Free The Lost Temple by Tom Harper Page B

silently as Grant and Marina approached.
    “
Kalimera sas,
” Marina called.
    “
Kalimera.
” The farmer leaned on his stick and stared at her. Beside him, his wife looked at Marina as if she’d stepped off the stage of a Paris revue.
    Stammering slightly, Marina launched into her question. Grant’s Greek was probably good enough for him to have followed it if he’d paid attention, but he didn’t bother. Something was troubling him. Pemberton had written “Valley of the Dead” in the margin of his notebook, but this wasn’t the valley. He turned and looked back up into the gorge. It curved away to the left, so that from where Grant stood it looked as though the valley ended abruptly in a sheer rock face where the wall swept round. And there, seeming to rise straight over the middle of the gorge, stood a domed hill.
    “He says they never saw anyone.”
    “What?”
    Snatched out of his thoughts, Grant turned back. Across the field the farmer still stood impassively and watched them. His wife had turned away and was ostentatiously driving the ox forward.
    “The farmer. He says they never saw a British archaeologist. He might be lying—the British aren’t so popular here since you started propping up the puppet government in Athens.”
    “Nothing to do with me,” demurred Grant. “But look behind you.”
    Marina looked round. “What?”
    “That’s the view.” The paper flapped in the breeze as Grant held it up, transposing it over the landscape. “The cliffs on either side, the sea at this end and the hill in the middle of the valley.” High above the domed summit a hawk hovered lazily in the sky. “You’ve even got the birds.”
    “And the flying lion?”
    “Sleeping.” Grant grinned. “Let’s see if we can wake him up.”
     
    They threaded their way through the trees and fallen boulders that littered the dry stream bed. Inside the gorge, with the cliffs looming over them, they quickly lost sight of the summit, but they pushed on, trying to keep as straight a path as possible.
    “The Minoans often put their shrines on hilltops,” said Marina, breathing hard. It was almost noon and her shirt clung to her skin. “Perhaps we should try the top of the cliffs.”
    “It wouldn’t look the same from up there,” said Grant stubbornly. “And in the picture, the temple’s under the summit.”
    “I told you, you can’t . . .” Marina broke off with a cry of surprise. She pushed past Grant toward a boulder at the edge of the path. On top of it, almost hidden by the fronds of an oleander, four rocks were arranged in a small cairn. She pulled them apart. A smoothed-out square of thinly beaten silver glittered underneath.
    “Minoan treasure?” asked Grant.
    “Fry’s Turkish Delight.” She turned over the foil to show him the wrapper. “Pemberton loved it. Every time he went to England he came back with some.”
    “Full of eastern promise,” Grant muttered, astonished. “I wonder what other surprises he left for us.”
    Marina scrambled over the rock and vanished into the undergrowth. With a rueful shake of his head, Grant followed her through the trees until they gave way to a bare hillside. A few yards away Marina was kneeling beside a rocky overhang.
    “Is that the temple?” The rock looked too low for anyone to be able to crawl under it.
    “See for yourself.”
    Grant crouched down. Laid out on a piece of sacking under the rock were a pickaxe, a spade and a paraffin lantern. All were coated in rust, but he could still read the letters stencilled on the wooden handles: B.S.A.
    “The British School at Athens,” Marina explained. “They ran the excavations at Knossos. They were Pemberton’s employer.”
    Grant pulled out the spade and banged it against the rock. A few flakes of rust fluttered to the ground and a mournful clang echoed through the valley. Grant looked around guiltily.
    “I thought we were trying to be secret,” said Marina, cocking an eyebrow at him.
    “We haven’t