The Oracle

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Norman raised his glass: ‘To those days, my friend.’

  ‘To those days,’ said Michel, raising his own. Then he lowered his head wordlessly, and Norman fell silent as well.

  ‘Did you love your father?’ asked Michel suddenly.

  ‘We never had much of a relationship. After I went back to England, I only saw him once or twice a year. At Christmas, you know? But that doesn’t mean anything . . .’

  ‘No, no, it doesn’t mean a thing . . .’

  ‘The only time I thought we might really get close was that time in Athens, when he offered to help me save Claudio and Heleni.’ Michel dropped his head. ‘What? Now you’re not going to get depressed on me, are you? We’re here on a treasure hunt, not to cry over the past. A big treasure hunt – you understand me, Michel? Come on, have another, for God’s sake.’ He filled his glass again.

  Michel raised his head, eyes suddenly full of consternation and bewilderment. He pointed his finger at the table: ‘I know this guy, Norman! I know this man. I saw him, that night, in Athens, when they arrested me, when they got Claudio and Heleni . . .’ His voice quavered and his eyes shone with anger and emotion.

  ‘Michel, Michel, what are you saying? You never could hold a drink . . .’

  Michel pushed his plate, glass and silverware over to Norman’s side, then lifted the newspaper on his side of the table and turned it towards his friend: ‘Look! Do you recognize him?’ Norman saw a photograph of what appeared to be a cadaver, eyes staring blindly. His bare chest was covered with blood and he had a sharp object stuck between his neck and collarbone. The headline said: ‘MYSTERIOUS CRIME AT THE DIROU CAVES: AREOPOLIS POLICE SERGEANT KARAGHEORGHIS KILLED BY MANIAC’.

  Norman shook his head: ‘I’ve never seen him. Are you sure you know him?’

  ‘As God is my witness. He’s older, his hair is thinner and his moustache is grey, but I’m telling you it’s him. I saw him that night. It was him, along with another cop, who brought me to that cell for the interrogation, after they’d tortured me with the falanga.’

  ‘Well, that’s strange.’

  ‘Wait, let me read what it says.’ Michel rapidly skimmed the article, then let the newspaper drop on to the table and downed another glass of wine.

  ‘Hey, cut that out. You can’t hold that stuff.’

  Michel leaned forward and took both of Norman’s hands into his own. Forehead to forehead, his eyes wide, he blurted out: ‘Claudio could still be alive.’

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Look at this: five weeks ago at Parthenion in Arcadia another policeman was killed, Petros Roussos. He was Karagheorghis’s colleague for fifteen years at central police headquarters in Athens. In other words, working directly with Karamanlis. And guess who they’ve sent to coordinate the investigation: Pavlos Karamanlis himself. He’s probably already in Areopolis; it’s just a few kilometres from here. They’re all tied in to that night at the Polytechnic.’

  ‘But what does Claudio have to do with it? I don’t understand about Claudio.’

  A little girl with a tray of sweets approached them: ‘Mister, want to buy some loukoumia?’

  ‘No, sweetheart. Michel, listen to me. Claudio is dead. My father told me so when the story came out in the papers. He also told me that the business about them getting blown up was probably something the police made up to get rid of the two inopportune corpses without leaving a trace. Accept it.’

  Michel continued to scan the newspaper. ‘Maybe it’s just a hunch, or maybe it’s something more. But I bet we’ll find out soon.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘They found the same words next to the dead bodies of both Roussos and Karagheorghis: “She’s naked. She’s cold.” It’s a message, get it? It has to be a message, and if we can manage to figure it out we’ll know who the murderer is and why he killed them with such deliberate cruelty.’

  Norman frowned: ‘A message . . . just like my father. But then it could be the same person. You think that Claudio has come back to kill his jailers, don’t you?’

  ‘You’re thinking that I’m still trying after all these years to rid myself of the guilt of having turned him in, don’t you? Say so! Go ahead and say so.’

  ‘But what you’re saying is crazy, can’t you understand? If there were a connection between these three crimes, what does my father have to do with it? My father tried to save them. He sent one of his men, a car . . . I was there, he tried to save them, I’m telling you.’

