The Orpheus Descent by Tom Harper

Author:Tom Harper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Historical
ISBN: 1444731351
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Twenty-two

Jonah – Athens

He stared at the phone, shaking and glowing in his hand like some exotic fish trawled from the depths of the ocean. Around him, Athens sprawled away through the windows of the glass box.

The phone stopped moving when he answered it. The voice on the other end reminded him of something he’d almost forgotten, like sniffing rain at the end of a long dry summer.

‘I’m glad you came. I wasn’t sure you’d remember.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Don’t you remember?’

‘Did you call me in London? Two nights ago?’

A sigh, as if he’d disappointed her somehow. ‘Did they drug you that thoroughly?’

Listening to her made him wonder if he was back in his dream. ‘Nobody drugged me. I just had too much to drink.’

‘Alcohol’s a drug. They don’t even have to inject it.’

He had no answer to that. ‘Did you tell me to come to Athens?’

‘You’re here, aren’t you?’

Talking with this woman whose name he didn’t know, he wasn’t sure of anything. He looked out the window to get his bearings, and came eye to eye with the Acropolis. Suddenly, it looked absurd – as if he was in a film, and the director had called for the most obvious establishing shot to show the audience that Jonah was in Athens. Except in a film, the Acropolis would be a backdrop stretched across the studio wall.

‘Are you there?’

‘Still here.’ He’d been studying the Acropolis, looking for creases. The haze in the air made it wobble and shimmer. He wondered if it was the infamous Athenian smog – or tear gas.

‘Are you going to tell me who you are?’

‘Do you know Elefsina? It’s an archaeological site, on the coast beyond Piraeus.’

‘OK.’

‘Meet me there at twelve. Make sure they don’t follow you.’

‘Who?’ No answer. ‘Why would I go there? I don’t even know who you are?’

‘Then come and find out.’

‘How will I recognise you?’

‘I’ll know who you are.’

In another world, Jonah wouldn’t have been sitting on a bus lumbering through suburban Athens on the strength of an anonymous phone call. He wouldn’t even have been in Greece. But that world didn’t exist any more. Its destruction had been seamless, but irreversible. He remembered the empty gates in the field at Sibari, the chill on his shoulders as he stepped through. Was that when it changed?

The bus rattled down a long, straight street full of tyre-change garages and hardware shops. Even at his stop, nothing said ‘ancient site’ except the driver shouting at him in Greek and pointing down a nondescript side street. At the end, a man in a kiosk sold him a ticket that was covered in dust, admitting him to a large, open square surrounded by broken pieces of tombs and buildings. Column stumps marked the remains of a monumental gateway that had been cut down. A scrubby hill rose behind it, topped by a clock tower that said twelve o’clock.

Beyond the ruined gate, a path wound around the side of the hill to yet more ruins. Lily would have known where to go.

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