Stones of Treason

by Peter Watson

  The British School in Athens, where they had been since ten o’clock this morning, was situated not far from Aristotle Leondaris’s flat in much the same sort of leafy street. Its library – devoted to classical archaeology – was on the ground floor. Haydon, to do him justice, had got them in here without raising any suspicions. He had produced his embassy card and explained that Victoria was from the National Audit Office, a government outfit whose job it was to assess whether the taxpayer was getting his money’s worth from various governmental agencies. This was a clever ruse because it was in the nature of things that people from the audit office should turn up unannounced and meant that Victoria was given total access and left completely alone. Together, she and Haydon were going through piles of academic journals, looking for references to Kolettis, anything that might lead them to him. It was already close to four o’clock. The library closed at five, although Victoria reckoned that if she insisted upon it they would stay open for her, given what she was supposed to be. But it wasn’t necessary; they were at the end of the journals. They had delved systematically through all the recent archaeological journals – but to no purpose. Kolettis appeared to have published nothing in the past two years. She closed the final journal. There was nothing in that, either.

  Victoria sat back. Now what? She was looking for an archaeologist but was supposed to be from the audit office. What else could she ask to see?

  Several things occurred to her. She got up and approached the librarian. ‘You have people on digs – right? Do you publish reports? … May I see them, please? Do you publish a newsletter? May I see the subscription list as well? What other records do you have?’

  ‘We hold conferences from time to time – there are lists of lecturers and the people who attend. And we have press cuttings.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll see all of those,’ replied Victoria.

  The folders were brought. Victoria took the conference brochures and gave Haydon the cuttings. However, there were far more cuttings than brochures and Victoria had gone through her bundle long before Haydon had finished his. She reached forward and took a fistful from the pile he had not yet examined. It was immediately clear that the cuttings had not been put into any order of date or subject. But, whether from Greek newspapers or British ones, they all related in some way to the classical world. There were reports of excavations, reports of conferences, reports of classical antiquities sold at auction. There were book reviews, travel features relating to ‘cultural holidays’ in Greece, and there were concert reviews of performances played in ancient Greek amphitheatres. Victoria did not at first realize that Professor X. D. Kolettis was the name she was looking for and she went on to the next cutting. But then, a slight sweat breaking out above her upper lip, she turned back. It was a cutting taken from a Greek newspaper and it appeared to be a leader article entitled ‘Bleak future for a glorious past’. Victoria scanned the contents. It was a polemical piece chiding the Greek government in colourful language for its lacklustre support for archaeology. It held nothing of material interest for Victoria save the fact that its tone and subject matter confirmed that Kolettis was politically aware and prepared to be involved.

  Her pulse began to slacken again. She shoved the cutting over towards the pile made up of things she had read. As she did so, however, she noticed two lines at the foot of the article which had been set in italic type: ‘The author is currently at work researching a new biography of Praxiteles.’ She turned it around and passed it to Haydon.

  He scrutinized it, then said: ‘So? Praxiteles was a famous sculptor. There’s a restaurant named after him in the Kallithea district. We could have dinner there tonight.’ He grinned.

  Victoria shook her head. ‘See the date. The cutting is only six months old. If he’s on a dig it has to be something to do with the sculptor. I don’t know anything about Praxiteles – but I know someone who does.’

  ‘David Eady!’

  The Shadow Arts Minister stood his ground as the six or seven other MPs who had been trying to attract the Speaker’s attention all sat down. Briefly, he acknowledged the cheers from his own party’s backbenchers. They knew what was coming and were looking forward to the government’s embarrassment. The hubbub in the chamber fell as low as it ever did and he took advantage of that. ‘Mr Speaker, will the Prime Minister please confirm or deny a report in last Sunday’s press that his government is considering returning the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum, where they are currently on display, to Greece?’

  As he sat down the hubbub rose again. Members not already in the chamber crowded behind the Speaker’s chair to hear Lockwood’s reply.

