The Great Temple Robbery

“After we spoke, I thought I should continue my accounting of the treasure,” Karnon said. “I wanted to be absolutely sure that I had my sums right before anyone moved a drachma.”

Karnon had led us to the Porinos Naos, the temple in which the fighting funds were stored.

“And?” Diotima prompted.

“And the loose change boxes all came up correct. But with the enclosed boxes, they are numbered and weighed. That’s the fastest way to get a quick estimate, you know.”

“I understand.”

“The boxes came up with the right weights, but . . .” Karnon gulped, and nodded at his slave, the one who had summoned us. “But Hermes here noticed that one of them had a loose top. That’s not so surprising, because these things are extremely heavy. Do you recall that I said the loose change is in coins, but the long term storage is all precious metal?”

“Yes.”

“Those cases break open quite easily. They’re small, to cope with the weight, but only made of pinewood. It wouldn’t be the first time someone dropped a case and it splintered to pieces. The slaves hauled out the broken case and called me over to witness. Whenever a case is to be opened, I must be present. It’s an absolute rule, the breaking of which is punishable by death. You can imagine why.”

“The guards were present too?” I asked.

“Of course. Also the village carpenter, to repair the casing. He makes most of the cases, by the way, using imported wood.” Karnon paused. He looked like he was gasping for air. “When we opened the lid we found . . . lead.” He almost sobbed at that word. “I immediately ordered all the boxes opened. There are two others with missing money.”

“Did you call for Anaxinos?” Diotima asked.

“Not yet, but he’ll know at any moment, of course. There are too many talkative people who know the truth. What I want to avoid, if at all possible, is for Pericles to find out before we know where the money is.”

“Yes,” I said with feeling. “Believe me, Karnon, I know exactly what it’s like to incur Pericles’s wrath.”

“How much is missing?” Diotima asked.

“As near as I can make out, it’s on the order of thirty talents,” Karnon said grimly.

That number sounded oddly familiar. Where had I heard that recently?

When I remembered, the pit of my stomach felt like it had fallen through the floor. Thirty talents was the amount that Geros had demanded from Pericles, to hand over the treasure.

I said, “Uh, Karnon, how long has this money been missing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bring the torch over here,” Diotima said. She was inspecting the cases of gold bars. “Have you noticed everything on Delos is very dusty?” she said, then added quickly, “Except for your home, Karnon, which is immaculate—”

“That is Marika’s fine work,” Karnon said. “She comments all the time about how hard it is to keep the grit outside, especially with the boys.”

“Right,” Diotima said. “Apollo’s Rest is clean too. Everything else on this island is caked in dust. Even in this apparently enclosed temple.”

She wiped her finger across one of the undisturbed boxes. The dust was thick indeed. “I imagine it gets in through the gaps between the roof and the walls. Now look here.” She pointed out the tops of the three cases that the slaves had opened.

“This one’s dusty.” Diotima swiped a finger. There was dust, though not as much as on the tops of the other cases. Diotima took the torch from Karnon and held it close to the second case.

“This one has some dust, but look, you can see where there are the remains of hand prints.”

You could indeed.

“This case was disturbed long enough ago that dust has settled over, but not as much,” Diotima said. “Now this one . . .” She moved to the third. “This one has large swipes across it that are still clear.”

“What does this mean?” Karnon asked.

“It means we’re looking at three thefts, not one,” Diotima said. “The same person has been here three times, taken treasure, replaced it with lead so you wouldn’t notice the difference, and then departed.”

“Why take such a risk three times?” Karnon asked.

“How much do these cases weigh?” I asked.

“Lift one,” said Karnon.

The cases were much alike, unsurprisingly, since Karnon had said the same carpenter made them. There were rope handles at both ends. I took the handles and lifted. The case was heavy, but not so heavy that I couldn’t raise it. I put down the box, with a slight clang of the gold bars within, then lifted two boxes, one on top of the other. That was an effort. I could manage three, but not comfortably.

“You are strong,” Karnon commented.

“My father is a sculptor,” I explained. “I’ve been carrying marble blocks for him since I was young.”

