by Will Adams
She walked along this corridor to the top of a staircase. But it didn't lead her far. A great section of the roof and side-wall had collapsed, laying an impassable barrier of rubble across it. Petitier had leaned a short wooden ladder against the leftmost section of this accidental wall, and had dug a hole in its top corner, through which he'd fed the orange cable, so that a little light glowed weakly from the other side. She climbed the ladder, hoping she might somehow be able to squeeze and wriggle through, but the hole was too small-no bigger than was necessary to reach a camera and its flash attachment through, and take photographs. And again she realised that perhaps she'd misjudged Petitier: he hadn't sought to address the conference from fear of being caught, but because he was an archaeologist at heart, and he'd considered whatever lay behind this wall too important for him to tackle by himself. And so he'd stopped.
Scuffling and heavy breathing behind her. She turned to see Mikhail arriving at the far end of the passage, his shirt shredded, his powerful upper body revealed, the patchwork of crude tattoos, the Mauser slung over his shoulder, his hunting knife in his hand. She climbed back down the ladder, but there was nowhere left to run or hide. He must have realised she was trapped, for he came unhurriedly towards her, almost with a swagger. She stooped for a sharp and heavy stone, held it behind her back. He reached the top of the steps then sauntered down them, tucking his knife into his belt as he came. She waited until he was close and then swung the stone hard at his temple; but he must have been expecting it, for he caught her wrist easily and twisted it until she cried out and dropped the stone. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her sharply sideways until she was off-balance, then he hauled her by it back up to the passage floor, where he threw her down and kicked her onto her back and stood astride her, pinning her wrists beneath his feet.
'Please,' she begged. 'Let me go.'
He laughed at that, as though she'd only meant it as a joke. 'I've been looking forward to this,' he told her, kneading the sideways bulge of his erection through his trousers. 'I gave your boyfriend my word. I always keep my word.'
The lamplight stuttered a moment, as though the generator was running out of fuel. There was noise back along the way they'd come. Gaille turned her head sideways just in time to see a third person arrive at the far end of the passage, sledgehammer in his hand.
'You!' scowled Mikhail.
'Yes,' agreed Knox. 'Me.'
II
It had been a mixed morning for the Intensive Care team. One of their charges had died; another had been returned to a general ward. As a result, the unit was empty except for Augustin and two nurses, so Claire felt free to unplug the headphones from the DVD player Nico had brought the day before.
She hadn't watched it the night before; she'd had too much else on her mind. But this morning she'd already played it through twice. There was something compelling about it, though she wasn't sure what. Not the words themselves, for even though they'd been written by Augustin, the technical language and obscure references mostly went over her head. It was more to do with the way Knox had somehow captured Augustin's qualities of voice, despite their different accents: his cadence, his metre, his trick of making listeners wait, the mischievous delivery of his punch-lines.
When this calamity had befallen Augustin, a treasonous internal voice had whispered to Claire that protocol didn't compel her to stick by him, as she'd stuck by her father. He wasn't blood, after all; they weren't yet married. She could simply fly back to America and pretend this episode had never happened. But she knew now that wasn't possible. When you gave your heart this completely to another person, it was no longer yours to take back.
On the DVD, Knox was nearing the end of his talk. She turned the volume up. It was a real comfort to listen to Augustin's words, but this was what she truly enjoyed, the extraordinary ovation that would shortly greet its conclusion, the tribute it so clearly represented to the man she loved. Each time she played it, it made her heart swell.
Augustin's left eyelash fluttered, delicate as a fly's wing. Though it was one of the few times she'd seen him show even that much sign of life, she didn't let it get her spirits up. His doctors had taken him off the barbiturates the night before, in the hopes that he might come out of the induced coma; but she was experienced enough with ICU patients to know that such tics happened all the time.
She leaned closer, just in case, murmured his name and squeezed his hand. His eyelash fluttered again, then opened for a blink before closing once more. She watched transfixed, simultaneously terrified and charged with hope. Then both his eyes sprang open, bloodshot and perplexed, even alarmed. She stood and leaned over him so that he'd know she was there, that he was safe and loved and cared for. But it didn't seem to do any good. His agitation increased, he slid his eyes to the side, he tried to speak.
