Tom Harper by The Lost Temple

Author:The Lost Temple
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-05-15T21:05:20+00:00

‘Elias Molho. Dealer in Rare Antiquities.’ Smoke curled on Grant’s tongue as he said it. ‘I thought you were dead.’

The grey-haired man smiled and spread his hands. ‘I am … as you see me.’

‘I heard the Nazis got you.’

Molho’s mouth twitched with displeasure. ‘Perhaps they did. Or perhaps it was convenient to me that people should think so. So many people vanished - even the Germans could not record them all. I chose to vanish on my own terms.’ He reached in his trouser pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. Grant recognised it from the tailor’s shop, the one he’d written the hotel address on. ‘But now it seems you have been asking questions about me, Mr Grant.’

Before he could speak the waiter appeared again. He set two tumblers of whiskey on the table in front of Grant and Marina, and left without presenting a bill.

‘From America,’ Molho said. ‘The first instalment of Truman’s aid programme.’

Grant sipped his drink. He’d drunk enough cheap liquor, in underground bars from Cape Town to Moscow, to recognise the real thing when he tasted it. ‘Is this what you deal in? The black market?’

‘Is there any other in Greece? All our markets are black now.’ Molho’s face stayed still and courteous, but his eyes were hard. He nodded to the stage, where a full-breasted woman sheathed in a silver dress had taken over the microphone. ‘Do you know our Rembetika music, Mr Grant? Before the war, it was a curiosity, music for addicts and thieves. The rembetes were a melancholy cult who thought that only their initiates understood the truth of misery. Now it is our national music.’

He swirled his drink in his glass. The big man beside him said nothing, but watched the singer and drummed his fingers on the table in time to the music.

‘I’m looking for an artefact. A Minoan tablet.’ Grant rushed out the words, almost stumbling over them. Everything since the phone had rung seemed like a dream and, as in a dream, he was frightened he would wake up before it finished. ‘Just before the war an English archaeologist came into your shop. He bought a clay tablet, or half of one, with writing on one side and a painting on the other. You remember the piece?’

Molho took a drag from his silver cigarette holder. ‘I

sold many artefacts, before the Germans closed my shop.’

‘Not many like this. It’s unique - or was, until you split it in two.’ Grant looked Molho in the eye.

The Greek nodded. ‘Mr Grant, I am a businessman. Whatever I am selling - American whiskey, Russian cigarettes, pieces of clay-I need to get the best price. What people want most, they pay most for. If my customers want ten cigarettes at a time rather than twenty, or a halflitre of whiskey, or two pieces of stone instead of one, I sell it. Of course there is a risk. Sometimes instead of twice as much profit, I make twice as much problem for myself.

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