The Oracle

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  NORMAN STOPPED THE car at the Greek border at Sidirokastro and paid the guide the amount they had agreed upon. Hackiris thanked him, showed the police his border pass and went on his way. Norman pulled out his own passport. The official looked at the photograph and then at him, but did not hand back the passport. ‘Mr Shields, would you follow me, please?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Just ordinary procedure. Please follow me, it will take just a few minutes. Routine inspection. Leave your keys in the car, I’ll have one of my men park it.’

  Norman obeyed and followed the man into the police station. He was taken into a small office lit by a single lamp on the table. In the darkness, he could barely make out the shape of a person sitting on the other side of the table.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Shields. Sit down, please.’

  ‘Listen, it’s midnight, I’m dead tired and I’d like to go to bed. If this is just a routine border check, could we please

  ‘I’m surprised, Mr Shields, that you don’t remember me. Can’t you spare a few minutes for an old acquaintance?’

  Norman sat down and scrutinized the man sitting at the table. His face wasn’t new to him, and his voice sounded kind of familiar, and he suddenly realized with dismay just who it was.

  ‘Pavlos Karamanlis!’

  ‘Exactly, Mr Shields.’

  ‘What is this farce about a customs inspection – what do you want from me?’

  ‘Fine. I see you’ve got straight to the meat of the matter, and I’ll be glad to tell you just what I want. I want to know what you’ve come to do in Greece, you and your friend Michel Charrier. I want to know what you were doing in Dirou when my man Karagheorghis was killed at the Katafigi caves. I want to know who you met on the evening of August the twenty-fourth on the western coast of the Laconian peninsula, and who you turned your car over to.’

  Norman stood his ground: ‘It’s not the frightened boy of ten years ago you have in front of you now, Karamanlis. I couldn’t give a shit about you, or about your questions. You have no right to detain me here and I’m leaving.’

  Karamanlis stood up: ‘I’d advise you against that. My boys have had just enough time to plant a good quantity of snow under the seats in your Rover. More than enough to send you straight to prison.’

  ‘You’re bluffing, Karamanlis.’

  ‘And I also want to know what you were doing in Yugoslavia with that mountain guide.’

  Norman shook his head and pushed his chair back.

  ‘Listen, this is no joke, Shields, you know I don’t fool around. Even if you manage to prove your innocence in the long run, you’ll be in jail for months, interrogations, the trial. I can still ruin you.’

  Norman got to his feet.

  ‘Wait. Let’s say I don’t want to get you in trouble, but I do want to know who’s practising target shooting with my men: Roussos, Karagheorghis. And your father, Shields. What about your father?’

  Norman suddenly felt faint: his suspicions were confirmed, then. He leaned back against the chair again. ‘What does my father have to do with it?’ he asked, head low.

  ‘Your father was the link between the American Secret Service and our political police force at the time of the Polytechnic battle. He died for the same reasons Roussos and Karagheorghis died, for the same reasons that another officer of mine, Vassilios Vlassos, nearly lost his life.’

  Norman lifted his head, his features taut: ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Vlassos had more holes in him than a soup strainer. One of his balls shot clean off. Nearly bought it.’

  ‘When did it happen, where?’

  ‘Wait a minute, Shields. I’m asking the questions.’

  ‘Listen, Karamanlis, I detest you, and God only knows what it’s costing me to be in the same room with you, even for just a few minutes. I realize you have information that I’m interested in, and I can repay you with the things you want to know. But we’re still enemies, clear?’

  ‘I didn’t take that vase.’

  ‘I don’t care. You are responsible for the deaths of Claudio Setti and Heleni Kaloudis.’

  Karamanlis did not seem perturbed: ‘All I want to know from you is what I asked you.’

  ‘I’ll talk, but I have questions to ask as well.’

  Karamanlis stood up. ‘I’ll have to search you,’ he said. ‘You could be wearing a tape recorder.’

  Norman let him pat him down, then took a seat again.

  ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I want to know exactly how my father figures in this whole thing.’

  Karamanlis stared at him for a long minute. ‘As you wish,’ he said.

  As they spoke, Norman lit cigarette after cigarette, trying to gather his thoughts and put together the pieces of the mosaic that was slowly forming. At the end, he asked: ‘Did you see the arrows shot at Vlassos?’

  ‘I have them with me,’ replied Karamanlis.

