The Lost Temple

by Tom Harper

  “What have you found?”

  The faint shout from below drew him back to the present. He looked down. Reed and Jackson were still standing on the boulder at the head of the stream, staring up like frogs on a lily pad.

  What had he found? He looked around. He had come into a high, steep-sided valley, almost like a sunken meadow. There were no trees, only the stream winding through the thick turf. It was surprisingly placid here; even the noise of the waterfall seemed distant and muted. In a strange way it reminded him of Scotland. At the far end of the valley, in front of another cliff, two stone columns stuck out of the ground like tusks.

  He unhooked the rope from his shoulder and tied a bowline round an outcrop of rock. He tossed the rest of the rope over the cliff. Then he lit a cigarette. In a few minutes the first marine had pulled himself up, followed—at varying speeds—by Jackson and the others. Reed came last, with the equipment, harnessed into the rope and hauled up by the marines. He didn’t seem to have suffered from the ordeal; in fact, his face shone with excitement. He looked around in wonder. “Remarkable,” he breathed. “Like a lost world—stout Cortez and all his men. We might be the first men to tread here for three thousand years.”

  “Let’s hope there aren’t any more coming.”

  A breeze whispered down the valley. Soaking wet from scrambling through the stream, they shivered. Grant looked back at the way they’d come up. The forested slope hid the beach, while the sea had all but disappeared in a smear of fine haze.

  They headed up toward the two pillars. The ground was soft, the grass thick and abundant. Wild celery grew in the crooks of the stream’s meanders. A desolate quiet filled the valley.

  It ended in another cliff, the walls curving round like the stern of a ship to close it off. As they drew near, they examined the rock pillars they had seen from the waterfall. They were colossal: they stood on either side of the stream, almost thirty feet from base to top. The white stone had been weathered smooth, but Grant, looking at them, had the sense that there was something indelibly artificial beneath, as if the columns had been cased in molten wax that still modelled the man-made contours under the surface. The more he looked at them the more he convinced himself he could see human shapes shrouded in the stone: bulges that could have been hips and shoulders, dips where the megalithic waists should have been. At the very top, hard to see from below, each pillar tapered to a conical cap that might once have been a head. And, on the right-hand column about three-quarters of the way up, two swellings that Grant felt sure had once been breasts. He pointed them out to Reed, who nodded.

  “Philostratus describes two statues in the temple, ‘crafted by the Fates.’ He claims they were Achilles and Helen.”

  “Helen of Troy?”

  “Precisely: the face that launched a thousand ships.” He saw Grant’s confusion and chuckled. “Yes, she’s not usually associated with Achilles. But there’s an obscure version of the legend that claims she actually came to live with Achilles on the White Island.”

  “Why would she do that? I thought the whole point of the Trojan war was to get her back to her husband. Doesn’t it rather spoil the ending if she runs off with another man?”

  “And a dead one at that.” Reed sighed. “The Greek myths have been tidied up and reordered immeasurably in the last two and a half thousand years—not least by the Classical Greeks themselves, who were appalled by the mess their ancestors had left them. Other versions of the myth said that Hecate was the woman who came with him, or Medea, the witch more commonly associated with Jason and the Argonauts.” He threw up his hands. “Take your pick. It’s most likely that they were all aspects of the female goddess.”

  “The snake woman?”

  “Indeed.”

  Grant looked at the right-hand pillar again. Even eroded by the ages, he thought he could see something of the goddess’s high hourglass figure in the stone. He remembered the tiny figurine in the cave on Crete; and then, with his next breath, Marina, kneeling over him on the hotel bed, her blouse torn open and her arms outstretched. He checked his watch. Eight hours until Kurchosov’s deadline.

  He shook his head to clear it. “If these are the statues, this must be the place.”

  “And look.” Reed was staring at the cliff. Behind the stone pillars, hidden until now by their bulk, they could see two spouts of water tumbling down the cliff. Both emerged from holes in the rock, cascaded down through deep-cut channels, then flowed across the earthy ground to meet at the head of the stream a few yards in front of the cliff. The surface of the water bubbled where they joined and eerie wisps of steam rose off it.

