The Age of Olympus

by Gavin Scott

  Forrester picked up the empty oilskin pouch and pressed it to his nose. “Wonderful aroma,” he said.

  “Oilskin,” said Venables. “It has quite a strong smell. And your point is?”

  “That smell is what makes it the perfect thing for hiding the aroma of Nobel 808,” said Forrester. “You could stay in the same room, even the same cabin with Keith Beamish and he’d never know that…” He pulled at a loose thread. “…there was a stick of 808 sewn away inside the bottom flap. Unless he looked inside.”

  “Keith was under strict instructions never to look at my manuscript,” said Venables evenly. “I trusted him implicitly.”

  “Apparently unwisely,” said Forrester. He gave the thread another tug and a little mouth appeared in the lining of the bottom of the bag. “My guess is that he wanted to know what you’d been writing about him and Ariadne, but it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that he opened the satchel, looked through your manuscript – and smelt something odd.”

  “Rubbish,” said Venables.

  “Not being familiar with explosives, of course, he didn’t know what that almond scent signified – until we were on the way to the castle and I happened to mention it.”

  “This is supposition on supposition, Forrester.”

  “I should have realised that he’d made the connection when he started talking to you about foxes and shrines, as we walked,” said Forrester. “I didn’t understand then it was an accusation. But you did, didn’t you? You realised he was onto you. Which was why you killed him.”

  “Keith was my friend,” said Venables. “And he was my collaborator. How could you even imagine I would kill someone who was so vital to me?”

  “Your book was a cover from the beginning,” said Forrester. “And you were perfectly prepared to sacrifice Keith Beamish for the cause, weren’t you?”

  “Keith was killed by Constantine Atreides,” said Venables doggedly. “You saw the sketch he made that proved the bastard was in the grove that morning.”

  “I did see it,” said Forrester. “It did indeed look conclusive. But unfortunately for you after you all left Countess Arnfeldt-Laurvig examined the page very closely – and do you know what she found? Pressure marks on every stroke delineating Atreides’s hat.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that it had been added to the drawing by somebody using a piece of tracing paper. The hat in the drawing was identical to the drawing of the hat in the sketch Keith Beamish made that night in Anafiotika. You simply added it in. And of course that explains why Keith made no reference to having seen Atreides’s hat in the grove that day: he hadn’t.”

  “Bullshit. It was Atreides who killed Keith. You know damn well Alexandros’s wife virtually saw him do it.”

  “Ah, Penelope Alexandros. That was another place where your excellent sources of information came in handy. You knew that she had been the mistress of at least one German commandant on Hydros during the war, didn’t you? That was how she had made sure the islanders were spared the kind of atrocities that happened elsewhere. And you used that fact to blackmail her into saying what you wanted her to say.”

  “Unprovable,” said Venables. “Did she tell you that I blackmailed her? I don’t expect so.”

  “No,” said Forrester, “you wouldn’t expect her to identify you, would you, because you had taken the precaution of sending your demands in the form of notes, which she naturally destroyed.”

  “But Penelope Alexandros wasn’t the only one pointing the finger at Atreides, was she?”

  “No, you used the same method to blackmail the gardener into naming Atreides. He knew about Penelope Alexandros and the German commander, he knew why she had done it, and he would do anything to protect her. His evidence against Constantine seemed like the final nail in the coffin for Atreides, but in fact it was the final nail in yours.”

  “What do you mean?” said Venables.

  “Because after Constantine was dead and you were all gone Socrates identified you as the man who blackmailed him.”

  “He couldn’t have!” said Venables. “He never saw me.”

  Forrester said nothing, but simply stared.

  “What I mean—” said Venables – but it was too late.

  “What you mean,” said Forrester, “is that you did it. You manipulated the entire situation to achieve your ends. You created the illusion that someone was trying to kill Ari Alexandros, when no one was trying to do so. In Athens you wanted him to believe someone had tried to kill him with poison – no one had. On Hydros you wanted him to believe the sabotage of the shrine was aimed at him – it wasn’t. And when Atreides tried to escape it was the perfect opportunity for you to take a shot at Alexandros and make it look as if it was Connie’s last effort to fulfil his mission. Before, of course, you shot Atreides yourself to ensure the case against him would never be properly examined. I have to congratulate you, Venables, it was a brilliant campaign – and it succeeded. Alexandros finally snapped, decided he wasn’t going to let the royalists or the right-wingers either frighten or eliminate him and went to join ELAS. Your masters must have been very pleased.”