  Lockwood rose and stepped forward. Three-twenty. In ten minutes the operation on his grandson would begin. Lockwood’s hands clasped the dispatch box. His face was shiny, as if he had just stepped out of the shower. Or was sweating. ‘Mr Speaker, I can confirm that the government is considering returning these sculptures to Greece … but no decision has yet been –’

  The rest of his words were drowned in the din created by the opposition. A deep roar filled the chamber, an angry noise spattered with old-fashioned cries of ‘Shame!’

  ‘Order! Order!’ shouted the Speaker. ‘Order!’ He let the noise ride for a while. There was no way Lockwood could be heard above the row. The Prime Minister took a step back and sat down. He stared at the dispatch box in front of him.

  The Speaker stood up. House of Commons protocol dictated that now every other member must be seated. ‘Order, order,’ he said and this time he was heard and obeyed. ‘The Prime Minister!’ he shouted, and sat down again.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Speaker,’ said Lockwood and then sped right on before anyone could interrupt him again. ‘No decision has been taken yet on this difficult matter. There are arguments on either –’

  David Eady was on his feet again and Lockwood gave way, sitting on the edge of his bench. ‘If no decision has been taken, why did the chairman of the Friends of the Museum see fit to organize a demonstration outside the building yesterday – a demonstration that resulted in injury and arrest? Why were the Trustees not informed of the government’s thinking on this matter? Why have Trustees at all if they are to be treated in this way?’

  A second roar now broke out behind and above Eady as the backbenchers of his own party voiced their approval of his line of attack. The Prime Minister stood up and waited for this second commotion to die down. ‘This is a delicate matter –’

  Another roar from opposite. ‘Only if you are up to no good,’ shouted someone.

  ‘Order!’

  ‘This is a-delicate matter, Mr Speaker. The House will appreciate, I hope, that there are diplomatic and political matters which I cannot go into at this moment but which have an important bearing on the conduct of policy. That is all I feel I can say just now.’

  Eady was on his feet again. ‘The Prime Minister is clearly speaking in code, Mr Speaker, or classical Greek for all I know. Could he please decipher that gobbledegook for the benefit of the House.’

  ‘It wasn’t Greek,’ said the Speaker with a twinkle. Everyone knew he had been a professor of classics before he took to politics. But as he said this he looked at Lockwood.

  The Prime Minister put one hand on the dispatch box and said, ‘That is all I feel able to say at the moment, Mr Speaker.’

  ‘Will the Prime Minister –’

  ‘Roger Dempsey!’

  A government backbencher rose to his feet. He was the Member for Wirral. ‘Will the Prime Minister confirm that the agricultural subsidy cannot –’

  His words were drowned in a groan from the opposition benches. They had been looking forward to seeing the PM baited some more, but now the House had moved on and the moment was lost.

  Lockwood leaned along the front bench so that his head was close to Hatfield’s. ‘Off the hook for a few hours,’ he whispered. ‘Is Dempsey one of your tame lions?’

  The Chief Whip said nothing. But he winked.

  ‘I’m sorry but
I didn’t recognize your voice.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s elusive. A different town or church or sculpture every day. You’re like a gypsy.’

  ‘But without a crystal ball. Or a caravan or violin, come to that.’

  ‘You’re obviously itinerant, though. Restless or nervous?’

  There was a pause. Had Edward gone too far?

  ‘I’m not nervous. Woodie. Why would I be nervous? That’s an odd thing to say. Restless, yes. I miss you.’

  ‘Well … here I am.’

  ‘So, let’s start again. Hello, Woodie. How lovely to hear you at last. You can’t get any gossip out of a machine. What’s the gossip in London town?’

  Careful, thought Edward. Was that a leading question? He played safe. ‘Oh, Hillier is recovering, so I’ll be able to get back to research soon. I’ve had an invitation to go to Romania – to give a lecture on the Royal Collection. Some Belgian thinks that one of our Rubenses is a fake. Paxton & Whitfield ran out of Parmesan cheese – that’s the worst news so far.’

