The Labyrinth Makers

When he returned to the kitchen a quarter of an hour later Faith was just finishing the last of the washing-up. She turned towards him with a look of muted expectation which faded as she saw his own puzzled expression.

'Didn't you get what you wanted?'

'What I wanted?' He sat down at the old kitchen table and stared at the scarred and scrubbed wooden surface. 'I didn't get what I dummy4

expected, certainly. And I got rather more than I expected, too.'

He looked up at her.

'You know, Faith, I think I know what your father's cargo was.'

'. . . we met at Rome at the Egyptian studies symposium, Sir Kenneth.'

'Indeed, I remember you well, Dr Audley,' That beautiful voice was heavy with authority, but utterly free from arrogance. 'Your paper on Shirkuh was admirable. I entirely agree with you that Nur ed-Din and Saladin have taken too much attention from him. But what can I do for you?'

'I think you may be able to help us with a problem we have in the department.'

That made it official, but Sir Kenneth was not a man to be hoodwinked anyway.

'Indeed?'

'I believe you were on the Allied Art Treasure Committee in Berlin in 1945?'

'I was, Dr Audley. A relatively humble member, though.'

'Do you remember G Tower, Sir Kenneth?'

Faith was staring at him.

'The Schliemann Collection.'

She frowned.

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'Troy, Faith–Troy! The topless towers and the windy plains–Troy!'

The frown faded. Her jaw dropped a fraction, and then tightened.

She said nothing.

'You've heard of Heinrich Schliemann?'

'Of course I've heard of him,' she said sharply. 'He discovered Troy, everyone knows that.'

'More than Troy, Faith. Much more than Troy. He found the royal treasure–one of the greatest treasure troves of all time.

'He stole it from the Turks and he gave it to the Germans. And after the war the Russians found it, and they took it–and they lost it. No one's set eyes on it since the summer of 1945.'

Anger was not an emotion in which Sir Kenneth Allen indulged, but his displeasure was magisterial: '. . . in that matter, Dr Audley, the Russian High Command was something less than straightforward with us. I do not question their removal of the Schliemann Collection from G Tower, or their right to it as spoils of war. They had suffered great loss of their own treasures, great loss. They had the right to a measure of recompense.

'But to remove it–and there is no doubt that they did remove it —

and then to allow it to be lost: that was an unpardonable act of carelessness.

'Some of my colleagues still believe that it was never lost, and that it rests in the Kremlin vaults. Mere wishful thinking! If it had survived it would have been restored to East Berlin, to the Staatliche Museum, long ago.'

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Faith sat down opposite him, her shoulders drooping.

Then she braced herself. 'You said you think you know? But how sure are you–and how do you know, anyway?'

'Nikolai Andrievich Panin, Faith–that Russian I told you about.

He's my clue. You see, I thought if I could find out just what he was doing in Berlin back in 1945, before he came looking for your father's Dakota, it might give us a line on what was supposed to be in the plane.'

Her eyes widened. 'It was the same man then?'

'That's really what all the fuss is about. He was just a nobody then, doing what he was told. But he's very far from being a nobody now.'

'And what was he doing–when he was a nobody?'

'He was a soldier. One of the very few who made it all the way from Stalingrad to Berlin. But before that he was an archaeologist, and there's only one thing that would interest him in G Tower.'

'G Tower?'

'That was where he was working after the Russians took the city. It was an anti-aircraft fort as big as a city block. A fort and a hospital and an air raid shelter. And a treasure house.'

'. . . Coins, tapestries and sculpture were recovered, but not the Schliemann Collection. All the Staatliche has now of Troy is a pathetic handful of minor objects.

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'And what makes the tragedy absolute, Dr Audley, is that but for