“Most men could only carry two at a time,” he said. “Even then they’d be struggling. It’s not the sort of thing you can sneak out underneath your clothing.”

On the face of it, this seemed impossible. Nobody could carry away one of these cases in the light of day without being quite obvious about it. At night, the thieves would be risking all sorts of accidents. I said as much to Karnon and Diotima. Neither could suggest an answer.

“Who has access to the temple?” Diotima asked.

“It varies with the treasury,” Karnon said. “Only I have a key to the Porinos Naos. All the other temples are open to the public day and night. Anaxinos and Geros have keys to the other treasuries, I think, but I don’t know, it’s not my business . . .” Karnon shrugged.

“But someone else could have stolen a key,” I said. “Everyone on Delos leaves their houses unlocked.”

“I like to think the guards would have stopped anyone else who turned up with a key,” Karnon said, with a great deal of practicality.

“That’s a very good point,” I said. “What about the guards?”

“Obviously they’re standing here day and night. But they don’t have a key.”

Diotima said quietly, “They might not have a key, but they’re the only two men who could have carried off treasure without being noticed.”

We all three instinctively looked to the door. It was firmly shut, and Diotima had spoken softly. I didn’t think they had heard us. But the guards could hardly have failed to realize that something was wrong. If they were the thieves then we would be in the greatest danger when we exited the temple.

“If they think we know, they could cut us to pieces the moment we exit,” Karnon said as softly as Diotima.

“I wonder what the odds are of getting to Philipos?” I whispered.

“Why?” Diotima whispered back.

“Because he could bring soldiers from the fleet.”

“The only way out is through that door.” Karnon nodded at the double doors through which we’d entered, on the other side of which were two armed and armored soldiers who were almost certainly expecting trouble, and who knew they faced execution if they were captured.

I fingered my knife. It was all I had.

Diotima grabbed my arm. “Nico, be careful,” she said.

Be careful? When I was about to face down two trained hoplites in full armor?

I pulled my dagger.

“I’m going with you,” Karnon said.

“No, you’re not.”

He could not have been less than forty, he was an accountant who had probably last served in the army twenty years ago, and though he’d kept himself fit he wouldn’t last a heartbeat.

Diotima at least had the sense not to say she was going to fight. In times past she would have raced me to the door, but now she had our baby to protect.

“Karnon, I need you to protect Diotima. Once I’m through, get her clear of here, and get help. The Athenian fleet has plenty of force.”

It was so frustrating. Pericles had turned up with enough men to destroy a small army, and we couldn’t use a single one of them until we had won the fight for which we needed them. My plan was the only way: to keep the two guards busy while the other two went for help.

Karnon nodded, reluctantly.

“Be careful, Nico,” Diotima repeated.

“Of course I will,” I reassured her. Then I wondered how I was supposed to be careful while attacking two armed guards.

Diotima and Karnon took a door handle each, ready to fling open the double doors. I stood behind, my weapon at the ready. I decided I would roll out, to duck under any spears that were thrust my way, then come up and with luck, attack them from behind.

I reached down my leg to take my second fighting blade. Diotima’s father was chief of the city guard of Athens. On my very first commission, many years ago, he had torn strips off me for not carrying a backup. Now I always had a second blade strapped to my right ankle. It had saved me more than once.

I looked to Diotima and Karnon and nodded. Diotima silently mouthed, “One, two, three—”

They flung open the doors.

I instantly dived through. I landed in a somersault that I executed perfectly, rolled out of it into a jump during which I turned, ready to stab.

“Yaaahhhh!” I screamed to scare them and pushed the dagger in a blind thrust to catch the first attacker.

My feet touched the ground after my jump. My fighting stance ready to kill.

But nothing happened.

There was no one there. The guards had disappeared.

There were plenty of passersby in the sanctuary grounds though. Every one of them had stopped what they were doing and stared at me as if I were some sort of maniac. One woman was so scared she dropped her bundle of laundry and ran away. Several other women screamed and priests moved to protect them. From me.