  Nancy chuckled. ‘What about the demo at the British Museum? What do you think will happen?’

  ‘Can’t say,’ breathed Edward, trying to sound as relaxed and offhand as possible. Nancy’s question was natural – but it could have been a probe.

  ‘Do the British like art that much, Woodie? Do you really care whether the Elgin Marbles go or stay?’

  ‘You tell me, Nancy. You’ve been here a while now. What do you think?’

  ‘I’m biased, Woodie.’

  What did that mean? ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Sculpture’s my subject. I’m bound to think the Marbles belong on the Acropolis.’

  She was leading the conversation neatly, Edward recognized. And trying to pick his brain. At the same time, she had just given him a motive for why she might have joined this bunch of …

  But all he said was, ‘I’m glad I’m not Lockwood.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re not Lockwood too. He’s so small. I like tall blonds. What about the weekend, Woodie?’

  ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘I’m not exactly sure. Here in Yorkshire, or further north. Durham, Northumberland.’

  ‘Book a room somewhere, just to be on the safe side. A double room.’

  Did she hesitate? Had she caught the tone in his voice? Maybe that crack had been a mistake. God! How Edward hated this fencing.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, and if there was a delay in her reply it was very brief. ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve done it. Get into another clinch with the machine, no doubt.’

  ‘Fine. Till tomorrow, then.’

  ‘Goodbye, Woodie.’

  Edward put down the receiver. Something Nancy had said itched at the back of his brain. What was it? Something … something out of the ordinary … something Nancy had said that she normally didn’t say. He swallowed hard. Normally, when she wound up a conversation she used that Americanism, ‘So long’. Not this time. This time it had been ‘Goodbye’.

  O’Day shifted in the passenger seat of the Toyota, trying to get comfortable. Given his height and the cramped dimensions of Riley’s car, that was virtually impossible. ‘If this goes on much longer,’ he groaned, ‘we’re going to have to get a bigger car.’

  They had been waiting for more than six hours. Once they had found Zakros’s name in that restaurant, the Greifen, they had prepared to stomp around all the hotels once more, to find out where he was staying. Riley, however, had first called the phone company on the offchance that he had rented a house with a phone. Bingo!

  ‘Why a house?’ O’Day had wondered out loud.

  ‘I can think of two reasons,’ said Riley. ‘One, it’s cheaper, much cheaper, if you are staying around for more than a few days. Two, it’s better security. When they first got these pictures, they may have needed to examine their condition, to check that they were not damaged in any way and that they were genuine. It would have been a risk traipsing them in and out of hotels.’

  O’Day nodded, agreeing.

  There was no car outside the house, no one had come or gone since they had been there, so they were waiting for dark, in an hour’s time at around nine o’clock, to see whether any lights came on. That would tell them if he was home or not.

  ‘Not your usual line, is it?’ asked Riley, with a sideways glance at O’Day.

  ‘Fieldwork, you mean? Legwork? Not any more, no. But security on this is as tight as a moneylender’s fist. O’Day sucked his teeth and squinted through the windscreen. ‘If this Zakros isn’t at home … we might indulge ourselves later.’

  ‘Well, we’ve survived another twenty-four hours.’ Lockwood surveyed the room from his regular vantage point, leaning on the mantelshelf. ‘Thanks to Joss here, Question Time was nowhere near as messy as it might have been. What are tomorrow’s papers saying, Bernie?’

  ‘That you were let off the hook, that the opposition weren’t allowed to nail you, that the Chief Whip displayed some sharp practice with Dempsey. The Greek emissary was in the House, by the way. He said he thought the Commons was a game and he is still pressing for an appointment.’

  ‘Let him press. The blackmailers have held off. They haven’t been in touch either but at least we are all still in jobs for the time being, Andover included. In fact, Dr Andover has been quite busy today. He rang me just before lunch to say that O’Day and Riley, in Basle, have got a name – Nicos Zakros – for the Swiss end of the team. So we are half a pace forward and no further back.’ Lockwood glanced at Edward. ‘And what have you got to say for yourself this time?’