  “My ‘masters’,” said Venables contemptuously. “I am not some lackey, like you, Forrester. I fight for what I believe in.”

  “And what do you believe in?” said Forrester.

  Venables glanced around the room, then spat back: “The forces of history, the triumph of the proletariat. Everything that Karl Marx predicted in Das Kapital.”

  “And you were prepared to sacrifice your friend for that? Because he realised you were a murdering bastard? And Jason Michaelaides, who had never done you any harm? And Connie Atreides, who wouldn’t hurt a fly? And Giorgios Stephanides, who was just an accidental casualty? And me, come to think of it, when you took a potshot at me in the wood that night. Together with anybody else who got in the way of the forces of history.”

  “Of course I was,” said Venables, his face suddenly radiant, as if lit by an inner glow. “Unlike you, Duncan, I believe in something. And as a result of what I did the cause has received a powerful new recruit – one who’ll change history.”

  “Unless he learns the truth about you and the Party,” said Forrester. “Unless he learns that the reason you were able to blackmail his wife was because the Party gave you the information you needed. Because that was what happened, wasn’t it? And he’ll know the truth when he hears it.”

  “From you?” said Venables. “What makes you think you’re going to get anywhere near him?”

  “Oh, I’ll reach him in the end,” said Forrester. “I fought the Wehrmacht in these mountains, and it’ll take more than someone like you to stop me. And by the way, if you’re thinking of trying to bump me off here, I should warn you I already have a Luger pointed at your stomach under the table.”

  To Forrester’s surprise Venables smiled. “Well, I don’t have a gun,” he said. “I have no need. I just want to take something out of my top pocket to show you. It’s not a weapon – it’s something I think you’ll be quite interested in. Will you permit that?”

  Forrester’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded. Venables reached up and took out an envelope. From the envelope he took out a photograph. He pushed the photograph across the table to Forrester.

  “Do you recognise him?”

  Forrester stared at the picture. It was a black and white prison photograph of a gaunt middle-aged man with wild, unfocused eyes. “I’ve never seen him before in my life,” said Forrester, but at some deep subterranean level, he knew this was not entirely true.

  “You may not know him personally, but a good friend of yours is very familiar with him,” said Venables. “Countess Arnfeldt-Laurvig.”

  Forrester felt his mouth go dry.

  “That is her husband, the count,” said Venables.

  “He’s dead,” said Forrester. “He died during the war.”

  “So the countess believed,” said Venables. “Otherwise I’m sure she would never have betrayed
him by becoming your lover. But the fact is he was captured, and through the complex convolutions of battle in the northern latitudes, ended up in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp. He is now about to be released. He is, of course, eager to return to his wife and estates.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “He is a degenerate, a drunkard – and is now a shell of a man, bitter, diseased and full of anger. It would be a tragedy for a woman like the countess to have him in her life again.”

  Forrester forced himself to speak. “And your point is?”

  “As you have realised,” said Venables, relaxing, “I am a member of the Communist Party. As a result of my achievements I am in very good standing with the Party. One word from me and the count will not be released back into the world, but will vanish harmlessly into the camps, where doubtless he will not survive for long, which will be a great blessing for you and the countess.”

  “In return for what?”

  “In return for you giving up your hopeless quest to find General Alexandros and agreeing not to cast doubts in his mind about the rightness of his decision to lead ELAS to victory. If anyone asks, you have tried and you have failed. No one will ever know anything different apart from you and me.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “The count will be released and repatriated and you will be condemning the woman you love to many years of misery. You will be sacrificing her for some abstract political cause – exactly what you accused me of doing in relation to poor Keith and Michaelaides and the ridiculous Prince Atreides. Are you prepared to do that, Forrester?”