I lowered my hands.

Diotima and Karnon appeared at the doorway.

“Where did they go?” Karnon asked the air and anyone who might hear.

“Do you mean the temple guards?” one of the nearby priests said. He edged away from me while warily keeping his eyes on my blade.

“They took off a moment ago. I thought you must have sent them on an urgent mission, Karnon.”

“Which way did they go?” Karnon asked.

“That way.” The priest pointed down the Sacred Way.

We all looked. In the distance, two men were running away. As we watched they both tossed their spears to the right and their shields to the left, the better to run. They tore off their helmets and flung them aside too.

“After them!”

I started running.
The guards had a good head start. If this were open country I wouldn’t have even bothered trying, but on tiny Delos they were going to run out of land very quickly, and then I would have them.

I was sadly out of condition. Married life and no recent hard work had seen to that. I was soon puffing hard. But I was gaining on my targets, which meant they’d been living an even softer life than me. I supposed that being a guard on Delos meant having nothing to do but stand around all day.

The soldiers didn’t deviate from the path. That was sensible. They were faster on the road, and they didn’t risk a fall on the stony ground. It made my job easier. I settled into a steady pace. The worst thing I could do would be to run out of breath when I caught up with two criminals. Though they were two stadia ahead, I knew this could only end one way.

By now we were passing the outlying houses of the New Village. These were the ones in which the priests lived—I hoped that someone would walk out a door and blunder into the guards’ path, but no one did. Soon we were past those first homes, into the village proper, and about to enter the agora.

I wondered if they would turn left or right when we reached the agora. Either way we would end up following the rough track that circled Delos. I had a ridiculous vision of the three of us running in loops around the island until we were all too exhausted to move. If nothing else it would entertain the onlookers.

We entered the agora. Moira walked out of Apollo’s Rest and was bowled over by the man in the lead. She fell backward, he stumbled, the other man took the lead and they kept on going straight ahead into the sea.

No, not the sea. They diverted at the last instant onto the narrow dock where the fishing boats moored. All the boats but two were out at sea, fishing. Damon was on one of the moored boats, doing the same repairs we’d seen him at the other day. At the other boat was a man unloading catch, and another on the pier accepting the baskets of fish.

The guards charged into the man on the dock. He flew backwards, straight into the water, then came up spluttering and cursing, his arms flopping wildly backwards in total surprise at the dunking. The guards jumped into the fisher boat. They landed on either side of the remaining fisherman, picked him up by an arm each, and tossed him over the side to join his friend in the water.

That fishing boat was still perfectly set for sailing. The guards ignored the curses of their victims while they set the sail. One took the tiller. The other rowed to get them started.

By then I had reached the dock, but they were already too far from shore for me to stop them.

I jumped onto the other boat; the one that Damon was in. He had watched the fracas with total surprise. Now he stared at me.

I pointed at the two escaping guards. “Follow that boat!”

Damon looked to the struggling fishermen in the water. He saw that they were hauling their soaked bodies back onto land. He looked at the stolen boat, now beginning to catch wind, and then he looked at the fishing boat we were in.

In a trice Damon hauled up the sail from below the shallow deck and was threading rope through holes in the sail.

“Quick, Nico, tie two cringles for the spar!” he ordered me. “I’ll manage the clews.”

I looked at him blankly.

“Right,” he said, perceiving the problem. “You don’t have a clew, do you? Do you know how to row?”

“Sure.”

“You better start then.” He nodded in the destination of our receding quarry. “Those two are getting away.”

I grabbed the oars from where they had been stored on each side. I pushed them over the side and began to pull.

As I did, Damon got the sail up single-handed. He stepped on me repeatedly as he did, but I couldn’t complain.

I had barely made any distance by the time Damon was settled at the steering oar. He nudged it one way, seemed to consider for a moment, then pushed the other way. The wind suddenly filled the sail and we had speed.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“I feel the wind on the back of my neck,” he said. “I’ve sailed here for so long that I can predict where it’ll come next.”

That was one advantage we had. Damon knew the winds and the guards didn’t.