'Don't talk,' she pleaded, anxiety battling euphoria. 'Just try to rest.'
He didn't listen, his lips moved again, he muttered something that she couldn't hear, because the applause had just started on the DVD, all that splendid thunder. She jabbed the button to silence it, put her ear back to Augustin's mouth, and finally made out his words. 'What's that bastard Knox doing,' he murmured, 'delivering my talk?'
III
Gaille's euphoria at seeing Knox was almost instantly extinguished as Mikhail grabbed his Mauser and turned it on him. Knox had no time to reach him or even flee, so Gaille twisted her wrist free from beneath Mikhail's foot, reached up and grabbed the Mauser's strap and tugged down hard just as he fired, the bullet crashing into the rock floor and then ricocheting harmlessly away.
Knox seized the moment she'd bought him, charging down the passage with a full-throated roar, swinging the sledgehammer in a wild arc at Mikhail's head, forcing him to use the Mauser as a staff to defend himself. It cracked and splintered in his hands, the barrel coming loose from the stock, yet still holding sufficiently to save him from the sledge, though his knees buckled and he stumbled backwards. He threw away the broken gun and grabbed the sledgehammer's head instead, wrestling Knox for it, using his greater strength to swing Knox around and against the wall of rubble, tearing the hammer from him as he do so.
Mikhail took it by the shaft and went straight after him, swinging like a baseball batter aiming for the bleachers. Knox ducked in time and it slammed into the rubble behind him, dislodging some of the smaller stones that cascaded away down the other side, making Petitier's hole a fraction bigger. Mikhail cursed and briefly let go of the shaft, his hands fizzing from the impact, then swung a second time. Knox tried to duck beneath it again, but Mikhail was expecting it and lowered his arc just enough for the head to clip Knox's temple as it passed, before smashing like a wrecking ball into the rock behind, sending more stones crashing, creating a thin but distinct gap at the top. With Knox dazed and down, Mikhail raised the sledgehammer for the kill, but Gaille thrust the Mauser's splintered stock at his face, making him lose his footing on the scattered stone marbles, and fall backwards. She grabbed Knox's hand and dragged him up and over the shrunken mound, then they were fighting their way through the rubble, pushing it aside as they went, scrambling down the other side, coughing and blinking from the thick dust.
They found themselves near the top of a wide flight of steps, looking out over the floor of a huge gallery, vast and dark as a night-time cathedral. The only thing Gaille could see clearly was the thin crevice in its high domed roof, its jagged edges overgrown with vegetation, the walls beneath black with dirt and guano. A few bats, disturbed from their roosts, flapped around so high above them they looked like specks of dust. On the wall beneath the crevice, a little weak sunlight glittered on waterfalls of quartz that fell in frozen cascades, and threw shadows on ridges of stalactites and stalagmites, so that they looked for all the world like the pipes of some grotesque church organ.
There was grunting and cursing behind, as Mikhail came after them. Knox still looked disoriented; she led him briskly down the steps to the cavern floor. A narrow flig
ht of steps led up to a circular dais on which sat a marble throne, glowing palely in the darkness. A pair of golden rings set with rough-cut stones lay in the thick dust upon the throne's seat, while a golden headband with two gilded horns lay beside it, along with a golden goblet; and just for a blink Gaille had the strongest image of a man sitting here millennia before, and perhaps even dying here.
Something on the throne's high back caught her eye. A sheepskin robe, only woven from the finest imaginable thread that gleamed beneath its coat of dust as only one metal could. Her breath caught in her throat as she touched it. 'Jesus!' muttered Knox groggily. 'Is that…'
'The golden fleece,' whispered Gaille. 'So he found it after all.'
