Splintered Icon (27 page)

A bird, a beautiful thing, soaring in the mountain air.

And another, and another. I suddenly become aware that they're circling me. I panic, but I can't move.

One of the vultures has landed. It's about twenty yards away. Others follow, flapping down noisily.

Now I manage to move a finger. It's enough for the moment. The food is still alive.

Something very close behind me. I force myself to move an arm. And that's it. I have no energy left. But the vultures keep their distance, for now.

I hear a male voice. It's Jamaican, and it's saying something like, 'Lawd sah!'

Through badly swollen eyes I can make out a black face peering anxiously into mine. Then there are hands under my armpits and I'm being heaved up to a sitting position. Now the man is attempting a fireman's lift, and for the first time I see the ground around me. I have fallen about fifty feet, except that it is more of a steep tumble down to a broad, flattish piece of land. The jeep, however, has rolled beyond this flat ledge and disappeared over its edge. I catch a glimpse of banana trees and coffee bushes. Then the man is staggering under my weight towards a shack, with corrugated iron roof and veranda. A small, grey-haired woman is leaving the shack, hurrying towards us, but then all I see is rich, bush-covered ground.

Now I am being bundled into a small truck, filled with what seem to be leaves. The woman holds me upright, while the man crashes into gear. We are driving over a shallow stream and up a steep, stony slope, and then we rejoin the road. I more or less faint and recover, faint and recover.

At first there is only brilliantly lit green hillside interspersed with black shadows, but then I begin to see the roadside stalls and even a little cluster of shops with names like Tek it Eazy, Katie Rouge Kitchins and Yaso Jerk Center. More brightly painted wooden shacks: a butcher's shop, a food emporium, a post office with notices about Melodious Explorers and the dangers of diabetes. I wonder about my own life expectancy. Then suddenly we are in town and turning left past a busy bus station, and there is the St Thomas Aquinas Church and a long row of stalls, and the truck swerves right towards low, pink buildings with a notice saying: UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES HOSPITAL.

A blurred, black face, peering closely into mine.

'Yuh name?'

'Thomas Aquinas.'

'Yuh gi mi yuh name or deh wi charge mi fi murda.'

As I focus, I see I'm in a big room with a dozen or so people milling around. Some are dressed in white, others are lying on trolleys. Somebody is having a bloodstained shirt cut open: a young man, his eyes rolling in his head, and moaning loudly. Clusters of people surround him; he is connected to a baffling array of plastic pipes, wires and tubes.

'I need to know your name,' she says, trying English.

'Harrius Blakeus.'

'Where you from, Mr Blakeus?'

'On holiday, staying at the Terranova. I won first prize, a weekend with Miss Jamaica.'

'You behave yourself now. What happened to you?'

'I was in the Blue Mountains, hiking.'

'On your own?'

'No, with Miss Jamaica. I was robbed.'

The nurse sticks a thermometer in my mouth. 'Suppose God treat we like how we treat one anedda? Foolish, foolish, on your own up there. You're lucky to be alive, Mr Blakeus.'

A doctor approaches; at least I suppose he is a doctor from the white coat and the stethoscope and the air of authority. He is about fifty, with a black, wrinkled face and white hair. He dispenses with the stethoscope and feels my pulse, 'You lost three pints of blood. Lucky it was just a flesh wound. Lots of bruising around your ankles but nothing broken. Rest for two or three days and you'll be dancing the hornpipe.'

My sheet is damp, I can feel sweat on my brow, but still I'm shivering. The doctor volunteers, 'And you got a touch of a fever.'

'Where am I?'

'Kingston ER. We have more experience with bullet wounds than UWI.'

The boy with the chest wound is starting to shout something in a thick Jamaican patois. The doctor floats out of my vision and I drift back to sleep.

Two men, dressed as ambulance orderlies, also floating. The ceiling, all damp patches with big lights, rotating like the night sky.

'Can he be moved?'

'Yes, but keep the drip on him.'

My voice booms around the big room and along the hospital corridors: 'They're not ambulance people! They're abducting me! They're taking me away to kill me!' I think my lips move.

The nurse leans over me as they lift me gently onto a trolley. 'What's that you say, Mr Blakeus?'

'They're going to kill me,' I managed to whisper. 'I know where to find the Cross of Jesus.'

