It was time to search the buildings for the plunder. Alessandra jumped into the lagoon to rinse out the orange dust from her hair and to scan the beach from the water. Meanwhile, Alexis and I began searching every building that might be used as an Aladdin's cave. It had to be accessible from the water, have plenty of storage space and most of all, it had to be secure. The most obvious ones had already lost their rooves, collapsing over the centuries, so they'd be useless in bad weather and anything hidden inside would have been ruined. Others were out of the question because of the terraces. For a while, it looked like we'd miscalculated and made a huge mistake but we decided on one last effort even if it meant having to split up and to be safe we'd stick to the beach area.
Alexis was right, it was hard not to crunch bits of pottery or sea shells underfoot, and I was forced to step over a gang of red ants, dragging off a caterpillar and waving nasty-looking pincers at anything that threatened their mission. As for my friends, they had disappeared and I began to wonder if they were safe. I tried staring into my surroundings without focusing on anything in particular and that helped a distant crumbling ruin to emerge from its orange terraced soil but the stillness made me feel I was being monitored or that something nasty was about to happen. Then Alessandra surfaced in the bay with a loud splash and we were glad to see each other, but there was still no sign of our Alexis. The silence had to be broken. So, instead of creeping about I took a deep breath and bellowed out his name into the nearest hovel which caused a rattled flock of partridges to explode and clatter into the air right in front of my face almost knocking me over in their escape. I was so startled I jumped up and down, waving my arms, laughing and shouting, spitting fluff and feathers from my mouth but more to scare my demons than because I found it funny. I held my breath and listened. Nothing. What if he'd fallen and knocked himself unconscious? I waved Alessandra in from the water.
We started searching near the shore but found nothing at all until I climbed onto a finger of land sticking out over the sea. Underfoot, bits of rock crumbled and splashed into the water, sinking past fishes in the swaying seaweed to the greenness down beyond. No, this was not a good place to twist an ankle or to find yourself trapped. Did I have the nerve to jump in and look for him? I had no choice. I'd started to undo my bootlaces when I became aware of a low drone. I looked around and saw a shack made from driftwood and mud amongst the shadows of one or two twisted olive trees on the extreme point. Of course, Alexis would call it a hut, and where else would you find a shepherd when not with his flock? Its opening was so low I had to crawl to look inside. I could just make out his smoky silhouette on his knees; arms outstretched, head back, swaying to and fro. He was mumbling before some sort of low table. The air in there was thick and the incense made me cough and stung my eyes. He seemed dazed and didn't react at all when I whispered his name. I left him and went outside to wait and after a little while, the droning stopped and a subdued Alexis appeared in the doorway.
'Are you all right? What on earth were you doing?'
'Asking the goddess Athena for guidance.'
'It looked pretty spooky. I thought I'd better not interrupt.'
Then Alessandra appeared picking her way towards us over the rocks, 'Are you two alright?'
'Everything's fine. Did you see anything unusual? Any ships?'
'Not even a Jolly Roger.'
There was a derelict mill right down on an old quay that backed on to the cliff face. It was in such a bad state we were amazed it hadn't been blown away. We were about to barrel past when Alessandra caught my arm and pointed to a well worn set of steps that climbed up to a doorway at the side. When we got to within six or seven feet it became obvious the whole building was fake, a facade, theatrically distressed to look convincing from the sea. As expected the door was locked and just when I thought this might be the perfect argument to turn him back, Alexis produced a set of lock picks from his pocket.
'Why do you look at me like that? I found them in your villa.'
Once inside, we found a second door, a hangar door at the front. Set on the wall was a bank of switches and when flicked, the largest flooded the building with yellow light. My jaw hit the floor.
'Can you hear that hum? It's really faint.'
'Air-conditioning,' suggested Alessandra.
We were standing at the entrance to a sort of warehouse that stretched back into the cliff for over a hundred metres. Amongst fragments of amphorae, plastic covered carpets and rugs, there were countless wooden crates. Stencilled on the nearest, 'Iraq National Museum of Baghdad'. My mouth went dry. I looked at some others. They were all from the Mediterranean region. Crates marked Afghan, Uzbek, Cyr, Scy, Ity, Try, Cthge and every Greek island including Faria stacked high to the roof on galleries along four or five avenues. There were temperature controlled, hermetically sealed, storage units made of glass. We saw a laboratory and a workshop and even a good old familiar fork-lift truck. In that one building was the largest collection of genuine, and therefore priceless, artefacts and pure works of art, reproductions and quality artifice imaginable. Here were antiquities to order - and not just a warehouse, a factory - and everywhere the Kaliantikos logo, a diamond 'K', Daphne's little company.
So Daphne was still blinded with rage, still vengeful, still cheating and now waging war on the art world for sure. This was unlimited revenge for shutting her out and she'd have it on its knees and paying through the nose in no time. Intelligent crime on a huge scale with a demon in the detail; a high-powered, heavily-armed, luxurious schooner feeding world-wide drivelling greed, gagging for more and supplied on demand by ruthless slavering zeal. How could she get away with playing the innocent as a respected art historian while being completely responsible for the trafficking of plunder on this scale. You didn't have to be the smartest man in the world to work out what might have happened to us if we'd been caught. A flicker of the imagination was enough to have us out of there in no time.
'No guards - with so much at stake, it doesn't make sense.'
'CCTV cameras everywhere so let's hope they're not watching by satellite.'
'It's a pity we can't get a mobile signal here, we could've called Nikos.'
'Well, it's going to take us a few hours to make the trek home and we're already tired and stressed so I suggest we get inside my hut and bed down for the night. We need to save our strength,' said Alexis.
'Calm down, you two! Calm down. Excuse poor little me, but being a woman and able to think and do more than one thing at a time, I have already asked Papa to arrange for Nikos to come here for us at around three and it's two o'clock already.'
We huddled together at the jetty and no one spoke a word, holding our breath and focused on the stillness, flinching at the slightest slop of wash. We scanned the gorge and rocky outcrops and if anything moved at all - we gave it full attention. The pain of waiting to see Nikos hove into view from around the point was killing and filling us with dread. Then just when my cynicism was arching its cynical eyebrow, three sharp blasts from a steam whistle shattered the deafening silence and almost caused me personal embarrassment. It was the Delfini to the rescue.
All the way back to Dorini the others spoke of nothing but resistance to the looters and their commitment to do whatever it took to ward off all threats from outside interference. They also agreed Maria must be told of our discoveries and we must become perfectly organised to ensure our success.