Damon asked the question I’d been expecting. “Who are they?” He hadn’t recognized the guards beneath the armor, not with so many Athenians on the island too.

I told Damon what had happened at the Porinos Naos. He was shocked. He eyed the other boat with a calculating stare. “They’re about to turn to port,” he said.

That made sense, because if they turned right they would round the point into fifty Athenian triremes. But Damon had obviously seen something I hadn’t. I asked, “How can you tell?”

“From the way they’re wobbling, and look, they’ve both moved to port side too soon.”

Sure enough the other boat seemed to stall for a moment. Then it went still as the sail turned dead to wind.

“Now we have them!” I exulted.

“Not unless they’re fools,” Damon said. “Watch.”

We were getting closer as they struggled, until I could see the two of them clearly. The one that had been rowing at the start pushed the oars out once more. He turned the boat by paddling. But the boat was pointing head into the wind, and the wildly flapping sail prevented them from turning any more. The other man had stood up, somewhat shakily. He manually pushed the sail to one side and held it there by main strength. The sail filled with wind, pushed the boat backwards in a curve, which completed the turn, and suddenly they were under way.

“He didn’t use the ropes. That’s cheating,” I complained.

“Yeah, but it works,” Damon said.

The stolen boat picked up speed again. Damon with his practiced eye turned our steering oar just a nudge, and our boat began a wide sweep that was faster than the other boat.

We continued in this way for some time, making ground. I knew from past experience that sea chases needed patience: things always seemed to move slowly, but the distance fell away before you knew it. I looked behind, to see that we were far from Delos.

I considered how we would capture those two guards when we reached them, which now we were sure to do. Damon would be a good man in a fight, and I had my daggers. In the sort of dirty fighting that was certain to follow, I with my real-world experience of desperate struggles in back alleys would have the advantage over two common soldiers.

“You know, it’s a funny thing, Nico,” Damon said breaking in on my thoughts.

“What is?” I asked.

“The other day, when you came by with Diotima, and we had the picnic, you didn’t ask me what’s wrong with this boat,” he said.

“All right, I’ll ask. What’s wrong with this boat?”

“It’s got a leak.”

I looked down. Now that he mentioned it, the water in the bottom did seem to be filling.

“Looks like the plug didn’t quite work,” Damon said with his usual irritatingly happy voice. I was beginning to understand why nothing ever seemed to work on Delos; the doors that never quite fit, the hinges that squeaked. If Damon fixed it, it wasn’t likely to stay fixed.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“I think we need another boat,” he replied.

I understood what he meant. Our only hope of survival was to take that other boat from the criminals. If we didn’t, we would drown.

“Can we reach them in time?” I asked.

Damon shook his head.

The plug failed totally. The wooden stopper popped into the air. I grabbed it in midflight. I immediately tried to push the plug back in, but the pressure of the water that now gushed in was far too strong. That meant the boat was about to sink and we would drown. I reflected this had not been one of my better days.

Our boat rapidly filled with seawater. As it did, the hull began to sway alarmingly with the wash of the sea. The hull sunk until it was below water, which was now up to my waist height. The sway caused the canvas sail to become so wet that it was too heavy to remain upright.

The whole craft slowly, majestically turned over. Damon and I dived out. It was that, or stay where we were and be trapped beneath the hull. I was careful not to swim underneath the descending sail.

The sail entered the water and rotated until it was pointing vertically down, which was the direction I would probably soon be going myself.

The only thing above water now was the bottom of the boat, a tiny island far from safety. Damon and I clambered aboard, with some difficulty because it was covered in slime and barnacles. We sat there, on the upturned hull, tired from the effort and with our skin cut by the barnacles.

I watched as the fishing boat we were chasing, inexpertly handled by two criminals whom I desperately wanted to question, slowly vanished into the distance.

I sighed.

“Can you swim?” Damon asked.

I turned my head to tell Damon I could swim, but not all the way back to shore. Delos was a tiny dot in the distance. Then over Damon’s shoulder I saw something behind us.

“We’re being followed.”

