by Dan Abnett
Two speedboats approached Alecto from the stern. The first cut its engine, and two men were already jumping onto the diving platform at the rear of the boat as it was being tethered by a third. The second speedboat came alongside to port, and two more men were boarding from grapple lines thrown over the guardrails before anyone on Alecto had realised what had happened.
The first of the crew to notice something was wrong tried to cut one of the grapple lines free as the boarder climbed, but the cable was too strong, blunting the knife. The boarder was fast, and grappled the crewman to the deck. He disarmed the crewman with a slam of his wrist against the deck, and knocked him unconscious with his second punch.
The second boarder had taken down one crewman with a blade wound to his gut and was attacking another. The second, a young woman, had been checking and stowing wet suits. She had one wrapped around her arm and was trying to defend herself against the blade while countering with well-aimed kicks.
Lara heard the commotion and ducked below the windows of the wheelhouse so that she could not be seen. She heard rapid steps on the stairs from below decks as Kennard and another crewman rushed onto the deck. They emerged behind the wheelhouse and met the two men who’d boarded the boat at the stern.
Lara checked the windows. She had to know what was going on. She could see both skirmishes on the deck. She counted four men in full, black wet suits, fighting with the crew of the Alecto, including Kennard, who appeared to be an expert in some form of martial arts. His arms and legs were swinging impressively as he drove one of the boarders back along the starboard deck towards the lower diving platform at the stern. She saw a glint of steel as the boarder held his ground for a moment, his stance wide and low, his left hand swinging into Kennard’s body at waist height.
Lara gasped, but her eyes kept moving. She didn’t have much time, and she needed to assess the situation. She did not see whether Kennard escaped the knife attack. On the port side of the boat, two more figures in black were doing battle with more of the crew. One of the women was struggling to keep her balance as she was being forced back over the guardrail. Suddenly, she snapped rigid fingers, hard, under the ribs of her assailant, and his head fell forward as he doubled over. Her neck stiffened and her back flexed, and then she drove forwards, full force, propelling the boarder’s body down onto one of the heavy metal storage lockers that lined that side of the deck.
A second crewman was attacking the other black clad figure from behind as he was clearly kicking a man that was already on the deck.
Lara saw another blade. This time it was in the hand of a crewman, not a boarder.
The thumps and shouts were loud, but the fighting was fierce, and Lara knew that it could not last for long. She was also sure that these were more of Ares’s people. She remembered the blistering skin of the face she had seen only hours before, the face of the jet skier that Kennard had attacked. If they were Ten Thousand Immortals, were they still after her?
Even if Kennard and his crew defeated them, there was the question of Greg’s allegiance and of Kennard’s lies about the dig.
Lara stepped out of the wheelhouse, shielded by the door. No one would notice her footsteps among the thuds and shouts of the skirmish. Some of the time, the dinghy was tied at the stern of the boat, but not when the diving platform was in use. The crew hadn’t finished packing up for the day, and Lara was relieved to find the dinghy tied up where Kennard had left it, forward of the wheelhouse.
Lara threw her rucksack into the dinghy and dropped down after it. The little engine started up immediately, and she drove the dinghy away from the boat on the starboard side, making a wide circle out into the harbour before doubling back towards the shore.
Chapter 23
Lara looked back twice. She had not been seen. As she approached the quay, Lara kept a careful look out. Her eyes were peeled for familiar faces. She was expecting to see Peasley or Frink. Her luck couldn’t last. She smiled with relief when she saw a tall, lean, young Greek man with a lot of long, curly hair. She pulled the dinghy into the quay as close as she could to him and called his name.
“Georgos,” she said.
He looked up and smiled broadly at her. She was finishing tying up the dinghy when he reached her. She shouldered her rucksack and let him help her onto the quay.
“Hello, Lara,” he said.
“Is Rebekah here?” she asked.
Georgos looked around for a moment, and then pointed thirty or forty metres further down the quay to where his sister was standing talking in a small group. She was facing them, so he stepped into her line of sight and waved both his hands over his head. Rebekah soon noticed her brother and walked towards him. When she realised that the English girl was with him, she walked a little faster, a broad smile, matching her brother’s, soon spreading across her face.
“Lara,” she said, by way of a greeting, “you’re back.”
“Hello, Rebekah,” said Lara. She turned her head and looked up and down the quay.
“What is it, Lara?” asked Rebekah. “What is wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” said Lara. “I’m trying to avoid somebody.”
“Is that all?” asked Rebekah. She took Lara’s hand and began to run along the quay with Lara in tow, as if it was a game. Lara let herself be led. They passed the spot where Lara had been put in the car by Peasley and Frink. Lara couldn’t help casting a glance into the arched porches of the houses that clung to the slopes facing the quay.
Another fifty metres, and Lara was being led into the shady space beneath one of the arches. The house beyond was cool and comfortable and very homely. Lara was led through a large, low, whitewashed room into a kitchen.
“We can hide here,” said Rebekah. “Welcome to my home.”
“It’s lovely,” said Lara.
“I have wine and fish and salad,” said Rebekah. “Georgos will be here soon, and he will want to eat. Will you stay?”