  The owner of the stand craned to get a look at them, as did the people sitting at the tables nearby. Norman lowered his head and finished eating in silence, while Michel bit his lower lip, forcing back the tears springing to his eyes.

  ‘Your nerves are shot to hell,’ he said to Michel. ‘Eat. Fried fish tastes terrible cold.’

  11

  Skardamoula, 24 August, 10.30 p.m.

  MICHEL KNOCKED ON Norman’s door: ‘I’m going down to get the car out. I’ll wait for you downstairs.’

  ‘All right,’ said Norman. ‘I’ll be down in ten minutes.’

  Michel drove the car out of the hotel’s garage and on to the street, parking under a street light. He switched off the engine. He took the abstract by Periklis Harvatis – ‘Hypothesis on the necromantic rite in the Odyssey, Book XI’ – out of his briefcase and started to read.

  Harvatis’s hypothesis: Michel knew it by heart, having read it time and time again. The author held that the necromantic rite for raising the dead described in the eleventh book of the Odyssey – which Homer set at the ends of the earth on the shores of the Ocean – was the same rite used in Ephira for consulting the Oracle of the Dead. Ephira was in Epirus, right opposite the Ionian islands . . . opposite Ithaca, the homeland of Odysseus. Actual excavations had shown that the oracle had been active since as early as the Mycenaean age, from the time of the Homeric heroes.

  It had been a magical, dreadful site for centuries. The Acheron flowed into Ephira after having been joined by the Cocytus and the Piriphlegeton. The Stygian swamp was found in Ephira, and in the villages on the surrounding mountains the dead were still buried with a twenty-drachma silver coin in their mouths – the obol demanded by Charon, who ferried the dead souls into the underworld. Raw fava beans were still eaten in commemoration of the dead – time seemed to have stood still in Ephira.

  And the eeriest episode of all antiquity had taken place right opposite Ephira, near the island of Paxos. The commander of a ship headed for Italy at the time of emperor Tiberius had heard the cry: ‘The great god Pan is dead!’ He had heard it distinctly, more than once, and he had heard a mournful chorus of laments from the forests which covered the island. News spread, and Emperor Tiberius himself demanded to speak with the ship’s commander to ask him about this mysterious event: the announcement that the pagan gods existed no more and that a new era had begun. It was the year, and perhaps the month and the day, of the death and resurrection of Christ . . . of Christ’s return from the underworld.

  Ephira knew.

  And the anguish-laden voice of a dying world shouted to the sky and to the sea: ‘The great god Pan is dead!’

  Norman opened the passenger door and got in: ‘You still reading that stuff? You must know that booklet by heart.’

  ‘I do. And yet, you know, there’s something I still can’t understand. Harvatis’s study is pretty naive, at times even superficial, and yet it led to the most incredible of discoveries: the vase of Tiresias, the proof of a second Odyssey. I’m starting to think that maybe this isn’t the complete version of his studies. I think that something important – fundamental – is missing here.’

  ‘It’s possible. Maybe the conclusion was never published. Harvatis may never have had the time or the chance to gather all his notes and have them printed. Start the car – it’ll take us nearly an hour to get to our appointment.’

  Michel turned the key and started the engine. The car crossed the nearly empty town square and headed south towards Cape Tenaro
s. The sky was clear and full of stars, but there was no moon and the road was dark and narrow between the mountains and the sea.

  ‘Norman.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s something there. At Ephira, I mean.’

  Norman lit up a cigarette and took in a long draught of smoke. ‘The door to the underworld. There was an Oracle of the Dead in ancient times, wasn’t there?’

  ‘You can laugh about it if you want, but there must have been something about that place that gave people the idea they could bridge the gap with the other world. For nearly two thousand years.’

  ‘Well, sure, in Delphi they thought they could hear the voice of Apollo predicting the future . . .’

  ‘There’s a reason for that, as well. Did you know that it was directly off the shore of Ephira, during the age of Emperor Tiberius, that the Paxos incident occurred? Norman, it’s believed to have happened on the very day of Christ’s resurrection. Understand? A voice announcing the end of paganism and all the pagan gods, symbolized by the god Pan. And that voice came from Ephira . . .’