Whatever came our way was barely larger than the dot of Delos, but the small vessel that had begun so far away grew rapidly to become a trireme.

“I think it’s one of ours,” I said, for the trireme had rounded Delos from the direction in which lay our fleet.

All we could do was sit on the upturned hull and wait to be rescued.

The trireme slowed as it approached. I stood up, unsteadily, upon the bottom of the boat, waved wildly and pointed in the direction our quarry had gone.

A head appeared over the side of the trireme. It was Captain Semnos. This boat was Paralos.

“Don’t stop!” I shouted. “Chase the other fishing boat!”

“Can you catch a line?” Semnos shouted back.

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I shouted, “Yes.” I raised my arms to show that I agreed with whatever Semnos proposed.

A sailor appeared over the edge of the fast-approaching trireme. He held a long rope, which he proceeded to pay into the sea beside him. Soon there was a long line trailing behind Paralos. Paralos’s path shifted slightly toward us. Semnos had clearly directed his boat so that it would pass by our crippled vessel.

“Do you want help, Nico?” Damon asked.

“Help to do what?” I asked.

“To grab the line as it passes,” Damon said.

So that was what Semnos had said, to which I had agreed.

“I’ll be fine,” I told Damon confidently. “You go first.” I wanted to see how Damon caught the rope.

Damon shrugged. “See you on board then.”

At that moment Paralos passed by. It was like an enormous, rapidly moving wooden wall that missed us by a hand’s breadth. I gasped. Any closer and it would have crushed us. Either the steersman on Paralos was supremely skilled, or else Damon and I were incredibly lucky. But by luck or skill, we were still alive.

Now the scary wooden wall had passed us by, and the rope was sliding across our hull. Damon dived after it. He grabbed the rope and was swept across the swell into the distance.

It was my turn.

I licked my lips—they tasted of salt—and wondered what would happen if I missed the rope.

Semnos was leaning over the stern. He waved at me. I saw that the rope was about to come to an end. If I dived and missed, I was probably going to drown.

I threw myself in and hoped for the best. I grabbed the rope and it slid through my hands. I let go and grabbed again, at the very end, this time with both hands, and this time I held on. I felt like my arms had been jerked from their sockets. Paralos was towing me at an incredible pace. I’d never understood from onboard just how quickly a trireme swam.

I screamed but I was underwater. I took a mouthful.

I automatically swallowed the enormous mouthful of sea. The salt burned my throat. That action made me gasp, and more sea washed in. I gulped mouthful after mouthful, until I managed to close my mouth and keep it shut. My head just didn’t seem to rise above the sea. That made me concentrate on surviving. I kept my mouth and my eyes firmly shut, I thought I would drown down there, until some fluke of the sea brought me to the surface. I gasped air, and gasped again, and almost choked on the sea water that now came gushing back up from my abused stomach.

By the time I had finished I felt awful, my stomach muscles ached with the amount I had vomited, but I also felt like I might live, as long as my throat didn’t collapse from salt and sea.

It was only now that I realized sailors were hauling on the line. It was a good thing, because without them I could never have clambered along the rope. Someone had dropped a fishing net down the side of Paralos. I saw it beside me with red-misted eyes. I grabbed the net with one hand and didn’t let go of the rope with the other until I was sure I had a firm grip. I was still traveling a hundred times faster than any man could swim.

I was dimly aware that the sailors were shouting at me. I grabbed the net with my second hand, and instantly the net began to rise, and me with it.

They hauled me over the gunwale and onto Paralos. I stood there shaking, and then I felt my intestines spasm.

I had thought my stomach was empty, but I was wrong. I bent double and was copiously sick.

Someone said angrily, “Over the side, you moron! Don’t hit the gold!”

But it was too late.

The sailors gave me a black look. They were the ones who would be scrubbing my mess off the deck and wiping the contents of my stomach off the ship’s gold fittings.

I looked up, feeling ashamed.

Damon stood there, dripping wet and grinning broadly.

“That was fun!” he said.

“Thanks for saving us,” I managed to croak to the captain.

