The Lost Sisterhood (23 page)

“Oh, not much.” I pulled up my sleeve to inspect my throbbing elbow. As I did so, Granny’s bracelet appeared in all its timeless grace, reminding us both what a consummate liar I could be. “Just an envelope with ten thousand dollars.” I shook my head, ignoring Rebecca’s gasp of horror. “Everything else was either in my room or in my pockets.”

“Everything else?”

Suddenly chilled, I drew the bedspread more tightly around me. Even though I was telling the truth, my voice sounded false. “Well, I still have my camera with the photos from Algeria.” I reached into the black windbreaker, which was lying on the bed next to me. “I hope it still works.”

Without hesitation, Nick took the camera from me and popped out the memory card. “With your permission.” It was not a question.

Nick’s laptop was of the sturdy variety, engineered to withstand grime, desert roads, and minor explosions. An excellent choice considering his employer, I thought as he placed it on the bed in front of me and uploaded my photos directly into his own picture library. The next thing I knew, an entire year of my life played out before us in a cringing slide show of James playing tennis, my father carving the Christmas turkey in his squirrel apron, some early daffodils I had bought at an outdoor market, my mother eating a rare ice cream … and finally, all my photos from Algeria followed by the ones I had taken just a few hours earlier in the tablet room.

“It appears,” I said, a little irritated at the ease with which Nick had annexed my private life, “I have more or less moved into your computer.”

“That’s okay.” He leaned forward to study the photo on the screen—the last of the batch. “It was getting boring in there. Is that the tablet?” When I nodded, he shook his head. “You risked your life to take a picture of an engraved pancake?”

I decided to let it slide. It was, after all, a relief to see Nick treating the precious clay disk with so little respect; had he seemed truly interested I might once again have wondered about his true motive for coming to Crete.

An odd buzzing sound brought me back to the moment.

“Excuse me.” Nick extracted his phone from a trouser pocket and disappeared outside. As soon as the door had closed behind him, Rebecca scooted right up to me, clearly itching to investigate his computer.

“Let’s see what he’s got on here!” she urged me. “Hurry!”

“Go ahead and hack it. It’s all yours.” I pushed the laptop toward her. “Be his guest.”

Rebecca looked down at the keys, only then realizing they were all in Arabic. “Oh.”

“Right.” I pulled it back in front of me. “You didn’t think he was going to make it that easy, did you?”

“What about his own photos?” Rebecca pecked eagerly at the screen. “Try to open another folder.”

I should have said no, but the truth was, I was even more curious than she. After a week of intense coexistence I still knew next to nothing about Nick, except that he was a smooth-talking shape-shifter working for the Aqrab Foundation.

At first glance, his photo library contained nothing outright incriminating. As far as I could see in my guilty hurry, most of the pictures were from archaeological excavations, showing the various stages of digging and cleaning of various finds. Some were burial grounds with skeletons surrounded by clay pots and weapons; others were actual
buildings emerging from desert dunes, and the artifacts found here included golden jewelry and drinking vessels.

But in between excavations and artifacts were pictures of armed guards and armored vehicles, stringing the entire photo library together by barbed wire. Even though the guards were often smiling and posing for the shots, a current of latent violence ran through it all, humming right beneath the scientific surface.

Only then did it occur to me to check the most recent folder. As expected, it contained photos from the temple in Algeria, including several close-ups of the sarcophagus in the inner sanctum. Scrolling through the images with trembling fingers, I barely allowed myself to look carefully until I arrived at the very last one.

“Look!” hissed Rebecca. “It’s your bracelet!”

I stared in disbelief. The photo did indeed show a coiled jackal lying on a paper napkin, the ancient bronze dimmed by dust. But it certainly wasn’t mine. It had to be the one from the sarcophagus. My bruised head throbbing with agitation, I decided there could only be one explanation for its presence here among Nick’s photos:
He
was the one who had removed it from the skeleton, and his claim that
I
was the thief had been nothing but a handy excuse for following me to Crete.

Just then, the door opened, and Rebecca—who didn’t have my early training in cloak-and-dagger dealings—recoiled with a gasp. Nick took a long look at her, then came over and closed the laptop. “Bedtime.”