  ‘From the gates of hell. So what did I say?’

  Michel seemed not to listen to the irony in Norman’s words. ‘And that vase, the vase of Tiresias, also comes from Ephira. That’s where Professor Harvatis found it, where it had once been immersed in the blood of so many victims. And now it’s reappeared near Dirou: and there’s another entrance to Hades in Dirou.

  ‘Norman, you remember that night at the Polytechnic? Ari Malidis told us that that vase had been discovered by Professor Harvatis, that he had died for that vase. He said he would explain later. Just what did Periklis Harvatis die of? I never saw Malidis again. The next morning they put me on a plane to France. I never saw him again.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll find Malidis waiting for us today.’

  ‘Or Pavlos Karamanlis.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was the one who told Karamanlis where the vase was.’ Michel jerked suddenly towards Norman. ‘Watch the road! You’re driving off the road! Look, that town down at the bottom of the gulf is Oitylos. We go straight from there to Pirgos Dirou, then we turn left towards the mountain.’

  At the Oitylos exit there was a police roadblock. The officer leaned down towards the window and shone a torch inside. Michel felt his blood run cold: for a moment he was that boy in his Deux-Chevaux, scared to death, trying to explain to the police why he was speeding through Athens before dawn that morning, and why the back seat was stained with blood.

  ‘Your documents, please,’ said the policeman.

  Norman realized how frightened Michel was. He squeezed his friend’s shoulder hard with his left hand and leaned over towards the police: ‘Right away,’ he said in Greek and handed over the car registration while Michel took out his licence. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘There was a crime the other night at the Dirou caves and we’re checking everyone and everything. Where are you headed?’

  Norman hesitated.

  ‘Kharoudha,’ said Michel. ‘We have a boat down there and we’ve taken a couple of weeks off to go fishing. We wanted to see the caves, too, but they must be closed, after what’s happened.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said the policeman. ‘They’ll be opening again tomorrow. You can see them, no problem.’

  ‘Can we go now?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. But be careful – the criminal who committed this murder may still be in the area.’

  ‘Thanks for warning us, Officer,’ said Norman. ‘We’ll be careful.’

  ‘We said we were putting all our cards on the table,’ said Michel after they’d driven off. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Karamanlis?’

  ‘I wanted to force him into making a bargain: the vase for freeing Claudio and Heleni. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to feel—’

  ‘Even more humiliated.’

  ‘I didn’t think I should. But now, thinking about it, since we don’t know who we’ll be meeting, I thought that you . . . that we . . . should be ready for any possibility.’

  ‘Then these signs – the abstract delivered to the University, the photo on your windscreen – could be a trap set by Karamanlis. We are the only two witnesses who know that Claudio and Heleni were his prisoners.’

  ‘And that the terrorist story was invented by the police to cover up their deaths.’

  ‘But why now, after so many years?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe someone else found out about it. Maybe he’s been threatened, blackmailed. Or even, even . . .’ A startling thought wrinkled his forehead. ‘No, maybe we’re worrying about nothing. We’ll probably just meet up with your run-of-the-mill fence who’ll want a lot of money from us.’

  ‘No, all this is too much for a run-of-the-mill fence. Maybe it’s even too much for Pavlos Karamanlis. Norman, listen, it’s like we’re working our way through some complicated maze. What I think is that everything is connected: the deaths of Roussos and Karagheorghis, the death of your father, the reappearance of the vase of Tiresias. Karamanlis being called into this and us too. It can’t just be chance.’

  Norman fell silent and kept his eyes on the narrow dirt-road full of twists and turns, squeezed between the walls of the rocky gorge that led to the pass. Michel broke the silence.

  ‘Norman.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No more secrets. If there’s anything else that you know and haven’t told me, even if it’s going to hurt me, tell me now.’

  ‘No, there’s nothing else. Whatever else comes out of this, we’ll face it together.’