Semnos shrugged. “They might not let us fight, but we’re still the best damned sailors in the Navy. When your wife turned up in a rush to say you were on a chase and probably in trouble, my men were the first to launch,” he said proudly.

“Diotima made it to the Athenian camp?” I said, perplexed. I couldn’t imagine how she had gotten there. Had she run? I was worried she might have hurt the baby. “How did she manage it?”

“Carried by four priests, on her orders,” Semnos said. “Apparently she was shouting at them to go faster every step of the way. They were sweating like pigs when they arrived. What’s our target?” he finished.

“Somewhere ahead of us there’s a fishing boat, manned by two soldiers,” I told him.

“Soldiers trying to sail?” Semnos smiled. “That sounds like the start of one of our onboard jokes. Don’t worry, Nicolaos, we’ll catch them easily.”

Semnos turned to speak to the steersman, who in turn roared orders that were echoed by the port and starboard officers. At midships were two aulos players, musicians who played the double flute. They increased the tempo of their song to match the increased urgency of the mission. Men pulled harder in time to the music, the sail went up, and Paralos surged. Having been mercilessly towed along by this mighty beast, I could only imagine with what speed we were cutting through the water now.

“We’re close to Mykonos, aren’t we?” I asked.

Semnos pointed. “That way, well north of us.”

“Oh. Then where are those guards going?”

“Maybe they’re as lost as you.”

The proreus—the officer who commanded at the front of the trireme—was on his usual watch, standing on the very pointy front end. His arm was wrapped around the smooth wooden pole that rose there for that very purpose.

Now the proreus pointed to starboard and yelled, “Captain! Captain, there!”

“Aye!” Semnos bellowed back into the breeze.

“Small vessel, sir!”

I stared where the officer pointed. Sure enough, there was the fishing boat. It couldn’t possibly escape Paralos, a fast and mighty warship.

The proreus paused, then added, “And a major vessel, Captain.”

Out of the sea mist beyond the fisher boat emerged another vessel; a large one, and it didn’t look Hellene. The other ship was also heading straight for the fishing boat.

Our Captain examined this new arrival with narrowed eyes.

“Who are they?” I asked Semnos.

“The hull looks Phoenician,” he said. “It’s a galley, not a trader. Which means they’re either pirates, in which case they might run, or they are enemy.”

The Phoenicians claimed to be the best sailors in the world, though everyone knew we Hellenes were better. Yet the Phoenicians were the only other sea-going people that Hellene commanders feared. It didn’t help that Phoenicea had long been a subject state of the Great King of the Persians. When the Great King had invaded us, twenty-six years ago, the Phoenicians had provided the core of his fleet. If this Phoenician was a fighting ship, then it meant trouble.

Another two boats came into view—they had been hidden behind the first—all three of the same type.

I said, “Three?”

“Usual contingent for pirates, if they have a base near here,” Semnos said. “Don’t worry, Nicolaos, those three together are no match for us.”

I asked, “Are they heading for the fishing boat too?”

“Looks like it.”

“Semnos,” I said urgently. “We have to get there first.”

“Pull hard. Maximum speed.” Semnos spoke it almost softly, but the effect on his men was instantaneous. The tempo of the aulos music increased to a frenetic pace. The rowers were sweating for their drachma-a-day.

It was going to be a tight race. We were fast, but the Phoenician was closer.

I suddenly realized the fishing boat would come alongside the other vessel at the exact moment we got there.

The guards bumped into the other boat, midships. I saw someone aboard throw down a line.

“Disengage,” Semnos ordered.

“But Captain,” a man objected, “We can take those scum.”

“I said disengage!” Semnos shouted.

All around me, I could feel the men’s shoulders slump. They were disgusted. And resigned.

But I wasn’t. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. An Athenian captain in a powerful ship of the line had just refused to take on a smaller galley.

“What? You cannot be serious, Captain,” I said. “Why aren’t we fighting them? We’re a ship of Athens.”

Semnos grabbed me by the front of my chiton. “Don’t you remember what my standing orders are?” he said angrily. “Paralos is forbidden to engage. If you want to fight, then you’re on the wrong boat.”