  Edward felt himself blushing. ‘I’ve heard from Athens, too. Victoria Tatton came across a newspaper cutting in the library of the British School which was only six months old and said that Kolettis is researching a new biography of Praxiteles.’

  Lockwood stared at him. ‘Forgive me, Dr Andover, but what good does that do us? Unless I’m very much mistaken, Praxiteles has been dead for … two-thousand-odd years.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But … you’re forgetting that when Victoria called Thessaloniki University she was told that Kolettis was away on a dig. That may have been moonshine, of course – but say it wasn’t. Whatever you think of Kolettis, he is a scholar. There have been lots of biographies of Praxiteles … therefore Kolettis would only produce another one under a particular set of circumstances: he has discovered something new!’

  Lockwood looked puzzled. ‘And this is relevant because …?’

  ‘Because Praxiteles only worked at a small number of sites. I haven’t had a chance to check them all out, but as soon as the libraries open tomorrow morning it shouldn’t take more than an hour to narrow down the places where Kolettis should be.’

  Lockwood stared at Edward, who couldn’t immediately read the Prime Minister’s expression. At length he shook his head. ‘That’s about the most fanciful piece of reasoning I’ve heard in a long time. Thank God I’ve got O’Day in Basle to rely on.’

  Haydon stood in the shadow and watched as the policeman strolled down the street. The Greek police were not so different from their British counterparts. These days even a backbench MP got some special treatment, even if it was only the fact that the local patrolman kept a closer eye on the politician’s home than those of ordinary, non-political souls.

  Haydon’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom and he watched the policeman disappear into the night. There wasn’t quite enough light to read his watch but he reckoned it must be after two. The houses were quite large in the part of Athens where Stamatis Leondaris lived. There were small gardens at the front, rimmed by a wall as high as a man.

  Haydon gripped the skeleton keys in his pocket and moved from one set of shadows to another. Apart from the sound of a train in the distance, all was still. He approached the small wrought-iron gate that gave entrance to the garden. He undid the latch and pushed it back. The gate whined on its hinges and for a moment Haydon stepped back again, into the deeper shadow. He waited.

  He let fifteen minutes go by. The n
oise of the gate did not appear to have set off any dog that might have been hiding in the shadows of the house. As more time went by, there was no sound of movement from within the house; Leondaris and his wife were deep asleep. Haydon hadn’t told Victoria what he had in mind; he would rather surprise her in the morning – if he found out anything.

  After fifteen minutes he moved forward. His movements were tidy, rapid and economical. He hurried down the path, then to the side of the house where there was an entrance beneath an architrave. Haydon inspected the door. It was mainly glass. He found the keyhole, inserted one of his skeleton keys into the lock, and manoeuvred it until he felt the lock give way. He turned the handle.

  The door wouldn’t budge. He didn’t curse or sweat. He moved on round to the back of the house. The side door was obviously bolted as well as locked. If the other doors were like that, he was lost.

  The back door was on a kind of porch, or ‘deck’ as his American friends would have said. He approached the door and without any delay inserted the skeleton key into the lock. As before he manipulated the rod until he felt movement inside the lock. He tried the door handle: the door wouldn’t give. It was only as he turned away that a thought struck him. He tried the skeleton key in the lock again, felt movement a second time and immediately pressed on the door. It swung open. It had been open all along.

  He didn’t dwell on it but moved rapidly into the house. The door gave on to an eating-room with the kitchen opening off that. Haydon passed quickly through both. He reached a hall or corridor. Along the passage he could see the front door and the staircase. Opposite was another door, open. Haydon saw immediately that this was what he was looking for: the study.

  He stepped inside. This was a well-organized room – a large desk with stacks of papers, bookshelves crammed with books, pamphlets, large-format art books. He knew by now, from the embassy’s reference library, that Leondaris’s wife was a jeweller, and he could see that some of these books were on precious stones. He had seen her workshop across the garden at the back, but clearly she kept some of her books here.