Ten thousand metres above the Aegean Sea, Greece
Present day
It was in the plane going back to Cyprus from Le Mirabel that they began to discuss their next steps. They knew they had to move quickly.
The Ruinands and the Marcquesa would not be far behind. They had their own spies. And there was the small matter of the traitor.
Elli thought of Iraklios and she was about to dismiss it when Katerina turned to her.
‘Elli, we know who the traitor is.’ Elli looked at her with blank eyes as if her mind was still somewhere else or was refusing to obey her and open up to hear the truth she feared. ‘In fact my parents can confirm it.’ She turned to her parents who were only now slowly coming out of their nightmare of the last twenty-four hours. ‘Dad?’
‘Elli, it’s Iraklios.’ Andros Markantaskis said, his voice and his face shouting his sadness loud and clear.
‘No.’ A small word full of anguish. Her inscrutability mask slipped, a rare event indeed. But she knew it to be true. She realised she had known for some time, but refused to believe it.
Then, not fully recovered yet, but loath to waste time in self-indulgent grief and soul-searching, determination brightly coloured her voice and she spoke.
‘We need to get back to the organisation of the mission. Tomorrow is the 21 ^st May, the day of Saint Konstantinos and Santa Eleni, and the crucial date for carrying out the ceremony. There may not be another opportunity for who knows how long.’ Her eyes fell on Giorgos. ‘Now, Giorgos, you can access your hard drives from that panel over there. Download all the relevant material. And don’t worry. The encryption and security equipment here is better than that of any secret service or software company in the world. Vasilis will show you how to use it.’ She looked at Vasilis who nodded. ‘Do you have scans of the scroll?’
‘Yes. I’ll get them too.’ Giorgos said and swiftly moved into action.
‘Good. It should not take you more than ten minutes, right?’
‘Yes, that should be enough time to have everything.’
‘Excellent. We’ll start then. I think we could all do with a little time to recover even if we cannot afford any.’
About twenty-five minutes later Giorgos was ready with all the material printed out. He distributed folders.
‘Take a few minutes to familiarise yourselves with the material.’
Giorgos was operating the console and projecting the material on a big screen above it. He brought up one of the geological scans. He indicated an area on the scan.
‘Look here at this. It’s a bit fuzzy, but you can clearly see that there are two entrances. Remember there has been a lot of erosion in Limassol in this area. The coastline has receded by a huge measure. I have calculated where the ancient coastline was around 1454 A.D. which from the evidence we have seems to be the time that whatever is down there was constructed.’
He brought up a plan and put it on top of the scan.
‘There is a second submerged entrance which has to be approached from the sea at this point here, next to the Western side of the old port. From the scroll we can deduce that we will need to split into two groups. Both groups will need to be at these precise locations that look to be the entrances into the main cavern containing the structure.
‘You will see from the scan of the scroll in your pack that two of the keys, the ones for the slots corresponding to Alexandria and Athens, will have to be used at the doorway accessed through the castle tunnel and the other key, the one corresponding to Constantinople on the doorway on the seaward side. The keys will need to be inserted and turned at the same time. We will need to be in communication to co-ordinate that.’ He turned to Vasilis. ‘Vasilis?’
Vasilis nodded and took over from Giorgos. ‘We will have to arrange in advance for the access through the seaward side. We will be employing the Valchern Corporation resources here. We will need to make sure that the entrance is not obstructed, and if it is, we will need to unblock it under the cover of construction works. It would not be difficult since Valchern owns this area here adjacent to the old port.’ He said indicating on the map.
‘We will use a special small submarine to pick us up from a place where we cannot be seen boarding it which I propose to be here near the mouth of the now dry river.’ He again pointed at the relevant area. ‘This area is also owned by Valchern. There is a copse of trees and a line of rocks jutting out to sea that should give us cover. The submarine will drop us off underwater at this point where we will change into divers’ suits and will proceed underwater all the way to the entrance. Giorgos?’
‘There are tests we will need to complete successfully and traps we will need to avoid. We will need to be close together and in constant communication. Let’s hope there is nothing to interfere with communications down there, be it the geological composition or an unsavoury companion. No rush moves, please. We cannot afford any wrong steps.
‘We’ve already arranged for Eleni Symitzis’ remains to be transported from the Symitzis Museum in Athens to Limassol. We thought about whether to stop on our way to pick them up, but that would be risky and we could not afford the delay or something going wrong. We wouldn’t want the Ruinands catching up with us in Greece and jeopardising everything.
‘The priority is to get to Cyprus as quickly as possible. We have the phial with Iakovos’ blood. We have the three icons and we can, therefore, now establish which of the three are the two real Likureian icons. We have the Emperor’s ring and the Book of the Pallanians and its missing part, the seven pages comprising the chapter called “The Pallanian Resurrection”. The scroll explains in detail how to put everything in its rightful place once we reach the Emperor’s tomb.
‘I propose to split the teams as follows: the team to approach from the castle tunnel will consist of Elli, Aristo and Katerina. John, you can dive can’t you?’ John nodded. ‘OK. Myself, Vasilis and John will deal with the seaward entrance. Vasilis?’
‘I’ve already arranged with trusted people from Valchern for the equipment to be ready at the appointed place and they will be expecting us. Andros and Anna will be taken to my mother’s house by four of our men where they will be under guard until this is over. The house, already a fortress, is now impregnable.
‘OK, everybody, that’s all. We should be landing soon. We are all suffering from lack of sleep, but I think the adrenaline will keep us going for as long as necessary to complete this mission.’