  There the dark rock o’erhangs the infernal lake,

  And mingling streams eternal murmurs make.

  Jackson looked at Reed. “Which one’s the River of Fire?”

  Reed walked forward. He passed between the two pillars—for a second Grant saw them as the posts of a giant door—and knelt by the left stream. He dipped his finger in. “It’s warm,” he exclaimed. He stepped across to the far bank and tried the other channel. “This one’s icy cold.”

  Standing back a little, as if reluctant to step between the pillars, Jackson gazed at the cliff behind. At its foot the two becks enclosed a small triangle of land that came to its point where the waters met. The wall behind was smooth and unbroken.

  “What do we do now?”

  First draw thy falchion, and on every side

  Trench the black earth a cubit long and wide.

  Kowalski grunted. “What does that mean, Shakespeare?”

  Reed fixed him with the polite, vacant smile he reserved for only the most irredeemably obtuse pupils. “It means you have to dig a hole.”

  They took their spades on to the triangular strip between the streams. While Reed watched, the others cut away squares of sod and piled them in a turf wall round the stream bank, then began excavating the black earth beneath. The soil wasn’t deep, and it wasn’t long before their spades rang on stone.

  Jackson paced impatiently. “What exactly are we looking for?”

  “Homer says Odysseus spoke to the dead by squatting in a pit. If we’re correct in our surmise that there was actually a temple here, I imagine we’ll find it somewhere beneath our feet.”

  “Is there anything else we can do?”

  “You could pour offerings to the dead. Homer specifies milk, honey and wine, followed by a scattering of barley grains.”

  “Sir, take a look at this.”

  They looked round. They had cleared the sod and earth from a rough pit about three yards across now, down to the bedrock two feet below. At the back, just in front of the cliff, a square of black earth filled the rock. The marine stuck his spade in, thrusting it down as far as he could. The blade sank in without a sound.

  “Seems to be some kind of hole that’s been filled in with dirt.”

  “Clear it. I’ll get . . .” He broke off. A low drone, like a bumblebee echoed above the valley. “What the hell is that?”

  Grant squinted up, but the raft of clouds pressed too low to see anything. “Could be nothing.” But again his instinct warned otherwise. “Maybe a routine patrol. The Soviets have plenty of bases around the Black Sea.”

  “Tell me about it.” Jackson glanced uneasily down the valley. “Kowalski, take your men and make sure there’s nothing coming up behind us. Grant, you dig.”

  Kowalski led his men at a run back toward the top of the waterfall. Grant began hacking away at the hole. It seemed to be a sort of shaft sunk into the rock, barely two feet square. It wasn’t easy to excavate: for each shovelful of soil he prised up, half of it had slipped off the spade before he could lift it out of the hole.

  A few feet away Jackson had got out the Bismatron and was kneeling beside it. He flicked a switch. Grant heard it crackle into life. There was a blast of static, then a rapid series of pops like the distant sound of a car backfiring.

  “Shit,” Jackson breathed. “This thing’s going off like the fourth of July. We
have to be close. How’re you doing?”

  The hole at Grant’s feet was now almost two feet deep. The spade was all but useless there: he couldn’t get any sort of angle on it at all. He pulled it out, stood on the tip and bent back the handle until it was at a right angle to the blade. That was a bit better; now he could use the spade to scoop the soil out like an oversized ladle.

  Inch by inch the hole got deeper, but still there was no sign of an end. Grant was down on his knees now, plunging the spade up and down like a piledriver. Even then he could barely touch the bottom.

  He thrust the twisted spade into the soft earth once more, pulled it toward him to scoop soil on to the blade and lifted. It didn’t come; instead, he almost pitched himself forward into the hole. He peered in. The flattened tip of the spade seemed to have caught on a lip inside the rock; he could see a dark crack between the earth and the stone. He pushed the spade back and jiggled it around. The crack widened; loose soil tumbled into it and vanished into unseen space beneath. There must be a tunnel or a chamber underneath the shaft.

  “Have you got a torch?”