  ‘Get them. I’ll be right back.’ He got up, went out to the car and took the newspaper bundle with the arrow he’d paid forty dollars for in Yugoslavia. When he entered Karamanlis’s office, there were three arrows lined up on the table, and he set his down alongside. They were identical, and quite particular. Wooden Easton Eagles with steel tips.

  IT WAS TWO in the morning when the phone rang in Michel’s room.

  ‘Michel Charrier. Who is it?’

  ‘Michel, they’ve tried to kill another one of Karamanlis’s men, his name’s Vassilios Vlassos, with a bow and arrow . . . Just like my father.’

  ‘Is that you, Norman?’ Michel’s voice sounded sleepy. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘There was a phrase carved on the shaft: “You put the bread in a cold oven.” ’

  ‘Another enigma. When are you coming to Athens?’

  Norman didn’t answer at first. His voice cracked. ‘Michel,’ he said, ‘Michel, I think you’re right.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Claudio . . . Claudio’s alive . . . and he’s killing them one by one.’

  15

  Athens, 28 September, 3 a.m.

  MICHEL COULDN’T GET back to sleep: could it really be Claudio? Had his old friend turned into this cruel executioner? Ten years . . . was it possible? Ten years in shadows and silence, his hate smouldering? Ten years planning revenge, ten years refining a single deadly skill? Was a man capable of all that? Was Claudio capable of it?

  He tried to recall other episodes from their life together before it had all happened: cracking jokes, talking, fooling around. Was there anything, a single, miserable clue, that connected that boy with this man? As hard as he tried to comb his memory, he could find nothing. He thought of that phrase that Norman had told him over the phone – You put the bread in a cold oven – but still nothing suggested itself. He was about to take a sleeping pill and lie down again when suddenly an idea came to him. Why hadn’t it occurred to him sooner? If the phrase on Shields’s body came from the Odyssey, maybe the other phrases came from another classic. But how could he sift through such an immense body of literature if the phrases meant nothing to him? Maybe they were from a passage he should know about; something simple, from some obvious source. But this phrase was so strange he couldn’t imagine any context. He had never fully realized how vast the body of writings that remained of the ancients actually was – too vast for a single person, alone, to hope to find a word, an anonymous expression. Wait! A person, right. A person alone couldn’t do it – but a computer could: Icarus!

  Icarus could find any association of at least two words in the entire corpus of Greek and Latin literature from Homer to Isidore of Seville: fifteen centuries of human thought enclosed in an optical disk of five million kilobytes. But could he get access to it? Was the program ready, and had all the texts been scanned? As far as he knew, British Informatics had already announced it in their catalogue, and they’d been working on the databank for years – but had any of the research institutes actually been hooked up with it?

  Mireille! Her parents
had stocks in the company, they were even on the board of directors. She could get through. If she got authorization she could go to the company headquarters and test out the program: two words like ‘cold oven’ or ‘she’s naked’ would be sufficient to find the passages. So even if the transcription wasn’t exact, the computer would be able to find the original expression.

  He finally lay down on the bed and took a couple of Valium, so he could get some sleep and shut down the agitation in his head that would otherwise have kept him up all night.

  AS SOON AS Michel woke up the next morning, he called Mireille. He was lucky: despite the time difference, she hadn’t left the house yet.

  ‘Mireille, I need your help. You can solve a problem for me; I’ll never get to the bottom of it without you.’

  ‘What? In just a few hours you’ve completely changed your mind? First you don’t want me and now I can save your life?’ said the girl, seemingly quite amused.

  ‘Mireille, it’s not a joke. It is really a question of life or death, understand? Now, British Informatics has a program called Icarus that we mere mortals don’t have access to. I need you to get into the databank and do some research for me.’

  Mireille fell silent in surprise, then said: ‘I would have to ask my father . . .’

  ‘Tell him it’s for your own research. He won’t say no.’

  ‘That’s not the point. You know what our relationship is like . . .’

  ‘Mireille, you’ve got to believe me when I say it’s a matter of life or death.’

  ‘All right. I’ll do it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And I’ll bring the outcome to Athens myself

  ‘Blackmail, I see.’

  ‘Take it or leave it.’

  ‘You got it. Get some paper and a pen, and I’ll dictate all the possible combinations. It’s a message in modern Greek that I think has been translated from an original in ancient Greek, okay?’

  ‘Right. And you want to know the passage and the author.’

  ‘If you can manage it. And if my hunch is correct.’