'That's okay. You stay cool now.'

I grab her sleeve. 'Don't let them take me.'

The nurse disengages my arm and pats it reassuringly. She speaks quietly to the doctor. He glances in my direction. In a moment he approaches with a syringe six feet long. 'This will calm you down a bit.'

I try to pull the drip out of my wrist, crawl off the stretcher and flee for my life down the corridor. I almost reach the drip but the nurse has a grip like a gorilla. 'You lost a lot of blood, Mr Blakeus. And too much hot sun isn't good for Europeans.'

There is an outburst of shouting from the corridor: another young man, moaning and holding his head, surrounded by friends. I think I see exposed brain.

'This ain't no place for Whitey, Mr Blakeus,' the nurse says gently. 'Yuh gawn to a nice private nursing home.'

'I like it here,' I manage to whisper.

'We need the space here.'

Then the ceiling starts to drift past and the young man with the chest wound, now covered with a massive bandage, is complaining loudly about his torn shirt, and the trolley is squeaking along a corridor and curious faces are looking at me and I'm shivering with cold, and floating, light as a helium balloon, and then there is hot sunshine on my face and I'm being wheeled over rough ground into a space shuttle and flying high over the Blue Mountains and Jamaica is shrinking to a small green dot on the turquoise Caribbean and there is a smell of perfume from Miss Jamaica, only Miss Jamaica is a Trench Town Yardie and he looks like one of the killers in the woods.

A quiet room. Light sheets; warm, dry air. A breeze blowing through an open, shuttered window. Curious rhythmic tapping from outside, like tennis balls being hit. A million insects clicking and buzzing. One of them, an iridescent dragonfly, hovers uncertainly at the window, looking for food. It darts away. Female laughter, and a man's voice. Room light, airy, pleasantly furnished with wicker

chairs. I drift back to sleep.

*   *    *

Darkness when I wake again. A gentle swishing from outside, which I recognise as waves. I try to move but my arms weigh a ton each. Do I mean a metric ton or am I talking British Imperial units? Soon will have to relieve myself. I close my eyes and sleep for a month.

On the second day I was well enough to sit up and start thinking about escape. Which was optimistic, as they'd had to support me to the toilet and back the day before. The two ambulancemen, that is. With revolvers in the waistbands of their shorts.

CHAPTER 31

My head was a cannonball. Someone had replaced my blood with mercury and my arteries with lead piping.

It must have taken half a minute to pull the sheet off and ease my legs over the edge of the bed. My head whirled as I sat up. Swollen fingers protruded from a thick bandage wrapped around my arm.

I gave the dizziness time to settle before I tried to stand upright. I felt a sense of achievement as I wobbled over to the open window and supported myself on the sill. The smell of coffee drifted in, mingled with damp tropical earth.

There was a path, winding down to a small rock-enclosed cove, turquoise and calm. There was a short jetty, a rowing boat and a powerful motor cruiser about a hundred yards offshore, bristling with aerials. I could just make out its name:
New Millennium.
Beyond the cove, the white-capped Caribbean stretched to the horizon.

Down to my right was a blue, kidney-shaped swimming pool. A man was lying face down in it, on an airbed. He had a broad, hairy back which glistened with sweat. His arms were dangling in the water and he was completely motionless. He might have been dead.

At the edge of the pool was a white table shaded by a pink summer umbrella with a Martini logo. A woman, apparently naked, sat at the table, drinking orange-coloured juice through a straw. Her breasts were deeply brown, with the nipples a dark shade of pink. She glanced up, smiled and waved. 'Breakfast?' she called up. She nodded to someone out of my line of vision, underneath the red sunshade below my window.

In a moment there was the squeaking of shoes on stairs. A completely bald man with an open-necked shirt - one of the ambulancemen - took me by my good arm and led me down wooden stairs. Still that black revolver in his waistband. He looked like a young Kojak. Every window and door in the house was open, and a warm, gentle breeze was blowing through the rooms. By the time I'd been propped up at the table the pool man was out of the water and towelling himself, and Cassandra's breasts were covered by a red string bikini top.

'You should eat,' the man said in a deep voice. His face was wrinkled and his English heavily accented. Kojak disappeared through French windows into the shady interior of the villa.