  Jackson grabbed one from the pile of equipment and tossed it to him. He and Reed gathered round, peering over Grant’s shoulder as he shone the beam into the chasm at the bottom of the shaft. All he saw was earth and darkness.

  “Down we go,” he muttered. He sat on the edge of the shaft, dangling his feet down inside. He tapped his hip to make sure the Webley was there and gripped the flashlight tightly. Then he jumped.

  CHAPTER 31

  Grant’s feet sank into the soil at the bottom of the hole and kept on going. He threw up his arms to cover his head as he slid under the lip of the shaft. He hadn’t stopped; in fact, he seemed to be gathering speed. Rolling and tumbling in the dark, he felt himself sliding helplessly down a slope. Loose earth and tiny pebbles cascaded down all around him: under his collar, down the neck of his shirt, into his ears and mouth. For a moment he felt a flash of weightless terror at the thought that he might fall forever. Then he landed with a hard bump and lay still. Earth slithered down over him; it piled up round his shoulders as if threatening to bury him.

  He spat the dirt out of his mouth and sat there for a moment, rubbing the bruises on his arms and shoulder. A thin, watery light filtered through the shaft above him: as his eyes adjusted he could see rough rock walls on either side of him and stone steps that seemed to lead still further down. He slowly got to his feet.

  The light went out. Grant heard a scream, then a thud and a flailing above him. Before he could move, something heavy slid down the mound of earth and slammed into him. His legs were knocked out from under him; he fell forward and rolled down the stairs.

  “Grant? Is that you?”

  “Reed?” Grant came to rest and risked opening his eyes. One of his ribs felt as if it had cracked, and there was a pain in his ankle that he had no time to think about. “Christ, next time shout before you jump down a dark hole.”

  Clearly shaken, Reed stood and stumbled down the passage toward Grant. He was barely out of the way when another shadow dropped through the shaft and came tumbling to the bottom of the slope.

  “My God,” said Jackson’s voice in the darkness. “It’s really real.”

  Grant flicked the switch on his flashlight. Nothing happened: he must have broken it when he fell. He threw it aside and pulled out his lighter. The damp walls shone in the light of the naked flame; the shadows rippled over them as he moved slowly forward. He edged his way carefully down the shallow stairs. Ancient as they were, they had none of the round edges or glassy surfaces usually worn into old steps.

  “Looks like they haven’t had many visitors,” said Jackson behind him.

  The tunnel ended in a thick, slanted doorway of dressed stone. A black mouth seemed to yawn open between its pillars, but as Grant reached his lighter into the shadow between the pillars dim shapes swam out of the darkness. He stepped back, holding up the lighter so that its glow reflected off the frame. Heavy bronze doors blocked his way. The metal had faded to a greenish-brown, crusted with age, but the patterns embossed in it were still visible. A pair of giant serpents writhed up the main panels, while four birds sat in the corners and stared out. There were no handles.

  Grant put his shoulder to the crack between the two doors and pushed. The metal cracked and flaked away; the doors bowed in but didn’t budge.

  “Careful,” said Reed. “If those are as old as we think they are, they’re absolutely unique.”

  Grant took a step back and eyed the door with an appraising look. Then, before Reed could stop him, he swivelled round and slammed the flat of his boot into it. With the crack of tearing metal and a horrified cry from Reed, the door broke off its ancient hinges and fell in. A cloud of dust coughed up around it, and the whole corridor resounded to the clang of bronze striking stone.

  “Geez. You sure know how to make an entrance.” Jackson pushed past Reed and shone his flashlight through the doorway. “So this is it.” He turned back and looked at Reed. “Congratulations, Professor. You’ve done it.”

  Grant stepped through the open door and stared in amazement. For weeks it had been a place glimpsed only in his dreams, a mysterious chamber veiled in shadows. Of all the things he’d imagined, the last thing he’d expected was that it would seem familiar. And yet, following Jackson’s flashlight beam as it circled the room, he had the unreal feeling of having been there before. It was an almost perfect replica of the shrine on Lemnos, a single round room whose masonry walls soared up to form a beehive dome high above their heads. Grant wondered if the ancient builders could possibly have carved the whole sanctuary out of the rock, or if they’d adapted an existing cave. Either way, it was an extraordinary feat of engineering, by men so far beyond the borders of their civilization.