A
S
I
CURLED UP
with Rebecca that night, I found myself unable to fall asleep. The events of the evening kept swirling around in my head, and I felt a strange, giddy excitement that didn’t make sense at all. I had been through a hellish ordeal, and my forehead throbbed so badly I could hardly lie down. And yet … I had survived. I had held my own against my attacker, and had managed to stubbornly claw my way out of the underworld. As delayed reactions went, my perplexing giddiness was tinged with triumph.

Maybe, I thought, I was wired differently than most people. It could be due to Granny’s indoctrination, of course, and her obsession with the toughness of the Amazons … or it could be that I had inherited some genetic condition of hers; perhaps a whole cluster of nerves was simply missing from my brain. It was not the first time I had nursed this suspicion, but it was the first time I had happily embraced the possibility that I was, in some respects, more like my grandmother and less like everyone else.

W
E HAD BRUNCH WITH
Nick at the Pasiphae Taverna. After a misty morning, the sun was finally peeking out through the haze, and the brightness did much to dispel the remaining night shadows. Clearly, none of us was in a hurry to reopen the subject of my misadventure in the labyrinth; Nick glanced once or twice at my bruise but didn’t actually ask me how I felt.

He was dressed in a loose white outfit consisting of a collarless shirt and drawstring trousers, all of which my mother—in her infinite in-sensitivity to the customs of others—would have been swift to classify as a nice pair of pajamas. I took this as a sign that he was heading back to Algeria or perhaps Dubai on the next plane and knew I should be relieved to see him go.

“So.” He looked at me with a knowing smile. “What does the pancake say? I know you’ve deciphered it.”

I hesitated. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rebecca tensing, but decided the subject was harmless enough that I didn’t have to lie. I had indeed spent the early morning deciphering the tablet by the aid of my paper transcript and Granny’s notebook, but had found no mention of golden treasures or anything else that the likes of Mr. al-Aqrab could conceivably be after. “It seems to be a treaty,” I replied, truthfully, “or at least a proposed treaty, between a queen and—I am guessing—the ruler here at Knossos.”

“Do you see any connection between this tablet and the inscription in Algeria—apart from the language?” asked Nick, his eyes locked on mine.

“Possibly.” I was a little unnerved by his intensity. “The name of the queen is identical to the name of a priestess mentioned on the temple wall, and the treaty also explicitly describes the enemy as having ‘black ships.’ I’m not sure what to make of these similarities, except—”

I broke off, aware that the narrative I had nourished in my own mind—a tale of violated women looking for revenge—was too wild, too embarrassingly fanciful.

“All right.” Nick studied me with those dark eyes of his—eyes that kept making me feel
I
was the double-dealer, not he. “How did you do it? You deciphered the text in Algeria in five days. And now this. What’s the trick?”

I felt a prickle of anxiety. Although I had not made any great effort to hide Granny’s notebook from him, I had not exactly made him aware of its importance either. For all Nick knew, I was simply a gifted code breaker who could find patterns and connections where others drew a blank.

“Don’t put perfection on the spot!” exclaimed Rebecca, erupting from her chair to ruffle my hair. “She can’t help it. She’s a decryptomaniac.”

Just then, her cellphone rang, and she excused herself to take the call. While she was gone, the waiter returned with our food and I started eating, only too aware of Nick studying me across the table. “What?” I said at last, unable to stand his scrutiny any longer.

But he merely shook his head and kept looking at me. Although the wooden tavern chairs were rather square and rigid, Nick had managed to make himself comfortable—a specialty of his, it seemed. With one arm draped over the back of his own chair and a beach sandal casually up on Rebecca’s, he would have looked like a man completely and utterly at ease, had it not been for the speculative expression on his face.

“I’m terribly sorry,” said Rebecca, returning to the table in a flurry of nervous energy, “but I have to go. The team leader has something for me, which apparently”—she grimaced and took a quick sip of coffee—”can’t wait.”

