Will Adams - The Lost Labyrinth

Boris' mobile began to ring at that moment. He answered it, then passed it to Edouard. 'For you,' he said.

'You have my answers for me?' asked Sandro bluntly.

'You have my wife for me?' responded Edouard.

'She's here now. You have thirty seconds.'

'Nina?' he asked eagerly. 'Are you okay?'

'I'm fine,' she assured him, though her tone sounded guarded. 'We went out riding this morning. Even Kiko. It was the first time he's been out since that time with Nicoloz Badridze.'

'Nicoloz Badridze?' frowned Edouard, shifting up to make room for Mikhail. 'You don't mean-'

'Yes,' she said. 'Nicoloz Badridze. But don't worry. Uncle Ilya rode beside him all the time, he kept his hand upon his arm, so there was no chance of him falling. We're all having a fine old time. Do you understand?'

'Yes,' said Edouard hollowly. 'I understand. Tell the children I'm thinking of them.'

'Of course. We'll hear from you again soon, I hope.'

'Yes,' he said. 'I'll do everything I-'

'That's thirty seconds,' said Sandro, taking back the phone. 'Now tell me about my fleece.'

It took Edouard a moment to clear his mind and focus. 'Listen,' he said. 'We'll never get away with this if people's first reaction is disbelief. I mean, once they start laughing, they never stop. So it has to be credible. Forget about a fleece that's made of gold but which handles like sheepskin. It's too improbable and too technically challenging, both for the ancient Georgians and for us. But I have another idea. It won't be as spectacular, but it'll be far more plausible.'

'Go on.'

'Metals were hugely important commodities in the ancient world. Silver, tin, bronze, copper, iron, you name it. They were all shipped around the Mediterranean in ingots, sometimes shaped like bricks but just as often in flat rectangles with small protrusions at each corner, maybe to make them easier to carry, but which look undeniably like animal skins.'

'Ah!' said Sandro.

'Exactly. Archaeologists call them ox-hide ingots: but actually they look more like sheepskins. And there's no reason at all why one of these ingots couldn't have been made of gold. And if it was made of ancient Colchian gold…'

Silence as Sandro considered it. 'I suppose it will do,' he said finally. 'Can you get us details?'

'We have pictures and specifications of several on the Museum Intranet. I can email them to you as soon as I get to a computer.'

'Forget that. Just give me your log-in details.'

Edouard sighed. With people like the Nergadzes, you got in ever deeper and deeper. He gave him what he wanted, handed the phone back to Boris. Their drinks had arrived: his coffee cup rattled a little as he picked it up, thinking again of his conversation with his wife, of the name she'd mentioned. Nicoloz Badridze! He'd hoped never to hear of him again. The man was a paedophile, released after twenty years in prison to be housed in an apartment block just a few doors from their Tbilisi home. The knowledge that such a monster was living so close to their twins became unbearable to them. They'd finally sold up and moved, feeling unutterably guilty because the buyers had had a daughter of their own, and they hadn't said a word. Neither he nor his wife had ever mentioned Badridze's name since.

Not until now.

He rocked forward from his waist, until the rim of the table pressed against his chest like an incipient heart attack. Ilya Nergadze out riding with Kiko, his hand upon his arm. He remembered suddenly Ilya's remark about his charming son, and that beautiful lady-boy serving champagne on the plane. Christ! What had he exposed his beloved son to?

More to the point, what was he going to do about it?

Gaille went into the petrol station to pay while Iain filled his tank. 'You're already doing so much for me,' she said, when he came in. 'You must let me pay for this.'

'Too kind.' He got out some money anyway, to buy mints and a packet of sweets. 'I've got a bit of a throat,' he explained. 'All this talking; I'm not used to it.'

'Then they're on me too. You wouldn't be talking if I wasn't asking.'

'You'll spoil me.'

'I think that ship has sailed.'

They laughed together as they went back out to the car. Iain opened the sweets and poured them haphazardly into the coin-tray between them, then grabbed a mint for himself and squeezed it between thumb and forefinger until it squirted out of its wrapper straight into his mouth. 'Where were we?' he asked.

'You'd just proved Minoan Crete was Atlantis.'

'Ah, scepticism. An academic's best friend.'

'It's always served me well. Especially on questions that can't be answered.'

He leaned forward to make sure there was no traffic coming, pulled out onto the road. 'I wouldn't be so sure of that. I mean, all those points of correspondence I just gave you must mean something. And then there are the inadvertent clues in Plato.'

'Inadvertent clues?'

'Sure. You know the kind of thing. Like that story in Herodotus, about the pharaoh who wanted to circumnavigate Africa. He commissioned some Phoenicians to sail south down the east coast, then back up the west.' He sucked on his mint a couple of times, then switched it from cheek to cheek. 'They reappeared three years later, claiming they'd done it. But Herodotus openly mocked them, because they said the sun had been to their right when they'd rounded the cape, when everyone knew that Africa didn't extend south of the equator. But of course we now know it does extend south of the equator, which makes pretty compelling evidence that they did actually complete the circumnavigation properly.'

'And there are similar details in Plato's account of Atlantis, are there?'

He nodded vigorously. 'People forget that the story of Atlantis is also the story of Athens, because it was the Athenians who led the fight against Atlantis. Plato and his contemporaries didn't know much about early bronze age Athens, other than for a few anecdotes in Thucydides. Yet Plato's account of Atlantis includes remarkably accurate details about bronze age Greek cities.' He popped another mint, gestured expressively at his throat. 'And he mentions a spring in the Acropolis, for example, blocked up by an earthquake. There was no such spring in his time, yet archaeologists found one back in the 1930s. How could he have known about that? Was it really just a lucky guess?'

'It's hardly proof of Atlantis.'

'No, but it makes his account worth taking seriously. And who knows what's still out there, just waiting to be found? It's one of the reasons I love hiking in the mountains here so much; there's still every chance of discovering an important new site. And if not here, there's always Santorini. There are still whole Pompeiis to rediscover beneath the volcanic ash. What if we found something specifically mentioned by Plato? A scene from his story represented in a frieze, say. Or that golden statue of Poseidon in a chariot pulled by six winged horses. Or some of the hundred Nereids upon their dolphins? Would those be enough for you?'

'Sure. If you found them.'

'Maybe we already have. Or traces of them, at least. You'd be amazed by how many artefacts we've recovered at Knossos that we've barely even looked at, let alone studied. Who can say what treasures aren't waiting for us among them?'

'I'm surprised you could tear yourself away,' smiled Gaille.

'Hey,' he grinned. 'Who can say what treasures aren't waiting for us at Petitier's place, either?'

The lighting was so low in the pavilion that it was only when Knox brought up the brighter of his slides that he could see the faces in the first few rows, hushed and leaning forward in their seats. He made a joke that earned far more laughter than it deserved, and he felt the heady confidence of a speaker whose talk was going well. He didn't rely on the teleprompter anything like as much as he'd anticipated; in a strange way, it was as though he was merely a conduit, allowing his friend to speak.