Footsteps on the cavern floor. Mikhail was coming. A narrow walkway led away from the dais along a colonnade of double axes. They fled down it to a second, larger platform. Her eyes had adjusted a little to the intense gloom, and she could see that this new platform was shaped like a giant rosette, with the largest stalagmite that Gaille had ever seen at its heart, thrusting almost obscenely upwards. It had a shallow basin at its foot for libations and sacrifices, as though it had once been worshipped as some great deity come to earth; and now she drew close enough that with a shock she realised what deity it was, for it looked just like a gigantic bull rearing up on its hind legs above her; and it wasn't merely imagination playing tricks, but a deliberate likeness of a bull sculpted from an original accident of rock. Elephant tusks had been set upon its head, and its shoulders had been smoothed and shaped, and the limestone ridging of its torso had been exaggerated to create the impression of a coat, creating a Minotaur to stand immortal guardian at the heart of this natural labyrinth. Only its base had been left unshaped, perhaps out of reverence, or perhaps because the whole stalagmite stood at a slight angle, and they'd feared to weaken it, lest it topple and shatter.
And that wasn't the end of it. On the platform at either side of the massive column, and behind, an extraordinary array of artefacts had been gathered. Most were rendered unrecognisable by thick coverings of dust and debris, though others had been sheltered by chance or the topography of this great chamber. They'd evidently once been arranged in groups divided by a grid of lanes, but so many of them had fallen over or disintegrated over the millennia that they'd made an obstacle course of themselves. Bowls of gems and semiprecious stones had scattered on the floor. A pink marble statue of a goddess, her arms raised in benediction, lay aslant across their path. A golden pendant of bees circling the sun lay in the dust. There was ancient weaponry too, shields and swords and axes; but all too pitted and fragile to be of use. She stooped for an ivory figurine of a young woman with an almond-shaped skull, cousins to the ones she and Knox had recently discovered in Akhenaten's tomb. She slapped it against her palm, but it was too light to do any proper damage, so she set it back down.
They ventured deeper and deeper into the treasures, putting distance between themselves and Mikhail, and it was then that they came across their most astonishing discovery yet: a towering golden statue of a bearded charioteer being drawn up into the sky by six winged horses. And her heart twisted with sadness for Iain, despite everything he'd done, that he'd not lived long enough to see it.
'What?' asked Knox, sensing something in her manner.
'Atlantis,' she told him.
FORTY-FOUR
I
All his life, Mikhail had known in his heart he was destined for greatness. All his life, he'd known his time would come. That was what they didn't understand, the little people who sought to hold him back and subject him to their petty rules. But it hadn't been until this very moment that he'd understood exactly what form his greatness would take.
The golden fleece. His golden fleece.
He reached out reverently and touched it. It was made from exquisitely fine threads of gold twisted together into amazingly lifelike tufts that rippled as he brushed them. He set the sledgehammer down on the rock floor, then picked up the fleece with both hands, expecting it to be so heavy that it would take all his strength to lift. But not only was it an artefact of indescribable beauty, it proved an astonishing achievement of craft too, for it was little heavier than the rucksack full of rocks he'd sometimes take on his runs whenever he feared he was growing unfit. He swung it around onto his shoulders in the almost certain knowledge that it would fit perfectly, as though it had been made for him; and it did. It had a chain and buckle for clasping around the neck. He fitted them together and laughed exultantly when they locked. Then he stood there for a moment, his chest swelling with pride as he imagined how he'd look on the world's television screens when he wore it on his return to Georgia.
A Nergadze would be Georgia's next leader after all. Nothing could stop him, not now that he had this. And fuck the elections; fuck the ballot box. Popularity had always been his grandfather's conceit. But their president had declared war, and Mikhail was the man to give it to him.
He looked along the avenue of double-headed axes down which Knox and Gaille had fled. They couldn't be allowed out of here, lest they blab and ruin his triumph. He tried to unbuckle the fleece, but its clasp had jammed, and its collar was too tight around his throat for him to pull it off over his head. He reached for his hunting knife, to cut through one of the links, then hesitated. It felt too like sacrilege. He put his knife away again. He was Mikhail Nergadze, after all. He could take out Knox and the girl by himself, hampered by a thousand fleeces.
He picked up his sledgehammer once more, then set off along the walkway.
II
Knox still felt nauseous and unsteady from the glancing sledgehammer blow he'd taken. He felt strangely powerless, too. Mikhail had shown even in their brief tussle that he was far too strong for him at the best of times, let alone armed as he was with a sledgehammer, a hunting knife and a boundless willingness to inflict pain. Gaille's cheeks were glazed with tears and she kept shuddering. He put his arms around her and hugged her. 'This is the last time I ever send you away to keep you safe,' he whispered in her ear.