The steersman diverted the steering oar, but only by the tiniest margin necessary to miss the Phoenician. He wanted them to know that we could have sunk them, but chose not to, and he growled as he did it.

I was forced to watch while Paralos skimmed so close to the fishing boat I had chased that I could almost have reached out and touched it. Instead, we passed it by at such a high speed that we were gone in an instant. The two criminal guards made rude gestures at our backs.

Semnos stood alone to the starboard side and swore. “By the balls of the dog, by the guts of a constipated goat, by the hairy bum of a—”

“Captain, I apologize,” I said, interrupting him.

“What for?” He was puzzled.

“When you said that Paralos was not allowed to fight, I took that for a hollow complaint. Now that I’ve experienced it, I completely understand your frustration. How do you stand it?”

He shook his head. “I ask myself that same question every time this happens.”

“The other boat was Phoenician, all right,” I said to Diotima and Pericles. The two of them had waited together for our return in Pericles’s tent. That must have been interesting, considering their mutual dislike. On the other hand, Diotima was surrounded by empty bowls. I guessed she had spent the time wisely, eating Pericles out of supplies.

Pericles turned to Semnos for confirmation of my statement.

Semnos nodded. “I got a clear view of their deck. That’s my evaluation, Pericles.”

Pericles visibly relaxed. He had been honest with Anaxinos when we first arrived: his greatest fear was that the Persians would use their newly recovered base in Egypt to launch an attack from the south.

“Three ships isn’t anywhere near enough for an invasion,” Pericles said. “For that you would want two hundred. It might be a raid, of course. Athens runs constant raids against Persian cities on the coast, though usually we’d send more ships than three to hit a city! That’s the sort of complement you see from a pirate base. If so, we have nothing to fear from them, with all our ships of the line.”

“On the other hand, it could be a scouting party prior to an invasion,” Semnos said.

That thought was mildly alarming. Pericles certainly thought so.

“I will order the triremes to patrol Delos,” he said. “Those sailors sleeping on the beach every day may as well be doing something for their drachma a day.

Semnos left, to carry Pericles’s orders to the other trierarchs.

Diotima and I stood to go, but Pericles waved at us. “Stay, Nicolaos. You too, Diotima.”

Diotima bristled; she didn’t like taking orders from Pericles. I hoped an argument wasn’t about to break out. Fortunately my wife held her tongue.

Pericles said, “What’s this I hear about Philipos becoming your apprentice? He came to me babbling about such a thing. You know he’s my closest assistant.”

“He wants to learn investigation,” I said.

Pericles frowned. “This doesn’t sound like you at all, Nicolaos. You prefer to work alone. What are you playing at?”

No one ever accused Pericles of being slow.

I explained to Pericles that his assistant, by his own admission, would have killed the victim if he’d been a little more competent. “Philipos is the only man on the island who not only had a motive but was in the right place to do it,” I finished.

“So you gave him a job?” Pericles asked.

“I put him in a position where I can keep an eye on him,” I said. “What do you know about him?”

“He comes from a good family,” Pericles said at once. This was something I’d noticed before about Pericles: he often judged men by who their fathers were.

“Military man?” I asked.

“Only in the sense that he’s served when the state needed brave men,” Pericles said. “Philipos is an adequate line officer, but he has no initiative. He’s not command material, Nico. He’s not like you.”

That statement took me aback so completely that I almost staggered. Had Pericles just offered me a compliment? If so, it was the first time in our long association.

“I don’t understand,” I said, because I could not credit what I had heard. “I’ve never commanded men in my life.”

That wasn’t strictly true. I had once commanded the city guard during a crisis, but at every moment I had been acutely aware that I had no idea what I was doing. I had never commanded men like Pericles did every day, or like my father-in-law.

Pericles shook his head. “That’s not the point. You act on your own initiative, Nico. Usually you act too much on your own initiative. That’s something Philipos will never do.” Pericles closed that statement with a hint of contempt.