  Forrester closed his eyes. Had Venables offered him the bribe as a means of securing his own happiness it would have been easy to refuse. But Venables had put Sophie on the altar of sacrifice, and handed Forrester the knife. Besides, wasn’t he right? Alexandros had made his decision. What was the point in trying to change his mind?

  He thought, for a long moment, of the years ahead with Sophie if the count remained in a Russian Gulag. Of the peace and contentment they could bring each other. Of the fact that he loved her and she brought a balm to his soul after years of drought.

  He saw all that and he knew it could never be. If he told her that her husband was still alive, she would have to go to him. If he did not, the lie would poison everything.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” he said, “but it’s not the one you’ve offered. If you agree to release the count into my custody, I’ll agree to give up my quest to find Alexandros and tell him the truth.”

  Venables stared at him. “But that’s ridiculous,” he said. “All your efforts to incriminate me have been for nothing, and you lose a woman you clearly care about. Because she will take him back, you know that don’t you? She will take him back like a wounded animal and look after him for years to come and you will lose her.”

  Forrester felt himself grow cold in the oppressive heat of the bar. Every word that Venables said was like a knife twisting in his heart. And yet he could do no other.

  “That is as it may be,” he said. “But that is my decision. Do we have a deal?”

  Venables reached down to the table, repacked the manuscript in its oilskin pouch, returned it to the canvas bag, returned the photograph to his pocket, and buttoned his coat. “Very well,” he said. “If you come with me now, we will make the necessary arrangements.”

  Forrester let out a long breath, picked up the glass that had lain untouched before him since Venables arrived, and drained it. Then, together, the two men walked out of the bar.

  Nothing happened for a long moment after the door slammed behind them. Then the stinking drunken Greek peasant who had lain patiently with his head on the table throughout the conversation, as Forrester had asked him to, straightened up.

  It was Colonel Giorgios Stephanides.

  “Well played, my friend,” he said to himself. “I will give your regards to the General when I make my report. But I am sorry about you losing your woman. She was a good woman, too. And they’re not easy to find.”

  AFTERWORD

  Greece did indeed erupt into civil war later that year, and ELAS came close to victory on several occasions. But General Ari Alexandros was not there to ensure that victory was complete. Ten days after the events described in this book, he unexpectedly left ELAS headquarters near the Yugoslav border and returned, in the company of Colonel Giorgios Stephanides, to Athens, where they were both given key commands in the Greek Army.

  The long-awaited elections, held on 31 March 1946, put the royalists in power, and in a referendum in September 1946 the people of Greece voted for King George II to return.

  The civil war finally ended, with the communists defeated, in September 1949.

  But by that time Forrester was far away.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Some of the Greek islands in the book, home to the local variants of the Greek myths expounded by my characters, do not appear on any map, and though there were several Bohemonds at large during the Crusades, mine and the knightly order to which he belonged escaped the attentions of all historians, just as my islands eluded even the most conscientious geographers. I hope, however, that the isle of Hydros and story of Bohemond and his family will now find a home in your imagination.

  Thanks for their help to Athina Plakoudi and Shelly Papadopoulos and the Greek Heritage Society of Southern California. There were two books which I found particularly useful in conjuring up the atmosphere of Greece and its islands in 1946: Osbert Lancaster’s Classical Landscape with Figures and Lawrence Durrell’s Reflections on a Marine Venus, both of which are as enjoyable as they are informative. Any of my readers who wish to delve further into the world of The Age of Olympus would be well advised to start there.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gavin Scott is a British Hollywood screenwriter, novelist and journalist, based in Santa Monica, California. He spent twenty years as a radio and television reporter for BBC and ITN, during which time he interviewed J.B. Priestley, Iris Murdoch and Christopher Isherwood, among many others. He is writer of the Emmy-winning mini-series The Mists of Avalon, he developed and scripted The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles for George Lucas, wrote the BAFTA-nominated The Borrowers, and worked with Stephen Spielberg on Small Soldiers. His first novel in the Duncan Forrester series, The Age of Treachery, was published in 2016.

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