  They reached the pass and Michel took his foot off the accelerator. For an instant, they could see the waters of the gulf of Messenia and the gulf of Laconia glittering to the east and the west. The whole promontory stretched out to the south, down to Cape Tenaros. The mountainous ridge, deeply eroded and worn away on the sides and crest, looked like the back of a dragon plunging into the sea.

  ‘Why have us drive up this mule track when there’s the low road that goes through Kotronas?’ asked Michel.

  ‘Obvious, my friend. Our man wanted us to admire this gorgeous panorama.’

  ‘I’m glad you still feel like joking.’

  ‘I’d say it’s evident why he had us come this way. There’s been a crime and the roads are crawling with police. This little affair of ours is hardly legal, and he’s not asking for a small sum. I’m sure he doesn’t want the police sniffing around half a million dollars.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s one o’clock. The rendezvous is in half an hour, at an abandoned lighthouse six kilometres from the coastal road. We’re to start measuring from the end of this road, heading south. We’ll be told what to do there.’

  Michel turned left and began the descent.

  CAPTAIN KARAMANLIS TAPPED the shoulder of the officer driving the squad car: ‘Stop at that roadblock,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if there’s anything new.’ His driver pulled over and Karamanlis approached the policemen posted at the block. ‘Anything to report?’ he asked.

  ‘Practically nothing.’

  ‘That son of a bitch can’t have vanished into thin air. Did you check all the outgoing vehicles?’

  ‘All of them, sir.’

  ‘No suspicious vehicles coming through?’

  ‘I’d say not. Just a short time ago a car with English plates passed through with two tourists aboard, a Frenchman and an Englishman. They were going to Kharoudha to fish for a week. They weren’t new to the place, both of them spoke Greek very well.’

  Karamanlis nodded then got back in the car and told the driver to proceed southward. A thought suddenly came to mind; he had the driver stop and got out again. ‘What were their names?’ he shouted towards the police. ‘Do you remember their names?’

  ‘The Frenchman was called Charrier, I think, Michel Charrier,’ shouted back the policeman.

  ‘What car were they driving?’

  ‘A blue Rover.’

  Karamanlis jumped back into the
car. ‘Get going,’ he told the driver, ‘and drive as fast as you can. To Kharoudha.’

  AT THAT MOMENT Michel had just reached the Cape Tenaros provincial road. He turned right after checking his milometer; after exactly six kilometres he pulled over, leaving only his parking lights on.

  ‘We’re here,’ said Norman. ‘Now we just have to wait for the signal’

  ‘HOW ARE YOU feeling, son?’

  ‘Weak. And very tired.’

  ‘The sea is being watched too closely. We couldn’t risk leaving by boat. We had to use this gallery. Others still have to pay their debt: you must not fail me.’

  ‘But won’t we be even more at risk on the ground, Commander?’

  ‘On the ground there’s someone waiting to take you away. To your next assignment. Now, stay where you are. Let me go ahead. I’ll call you in a minute.’

  Claudio heard a creaking, and a square of light opened above his head: a trapdoor, leading upwards. Admiral Bogdanos’s figure stood out dark against the light. ‘You can come up now. There’s a stairway cut into the rock.’

  Claudio made his way up the slippery steps and found himself in an empty, dusty chamber full of broken glass, with unhinged shutters on the single window. The swash of the undertow could be heard nearby. ‘Where are we, Commander?’

  ‘On the other side of the peninsula, on the eastern coast. This is the abandoned lighthouse of Kotronas, in disuse since the last war. Back then I used to use this passage to reach my submarine beneath the cliffs of Hierolimin.’

  ‘Do you mean that we’ve crossed Cape Tenaros underground?’

  ‘Exactly. And we’ve done it faster than the coastguard boats; they’ll still be near Hierolimin, fighting the Meltemi and the rocks. As the poet says, “Ephtes pezòs iòn è egò syn neì melàine”.’

  ‘I understand ancient Greek: it’s a line from the Odyssey. “You arrived sooner on foot than did I on the black ship”,’ said Claudio, without recalling the exact reference.

  The older man nodded, and a fleeting melancholy crossed his blue eyes. ‘They are words said to a friend who died before his time.’