result.’
The wheels of Antonios’ mind were already turning, formulating a plan. He chose his words carefully.
‘Kostas, I believe you should continue courting the British authorities in Cyprus and gaining favour with them. We will need to be allowed to carry out our activities from the island undisturbed. At the moment it is the only safe haven in the Eastern Mediterranean. Now, about the main reason I called you both here today. I have still not been successful in locating any of the descendants of the last Emperor. We still do not know what happened to the child. Let’s hope Manuel has good news for us. I’m expecting him soon. And I had a talk with Zoe. There is the matter of locating the exact burial place of the last Emperor. You will know about the prophecies. Well, we may have good reason to believe that they are indeed true.’
‘Antonios, I do not come without a gift of good news. One of the pair of the Likureian icons has resurfaced.’
‘Where is it?’
‘I have it in my possession.’
‘But how? They have both been lost for centuries.’
‘It was by accident. I don’t know whether the icons have a way of finding their way into their intended keepers, but I was as surprised as you were. I did not realise it at first. I had bought an icon for my collection when my six-year-old son found himself playing with it and as he was handling it, he must have pressed some hidden button; the icon fell like an outer shell revealing the Likureian icon beneath.’
‘But how do you know it is authentic?’
‘Well, let’s put it like this. Since I acquired it, strange things have been happening around me. There is no other explanation. It cannot be a coincidence. You know as well as I do the notoriety of the icon to cause such things.’
There was an almighty commotion in the hall and Manuel burst into the library. A deathly silence descended on the room, all eyes on Manuel. The only sound came from the clock in the hall and some birdsong outside. They all waited for Manuel to speak. Kostas even forgot the business proposal he had for Antonios.
‘The lead was a dead end. The man thought he was getting a reward for information. I do not know where he may have got that idea. He started his story well enough, but soon I realised he kept contradicting himself and saw through his lies. Fairytales the lot of them. He made his first mistake when he began throwing secondhand accounts that at first glance seemed convincing. I bet he was hoping to create a smokescreen and impress me with his historical knowledge and slow authoritative voice. Anyway, having just about avoided being blinded by his desire for his fifteen minutes of fame, three hours more like it, I could not confirm or otherwise ease my suspicions. We are back where we started. We don’t know what happened to the real Emperor and where he’s buried.’
‘Slow down. What suspicions are you talking about? And why did you say “the real Emperor”? What are you not telling us?’
‘I heard rumours that during the siege of Constantinople, before the fall, people had seen the Emperor in two places at the same time. I don’t know how much credence to give to those rumours though.’
‘How can that be?’ interjected Kostas. ‘Surely people must have been confused amongst all that hellish mess of the battle.’
‘I also heard that the person people saw was not wearing Imperial regalia.’
Manuel’s words echoed his anxiety, but also allowed for hope.
‘Is it possible that the real Emperor may have come back, if he were away in the first place?’
Manuel and Nikitas looked at each other and there were dark clouds in their eyes. With their minds they spoke to each other and they knew what they had to do. They knew they had to leave immediately.
It was later in the afternoon, near dusk, that Manuel was strolling along the promenade, when he suddenly stopped and looked back, but saw nothing. He thought he saw a face he had seen before, but could not identify. And then it hit him. It was his brother, Stephanos, he was sure of it. But what was Stephanos doing here? He was supposed to be on a mission to Alexandria in Egypt. He was definitely up to something.
A few metres behind him, Stephanos was climbing aboard a ship anchored just outside the harbour. He had spent the day visiting his favourite places, which he could never resist when he was in Smyrna, one of his favourite cities. He loitered around the harbour, spent a couple of hours wandering around the city’s famous central market taking in the intoxicating smells of spices and food; he was tempting fate, he was taking a risk of being recognised, but he could not care less.
He filled his belly and every nook and cranny of his olfactory senses. He satisfied his love of touching and tasting the numerous fares on offer in the richly coloured stalls stacked up with the delicacies of the world. Now he was ready to face a different kind of experience.
Entering the city’s central baths, he felt a sense of tranquillity wash over him. After relaxing in the rich steam and breathing in the mixture of aromatic herbs and spicy sweat, he washed, dressed carefully and left this temporary refuge.
It was on his way to the harbour that he saw Manuel. He recoiled at the thought of it. He could not be sure whether Manuel had recognised him. For a brief moment he saw Manuel hesitate, slow his pace and look back. Stephanos just had enough time to dive into an alley and hide. He saw Manuel walking away and he then knew he was in the clear.
He arrived at the harbour and boarded the small boat that would take him to the flagship of a fleet owned by a man that many people knew by name, but nobody would have recognised, had he walked amongst them, as nobody had ever seen him.
His host was a powerful man. And this powerful man was a bitter commercial rival of Antonios. And Stephanos had met him before.
At that point the account of events from 1921 A.D. ended. Elli fell into deep thought immersed in the past she still could not shake. Reality could wait for a while.
CHAPTER 15
New York
Present day
It was an August morning in New York, unusually rainy for this time of the year, under an overcast sky that, combined with the rising heat, stifled the city. John Halland woke up with a start and sat up in bed. His dream was still very vivid in his mind and it was unlike anything he had experienced before.
He dreamt he was in a strange place that reminded him too much of Cappadocia in Turkey that he had visited only two years earlier. He dreamt he was walking in an underground cave, when he was suddenly snatched, a hood placed over his head, and led to a place that smelled of damp and rotting corpses.
He could then remember hearing some voices he could not make out, then seeing a plaque with an indecipherable inscription and then being placed in a sarcophagus, the lid safely fastened into place and all going dark. He was entombed and he was having difficulty breathing and he was falling in and out of consciousness and drowning and then a vacuum, silence.
As a final act, a face flashed before his eyes, a face he thought he recognised, and then a voice and something he could just about remember… He could almost touch it, but it was not meant to be.
Whatever it was it kept slipping further and further away, like sand through his fingers, and then he was awake and it was gone. But he was glad he was saved, that he was alive.
He was in his bed. The bedroom was quiet and dark with the curtains drawn and the blinds secured. It took him a while to recover. A part of his brain was dismissing it, but another was drawing him to it, as the nightmare’s vividness kept bugging him.
He looked at the clock. It was time to get ready and go to work. Damn, he had overslept again. And damn, he had no time to go for a jog. Again. He fumbled for the lightswitch, then rubbed his eyes, threw off the bedcovers and jumped out of bed like a spring or as if someone had set him on fire.