  Michel dictated all the possible variations in ancient Greek of the phrases to feed into Icarus. ‘Did you get it all down?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Mireille. ‘Strange words, very odd. Don’t know why but they give me the creeps.’

  IF PAVLOS KARAMANLIS had any doubts, his conversation with Norman Shields swept them away: a single person had killed James Shields, Petros Roussos, Yorgo Karagheorghis and had tried to kill Vassilios Vlassos. That same person was saving him, police Captain Karamanlis, for last. He was watching him make his moves, playing with him as a cat does with a mouse. That person was, in all probability, Claudio Setti. There had never been certain proof of his death. The only other possibility was that it was someone trying to make him believe, for some unknown reason, that he was Claudio Setti.

  He was reasonably sure, in any case, that the killer would be trying again with Vlassos, and this gave him an advantage. He would prepare another trap, and this time he would not fail.

  He left the Sidirokastro police station at eight in the morning and walked into town to buy some feta cheese for his wife. He got a nice piece in a grocery store that the sergeant had recommended, along with some sausages, fresh ricotta, bread and a bottle of retsina, tapped from the barrel. He was back in his car by eight thirty and headed south towards the Salonika highway.

  What he couldn’t manage to explain was the role that Bogdanos was playing in all this; the story that Shields had fed him about their meeting at Kotronas didn’t convince him in the least.

  He still had a suspicion – or perhaps just a sensation – that Bogdanos had something to do with the murders. But then why had he stuck his neck out to save Vlassos’s life, and what was his real reason for meeting Shields and Charrier?

  It was absolutely necessary to understand what game Bogdanos was playing and what the stakes were. He entered the highway and set off at a good speed. If he got to Athens at a decent hour he’d look up that old friend of his at the Ministry of Defence and ask him a few questions. If he hadn’t retired. He ate a sandwich in the car at lunchtime and afterwards drove straight through to the centre of Athens. He phoned his friend from a little square near the Ministry, but the man’s answer left him speechless.

  ‘Anastasios Bogdanos is dead, my friend.’

  ‘Dead? That’s not possible. I spoke to him just a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘It just happened. The funeral was in Volos. That’s where he was from.’

  ‘Can you tell me exactly when it happened?’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ said the functionary. ‘I have to find the papers. Here . . . the funeral was last Tuesday.’

  ‘Last Tuesday . . . and what did he die of ?’ asked Karamanlis.

  ‘As far as I know he’d been ill a long time. His heart, I think. Guess there was nothing to be done. Anything else you wanted to know?’ asked his friend.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing . . . for now. I’ll call you again if I need you.’

  Karamanlis looked at his pocket calendar: last Tuesday . . . so Bogdanos died just ten days after he’d seen him at Portolagos . . . strange. Very strange indeed. A bad heart. He thought of how quick, how agile he had been that night at Skardamoula. He hadn’t acted like a man with a bad heart. He picked up the phone again and called his wife: ‘Irini, it’s me. I’m sorry, but I’ll be back very late tonight, if I come back at all. I’m not sure.’

  ‘But why? You told me you’d be back early! That nice fresh ricotta from Sidirokastro will go bad.’

  ‘Irini, for God’s sake, what do you think I care about the damned ricotta . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but you know how my work is. Okay? Goodbye, honey, maybe I’ll see you later tonight . . . who knows.’

  He jumped back in the car and turned back towards the highway, sounding the siren so he could make his way more quickly through the chaotic city traffic. He stepped on the gas, squeezing every last drop of energy from the car’s old engine. He reached Volos in two and a half hours and started looking for the cemetery. It was closed, naturally, and he had to call the town hall to get the name and number of the custodian who could let him in. When the caretaker turned the key in the padlock on the gate, the sun was low on the horizon and it was near dusk. The cemetery was on a little hill, and he could see the whole bay of Volos reddening with the rays of the dying sun. Towards the east a star already glittered over the peak of Mount Pelium.

  ‘Could you tell me where Admiral Bogdanos was buried?’

  The custodian shut the gate again after letting him in and pointed towards a corner of the cemetery. ‘Down there,’ he said, ‘in that white marble building. It’s the family tomb.’

  Karamanlis hurried towards the spot, and entered: he could immediately pick out the slab which had just been added because it was very shiny, and the flowers in front of it were fresh. Someone must have put them there that very day. The tombstone reported only the man’s first and last name, and his dates of birth and death, in large bronze letters.

  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 Sc
otland 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?’

  MIREILLE 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.