  “Of course,” said Reed. “I should have expected it for the grave of a hero. This is a classic Mycenaean tholos tomb. Those stairs we came down would have been the dromos—the sacred approach road.”

  The flashlight beam played over the walls. There were no carvings in the stone; instead, the lower reaches had been plastered and painted. Some of the plaster had peeled away; in places black mold bloomed across the frescoes, but the rest of it remained, faded and wan. In a daze, Grant walked across and held his lighter up to the wall. Even close up the pictures were so faint that they seemed immeasurably distant, as if he was peering at them through cobwebs. Some of the scenes looked identical to Lemnos: men harvesting corn, sheep on the hills, a bull trussed up beside a poplar grove. There were images of war: elongated chariots rushing into battle; a walled city; a line of ships drawn up on a beach; men with shields as tall as themselves impaling enemies on their spears.

  As Grant stepped closer to examine the figures, his foot kicked something. He crouched down and held the lighter flame closer. At the base of the wall, a thick heap of debris littered the floor. It must be fallen plaster or stone—but even as he thought it, Grant felt it couldn’t be right. He reached out and picked up a piece. Through the crust of dust and grime he felt the hard chill of metal.

  He snapped the lighter shut and put it between his teeth. The pool of light around him vanished. He felt for his shirt-tail, still damp after wading through the lake, took it, and rubbed it vigorously against the object in his hand. Who do you think you are? he asked himself. Aladdin? He took the lighter out of his mouth and sparked it with his thumb. No genie had appeared—but from the black lump in his hand, a golden eye stared unblinking out at him.

  Grant almost dropped it in his amazement. “Over here,” he called. He polished it some more while the others ran over, working back the boundaries of the exposed patch of gold so that it spread across the face of the object. It was a cup, he saw, a beaker with a high rounded handle like a teacup, and pictures of deer and lions worked into the metal. He handed it to Reed. “How much is that worth?”

  Reed took the cup with trembling hands, like a father holding his child for the first time. “I can’t imag
ine.”

  Grant took Reed’s flashlight and moved the beam along the wall. The ridge of piled-up treasure ran unbroken all round the room. Now that he knew what he was looking at, he could make out individual shapes among the debris: plates and bowls, cups, crowns, statues and swords. He tried to imagine how it would look all polished up, a hoard of heathen gold. “There must be half a ton of this.”

  “Forget that.” Jackson took the flashlight back from Reed and aimed it at the walls, moving it in tense, erratic jerks. “We don’t have the time. Where’s the goddamn shield?”

  They scanned the chamber. Unlike the shrine on Lemnos, there was no altar, no ring of gas flames, no hole in the floor for an initiate to crawl through. The circular walls continued smooth and unbroken. Except . . .

  “There.” On the far side of the room a recessed door interrupted the curve of the wall. They hurried over. Corroded metal pins stuck out of the sides of the frame, but the door they had once hinged had crumbled away long ago. Jackson beamed the flashlight through the aperture. Grant glimpsed a small chamber with elaborately carved walls; then the view was blocked out as Jackson stepped through the doorway.

  “Careful.” Reed grabbed Jackson’s sleeve and pulled him back. He pointed to the ground. Just inside the door, right at Jackson’s feet, a shallow pit about three feet deep yawned in the floor. Jackson shone the flashlight in—and recoiled with a sharp hiss of breath. At the bottom of the pit, skeletal prongs of white bone protruded from the patina of dust and dirt that caked the floor.

  “Those aren’t—human?” Even Jackson’s normally bullet-proof confidence sounded shaken.

  Reed took the torch and shone it around the pit. “I think it’s a bull.” The beam picked out a dull brown horn sticking up in the corner. “It must have been sacrificed when they dedicated the temple. In Greek hero cult a pit usually fulfilled the function of an altar.”