Somehow she managed a laugh. 'Is that a promise?'
'It's a promise.'
'Thank Christ. But what do we do now?'
'The police are on their way,' he assured her. 'We just need to find a way out of here.' Easier said than done. The crevice in the roof was far too difficult a climb. And the floor surrounding the rosette platform was impassable with huge boulders and jagged rock. Which left only the way they'd come, back along the colonnade of axes and then through the cave.
But first they had to get by Mikhail.
He looked back past the stalagmite. His stomach clenched as he saw the faint aura of the golden fleece around Mikhail's shoulders as he advanced towards them.
III
Mikhail reached the base of the stalagmite then the edge of the gallery of treasures. The narrow lanes between them were too constricted to allow a good swing of his sledgehammer. He considered leaving it behind or even throwing it out into the surrounding rocks, but he didn't want to give Knox or Gaille even the slightest opportunity to arm themselves, so he gripped it by its throat to shorten its shaft, then pressed on.
He walked slowly, scouring the darkness as he went, half expecting an ambush at every step. It didn't come. He paused to listen, but heard only his own breathing; and just for the briefest moment he had a flashback to that Fort Lauderdale gaol just three weeks before, pressing that psychologist against the interview room wall with his body, the way her breathing had fused with his, the feel of her pussy as he'd cupped it with his hand. He didn't know how he'd come to understand her game, other than he'd always had a sixth sense for duplicity. Luring him on so that she could cry rape and have him banged up for years; or even perhaps wearing a second recording device, hoping to trick him into an indiscretion. It didn't matter which. All that mattered was that she'd thought to betray him and bring him down, and so she'd had to pay, just as Knox and Gaille were about to.
He saw a flutter in the shadows ahead, but
pretended he hadn't. If they thought they could ambush him or even outflank him and so get back to the walkway, they had another think coming. It was just a question now of waiting for his chance.
FORTY-FIVE
I
Knox and Gaille backed cautiously away from Mikhail's advance, trying to loop around the stalagmite to the walkway. But Knox trod on a loose rock and instinctively grabbed Gaille's forearm to stop himself from falling, pulling her off-balance too. It was only a moment, but it was enough. With a terrifying war-cry, Mikhail charged out of the darkness, the sledgehammer raised like an executioner's axe, swinging it lethally down at Knox's head. Knox had no time to get out of range; he leapt inside the blow instead, slamming his shoulder into Mikhail's chest, dumping him onto his backside, the hammer passing harmlessly behind his back. Mikhail let go of its shaft, drew his knife and in a single fluid movement slashed up at Knox's face.
'Run!' yelled Gaille.
Knox didn't hesitate. He turned and fled with her out of the gallery of treasures down the colonnade of axes then over to the steps and clambering breathlessly back over the rubble mound. The generator must have run out of fuel, for the lamps had gone out in the passage, leaving it dark as blindness. He crouched and felt for the electrical cable. 'Grab my shirt,' he told Gaille. 'Don't let go.' He waited till she had a firm grip, then set off up the passage, using the cable like Ariadne's thread to guide him back out of this labyrinth. Aware Mikhail would be able to use it too, he pulled it after him as he went; but a loop of it snagged on a rock and he couldn't tug it free. And then he heard Mikhail, and it was too late. They scrambled up the ramp of rock, picked up the flex again. The blackness had settled around them so completely he could see nothing at all, making it hard to know how much distance they were covering. He held out his free hand defensively, lest he crack his head on an overhang. They'd soon come to the top of a high rock shelf; he remembered that much. He got down onto hands and knees and crept along until he felt its edge, then he found the top of the ladder and climbed briskly down. He waited for Gaille at the foot then they tried to rip the ladder from the wall, but again Mikhail was on them before they could finish, and they turned and hurried on, Mikhail cursing and muttering behind as they passed through tunnels and galleries. Gaille was struggling to keep up, so Knox slowed as far as he dared. Then finally there was a lessening of the darkness and he glimpsed greyness ahead, and suddenly they were at the cave mouth, blinking at the light, flinching at the horrific sight of Iain's head lying on its side. They got back onto their hands and knees and crawled along the throat of the cave until they were outside.