“I have nowhere else to go,” said Lara. “Except, I need to get off the island. I need to get back to London.”
Rebekah stopped moving around the kitchen, finding glasses and wine. She looked hard at Lara.
“You are serious, Lara,” she said. “Something is wrong?”
“My friend is in hospital, and I need to get home,” said Lara.
“One phone call,” said Rebekah, holding up a finger. She turned, lifted the receiver of a landline hanging on the kitchen wall, and dialed a number. She spoke rapidly for a few moments, and then turned to Lara.
“Your name is Lara?”
“Croft,” said Lara.
Lara heard her name spoken into the receiver, along with a lot of Greek that she didn’t understand. When she hung up, Rebekah was smiling.
“You are on the ferry leaving for Piraeus at 10:20 tonight,” she said. “There’s a transport service from Piraeus to Athens International Airport.”
“Thank you. You made that so easy,” said Lara. “I hope I can repay the favour one day. You must come to see me when you visit England.”
“I will,” said Rebekah. “After we eat, Georgos can take you back to your hotel to collect your luggage.”
“I have everything here,” said Lara, lifting her rucksack from her shoulder and putting it on the floor at her feet.
Rebekah smiled again.
“More time together then,” she said. “A proper farewell.”
Rebekah handed Lara a small glass half-filled with wine.
“A proper farewell,” said Lara. She hesitated for a moment.
“There was something else?” asked Rebekah. “I am happy to help you, Lara.”
“You know about boats and the sea around here?” asked Lara. “You know about coordinates?”
“All my life,” said Rebekah. “For as many generations as anyone can remember. For my whole family it has been only fish and boats and our
little houses on the quay.”
“If I showed you some coordinates, do you think you could tell me where they are?” asked Lara.
Rebekah gestured out of the kitchen.
“Follow me,” she said.
Lara picked up her rucksack and followed Rebekah into the large sitting room. Against one wall there was a piece of furniture covered in what looked like an old painted shawl. Rebekah threw back the cloth to reveal a beautiful old plan chest made in a highly figured dark golden wood. She pulled out a drawer, and Lara looked in to see a pile of maps.
“Anywhere in the Aegean Sea, the Thracian, the Sea of Crete, the Ionian, the Myrtoan will be in this drawer,” said Rebekah. “Below are maps of the Mediterranean. Below that, the Adriatic. If your coordinates are not in those places, Georgos will know where to look.”
Lara was only half listening. The map she was looking at was, by her estimation, at least two hundred years old. It depicted a series of islands with their coastlines and the seas around them, and it was hand drawn and coloured. It looked as if it had never been folded. Lara stepped across the room to put her glass down on a table at a distance. She wasn’t going to risk spilling anything on the maps.
“Give me your glass please, Rebekah,” she said. Rebekah handed her the glass, absentmindedly, and Lara placed it beside her own.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a beautiful map,” said Lara.
Rebekah laughed.
“A map is a tool,” she said. “True maps, family maps, remain on the land. They are copied for the boats as they are needed. A good map is a useful tool. It does not need to be new or beautiful.”
“Do you have more like this?” asked Lara.
Rebekah began to rummage through the drawer, pulling out maps and tossing them on top of the chest.
“Carefully,” said Lara. “Please be careful with them.”
Rebekah laughed again. The first drawer held about a dozen of the maps, all of similar age and all in wonderful condition, never folded or exposed to humidity, and stored in the dark.
“These are rare and very valuable,” said Lara. She wanted to touch them, but couldn’t bring herself to do it without wearing gloves. “Do they belong to you?”
“To me and to Georgos,” said Rebekah.
“You should have them appraised,” said Lara.
“They are just old maps,” said Rebekah, but she wasn’t laughing anymore.
“When I get back to London, I’ll speak to someone about them, if you’d like,” said Lara. “May I take some photographs, just on my phone?”
“Of course,” said Rebekah, bemused. “But don’t you want to know about your coordinates?”
Lara took her phone and her notes from the logbook out of her rucksack. She gave the notes to Rebekah and started to take photos of the maps.
“This is easy,” said Rebekah. “The first coordinates are right here in Anafi harbour. The second are in the Ionian Sea. I think it is Preveza. She slid the maps over each other until she found the one she wanted. “Here,” she said, stabbing the map with her finger.
“Is that far from Anafi?” asked Lara.
“A thousand kilometres, maybe more,” said Rebekah. “The other coordinates are close by. I think Kerkira.”
“Corfu?” asked Lara. “That’s east of the Greek mainland.”
“One hundred and fifty kilometres north of Preveza,” said Rebekah.
“Alecto hasn’t been in Anafi harbour for eight weeks,” said Lara, more to herself than to Rebekah.
“Your boat? With your diving friends?” said Rebekah. “Of course not. It was there two days when we first met.”
The exterior door into the sitting room opened, and the girls turned to see Georgos entering.
“Let’s make some food,” said Rebekah, “and we can tell Georgos about the maps.”