Pericles was not a man to hide his feelings about an underling. He had probably made clear to Philipos, every day that the lesser man hung around Pericles’s house, that he considered Philipos good only for following instructions. Yet Philipos had kept returning, because he wanted to help. It would have been like kicking a faithful dog.

Suddenly I understood why Philipos had acted as he did to try to kill Geros. Philipos had acted on his own initiative, probably for the first time in his life, purely to prove Pericles wrong.

And now this had happened.

I felt sorry for the man. If Philipos proved to be the killer, I was going to blame Pericles.

“Is there any chance those two guards could have been the killers of Geros?” Pericles asked.

“It’s possible,” Diotima said. “When the protest began that night, the guards made themselves scarce, and who can blame them? Geros might have ordered them to defend the treasury against the entire fleet. “

“So they might have done it?” Pericles pressed. That answer would be very convenient for him.

“They might have gone to the Old Village,” Diotima agreed. “In fact, they almost certainly went somewhere out of the way. Nobody saw them all night.”

“Then they might be the thieves too,” Pericles said.

“Not a chance,” I told him. “Accomplices, yes—”

“Almost certainly,” Diotima added.

“But to get so much money off this island and then know what to do with it requires skill. Skills a common soldier wouldn’t have. Whoever did this knows finance and accounting. In particular they knew how Karnon accounts for the funds. From the evidence this has been going on for some time.”

“Then let’s move on to the theft of League funds,” Pericles said. “How are we supposed to explain this to the people of Athens?” He threw his arms up in despair. “Not to mention that an entire Athenian fleet was present when the theft was discovered. That’s not going to sit well with the other member states.” For a moment I thought he would tear out his hair. Instead he turned on us. “How much is missing?”

Diotima spoke up. “We won’t know until Karnon has finished his accounting. His initial estimate is thirty talents.” Diotima hesitated, then added, “Pericles, when you keep in mind that there are four thousand talents in that treasury, thirty talents doesn’t seem so much.”

“It’s enough to build three entire war ships!” Pericles exclaimed. “Did the killer take the money?” He asked.

“It does seem logical,” I said. “We’ll have to look into it.”

“What a good idea,” Pericles said in his most sarcastic voice. “Don’t let me keep you.”

“No, but we’ll keep you,” Diotima said.

Pericles stared at her.

“We need to understand whether there might be some other member state, or some other organization, that might want to target the treasury,” Diotima said. “Why is the treasury kept on Delos?”

“Because no one could agree on which city to trust with the money,” Pericles said. “That was twenty-five years ago. Now everyone knows that they can trust Athens.”

I thought Pericles was more optimistic about that than I felt.

“Also, no one in their right mind would sack Delos. The city that did such a thing would be cursed for all eternity.”

“So you don’t think a member state would be behind those ships out there?”

“Hardly.”

“How many members are there?” Diotima asked.

“A hundred and forty-eight.”

“Anaxinos wanted you to convene a meeting of the members, to talk about where the treasure should lie. Yet you refused?”

“Have you ever tried to get a hundred and forty-eight men to agree on anything?” Pericles asked.

“I see your point,” Diotima said. She’d seen enough meetings of temple priestesses to know how that would go. “Then let’s be sure about this. You still think those ships are Phoenician or Persian?”

“That or pirates. Why are you pressing these questions?” Pericles asked.

“One of the coins we found on Geros came from Kyzikos. Karnon identified the coin for us,” Diotima said. “Kyzikos is in the province of Anatolia. Anatolia is on the other side of the Aegean, well inside the Persian Empire. So far inside that we Hellenes don’t normally see their coins.”

Pericles was visibly disturbed at that news. He stopped pacing. “You think Geros was in some sort of conspiracy with the Persians?”

“Karnon said the coin might have come in trading,” I said.

Pericles nodded. “Yes, or the conspiracy theory is correct.”

“Or Geros discovered someone who was in a conspiracy,” Diotima suggested. To our looks of surprise she shrugged and said, “It’s a theory. One of those ideas must be right. No matter which, we have a major thief on the island.”