And then she was off, leaving us with heaps of delicious food—all of which suddenly turned my stomach. For despite my good intentions,
this little detour to Crete had been an unmitigated disaster. I had a bump on my forehead the size of Sicily, bitter memories of ten thousand dollars lost, a power cord but no laptop, and, without a doubt, back at Oxford, the Larkin lectureship was imploding in my absence. As if that were not enough, I had managed to get myself tangled up with the wrong kind of people—one of whom was presently looking at me with a suspicious squint, apparently forgetting that
he
was the bad guy, not I.

“Curious to know,” I eventually said, poking at my scrambled eggs, “whether you ever managed to find someone back at the office who could explain the Amazon connection?”

Nick shifted abruptly in his chair. He still hadn’t touched the food—was merely nursing a glass of orange juice. “Remind me of the connection?”

“Well.” I felt a little flare-up of irritation. “Evidently
someone
you work with decided you needed me in Algeria—probably the same
someone
who sent Mr. Ludwig to Oxford to woo me with talk of the Amazons. Now, as it turns out, you
did
need me … and yet I am left wondering what is so bloody important about those priestesses in the temple. Were they Amazons? If so, how on earth did that idea get into Mr. Ludwig’s head in the first place? And while you’re at it”—I pointed at the bruise on my temple—”ask your lovely Mr. al-Aqrab why I keep getting hurt!”

We sat in silence for a while, until Nick finally pushed aside his plate as if our conversation required his undivided attention. “That night at the bonfire,” he said at last, leaning on the table, “I heard you talk about a legendary hero who stole Medusa’s head. You said it reminded you of the goddess Athena, who could have been a North African import. Any further thoughts on that?”

The question threw me off completely. “No, why?”

Nick shrugged. “I’m just trying to solve the mystery. Who were these women … where did they go next … how did they end up as Amazons in John Ludwig’s head? I think it all hangs together. And here is the fun part”—he picked up his fork at last, stabbed a cherry tomato, and pointed it at me—”I think you already know the answer.”

I was so astounded I couldn’t even think of a snappy retort.

“Help me out here,” Nick went on, eating the tomato. “The priestesses left Algeria and sailed to Crete. Where did they go next?” When he saw my speechless incredulity, he held out his arms appealingly, fork and all. “Come on! Give me something to tell the boss. Anything.”

“I have absolutely no idea what it is you want—” I began.

Nick shook his head and leaned back on the chair once more. “You’ve never worked in a big corporation, have you? Corporations can be like governments: All the little drones have a budget to spend. And because you’re just managing other people’s money”—he reached out and stabbed another tomato—”deep down you really don’t give a shit. It’s just a job. And all they want to hear at the big meeting is that you’ve met your quota.”

I was so shocked by his prosaic speech, I wasn’t immediately able to determine whether he was lying or at last telling the truth. “So, that’s what you are?” I asked. “A drone with a travel budget?”

Nick smiled as if he was quite comfortable with the label. “An overworked drone, in fact. Nice to be on vacation.” He looked around at the other tavern guests as if he genuinely enjoyed being there. “I’ve always liked Crete. People are nicer here.”

Nicer than where? I wondered. Was this really the man who had yelled at me because I wouldn’t touch his sarcophagus and get things moving? The man who had confiscated my cellphone with the manners of a prison guard? What could possibly have turned such a hell-bent workaholic into a slug ready to bullshit his way to a paid holiday? It simply didn’t compute. Yes, Nick could be convincing in his role as al-Aqrab’s gofer, making a big show of his slipshod attire and cereal-box wristwatch, but this time I wasn’t fooled. I had spent enough time with him to see that it was just another disguise and that, underneath it all, there was a savvy manipulator whose sole responsibility—at least lately—seemed to be to keep an eye on
me.

“Fair enough.” I watched him across the table as he finally embarked upon his toast. “You’re on vacation. I suppose it’s wonderfully relaxing to see other people getting beaten up.”

“Yes,” said Nick, frowning, “I’m sorry I forced you to go down into the labyrinth all by yourself. How can I make it up to you?” He pretended
to think about it, then said, “Here’s an idea: You tell me what to write in my report, and I give you a check to cover your losses. Sound good?”

I was sure I had misheard him. “You’re offering to give me another ten thousand dollars?”

He nodded. “
And
pay for a new laptop.”