‘Then again “temple of wisdom” could be referring to a space with manuscripts residing inside, a space very much like a library, perhaps? It could mean that the Emperor’s tomb could be inside the temple.’ Katerina paused, suddenly, and surprisingly for her, self-conscious and shame-faced. ‘I hope I’m not going on a wild tangent here. Sorry. My imagination got the better of me.’
Suddenly she had second thoughts and quickly recovered from her unlikely feeling of shy embarrassment. She certainly did not have an inferiority complex. Her defiance and common sense reasserted themselves. ‘But, surely, especially because of what we have encountered so far on this adventure, my speculation is not that crazy, is it? I only wish the geological scans were clearer.
‘The geological strata or something in there was interfering with the satellite imaging. But the outline of that subterranean structure in the middle could be a temple or a church. And there seems to be a chasm surrounding it, above and below and on each side. It looks as if there is no way to reach it. We’ll have to get there and see by ourselves. If indeed there exists that chasm around whatever structure is there, there may be walkways leading to it.’
Giorgos cut in. His voice carried clear through their earpieces. ‘Katerina, it looks like you will have to go through the opening next to the inscription before you proceed further along the tunnel.’
At that time the same inscription appeared next to the first opening in the tunnel on the seaward side where Giorgos, Vasilis and John were standing.
‘It looks as if we have to do the same at our end. Let me check the scroll.’ Giorgos paused for a couple of minutes while he consulted it. ‘The three keys seem to activate walkways leading to the middle structure. Katerina your wild speculation appears to be right. But that comes later. We need to go through our respective openings first. There may be traps. Take care.’ They all went through their respective openings.
CHAPTER 57
Present day
Katerina, Elli and Aristo recognised the place they were standing in. It was the Megaron Mousikis or Music Hall in Athens. They were suddenly all dressed to the nines for a very formal event.
A board on a tripod in front of them told them that Elli Symitzis appeared to be hosting a concert there in aid of the Symitzis Foundation and a host of charities close to her heart. A chance for the elite to show off and hear and relish the multi-layered gossip. Another chance to trash some people, praise others and dish the dirt. And an opportunity to do business.
Security was tight. Nobody unwanted could slip through the net, the spider’s web that Elli had weaved, unless she wanted them to.
When Giorgos, Vasilis and John went through the opening on their side, they seemed to have landed at the same event, themselves dressed formally as well. As they were mingling and enjoying the jovial and glamorous atmosphere, during the interval before the second act, the three of them found themselves drawn towards backstage to see one of the performers whom they admired like star-struck teenage fans, when their eyes fell upon a strange altercation outside one of the dressing rooms. They went closer to investigate.
Giorgos, Vasilis and John could see the intensity of the discussion increasing until it was almost a shouting match, only none of the people standing close to them or passing by, seemed to have noticed or, if they had, did not want to get involved. It was as if they could not see the verbal combatants at all.
As the three of them approached, the couple who were engrossed in their drama, apparently more dramatic than anything taking place only a few metres away on stage, the whole place started to wobble and the floor was changing shapes like jelly and taking them on a rollercoaster ride.
All three of them started to feel dizzy and swaying like a tree accosted by high winds. They were feeling close to losing their balance. The couple was not getting any closer. It was as if they had been walking forever. They began to wonder whether they were going to miss the rest of the performance.
Then suddenly the couple disappeared. Giorgos, Vasilis and John launched into a fierce search. Their eyes caught someone disappearing through a door and they followed. They found themselves in an empty low-ceilinged room with whitewashed walls and no adornment but a simple chandelier hanging from the ceiling. There was nowhere to hide and no other exit from the room. Where did the man go?
As they were about to give up and return to the concert, a man materialised in front of them. Not any man. He was dressed in what Giorgos recognised as Persian attire of the 4 ^th century B.C. The whole room transformed into Persepolis, the Persian Empire’s ceremonial capital and showcase of Persian splendour, that stood for more than two hundred years until it was burned down by the army of Alexander the Great a few months after they captured it in 330 B.C. an act that some people claimed might have even been an accident or the result of a challenge or a misguided act committed in a drunken stupor; others have labelled it a crime against history by the usual perpetrators, the victors.
The Persian led the three men through pillared halls and peaceful gardens to a strange door with indecipherable writing around the whole of its outer edge. The Persian beckoned them through. They were a little apprehensive, but they followed once again, bitten by the bug of curiosity.
When they went through the door, they realised it was a gateway that took them a few years into the future for they found themselves in a ruined Persepolis, only recently raised to the ground by Alexander the Great’s Macedonian troops and stripped to its foundations, its hollowed and ghostly, formerly intimidating, halls of grandeur, now deserted ruins still smoking and telling their sad story through their smoky tears to everybody who would listen.
Giorgos, Vasilis and John felt the shame of being the only people, since the fateful day of its destruction, to see that place freshly desolate. The sands of time and of the desert hid it well until it was rediscovered in the 20 ^th century. The three men wondered what they were doing there when they saw the Persian disappear up a flight of stairs ahead of them.
Up the stairs they went to the great hall and throne room, now not even a burned out shell, but a pile of ashes and random stones. In front of their eyes, though, it seemed to have been restored to its former glory and awe-inspiring magnificence.
They entered a different place, a whole world away from the ashen ruins they left only a few footsteps behind. But then suddenly the illusion was shattered and the hall fell back to its harsh reality of non-existence, its ethereal beauty turning to dust and stripped back to its burned out ashen shell.
They went down a few steps, and through a free-standing doorway connected to nothing, a lone survivor, jutting out like a sore thumb in a flattened-down landscape coming from nowhere and leading to nowhere. They tried to go around it, but the Persian shook his head and insisted that they go through. Although he only spoke once when he greeted them at their first sighting, the few words he had said were strangely in both English and Modern Greek. They wanted to ask why, but held back.
They went through the lone doorway, half-expecting to come out the other side just a step from where they were standing earlier, when they were forced to stop, as if an invisible barrier had been erected in front of them. They tried to go back to where they had come from, but they came up against another barrier.
They were trapped in limbo. They could not move forward and they could not go back. Then they heard a noise accompanied by a tremor appearing to be coming from under their feet and rising ever closer towards them, getting louder and more intense.
A flight of steps appeared and they followed down into darkness that slowly lifted to bathe them in day-light.