The Lost Temple by Tom Harper Read Free Book Online Page B

loose.
    He waited another minute, then decided to come back later. He turned round—and stopped.
    Even with all his training, he hadn’t heard her come up behind him. She wore a plain black dress, and a black scarf covered her head. If you had seen her from behind you would have taken her for one of the old women who inhabited every Greek village, as gnarled and wizened as the olive trees and just as much part of the landscape. But if you looked from the front, you would have seen that the dress was pulled in at the waist, tracing the curves beneath, and that below the hem of the skirt her ankles were smooth and slender. Her dark hair was pulled back under the scarf, except for one loose strand which hung over her cheek. It only seemed to accentuate the wild beauty in her face.
    “Grant?” The face screwed up and her dark eyes blazed. “I didn’t think you’d come back. I didn’t think you’d dare.”
    Her voice was the same as he remembered it, with a quickness like a lick of flame in the way she pronounced the English words. He put his hat back on, just so he could lift it in mock courtesy. “Marina. I . . .”
    “If I ever wanted to see you again, it would only be to kill you.”
    Grant shrugged. “Time for that later. I came to warn you.”
    “The same way you warned Alexei?”
    “I didn’t kill your brother.” Grant spoke deliberately, coldly.
    “No?” She had begun to move toward him, carried away by her anger, and Grant braced himself. He had never underestimated her. Most of the men who had had regretted it. “Three days after the ambush he went to meet you in the gorge at Impros. Neither of you ever came back—but only one of you is alive now.”
    “I promise you, his death had nothing to do with me.” That wasn’t entirely true. He could almost taste the poison bile that had clogged his throat as he’d waited in the gorge with the Webley, the sweat stinging his eyes like tears. “Christ, he was almost like a brother to me.”
    There was a lot more he could have said, but that would only have made things worse. And he didn’t have much time. He glanced over his shoulder, then back at Marina. “I came to warn you.” He’d already said that, he knew. “You remember the book?”
    She looked up, caught off guard. “What?”
    “The book. The archaeologist’s notebook I gave you to hide. You remember it?”
    A gust of wind suddenly lifted her scarf and snatched it away. It sailed across the garden, catching in the branches of a tree by the wall. Marina’s long hair billowed out behind her, savage and untamed.
    “I don’t remember it.”
    “Yes you do. Two days after the invasion. I brought it here—the archaeologist asked me to. You were upset because he’d been killed.”
    “Pemberton was a good man,” said Marina softly. “A
good
Englishman.” She stared at Grant a moment longer. A tear glistened in the corner of her eye. It wouldn’t fall, but nor would she wipe it away. Grant just stood and waited.
    She seemed to decide something.
    “Come inside.”
     
    The house was exactly as he remembered it: a kitchen, a bedroom and a living room, all simple but impeccably tidy. A charred log smoldered in the stone hearth, and bunches of wildflowers and dried lavender were arranged in vases on the windowsills. Photographs hung on the walls: a man in a broad-brimmed hat sitting on a donkey, struggling to keep still for the camera; two young women laughing by a river bank; a young man in a conscript’s uniform, his face grainy and drawn as he tried to look brave. Grant didn’t look at that one.
    Marina disappeared into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with two tiny coffee cups and two glasses of water. She had also brushed her hair, Grant noticed. She put the drinks down on the lace tablecloth and seated herself across from him. Grant sipped his coffee cautiously and made a face. It was thick as tar.
    “Have you lost your taste for Greek coffee?”
    “Just checking it for