Will Adams - The Lost Labyrinth

'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.'

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.

'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 precis 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.'