over ugly suburban housing made even uglier by graffiti and satellite dishes.

  He got out at Irini, down the steps and between two shallow ornamental pools onto a windswept concourse. A brass band was somewhat unexpectedly thumping out Souza while marching on the spot, as though playing and moving simultaneously was still beyond them. A mini-cyclone fluttered the pages of a discarded phone-book like applause, while paper bags and empty sweet wrappers whirled in impressively tight circles, like gymnasts with their ribbons.

  He took out the scrap of paper on which Nico had scribbled Antonius’ address, then asked the people he met until one pointed him on his way. He walked through a vast parking lot, empty except for a few families visiting the swimming pool, from which he could hear splashing and squeals of delight. He hurried across a main road. A woman out walking her dog directed him to a street of plush semidetached homes with sleeping policemen and neat rows of polished cars, interspersed with occasional skips filled with ripped-out carpeting. But there was no such gentrification taking place at Antonius’ house, a rotten tooth in an otherwise perfect register. His front garden was a jungle, his walls overrun by ivy. The house had withdrawn into itself, like its owner.

  Knox rang the bell. No reply. He put his ear to the door, but the neighbours had the builders in, their hammers and drills making it impossible to hear. He pounded on the front door, then looked up at the first floor windows. Not a sign of life. The letter box attached to the front gate was overflowing with junk mail. His apprehension grew. Maybe Antonius had hated the noise of construction so much that he’d decamped: but with Petitier dead, and Mikhail Nergadze on the loose, it was hard not to worry.