'Coffee?' Cassandra asked, pouring me some. I had to use both hands to lift the cup. I drank the brown, sweet liquid greedily.

The man lifted a packet of Marlboro from the table. I shook my head. He and the girl lit cigarettes. Kojak came back with an English breakfast, everything deep-fried. He leaned over me, serving up the plates. I was within two feet of the revolver tucked into his shorts but the fact wasn't worrying him; I had problems enough lifting the fork. They watched me in silence as I ate. I felt better after the food. Kojak took the plates and cups away and disappeared back into the villa. It was a big, white, boxy house, like something made of Lego, all verandas and gingerbread frills.

I sat back. 'What now?'

The man leaned back in his chair, blew smoke, looked at me thoughtfully. 'My name is Apostolis Hondros. I'm a priest of the Greek Orthodox Church. I tell you this because if you survive this encounter you will identify me from some Interpol photograph. If you do not, well... either way, nothing is lost by giving you the information. You see, I am open with you. I need your help, Mr Blake.'

'And I suppose you have ways of making me give it.'

'Correct. I intend to find that icon, Mr Blake.'

'It may not even exist.'

'We are confident that it does.'

'What about the others?'

'Your colleagues? Debbie and Zola are both here, resting.'

My stomach flipped. 'Dalton's one of your people, right? Leroy Abo.'

The Greek laughed harshly. 'I see that we fooled you completely. He was in fact a member of the British MI6. They were using you to get at us.'

'And where is he?'

The man waved his cigarette casually. 'He is dead. As the ladies will be shortly.'

'Oh God.' I sank my head on the table.

Cassandra pulled me up by my hair. 'You too,' she added conversationally, looking at me through cigarette smoke. Her eyes were glittering with pure sadism. 'If only you'd given me the journal in Lincoln.'

'If you help us,' Hondros said, 'we might reconsider your future.'

I pushed her hand away with an effort. I leaned back in the garden chair and looked at them. Their eyes showed as much pity as those of the vultures. Even talking was an effort. 'Once you get your greedy hands on the relic, Debbie, Zola and I are finished.'

The Greek nodded. 'Could be. But my magnanimity is your only hope. What else is there?'

I nodded at the heavy silver cross on his hairy chest, held around his neck by a thick chain. 'Is that a cross or a swastika?'

Hondros smiled. 'You're being naughty, Mr Blake. You hope to provoke me.'

'No chance, with someone as self-satisfied as you. I'm just curious to know what brand of lunacy drives you. I think I'm entitled to that.'

'Lunacy?' Hondros adopted a puzzled expression. 'Is obedience to God the act of a lunatic? Or perhaps you don't believe in God. Perhaps you think the world sprang into existence by itself.'

I sighed. 'This is bad news. You're a religious nut.'

'Some of us prefer to spend our limited time on this earth planning for eternity.'

I looked out at the motor launch. I said, 'You may be just passing through, but you sure like the waiting room to be comfortable.'

Hondros gave a contemptuous half-smile. He stubbed out his cigarette in a little marble ashtray and took another one from the packet in front of him. 'You are a traveller, are you not?'

'It's my job. I look for antique maps in the back streets of the world.'

'Do you know Venice?'

'Not very well.'

'St Mark's Square?'

'Uhuh.'

He flicked at a little green lighter, held the flame to the cigarette and puffed. Grey smoke spiralled upwards and he inhaled with satisfaction. 'Do you know St Mark's Cathedral?'

A memory came back. 'Vaguely.'

'And the four gilded horses from the Hippodrome which grace the facade of that building?'

'I remember them. So what?'

Another puff. I noticed for the first time that his fingers were brown with nicotine. 'Now there we have art, in the Byzantine style. True beauty. Go to Venice, Rome or Barcelona, Mr Blake. Look closely at the wonderful statues which decorate these cities. Look at the paintings of the saints, the egg-shaped heads and the pinched faces, a style adhered to by the Byzantine artists for a thousand years. Oh yes, the Byzantine style, because these things were stolen from that great civilisation in 1204.'

'1204?'

'Yes, by the Latins of the Fourth Crusade. On their way to fighting the Moslems of the Holy Land, they raped Constantinople, the centre of Byzantine civilisation. The Byzantines were fellow Christians, but they were guilty of an unforgivable crime.'