Chapter 24
Rebekah and Georgos insisted on taking Lara to the ferry, and she was glad of the company. It made her more anonymous than if she’d been alone. She walked between them and listened to them talking to each other and laughing, clearly excited about the maps, even though neither one of them seemed to quite believe what Lara had told them.
Lara said her farewells and was soon safely installed on the ferry and on her way to the mainland to catch a flight back to London. She had an eleven-hour overnight journey to Piraeus, but the ferry wasn’t busy and she managed to upgrade to a berth on her own for an extra charge. Lara knew that she would need some sleep, but first she needed some time to think.
Lara got comfortable and took out the Book. She took the photographs out of the pocket in the back cover and looked at them again. It was the black-and-white photograph of the ram statuette that really interested her. Where had she seen that statuette before?
“Think, Lara,” she said to herself. “It was recently. You know you saw this recently.” She sat back for a moment and closed her eyes. She couldn’t remember. She reached into her rucksack for the bottle of water that she’d brought with her, and felt the cold, embossed surface of the Queen Mary tin. She pulled it out and put it in her lap. Then, she took out the bottle of water, thumbed the cap, and took a couple of long sips.
She thought about Herodotus Menelaou. She thought about his office, high up in the old building in Paris. She thought about all the wonderful things in his room. She thought about his stories. She thought about how he had allowed her to touch everything, about how alive she had felt, about the romance of it all.
He had been alive too, more alive than almost anyone she had met. He had been ancient and enormous. He had breathed hard, and he had sweated profusely, and he had talked and laughed with her as if they had been old friends. She would have liked to have known him for longer than the couple of hours they had spent together. The time had gone so quickly, and yet she hadn’t had a chance to properly look at more than two or three things in his room.
She wondered if he even knew what he owned, but only for a moment. Of course he knew; he’d known about the Fleece and about the gold. It hadn’t mattered what she’d picked up, he’d had a story about it, about its origins, where he’d found it, who it had belonged to before him, and any number of details surrounding its provenance. She wondered what would become of it all. She grasped the little tin tightly in her hands. For someone so alive to die like that...
Lara closed her eyes and cast her mind back to the room.
“Was it there?” she asked. “Were you in that room?” She opened her eyes and stared at the photograph of the ram statuette again.
It wasn’t there. It couldn’t have been there, she thought. I would have touched it. I would have wanted to know how it felt in my hands. It’s the perfect size to hold… the perfect texture.
“You would have let me hold it,” she said out loud, as if she was talking to Menelaou.
And then she knew.
It was as if a light switch was thrown in her head. She could see it so clearly she wondered how she hadn’t seen it before.
She had seen the statuette. She had seen it shelved, carefully displayed. She had seen it in its rightful place among other objects from the same period and the same region. She could see the little statuette of the ram now, and she could hear his voice.
“There are some fine pieces, so I’d prefer you didn’t touch anything without asking first.” That’s what he’d said to Lara. What’s more, he’d said it just as her eyes had fallen on the golden ram.
“It’s in Babbington’s office,” she said. “The gold from the Golden Fleece. Professor Babbington had it all along.”
Lara’s mind was buzzing. She had her lead. The last piece of the puzzle was in place. She had travelled all over Europe following Kennard’s clues. She had put herself in harm’s way in Paris, and she’d been tracked down to Anafi and even kidnapped. She had at least two factions following her, and she s
till had no idea what Kennard’s part was in the whole adventure. And all along, the final piece of the puzzle had been in Babbington’s office in Oxford.
There was nothing to be done until she could return to England, except to stay one step ahead of whoever was tracking her, to stay out of reach of Christian Fife’s henchmen and Ares’s Ten Thousand Immortals.
How were they able to find her so easily?
Lara’s main source of information was the Book. She used the Internet, of course, and her phone. Then, she remembered something that Christian Fife had said.
“I’ve scoured the Internet for information about you.”
Wasn’t that exactly what she’d done? If Ares really was as powerful as he said he was, wouldn’t it be simple enough for him to set up The Ten Thousand Immortals home page and then track anyone who checked the page? She’d visited the site several times. She’d bookmarked it on her laptop at the flat, and visited it again from the borrowed laptop in her hotel in St. Germain. He knew who her father was. He knew about Yamatai. She was a target for Ares.
It’s the technology thought Lara. That’s how they’re tracking my movements. That’s how they know where I am.
Lara took out her mobile phone, turned it off, and removed its battery. No one could track her phone if it was disabled.
It was a long ferry ride, and there was nothing more that Lara could do, except sleep. So much had happened in the last few days, and she hadn’t slept at all the night before. Suddenly, she realised just how exhausted she was.
She put all her belongings back in her rucksack and made a pillow out of it. If it was under her head no one could steal it without disturbing her. The contents, the Book and the photos, were far too valuable for her to lose them.
Then, Lara slept. For the first time in two days, she slept.
Chapter 25
When the ferry arrived at Piraeus, most of the passengers transferred to a bus for Athens International, and Lara went with them. She felt safe in a crowd, and all of the travelers were obviously tourists in family groups with luggage, or students, who resembled her, with backpacks. There were no suspicious looking men, or people travelling alone, and no one was travelling light.