robe exactly as Jack remembered before he lost consciousness.
“I trust you enjoyed a comfortable night. My doctors attended to your injuries.” He gestured towards a low- set table in front of him. “Breakfast?”
Jack remained where he was and scanned the room again. It had a second occupant, Olga Bortsev, Katya’s research assistant. She was staring at him from one of the niches in front of a table covered with open folio volumes. Jack cast her a malevolent glare and she looked back at him defiantly.
“Where is Dr. Kazantzakis?” he demanded.
“Ah yes, your friend Costas,” Aslan replied with a hollow laugh. “You need not be concerned. He is alive if not kicking. He is assisting us on the island.”
Jack reluctantly made his way across the room. His body desperately craved replenishment. As he approached the table, two waiters appeared with drinks and sumptuous platters of food. Jack chose a seat at the far end from Aslan and settled down gingerly in the soft leather cushions.
“Where is Katya?” he asked.
Aslan ignored him.
“I trust you liked my paintings,” he said conversationally. “I had your suite hung with some of my latest acquisitions. I understand your family has a special interest in cubist and expressionist art of the early twentieth century.”
Jack’s grandfather had been a major patron of European artists in the years following the First World War, and the Howard Gallery was famous for its modernist paintings and sculpture.
“Some nice canvases,” Jack said drily. “Picasso, ‘Woman with a Baby,’ 1938. Missing from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris since last year. And I see your collection is not restricted to paintings.” He gestured towards a glass case in one of the niches. Inside was an artefact instantly recognizable the world over as the Mask of Agamemnon, the greatest treasure from Bronze Age Mycenae. It normally resided in the National Museum of Athens, but like the Picasso had disappeared in a series of daring heists across Europe the previous summer. To Jack it was a symbol of nobility that mocked the arrogance of its grotesque new custodian.
“I was a professor of Islamic art, and that is where my heart lies,” Aslan said. “But I do not restrict my collecting to the fourteen hundred years since Muhammad received the word of Allah. The glory of God shines through the art of all ages. He has blessed me with the gift to make a collection that truly reflects His glory. Allah be praised.”
“Playing God won’t make you any friends in the Islamic world,” Jack said quietly. “Not very devout to keep a collection that mimics God’s creation.”
Aslan waved dismissively as his cellphone chirped. He removed it from a pouch on his chair and spoke in a guttural tongue Jack took to be his native Kazakh.
The food on the table looked appetizing and Jack took the opportunity to make the most of it.
“My apologies.” Aslan slipped the phone back into its pouch. “Business before pleasure, I fear. A small matter of a delayed shipment to one of our valued customers. You know the story.”
Jack ignored this. “I take it I am in Abkhazia,” he said.
“You are correct.” Aslan pressed a button and his chair swivelled towards a map of the Black Sea on the opposite wall. He aimed a laser pointer at a region of mountains and valleys between Georgia and the Russian Caucasus. “A matter of destiny. This coast was the summer residence of the Khans of the Golden Horde, the western Mongol empire based on the river Volga. I am a direct descendent of Genghis Khan and Tamburlaine the Great. History, Dr. Howard, is repeating itself. Only I will not stop here. I will take up the sword where my ancestors faltered.”
Abkhazia, fiercely independent and tribal, was a tailor-made hideout for warlords and terrorists. Once an autonomous region within the Soviet Republic of Georgia, the collapse of the USSR in 1991 had precipitated bloody civil war and ethnic cleansing in which thousands had died. With the upsurge of Islamic extremism, fighting had again broken out, leaving the Georgian government no alternative but to give up all claims to the region. Since then Abkhazia had become one of the most anarchic places on earth, its ruling junta surviving on payouts from gangsters and jihadists who had arrived from all corners of the world and transformed the old Soviet resorts along the coast into their own private fiefdoms.
“The border of Abkhazia is one hundred and fifty kilometres north of the volcano,” Jack observed tersely. “What do you propose to do with us now?”
Aslan’s demeanour suddenly changed; his face contorted to a sneer and his hands gripped the armrests until the whites of his knuckles showed.
“You I will ransom.” Aslan’s voice was a snarl, his rage seething. “We will get a good price on your head from that Jew.” He spat out the final word with all the venom he could muster, his hatred a poisonous cocktail of anti- Semitism and envy for Efram Jacobovich’s spectacular success as a financier and businessman.
“And the others?”
“The Greek will cooperate when I tell him you will be tortured and beheaded if he does otherwise. He has a small task to perform for us. He will lead us back through the volcano to
“And Katya?”
Another dark cloud passed over Aslan’s face and his voice dropped to little more than a whisper.
“In the Aegean I decided to stand off when she said she would lead us to a greater treasure. I gave her two days but she failed to make contact. Fortunately Olga had already copied the ancient texts in Alexandria and had done her work. We knew you could only be heading here.”
“Where is Katya?” Jack tried to keep his voice controlled.
“She was a loving child.” Aslan’s eyes appeared briefly to soften. “Our holidays in the dacha were a joy before her mother’s untimely death. Olga and I tried our best.”
He looked at Olga, who smiled ingratiatingly back at him from the table of folios. When he turned back to Jack his voice was suddenly shrill and harsh.
“My daughter has dishonoured me and her faith. I had no control over her education in the Soviet period, then she fled west and was corrupted. She had the effrontery to reject my patronymic and adopt her mother’s name. I will keep her on
“You mean mutilated and enslaved,” Jack said icily.
“She will be cleansed of the vices of the flesh. After the rite of circumcision I will send her to a holy college for moral purification. Then I will find her a suitable husband,
Aslan closed his eyes for a few moments to calm himself. Then he snapped his fingers and two attendants materialized to help him to his feet. He smoothed his red robe and arranged his hands over his paunch.
“Come.” He nodded towards the window. “Let me show you before we get down to business.”
As Jack followed the huge shuffling figure, his eye was caught by another glass case mounted on a plinth beside the window. With a thrill he recognized two exquisite ivory plaques from the ancient Silk Road site of Begram, treasures thought lost forever when the Taliban desecrated the Kabul museum during their reign of terror in Afghanistan. He paused to inspect the intricate carving on the plaques, imports from second-century AD Han China found in a palace storeroom alongside priceless Indian lacquer and rare masterworks of Roman glass and bronze. He was delighted that the hoard had survived yet dismayed to find the artefacts in this monument to ego. Jack believed passionately that revealing the past helped unify nations by celebrating the shared achievement of humankind. The more great works of art disappeared into the black hole of bank vaults and private galleries, the less that goal seemed attainable.
Aslan turned and noticed Jack’s interest. He seemed to derive great pleasure from what he saw as Jack’s envy.
“It is my compulsion, my passion, second only to my faith,” he wheezed. “I look forward to selecting items from your museum in Carthage as part of your ransom. And some of the paintings in the Howard Gallery interest me very much.”
Aslan led Jack across the room to a convex window which swept round the rotunda. It was as if they were looking out from an airport control tower, an impression enhanced by the complex of runways that spread out across the valley floor below them.
Jack tried to ignore Aslan and concentrate on the view. The runways formed a giant L shape, the east-west
